No Life But This (26 page)

‘Shut the coit up, princess, I wasn’t talking to you,’ Quin said. ‘Otto! Just wait
there, I’m coming down.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Rose said. ‘Turn yourself in now, 50, and I won’t see you hanged.’

‘Like you have any power here, witch,’ Quin scoffed.

Rose swallowed, opened her satchel, and pulled out what looked like a cell. ‘Fugitive five-zero Quin sighted at signal location,’ she announced into it. ‘All Plastines, converge and detain. Lethal force authorized. Authorization,
RS Fitzroy, authorization number two-two-one, Beta.’ She looked back up at Quin as every Plastine we could see – and there were half a dozen in just that block – stopped what they were doing and turned to converge on Quin’s building. ‘Die,’ she said coldly, turned around, and headed towards the port.

What the hell …?

I followed and snatched the device from her hand, the question clear in my
eyes. ‘I got it from Xavier’s room,’ she said dully. ‘It’s a priority one channel. Xavier gave me clearance because the Plastines made me nervous. Only Xavier, myself, or the three city captains can rescind that order, now. Captain Jagan is on the ship. The other captains don’t care what is happening here. And Xavier … won’t.’ She wouldn’t admit he was dead – because he had to be dead. Assuming that
Quin would turn away from violence would have been as mad as I was. She also didn’t mention the last option. She wasn’t going to rescind that order, either. Unless Quin surrendered – and we both knew Quin could never surrender – it was over.

Quin was as good as dead.

Rose’s voice was so calm and her eyes were so cold. I realized I recognized it. At least one set of my memories had seen it before,
repeatedly, and hated it. I had no idea how it could have happened. She was so accepting, so passive, so kind. Generous, thoughtful, artistic, submissive Rose had gone and done the unthinkable.

Rose had become her father.

We made our way to the elevator to the hydrobay, chaos in our wake. We were passed by at least twenty Plastines, all converging on the area where we had last seen Quin. Unfortunately, that meant the Plastines had all abandoned their previous tasks, which was to search out the bombers and stop them. The number of explosions doubled, and people who had been hiding in neighbourhoods they
thought were safe were suddenly rousted from their bolt holes, and shuttled to and fro. No one seemed to know what was best to do. Many people were heading towards the hydrobay, but there weren’t enough icebreakers to take them all to the city ships – they had to know that.

Rahul pushed ahead of us, shouting at most to move aside, actively threatening others as they tried to get in the way. Rose
stood as if it was all just proper, which I suppose to her it was. I felt strange. My head ached, and things jumped in the edges of my vision. There was enough chaos that people actually were jumping at the edges of my vision, but 42 kept telling me it was okay, this was normal. She didn’t mean the chaos. She meant what was happening to me.

I didn’t like to think what she meant.

Rahul managed
to get us to the elevator, which had been shut down in the chaos. Rose needed to use her clearance number to reactivate it. Rahul kept the refugees from pouring in on us. The treacherous staircase cut into the ice was frozen in a traffic jam of desperate people.

Captain Jagan’s icebreaker was sitting by itself in the centre of the bay, too far from the gangway to risk the now-homeless refugees
swarming aboard. But the door to the hatch was open, and Dr Zellwegger and the twins were standing, waiting for us. Dr Zellwegger waved hugely when he saw us, making sure we’d seen him, and shouted behind him, probably ordering the icebreaker to come back to the gangway for us to board. Rose leaned against the metal bars of the lift as it descended, as if she carried a hugely heavy weight on her
shoulders. I wanted to hold her, but she’d been so angry…

‘Rose Fitzroy!’

The three of us looked up. Leaning over the edge of upper level was Quin – impossibly, Quin – surrounded by more of those brown-coated rebels.

‘I’m trying to talk!’ Quin shouted down at her.

‘Shoot him,’ Rose said quietly.

Rahul looked at her askance. ‘Are you sure of this? I think …’

‘Shoot him,’ she said again.

Rahul looked to me, but I was in too many levels of shock. I had nothing to say. Rahul aimed his gun and shouted a warning. ‘Step away from the lift, or I will be forced to shoot!’

‘I need to talk to that stuck-up princess!’ Quin shouted back. ‘Otto, talk some sense into her, will you?’

Rose grabbed Rahul by the shoulder. ‘I said, shoot—’

She was cut off as the gun went off, probably accidentally.
It was not properly aimed. There were screams from both above and below from the shipless refugees and the rebels on the upper level. The sound hurt my ears more than it should have. I’d gone hypersensitive, and 42 told me again, this is normal. I had to hold my ears to muffle the sounds, but I kept my eyes fixed on Quin.

Quin had been shot. It was plain to see. He was clutching the side of his
waist with both hands, and his face was twisted in a grimace. Then suddenly he turned as some one of the rebels came past him with a large metal canister. The rebel threw the canister over the edge, and Quin abandoned his wound, turning on the perpetrator with his hand in a fist. I saw them both go down, wrestling on the edge of the ledge, in a fight exactly like all the others Quin always got
himself into.

That was all I had a chance to see before the canister struck the edge of the open elevator, bounced off, fell, and exploded beneath us.

We’d almost been to the ground level, and the elevator itself was torn from the icy walls. The metal of the platform was stronger than the ice of the floor, and the ice broke before we did. The entire icy floor of the port level cracked, and the
three of us were thrown through the air, and struck one of the huge fragments of floor. My system was shocked, and it wasn’t surprising to find that much of the next ten seconds was thrown out of my head.

I opened my eyes to find us bobbing up and down, on a chunk of broken ice slowly floating out into the centre of the bay. Rahul lay beside me, a twisted chunk of metal from the elevator slicing
through his chest. His blood stained the white ice crimson. I didn’t even have to touch him to know he was already dead.

‘Rose!’ ‘
Rose!’
(
Rose!)
Every single part of me was suddenly terrified, and I scrabbled to my knees, searching the impromptu iceberg.

‘Help!’ Rose whimpered, and I whirled. Rose was floundering in the freezing water at the edge of the iceberg, trying to flop herself back onto
the ice in her thick, insulated dress, heavy with water. I scrambled to her on my stomach, and tried to reach for her. But the moment I touched her, I seemed to short out, as if my entire brain was tuned to static. I couldn’t hold onto myself through it, and my hands let go automatically.

What had happened? She was wet, I realized. It was the waters of Europa, all the millions of tons of plankton,
influencing itself in the icy ocean. I reached for her again, and another wave of pure static hissed through me, turning off my own signal. A third time, and this time I nearly fell into the water.

‘I can’t touch you!’ I hissed, and looked around, desperate for anything that might prove capable of dragging her out. The only tool available was the bloody corpse of Rahul. On the one hand, it was
horrible. But on the other, he was a guard – it was his task to protect and save her, even if he couldn’t do it himself. A part of me didn’t hesitate – the part that had done this sort of thing before. Xavier knew that fastidiousness and moral dilemmas meant nothing when lives were at stake. I grabbed the still warm bleeding corpse – nothing inside, empty like a piece of meat – and dragged it out
towards Rose, holding on to his boots. His head and torso dangled into the water. Rose made a noise of despair, but she climbed him like a ladder, and then without a word helped me drag him back up onto the ice with us. Use him in this instance, we might, but we wouldn’t discard him like so much garbage.

Rose knelt by his wet head and brushed the hair from his staring eyes. ‘Poor, brave Rahul.
Thank you,’ she whispered.

I staggered and sat down, unable to stand any longer. The chunk of ice tilted dangerously as my weight shifted. My ears were still roaring from the static I’d experienced, and I gripped the sides of my head in the hopes that it would calm it all down.

‘Otto, don’t,’ Rose said, coming back to me. I was afraid to touch her, and tried to pull away, but she grabbed my
hands. The static I’d felt when I touched her before was gone, and I gasped with relief. She was cold as ice, but she didn’t even care. ‘I’m sorry.’

My body ached, and I wished I could scream. I told her I hurt.

‘I know. I’m sorry. I lost my satchel in the water. Your medicines … I can’t fix this, Otto.’

‘I’m not Otto,’
I half-heartedly tried to tell her, but she grabbed me and kissed my face,
rocking me back and forth.

‘Yes, you are!’ she whispered. ‘God damn it. I wish I could have you back. I didn’t know how much I’d loved you until I’d lost you.’ She kissed my forehead and held me to her, her heart beating so fast I worried for her nanos. ‘I know you’re still in there, somewhere. Underneath all the holes in your mind and the delusions and the personalities you’ve absorbed, I have
to believe you’re still in there. Do you know what you’ve meant to me? I couldn’t have made it this far without you. I’d have paid a thousand fortunes to find another stass tube and disappeared into it for another hundred years.’ She kissed me again. ‘I love you. I love
you
. I loved Xavier, but you’re not Xavier, and you’re not you, and I hate this weird crazy thing you’ve become. I miss you so
much. I wish you’d come back to me.’

I closed my eyes, and let Rose hold me, and 42 sat on my other side and brushed the tears from my face, and Xavier – my strange, desperate, mad, previously unknown friend – quietly disengaged himself from my mind. ‘
Don’t go,’
I whispered to him. ‘
You made it easier.’

‘You don’t need me,’ he told me. He blew Rose a little kiss, that she couldn’t see. ‘She
doesn’t either. Not anymore. She’s outgrown me.’

‘
But I don’t want to die alone.’

42 stepped away from me and took Xavier’s hand. (
He can stay with me, if you’d like. We’ll wait for you.)
She looked up at Xavier with a strange smile on her face. (
You okay with that?)

‘Neither of us is real,’ he pointed out.

She shrugged. (
Then we’d be perfect together.)

I think I laughed. Even my insanity
didn’t want anyone to be alone.

Then they were gone. Just like that.

‘Otto?’

I looked up at Rose, completely alone in my thoughts for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. It was very peaceful.

‘What just happened?’

‘
I think I’m sane again,’
I told her. I hadn’t been sending her any of what just happened, so all she’d seen was whatever leaked out that her subconscious was able to
read without me. It was confused and misty and mostly emotion, as far as she was concerned, and mostly my thoughts had just become … quieter. That was all she saw. I swallowed. ‘
And I think I’m dying.’

Rose closed her eyes. She’d already known it, but she denied it anyway. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we’ll … we’ll get you … get you down to the
Minos
, and …’ She looked around. The icebreaker was still
there, but it was twenty metres away, and the gangplank was long gone. A sob fought in her chest, but she forced it down. ‘No,’ she whimpered.

‘Yes,’ I whispered for her. ‘You should. You should go for the icebreaker.’

‘You’ll come with me,’ Rose said, determined.

‘I can’t,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t touch the water. It was shorting me out, I can’t swim.’

‘Then I’ll take you there!’

‘Rose, look
at me.’

Rose looked down. I sat up, and it was difficult. I was dizzy. I did know this feeling. 42 knew this feeling. My arms and legs were numb, and it wasn’t from the cold. My blood was concentrating on my brain and heart, as I didn’t have enough to keep the rest of me functioning. That was probably why I was sane again; my body had abandoned trying to keep the rest of me alive, so my mind
was clear for the first time in months. ‘You’re going to have to let me go.’

‘I can’t.’

I kissed her. ‘
You know you can,’
I told her. ‘
You’ve done it before. You’re strong. People see you as passive and weak, but we know the truth. You’re a briar rose. You’re a survivor. Your body is frail, but you fight until you find your strength, until you force your way through solid stone. You bend, passive,
with the wind, but you do not break. You snap back and whip those that force you in the face. And when you’re uprooted and abandoned, you absorb the sun and the rain and form new roots and grow again.’
I kissed her eyelids.
‘I’m sorry I have to abandon you. But I need you to survive. I need you to grow again, to be the briar hedge, to grow strong, to protect, to tear apart those who would force
their way through you. Will you promise me that?’

Rose shuddered, but she stared at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’m not abandoning you here. I’ll go to the icebreaker, but I’m taking you with me, do you hear me? You may be dying – you’d know better than I would – but you’re not dying of exposure all alone out here on this ice cube.’

‘Rose, it’s safer for you—’ I whispered.

‘Don’t fight me on
this, Otto,’ Rose said firmly. ‘You belong to me, remember.’ She took my head, and her thumb caressed my cheek. ‘We’re family.’

I closed my eyes. I loved her so much. ‘Okay,’ I whispered.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay. But if you think you can’t make it, you leave me, you hear? Promise me.’

Her eyes grew hard. ‘I’ll make it,’ she said.

She kissed me briefly and then turned to the icebreaker. They were still
watching from the portal, and they waved at her, shouting something that could not be discerned over the noise and the distance.

Using her hands to communicate while she shouted, she announced her intentions slowly to those waiting on the icebreaker, telling them to prepare warming blankets and get ready for us. We couldn’t quite hear them over the noise, but they seemed to understand, and someone
went off to fetch the equipment they’d need.

I took Rose’s hand. ‘
Rose? Given what happened when I tried to touch you in the water, you know I might not survive this.’

‘I know,’ Rose said evenly. She turned around. ‘Unzip me. I can’t swim in this sea anchor.’ I unzipped her gently. She was already almost as blue as I was, and her shivering became more pronounced as I stripped her down to her
light silk shift. I took off my heavy dress shirt, and then held her to my bare chest, trying to will all the warmth I could into her thin, shivering frame. ‘W-we don’t have much t-time,’ she shivered, and kissed me fiercely. ‘I love you, Otto,’ she whispered.

‘I love you,’ I whispered back.

We dove into the freezing water.

According to witnesses, and the footage from Moriko’s cell camera,
I went rigid the moment I touched the surface of Europa’s half-frozen sea. Rose dragged me in a life-saving grab, swimming one armed until she made it to the icebreaker, where they hauled us up and wrapped us both immediately into warming blankets, and forced warm liquid into Rose. She went severely hypothermic in the cold. She actually passed out for a second once, and nearly dropped me twice, but
she forced herself to keep going until they could drag her inside. It was a heroic swim, a life-affirming video, and was shown and copied all over Europa. If Rose hadn’t already been famous, she would have been made a hero overnight from that video alone. It solidified her power base, and no one in the colonies, and almost no one on earth, would ever dare to dismiss her again.