The Color of Rain (14 page)

“Look it up on the network, Samson,” Ben calls.

“That's cheating,” he yells back. He looks to me. “So?”

“It's in there, but, well, it was something that my dad used to hum. That's how I know it.” I clear my throat and begin to sing, “
‘I am the Poem of the Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise . . . out of the land. . . .'
” Ben gives me a laughing look. “I didn't say I was a good singer.”

“Then I won't call you a liar.”

“Ass.” I show him my middle finger and turn back to Samson. “I don't remember the rest, but the best part is the end. It's,
‘Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.'
I don't really know what that means, but it kind of dances off my lips.”

Samson whistles the melody. “‘Duly with love,'” he repeats. He flips through the book, and I step over to where Ben taps a screen with hundreds of moving dots. He pauses, looking at me almost sideways.

“What?”

“Still just thinking how strange you are for an Earth Cityite.” I give him a sort of grimace, but he smiles. “I didn't say it was a bad thing.” He turns back to the screen, and text tags scroll across it too fast for my eyes to keep up. Ben sorts through it all at lightning speed until a cross section of
Imreas
appears. He taps the engine
room and then a scarlet glowing dot with a single word attached to it: RAIN.

“You,” he says. He selects the dot almost on top of mine labeled BEN RYAN. “And that's me.”

Ben Ryan . . . he has a good name.

“Why isn't my last name on that screen?”

He shrugs. “Johnny must have put you in. You want me to add it? It's White, yes?” He clicks on the “Rain” tag again.

The red letters blink at me. He begins to tap letters, and I catch his hand, his fingers surprisingly warm. “I don't need to bring my family into this.” I clear my throat and turn away from his strange look. “So this screen could find anyone on the ship?”

“Anyone with one of these.” Ben clicks his com against my bracelet. “The passengers aren't tagged, so there's no way to keep track of them. Hence the alarm system. But the crew and girls are.”

“Find Lo,” I demand.

“Are you sure you want to know? If I can't find her, it means . . .”

“
Find her
.”

His fingers move too fast, but in a few moments he breathes a sigh. “Here.” He selects a dot and the script reads: Lo.

“So she's fine? Where is she?” I almost knock him off his feet as I lean over the screen. Lo's position is close to mine in the ship. She's only a level away. “How do I get there?”

“That's crew deck. Hell, I can't take you there.”

“But she could be hurt or messed up.” I face him, realizing how close we are in height. The scruff on his jaw is a little blonde and boyishly patchy. “You aren't the monster, I know it. Please. Take me.”

He shakes his head.

I turn back to the screen and grit my teeth. “Show me Kaya then.”

Ben taps the glass, but nothing happens. He tries again.

“She's no longer with us.”

“What do you mean? She's gone?”

His eyes lose their focus like he's slipping into a memory. “I thought for sure I'd find Bron. Just as soon as I came down here, I'd find where Johnny stashed her to punish me. But she was gone.”

“
Kaya's dead?
”

Samson squeezes Ben's shoulder. “There are two ways to disappear off that screen, Rain. You either jump ship or you die.” He places his other gnarled hand on my shoulder. “Of course if you go the way of the airlock, both happen at once.”

“It's my fault.” Ben's whole body sags. “I picked Kaya to take you upstairs. Clean you up. I should have done it myself.”

“It's not your fault. It was me. I said her name to Johnny. I gave him something to use against me.”

A small part of me waits for him to argue—to say that this isn't my fault—but he only murmurs, “So we both did it.”

“Ben.” I take him by the front of his shirt. His eyes have a tugging look, which catches me off guard. “I have to see Lo. I have to warn her about all this before something else happens. Something terrible!”

I shake him, but Samson answers for him in his stunned silence: “If Johnny finds out that he took you to the crew deck, something terrible will certainly happen.”

J
ohnny and his security be damned. If someone like Kaya, who had been with him for years, can up and disappear, I have to warn Lo. And I saw the cross section of this ship. The crew deck was on the second level, and Lo was all the way at the one end.

I'll find her.

The only problem is that Ben hasn't let me out of his sight in the Family Room, and from my seat on one of the center couches, I watch him move from one corner of the room to the other, weaving in and out of the veils. Always as aware of me as I am of him.

I feel his passage as though a string is tied between us. And maybe there is. After all, we are both at Johnny's command. We're both being forced into something, right? The question holds me: if Ben isn't so horrible—if he's been swept up in this dangerous game even though he's a good person—then why can't that be my fate as well?

My legs are sore and my hips have had an odd weight in them since I had sex. I shift on the couch, so lost in my thoughts that I almost miss the moment when Ben goes into the bathroom. A perfect moment to slip away . . .

I open the door but collide with the back of a sandy-haired girl.

“Don't tell Johnny,” she pleads with a man, his shirt stained by something yellowish. “Everyone gets sick sometimes!” She's still standing against me, and she reaches behind her, taking my wrist for support. “If you tell Johnny, he'll bump me down. I'll be yellow tagged before the morning!”

He curses in a language I've never heard before leaving, and I touch her shaking shoulders.

“I threw up on him. I didn't mean to! I couldn't help it!” She watches him storm down the hall.

“Don't worry about Johnny. I'll talk to him,” I try. “What's your name?”

She turns around and looks from my face to my scarlet bracelet, horrified. “Not you!” She backs further into the Family Room, and into the mass of girls who had collected during the commotion. Ben stands to the side.

They all glare at me.

“You got Kaya taken away.” A girl with short brown hair stands at the front, wrapping her arms around the sandy-haired girl. “Do us a favor and don't pick any of us out for him.”

“But I didn't . . .” I look to Ben, but he's glaring.

“Come on, Angel.” He steps forward and takes hold of the sandy-haired girl's arm. She shirks from his touch but lets him pull her toward the door. “It will be better if you tell Johnny before your client does.”

They leave, but not before Angel bursts into wails. And not before Ben whispers at me, “You stay here!”

I'm left in the quiet of the judging, green-braceleted girls.

“She's slept with him,” the one who spoke before says.

“And she's still red tagged,” another girl supplies. “He's not done with her. Yet.”

“What's your game?” the first one asks. “What are you trying to do?”

I shake my head. “I don't know what I'm doing. What do I do when he's done with me? Please, I could use some advice.” My pleas are met by their backs, each turned at me one by one.

The only girl remaining is the loudmouth with the short brunette hair. She squints at me. “You want some advice? Johnny comes first. Think about it, Red. And for all that's astral, keep away from the Mec.” She leaves, and I'm alone in the center of the Family Room just like I was a few moments ago, but now everything feels blacker. Lonelier.

Johnny comes first
. I dig into the words for more truth but come up empty.
Keep away from the Mec?
But Ben is the only one who talks to me. And why were they so shocked to find that I'm still red tagged after being with Johnny once? Does he go through girls that fast?

My heart pounds like ominous footsteps coming ever closer. When Johnny is done with me, he'll change my color. Green, blue . . . yellow? None of that matters because it all amounts to the same reality: I'll have to sleep with the other men. The ones who pay for me. Strangers. My breath is tight in my chest until I'm shaking, aching for Lo. She would know what to say—how to keep Johnny's attention. She
knows
.

I have to find her.

But I can't move from the couch, let alone slip through the belly of this claustrophobic ship. Someday soon, I'll have to sleep with strangers. The term
fucking
drips along my fears. And when Johnny appears in the doorway with his confident grin, I go to him like a shot. I tug him back to his room, and this time, I take him.

I kiss him, lean into him, slip against him, and all the while, my fears flare like fireworks through my body, aligning sizzles of pleasure that make me quiver.

When he's spent himself, he falls asleep, and I begin to hate him again. His lips twist into a demented dreaming smile, and I suddenly can't stand his heat. I escape his slippery bed, my body humming. I need to find Lo, but now I also need to rid myself of the lingering warmth of his touch—and to flee the whisper that I want more of it.

I take the elevator to the second level, hoping that Lo hasn't moved too far since I saw her dot on that screen.

When the doors open, I'm blasted by loud chattering like a party—or a bar. I tug my sleeve over my bracelet and head toward the noise. Unlike the Rainbow Bar on the passenger deck, I enter a low-ceilinged room full of metal crates, which double as tables and chairs for a throng of drunken crew members.

A stenciled sign on the wall reads:
YELLOW DOG BAR
.

I breathe a sigh. If I'm going to find Lo, I'm going to find her in a bar.

A card game is the focus of the room, and almost no one looks my way when I slip through the crowd. Two crew-women stare
each other down while everyone watches, and one slaps a card on the tabletop, making the others scream and cheer.

Someone grabs my wrist.

I'm yanked back and away from the cheering, pinned to the wall by a girl with a yellow-rimmed bracelet. Her straight, sandy hair is askew, and I recognize her too slowly. I saw her only hours ago, but this can hardly be the same girl. For one thing, she has a bruise on her throat in the shape of a hand.

“Angel?”

She pulls my sleeve back and glances at my tag. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for—”

“I know who you're looking for. She was in here earlier talking about how her friend—Johnny's special girl—was going to find her.”

I yank my arm free. “Where is Lo?”

“Oh no. I tell you and that Mec's likely to kill us all.”

“I've made a deal with B—with the Mec,” I lie. These girls really don't worry about Johnny. They're terrified of Ben. “He let me come down here to check on her. How else do you think I made it this far without tripping alarms?” I'm a little stunned by my own question. Where are the triggers? And how close have I already come to setting one off?

The card game takes another noisy, jeering turn, and Angel jerks around like she's expecting a blow. “Room 214,” she says in a rush. “Jeb's got her in there. She was pretty out of her head when she left.” Her eyes drop like the pity in them is getting too heavy. “But you didn't hear it from me. You didn't talk to me. You've never seen me before, got it?”

“Done,” I agree, remembering Kaya.

She begins to say something but stops. “You did want to help me. You tried.”

“Maybe I can still talk to Johnny for you—”

“No!” She shoves me, and I slip back through the crowd. Outside the Yellow Dog, I turn down a hallway dotted with narrow doors. Numbers are stenciled on each one, but many are worn away. It isn't until I come to 215 that I realize I've passed 214.