The Color of Rain (35 page)

The strange fish swim this way and that. The largest one has black-red stripes down its sides and straw-like teeth that hook out of its rust-colored jaw. I wait for him to swim to the bottom and then lower my arm into the slimy water.

I work my hand like a pendulum as fast as I can, releasing the com so that if flips and tumbles, sinking into the vat of fish goo. “Yes!” I whisper.

“
AH!
”

I yank my arm out of the water, dragging the body of the red-jawed fish, its hooked teeth clamped to my forearm. I grab the ridge of its back fin and rip it away, slamming it back into the tank with a mighty splash. I slide the lid closed and jump from the console, gripping my arm.

The fish eyes me from the other side of the glass. A knowing, fishy glare.

“Sneer all you want!” I huff. “Damn fish!”

I look over the bite in the light of the tank. The spot oozes pus and blood, and I close my hand over it. I can't drip. Can't leave a trail.

I jog out of the command deck to where the girl waits with my candle. “I'm sorry, but I need some of this.” The sleeves of her flight suit are already torn, and I rip a strip of fabric to make into a bandage for my bite. When I try to take the candle back, her hand doesn't open right away. “Give it to me,” I say, a sudden ache pounding inside my skull.

But the flame burnt down while I was gone, and her finger burned into the wax, bad enough to raise small welts across her knuckles.

I rip another piece of her uniform to bandage her finger. “I'm sorry.” My headache surges, and I grit my teeth to keep from groaning. I wonder if she can even feel pain. I squeeze her bandaged finger, and her cheek twinges.

Yes, she can feel pain. She could feel her finger scorching, but I told her to hold it. No doubt that sick Leland bastard exploits their inability to fight back. No doubt he enjoys making them suffer through their blankness.

“Take me to Leland,” I manage, pulling my hair out of my eyes as we descend the spiral staircase and further into the gloom.

My arm burns from where that freakin' fish bit me, and my head
buzzes heavily. The Touched girl leads me through the corridors of
Stride
until we come to a wide room strewn with old couches and pillows.

If it had color or life, it might resemble the Family Room.

I sneak in, drawn to the back corner where a window sheds the fog's light over a huge striped mattress—and Leland's sleeping form. I raise the candle a little higher, and its light reflects off the eyes of the two green girls.

They hunch at the far edge of the bed, holding on to each other. The smaller blonde gasps quietly, but the tall girl squeezes a hand over her lips to stop it. I wave at them, but they don't move. The tall one shakes her head back and forth. She points to Leland and draws a finger over her throat. So they think that if they move, they'll be killed. . . . They're probably right.

I pull the dose rod out of my sock and creep toward Leland. His chest is bare, revealing more muscle than his brother, but like Johnny, they both exude a striking beauty that doesn't match their darkness. Like their mother was a lovely angel, and their father was the Devil himself.

I want Leland to be worse than Johnny, but as I approach his sleeping form, I know they are more similar than different. Johnny manipulates people into obeying him and girls into sleeping with him, while Leland forces his will over the Touched who have become his slaves.

They are both a kind of rapist. Johnny is just better at hiding it.

I shake a sudden dizzy spell from my eyes and step so close to Leland that I'm standing over him. I turn the setting on the rod from green to black—the death dose—but as I lower it closer to his
pale chest, the candle illuminates patches and patches of ugly scars.

They stripe his torso: a ragged, horrible chaos of long-term abuse.

My breath draws in fast. Who could have done this to him? Surely he didn't do it to himself? My mind trips over all the horror stories about Johnny's father that slip out when he's in a drunken stupor. . . .

And I lower the dose rod. Somewhere behind me, one of the girls whimpers.

My hand shakes. I can't leave him here to wake and stop us, but I can't kill him either. I don't want to be a killer. No matter what kind of monster he is. I switch the rod's setting to green and click out the needle. I have to trust that if our plan works, Leland will be caught by the K-Force as soon as his ship leaves the Static Pass. I'll let them judge him, although I'm pretty sure he won't escape death for long.

I bring the syringe to Leland's stomach and press the button. He jolts awake, snatching my wrist. One of the girls screams, and I twist and twist to get out of his icy touch. His eyes look black, but they droop until he drops back to the bed like an oily rag.

I turn back to the girls. “We have to go. He's knocked out.”

The tall girl slips off the mattress, clutching her ragged clothes. “Go where? With you?! You're Johnny's Scarlet Siren!”

“Oh, shut up. You want to be rescued?” I hold my arms out. “I'm right here. But if you want to stay . . .”

The little girl gets off the bed. “Come on, Gen.” She sniffles and scrubs at her face. “I'm going with her. Anywhere is better than staying here.”

I cross the room to take her arm. “We have to hurry.”

The tall girl called Gen takes the smaller one from me. “Where are we going?”

“Back to
Imreas
.”

The Touched girl leads us through the shadowy paths of
Stride
until we reach the familiarity of the airlock. I bring out the glass plate and take the blonde girl's wrist.

Gen stops me. “What are you doing? You'll give her a shock if you try to take it off!”

“First of all,” I hold up the plate, “this was made from Johnny's thumbprint by a
Mec
. And secondly, we're in the Pass. These things are dead here.” I wave my own colorless bracelet in her face. “Just trust me.”

Gen turns her own bracelet around on her wrist and gives a stiff nod.

I press my thumb over the glass, waiting for the clink of her bracelet's release. “You'll have to be stowaways and get off this ship the first chance you get. It'll be too hard for you to stay together, so I suggest that you split up.” I drop the blonde's wristband, hearing it roll and then slip through a rust spot on the airlock floor. “Do you know the engine room?”

The girl looks from her wrist to her friend's face. “Gen?”

“Answer her,” Gen says.

The small girl nods.

“Good. Go there and ask for help from the old man with the beard. He'll be gruff, but tell him that Rain sent you and that you need a place to hide. He'll help. He won't like it, but he'll help. Understand?”

She nods.

“Then go! Now!” The girl takes a few wary steps backward, and I almost shove her. Finally, she turns and runs through to
Imreas
's airlock.

“I've got a splitting headache.” I start to fall over, and Gen grabs me. I blink to clear my eyes and use the glass plate to free her from her tag. “Try to sneak onto the first passenger deck. There's a place called the Rainbow Bar. The bartender's name is Lionel, and he's got a storage room. . . .”

My mind fuzzes out of focus.

“And I should tell him that you sent me?” Gen concludes.

“Yeah. You might have to sleep with him or wait on him, but hey”—I say and then almost fall over, and she shoulders me up again—“we've done worse, right?”

I swear the ship is growing darker, and I shake the candle like that'll make it give off more light.

“You're about to pass out,” she says. “What's wrong with you?”

“Don't know.” I manage to get the dose rod out of my sock and hold it up to her. “Can you put this on red and shoot me? I can't see for some reason,” I slur. I should be terrified. I should be panicking, but all I want is to lie down. If I close my eyes, maybe the pain in my head will stop . . .

The shot jams through me like a knife, and I jerk back to the airlock and the tall girl with straight hair. I slip the rod back in my sock. “Thanks. Like I was saying, he has a storage room, and I've hidden some credits beneath a can on the lowest shelf. Use it to bribe someone to get both of you off this ship once we reach Edge space.”

She rubs her freed wrist. “Why are you helping us?”

“Because I'm not Johnny's girl. Not really.”

She backs up toward the other airlock. “Sure you're okay? What will you do?”

“You care now?” I press my aching temples and sigh. “I'm going back to him before he wakes and realizes that something's wrong. If we're lucky, Leland will stay under long after we've undocked from
Stride
.”

“I should thank you.” Her tall body draws a thin shadow, reminding me of Lo.

“Don't thank me.” I touch Lo's picture in the front of my shirt. “Just survive.”

The Touched girl takes me back to the room with the smoldering embers of the fire. I can see the outline of Johnny's sleeping form, but I can't go in.

I have one more task for this endless evening.

I lead the girl down the hallway until I find a small storage room. I shut the door behind us, remembering Lo in the storage room on the crew deck. She would tell me to do this, and I ache from wishing that she were here now to help me.

“Sit,” I command, and the girl obeys. I set the candle in the center of the small space and kneel before her, her eyes staring blankly. I could tell her to stay in this spot until she died. That would save me from having to do what I know I should do, but that would also mean dying of hunger and thirst. Dying through pain.

I take the rod out of my sock and turn the setting to black. “I'm sorry, but this is best for you.”

I hold the needle to her arm, but I can't press it.

“Give me your hand.” I mold the rod in her fist, roll the ripped sleeve of her flight suit up and position the needle on her skin. Then I take a step back.

Press the button
, I want to say, but I can't.

I kneel before her again and hold the sides of her face. She's cold, but she doesn't shiver. Her deep, wide eyes are rimmed with exhausted red lines, but she doesn't blink. I take the dose rod out of her hand and hold it to her neck. I should say something, but all my words are useless. If there's anything left of this girl in her body, she needs to know that I'm not trying to hurt her. I'm trying to set her free.

Ben's words come from the buried memory of where all this started.

“Dream of somewhere else.” I take a deep breath and inject her.

She dies within seconds, and nothing changes except for the rise and fall of her chest, her eyes as glassy in death as they were during her stolen existence.

I
am kicked awake.

“Rain.” Johnny's voice beats into my head. “Why are you all wet?”

I open my eyes and sit up beside the still smoldering fire. My arms and shoulders quiver, and my clothes are soaked and stuck to me in patches. “I'm sweating.”