After the Red Rain (26 page)

R
ose stayed under the blanket as long as possible, even though he longed to uncover himself and enter the sunbeam falling into his cell. The clouds were thin today, the sun a little stronger than usual, and its light sang to him, tempting him out of bed. He resisted. He’d spent the night preparing, and if the camera saw his preparation, his escape would be over before it began. Now he only needed to wait for—

There it was. The telltale tread of a boot just outside his door. Bringing what passed for breakfast for the prisoners of Max Ludo.

The food slot slid open from the outside and the tray prodded into the cell, waiting for him to take it.

He slid off the cot, still wrapped in his blanket. Overnight, he had coaxed his skin color to change, deepening and darkening it to a mottled black, like the body armor worn by the guards. As his strength had returned, his sepals had regrown as well, and he’d focused his concentration, shaping them around him. He knew the camouflage wasn’t perfect, but he hoped it would be close enough to fool people at a distance, and maybe those not paying rapt attention to security cameras.

It had been hard, exhausting work, and it had taken a night of rigorous single-mindedness. But it was nothing compared with what he had to do now.

He had to perform violence.

He did not want to do this. In the past, he’d often been able to reason his way out of situations that called for violence, or used his powers to evade those who would not be rational. But there was no way to reason with Max Ludo or his underlings, and no way to run away. Not without hurting someone.

Holding the blanket around himself with one hand, he took the tray with the other, slowly pulling it into the cell.

The hand on the other side of the door let go. The slot was open and unblocked for just this moment. He dropped the tray and thrust his hand into the slot.

And fired out tendrils from his arm.

On the other side of the door, he heard a gasp of shock. Lashing out with the tendrils, he flailed until they wrapped around something. A leg.

Unlike the time he’d wrapped up Deedra and lifted her into the air, this time he was glad for the thorns.

A yelp from the other side of the door. He tightened his grip. The thorns ripped at the bulky body armor.

He thickened the vines. Going by feel, he extended them up the guard’s body, encircling the throat and cutting off his voice before he could call for help. Through the tendrils, he could feel the rapid, panicked pulse in the man’s neck. He tightened his noose of vines, and thorns bit into the man’s flesh.

How much time had passed? Seconds. Maybe. He hoped. If someone was watching him on the camera, they would just be wondering why he was still crouched down at the door. Maybe they wouldn’t react yet. Maybe curiosity would keep them watching.

Throwing away that worry, he focused on the man outside. He needed the guard helpless and terrified, not injured or dead.

“If you want to live,” he said into the slot, hoping his voice would carry, “then open the door.”

There was a gurgle of speech, unintelligible.

“You have no idea what I can do to you,” Rose said. He tried to make his voice threatening, but it came out more informative than anything else. Oh, well. The thorns biting the man’s neck should be threat enough.

Another gurgle. The man moved against the vines. Rose closed his eyes, visualizing the other side of the door. He had the guard’s holster securely closed with a vine, and one hand bound to his waist. The other hand was free, tugging at the vines choking him.

“You only have a few seconds before you pass out from lack of oxygen,” Rose told him. “Open the door and you’ll live.”

Still dry, academic. Maybe that was actually more frightening than doing a Jaron Ludo impression.

More gurgling. Was the man struggling against the vines, or struggling to reach the controls to the door? Rose retracted his vines a tiny bit, pulling the guard closer to the door.

Would he kill this man, if he had to? Would he carry through on the threat? He didn’t think so. His mind was sharper now than it had been in weeks, but still fuzzy. Fuzzy enough to kill? No. Certainly not.

And yet… if this gambit failed, they would know what he was capable of. He had no choice but to get out of his cell
now
. It would be his only opportunity.

“I can constrict these even tighter.” He forced himself to growl a bit, turning his voice deep and husky and alien. “I can crush you like cheap glass.
Open the door!
Do it now if you want to live!”

More flailing beyond the door.

And then the click of the lock.

Rose sighed in what he knew to be premature relief. This, as hard as it had been, was the easy part.

He retracted his vines and yanked open the door. The guard—purplish, gasping, bleeding—staggered there. Rose shed his blanket and pushed the guard aside, darting into the hallway.

Alarms rang out.

D
eedra finished filling out the useless form and made her way back outside via a different route, recording. Just in case it could help.

The form had asked for the name and Citizen ID of the inmate she wished to visit. She’d used one of the names she’d found while on the wikinets, hoping no one would actually check into it. She didn’t think anyone would, especially since she had no intention of coming back. The few people she saw milling about the Magistrate’s Office were listless and slow, in no hurry to accomplish anything. She didn’t think they were particularly detail-oriented.

Outside, the sun broke through the clouds just long enough to remind her it was still there. Maybe this was a good omen. In
This Side of Paradise
, sunlight always seemed to mean something beautiful and delightful. She turned her face to the sky and luxuriated in the warmth on her skin. Was this what Rose felt when he photosynthesized? She liked to imagine that was the case, that they could share this sensation, but she knew the truth was more likely that he experienced the sun on a deeper, truer level than she ever could, that he had a connection to the sky and the rain and the soil and the air that she could never understand. Maybe she could come to appreciate it, but she would never
know
it.

Then again
, she reminded herself,
he’ll never fully know what it’s like to be human, either
.

The thought saddened and gladdened her at the same time. She and Rose would never truly understand each other… but they would always surprise each other.

That’s assuming you can get him out of here. And you’re not doing a very good job so far.

SecFac loomed ahead of her, a blunt chunk of squared-off concrete three stories high. Squat, gray, and mottled, it made her think of a bad tooth in a near-empty mouth. She wondered how close she could get. There were guards stationed nearby, ten or twelve of them—
TWELVE LIFE-FORMS LOCKED
, the SmartSpex reported an instant later—and they seemed pretty attentive. The opposite of the lassitude in the Magistrate’s Office.

She wandered a little closer. “Magnify,” she mumbled, and the SmartSpex zoomed in on SecFac. Text and numbers scrolled by; she ignored them. All this information would be preserved for her—well, Dr. Dimbali, really—to examine later. Right now, she just had to see how close she could get. There had to be
some
way to figure out which window led into Rose’s cell.

Give me a sign
, she thought fiercely.
Shoot a vine out the window. Do something!

“Ms. Ward?”

Deedra startled and turned to her left, staggering for a moment as the SmartSpex had to catch up, zooming back out so that she could see the man who’d come up right next to her.

“I thought it was you,” said TI Markard. His lips quirked into a half smile, unsteady and wavering, as though he were trying it out. He glanced at SecFac, then back at her. “Here to see Rose?”

“What? No! No, not at all. Of course not!” It didn’t sound persuasive, even to her. She was too adamant, her voice high and guilty, and
she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Why would I be here to see him? That’s crazy, Top Inspector.”

“It’s actually Superior Inspector now,” he said, almost absently, and the casualness of it infuriated her. He’d been promoted. For letting someone shoot her friend. For beating and arresting Rose.

“Goggs aren’t allowed in the Complex,” he said, pointing. “The guards should have told you.”

“They don’t work.” At that moment, the SmartSpex were recording every word and motion from SI Markard, including a slightly elevated heart rate.
SUBJECT STATE: AGITATED (98.43% ACCURATE)
, the readout claimed. Deedra thought it was more like 100 percent. SI Markard wasn’t very good at hiding the annoyance on his face; SmartSpex could read his body’s functions but not his expression.

“Let me see them,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Why?” She’d never in her life refused a direct command from a DeeCee or a cop. And here she was, in the very center of DeeCee and police authority, resisting.
You’re either brave or completely crazy, Deedra.

Or desperate. She didn’t know what to do, so she had to stall. She could speak the murm that would shut down the SmartSpex, but with the battery still in, he could just turn them on. And he would probably notice the murm anyway. No matter what she did, she was in serious trouble.

Which meant Rose would be in serious trouble. Well, even more serious trouble. Was there a penalty for having friends try to break you out of prison? If there wasn’t, she was sure Max Ludo would come up with one.

“Don’t BS me, Ms. Ward,” said Markard. He was still smiling, but his words were cold. Did he even realize? Was it on purpose? The combination was unnerving as hell. “Your name popped on CentServ when you signed in at the Magistrate’s Office.”

“You have an alert on me?” Still stalling.

“For all persons of interest in something as important as the murder of Jaron Ludo.”

“I told you I wasn’t involved—”

“Give me those goggs, Deedra,” Markard said in a voice that was undoubtedly intended to be kind. “Give them to me now, or I’ll take them from you.”

She cleared her throat, murmuring “Die, Spex,” hoping the goggs heard her and Markard didn’t. His expression changed just slightly as she did so, and she figured she was screwed. She slipped the SmartSpex down the bridge of her nose. Was that graphic in the corner of her eye part of the shutdown process? She hoped so. Just another second or two…

Markard grumbled and reached out to snatch them away.

And the air erupted with a loud, piercing siren that seemed to emanate from heaven itself.

A
s soon as he was in the corridor, Rose realized his error. He also realized it didn’t matter. Not really. He’d had no choice—he had to be out of the cell.

The camera in his cell had, of course, noted his escape. He’d hoped for just long enough to shuck the blanket and appear as another guard when he emerged into the hallway. Sure, an alarm would go off, but with the right timing and the right luck, he could blend in with the guards responding to the alarm.

But he hadn’t counted on cameras in the hall. Stupid.

And he’d forgotten about the helmets. He couldn’t mimic those—too bulbous and plasticky and unfamiliar. Even more stupid.

But most stupid of all: His disguise just wasn’t that good.

Viewed through a lens of desperation, alone in his cell, his disguise had seemed spot on, but the instant he climbed over the body of the struggling guard outside his door, he could tell—with depressing certainty—that his faulty memory and his drive to escape had conspired to convince him his fidelity to reality was greater than it actually was.

He looked nothing like the guards. His coloring was too mottled,
compared with their flat black. He wasn’t bulky enough, his “body armor” thin and lumpy, where it should have been heavy, planar, regular.

Still, there was nothing for it. He couldn’t very well shrug his shoulders, chuckle, and say, “Can’t blame me for trying, guys!” and go back to his cell. Only death lay in that direction.

Crouched on the floor of the corridor, wincing at the screaming alarm, he sensed the guard in his cell scrambling to his feet. Rose sent out a vine to trip him and was rewarded with a muted thud.

He normally didn’t like hurting people, but after weeks of captivity, he admitted to feeling a certain amount of satisfaction.

Footsteps. The sound of harsh breathing. He looked up and down the corridor.

In both directions, the hallway was clogged with a rush of black-armored DeeCees.

Rose took a deep breath.

All right, then. So we’ll have to fight.

W
hat’s that?” Deedra shouted over the piercing sound.

SI Markard had spun around at the noise. His right hand went under his jacket. While he was turned, Deedra slipped the SmartSpex off. She slid out the battery and slipped it into her pants pocket, while also tucking the goggs themselves into her poncho pocket.

“Lockdown alarm,” Markard said. “Someone’s…” He turned back to her. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

He grabbed her by the elbow and with his other hand drew his firearm. “You did
something
. Too much of a coincidence. He’s escaping, isn’t he?”

Deedra had no idea. All she knew was that her head was about to split wide open from the endlessly shrieking alarm and that a small army of DeeCees was charging toward SecFac. And Markard’s grip on her arm was too tight.

Markard seemed caught between two desires—to run toward SecFac, or to drag Deedra off somewhere, lock her up. He vacillated for
a moment, then split the difference, hauling her with him toward the action.

First, they tried gas.

Of course. They wanted him alive, if possible. They all wore gas masks, and after a series of soft, blunt
puft
sounds, the corridor filled with a hazy green fog.

They thought it would knock him out. They thought it would blind him.

Rose stopped breathing. He adjusted his internal body temperature.

“Where the hell did he go?” a voice complained.

They were trying to track him on infrared.
Good luck with that.

He dropped to the ground, where the good air was, and scuttled along the floor. Using a series of thorns and vines for grip and pull, he moved quickly, flat on the floor and smoothly gliding. Ahead were the boots of the DeeCees. As he came to them, he bounced upright in their faces, flinging vines in every direction. The men screamed in shock as a flurry of green, sinuous tentacles burst at them from out of the gas haze. Rose attached to a light fixture in the ceiling and pulled himself up and over them. In panic, someone opened fire—a voice screamed, “
Cease fire! Cease fire!
”—and he heard the flat impact of bullets down the corridor, causing the DeeCees on the opposite end to open fire, too, thinking they were under attack.

Rose knocked two DeeCees down just before they could fall to friendly fire. There was no reason for anyone—
anyone
—to die. He did his best to push them out of the paths of their own bullets, but he couldn’t stop them from exercising their own worst instincts. Driven by fear and an ignorance they themselves had generated, they reaped what they’d sown. He spared an instant to mourn them, then hurtled
himself forward, releasing his vines as he did so, bulleting into the cleaner air of the corridor beyond the DeeCees.

“
Lockdown!
” a voice blared. It was disturbingly dissimilar to the one from L-Twelve, from home, the one she’d heard warning of lockdowns her whole life. This one was deeper, meaner. More serious. She hadn’t thought that was possible.
“Lockdown! This facility is in lockdown! Visitors and unauthorized personnel, report to the Central Office.”

The voice repeated on a loop. Deedra didn’t know which building housed the Central Office, but it didn’t matter—SI Markard swore and kept a tight grip on her elbow. He drew her close to him and shouted over the blaring alarms. “Tell me what you did! Right now!”

“I didn’t do anything!” she bleated. It had the benefit of being absolutely true. She had no idea what was going on.

“You can’t—”

He was interrupted by an explosion from the prison building. His mismatched eyes widened, and he looked in that direction, swearing. His grip on her tightened, and she struggled to pull away from him. Without even looking back, he cuffed her across the face with the back of his hand, releasing her so that she fell to the ground.

He loomed over her. “What have you
done
?”

Rose had no idea where he was going, only that he was going
away
. He ran, moving ever forward. The walls around him were all disturbingly the same, the doors all identical to his own cell door.

There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go, but forward.

He rounded a corner and collided with a brace of armed guards,
who shouted in surprise. He was too slender and light to knock them down, and they immediately brought up their rifles.

Instinctively, Rose reached out with vines and stripped the guns from their hands. The guards, shocked, froze in place.

“Holy—” one of them said, and Rose didn’t stick around to hear the rest. He threw himself against a wall, ricocheted, and somersaulted over their heads, then kept running, checking over his shoulder to make sure they hadn’t recovered their weapons too quickly.

They hadn’t. They were just standing there, stock-still, goggling at one another in disbelief at what they’d just witnessed.

He felt a change in the air currents. Looked ahead. The good news: There was a large entrance, which clearly led to another part of the building. No more cells. More room to maneuver. Closer to freedom.

The bad news: A squadron of DeeCees was barreling through, and a massive blast door was sliding down behind the troops to seal them all in.

He grimaced. He didn’t slow down. He couldn’t afford to.

“Target!” someone shouted. “Target in range! Target in range!” A dozen or more rifle barrels swung at him.

As the bullets fired, Rose flared his sepals further to catch air currents and leapt. He caught the edge of the thin air current and drifted there in the air, close to the ceiling, the hail of bullets passing beneath him. With a vicious kick against a wall, he launched himself toward the squadron from above.

The troops scarcely had time to react, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have known what to do. Nothing in their training had prepared them for the sight before them—a slight, humanoid form bristling with black faux armor, winglike protrusions extended, flailing tendrils—as it hurtled at them from above. Trained soldiers all,
they broke discipline. Someone shouted, “Kill it! Kill the goddamn thing!” at the top of his lungs, his voice high and quavering with utter panic.

A shuffling chaos followed, as guns clattered against one another, jostling and throwing off targeting. Bullets whipped and whined and chipped the walls and ceiling, but Rose was already on them, crashing into the thick of the squadron.

“Kill that thing! Extreme measures! Extreme measures!”

So great was their panic that they fired away, directly into the thick of their comrades. Rose twisted and turned. They had body armor to—hopefully—protect them from their own friendly fire. He had nothing. He dodged behind one, then another, then ducked and spun and doubled back where they didn’t expect him to go, his slightness and lightness allowing him greater freedom of movement than they had with their bulky armor and unwieldy weapons.

“Retreat!” someone yelled, and Rose couldn’t imagine why—he was surrounded.

And then he realized why. The man who’d called the retreat was holding a grenade in one hand.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

What he’d thought to be panic and chaos a moment ago was really nothing more than disorganization.
This
was chaos. The squadron completely fell apart, soldiers running in every direction, tripping over each other.

“Don’t!” Rose screamed. Was the man insane? He would kill himself and his comrades if he loosed that grenade. “Don’t do it!”

But he’d sent them—all of them—past rational thought. When he’d revealed the truth of his abilities, the truth of his very biology, to Deedra, she’d been shocked, but she’d come to embrace it. She’d had the chance to adapt, to think it through, to adjust.

These men had no such opportunity. Confronted with something
alien and—to them—monstrous, something beyond their ken, beyond their imaginations, they were panicking, and they were willing to die to kill the threat.

Rose reached out with a tendril, grabbing the grenade.

Too late. The man’s finger was in the pin. If Rose pulled, it would—

The choice was made for him. The DeeCee yanked the pin.

“No!” Rose shouted, but his voice was lost in the explosion.