Page 15 of Dead Drop

I come out on the roof.

The sky is enormous. The canopy stretches in every direction—the upper towers catching the morning light, the ruins of the old city buried beneath the growth like bones under skin. The wind hits my face and the sweat goes cold.

Below, New Reach. Smoke from the breached eastern gate. Distant sounds of fighting that might be my people holding ormight be the last of the defense collapsing. I can't tell from here. I can't help from here.

Behind me, the stairwell door. The Ordained are one floor below. I can hear them.

The rooftop is flat. Gravel and old solar panel frames and the rusted skeleton of a communications antenna that stopped communicating a long time ago. No cover. No exit. The parapet is waist-high, crumbling in places where the weather has been working at the concrete for decades.

Fifty-three floors.

I walk to the edge.

6

ADA

Fifty-three floors down. The canopy starts at approximately one hundred and fifty feet—dense, dark, the mutated growth that ate the lower city. Below the canopy, another hundred feet of branches and then the ground, or what's left of it. I won't reach the ground. The canopy will break the fall in the wrong way—branches catching me, the stop sudden, the outcome the same regardless of which branch gets there first.

I've counted it three times. It comes out the same.

Behind me, the stairwell door bangs open. Three Ordained soldiers spill onto the roof, blades drawn, breathing hard. They see me at the edge and they stop. The squad leader—broad, armored, his face trained into the calm of someone who has dealt with this before—raises a hand. His soldiers hold.

"Step away from the edge."

His voice is professional. Trained. He's been taught how to talk to people on ledges, which tells me the Ordained have people on ledges often enough to train for it.

I don't look at him. I look at the sky.

The morning is clear. High clouds, thin and fast, the kind that come before a weather system moves through. The lightis the color of something ending—pale gold, the sun not quite above the canopy crown, the shadows long across the rooftop gravel. Below me, the canopy moves in the wind. The upper branches sway, leaves catching the sun in flashes of green and gold that scroll past like something alive, something breathing. Silver-backed leaves turn and catch the light, sending bright flickers across the surface of the canopy like fish turning beneath dark water.

It's beautiful. I wish it weren't. Dying should be uglier than this.

"The girl you took," I say. "Petra. Where is she?"

"Step away from the edge and we can discuss?—"

"I'm not negotiating. I'm asking a question."

He doesn't answer. I didn't expect him to. The question isn't for him—it's for me.

I need to hear myself ask it. I need to know that Petra was the last thing I fought for. I need that to be the shape of it.

She'll be all right. The Cages are soft. She's strong, she's trained, and the drugs won't take all of her. She'll survive.

I think this the way I think every lie I have to tell myself to function—with my teeth set and my eyes open, the full knowledge that it's a lie sitting right beside the parallel knowledge that it's necessary. Lies are a resource. I've been spending them for four years.

The Ordained squad leader takes a step forward. His boots crunch on the gravel. Behind him, his soldiers have spread to either side, widening the approach angle.

Standard flanking for a cornered target. They're treating me like an asset to recover, not a threat to neutralize. That tells me everything.

"Ada. We know who you are. Brother Lief has an offer?—"

"Brother Lief can choke on his offer."

Another step. "You're valuable. You don't have to do this."

Valuable.