So she’s still alive. I breathe the smallest sigh of relief. At least I did something right.
Johnny’s happily drunk by the time we make it to the command room. He drops me to the floor and collapses in his captain’s chair. I look out the massive window. The strings of the Void veil the stars, and I wrap my injured hand in the bottom folds of Ben’s shirt.
Are the K-Force even coming? Or am I prolonging my misery for nothing?
At some point, Johnny is going to get bored and kill me. At some point, Ben is going to wake in Melee, and Johnny will find him in there.
And kill him.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” Johnny sighs. “I’d like to hang you, but that just seems so quick. Any suggestions?”
I brush a trickle of blood from my scalp and open my mouth, but the screech of the alarm beats my words. It silences itself in record time, and a blue, blinking warning light replaces it.
Blue.
Johnny gets to his feet so fast that he stumbles. “What the—”
The command deck fills with crew members flying to posts around the room. “What’s going on?” Johnny barks.
“A ship, Captain. A large ship is incoming.”
The Mecs!
“It’s Stride,” someone yells.
A shock rattles through me. Not Stride!
Johnny collapses into his chair. “I knew my brother would come back with his tail between his legs. Father would kill him for abandoning us here with a hole in our guts.”
I almost choke. We sent a call for help, and the wrong side answered . . . and if Stride is here, does that mean that he bested the K-Force? Could he have killed Holmes?
“Should we address him, Captain?” a man asks.
“No.” Johnny pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let my brother come sniveling to me. Turn all that crap off, and for fuck’s sake, clear out of my command. Can’t you all see that I’m busy?”
The blue light turns off, and the crew members hurry to leave, several of them glancing at me as I cower on the floor before Johnny’s knees.
I crawl toward him. I want to die now.
I don’t want to see Leland and his crew of the damned.
Johnny seems to be having similar thoughts. He brings out his knife, flips it open, and balances it on his thigh. “I have an idea. You tore a hole in Imreas’s guts, so maybe I should rip a hole in yours.”
Samson storms in. The old man’s brown and silverish eyes dart to me, but he stares down Johnny. “Where the hell’s your crew, John? We’ve got blasted Mecs sneaking up our ass. And what are you going to do about their request?”
“What request?”
“The bleeding transmission that’s blaring through our feed!” Samson taps something on the control panel, and a stiff voice booms:
“PASSENGER SHIP IMREAS, YOU ARE HOLDING A MEC HOSTAGE. HAND HIM OVER OR YOUR SHIP WILL BE DESTROYED. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO COMPLY.”
“That came from Stride?” Johnny yells over it.
“Stride is dead.” Samson manipulates the view screen until Leland’s ship magnifies to take up the whole window. It leaks gas in several places and a huge gash has been ripped through the place where the engine room might have been. “There’s a K-Force ship hiding behind Stride, and you were stupid enough to let them get into firing range.”
“Fucking K-Force?” Johnny stands. “You’re telling me that there is a K-Force ship up my ass and that it already took out my brother?”
“That’s what it looks like. But they want the Mec. We give him to them, and maybe we’ll have enough time to get back into the Pass. You know they won’t follow.” His silvery eyes glance down at where I hold my bleeding hand. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up in prison on the Edge for the rest of my life.”
The message begins to blare all over again. “PASSENGER SHIP IMREAS, YOU ARE HOLDING—”
“TURN THAT OFF!” Johnny yells.
“. . . HAND OVER THE MEC OR YOUR SHIP—”
“I can’t!” Samson yells. “They’ve taken over our network!”
“. . . NINE MINUTES TO COMPLY.”
“What Mec?!” Johnny screams in the new silence. “You?”
Samson looks over Johnny like he might be low functioning. “Ben. In Melee. Down in the airlock. You brought him in yourself.”
Johnny kicks me in the face, and I explode with pain. “I thought he was dead in there.”
Samson’s fingers fly over the control screen, reminding me too much of Ben. “No. There’s a life signature. It’s not moving, but it’s in there. We better act fast, Johnny.” Samson gazes down at where I hold my jaw. It’s not broken this time, but the pain is a pitch-perfect throb that makes it hard to think. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I get the feeling that he’s trying to hustle Johnny away from me . . . he’s trying to help!
Johnny begins to leave with Samson, but then stops short. “Wait. I almost forgot.” He spins around, towering down on me before he lifts me to my feet and slams his knife into my stomach.
Stars burst through my vision, and my legs crumple beneath me like some essential string was cut.
Samson shouts something, but Johnny just hauls me over his shoulder. “Now we can go.”
I don’t know how I’ve gotten back down to the docking bay, but Johnny drops me on to the catwalk, looping my arms around the guardrail so that I hold myself up.
The knife is still in me.
And Samson is gone. It’s just Johnny and me.
Alone.
He checks the airlock door that contains Melee and taps on a tablet.
“Say good-bye to your little boyfriend, Rain.” Loud, metallic clanging noises sound as the door unseals. Then Melee is sucked through the opening, falling into the deep of the Void. “Samson’s getting our engines going. We’ll take our chances back in the Pass.”
My heart lurches. The K-Force will pick Ben up. He’ll be safe. I did something right. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to save Walker. Maybe he’ll live on for me. For our whole lost family.
I start to cry.
Johnny turns around, flinging the tablet over the edge so that it crashes down into the depths of the ship. I begin to slip, but he pins me against the railing.
“Finally some real tears.” He fingers the wetness on my cheeks. “How about another pinch then?” he whispers. An electric pain erupts through me as he tugs the blade out of my guts. And jams it in all over again.
A black shockwave rolls through my body.
Johnny fixes my arms around the guardrail and steps back to admire his work. The pain jolting through me is like slivers of glass in my veins. I can hardly breathe, let alone keep my eyes open.
“Look at you. As docile as a baby. I bet I could even dance with you now.” He hoists me off the railing, swinging my limp body as he sways on the walkway. He even hums.
With each turn, I utter a string of moans that fill my throat with metallic-tasting blood. He stops dancing and hooks my arms around the railing once again.
Johnny runs his finger down my chin. “I want you to know that you were the best.” He leans way out over the guardrail and looks down. If I could get my hand free, maybe I could push him . . . but he’s too strong. Too tall. “Definitely the best. And in so many ways, I want to keep you.”
“Keep me?” I say softly. Keep me? “You can’t. I’m not yours.” The words don’t reach him, but they don’t need to. They’re mine, and they’re real. No matter what I gave him, I kept what matters deep within me. I close my eyes and feel the edges of myself. Fine, proud, and true. I may be dying, but I’m ready.
And I’m not going alone.
I open my eyes.
Johnny is haunted and terrible, and he speaks like the center of him has been long-hollowed. “I could even keep playing this game if you hadn’t taken my manhood.” He slams the railing so violently that it wobbles, and my arm slips free. I slide my free hand across the blood-soaked fabric on my s
tomach until I reach the knife’s handle.
I tug it free.
Scorching pain blinds me for such a moment that when I can see again, he’s caught me. “Now, now. None of that.” He knocks the knife away, and it clatters over the catwalk and down, down over the edge.
He takes me into his arms very gently. “We could have been great. Legendary. I could have really loved you,” he whispers into my hair. “And there were moments when you loved it. Admit it.”
“Yes,” my words bubble with blood. And he’s right. There were so many hours when I felt myself split with joy in his bed, whether or not I wanted to. There were times when I watched him sleep and realized that my life with him, for all its corruption, was the easiest I had ever known. And I’ll always have to remember that I gave him my virginity. I sold it. No, he stole it. I almost laugh, finally knowing what that phrasing means.
I’ll have to live with it all . . . for another minute, at least.
“Yes,” I say again, and he sighs happily, bringing me into an even tighter hold.
My legs find the railing, and I wrap one around the bar for leverage. And then I kiss his scorching lips, tasting the terrible liquor that’s still making him sway, and use my body for the best purpose I’ve ever used it for.
To throw us both over the edge.
His great height topples just like a skyscraper I once saw collapse on Earth City. Strong and tall, and then in a blink, rubbery and leveled. He rips at my clothes and hair without getting a real piece of me, falling beyond where I hang upside down, my one leg somehow still hooked to the guardrail.
He falls and falls.
Landing with a bone-splintering bash between unseen gears.
Gone.
I use the last of my strength to bring myself back onto the catwalk, to collapse on the walkway. MADE ON EARTH is stamped into the metal plate beside my face.
Okay, I close my eyes. I’m ready.
Footsteps hammer my consciousness and a man lifts my arm, picking me up and holding me against a wide but bony chest. He groans under my weight and smells of grease and steam. I slide an eye open and peer into a face full of sweat lines, a wild beard and otherworldly eyes. “Come on, Rain Runner. Stay awake.”
“No thanks,” I manage before my voice leaves me, and my heart
Stops.
CHAPTER
32
Tick.
My death feels colorless—a stretch of space without stars or planets or the white ties of the Void. It’s weightless and bodiless, without temperature or smell.
But there is poetry: “‘And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower. . . . I am the Poem of the Earth, said the voice of the rain.’”
Reck’d or unreck’d . . .
It’s not so bad at all.
Tick.
Except for the damn ticking.
Fingers slide across my hand, and I jerk. Something tugs, sending a sharp pain through my arm, and I open my eyes midgasp. I’m in an all-white room. Wires and tubes connect me to a panel on the wall. So I am alive.
“No!”
“Rain.” Ben leans over me, backlit by the brilliance of the room.
“No.” I cover my face. “This should be over!”
“It is,” he says. “Look at me.” I open one eye at a time. Ben is clean shaven and bright eyed, the blue overpowering the steel. “We’re safe on Holmes, my uncle’s ship. Imreas is . . . don’t you remember?”
I remember the knife. Johnny falling.
“I killed him.” Tears slip, and I reach for my wrist, ready to find it free of Johnny’s cursed bracelet, but my fingers connect with the metal. It even still gleams with scarlet light. I hiccup a sob.
Ben takes my hand in both of his. “We can’t get that off just yet. Not without possibly zapping you, but we’re working on it. I’m working on it, I promise.” He squeezes my hand. “You were dead, Rain. Samson brought you onboard in the hover cab just in time for the doctors to revive you, but it was close.” He pauses, and I see a familiar tatty book on the bedside. My dad’s favorite book. The one he read to my mother.
“That was you. You were reading to me.”
“I thought you might like it.” He clears his throat. “Or that it might help wake you.” He hands it to me, and I squeeze the worn-soft cover and feel the flooding strength of memories. So many memories. And not just of my family, but also Lo with her wide-eyed love of “you gingers,” and even Samson spouting poetry into glorious echoes as he dangled from the ceilingless engine room.
And now Ben. Ben reading to me while I cradled my own death. I glance into his eyes without seeing their color or strangeness; I only see Ben. My Ben. And all his sparks and stars.
I’m suddenly aware of how intently we’re taking each other in, and I fumble for words. “I don’t really know what happened. Samson was supposed to be powering up the engines. That’s what Joh . . . he said.” Johnny’s name is too hard for my mouth.
“Well, Samson lied. We’re towing Imreas and Stride back to the Edge. Leland is locked up. All those people are safe. You did that.”
“I just followed you.”
“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “No. That’s backward.”
“Then it really is over.” But as the words leave my lips, I remember why it started to begin with. I get up. “Walker!”
“Go easy.” He takes my waist, and we stare at each other while he guides my hips back to the bed. Then he starts disconnecting the wires one at a time. He’s halfway done before I find my voice.
“I’m sorry about dosing you.”
“What you did probably saved both of our lives. Probably.” He glances at me. “But that doesn’t mean I liked it.” He detaches the last wire from my arm.
“What about Walker?”
“We were able to recover his pod from the Void before it floated too far away. I’ll take you to him.” For such wonderful news, his voice is all wrong. A heavy feeling settles in my chest.
“What is it? What happened?”
“He’s no worse than he was.” Ben’s tone reveals that he is no better either. “I wanted to have more progress by the time you woke up. You’ve been in a coma for weeks.”
“Weeks?” I rub my arms, finding a new white scar on the back of my hand to match the burn scars left on my wrist and the crescent scar from the fish bite. I touch my stomach through the thin gown, my fingers catching on the welts from where I was stabbed. I remember the smell of metal and grease as Samson picked me up off the catwalk. “What about Samson? Will they lock him up?”
“They did arrest him at first, but since he’s been helping with Imreas’s security codes, they’ve granted him a pardon until we reach the Edge. The courts won’t go easy on him though. He helped Johnny for too long.”
I slide off the bed and stand on rubbery legs.
“Walker is on a different level.” Ben places a folded green uniform on the bed. “Do you need help changing? I’ll close my eyes. Or I can get a woman to help you.”
“No need.” I reach for the shirt, but already my breath is tight and fast as though I’ve been running. “Maybe you can help. But you don’t have to close your eyes. It’s not like you haven’t seen me naked before.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.” His eyes are already closed, and he bunches the shirt around the neck hole to slip it over my head. “Besides, you’d be surprised how capable I am without my sight from all those runs through the Pass.”
I slip the gown off my shoulders, looking at the way he holds out the shirt with his eyes sealed. I wait for him to peek or make a move, but he doesn’t budge.
“Is this respect?” I joke to hide my sudden awkwardness.
“It is,” he says without humor. “Like you deserve.” I step toward the shirt, and he loops it over my head. My arms are stiff and slow, and he guides them through the sleeves.
“I think I got the rest,” I say as I step into the pants, and Ben turns his back while I finish dressing. When I’ve fastened everyt
hing and braided my hair back, I lean around him and find that his eyes are still closed even though he’s facing the wall.
A yearning swells in my throat, and I slip my arms around his waist, pressing my face to the hollow between his shoulder blades. His shirt is so warm, and I’ve never realized how sweetly he smells. He holds my arms against his stomach, and I can feel the indented spot on his wrist where years of wearing a com wore the skin down to his bones.
“We’ll get better, Rain,” Ben says. “Every day, we’ll get a little bit better.”
We walk down a hallway as white as the room I woke in. In fact, everything is made from an opaque glassy substance, and doorways seem to yawn open when they’re touched or commanded.
“This ship is so strange.” I run my hand down the smooth surface. “What is this stuff called?”
“Memory glass. Although don’t let the word ‘glass’ fool you. It’s damn near impossible to break,” Ben says. “Almost everything on the Edge is made out of it.”
“It’s beautiful.” I touch the smooth hardness, remembering the surviving panes of the greenhouse. Could I imagine a whole world made out of something so precious? Unbreakable? “How do they make it so strong?”
“They smash it a few million times. Right down to the atoms until it’s so pure that its molecules line up like a puzzle.”
“You smash it to make it stronger?” He nods, and I love it. “I’ve never imagined anything like that. But how do you know where you’re going? There are no signs or directions and every hallway looks the same.”
“There are signs within the glasswork . . . and ads and pictures. It’s a jumbled mess, if you ask me.” He taps his temple. “You need the hardware to see it.”
We turn down a hallway, passing more Mecs than I ever imagined, but instead of staring at them, they openly stare at me. “Maybe they think you’re the one who eats brains,” Ben teases.
“One thing certainly hasn’t changed. Your jokes are still pretty bad.”
The Color of Rain Page 26
