Chapter 32: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Pt. 1

The windowless, menacing slab of the rationing center loomed over them like a tombstone. In its shadow a flame-gutted building smoked gently; it had been a small office of some sort, possibly where applications were processed. The desks and banks of metal cabinets along the wall were all charred.

They sheltered there, observing.

Delphi was arranged with streets like spokes on a wheel, running back to Alpha Base at the hub. They were very near the center now. Regulars marched past their hideout in columns and black armored vehicles rolled down the broad street, blaring a canned message about a ban on gathering in groups larger than three and a dusk to dawn curfew.

For the better part of the afternoon Lily watched patrols and mapped out patterns. A head-sized hole in the wall gave her a decent angle on an avenue leading to the base.

Aiden had been laboriously unpicking the threads from his nametape, erasing the word one letter at a time. Lily didn’t care why and hadn’t asked, but she did notice when he left off this task to join her at her vantage point on the second floor.

“You were right,” Lily said, without looking at him. “The city’s gone mad.”

“You know we’ve been smuggling guns up from Memphis?”

Lily frowned. “Who’s ‘we’? You and Anya?”

“Nope. Bigger ‘we’.” Aiden winced as a black-coated Operative shot a dissident point-blank in the head. The body crumpled gently sideways and was dragged off the street in a smear of blood before the echoes of the shot died away. “That’s what happened to our contacts, probably.”

Lily had never seen anyone resist before. She hadn’t thought it possible.

Aiden wiped his face on his sleeve, but all he did was move the soot around. “How much longer are we gonna sit here.”

“We could go in at shift change. Form up and just…”

“That’s even worse than your first idea. You have no idea what kind of security countermeasures that place has.”

She couldn’t even make herself feel anger. There was nothing but a dark sourness at the center of her, a foul, heavy thing like a tar pit. “Neither do you.”

“I know a bit,” Aiden said darkly. “I know you’re one biometric scan away from getting your skull aired out, and I think you want that because deep down you know he’s gone.”

Lily clenched and unclenched her jaw, staring out at the street.

“You’re tough, and you’re smart. You could do a lot of good…” Aiden gestured at the base. “Or you could die for a man who doesn’t even know you exist.”

“Don’t forget the third option,” Lily said, after a pause that was much too long. “The one where I win.”

The Operative was staring down the eastern end of the street, body half-turned. They appeared to be listening, but the whispered argument couldn’t possibly have carried those few hundred yards.

“Crying shame,” Aiden said.

But he was easy to ignore. A profound, aching weariness pressed on Lily's back and shoulders, dragging her down. The Operative felt familiar — something about their carriage and bearing, the keen movements like a bloodhound…

Not him. He had never moved that way. And he would've hesitated before pulling the trigger. Whatever they'd done to him, however much they'd hurt him, he would've hesitated.

Lily rubbed her knuckles along her sternum, kneading and grinding the bone.

A vehicle pulled around the corner, something large and boxy. An ID number was neatly stenciled on the plain white side of the thing, an alphanumeric sequence. Deliveries from a factory to the rationing center, most likely.

The Operative motioned to the driver to pull aside, diverting the vehicle down the side street toward their vantage point. Regulars jogged over, clutching the straps of their rifles.

Lily would die if she stayed still another minute. They would be outside soon and there was no telling how long the inspection would take, how long she’d be trapped in this wreck with a man she was quickly growing to despise.

The Operative followed the delivery vehicle and the Regulars. Still familiar, still anonymous, face indistinct beneath a black cap. Lily remembered the morning she left with the militia, the brush of his thumb against the back of her neck as he adjusted her coat collar.

“I have to go,” she said.

Three or four things happened at once.

A Regular stepped up to the window and motioned for the driver to roll it down. Aiden crept back down to ground level, presumably to rejoin Anya. Lily crouched, minimizing her profile—

And the world was upended and inverted. Day became night. Sound and heat and light bloomed and then vanished, along with the ground, along with everything.

—

Lily pushed up on her hands and knees, fighting to breathe. Rubble cascaded off her back. The ground was slick and grimy. Blood. Her blood. She was impaled, bleeding, dying—
No. Her clearing vision registered a curved tunnel wall ahead of her and cracked, mossy tile under her. A thin, dank stream ran between the two platforms, trickling over the rusted tracks.

The Undermarket smelled like death and burning.

A siren wailed off in the city above her, distant and wavering. Gunfire popped and rattled. Chunks of the city were strewn across the ancient rails and everything tasted of smoke.

Lily rose to her knees, groaning, trying to get her wind back. Her hands bled. The sky was a jagged grey canyon above her, crosshatched by the ruins of the admin building. A grey-uniformed arm protruded from the rubble, dangling down.

She closed her eyes against a wash of panic like cold water, then hauled herself up and took stock. Alpha Base was close, maybe half a mile southwest of her position. She would move ahead til the tunnel ended, but without Anya the plan stopped there.

Footsteps crunched in the rubble down-tunnel. Someone coughed, low and throaty.

Lily grasped her knife, flipping her oversized uniform tunic out of the way.

A figure weaved down the tracks, stepping over and around debris. Their clothes were chalky-grey with the dust of pulverized buildings. A square of smoky, thin light fell across her face as she drew closer, and Lily relaxed. Her hand fell away from the hilt.

“Anya,” she sighed, swaying a little.

Anya blinked. “You were not part of my detachment. State your purpose in this sector.”

It was Lily’s turn to be struck mute. She opened her mouth and closed it again, uselessly. Beneath the ash and dust of pulverized concrete a small silver insignia was pinned to Anya’s collar. The Operative’s collar.

“Make your report, Sergeant Davis,” Operative 23 ordered.

No lie was forthcoming. Nothing was. Lily couldn’t take her eye off the little glinting badge, the damning numbers.

Operative 23 reached for her sidearm. Then her duplicate hurtled into the tunnel from above and grabbed her by the throat, momentum carrying them both to the ground.

They saw each other’s faces, and 23 hesitated.

Anya didn’t.

It was quick. A twist, a dry snap, the thunk of skull against ground as Anya dropped her opponent with a derisive grunt and dusted off her hands. Immediately she started stripping the body of its uniform. The dead Operative’s head lolled grotesquely.

More footsteps, above them. A familiar silhouette. Aiden hung and let go, landing heavy, and began smacking dust off his clothes. Blood trickled down the side of his face from a shallow forehead wound but he was infuriatingly alive and whole.

“Fuckin’ truck bomb! We used to call that a Memphis Special.” He noticed the body, and then the face. “Oh. Huh. All right then.”

“Angelina,” Lily said, finding her voice at last. Anya’s hands slipped. She flinched. “I thought that was your name.”

She shook her head and kept working, wrestling her double out of her trousers.

“Hold on,” Aiden said, darkly. “You two know each other? Is that what this is all about?”

“We have a mutual friend.” Lily struggled to keep her voice level. She couldn’t decide what emotion she should attach to the words. Confusion? Blame? Nothing at all? “He looked for you. For years.”

Anya was struggling into the black uniform. It wasn’t quite right; the dead woman was younger, narrower in the shoulders and biceps. She did not look up from the buttons.

“When were you going to tell me,” Lily demanded.

“Forget that, when are you going to tell me,” said Aiden, folding his arms. “Let me in on your fun little secret.”

The ground trembled. A fresh spurt of gunfire rattled through the grey streets. They’d already been too long in one place.

“You could’ve stayed in Dallas and minded your own business,” Lily snapped. “You really want to know? They grew up together, her and my — the man I came to find. She got herself out and left him behind.”

Anya made a swift chopping motion with her hand. Rage sat ugly on her face. She signed in sharp, furious motions, then jerked her chin at Aiden and made a sign that could’ve only been talk.

“She thought he was dead,” he translated, grudgingly. “Until Dallas she figured you were after the man who killed him, since you’ve got his knife. So you never thought to mention that your infamous dead lover was Owen’s duplicate? That’s disgusting, Anya, it’s practically in—”

Anya slapped him open-palmed across the face. He staggered, clutching his mouth and nose, cursing faintly.

“You could’ve stayed home,” Lily repeated. “Nobody made you come.”

Anya looked like a nightmare in the uniform, but her face…it was grief, there, not anger. She signed something she knew Lily couldn’t understand, a brief and bitter statement that culminated with her hands spread out in supplication. Looking for forgiveness? For what.

“Get me into the base,” Lily said. “That’s all I care about.”