Page 28 of Mutant Mine

Roth ignores me. He walks into the bathroom, but leaves the door open as he strips to the waist and begins to wash up at the sink. I follow him as far as the doorway, watching him perform the same motions that I did myself so recently: wetting a washcloth and daubing himself clean. Reflected in the mirror, I can see beads of water running down the sleek muscles of his chest.

My cheeks hot, I look at the floor. The parallel is irritating.Nothingwe do will ever be alike. The only blood I needed to wash off was my own, from when…

The most awful thought strikes me.

“You didn’t hurt any of the crew, did you?”

Roth continues to ignore me. He’s cleaning out his knuckles; the skin has split, presumably when he slammed it into someone’s face. The image of Tommy’s delicate cheekbones and already broken smile drifts through my mind, and I pale.

“Who was it?” I beg. “When I tried to bust them out the other day, that was one hundred percent my idea. They didn’teven know I was alive.They had no idea what I was planning. Please, you can’t punish them for what I did!”

At last, Roth’s eyes snap up to mine.

“Little bird,” he says. “This is the blood of some very bad men. Trust me when I say that they would have been no friends to you. Nor to your colleagues — who remain safe and well. I swear that no harm will come to them.”

Roth turns back round and scrubs hard at a stubborn patch of blood. Then he stops. With a sigh, he rests his hands on the edge of the sink and lowers his head.

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. Seeing him like this, almost vulnerable… I shift uncomfortably. I’m just about to turn away when Roth speaks again.

“I know that you perceive me as a monster,” he says, with his head still bowed. “And to some extent, I am content to live up to your expectations. It is not your fault that you have been fed so many lies. And I know that the role I must play here is often… less than ideal.”

His voice is softer than I have ever known it.

“But these men…” Roth continues. “You have not lived among them, so you do not understand; not truly. I am glad that you do not. But these men have beenreduced. Perhaps, long ago, they made a mistake — or perhaps they were born without a chance. But one way or another, they have sunk down to the very bottom of the world. Down there, the only way to survive is to be lower and meaner than the next man. Sharper and faster. Always alert to blood in the water.”

It’s the most words I’ve heard him speak at once. I picture deep sea creatures: disfigured things with giant, toothy mouths, never meant to be seen by the light of the day. Creatures that thrive in pressure and darkness, and feed on scraps. It does remind me of the men I’ve encountered on the Hades — but somehow, not of Roth. Not right now.

“Is… is that how you see yourself?” I manage to ask.

Roth looks up at me, his eyes blazing blue.

“Do you grasp the reality of the situation we are in?” he demands sharply. “If someone does not maintain control, their battle to fill the power vacuum will boil over into madness. None of us will make it off this ship alive.”

Roth closes his eyes and sighs again. His fist tightens slowly around the washcloth, dribbling red-stained water down his wrist.

“Yes,” he says at last. “I have been reduced. I am reduced by my imprisonment. I am reduced by the lies that have been told about me. And I am reduced, every day now, by the violence I must commit to maintain my grip on these men. It is a weak grip, and some of them know it.”

“What lies?” I whisper. My fingers are shaking. “You said that before, ‘lies’… What do you mean?”

Roth gives me an assessing look, then begins buttoning the top half of his uniform back up.

“Do you trust the government, little bird?”

I think about the treatment that I’ve endured in my life, all of it perfectly legal. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I was raised in the corridors of power. My mop and bucket made me invisible, but I was always watching. I saw the politicians, the businessmen, the judges, the bankers. I saw their handshakes and their easy laughter. They were men who had known each other since boyhood, more often than not.

Do I trust them?

“No,” I say decisively. Not as far as I could throw them.

Roth pauses on his way across the room. He smiles at me again, although it’s not like his smile when he caught me sneaking food. This one’s a little more… fang-y.

“No,” he agrees. “Very wise. So why do you trust what they told you about me?”

I start to argue, but the words die in my mouth. If I ignore my knee-jerk reaction and think about it objectively, Roth is right.

17

Rory

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