“You’re Mec!” I exclaim. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Because then people either quiver with fear or expect too damn much. And you two are just a couple of teens. Don’t forget that while you’re off saving civilization and upholding the moral code or whatever.” He yanks his goggles back over his eyes. “Don’t forget to enjoy yourselves where you can.”
I manage a small laugh. “Sure thing, Dad.”
The title was meant to be a joke, but saying Dad sends a terrible shock through me. What would my father think of all this? What would he say to his daughter who is now little more than a prostitute? A prostitute who’s in the habit of getting her peers killed?
Samson presses a button that recalls his seat up into the engine rigging. “Reck’d or unreck’d . . .,” he sings as he goes.
“You’d think he’d help us,” I say.
“He does in his own way. He’s a decent soul, but he’s been in the Void too long.” I can feel his stare, but I won’t look at it. “Samson may not agree with Johnny’s ways, but he isn’t about to interfere with them.”
“You think all Runners are like that?”
“All the ones I’ve encountered,” he says.
“What about these K-Force? You said they’d hardly prioritize a rescue mission for you. What makes you think that they’ll pick up Walker in Melee?”
“Because Melee is a Void-capable vessel. She’s valuable.”
“Everything is ranked by a depraved value system in this universe, isn’t it? Human life should mean more.”
Ben shrugs. “Depends on the human. I can tell you that Johnny gets forty credits a head for the Touched.”
“Forty!” The number is both sickeningly low and much higher than I expected. “And what about Amanda? How much was she worth?” Ben looks away, and I turn out of the engine room. He stomps in pursuit. “Did you even bother to check the population chart to see if she’s still alive?”
“I did.” His steps slow until I know that he’s given up on trying to catch me.
I swing around. “And?”
“And she’s gone.” His forehead creases with a frown. “Don’t try to shame me, Rain. Remember how long I’ve been on this ship. Remember that I’ve lost friends as well.” He gets in my face, and I can’t help but look at the split in his bottom lip where Johnny punched him. “Our plan is too important for this!”
“I know that!” I press my face right under his, but his words beat mine.
“So if I have to choose between one person and the lives of hundreds of sick people, I’m going to make the easy decision. And if I have to choose between one of Johnny’s sickly obedient girls and you, I’m going to pick you every time.” He wavers after his outburst, and I feel a little blown by such a passionate admission. He squeezes his eyes like he regrets his words but doesn’t lean out of our standoff.
My hands slip up his arms, and I clutch his shirt like I need to find some way to hold on to him. Ben Ryan dead.
“This is too important,” he says without opening his eyes. “Right?”
I squeeze the soft fabric. I could almost press myself to him. Let him feel and see and know the real me beneath all my terrible deeds.
Almost.
CHAPTER
20
Entra is a wonder.
The planet’s forest surface swirls with emerald and jade colors even from the upper atmosphere where Imreas is parked. I press myself to the hover cab window as we leave the docking bay, only to be half blinded by the brilliance of two orange suns.
Johnny touches a button, causing a shade screen to drop over the windows and mute the new world to a tolerable, but less vivid, hue. Ben sits across from me, his eyes shielded behind his hair, and Samson’s ratty head is haloed by light in the driver’s seat. Despite their silence, I can’t help feeling surrounded by secret friends. Samson might not go out of his way to help us, but he’s on our side. I can tell.
Johnny’s fingers slide from my knee to my thigh, under the hem of the crimson dress he presented to me just this morning.
Here I am, obedient. And the color of blood from head to knee.
I refuse to look at Ben, not wanting to know if he’s watching. Glaring. In the days since our tryst in the secret wall space, I’ve taken to rethinking the hell out of that moment. Of course it doesn’t mean anything; it can’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go over it in my head and just pull the pieces of those hours apart, savoring them. I feel myself run warm as I remember the low husk to Ben’s voice when he said, You can lean on me.
Johnny pushes my hair behind my ear. “You look perfect. We’ll go straight to the hotel,” he commands.
I begin to respond, but my voice is rough. “All right,” I say, unable to keep myself from glancing in Ben’s direction, but he’s looking out the window, only the hint of a clenched muscle along his jaw.
Johnny’s touch turns from caress to grip, and I can’t help but feel the sway of his nerves. Entra has put him on edge, or perhaps it’s the thought of running into his old love. Whatever it is, it’s making him unpredictable, which spells danger for our plans. I turn to the window, watching the mass of green sharpen into an endless forest.
“I’ve never seen nature before. That’s the word, right? Nature,” I try. “Not outside of a document screen anyway.” No one responds, and I continue to watch the swift magnification of the planet through the window, remembering the brown vine that grew around the glass ceiling of the greenhouse. Would it grow in this environment? Or does it need hardship and constraint?
Could anything from Earth City flourish here?
Maybe the Touched won’t survive in the wild, but at least no one will be hunting or enslaving them. Who knows what they’re capable of when they’re finally free. I twist the bracelet around my wrist.
Johnny knocks my hand away. “Don’t play with that.”
The hover cab turns toward a massive white structure, which sits atop the tree line on thick pillars. Samson sets us down on a parking lot of other hover cabs on the building’s rooftop.
We exit, and though it stings my eyes, I watch the crowns of the two suns settle out of sight until the whole horizon bleeds a citrus rainbow. The hover cab lifts off from behind us with a gust that throws the hem of my dress up to my hips. I tug it down and take a deep breath to ask where Samson’s going, but instead my lungs burn so hard that I have to lean over and hack to breathe.
“Breathe shallowly,” Johnny orders.
I try to ask why but only succeed in coughing harder.
“The atmosphere is packed with oxygen because of the trees and a few other gases that don’t exist on Earth,” Ben says. “Your body will adjust to it, but it’ll take awhile. Best to sip at the air until then.”
I take a very shallow breath and the burning abates. “Where is Samson going?”
Johnny smooths his hair and grips my elbow.
“He will run disembarking passengers down from Imreas,” Ben says.
“Shut up,” Johnny barks. “Since when do we answer the girls’ questions?”
“A slip.” Ben’s footsteps fall behind as Johnny marches me around a variety of hover vehicles. When we reach a silver platform, he steps on a lighted square in the center, and the whole platform drops below the parking lot level. We come to a stop seconds later on an inner floor.
“Welcome to the Entra Suns Casino, Rain,” Johnny says over the bustle of hundreds of people.
We’re in the center of a corridor overflowing with bodies and chattering voices. Restaurants, bars, and storefront doorways spot the white hall as far as the eye can see, but most striking is that the floor is not a floor at all, but a wide expanse of seamless glass that shows off the forest running beneath the whole structure.
I almost trip as it feels very much like standing on air.
Johnny’s grasp on my elbow flexes as we push through the crowd. People jostle by, bumping into him in a way that notches his already aggravated demeanor until even I w
ant to scream, “Out of the way!”
He stops in the flow after awhile. “Take the lead, Mec. Turn your blinders up and stare them down.”
Ben frowns. “No.”
Johnny’s eyebrows twitch, and Ben shakes his head, submitting, but making a point about not wanting to. He tucks his hair behind his ears and closes his eyes. When he opens them, every drop of blue has been replaced by shining silver—like he’s turned into a ghost. I can’t suppress a shiver as he turns his gaze through the crowd.
And they part. They whisper and point.
Some people look away while others gawk. Either way, they clear from his path like he’s some kind of lord. It’s the damndest thing I ever saw.
“What the . . .”
“In a universe full of unveiled wonders”—Johnny says, not bothering to hide his annoyance—“everyone still freaks at the sight of a Mec. You should have seen them when I had a Mec girl. Like I’d stolen an angel from the heavens.”
Ben looks back at Johnny with burning hatred, and even I feel the heat of it. Johnny means Bron—Ben’s Bron. So she was that valuable and he still killed her? Ben and I are crazy. Johnny is both the armed weapon and the itchy trigger finger. And we want to drug him and steal his valuable shipment of human cargo?
“Stop fidgeting,” he commands and swipes my hand from my hair.
Ben leads us toward an entrance engraved with the words SILVING SUNS HOTEL, and we follow the wide berth his presence commands, passing through the hotel’s posh lobby to an ornate hall. I linger behind Johnny as he lists orders for Ben.
“I want those girls brought down immediately. I’ll be out for the evening,” he says.
Girls? He means the three green girls who Amanda died for. I stare through the glass floor as I walk, longing to touch the leaves and branches only a few feet away. What I wouldn’t give to escape. To walk among growing things . . .
I knock right into Johnny’s back.
He’s frozen in the middle of the hallway by the sight of an incredibly tall woman. Her blonde hair pours down her shoulders like a cascade of gold water. She, too, has gone still except for a creeping smile.
“Hello, Johnny.”
He clears his throat. “Crysta.” Another shiver lights my spine, much worse than the one when I saw Ben’s eyes. Johnny yanks me forward until I’m at his side, but she doesn’t even look at me. She’s too busy staring into Johnny . . . ungluing him.
“Welcome to my hotel,” she says.
“Your hotel?”
Her smile slips into something so cold that even I am stung by it. She snaps her fingers at one of the two huge men flanking her, whom I didn’t even notice until that moment, and holds her hand out for a tablet. She runs through information on the screen. “I see that you’re booked in the Helena Room. That won’t do for your . . . tastes.” Her glossy nails click against the tablet’s glass screen. “I’ve switched you to the Fina Suite. One of our best. The last door on the left.”
“Wonderful.” Johnny’s tone is full of barbed pleasantness.
She doesn’t look up from the tablet. “I have business to attend to. Enjoy your stay.” Her curvy form sweeps around Johnny, followed by her two servants, and my pulse beats warnings as his face folds. He hauls me to the end of the corridor where the door on the left opens as though it saw us coming.
The suite is built into the corner of the massive casino. Two of the walls are made of seamless glass, which, along with the floor, makes the whole place feel like it’s floating. A stream of water pours down the corner of the two glass walls, emptying through slits in the floor and into the forest below. Our own waterfall . . .
Johnny slams the door, stripping his coat away. “What is she doing here?”
Ben shrugs.
Johnny muscles him into the pristine glass wall so hard that Ben’s breath busts out of his chest. I swallow a yell. I can’t believe that he didn’t go smashing through the pane and plunging into Entra’s surface.
“Her hotel?” Johnny yells. “Hers?”
“She probably won it in a gamble, Johnny.” Ben’s face is tinting into a red hue as Johnny squeezes his chest. “Ch-check yourself. She’s probably watching you now.”
Johnny’s eyes flick up at the ceiling, and he drops Ben to the floor. “You’re right.” He straightens his shirt and pulls his jacket back on. “I’m going out.” He bends down to where Ben kneels, catching his breath. “You bring me those girls now.”
“And you,” he swings at me. “Move from this room for any reason, and I’ll—” He holds the back of his hand up. His fingers twitch, no doubt dying to slam into my face. All the smoothness of his youth has vanished under his expression, almost as though Crysta made him age a few decades in a few seconds.
He leaves, and the sound of the falling water fills the sudden quiet. Ben looks up from his crouched position on the floor and glances at the ceiling. We’re being watched, his silver gaze warns. I help him to his feet.
“Mind turning your eyes off,” I say. “They’re freaking me out.”
Ben blinks hard, and when he opens his eyes again, they’re blue and natural and lovely. “I’m sorry you had to see that. Pretty alien, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I lie. I glance around the room. “What do I do now?”
He points to the shoulder of my dress. “That’s all twisted,” he says in a weird tone that I’ve never heard before. He moves behind me, brings my hair out of the way and fusses with my straps. “You need to lay low,” he whispers. “Crysta is bad news, Rain. He was dangerous; now he’s damn explosive.” His fingers brush my neck, sending sparks all the way to the backs of my legs.
“Please,” his voice drops to its lowest yet, “don’t give him a reason to hurt you.”
I pace the glass floor all day, very aware that somewhere in this bizarre casino, Johnny’s gambling with the lives of three girls. He’s drinking himself into oblivion. But most importantly, unless he returns, he’s ruined our plans to save the Touched.
Outside the glass room, the suns set into a citrus rush, and the sky turns to violet velvet.
If he doesn’t come back, I can’t drug him, and if I can’t drug him, Ben and I can’t sneak away. I squeeze the tin of drug strips in my pocket. If Ben could do it all without me, we’d be set, but he needs two people—one to fly the hover cab and one to release the Touched from the cargo crates.
Damn!
I sit on the silky white sheets of the enormous bed only to stand up again and pace to the other side of the room. Does Ben even know that Johnny hasn’t returned? I finger the silver lamp on the bedside table, and it springs on at my touch, glowing with an eerie green light.
I return to the bed and sit down just as the door opens.
Johnny enters with a lurch and stumbles. I rush to his side and catch him before he falls. He tugs at his collar like it’s choking him and screams at two bouncers in the hall. “Fuck off now! I’m outta your precious way!”
Crysta stands a little further back in the hall, and her eyes lock with mine in a way that threatens and smiles all at once. Johnny tries to swing around in my arms to face the door, but one of the men slams it in his face.
He tumbles back into me, pressing me against the glass wall and groping blindly. His lips fall over mine until I can’t breathe. I manage to turn my face away, and he moans, “Crys. Baby doll.”
I lead Johnny to a lounge couch and press him into the seat. I pour a drink from the bar and slip one of the drug strips into it, watching it dissolve before I take it to him. “Here.”
Ben could be here any minute. What if Johnny realizes that he didn’t call for him? Is he too drunk to suspect something?
“You don’t want it?” I shake the glass in his face.
His eyebrows bend over his gaze like black clouds, but he doesn’t answer. I set the glass down beside the lamp and sit on the footrest before him. I pull his shoes off, letting them thunk to the floor. Then I rub his calves. A kiss worked last time; maybe it’ll
work again. I move to his thighs. Nothing. I finger his belt, but still he doesn’t engage. I tug my dress over my head and start to unbutton his shirt.
One of his hands closes over both of my wrists. “She owns half the damned casino. Rigged it,” he says. “Took every last credit from me.”
I try to twist out of his hand, but his fingers constrict, and his expression strips me. I should be careful, but I feel damn careless. “Maybe she wants revenge for the life you pushed her into.”
“She wants to play with me like I played with her.” His head tilts back so that he’s staring up into the hidden security cameras. “I offered a way outta that life, but she wouldn’t take it. Damaged goods!” he yells upward.
When his face turns back to me, his eyes have blackened. “Why aren’t you as pretty as her?” He yanks me closer and pulls at my hair. “You are . . . exotic . . . but not a goddess. She’s a goddess, especially now. Did you see her?”
“I did,” I say through clenched teeth. He’s squeezing my wrists so hard that my fingers are growing stiff.
“She was different before. Less confident. Liable to cry. I used to make her weep.” His tongue lingers on the point of his eyetooth. “Would you cry for me?”
I can’t answer. My hands are numb except for a pain that shoots up my arms every time he twists his grip.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” He yanks me onto his lap, wrestling my chest under his arm. I want to fight back. I could take him in this state—probably—but Ben’s words sound through my head.
Don’t give him a reason.
He reaches into his pocket with his free hand and pulls out a small silver lighter, the same kind of lighter that the Earth City factory workers receive after twenty years. He pops the lid, igniting a flame as long as a finger, and holds it a foot under my wrist.
“Sure you won’t give me a cry?” he says into the side of my hair. “You sure?” He brings the flame closer and closer until its warmth turns into a biting pinch. I grind my teeth, concentrating on the glass wall, on the forest beyond. On the trees . . .
The Color of Rain Page 16
