All That Is Red (12 page)

Seeing a table set up on the bed across his lap, I asked what he was working on now.

“What do you think?” he asked laughing.

He showed me a detailed map of everyone’s rooms and the public buildings. On it, I could see where the commander’s funeral took place, where the boy’s and my own rooms were,
and where I was right now.

“Of course, this is still rough,” he said humbly, though from my inexperienced eye the map looked perfect in every way and as exact as I could possibly imagine.

“I’m drawing this all from memory, since I still can’t get around that well,” he apologized, but I was utterly impressed by his enthusiasm and dedication to his job.

Then he pulled out another map, one much larger than the first, from beside his bed and handed it to me. It was a map of the area between the Ever Forest and The Pure One’s city. The areas
bordering us were quite detailed, but, as the map moved farther north and closer to The Pure One’s city, the details grew less and less distinct and the notes farther and farther apart.

“We don’t have much information about the areas nearer to The Pure One’s city,” Nalin explained. “If we can dispatch surveyors to those areas to take notes on what
the topography is like, I can probably finish it up quickly.”

I nodded in agreement. Nalin seemed to know what he was doing and I trusted him. I knew the boy would be more than happy with the progress he had made so far.

“So, how’s everything doing?” he asked. “You look tired.”

“I am,” I hesitated.

“Don’t worry. I know you can’t tell me everything,” Nalin said. “But how are you?”

“I’m as good as anyone can be during preparations for a war.” I was glad I could be frank with him and have him understand.

He looked amused at my sounding a lot like him.

“Can I tell you something in confidence, a secret you can’t tell anyone else?” I asked Nalin, as I was about to tell him of the plans to send representatives to meet with two
of the White.

“No,” was his direct answer.

At first, I was admittedly taken aback, not expecting an answer of that kind. Then I thought he was joking and was prepared to stick on a smile matching one that would light up his face any
second now. That smile never appeared. Nalin’s response was serious.

“I can’t let you tell me whatever it is. I ... I have something to tell you as well,” he stammered. “I don’t know how well you’ll take it. You don’t
have to promise not to tell anyone. Quite the contrary, you can tell whomever you wish. I’ve been keeping something from you and I think it’s time to tell you.”

As he began to speak, his words shook me and I tried to brace myself for whatever would come next. His tone was serious and its somberness perturbed me. Not a trace of the old Nalin was left in
the shell before me.

“I ... I was an observer ... for the White.”

“An observer?” The meaning of his words dawned on me after what seemed like an exaggerated moment. “For the White?”

“Nothing was set in stone,” he said. His voice pleaded with me, sounding so pitiful and wretched. “I just ... I don’t even know ... I felt buried beneath my emotions.
They were too strong. I felt lost and confused. Scared too. Unbelievably scared. However much I tried, I couldn’t explain it to myself. I wanted others to understand, but how could I when I
couldn’t understand myself? All I wanted was for it to stop.”

His words sounded so familiar and seemed to trigger something in my mind that sent them vibrating through my head. It pounded in there, a living heart inside my head. I remembered those exact
words running through my mind ages ago. I recalled the scene as acutely as if it were unfolding before me again. It was as if time’s rusted hinges had creaked open for me to glimpse the
distant past and judge it accordingly.

It had been in art class and I had been at the sink washing the paint off my hands. I remember feeling like Lady Macbeth, the Red paint staining my hands. It had tainted the water Red and it
hadn’t seemed to come off no matter how hard I had scrubbed. I hadn’t realized that my sleeve had rolled up my left arm as I had tried to get the paint off.

“Oh my gosh. Are those all scars?” a girl waiting to use the sink had asked.

I had hurriedly pulled down my sleeve, not caring if I had gotten any Red paint on it. I had been ashamed that she had seen those scars. They were my record of confusion, each line representing
a mass of blurring and deadened emotion.

“You’re a cutter? That’s so sick,” she had said. “You’re such an attention-seeker.”

Without waiting for me to reply or justify myself, she had left. I’m not sure what I would have said if she had stayed, whether I would have tried justifying my actions, or if I would have
been able to say a word.

I didn’t feel anything. How could I? I was numb. But I felt lost and confused. Scared too. Unbelievably scared. I felt nothing and everything all at once. However much I tried, I
couldn’t explain it to myself. I wanted others to understand, but how could I when I couldn’t understand myself? All I wanted was for it to stop. I wanted to be normal and happy all the
time. I wanted to feel.

I wondered if I stood still enough, would the world close in around me and suck me in whole? Could I find a way to break the fragile life that I only half led?

I had thought the same words Nalin voiced and, in that instant, I realized that I could not judge him even if I tried. Here I was in the shoes of the girl from art class, but I found myself
making a different decision. I didn’t turn away from him like she did from me. I stayed, waiting to see if he would make the choice to speak and justify his actions.

“With the confusion and stupefied emotions I felt, I did the only thing I could think of. I turned to the White,” Nalin continued. “I don’t remember the exact moment I
made the decision or what ultimately pushed me to it, but it seemed like an accumulation of everything catapulted me over the edge.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he asked me to wait until he had said everything he meant to say. He told me that was the only way he could ever finish and truthfully tell me everything. When
I responded that I didn’t need to hear everything and that I forgave him already, he said that he needed to do this for his own sake.

“One day I had enough of it,” he continued. “I woke up that day and said, ‘I’m not going to take any more of this.’ I walked to The Pure One’s city and
turned myself in. I went to the first unfeeling I saw and pledged my allegiance to the White. I asked him to make me one of them, but he only laughed and said that I had to prove my worth first. At
that point, I was desperate. I would have done anything to escape those emotions plaguing me.

“It was terrifying, but I think, at that moment, I would have been ready to kill for what I wanted. He talked to The Pure One and came back with a proposal. In exchange for me going back
to the Red cause, observing you, and diligently reporting my findings, they would make me one of them; an unfeeling.”

“How long was this plan supposed to be in action?” I asked, as the agonizing truth gushed out.

“As long as it would take me to get a secret or strategy of high importance from the cause. It had to be something the White could use against you in war. And I would have gotten that
piece of information if I hadn’t met you. You really understand me. I felt like I could trust you ... I still do, which is why I’m telling you all this. It’s not a secret anymore,
so you don’t have to keep it. I’ve stopped feeling like an outsider and more like a person and I can only accredit that to you. You saved me from myself.”

“No one else knows about this?” I asked.

“Only you,” he confirmed.

I nodded my assent. “Be careful who you tell.” Then a thought came to me. “How many others are there?”

I had to tread carefully in what I asked Nalin. Although I wanted to know what he knew, I didn’t know how much information I should ask him to tell me. I decided to stick to the basics,
which was all that was necessary for me to know.

“Spies?” he asked. “One other that I know of.”

I was about to leave when another thought struck me. “Do you know who was behind the assassination of the commander?”

“I don’t,” he replied, shaking his head.

I turned my back to leave, but then he said something that piqued my interest.

“But I have a suspicion.”

C
HAPTER
10

I raced through the paths bending around each building with Nalin crutching after me. We ran to Gerrard’s rooms, but upon finding them empty, we resorted to asking random
people on the path where he was. Most ignored us, but some were polite enough to say that they didn’t know. An old Trigon man pointed us toward the direction where he had last seen the
general. We hoped he was still in the vicinity.

“Maybe we should look for General Devonport or the boy instead?” Nalin suggested.

“No, Gerrard will know how to best handle this.” I was sure of it.

As we turned the bend in the path, we found the man we needed. Gerrard stood in the shade of a building with a person’s neck in his grasp. He was holding someone against the wall,
murmuring intimidating words to their ears.

“It’s her,” an astonished Nalin whispered by my side.

In the dim shadows, I could barely make out the facial features of the girl I bumped into earlier today. Her face was marred by a distasteful glare directed entirely at the general. It was a
cold look, but Gerrard seemed unaffected by it.

“Lynette,” Gerrard growled, shaking her pretty little neck in his hand. “This is your last chance to tell me where the papers are. I know you have them.” I saw his grip
tighten.

“Never,” she choked out, gagging on the bit of air she managed to obtain. Gerrard’s grip tightened further and I saw his knuckles turn pale as Lynette’s face
blanched.

“I have a feeling I know where they are,” I said, stepping out from the other side of the building. Lynette’s face turned even paler, though I wouldn’t have thought it
possible at that point. I brought my face close to hers. “Do you remember me?”

I took the liberty of slipping off her sweater, revealing a ragged Red shirt underneath it. The cardigan didn’t seem like anything special. It had a row of Red buttons, some missing, some
broken, that trailed down like small beads rolling off a tabletop, but that wasn’t what first caught my eye. I had thought it quite odd when I saw her wearing the sweater this morning with
the weather being as temperate as it was. I searched the cardigan, until my fingers caused the crinkling of paper. I reached into a sewn-on pocket on the inside back of the sweater and, as I
suspected, the papers were there.

Gerrard’s grip on her neck slackened and he pushed her away from the wall. “If you know what’s good for you, scram.”

“You’re just going to let her go?” Nalin asked, voicing exactly what was on my mind.

“She doesn’t have the papers. Without them, she’s useless, both to us and the White.”

“You mean they’ll ... they’ll kill her?” Nalin asked.

“Precisely,” Gerrard said in a cool, reserved manner that I thought was very much unlike him. “Think of it as them taking out the trash for us. That way we don’t have
to.”

I had never seen him speak like this, but then again, I had never seen him almost strangle a spy either. It was a different man in front of me and, although I knew it was necessary in these
times, I didn’t like this side of him.

“We should go to my rooms,” Gerrard said, as he looked around.

People were congregated around us gawking. I knew they hadn’t seen anything since they came well after Lynette had disappeared. However, having an audience made us all feel uneasy.

Trying to act relatively normal, we walked to the general’s chambers. Out of breath, but still filled with adrenalin, Nalin and Gerrard both puffed. Knowing I was supposed to feel
something, anything, confused maybe, but not feeling anything at all, I felt out of place.

We reached the general’s rooms and closed the door behind us. Locking the world away on the other side, it was a safe haven for us.

“You have the papers?” the general asked.

I confirmed the fact to their relieved sighs and laid them out on his desk.

There were at least twenty pages in all. Maps, drawings, notes; there was page after page of information on our cause. One page caught my eye. It was an unmistakable drawing of my room. The
window, the desk, and the bed were in their right places. Even the quilt covering the bed had the correct patterns on it and there, beneath the quilt, I saw something that resembled a head. It was
mine.

“Some of these are copies of my maps,” Nalin said, picking a few sheets out of the pile.

“Then we know they’re not safe,” Gerrard said. “We can move you to one of my rooms where you can stay under the security of my guards.”

“That would be helpful,” Nalin said. “I just ... I didn’t know that they were spying on me, too.” I knew he must have been shocked that the White had sent out a spy
to keep tabs on him as well.

“That’s why it’s called spying, Nalin.” the general replied gruffly. “Everyone is spied on and no one’s life is private anymore.”

“We have to tell the commander,” Gerrard said. I knew all of us thought of the deceased commander when he said that. But we had to remember that the commander was really only a
title, a position to fill, and though I filled it now, to everyone else the boy was their commander.

“We have to tell the commander,” Gerrard said. I knew all of us thought of the deceased commander when he said that. But we had to remember that the commander was really only a
title, a position to fill, and though I filled it now, to everyone else the boy was their commander.

Gerrard sent one of his assistants out to get the boy. While waiting, he led us to a room deeper in his quarters. The furnishings of the room, a bed and a bedside table, were sparse, but they
were made up for by the rich wallpaper and carpet that seemed to envelope us all within itself.

The walls were decorated with none other than light. It was a painting, but the light seemed real. It glowed and danced in front of our eyes. At the same time, the light was both all colors and
none. It undulated, hugging in shadows. The light sprawled out and touched all corners of the room. There was nowhere it couldn’t go.