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

Rose.
    “Everything was all right yesterday? With Jaron?”
    Deedra glanced at Lissa, who was gnawing at her lower lip, watching with concern. “Everything was fine,” she lied. She didn’t want to tell Lissa what had happened on the rooftop. There was no point. What would or could Lissa do about it?
    “You sure?”
    “Yes, of course!” She turned back to the entrance, but Lissa plucked at her sleeve.
    “Then come on, Dee. Let’s grab our stations.”
    “Wait. I want to see what happens.”
    Lissa squinted at Rose. “Who’s that? Never seen him before.”
    “That’s him. The guy by the river.”
    Lissa goggled. “I thought you were hallucinating or something! You mean he’s real?”
    “Seems like it, huh?”
    At the scanner, Lio was arguing with Rose, trying to show him how to expose his brand to the device. Rose balked.
    “Look, jackhole,” Lio said with heat, “are you some kind of idiot? If you want to work, you get scanned.”
    “Why?” Rose asked mildly.
    Lio threw his hands up in the air. “So you can get your ration, dumbass! If we don’t know how long you worked, how the hell do we keep track?”
    “Don’t worry about me,” Rose said. “I’ll be here every day.”
    “Great. Good to know. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
    “My name is Rose.”
    A chorus of titters rippled through the Bang Boys. Except for Kent, who openly guffawed.
    “Are you kidding me?”
    “I’m pretty sure I’m not.”
    “That’s a girl’s name,” Lio said, still chuckling.
    “Which girl?” Rose asked.
    Lio did a double take. “What?”
    “You said it’s a girl’s name. Which one? I’m curious. I’ve never met someone with my name before.”
    “That’s not what I…” Lio fumed. “Are you a smart-ass?” he demanded, and banged his pipe against a nearby fence post.
Clong!
    Rose didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you?” he asked.
    No one had ever asked that before. The answer had always been so obvious. So the question threw Lio off, and he gabbled for a few seconds, searching for the best response.
    “Shut your hole,” Kent advised, picking up the slack. He
thwack
ed his pipe into his palm for emphasis. “You don’t scan, you ain’t comin’ in here. Now buzz away; you’re holding up the line.”
    “But I want to work. I want to contribute.”
    “Then scan your brand.”
    “No.”
    “Look, you’ve
got
the brand. Just scan it! Scan it and work.”
    “What does one thing have to do with the other? Why do you care if I get my ration or not?”
    Kent grunted something unintelligible. Rose didn’t move, and for a second Deedra thought the Bang Boys would—all of them at once, maybe—take a swing at him. But a voice sounded out from a speaker mounted on a nearby pole, a speaker adjacent to one of the security cameras.
    “Let him in,” said Jaron Ludo’s disembodied voice. “And bring him up to the office.”
    Inside, she strained to listen through the air duct. But as usual, she could pick up only the sense of voices, nothing specific. Down on the floor, they ran through the Patriot Oath, swore fealty to the Magistrate, then got to work.
    Deedra had trouble focusing. The conveyor belt zipped by her station, and she worked as quickly as she could, but she couldn’t help tossing furtive, useless glances upward, toward the office into which Rose had disappeared, escorted by Lio and Hart. Kent and Rik stayed on the floor, occasionally living up to their group name and startling anyone within hearing distance. Which, given the loudness of the pipes, was everyone.
    After a little while, Rose exited the office with Lio, strode from the catwalk to the stairs, and came down to the factory floor. Lio banged his pipe three times in rapid succession, setting up a tooth-jarring chain of echoing clangs that stopped everyone at their stations.
    “Listen up!” he shouted. “I need a volunteer to show Rose”—he couldn’t say the name without a