I can’t leave the way I came, the celebrations and the crowd density are insane in the south-west, so I break even further north, hoping to work my way through the ruins of what was the financial district, and hike up the hills, make contact with S45 when I’m beyond the waste processing plant. The bombing has been uneven here, with some high-rises broken to the foundation and others oddly intact. I walk through concrete canyons paved with broken glass, holding Nuru’s tentacle as a weapon. The suckers stick to my forearm sometimes, but the tip always points outward. I can feel a pulse in it, like it’s developed a heart. I’m plagued by phantoms as I walk, ruin-dwellers afraid of my confidence and scampering like cockroaches. Someone takes a potshot at me, but the grapheme absorbs it. I don’t even bother to chase the person down.
I avoid roads where there are new ganglions, but it’s hard. They are everywhere now, which is good for Rosewater, but bad for me.
I see a crater with a downed drone, and seven skeletons around it. I’m guessing it had an incendiary payload that went off after a delay. These poor scavengers got caught in the blast.
I’m starving and running out of drinking water, but I’ll be out of town by nightfall, so I’m not worried about that. I do look in some of the buildings, but the taps aren’t on yet. The new mossy green layer on the ground absorbs sound and sticks to the boot. I try to eat it, or squeeze moisture out, but it’s bitter, and that might mean toxic. I take ten-minute breaks every half an hour during which time I try to search the xenosphere, but it’s full of what I can only call neuro-static, all flashing lights and incoherence. In the quiet moments I still remember the ambush, and the fear at the moment I thought I was going to be killed, the scattering of Nuru’s body parts in the blasts. When I think this the tentacle twitches, as if it remembers, at which point I wonder if it’s accessing my thoughts in some way, but then I see three people coming towards me. They are armed with cudgels and maybe a gun.
I rise to them, but the tentacle does all the work. Of its own volition it streaks out at the first person’s face and drives a spike through. She drops. It detaches and wraps around the arm of the one with a gun then it reverses its track, coming away with clothing, skin and muscle, desleeving the bones. The screams of its owner echo all around us. The third is changing his mind, but the tentacle, sensing only a fraction of my movement or intent, whips across the neck and tears out a handful of flesh from the side of his neck. Blood fountains as he staggers for three steps, then stops.
The tentacle becomes inert again.
I search them, and come away with one locust bar, and two unspecified protein sachets, which usually means blended cockroach and ant. No water. I chew two squares of the locust, and keep moving.
I soon come to three topless boys taking turns to drink out of a tubular plant shoot. They say it’s their plant and I have to pay. I give them the unspecified protein, then I drink. The water is sweet with a hint of chalkiness. After a bit of suction it flows, and rushes abundantly, so I rub some on my head. Then I see her standing where I was. The tentacle is not reactive. She is tall, with variegated green skin and black studs here and there, which are either piercings or growing out of her. She’s wearing a flowing gown that the wind is trying to take away from her. She does not look pleased to see me.
“You’re Eric. The assassin.”
And, just as suddenly, I know. “You’re the new proxy for Wormwood.”
“Even so.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You have crimes to answer for.”
“First of all, they’re not crimes. I am an agent of the legitimate government of Nigeria, which includes Rosewater, although I don’t yet know what’s happened with this armistice. I’m an agent on orders. Secondly, why do you care? You’re an alien. This does not concern you.”
“I need to keep this area safe because my people are coming.”
“And you can do that. I’m walking away, so even if you consider me dangerous, letting me go would be the thing to improve the safety of Rosewater.”
“Or I could kill you and be sure.”
At this point, though, I see hesitation, and I gamble that she is torn. With all my will-power I turn my back on her and take another gulp of the fresh water. “You could, but I’ll tell you what: kill me quick. I have no patience for listening to words from an alien in league with someone as evil as Jack Jacques. I wish I had succeeded.”
I fill the canteen I found on my trek, and walk away from her, expecting to be disintegrated or crushed or given a stroke any minute. It doesn’t happen, although I sweat for a mile despite the sun going down. Once it is nightfall, I no longer sense her around me, although she is everywhere in Rosewater. I start to wonder about the speech I gave her, and the words do not seem like my own at all. In fact…
“Kaaro,” I say.
The gryphon appears to me in the xenosphere. “Bawo ni?”
“What else have you left in my head?” He sounds a lot cheerier than I would have expected.
“Nothing, nothing, I swear. This is all in real time. I didn’t puppetmaster you, Eric.”
“And yet.”
“And yet I may have given you a nudge or two, for old times’ sake. The rest was all you, I swear. Some intercollegiate stuff, agent to ex-agent.”
“What do you want?”
“Just making sure you’re really gone. And Eric?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ever come back here. Gryphons are territorial.”
I walk past the processing plant, the marker of city limits. I don’t know exactly everything that happened here, but I am glad to be out. I look back and there is a large area of darkness where the dome used to be. All the dozens of new ganglia glitter like stars. A breeze carries the smell of waste from the plant.
I give Rosewater the middle finger. “Fuck you.”
I hold it up for some minutes, then I signal for a pick-up.