Page 2 of Rogue’s Mark

Rogue is already at the door. I never saw him move, he's just there, hand on the frame, shoulders loose, figuring shit out while keeping any expression out of the equation. Sting follows, his jacket on, in an unhurried and controlled motion that means he’s been ready to go while waiting for the rest of us to catch up. He looks at Fischer once. Not in anger. Sting doesn't do anger like regular people. He does something colder and more deliberate that hits harder than anger ever could.

"Up," he says to Fischer.

The man rises. No argument, no protest, no attempt to resurrect the friendly-Tommy routine that everybody in this room now knows was a pile of fake-ass bullshit. He stands, straightens his shirt collar with both hands, and waits. He figures a decision has been made about him and he’s got the smarts not to bother fighting it.

They walk him out.

No hands on him, no restraints, nothing dramatic like I might have chosen had I been in charge. I mean, Christ, can’t they at least rough him up a little? That would be so satisfying. Instead, there’s just Armen in front and Sting behind and Rogue holding the door, unhurried, unremarkable. This place has always been good at making things look like nothing big is happening. It keeps people on their toes. I know I’m always trying to figure out what the hell is going on, where I stand, and what it all means.

The door closes, leaving Mara and me. Still on the table are the city property transfer documents with the matched handwriting that blew Fischer's cover and started this whole avalanche. Also left behind, dangling in the air, is the question I can't stop asking myself, the answer to it having left the room with Fischer.

Is my father still alive?

I stand up and, thank God, my legs don’t collapse from under me.

I need air. I need a few minutes where nobody is watching my face while I figure out how to digest this.

I pick up the documents, folding them once along a clean crease and sliding them into my jacket pocket. My hands are steady but I don't feel steady.

"Vi," Mara says from the couch.

"I can’t talk."

"I just⁠—"

"Mara," I snap.

She knows that tone. She's known that tone since we were kids, like old muscle memory. Some things survive everything.

"I need ten minutes,” I tell her.

She nods. Her eyes are red again and she's doing her own version of holding it together, her arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw set. She heard the word too. She's chewing on the same word I am and landing on the same crazy answer.

I pull the door open.

The corridor’s dim and familiar, smelling like it always does of concrete and stale air. I’ve gotten used to the particular scent of a building that was never designed for living in, that has been lived in hard for years anyway. I’m getting to know the cracks in the walls and which lights flicker and which ones don’t. Weeks ago, I was terrified of this place. Now, it's home, which is the weirdest fucking thing of all.

I start walking. Not too fast but not too slow. Just walking because walking means I’m not lying down, comatose, trying to figure out what just happened. It’s all I can handle right now, like if I slow down, God forbid, the crap swirling around in my brain might eat me alive.

Is.

My father built a case against the crooks running the city and then made a decision nobody expected.

Is.

I need to find Alice.

She knew my father. She knew what he was doing, what he was up against, what he was capable of. If there's anyone inside the Rot who has a piece of this answer, it's her. She’s the woman who found me and handed me documents and said your father left these for someone to find, like she'd been waiting for me to be ready to hear it.

Maybe she's been waiting for me to be ready to hear the rest of it too.

2

VI

I make it about thirty feet down the corridor before Alice appears.

Not from any door that opened. She’s just there, stepping out of a gap between a collapsed display rack and the wall, like she's been standing there all day. Maybe she has. She’s still got the shaved head and scar across the cheek, making her look like something out of a Mad Max movie. It’s crazy to think she used to work for the city and even crazier that she worked with my dad, with how subversive and badass she looks now.