The Color of Rain (11 page)

“I already have nothing,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Are you sure?” He smiles, but his lips are a tight line, and I can't help but think of Lo and her yellow bracelet. Walker in his frozen prison. “Just wait, Rain. Soon you'll be dying for me,” he adds with the confidence of a stone-cold killer.

And with a rush, I realize that Johnny may very well be one.

L
o is missing.

So is Kaya.

I stand by the small window at the back of the Family Room, hiding behind one of the many colored curtains. I'm sucked in by the outer space of my dreams—huge silver orbs gleam against the black stretch while in the distance, smaller stars streak like a hard rain.

And yet, it all weighs upon me like some great penalty. What have I gotten into?

The green-braceleted girls are silent or snoring, each one nestled on a bed mat in a different section of the veiled room. None of them would speak to me when I came back from meeting Johnny. Not one word about Lo or Kaya. Almost as though they had been warned.

Or maybe Lo had been right; I'm Johnny's red tag now. I'm the one to beat.

The lingering men left with their chosen girls when the lights dimmed for the night, and I find myself hoping that Ben might appear and leak his cryptic information. His body isn't so bad either.

“There's no reason to flirt with him,” I whisper. “No good reason.” And a whole host of bad ones. Not the least being, did he really get some girl thrown out the airlock?

But whether or not I want him to, Ben doesn't show, and all I have are the stars.

“Can't take those from me,” I say, remembering Johnny's bizarre threat. “No matter whatever else you have in that twisted head of yours.” I'm no longer foolish enough to believe that Johnny and I met by accident, and I've gathered that Lo is a pawn in this game he wants to play. He must have seen her on the docks and factored her into his plans. . . .

Lo's yellow tag must mean that she's somewhere on the crew deck, and yet her absence feels too sudden. Too permanent. She could be in trouble already. Knowing Lo, I don't doubt it for a second.

A guilty thought trips up my fears: if Johnny's going to use Lo, maybe he's not focused on Walker. I force myself to breathe, fogging up the window. Only a few weeks ago, Walker and I worked a double shift. He was so tired that I was practically carrying him home, and then I looked up, and that girl was falling from the sky, and everything changed.

I squeeze my eyes so hard that they ache. Samson put Walker somewhere on this ship, and I'm going to find him. “You haven't disappeared,” I whisper.

But Lo has.

And Kaya is a green bracelet; she should be in this room, right? I remember Johnny's intense sigh as he said Kaya's name. Did I get her in trouble? Are they being punished?

I push the thoughts away. Lo, at least, is street tough. She knows about men and desperation. And if she were here, she could tell me how to
do things
with Johnny. How to kiss him. How to move against him . . .

SCHREECHEEENSCH! SCHREECHEEENSCH!

I fall to the floor, clutching my ears against the siren. A red light turns on and off, throwing an eerie pall over the room. Someone trips from behind a nearby veil, and Ben stumbles twice as he makes for the door. The siren stops, but the red light continues to flicker as he bolts out of the room.

So he
was
here! Right next to me the whole time! Was he watching? Did Johnny make him spy on me? My brain recovers from the searing volume of the alarm as I watch the door close in his wake.

It will lock, and I'll be a prisoner just like we were in the elevator. Shut in. Stuck.

I sprint, catching the handle a second before it clicks into the frame. I slip into the hallway, letting the door lock behind me. A far door slams behind Ben, and I follow slowly, stepping down a tower of steep stairs.

The air is grim on the low decks, and I breathe in a foul, steamy stench that is a little like livestock and more like a butcher's shop. I come out of the stairway before two huge storage units that stretch from floor to ceiling and duck behind a large support beam. High above, strips of fluorescent light attempt to dull the red glow of the lockdown lamps, but fail.

Ben paces before an enormous cargo door.

“The same one as earlier.” Johnny appears as though he
materialized from the shadow. He throws someone at Ben's feet—a balding man in filthy clothes. His face is bowed to the floor.

“The same one,” Johnny repeats. His voice is cutting, and my heart bangs with speed. I'm going to see Johnny, the Killer. I know it through to my bones. . . .

But Johnny tosses something else on the floor instead, and it clatters to a stop before Ben's boots. “Take care of it.”

Ben doesn't move.

“Don't make me rethink our relationship, not after all we've done together.” Johnny touches Ben's shoulder in a strangely friendly way. Too friendly. “You want me to trust you. You don't want this relationship to sour like it did with
her
.”

Ben's face is red with the glow of the lights, and he slowly picks up the same knife that Johnny used to fix my shirt on the pier. “I know a more secure place where we could place him,” he says in a raspy voice.

Johnny shakes his head. “Do it. I have a dinner to get to.”

Ben's shoulders straighten, and a terrible sense of foreboding floods my veins. My fingers slip into my mouth, and I bite down as he pulls the man onto his knees by the back of his ragged clothes.

“Help
us
,” he moans, but it's too late. Ben slams the knife into his chest and pulls it out in one slick movement. The man's head lolls forward, and Ben drops him facedown.

Johnny just smiles. “I do love watching you. As skilled as a surgeon.”

“Shut up, Johnny.” Ben shoves the knife into his hand and leaves, his heavy boots echoing like swears in his wake. Johnny
wipes the blade on the dead man's clothes before dropping it in his pocket and disappearing into the shadows.

I taste blood. I've bitten into my knuckle, and my fingers are stiff.

The lockdown light vanishes, and the dank area fills with the yellowed overhead lighting. I stumble out of my hiding place and fall to my knees before the man. I want to check for signs of life, but my hands won't close on his greasy clothes.
Why
didn't I do something? I could have rushed out to stop them . . . right?

Wrong.

A circle of blood pools from beneath his body, and I scuttle back to escape it.

And still it grows and grows, filling the floor with crimson. The color slides after me like something insatiable—something drawn to me—until I have no choice but to run away.

People die on
Imreas
. The words chase through my mind as I toss on my mat back in the Family Room. People die when no one's looking. What could have been that man's crime?

Help us
.

A shiver lights my spine. So there are more where he came from. If I was smart, I'd realize that I shouldn't be sticking my nose into the shadows of this starship, but I'm already desperate to find out what's happening. Where are these people? And why are they here? This is a passenger ship, but the passengers I've seen are rich traders and questionable personalities like Johnny.

The window throbs with whiteness, the view shifting from an
endless stretch of stars to a net of gossamer strings unlike anything I've ever imagined. They weave as they embrace the ship, and I catch my breath.

I have to warn Lo. And above all, I must find Walker.

I step silently around the bodies of the sleeping girls, but when I push through the shower room door I can't hold back a scream. My voice powers off the tiled walls as Ben faces me. His arms and hands are dipped in bloody water at the white sink. Blood stains his shirt.

He runs at me, and I bring my fists up, but he slams into the door, locking me in.

“Don't!” I shout.

“
Shut up!
” He returns to the sink and scours his hands like he's trying to take the skin off. “I'm not going to explain, so don't ask,” he manages after a few moments, before adding, “Someone needed help.”

“Yeah, right,” I say as he yanks his bloody shirt over his head and tosses it down a garbage chute. His brown boots are stained as well, like he walked through a stream of red.

Wait
.

He didn't have any blood on him when he left Johnny. Not a drop. That's how swift he was with that knife. How cold. Did he go back to clean up the body? Did he see me?

“So you were just
helping
someone?”

“That's what I said.” He kicks his boots off and unbuttons his pants. I should be demanding answers or just looking away, but the quiver of his back stuns me—like he's trying not to cry. “You going to stand there and watch me change?”

I feel warm. “Maybe. You saw me naked.”

“Not by choice.” He slams his boots in the sink. “And I didn't look. I'm no pervert.” His hair is askew across his forehead, his expression pained. He's a killer—I saw it, but then what am I seeing now?

“What did you . . .”

“Just get OUT!” Ben struggles with heavy breaths as he scrubs his boots over the rushing stream of steaming water. I switch the lock and go back into the dead quiet of the Family Room.

I sit under the starry window, curl my legs into my chest and squeeze my eyes against what I just saw. I can't afford to be naïve. No matter what I think I know about Ben, he is a murderer. Johnny may have been the one to order it, but Ben
did
it. I rock on my heels until something like sleep finds me, but it's pierced by a familiar nightmare of chasing my dad's bloody trail out of the apartment building, down the street, and this time, into a black sky.

Waking in a sweat, I press myself to the cool window. “I miss you,” I admit to the universe, hoping that somehow, he can hear me. Just outside, purple and orange rings mark the spot where a supernova blew itself to pieces ages ago.

I
have to sleep with Johnny.

I unzip my clothes to the very border of indecency and wear a fixed smile as he takes me on a bragging tour of the passenger levels. I bury the image of the stabbed man as best as I can, needing to focus on Walker and Lo. Not to forget the overwhelming question of Johnny's endgame.

We pause in a meeting room with a wide window and strange pots filled with growing things. A few blue girls socialize with groups of sketchy passengers.

“Not exactly a family ship,” I mutter. “You ever have kids onboard?” I ask Johnny.

“I don't do kids.”

“What about things down in the cargo?” I ask, remembering Kaya's veiled words about animals in the lower levels that get loose and set off the alarms.

“
Why
would we have kids in cargo?” He's missed my meaning, but his tone is a razor. “No kids except that brother of yours, that is,” he adds. I stiffen while he reclines into a plush couch. He enters something on his com. I guess Ben gave it back to him already.

“The Mec fixed the security?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Probably. We'll see,” Johnny says.

“Isn't it dangerous to trust him? Can't he do just about anything with technology?”

“Mecs do have limits, Rain. Just like everyone. Or, I should say, they have soft spots. You find one, and you put a finger in it.” He leans forward and holds out his hands. “Skilled fingers are all it really takes to command a ship. I think you'll like them, too.”

I blush from my knees to my ears, touching the leaves of one of the potted growing things. “I've never touched a plant before,” I say, hoping to distract him.

“I always forget that you Earth Cityites don't know plants. Just wait until you get a glimpse of Entra.”

The leaves are flimsy and soft like a dog's ear. I always thought they'd be tougher, more like the waxy brown vine that wove itself through the greenhouse. I wipe the gentle texture from my fingers and remember to smile.