The Color of Rain (16 page)

“In here.” He presses a door release and climbs into the side of the ship. I lead Lo through, and he shuts it behind us. “You're so damn lucky, Rain. The only reason you didn't set off a host of alarms is because I was down there. You realize how lucky that makes you?”

I ignore him. “What did I just see in that room?”

“Give me a second.” He sits in a captain's chair before a control screen and his fingers fly across it.

“I want to know now!”

He pauses; his gaze is fierce despite the fact that one of his eyes is swollen shut. “Let me check the security logs before Johnny sees them and offs us all, will you?”

“He's asleep,” I say. “I just left him.” I swallow the sudden flash of Johnny leaning over me in his slick bed, his body working against mine. . . .

Ben pulls up an image of me in the elevator a few moments ago. His fingers fly over the controls until I disappear from the video.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm looping it. Deleting you from the record.”

I step back and let Ben work. The vessel we're in is as small as a hover cab only more equipped. It reminds me of the small, rotting ship on the pier without the rust and age. Someone moans behind me, and I swing around.

A bald man lies on a bunk, his chest bandaged.

“Ben,” I hear myself whisper. This is not just any man. It's the man I saw murdered—stabbed.

Ben finishes his work at the control screen and crosses to the bunk.

“Ben,” I say again like it's the only word I know. “This is him.”

“I know who it is, Rain.” He sits beside the man and inserts a medical tube into the bend of his own elbow. Blood circles through it, surging straight into the man's arm.

“What's going on?” Lo asks from where she cowers by the door.

“I saw him kill this man. I saw him,” I say.

“Yeah, well, you didn't see me save him afterward, did you?” Ben gives the man a shot of something that makes his moans stop.

“You're not a murderer.” I hold back from adding, “I knew it,” but I slip to the floor by Ben's feet. “Tell me what is going on here.”

He checks the man's pulse while he speaks. “Johnny's business has nothing to do with passengers. Or girls. That's a front. He sells the Earth City Touched to a slaver known as Leland. The K-Force have been after both of them for years, but they do their trading in the Static Pass, and no one has been able to take them down so far.”

“The who?” Lo asks at the same time that I say, “What's the Static Pass?”

He pauses. “The more you two know, the worse this is. You get that, don't you?”

I exchange looks with Lo. “We need to know,” I say.

“Those are our people in that hold,” she adds, tightening her
arms around her chest.

“The Static Pass is a section of the Void near Edge space. Electromagnetic fields shut down there and ships kind of glide through—without power or any technology. Johnny does his trading in secret there without interference from the K-Force.”

“The K-Force?”

“Mec space police. Or vigilantes, really. They have ties to the military on the Edge, but mostly theirs is a moral mission: rid the universe of filth.”

“They sound delusional.”

“They're the only ones doing something about the lawlessness of the Void.”

“What does Johnny want the Touched for?” I ask.

“Mining on the asteroid formation beyond the Void. A place called the Ridges. It's dangerous work. Most of them die within a year or two. Some less.”

“So they
are
slaves.” My voice shrinks around the words. Mom and Jeremy . . . and even Walker, if they got their hands on him. For long moments, the vessel called
Melee
is silent apart from the ragged breath of the unconscious man. Lo holds herself, rocking back and forth until I rest her head on my lap. In no time, she falls into a dead sort of sleep.

Ben brings out his dose rod, giving the man something that makes his breath slow and quiet.

“He's Touched, isn't he?” Shivers break out across my arms as I remember the man's moan of
Help us
.

“He is, but he has these sane moments. He kept figuring out how to escape . . . that's what you saw when I . . . you know.”

“But why bother curing him if Johnny's just going to sell him into slavery and a horrible death?”

Ben disconnects the tube from his arm and paces around the room. “Because he didn't deserve to die that way. Or maybe I just couldn't stomach being a murderer. I'm a human being, Rain. Give me a little credit.” He takes the med disc from his pocket and hunkers down to my level, brushing Lo's hair from her face before running the blue light over the bruised lid of her blood-stained eye. She murmurs my name in her sleep but doesn't wake.

“How could I have let this happen to her?” I say in a hushed voice that doesn't reach Ben. He collapses in the captain's chair with a slight groan, the eye I punched turning purple. I have to do something to turn our fates around. Something good for once.

I slide Lo's head from my lap and cross the minor distance to him. “Give me that disc thingy. Let me fix your eye.” I hold out my hand.

“Not the eye. But you can do my mouth.” He wiggles his jaw and hands me the med disc. “Feeling guilty for attacking me?”

“Not especially.” I raise his chin, looking down into his face. “You should have told me the truth upfront. Walker and I would never have gotten on this ship.”

“Yes, you would. You couldn't hear me back there. You were blinded by your dreams about the Void and the need to help your brother.” He's right. What could he have said to stop me? I hold the device like I've seen him do and pass it over his mouth. The blue light makes the bruise fade to yellow before it blends into the creamy color of his skin.

“You had some moves back there. When I jumped you.” I
wipe a small crust of blood at the edge of his lip with my knuckle. “Like someone taught you how to fight.”

“Someone did,” he admits. “I've had training. You've got moves yourself.” I can't get over how strong his stare is even with one eye—like it's another muscle he's honed.

“My training was living on the street.” I press the disc into his hand. “And I have brothers.”

“Brothers? You have another brother?”

“Had. Jeremy was—well, he probably ended up in a place just like that cargo hold. Maybe the same one.” I look away. “I've got to go back to Johnny before he wakes and all hell breaks loose. Can Lo stay here?” I look around the small but cozy interior of the ship. It's different from
Imreas
. The metal walls are without rough bolt lines, and everything is neat, sparse, and, well, military.

He nods. “
Melee
is my ship—or at least it was before Johnny commandeered it. But he has no security tags or monitors here, and it isn't under the lock of his thumbprint. It's one of the only safe places on
Imreas
.” He stands, and I'm too close to him.

“Give me a few minutes with Lo. I don't know when I'll see her again.”

Ben leaves the vessel, and I wake her gently. “You have to listen,” I say as she rubs her face. “Johnny is using you to get to me. To make me do what he wants.”

She sits up tall. “He stole your virginity.”

“He didn't rape me. I gave it to him. Like I agreed.” I dig my fingernails into my arms, suddenly panicked. I've never understood that phrasing of “stolen virginity.” How could he be the thief of what I was handing out? “It was easy, Lo. Like you said.”

“Who do you think you're lying to? And if you've interpreted what I do as easy, then you've never been listening to me. Not one bit.”

I look away, touching my stomach. “Lo, do you ever feel like . . . like it's not so bad?”

“You mean, do I ever like it?” Her tone is all business, and it makes it hard for me to nod. “Rain, there are two types of working girls. There's the ones who do it. And then there are the ones who
feel it
. He'll want you so much more if you put yourself into it, but that means you're giving away more than your skin. A lot more. And it's not worth it. Do you follow?”

“But I need to keep his interest, Lo. Otherwise I'll have to start sleeping with anyone who pays. I'd rather stay with him. I need to stay with him.”

“Rain, in this business,
need
is just about the worst word there is. All you really
need
is to stay alive. To make it to the Edge with Walker. Everything else is up for grabs.”

“He brought you on this ship”—I pause—“to use against me. And he could use Walker as well.” The words fill me with the urge to break something.

“It's worse than all that.” Her face is drawn so that I can trace the lines of her skull over her skin. Her sunken eye sockets. Her pointed chin. Tears veil her stare, but she blinks them back. “I shoulda told you sooner.” She takes my hands in hers. They're shaking.

Just like Walker's.

“Lo,” I almost yell, “you're—you're going—”

“Touched,” she finishes. “I've had the shakes since before we left Earth City. I'm going away, Rain. My mind is hightailing it for
better space. But you make sure they don't throw me in that hold,” she says. “You make damn sure they don't make me a slave. You put me out of my misery when the time comes. Then he won't have me to use against you.”

Her shaking hands fumble with her shirt, and she pulls out the picture of her mother. “I want you to take my mom. Keep her safe. If something happens to that, there's no proof she ever existed.” Tears drop from her eyes. “She has to keep
existing
, Rain. Promise me.”

I can't answer.

“Promise!”

“I promise.” I take the picture but then press it back into her palm. “This isn't the last time I'm going to see you. You hold on to your mom, and I'll take her if the time comes.” Lo wraps her twitching hands over the old photo like she's praying.

“Can't you fight it?”

She pulls me into a hug, and her back is all bones and paper-thin skin. “You already know the answer to that.”

I leave
Melee
, rethinking the two nightmarish reveals of the evening: Lo is going Touched, and
Imreas
is a slave ship.

“I'll walk you up so you don't get lost. It's almost morning,” Ben says. “If Johnny caught you, well, we'd all be . . .” He draws a finger over his throat.

I barely hear him. I blindly touch the door release, closing Lo into the small ship.

“Hell, Rain. You look like you've seen a Void demon,” he teases. I start down the catwalk, making him jog to catch up.
“Which don't exist, by the way. It was a lame joke.”

I swallow. “Lo is going Touched. Got any jokes about that?”

“
What
?” He tries to grab my arm, but I walk even faster. I don't face Ben again until we're rising in the elevator. He clicks the halt button, and we slow to a pause. “How do you know?” he asks.

“Because I've watched it happen time and again,” I say. His swollen eye stirs at my uneasiness. “She's stage two already.”

“Out of how many stages?”

“Three,” I say. “First they get headaches, and then shakes. The final stage is a sort of fog that they drift in and out of, until one day the fog becomes permanent.”

“Hell,” he says. “Are you afraid of it happening to you?”

“Why would you say that? Who asks a question like that?!” I smack his chest. “That's like finding a person chained to a cliff and asking them if they're afraid of heights!”

“I'm sorry.” He rubs where I hit him. “I can't really imagine it. I mean, to watch that happen to everyone you love . . . your brother even.”

I hold back the sudden image of my family, but now only Walker remains. “Yeah, well, we'll be at the Edge soon, and your people will have a treatment for him. And for Lo, too.”