The Color of Rain (5 page)

Johnny's fingers wrap around my chin while he dabs at my face, the white cloth coming away scarlet. “I don't think you're the one who is injured,” he concludes.

“My brother,” I say. “I need your help. He fell.”

“Show me.” Johnny pushes me away to stand. He tosses a few coins on the table and snaps his fingers at the guy beside him. “We're going. Bring your toys.”

The guy slips out of the seat behind Johnny. He's not as tall or as old—I might even call him a boy—but his shoulders are broad. His plain shirt and green cargo pants remind me of a military recruit but not from any service that I know.

Something about him begs a second look, but my mind buzzes with Walker.

We take their hover cab, the kind that can soar up into the thinnest atmosphere and maybe beyond for short distances. I sit in the back beside Johnny, squeezing the plush seat as the gliding sensation does weird things to my stomach. I keep turning from the strange guy in the corner, his face cast in shadow, to the back of the driver's shaggy head.

Faster. We should be going faster
.

And yet, as the hover cab lets down on my rooftop, it's only been minutes since we left the bar. But even that might have been too long. . . .

There was so much blood.

I rush into the greenhouse, dragging Johnny behind me. Walker is curled in the deep end of the pool. His head is at the center of a great red puddle, and the sound of air leaving his body is a constant wheeze.

Johnny holds me against him as the other guy leaps into the pool. His boots slide down the blood-slick tile, but he comes to a skillful stop beside my brother and peels back the strips of blankets I tied around Walker's skull.

It hadn't been a long enough fall. He probably thought that he'd break his neck, but his head hit and just split. Then he screamed and screamed and screamed. . . .

“I couldn't go to anyone else. They'd take him away or put him out of his misery. But what can you even do?” I squirm in Johnny's hold, but his arms grow tighter, somewhat comforting but mostly restraining.

“How is it, Ben?”

The boy called Ben takes a metal disc from one of the many pants pockets. It pulses with the same sapphire light as the engines hanging over the spacedocks, and he passes it over Walker's cracked scalp.

“I asked you a question,” Johnny snaps.

“It's bad.” Ben pushes his light brown hair out of his eyes, but even as his words spear me, Walker's wound transforms under the blue light. Within breaths, the whole gash has sealed into a long, white scar.

“How in the hell?” I struggle out of Johnny's arms and drop into the pool. I run my hand over Walker's scalp. “How did you do that?” I ask Ben.

“Amazing what you can do with Mec toys,” Johnny says.

“Where did you get Mec toys?”

“They usually come with the Mec.” Johnny's tone is black. “Stars forbid they let anyone else have them.”

“Mec?” I glance at the blue disc as Ben slips it into his pocket. “You're Mec?”

Ben looks away in a hurry, but I swear I see beneath his wild hair for a moment. I swear I see blue eyes that glint like something slightly metallic.

“Come, Rain. We need to discuss what happens next.” Johnny beckons for me, but I stare at my brother's drooping eyelids and slow, slipping breath.

I look to Ben. “He's better?”

“On the outside,” he says. “He's in a coma. They could do more for him on—”

“The Edge!” I almost yell. “I knew it!”

“Rain,” Johnny commands. I climb out of the pool but keep trying to look back at Walker's still form.
They
could
do more for him
. A sharp sound brings me back as Johnny kicks the glass from one of the greenhouse panes, and I follow him out onto the rooftop with growing unease.

Below, people clog the street with their unhurried passage: the passionless procession to the next factory shift. “I don't understand this planet.” Johnny motions to the workers. “Like insects with one purpose. No wonder your minds have been whittled down to a corruptibly thin wavelength.” He spits over the edge, no doubt hitting someone in the head.

I look over my brother's savior in the numb daylight, my words leaking before I can stop them. “You're an angry sort.”

He turns at me a little fast, and I take a step back. He puts a hand up that may have wanted to grab me but only shows his palm instead. “Don't be afraid of me. Do me that favor.”

“All right.” I lick my lips and stand close to him again. Close to the edge of the building where he could give me the lightest shove and send me over. “Should we deal now?”

“
Deal
.” He sets his teeth on the word. “Let's.”

I take a deep breath. “Well, you want me. Clearly.”

He chuckles. “Clearly.” He touches the curly ends of my hair at my elbow. “You're a rare beauty, but you know that. And up there”—he says, glancing into the smog like it isn't there, like he can imagine every detail of the stars beyond—“things get a little lonely.”

“I'll go with you. I'll be your friend. More, even.”

“More?”

“You want it in writing? I'll give you my virginity. Whatever.”

“So you'll be my girl.”

It isn't a question, so I don't know how to answer. I look over his profile, striking against the height of the fall just before us. His eyes seem to bleed with brown, but it only makes me want to know more. Who created this haunted sort of guy? How did he become a Void captain? And what else lies beneath this polished surface?

Maybe he's not what he seems. Maybe there are unimaginable diamonds in his deep places. That's what my dad had said about my mother when he first met her. She was homeless and starving, and yet he saw “sparks and stars.”

“I'll be your girl. And you'll get me to the Edge with my brother,” I say in a rush. “Deal?”

He frowns. “Your brother, of course.” His gaze slips past me, narrowing like he's suddenly not so sure that I'm worth it. And I have to show him that I am.

I lick my lips as I reach for his collar, standing on the very edge of my tiptoes to bring his mouth to mine. I'm surprised to find him yielding and the slightest bit hungry before I lean away, embarrassed. He's the first person I've ever really kissed, and my heart pounds with nerves.

He touches his mouth with the back of his hand, making me think that I did something wrong, but his eyes glint in an encouraging way. “I've heard stories about redheads. Aren't you supposed to be fiery?”

I smirk. “My dad used to say that gingers are capable of all kinds of mischief.”

“All kinds,” he repeats. “It has been a while since I've had a challenge.” A sudden grin strikes his face like a spark. “We have a deal.” He spins, reenters the greenhouse, and I jog to keep up.

“So you'll take me and my brother all the way to the Edge? You promise.”

“Cross my heart,” he says with a laugh. “Now, we're in a hurry.”

“You mean leave this minute?” I ask. “What about Walker? He's in a coma!”

Johnny stops by the edge of the pool, and I collide with his back. Ben stands in the center of the tile, holding my brother like a baby. Walker's head is against the Mec's chest and blood smears his white shirt. The sight is strange, but I can't put my finger on why. . . .

“So what do we do with him . . .,” Johnny says, and I don't like his tone. “What say we freeze him?”

“
Freeze him?
”

He frowns. “We can't have a Touched boy wandering around my ship, and this way you can get him treatment as soon as we set down at the Edge.” He pockets his hands. “And he won't interrupt the business of the run. Yes, we'll freeze him. Those are my terms.”

Ben is watching us. He adjusts my brother's weight in his arms, and his hair has parted enough to reveal that it wasn't my imagination: his blue irises really are rimmed with steel.

“He'll be fine if he is frozen?” I look to the Mec.

“Better than fine. He'd be preserved,” Johnny says. “And no babysitting required.”

Ben gives me the smallest nod.

I don't like the idea of freezing my brother, but no babysitting . . . I can't deny that I'm more than tempted by a reprieve of watching his every moment. “As long as he'll be safe.”

“Have it done.” Johnny inputs something on his wrist communicator and leaves Ben and me to stare at each other. On closer inspection, the Mec could be my age. Maybe we could be friends. He's got to at least know the ins and outs of the starship and this Johnny.

But Ben's voice stops my scheming midstream. “Now you've done it.” He shifts my brother in his arms and steps toward the shallow end, his hair falling over his expression.

“Done what?” I ask.

“Made your bed with the devil.”

I don't like the Mec. His words bang around my thoughts.
Devil?
Johnny's clearly no angel, but
the devil
? I doubt that Mec has ever
had to dodge the police or the Bashers . . . or worked so many factory shifts that his mind kinked up like an old wire.

He can't know what a real devil looks like. The kind of devil that comes through your own skin and makes you do things. Horrible things. Like stealing a pair of shoes from a dying old lady because your brother's feet are bleeding.

Or agreeing to sell yourself to the likes of Hallisy.

That Mec probably just doesn't like being ordered around; I could be wrong, but I think Ben is Johnny's servant. Well, no servant likes his or her master.

The morning shift horn ricochets across the crumbling skyscrapers, making the loose glass panels in our greenhouse tinkle. “That's the last time we'll ever have to hear that,” I tell Walker. I touch the new scar on his scalp. “Maybe I wasn't dreaming. Maybe the next time you wake, you'll be better. We'll be at the Edge.”

I'm still not crazy about the idea of freezing him, but this way he won't know what I've agreed to. An invisible wind makes all the hair stand on my arms. At least this Johnny is a tenfold upgrade on the lecherous Hallisy, and we are getting off this planet for good.

The hover cab driver, an older man with silvery hair and beard to match, wedges a metal pod through the greenhouse doorway. He rubs his hip through a faded black flight suit as he hunkers down beside me. “Blasted bones,” he mutters. He observes Walker through work goggles so fogged that he looks like he has opulent bug eyes.

Johnny returns with a deep scowl, pressing his thumb to a
scanner on the pod's control box. The lid releases, and I watch him say something into his silver wristband as he leaves. I zip Jeremy's jacket up to Walker's collar. What could Johnny be angry about all of a sudden?

“Magic fingers,” the old man says, interrupting my thoughts. “Johnny's fingers open
everything
on his ship.” He tucks Walker into the pod, placing my brother's legs and arms gingerly. The lid latches with an airtight sound. “What's this?” He picks up my dad's copy of
Leaves of Grass
, the book Walker had been reading from last night.

“Some old poetry.” I look at the pile of books beside the pool. “Don't suppose I'll be able to bring these.”

He sighs. “He won't let you bring the clothes on your back, most likely. So you'll be the new girl? What are you called?”

“Rain White. And this is my brother, Walker.”

He presses a few buttons and the pod hums. “Ah, ‘Into each life some rain must fall.'” When I don't respond, he adds, “Longfellow. Another long ago poet. Too forgotten, like every artist. Tell me, Rain, are you falling into our lives?”

“Not falling,” I insist a little fast, remembering the suicidal Touched girl. “My dad used to sing, ‘I am the Poem of the Earth, said the voice of the rain.'”

He slaps his knee. “An Earth Cityite who can read
and
recite! You're a surprising little sprite, aren't you?”