The Color of Rain (36 page)

“No shit,” Johnny says. “You look sick. How did you get sick?”

I push clingy strands of hair off my face. The fish bite throbs, but I pull my sleeve over the bandage instead of looking. “Maybe—maybe there is something on this ship that I've never been exposed to.”

“Maybe.” He frowns and squeezes his temples between two fingers. “You don't think those creatures are carrying some kind of plague, do you?” He looks over the shadows of the Touched crew members, and I swear I see him shudder. “I don't know where my brother disappeared to, but I've got a smashing hangover. With or without him, I'm getting that shipment off
Imreas
so we don't have to stay connected to this metal heap any longer.”

I get to my feet and grab Johnny's arm to keep from tripping into the fire.

He shrugs me off, holding his sleeve out like it's been infected. “I really don't like sick people.” He snaps his fingers at a crew member who's old enough to be his father. “Tell my brother that our business is done, and he can join me by the locks if he cares.”

Good. Maybe he won't be expecting Leland to join him. Maybe we will have some luck after all. Maybe that drug hasn't worn off, and I'll never have to see that scarred creep again.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

He squeezes my arm. “You said, ‘that scarred creep.' Did he touch you after I passed out?” I freeze. Can I really be so out of it that I don't know when I'm speaking out loud? “Did you fuck him?”

“Damn, Johnny! No!”

His grip relaxes. “You better not have.”

I struggle to follow him through the chasms of the ship. Several times, I bang into a wall, making him give me dirty looks over the lighter in his hand.

A familiar crew member waits on the catwalk in
Imreas
beside a wavering line of candlelight. Johnny claps a hand on his shoulder. “Ah, Jeb, I could kiss you. Got them out and ready?”

“Yes, Captain,” Jeb says. He steps aside, and I look into a sea of ghost faces lining the catwalk. They're locked together on a chain, and Jeb wastes no time in pushing them through the airlock toward
Stride
.

“You're just going to set them loose in there?” I shake so hard that I have to grip the handrail.

“They're bound. What harm could they do? Plus my brother
enjoys it when they hide. He hunts them.” The candlelit catwalk swings beneath me, and I can't tell if it's my fever or the weight of the Touched marching by. So many faces.

A woman passes who could be my mother.

“Mom?” I whisper.

Johnny shoots me with his eyes. “I thought I might enjoy making you watch this, but you're really out of it, aren't you?”

I can't respond. I see the two blonde girls, skipping hand in hand in the procession. But then I blink, and they are gone. But then, they were never there. Johnny dropped them out the airlock. . . . I squeeze my eyes and peer harder at the end of the crowd. Walker shuffles among the last of them, and I reach out to touch him, but my hands fall through the empty air.

Johnny punches me in the shoulder. “That was pathetic,” he says as the last of the Touched leave
Imreas
, and the airlock bangs shut. He faces the trio of crew members who handled the line of prisoners. “Get us undocked within the hour. As usual, your silence about this business
is
your paycheck. Break your silence and I sell you.”

He takes me by the back of the neck and hauls me to his quarters.

The screech of metal on metal and vibrating shudders announce our undocking from
Stride
. Johnny watches at the window while his brother's ship coasts further away. “Bastard. Just like our father,” he says. “Selfish bastard. I'm always too happy to see him, and he's always the same damn asshole.”

I collapse on the sheets while the ceiling swings left to right. “Being rocked to sleep,” I say through my fever. “Johnny, did your father do all those cuts on Leland? Looks like someone used him just to dull up a knife.”

“
What?
” Johnny steps over, glaring down through all his dark glory.

“So scary. Johnny is a devil.” I giggle.

He slaps me, and my eye socket bursts with pain. “You
were
with him! How else would you know about his scars?”

The candlelight adds a sudden harrowing depth to him, and my fear lets me focus through my aches and chills. “I didn't! I swear!”

He hits me again, his hand coming away covered in my saliva. He wipes it off on the front of my shirt. “You're a mess. Didn't think I'd ever have to say this again, but I might have to summon the Mec to take a look at you. Then we'll talk about what you did with my brother.”

“You can't.” I can see white, hovering spots in the dim room. “Can't summon him. Ben doesn't have his thing on.”

“
What?
”

Even through my fever, I know the magnitude of my mistake. I push up on my elbows. “I'm hallucinating, I think. Give me a second.” I stumble into the bathroom where a candle has burnt down to the very last nub of its wick. The dim light throws a shadowy halo around my gaunt face in the mirror. I splash water on my cheeks and eyes. Then I take out the dose rod from my sock. I fumble to turn it to red and give myself a shot of adrenaline.

I'm blasted by my headache as my pulse begins to pound
through me. Still, my vision clears and my brain shouts orders:
Can't rat out Ben. Can't let Johnny know about the com
.

Can't be sick
.

But I am sick. I peel my sleeve back and check the fish bite. The bandage I tore from the girl's flight suit is stuck to the wound by a yellowish pus, and I run it under the water until Johnny bangs on the door.

I really must be hallucinating now because I think I see a tiny fish fall out of the faucet, dancing through the stream and down the drain. . . .

“Come out!” Johnny yells. “I'm taking you to medical before you spread some plague on this ship. Or worse—” His voice cuts out, and he bangs on the door even harder. The sound sends horrible gong-like vibrations through my skull.

“One second.” I refasten the bandage and fumble to get the dose rod in my pocket. He bangs again and rattles the door. I open it and push back my sweaty hair. “I'm feeling much better.”

“You look like a ghost, Rain. Your eyes are all shiny and . . . you're from Earth City!” he jerks back like I'm contagious. “Are you going Touched?”

“No!” I pull at my sweaty clothes. “I told you, I'm just sick. Going Touched is very different.” The adrenaline makes me stomp in circles. “You know nothing about those people you buy and sell, do you?”

“That's not my interest.” He watches me with raised eyebrows. “Leland is the one who finds them so fascinating. I'd rather push them off a cliff.”

The lights flick on.

Outside the window, the crimson fog sags behind us, and the engines begin to whirl and hum through the metal skeleton of
Imreas
. But I'm hanging on Johnny's words.
Push them off a cliff?

I cling to the edge of the bed as my first memory of Johnny overtakes me. His black-suited profile. Walker dangling over the edge of the pier, his small feet jerking in the air . . .

“That day on the pier . . . you said you were keeping him from jumping, but you were tossing him out of your way, weren't you?”

“Oh, don't look shocked. You know I can't stand those empty shells of humans. And shit, Rain, you look way worse in the light.”

I face his angles. His body as lean as a knife.

“So do you,” I say.

His expression goes dangerous. “If you think I won't punish you just because you're sick, you're wrong.”

“Try it.”

Johnny sweeps at me, knocks me into the bed quicker than I can blink. His hand strangles my neck, but I slam fists and legs and knees into him over and over. He grunts through my attack. That shot must have given my muscles some crazy strength, but the adrenaline isn't enough; I still need air.

My limbs go slack, and he lets all his weight pin me. He releases my neck and takes both of my wrists in one hand.

“Can't believe I'm enjoying this.” He moves his hips to tug his pants open. “You better not get me sick.”

Through the blinding halo of my fever, I feel hot tears sliding from my eyes to my hairline. “No!”

“Just when I was starting to get bored with you, you want to play the ‘force me' game. Damn it, Rain, I love you.” He's
laughing, and his lips try to seal mine.

But I shake my head. I won't do it. I won't let him.

I won't do it ever again.

“NO!” I slam my knee into his balls, making his body double up in pain, and my hand slips to the dose rod in my pocket. “Never again!” I click the needle out and jam it into his back. It could be black—the death dose. Or adrenaline red, in which case he'll crush me with one hand. But I know which color I want it to be, and for once, the cosmos are on my side.

Johnny howls and falls to the floor. He grips his crotch, shrieking with pain. “You—you just—”

I check the setting, ready to see yellow.

It's yellow.

I stand. “That should keep things limp.”

He tries to get up, but the pain keeps him on the floor. My sickness has come raging back, and I begin to slip off the bed, unable to catch myself on the satiny sheets. Johnny surges after me, and I run from the room, hearing him scream my name in a voice quivering with madness and aching and rage.

Breathing too fast, I can't get enough oxygen out of the air, and when I reach the elevator, I stumble through the doors. I have to make it down to the docking bay. To
Melee
.

Ben and I have to get off this ship.

But I've only gone a floor or two when the screeching blare of the alarm brings me to my knees. This time, for once, there's no doubt that I triggered the sirens. And now I'm trapped in the elevator . . . and the scarlet glow of my bracelet begins to flash like someone is doing something to it. Will he kill me now? Zap me?

No, he'll want to do that in person.

The siren shuts off only to be replaced by the crimson lockdown light. I struggle to get back on my feet, but a strained voice comes over a loudspeaker and glues me to the spot.

“
Red tag alert. All crew ordered to capture and seize. Kill her if she resists
.” Johnny's voice slips into a mocking tone. “
You can hide, Rain, but now you can't run
.”

“Try and stop me!” I scream at the hidden speakers. I jam my fingers into the cracks between the elevator doors. I saw that crew member shimmy out of here my first day on the ship, and if he could do it, so can I.

I strain to force the massive doors apart and resort to giving myself another adrenaline shot. My heart throbs like it wants to explode, and my muscles tense beyond their limits . . . but I get the doors open a few inches and then a foot. I'm halfway between floors, and I have to crawl up and over to get through to the next level.

But it's the first passenger level. I'm still three floors from
Melee
. . . .

I make a break for the stairs, dashing and falling down a full flight. I exit by the docking bay, wanting to run straight to
Melee
, but I can't.

I've forgotten about Walker.

I haul open the wheeling lock on Walker's airlock, slipping through the door in the moment that a pack of crew members runs down the catwalk behind me. I throw the door closed and find that I'm in my own personal hell. The airlock. Alone with Walker's pod.

I can barely make out his thin face and gray skin through the clumps of frost, but even at a distance of only a few inches, my brother has never looked so distant. So gone. “Walker,” I whisper.

And that's when I hear it. The roll of the clanks.

Is Johnny
dumping
me? I run back to the door, but I can't leave Walker! I try to push his pod as the airlock doors echo a
snap
. And I freeze. And the moment seems to freeze with me. This is where I die. Walker and I together. Into the stars.