The Color of Rain (19 page)

“You look pretty rough, Rain.” He presses the ice to his head.

“What'd you expect?” I finger-comb my hair. “I've been on my own for weeks.”

“I couldn't come earlier. Johnny's been watching your every movement through the cameras. He's been waiting . . . wanting to see you break down.”

So he couldn't see me in my hiding place. “I'm surviving.” I get up and pace the floor. “What do you want anyway?”

He rights the toppled table. “I thought we could go see your brother. I've looped the security feed for the next few hours, and Johnny's down a couple bottles.”

I'm at the door before his voice has stopped. “Well? Let's go.” I feel a smile that, for the first time in weeks, is genuine, and it flips onto Ben's face like a mirrored image.

I press myself to the frozen pod. The small window is covered in frost, and I have to chip away at it with my thumbnail before I can get a glimpse of my little brother.

Walker is so much smaller than I remember.

“He's only twelve. And I know you haven't met him—not the real him, but he's a damn firecracker. The best kind of pushy loudmouth.”

“Must run in the family,” Ben says from his seat on a dusty crate. He heals the lump on his head with his med disc and then probes the spot with his fingers.

“He's smart, but he gets distracted.” I look for the orange scruff, but the pod's growing frost has masked my brother's
cheeks. And there's nothing I can do about it. Walker's never seemed so distant—not even through the longest of his fogs. It's like he's already left me.

I tug the tarp back over the pod.

“That's it?” Ben asks. “I thought you'd want to stay for hours.”

I smooth the rough fabric. “Johnny showed me this room before the airlock . . . before Lo. He wanted me to know that she wasn't the only person that he could dispose of.”

“Hell. I'm really sorry about Lo. I tried to help her, Rain, but he”—Ben pauses before adding—“Remember that Johnny thinks this is all for his entertainment. His game. But I'm smarter than him. So are you, I think, which is kind of awesome.”

I push past Ben's somewhat backward compliment and yank the door open. “But he worked it out last time. I'm not taking the risk again.”

“That's because some crew member saw you. If you told me that, I could have taken care of him.” The way he says
taken care
makes me think of the Touched man Ben stabbed. Blood like floodwater spreading across the floor.

“Don't do me any favors, Ben.” I start out the door, and he follows. I was an idiot for leaving my level and crossing
Imreas
with him. “It's like you said all those weeks ago, I'm not your friend or your ally. We're nothing to each other.”

“Whoa, whoa.” He grabs my elbow. “I thought we were friends. Or at least friendly about each other's secrets. Isn't that what you wanted?”

“Didn't you get the last girl you were friendly with thrown out the airlock? What was her name again? Bron?”

He lets go of me. “Don't be cruel.”

I press the elevator call button. “Right before Lo died, she said ‘Don't trust the Mec. He's not telling the truth.'” I brace myself on the wall. “If we're friends, explain that.”

“Lo heard a transmission while she was in
Melee
. Do you want to know what it was?” The doors open, and I step inside. Yes, I do want to know. But should I? Damn my curiosity. I slide to the floor. Ben steps in before the doors shut and presses the halt button.

He hunkers before me. “Are you all right?”

“Of course not.” I press my head into my hands, trying to hold myself together while I shake like a Touched person. Ben tries to put an arm around my shoulders—and I feel like breaking it. “Don't!”

“You're having a panic attack. I can help you.” He pulls a silver gadget out of his pocket, and I knock it away.

“Don't. Touch. Me.”

Ben sits back against the doors. I hold myself even tighter and work to get the air out of my lungs. One breath. Then another. One more. I try not to look at him, but he's too enticing. He even smiles kindly, which is so weird that I almost laugh.

I scrub my face, surprised that it feels good to have him on the other side of my panic. “What am I doing?” I shake my head. “I promised myself that I'd play it safe from here on out, but I think that's against my nature.”

His smile grows. “Me, too. That's why I'm K-Force.”

“You're what?”

“I'm a spy.”

I
blink at him. “K-Force? The Mec vigilantes?” I laugh. “You're dreaming. You're just a teenager. When did you have time to join the space cops?”

He shifts into a cross-legged position. “I was fourteen when I volunteered. Bron and I presented ourselves to Johnny as defectors in
Melee
. The K-Force knew that he wouldn't turn down the chance to have two young Mecs for servants, but they didn't know about what he would make us do.” Ben sighs. “We were supposed to subvert that first run so that the K-Force could intercept
Imreas
and rescue the Touched in his cargo. We failed.

“We weren't able to get in contact to regroup as easily as I hoped,” he continues. “And I didn't even figure it out until the last run.” He holds up his wrist. “I'm routing the signal through this.” I remember the squealing sound that came from Ben's com back on Earth City when we were above the smog in the hover cab.

I get to my feet, and Ben follows, still waiting for me to say something. “So you're a spy, and everything you do here . . . organizing the girl trade and killing for Johnny . . . that's all just a front so you can bring him down? Which you can't really do?”

He leans in so close that I flatten against the wall. “If you
haven't noticed, Johnny's pretty good at punishing people who don't follow the very letter of his commands. Hell, Rain! He
murdered
my girlfriend! Shot her out the airlock like a hunk of trash metal!”

A speck of his spit hits my chin, but I don't wipe it away. I'm hearing the clanks. I'm seeing Lo fly backward into the tomb of black space.

Ben blinks and his eyes have lost their fight. “You know how that feels.” He wipes my jaw with the back of his hand. “He was jealous. . . . I tried to deny my feelings for her, but he killed her anyway. Said I needed to learn a lesson in loyalty.”

“Nothing to lose,” I say.

“Everything to gain,” he finishes. “Except it's everything to lose with him, isn't it?” He clears his throat. “I'm close now, but . . . I need your help, Rain.”

I barely hear him. I hit the button for the first passenger level over and over. The elevator begins to rise too slowly.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Getting away from you as fast as I can.” My pulse tumbles. “This plan is fatal. Why would you even share it with me? Are you trying to get me killed or my brother?”

“I need your help.” He touches my arm, and I cock my fist back like I'm going to nail him.

“You need to stay away from me, that's what you need.”

He steps back. “What about the hundreds of Touched in the hold? You don't want to help them? That's why I'm here, Rain! We—you and me—are going to stop Johnny's slave trading. I have a solid plan.”

I hit the floor button again and again, urging it to rise faster. “I'm busy enough trying to save one of them. I don't have time to care about the rest.”

Ben overrides the elevator with his com. We halt jerkily and begin to drop.

I fling around. “What'd you do? Let me go back!”

“Not until you see something,” he says.

Ben opens the lock on the cargo hold and then rolls the doors open just enough for us to slide in. The stench knocks into me like a toppling skyscraper. I'm beneath it. I can't breathe. It's in my eyes and mouth and I swear I can
hear
it—human waste and filth trickling everywhere.

I grip Ben's shoulder and look down at the grated floor. Feet below, the sloshing surface of an open sewer glistens with vile fumes.

Ben's arm circles my waist, holding me up. I cover my mouth and nose, and he tugs me further into the mass of Touched people. They linger this way and that, bumping into each other. Mouths ajar and gazes unfocused.

“I get the point,” I say, and the filth feels like it's crawled across my tongue.

“I want to show you something.” He leads me through the mess of bodies to where two young, blonde girls hold each other. “I found them a few weeks ago,” he says. “They must have known each other before they lost it. Look how they won't leave each other.”

Their hair is so much the same color that they might very well be sisters, and their eyes are slack, yet they hug with a fervent need to be close. Just like Walker always clung to me, even in his deepest fog.

“I don't understand this disease.” Ben shakes his head. “But I think that if they can still recognize loved ones, they can't be altogether lost. I mean, these aren't my people, but—”

“They're my people.”

Ben slips a hunk of bread from one of his pockets and holds it out to the girls. They reach for it together, each girl holding one end while they pass it back and forth to bite. “They have hunger. If I didn't know anything else about them, I'd still know that they don't deserve to be worked to death in the asteroid mines.”

The girls have green eyes like Walker's, and I can't look anymore. Ben leads me back the way we came, back through snagging fingers and moans and filth. He locks the door behind us, and I throw up. I begin to fall forward, and he catches my hips, holding me up against him.

“I did the same the first time I went in there. If you—”

Footsteps clamor around the corner, and Ben tugs me into the stairwell by the waist. I try to say something and he whispers, “
Shhh
. Come with me.” He draws my arm over his shoulder and leads me down the steps. His closeness is friendly. The closest I've had to Lo or Walker in so long that I keep tightly to him and let him take me anywhere.

We pass the clanking whirl of the airlocks, and into
Melee
.