by Lyga, Barry
The vine holding Deedra’s left hand came loose. Just a little. She wiggled her hand free, and Rose concentrated on the one around her midsection, the one making it hard for her to breathe.
Eyes closed, he gritted his teeth and focused with all his might. He still felt woozy and tentative from what seemed to have been a long, fitful sleep, the sort that did not refresh, but rather left the sleeper even more tired on awakening. He vaguely remembered running from the DeeCees at the prison, but little else. Save for brief, nightmarish snatches of grandiose speeches from Dr. Dimbali. Laughter. Mumbles. The pain of the nutrient spikes, ruthlessly inserted and manipulated. He struggled and pulled at the vine around her middle, desperate to free her, to do this thing, this one thing he so badly needed to do.
And suddenly the vine came loose, sending him stunned and stumbling backward until he collided with the table. Deedra hung from the wall by the one vine holding her right wrist, but it quickly withdrew almost as if alarmed. She dropped the six inches to the floor and managed to keep her feet under her.
The vine that had encircled her midsection was hacked in two, its bloody, pulpy stumps flailing in pain and shock.
Deedra held up her makeshift knife in her left hand. “Sorry, but…”
“Between you and the plants,” Rose promised her, “I choose you.”
He reached out to help steady her after the drop. She took his hand, then pulled away after a moment, turning away from him.
“It’s me,” he assured her. “I just needed to let…” He struggled with the words. For so long, on the table, in torment, his memories and thoughts had been a mash. Until he saw her, bound with the vines, so close to death. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“It’s not that,” she said, averting her eyes, and letting out an amused little laugh.
He looked down at himself. “Oh. I should probably put on some pants.”
They scoured the basement quickly, hoping for maybe an old lab coat or smock of Dr. Dimbali’s. Instead, Deedra came upon a jumble of material stuffed onto a shelf in a dark corner. She unfurled it to discover a pair of pants spattered with dried blood, as well as something she knew all too well.
She shook it out and held it up. “Rose. Look.”
His eyes widened in surprised delight as she held his coat up to him. There were slashes and cuts along its length, most of which had been mended or patched. “It’s your stuff from SecFac,” she said. “They must have given it to Dr. Dimbali along with…” She hesitated to say “your body.”
“… along with my remains,” Rose said with something like humor. He approached her and took the coat, studying it. “It looks like he tried to fix it. Experimenting on the biomass, maybe…”
She handed him the pants. “They’re, uh, not particularly clean, but…”
“They’ll do.”
He stepped into the pants, then slipped on the coat. It was a bit ragged and worn, but seeing him in it suddenly made everything right again. It made him real again.
“You don’t have any shoes.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
Before she could reply, the room erupted in a high-pitched wail.
“Lockdown!” a familiar, programmed voice bellowed after the alarm wail ended. Deedra almost dropped her knife, still slick with red-and-green-smeared fluids.
“Lockdown! This is a lockdown!”
“What in the—” Rose began.
“This is a block-wide lockdown! Repeat, a block-wide lockdown!”
Deedra dared to crane her neck around the corner of the alcove. The rest of the workshop was empty and still, save for the screens now lit up with the flashing lockdown logo. Dr. Dimbali was gone.
“He must have reported us—” she began, only to be interrupted by the continuation of the voice, which announced the very block on which Dr. Dimbali’s building stood.
“All citizens within two blocks of the location stated are to remain in place until released by the Department of Citizen Services or representatives of the Office of the Magistrate!”
“He reported us, for sure,” she fumed. “And now the DeeCees are coming after us.”
“He wouldn’t report us,” Rose said. “Not if he wants to keep me a secret.”
“Then how did they…” Deedra gasped as she realized. She fumbled in her pocket for the SmartSpex and slipped them on. In the corner of her eye, a red light pulsed, flashing the words WORM DETECTED!
“They bugged the SmartSpex,” she groaned. That was why Markard had returned them. Why she’d been released from SecFac and left alive. Just in case she led them somewhere. She recalled the DeeCees and drones that had shadowed her on her way to Dimbali’s basement from Lissa’s building. They’d been closing in as she moved and nailed her down when she was still.
“Break them,” Rose said.
She took them off and prepared to snap them in half but couldn’t bring herself to do it. They were too useful, and she could maybe figure out how to remove the worm. For now, she settled on removing the battery, killing their connection.
Rose scurried to her side and took her free hand. His hand was cool and softer than she remembered, which should have been impossible. New hand; new skin. Untouched, undamaged. “We aren’t safe here,” Rose said. “It’s only a matter of time before they search the place. And find us.”
She squeezed his hand. Gently. So fragile. She knew how powerful he was, but he still felt so… breakable. The image of his chest exploding as the shell tore through him lurked at the edges of her imagination. Would she ever forget it?
She thought not.
“We’re leaving the Territory, aren’t we?”
Rose considered her for a moment. Then: “I don’t think we have a choice.” He said it with real regret, and she couldn’t figure out why. “I know it’s your home, but…”
Deedra shook her head fiercely. “No. No, it’s okay. I was actually… I was actually getting ready to leave anyway. Before I knew you were alive. There’s nothing left for me here.” She shrugged. “There was nothing much to begin with. I have to admit—leaving with you is a lot better than leaving alone.”
He grinned and raised their joined hands so that he could lightly kiss her knuckles. “Then we go. Together.” He thought for a moment. “We need to get out of here right now. Go somewhere else. The best option to get out of the Territory safely is to move at night, when no one’s on the streets. The drones can’t see me because my body temperature doesn’t fall within their parameters. But you…”
She gestured to her poncho. “Dr. Dimbali was kind enough to make me drone-invisible.”
His face split wide into that grin she loved so much, and she had to resist the urge to lean forward and kiss it. There was no time for that.
“I think I know a place we can go. To hide until night.”
“Where?”
He clenched her hand tighter and pulled her toward the exit. “I’m pretty sure you call it the Broken Bubble.”
CHAPTER 48
Outside, DeeCees were everywhere. Drones thickened the sky. The programmed voice shouted instructions every thirty seconds, reminding citizens to shelter in place, not to leave their current positions, and so on. Deedra’s name had been added to the lockdown blast, and she knew photos of her would be flashing on vids throughout the Territory. Her scar alone would make her unforgettable.
If I wasn’t planning on leaving before… I’m definitely going now.
Rose and Deedra watched from the roof of Dr. Dimbali’s building, ten stories up. The rain had tapered off and the sun was doing its best to burn through the cloud cover. She prayed for it to hold off as long as possible—right now the cloud cover was the only asset they had. That and the fact that the DeeCees and the drones were all focused on the ground. Dr. Dimbali had been right about one thing—no one ever looked up.
They’d had no choice but to run for the roof. Dr. Dimbali’s “secret” entrance had been compromised already, with DeeCee
robotic cameras positioned at its mouth. (Fortunately, Rose had been in the lead, and he saw them before they could see her.) The block surrounding the building swarmed with DeeCees, like roaches on offal, a slow-moving, oozingly growing sludge of those shiny black helmets and matte black suits of antiballistic body armor. Deedra had never seen so many DeeCees in the same place at the same time, except in her nightmares.
The streets were closed off to them. They couldn’t stay in the building—someone would see them and report them, or they would be found during a search. And so, the roof.
But now that they were up here, Deedra had to admit that while being outside was preferable to being trapped inside… they were still trapped. The only difference being a slight breeze from the north.
“There.” Rose pointed off to her left. Another building, this one a story smaller than Dr. Dimbali’s, squatted just off to the east.
“What about it?”
He guided her line of sight. “Once we get to that roof,” he told her, “we can get to the one on the right over there. And then to the one just past it. That should get us past the blockades, and we can get to street level and make our way to the Broken Bubble.”
She could see it in her mind’s eye, a series of rooftop hops. It made perfect sense. Except for the part about hopping from rooftop to rooftop.
“It’s at least thirty feet from here to that next roof,” she pointed out. “We can’t jump it.”
“I’m not proposing we jump. I’ll go over first and then make a bridge for you.”
She stared at him, openmouthed. He grinned.
“Don’t worry. I escaped from the Blam Boys, remember?”
“The Bang Boys.”
“Oh. Right.” He shook his head. “Some things are still scrambled.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She gnawed at her lower lip. “Can you do this?”
“Watch me.”
He stood at the very edge of the building, facing their escape route. His reclaimed coat’s ragged hem fluttered in the breeze. As she watched, his arms thickened and lengthened, becoming tougher and more vine-like. Vicious-looking spikes stood out from them. Thorns. To help him grip.
He backed up several paces. Deedra stood aside. She wanted to ask him exactly what his plan was, but before she could form the words, he took off at a dead run, charging full speed toward the edge of the building.
And jumped!
She bit back a shriek of horror. For a moment, Rose’s slim form was a green highlight against the lightening sky, and then gravity blinked into awareness and he began to plummet. This time, Dr. Dimbali would not be around to resurrect him.
And then he lashed out with those extended arms of his. Their ends just barely reached the roof of the other building. Running to the precipice, she watched him, one story below, as his body jerked to a sudden and painful halt that made her own shoulders throb in sympathy. He swung against the side of the other building, feetfirst, absorbing the impact with a bend of his knees.
And then—she could hardly believe she was seeing it—he scrambled up the side of the building so fast that it seemed to take no time at all. Some combination of actual climbing and retracting his vines, the thorns studded along their lengths giving purchase, finding support in cracks and fissures along the building’s facade. She stared in gape-mouthed astonishment as he hauled himself over the parapet at the top of the building, vanishing behind it for a moment, then popping up to reappear, that infuriating, gorgeous grin on his face.
He gestured to her. It didn’t take much to interpret what he was saying:
Jump! I’ll get you!
No. Way.
Come on! he mimed.
She risked a look down the side of the building. Not a chance. She had scaled plenty of structures in pursuit of scavenge, and she wasn’t terribly afraid of heights themselves. Falling, though? Yeah, she was plenty afraid of falling.
He gestured Hurry! and as she watched, a swarm of vines and tendrils protruded from his body, extending out into the chasm between buildings, many of them overlapping. It wasn’t quite a net and it didn’t cover the entire space, but she supposed it was better than nothing. Like the bridge by the river, it was imperfect and probably unstable, but—like the bridge—it was something she had to do.
Jump and take your chances… or stay here and be caught for sure.
She thought of the thorns. Of the night he’d cut her without meaning to.
They’ve already built the machines. No one knows what’s coming. So many people will die.
And hey—at least if Rose misses you, you might squish a DeeCee or two.
One thing she knew for certain: If she screamed, they would hear her down below, and all those faces and robots and cameras currently looking down would look straight up… and see her there. And whether she made it or not, they would know where to look for Rose. So before leaping, she wadded up a shirt from her backpack and stuffed it into her mouth to muffle any sounds she made.
She did as Rose had done, backing up a little way. Before she could lose her nerve, she ran full tilt toward the edge of the building. The tricky part was right at the end, where the parapet rose. Time it wrong and she would lose momentum or trip.…
At the last moment, she hop-stepped onto the parapet and—
Lost her balance.
And dropped over the edge of the building, arms flailing, legs kicking.
She screamed her lungs out, the sound muffled by the shirt. Desperately, she wanted to close her eyes, but she seemed incapable of doing so. She would get a nice close-up of the shocked DeeCee she landed on. Would it be a squish or more like a wet explosion, she wondered.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement from above. A blur. Rose, she realized, leaping from the other rooftop…
No, no, no! Don’t! Not worth both of us dying—
It was all she had time for as her leg jerked, so hard that she thought it might pop out of its socket, driving all thought from her. Still screaming, she twisted in midair, her plunge halted. The fabric of her pant leg ripped, then caught and held strong at the hem. Like a one-way pendulum, she arced toward the opposite building, its face rushing at her with surprising speed. What was worse—smashing into the ground ten stories down or crashing into a building?
Crashing into the building was pretty bad. Her teeth rattled; her entire skeleton felt bruised; her body flamed with pain. But she was alive, panting and moaning into her self-imposed gag.
Above her, Rose dangled in midair, suspended by a vine whose end disappeared up onto the opposite rooftop. Another vine, just as taut, extended to her.
He’d caught her. He couldn’t do it from the rooftop, so he’d leapt.…
Another vine now, encircling her. Rose’s expression was one of almost peaceful agony, acceptance of the strain.
The thorns she’d dreaded were more help than hindrance. They hurt, but they made for a better grip than the smooth surface of the vines. Through her shoe and sock, she felt them stabbing at her. The pain was minor compared with hitting the building.
Only a matter of time, she thought. Only a matter of time before someone looks up. Or a drone scans this area in visible light, not IR.
But she couldn’t make herself move. The pain was too tremendous, and blood rushed to her head. She was suspended upside down, disoriented, the world spinning beneath and around her.
At last, she craned her neck, looking up. Rose had extended more vines but couldn’t reach her with them. They waved temptingly at her.
They couldn’t reach her… but maybe she could reach them. It was a precarious twist, but maybe if she moved just right…
She steadied herself with a palm against the building. Bent double, she couldn’t reach far enough. A petulant thought flashed: Why doesn’t he just pull me up??? and she immediately felt ashamed for thinking it. He’d caught her. He’d jumped headlong off a building. He could only do so much.
Braced against the building, she tested the limits of he
r movement. She didn’t want to do anything sudden or unexpected that would make Rose drop her or pull him down with her. But she needed to right herself because then she could extend her left hand out and grab one of the other vines. Carefully, she avoided touching the thorns.
It probably took only a minute—perhaps a few seconds less—to reorient herself, gripping the vines around her middle with her right hand, inching herself in a circle to upright with her left against the wall. But it felt like forever. By the time she’d finished, she was exhausted, her body drenched in sweat, her nostrils flaring with exaggerated breaths. Aches consumed her. She wanted (no, needed) a break, just a few minutes to rest, but she was keenly aware of the DeeCees below and Rose above, holding her without complaint, surely as exhausted and as battered as she was.
Planting her back against the wall, she reached out with her left hand. The motion pulled her away from the safety of the wall and for a stomach-dropping moment, she was out in the naked air again, but she kept her eyes firmly focused up and grabbed the vine.
Now she was more secure. She inhaled as deeply as she could and cursed herself for the gag. Yeah, it had been useful, but right now she wanted it out of her mouth so that she could take a nice, deep breath through her mouth.
Focus, Deedra. Focus.
She steadied herself and adjusted her grip, drifting minutely toward the building again. Guided by Rose? By gravity? Didn’t matter.
With her legs stiff, she made contact with the building, facing up, her feet planted.
She stared up. When she’d been falling, it had felt as if she’d been falling forever, but the roof was only two or three stories up. Rose hung in the middle space between her and safety.
Two or three stories. You can do this. Easy, right?
She started to climb.
When she was still ten feet from the top, her whole body jerked once and she was grateful for the stupid gag, which choked off another scream, this one of surprise and delight, not terror. Rose was now pulling her actively, hauling her up into his arms, then dragging them both the last story, over the parapet, where she collapsed onto the rooftop. She rolled away from him, onto her back, yanked out the gag, and gulped in great, huge swallows of air. Rose, his body now more or less returned to its usual slender, bipedal dimensions and form, crawled to her.
