The Color of Rain (17 page)

He presses the button, and the elevator begins to rise again. “If anyone can help, the Mecs can. Maybe. You should understand that it's a closed society. When scientists founded the colony, they were overly conscious of starting a new race. They were precise and clinical. For all its beauty and advancements, the Edge can be a very unfeeling place.”

“Lo's going to get worse fast, and if Johnny finds her that way,
he'll sell her with the others. She wants me to kill her before that happens, so I'll probably have to put her into a coma like Walker. You can do that with all your”—I say, motioning to his pockets—“gadgets, right?”

“Hell, Rain. Talk about rolling with the punches.” He shakes his head. “You just found out that your best friend is losing her mind, and you've already moved on to saving her through elaborate and improbable schemes?”

“Not everyone likes to wallow and suffer.” I watch him touch the edges of his swollen eyelid. “Why don't you use that disc thingy to heal your eye?”

“Can't,” he says. “I've got hardware in there. You hit me in the one spot I'm vulnerable.”

“Hardware?”

The elevator doors slide open. “Don't worry about it,” he says flatly.

I step out before Johnny's quarters. “You shouldn't tell people where you're vulnerable, Ben.”

He frowns. “Not everyone pretends to be invincible, Rain.”

Lo's going to leave me now with or without Johnny. She's going to leave me to sort through the nightmare of this ship alone. I slide into the shadows of Johnny's room just to escape thinking about her. The room feels dimmer than I left it. I can only make out lumps and creases on the satiny bed. Johnny must be among them.

But I step through the darkness and into a black voice.

“
Hello, Rain
.”

“L
ights,” Johnny commands, and the room floods.

I squint against the sudden brightness.

“How was your walk?” he asks. “That's what you're going to say, yes? You were just out taking a
walk
?”

My blood has frozen in my veins. “I don't think I should say anything.”

“Smart, but not smart enough.” Johnny sits in the plush chair on the far side of the room. He wears his pants, but no shirt. “Come here.”

I step to his knees, securing a fist behind my back. If he's going to beat me, I'm swinging back. But he just scoops me onto his lap, his arm chaining my waist.

He picks up a tablet from the side table, pressing his thumb into the security clearance that blinks a small red box. “Let's just see where you really were, shall we? Then I don't have to hear your lies.”

My heart thunders into spiky questions. What if Ben didn't erase it all? What if Johnny sees me with Lo? Or Ben?

AIRLOCK
.

He runs his fingers through the information on the screen,
his frown growing tighter, until he jerks, making me tumble to the floor. “So you were nowhere? You were a ghost through the night hours?”

My fear turns from his face to his leg. He's going to kick me. I've never been more certain of anything in my life. I curl my knees against my chest and shake my head.

“Still not going to spout lies?” He drops the tablet to the chair. Now he has both hands free. Now he could kick me and hit me—I eye his belt with new fear—his hips—and even lower.

I struggle to swallow. My terror won't do anything now, and it certainly won't distract Johnny from the events of my night. But I have to keep his attention on me and away from Lo or Ben or the fact that I now know about his true business.

“You wanted fiery.” I glare into his glare. “A feisty redhead.”

He laughs, and the sound spears my little reserve. He grabs me by the back of the shirt and hauls me to my feet. “Get out of my sight until I know what to do with you.”

He throws me into the hallway, and I stumble into the Family Room just as the green girls are waking. They stare as I slip through the common area and back to my mat. I shut my eyes, but I don't expect to sleep.

This isn't over. This is the edge of Johnny's razor.

I wake to a fat man leaning over me. He checks my hair as though he'd like to buy it.

“What do you think you're doing?” I pull from his reach, my back to the window.

“Inspecting an unusual specimen. He was right. I've never seen anything like it.” He groans as he leans on a silver cane. His hair is missing in patches and streams of sweat work down each temple. “I'll have you.”

“I'm Johnny's,” I blurt. “I'm red tagged.” I thrust out my arm and pull back my sleeve.

But my bracelet has turned green.

He chuckles. “Not anymore, it seems.” He holds out his cane like an offer to help me up, but I get to my feet on my own.

“Johnny sent you to come get me? Did he tell you to punish me?”

He wipes his brow with a yellow handkerchief and shoves it in his pocket. “Am I punishment, little girl?”

My mouth opens and closes without an answer. I'm to please this man. I'm a green tag now . . . right? A
real
prostitute. Of all the horrific things that I imagined Johnny might do, it comes to this one: he means to whore me into submission. The walls of my mind melt, but I try to hide my panic. This is better than a threat to Lo and Walker . . . it only feels worse.

“Okay.”

“Truly?” he smiles and a bead of sweat drops the length of his nose. “What a changeable creature you are.”

I follow the man out of the Family Room, passing Ben at the door. His gaze tugs at strings in my chest, but I put the sudden emotion out of my mind. I touch my green bracelet; I have a job to do.

And I do it.

I turn my mind off just like Johnny taught me, my body slipping against the bare minimum. Afterward, the huge man is a
pile of snoring pink flesh, and my brain clicks back on until I'm kneeling on the carpet, unsure of how I got there. I try to stand, but I can't, and my breath cuts at my throat. Half crawling, I make it to a small door—a closet—and hide inside. The narrow space wraps me up with darkness, and I weep.

The fat man's name is Proffers, and I stay in his sauna of a room full of golden, ornamental things for days. He never asks my name but keeps me held up against his mound of a body until I fall away from myself, into an empty headspace. I am anonymous. Invisible.

This must be what it's like to be Touched.

Almost a week after Proffers came for me, I'm lying on a gold-cushioned window seat, watching the white strings of the wormhole dance outside when Johnny leans over me.

He snaps his fingers in my face to stop me from saying something, and I scoot away from him, listening to Proffers hum a loony song in the shower.

“Follow,” he commands, doing an about-face and leaving the room. I pull on my shoes while I tread after him. We weave through passengers in the hall who stare from Johnny to me. “Disgusting, wasn't he?” he says in the elevator. I had forgotten the way Johnny's eyes and hair can reflect the exact same shade of dark.

I level my shoulders. “I've had worse.”

Johnny grinds his teeth. “That's a lovely thinly veiled insult, Rain.”

“I'm cleverer than you give me credit for.”

His thin smile matches his gaze. “You are. You really, truly are.” The doors open, and we exit onto the floor for his quarters. “It took me this long to discover what you were up to all those nights ago. What a wild chase you've sent me on.” My stomach drops in sudden fear for Lo. “For a few days there, I doubted that I would be able to uncover your secrets. But then, breakthrough.” He holds his door open.

A man stands in the middle of Johnny's room. His flight suit is ripped open at the top revealing a patch of curly, grotesque chest hair. I remember his fingers smashing my face against the back of the door and hear his gravel shouting of
GET OUT!

He twists his hands like a small boy before a disappointed father until his eyes fall on me. “That's the red, Captain. The very red. Stole my girl right out from my room, and I'd paid her up for the week and all.”

“This is Jeb, Rain. But you've already met.” Johnny's fingers slide along my lower back, gripping the material at my waist.

“Didn't touch her but for a second, Captain,” Jeb adds. “Not the second I saw she was your girl.”

“Would you like her now?” Johnny asks.

Jeb's head jerks around from Johnny to me and back again. “If you're done, of course, then I could—”

“How about it, Rain?” Johnny dares.

So he found Jeb, a man more vile than Proffers, to be my next punishment?

Well, it doesn't matter because I won't let Johnny have the best of me. I braid my hair back to shift out from under both of their looks. “Okay, Johnny. Whatever you want.” I step toward
Jeb, but Johnny's grip on my waist yanks me back into his chest.

“Changed my mind. Go,” he commands. Jeb stands there for an ugly moment, his eyes like loose marbles while he looks from me to Johnny. “I said, go!”

Jeb hustles out, and Johnny swings me around, gripping my shoulders like he's about to break me. His perfect skin is blotched with anger, but instead of crushing me, he lifts me by one arm and marches me to the command deck. The handful of crew members on duty exchange glances before disappearing altogether.

Johnny shoves me away and collapses into his captain's chair. I take a few steps toward the large window, looking out on the rush of a cluster of passing stars. Johnny is smiling again by the time I turn, showing off his teeth. “I'm so
very
frustrated, Rain. I didn't want this, you know.”

“You did,” I say, gripping my elbows. “You asked for complication. For ruse. You dared me into this.”

His smile twists into a frown for the briefest flash. “Maybe I did. But you have no one to blame but yourself.” He presses a few buttons on the control panel beside him. “Take a look.” He waves his hand at the window, and I turn to find it altered into a view screen. And the view is a dingy cargo room with one dangling bulb.

Walker's pod beneath it.

A choked sound leaks out of me before I can stop it.