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The tears have anger in them at first, but anger burns out fast. Tears stay.
She slides her finger beneath the flap and pulls. The seal breaks as easy as a spine.
She reads.
Around her the world burns. Plants wither. The waves wash carcasses ashore.
Red screams at the sky. She calls Beings in which she does not believe to account. She wants there to be a God, so she can curse Her.
She reads again.
Radiation wind blows through her. Hidden organs wake to keep her alive.
A shadow stands behind her.
Red turns and looks.
She has never seen the seeker before, her shadow; even now she sees only outline, distortion, crystal slipped into a clear river—and a hand, outstretched. No Agency creature after all—and no Garden thing, either. This should be a mystery, an unveiling of secrets—an answer.
What does it matter? she thinks. What does any of it matter?
She presses the letter into that glassy, reaching hand and steps off the cliff.
She holds to her despair as rocks streak past and other rocks approach and the sky’s a ruin of bombs, but at the last breath before impact she breaks. This is too good for her, too easy, too quick. Blue wouldn’t grace her with a death this clean. And she’s always been a coward.
Weeping, cursing, broken, a hair’s breadth from the rocks, she slips away into the past.
* * *
Oh, Red.
The twist of you in me. The writhe. You’re a whip uncoiling in my veins, and I write between the rearing and the snap.
Of course I write to you. Of course I ate your words.
I will try to compose myself—to order myself into something you can read. I fall to paper and quill because there is no time, now, to do anything else—and it is luxury, in its own way, to do this. To write in plain sight. To write, too, to the rhythm of what I feel happening. It’s fascinating, in its own way. It’s everything I wanted from an enemy. I wish you could hear me clap.
Brava, my pomegranate. Well done. Nine out of ten.
(I reserve a point, always, to encourage reach exceeding grasp.)
The ache in the back teeth is an interesting touch. I’ve been through the cold sweats, and now I think my hands are starting to shake, so I pray you’ll forgive the flaws in penmanship. You should read your triumph in them.
I was disappointed at first, you know—the obviousness of the double-bluff. Methought you did protest too much. But it worked, after all—I bit your poisoned apple. There’ll be no glass coffin for me—all your Shift could ever have been—and certainly no necrophilic prince to tumble me into a different story.
You’d have made such a splendid agent for our side, truly. If anything saddens me in this, it’s the waste of you—sweet and safe in cold sharp places that won’t thrill to pierce your skin.
The needle sinks and spirals through its grooves. I spurt anachronisms as I wind down. It’s good to feel this in common with the universe, somehow. I never died but once—that once I told you of—and it was quite a different thing. Strange how being erased can bring one in line with a greater narrative.
I loved you. That was true. With what’s left of me I can’t help but love you still. This is how you win, Red: a long game, a subtle hand played well. You played me like a symphony, and I hope you won’t mind my feeling a little proud of you for such a magnificent betrayal.
I see you now as the red hourglass on a black widow’s back, measuring out my life in cooling blood. I imagine you coming upon whatever will be left of my body, spinning your nanite-shrouds to break, learn, consume my remains. I expect it to be exhaustingly tidy. Boring, even. I certainly hope I’ll be dead by then.
The pain truly is excruciating. It’s wonderful, really. Is this what it’s like to not feel hungry anymore? A lot less work than the other way. Wish I could go back upthread and—
I think this is it. I need to keep strength enough to seal this. What would Mrs. Leavitt say otherwise? Or Bess, or Chatterton?
Thank you, Red. It was a hell of a ride.
