Rebirth

Cass nodded. “It looks great.”

Feo pointed behind him, along the perimeter of the Box where the chain-link fence topped with razor wire stretched the length of two city blocks. “I seen Dor, too. He went out the back. He’s smoking.”

Cass caught her breath, careful not to let her anxiety show. She would bet Feo had been waiting for her, not wanting to share even this small confidence in front of the others. He did not often speak when people were gathered, though she’d managed to coax half a dozen conversations from him in private.

“Thanks,” she said softly, feathering his hair lightly with her fingertips. Experience had taught her that Feo could only bear the smallest of intimacies yet. He allowed the men to roughhouse with him, squirming and laughing in their arms, but she glimpsed him lurking where women gathered, the look of longing in his eyes painful to see. It would take time, that was all. At least, that was the story she told herself.

“Thanks, Feo,” she repeated. “Smoking’s bad.”

She knew she wasn’t the only one who told him that. Funny how protective they were of the boy, what with men even hiding their bottles and cigarettes when Feo was around. He flashed her a quick smile before he dashed back between the tents and disappeared.

The path around the inside perimeter of the fence was well-worn, the earth hard packed and smooth. Newcomers often walked it deep in the night when they had trouble sleeping, and the strung-out and far-gone paced like fevered wraiths at all hours of the day. Mealtimes were the only times that the path emptied, and Cass encountered no one else as she hurried in the direction the boy had pointed.

The break in the fence, hidden behind a thicket of dead snowberry shrubs at the back of the Box, wasn’t exactly a secret-but only the permanent residents of the Box knew about it, and only the most fit could use it. It was Beater-proof-the break was only in the razor wire, where two sections had come loose at a joint, leaving the ends to hang down, and it was only a couple feet wide. Climbing the chain-link was more trouble than it was worth, even for someone as strong as Dor, when you could walk to the front gate in a matter of minutes.

Unless you weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone. She didn’t know Dor well but she recognized in him, one loner to another, the need for silence enough to hear yourself think.

Cass reached the break and considered for a moment. Across the street, the storefronts facing the Box had long ago been stripped of anything useful, their windows shattered and the glass swept away. Dor insisted that the streets directly abutting the Box be kept clean; trash pickup was among the new recruits’ jobs, and despite their grumbling there was a sense of pride among the maintenance staff.

She knew where Dor would go. Smoke had shared this confidence with her. In their long talks into the night, he told her about the men and women he worked with, their habits, small details of their lives. He admired Cass’s ability to see through people to the emotions underneath. Cass didn’t ever tell him that sometimes she wished she could stop; he relied on her to be his divining rod, his translator.

Smoke was bewildered by Dor’s habit of wandering so far off-site unarmed, but Cass thought she understood. Solitude was as short in supply as medicine or fresh produce, but for some, just as desperately missed. Time to oneself-even when it came with great risk-somehow made it possible to sort through your tangled thoughts, to remember who you used to be, Before. And to understand who you had become Aftertime. In the din and commotion of the Box, Cass sometimes felt that she would slowly fade, edges first, until she was lost.

Two blocks in, where the stores gave way to apartments and small houses, a yellow brick building ringed a small courtyard with overturned benches and dead gardens. A studio apartment on the second floor looked west toward the mountains and the setting sun, and it was here that Dor came to sit occasionally, in a chair pulled up to the window. It wasn’t safe-there was no exit if Beaters found their way up the stairs, save a drop out the window to the ground, one that Beaters wouldn’t hesitate to follow.

Cass might have regretted disturbing his peace-if she had any choice, and if it were anyone else. Instead, she scrambled up and over the fence, the wire cutting painfully into her palms and the impact of jumping to the ground jarring her legs. She jogged down the street, scanning for flashes of movement as she went. She had her blade at hand-she never went anywhere without it-but it would do little good if she encountered more than one.

The sun had slipped behind the building, casting its courtyard in shadow. The earth was cracked and scabbed despite the recent rains; patches of kaysev, leaf-dead and spindly, caught debris in their rigid stems. A foam cup, a plastic bag, a diaper, dried and desiccated.

The building’s door had disappeared months ago, and inside, the litter hinted at stories of desperation. A torn suitcase spilled matted clothing across the tiled entry, and a stroller was overturned in the corner, its colorful fabric fuzzed with mold.

Cass took the stone steps two at a time, hand over hand on the banister, moving as stealthily as she was able-Cass had the sensation that if she didn’t catch Dor unawares he would simply disappear, would magic himself away to somewhere else entirely. He had that way about him, an elusiveness, and when she rounded the top of the stairs and found herself staring through the wide-flung door into the room Dor had made his own, the sight of him- broad back and hints of a dark, tanned neck, inky black hair reaching almost to his shoulders, motionless in a canvas director’s chair, the rest of the room stark and empty-it only underscored the sense that he was illusory.

Dor heard her and leaped from his chair, going down on one knee with the blade in his hand like an extension of his body, eyes flashing black and bright, and the surreal notion of him grew stronger still.

But then he said her name, and his voice was flat, almost disappointed. He stood slowly, lowering his blade hand, and the mythological strangeness of him began to evaporate. The scar across his forehead was almost invisible in the gloom and his expression was unreadable. The loops of silver that pierced the cartilage of each ear weren’t noticeable, and the coal-black kaysev tattoos running up both arms were covered by his canvas coat. He almost looked like an ordinary man. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry about Sammi.”

Dor barely acknowledged her words. A faint lift of his chin, that was all. She knew he had decided long ago that his daughter would be safer sheltering at the school than here in the Box with him. Few people knew about Sammi: her very existence was something that could be used against him. So long as his foes believed he cared for nothing and no one, he was invulnerable.

Dor never spoke of her, and neither, by tacit agreement, had Smoke or Cass. If the Rebuilders discovered that they had Dor’s daughter, the entire balance of power shifted, and the Box could be theirs for the price of a single life. Getting her back was key to keeping all of them safe. But Cass knew that Dor wasn’t thinking about strategy now, that his mind was filled only with Sammi, with his fears for her and his rage at her abductors.

Cass pressed on. “Smoke says he’s going.”

“I told him not to,” Dor said, then added in a tone only fractionally less cold, “if that matters to you.”

“And yet he’s going anyway.”

“You want him to stay.”

Cass shrugged. Of course she did…what did he think? She was a woman with a child; Smoke was more than just a body in the night-he was also a layer of safety. It should have gone without saying.

“You think he should stay.” The same question in different words, or something else entirely? Dor did not invite her farther into the room, and she was aware of the space between them, of the still air that was even colder, if that were possible, than outdoors.

“Of course he should stay,” she snapped. She needed him. But what she said instead was: “What can he accomplish? Even if he finds them, if he tracks them down, they’re not going to be alone. They’re not going to be unprepared-”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Dor interrupted. “If I were a betting man, I’d bet on him.”

It was the rock slide, of course. The legend. Three Rebuilders dead, and Smoke untouched, not a hair on his head lost, while the two who fought at his side were dead. It almost didn’t matter that it was true. Cass had heard the story retold a dozen times over a dozen late-night fires and sometimes it was twice that number dead, and sometimes Smoke took a bullet and kept on fighting, and once he had sliced off their ears as trophies and wore them on a cord around his neck.

“He’s just a man,” Cass said bitterly. “Lucky once. No one’s lucky twice, not Aftertime.”

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then Dor bent and folded his chair carefully and leaned it against the wall, where Cass noticed twin marks in the paint. So, he left the chair in the same place each time. Glancing around the room she saw something she’d missed at first-there was no dust, no dirt. Dor kept this place clean. She wasn’t surprised-anyone could see from his office that he was a fastidious man. She wondered what that said about him, what flaws or virtues it bespoke, what history it maybe whitewashed, and then she put that out of her mind and