After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Robert DeFranco Page B

something. To you. Or me. Or both of us.”
    Rose’s expression did not change. “That won’t happen,” he said.
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “Because I won’t let it happen.”

CHAPTER 12
    L ater, Rose lies perfectly still on the table as the man inserts a needle into his lower arm with cool, methodical precision.
    “Something’s on your mind again. You have that troubled look.”
    “Do I?” Rose asks.
    “Is it your ‘connection’ still?”
    “No. It’s something else. I’ve been thinking about it.”
    “We have time. Tell me.”
    Rose stares at the ceiling as he speaks. The rough-hewn concrete sweats, and the pipes suspended in a crisscross pattern occasionally groan and gurgle. “I don’t fit in. As much as I try. I still stand out. I’m a freak.”
    A derisive bark of laughter. “Oh, if only the world had more freaks like you! Trust me, Rose—humankind is not some sort of apotheosis to which to aspire. We are not to be admired. We are poor, hairless apes who’ve lost all our bananas. If there were any apes left after what happened in Africa, I could extract their DNA and show you how similar humans and apes are. Well, were, I suppose.”
    “I understand,” says Rose. He continues staring at the ceiling. Water drips steadily for three seconds, then stops, the pattern broken. Chaostheory, Rose knows. Or thinks he knows. There is so much information in the world and so little knowledge.
    “You still seem disturbed.”
    “I don’t think of you as apes,” Rose says. “More like worker bees, serving the queen.”
    At the flick of a switch, the tube in Rose’s arm begins nursing. The man chuckles. “An apt description, I fear.”
    “And I just wonder, I suppose… if you all are workers and your Magistrate is the queen… what does that make me? What am I?”
    “That is what we are going to find out.”

CHAPTER 13
    S he wanted to be nowhere near Jaron and whatever his schemes might be, but Rose refused to back off. And she wasn’t about to let him go to L-Twelve alone the next day.
    Not that she had much of a choice. If she missed work without some kind of proof of illness, she would either lose her job or be physically moved to the factory by the DeeCees.
    “Last chance,” she whispered to Rose just before they passed through the scanner. “Go back to where you came from.” Wherever
that
was.
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “If you keep going in there, he has you right where he wants you.”
    “I’m sure he thinks that.”
    Inside, she stowed her poncho and took up her position. Rose made sure to get the station next to hers. She tried to focus on her tools. Couldn’t. Stared at the vid mounted before her.
    I don’t think we’re making air scrubbers
, Rose had said.
    What else, then? What else could it be?
    It didn’t make any sense. She blinked to clear her vision, forced herself to concentrate.
    “Hey, Lissa.”
    From her left, Lissa said, “Yeah?”
    “What happens to drone video? Do you know?” Lissa’s father had once spent a six-month shift in the DCS Monitoring Division. He’d been a low-level tech, but maybe he’d learned something. And maybe he’d told Lissa.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, when do they arrest people for the crimes the drones spot?”
    Lissa cocked her head. “What crime did you commit now?” she joked.
    She couldn’t tell Lissa that she was wondering why no one had at least come to her to ask about the video from the rooftop. For example, if you were out after curfew and a drone videoed you, you were given demerits at the very least. So shouldn’t someone have started an inquiry into the day on the rooftop by now?
    “Just wondering why it would take more than a month. Did your dad ever—”
    Lissa chuckled. “If it’s been more than a month, then you got away with it, Dee. I hear they wipe the vids after a month.”
    Deedra forced herself to smile at Lissa’s joke, but fear froze her innards. If the video was gone, then there