The Color of Rain (21 page)

I keep to the window and observe a passing lava star so huge and fiery that I'm caught in the sweeping, licking flame-covered surface.

“I hoped to find you naked. Isn't that your special move?”

Johnny enters, pulls his collar free, and undoes the string of buttons down his front. His chest seems thin next to Ben's, but it's still toned with the right curves and dips.

“I don't do anything twice,” I say.

“You look much better.” He untucks his shirt. “I didn't enjoy watching you get all filthy on the passenger floors.”

I laugh. “You call that filth? I grew up on Earth City, remember?”

“True.” He's shirtless now and already undoing his pants. My mouth has run dry, and I finger the tin in my pocket.

“Do you want a drink?”

He smiles. “Always.”

I move to the bar and pour from the first bottle I see. I slide a tab out of the tin, but before I can drop it in the glass, he corners me from behind. His desire and impatience press into my back as he combs my hair away from my neck.

“My fiery girl,” he whispers. “I watched you every second you were away. You didn't enjoy those other men, did you?”

Heat rolls up my body. How would he know a damn thing about what I enjoy? But even as I think these words, Johnny's closeness—his caresses and warm breath—make me feel a very forgotten thrill. I had thought that I could go to him like the others, all numb and robotic, but he does things to me without my
permission just like before. He makes my skin tingle and my belly warm.

My heart bangs with both the anticipation of it all and the anxiety of enjoying it.

I can't. I have to keep a straight head. . . . I have to . . .

He turns my shoulders, and I slip the tab between my lips. It dissolves in a hurry, and I spin and kiss him so fast that even he fumbles to get a hold on me. I reach into his mouth with my tongue, the whole experience running much sloppier than any other kiss, but it doesn't matter because he's passed out on the floor before I can gag.

I feel a little woozy myself and grip the edge of the bar. I wipe the spit from my lips and chuckle at my success . . . only to fall, landing on top of Johnny.

Lights out.

“You weren't . . . supposed to . . .” The voice is a blurry mess. My eyesight is a blurry mess. My neck stings as something is zapped into my skin, making me jolt up into Ben's arms.

“I said, you weren't supposed to take one as well.” Ben fixes the needle back into the silver dose rod.

“What'd you give me? Not that limp dick drug.” I rub my neck as my eyes adjust. I'm on Johnny's black satin bed. Johnny is beside me with his mouth open and tongue lolling out like a butchered animal. I lean away from him.

“I gave you adrenaline.” He turns the rod over before me, showing the different colors of the injection settings. “Red is
adrenaline. See, I can switch out the meds for whatever purpose, and right now I've got it loaded for emergencies.” He flips it to the next setting. “Yellow is Limpicilin.” He cracks a smile and hands the heavy silver instrument to me.

I flip through the settings. “Can any of these kill a person?”

He tugs it out of my grip. “Don't even think about it, Rain.”

“This could be it.” I look over at Johnny's limp, shirtless body. “We could kill him.”

“If Johnny were to die, the crew would be loyal to his father. They would dump the passengers and girls and hightail it for the asteroid belt beyond the Void. Believe me, we don't want that. The Touched would go straight to the mines, and we'd be in enemy space.

“Besides, Rain”—Ben says, nudging my chin with his knuckle until I look his way—“you don't want to be a murderer. Trust me.”

I try to imagine Johnny dead, and a quiver slips from my lower back to my scalp. Of course, I don't want to be his killer.

What I am is bad enough.

Ben offers a small smile. “You ready to tell me your brilliant plan, oh fearless Earth Cityite?”

“Don't mock me,” I say, hiding my own little smile. I try to stand on my own, but I stumble too far to the side and have to grip his arm. “Stupid drug,” I curse. “Can you give me another shot?”

“Not unless you want your heart to explode.”

I squeeze my eyes and try to shake away the grogginess. “All right, well, we have to go down to where he keeps Walker. We have to move him.”

“That's your plan?”

“That's my price for helping you. We have to hide him in case Johnny figures out what I'm doing and decides to take something from me.” I close my eyes against the memory of Lo flipping through the black. “He won't be able to get his hands on Walker. At least not as easily as before.”

By the time we make it to the room with the solitary swinging light, my head and body have recovered from the knockout drug. Ben wastes no time in maneuvering Walker's pod out the door, and I find a similar-sized crate to replace it, covering it with the tarp as a decoy.

Of course it won't fool Johnny if he comes down here to check, but I have to trust that he's too reliant on the technologies at his fingers to do any actual legwork.

I twist the scarlet bracelet on my wrist.

“Don't do that,” Ben says. “It could shock you.”

I leave it alone but itch to tug it off my arm. “I thought it was beautiful when I first saw it.”

Ben pauses, leaning against the pod. “Bet you thought Johnny wasn't so bad either.”

He's right, but I won't tell him. I push my brother's frozen prison to keep from revealing my lingering problems along that front. Despite everything, Johnny still knows my pleasure zones like he mapped them, and yet he killed Lo.

What's wrong with me?

W
hen we finally make it to the suspended mass of
Melee
in its chain net, Ben works his magic on the ship's control panel until the lower side of it opens like a secret door. We push Walker inside and close it off.

Ben steps into the small ship and I follow. “Johnny will have a hell of a time finding him in there.” He rotates this way and that in the captain's chair while I flop back on the bunk. I hadn't realized how nervous I was about moving Walker until now. My heart spins like an engine and my breath is uneven.

“Of course, we'll be in trouble if he checks in person. . . .”

“We'll jump that bridge when it crumbles under us.” I don't want to think about Johnny's wrath. Or Johnny, period. “So my plan”—I say and then sit up, folding my legs underneath me on the bunk—“is to free the Touched on Entra.”

Ben stops circling in his chair. “No way.”

“Well, you wanted to sneak them off the ship and store them somewhere until the K-Force could pick them up. That's stupid. If Johnny figures out that they're gone, and they're all in one place, it's only a matter of time before he finds them. Right?” Ben opens his mouth to object. “
But
if we release them on this forest planet,
they'll be much harder to find. They'll certainly scatter, and then how easy will it be for Johnny to round them up? Not at all, right?”

“Rain . . .”

“Plus, they'll be free. Who knows? Maybe not being locked up and starved will set something loose in their minds. You said it yourself: they still have hunger. Humanity. They deserve freedom.”

“My plan might have been crap,” he admits. “But that plan is crap as well.”

I bring my hair back and braid it. “It's not genius, but even you said that Entra's our last chance to save this group. After that stop we'll be in the dead zone. What's it called?”

“The Static Pass.”

“Right. And you said that the K-Force are on the wrong side of it, which allows Johnny to just go about his business. We can't let him deliver all those people into the hands of that slaver. And this way the Touched aren't waiting on the help of some phantom space cops who may or may not ride in to save them.”

Ben gets out of his chair and paces around the cabin. “Have you thought this through, Rain? I mean, have you thought through the aftermath? If you're too close to him, if you're still red-tagged, he could take his anger out on you—even if he has no idea that you're in on this.” He stops moving. “He could punish you just to make himself feel better.”

I look away. “Or you.”

“I am one of his favorite punching bags.” He sits beside me so hard that the whole bunk bounces. “He could do anything if he
realizes that they're missing. I mean, he'll most likely keep up appearances as a passenger ship and head to the Edge, but if things go crazy, your already slim chances of getting out of here with Walker decrease significantly.”

“I
have
thought about that.” I pick at a small hole on the knee of my pants. “You still have to get off this ship. You said yourself that the K-Force are out there. Maybe when you rejoin them, I'll come with you. You can get me and Walker to the Edge.”

His hand moves over mine, but at the last second, his fingers curl into a fist that doesn't touch me. “Hell.”

He stands and palms the release to open
Melee
's door. “I'll try, but I can't promise anything. Recovering me or anyone else is not one of the K-Force's priorities. Especially after all my years of failure . . . regardless of who my uncle is.”

On the walk back to Johnny's quarters, Ben is too quiet, and then, the whole ship blares.

SCHREECHEEENSCH! SCHREECHEEENSCH!

I fall to my knees on the swinging catwalk, clutching my ears against the siren. The red light flicks on and off, eerily matching the glowing scarlet on my wrist. Ben is swinging around in a circle, confused.

“What do we do now?” I yell without being able to hear myself. “Did we set that off?”

He screams something back, but I can't hear. He's panicked; the color is draining out of his face. Through the breaks in the siren, we hear footsteps. Running footsteps and many of them.

“We need to hide!” I shout, but he just gives me a confused look. I get right in his face “HIDE!”

He blinks awake, pulling me by the arm from the walkway. We haul down a corridor, and he beats his fist on a wall until a panel pops free, and then he shoves me into a very narrow space. He slips in behind me, snapping the piece of wall back in place.

The flashing alarm light is now just an outline to the panel.

And we are in the dark.

The siren stops after a minute, and the space is so small that I can't get my arms free to rub the tingling sensation from my ears. I work my jaw while Ben twists so that he's leaning into me, almost on top of me.

“Did we just set that off? I thought you shut the alarms down!”

“
Shhh
,” he says. “There are going to be crew members all over this hall. And don't blame me, I did my best with the feed, but I'm not perfect. And Johnny's been updating the system behind my back.”

“Will the alarm wake Johnny?”

“Nothing's waking Johnny before that drug wears off.”

I breathe a sigh that must knock right into Ben's face. He's so close that I can feel the heat of his body, but I can't see a damn thing. The edging glow of the lockdown light doesn't reach into the wall space, and my bracelet does nothing outside of coloring my arm with a bloody tinge.

“Are we—”

Ben presses into me as a warning just as voices sound outside. A number of crew members bark commands back and forth. The loudest being, “Check every room.”

“Hell.” Ben's lips are against my ear. “They're looking for us.”