“What are they for?” I whisper.
Johnny steps close and touches one of my curls. “They’re gifts for Leland.”
“But I heard that he’s—”
Johnny tugs my hair. “Just pick.”
I walk down the line, my heart limping in my chest. I close my eyes and point to the girl from the far end, the tallest in the group. She’s damn near Johnny’s height with razor straight, dark hair. She reminds me of Kaya a little, but that’s not why I picked her. I chose her because she looks the oldest—the least afraid.
“That’s it.” Johnny steps back, but the candlelight continues to highlight the horror on the two chosen girls’ faces. “The rest of you will be locked down until we exit the Pass. If you have a problem, you can ask Ben,” he stops short, but my chest spasms at the mention of Ben’s name. “If you have a problem, save it until I get back,” he says and for a moment he loses his usual lordly demeanor.
“I admit it. I miss having the Mec to order around.” He winks at me. Winks. I’ve never seen that behavior before, and it fills me with dread. If there’s still a hidden aspect to Johnny’s personality, it can’t be good.
It’s got to be the worst.
We exit the Family Room with the chosen girls, and Johnny hands me the candle before forcing a large deadbolt lock on the door. The girls huddle together, eyeing me as though I just stepped from their nightmares.
We take the stairs down to the docking bay where I see just how Imreas is connected to Stride. Several of the airlocks are open and sealed against mirroring airlocks on the other ship. One of the closed ones holds Walker’s pod, and I push past it, not wanting Johnny’s attention. I glance through the deeper dark to where I can imagine the catwalk leading to Melee. Is Ben nearby? Is he watching through the shadows with those amazing eyes?
I am the last to pass through the dead, empty space of the airlock. Every step brings an image of the people who knew this room as their last: Kaya, Lo, even that Amanda girl. And all those Touched . . .
The candlelight crawls along the grated floor of the airlock, and I stop when I see something—a shred of rolled-up paper. I stoop, and tug it out of the grid. This is impossible. No way.
But I don’t even have to unroll the small square to recognize it. It’s Lo’s picture of her mom. Or what’s left of it. The edges are worn so soft that it couldn’t be any other piece of scrap in the universe. After all, it was kept snuggled against her skin for years.
I seal it in my palm. Lo. I imagine her so clearly through the shadows—her hips thrust out beneath her stretchy skirt and the pink streaks beneath her blonde hair. The neon angel who magically appeared when I could not have made it another day with Walker on my own.
And as I imagine my best friend, she shakes her head, her face clouding with anger.
I hurry my steps and run straight into the back of the tall girl. “Sorry.”
“Scarlet Siren,” she hisses. “Don’t touch me.” And she hustles to put her arms around the other girl.
“I had to choose,” I whisper so low that she might not even hear me. “I have to keep him happy. I have to survive.”
“Sure you do, and the cost is our existence, huh?”
Existence. I squeeze the photo in my fist and tuck it into the front of my bra. “That’s a good question,” I mumble just loud enough for her to hear. She cocks her head at me for a moment before passing from Imreas’s airlock to Stride’s.
Every grate and beam of Stride shows more age and abuse than Imreas’s. Rust patches catch the candlelight like spots of dried blood, and dented sections of metal indicate years of trauma. Johnny knocks on a pockmarked door, and it swings open to reveal a dozen crew members waiting.
Like the ships, the crew of Stride reminds me of Imreas’s with marked differences. They are dirty and glass-eyed, their black flight suits torn and faded like they’ve been in the Void for years and years.
Johnny elbows the girls toward the first crew member he sees. “Take them to the party room. Don’t lose them. Where is my brother?”
Brother?
Leland is Johnny’s brother? Nerves prickle down my back like a fleeing spider.
The crew member doesn’t answer; he doesn’t even look in our direction. Johnny knocks on the man’s forehead, and he turns. “Tell me where Captain Leland is.”
“Where Captain Leland is?” the man replies in a stiff voice. Something about his demeanor is strange—disassociated, maybe—like he’s been beaten into a submissive state.
“Never mind, you waste of space. Don’t know how he puts up with you.” Johnny reaches back for my elbow and rips me forward, through the bowels of the murky, decrepit ship.
We march up a steep spiral staircase, and not even the candlelight can find the end before us.
By the time we reach the top, my legs are sore and loose, and Johnny huffs a few breaths before pressing forward. We enter a command deck lit by a central tank filled with circling fish as long as my arm. The strange creatures must excrete a kind of phosphorescence, which lights the water, giving the room an eerie yellow-green glow.
The tank sheds most of its light over a waist-high command console, and leaning against it with his back to us, is a man completely dressed in white. His hair might be golden, but by the weird light, it gleams olive.
Johnny presses me into the room with a hand on my lower back.
“Lee,” Johnny says.
Leland turns around. “John.”
Brothers indeed. They have the same lean angles to their faces, but Leland must be at least ten years older than Johnny. “So you’re bringing your girls into my command now?”
“Just this one. She’s special. What do you think?”
“Little brother always needs approval.”
Johnny either doesn’t hear this or it doesn’t bother him. I, on the other hand, am in Leland’s breathing space. He lowers his face into mine so fast that I don’t have a chance to pull away. Not like I could. Johnny’s hand braces the back of my neck.
Leland’s features are like a smoothed portrait, maybe too smooth. His eyes are brown like Johnny’s except that they’re flecked with gold that feels almost electric even by the dim light of the candle. My stomach churns into a tight knot, but I hold my stare for as long as he does. One of his eyes twitches a little, and he turns back to Johnny.
“She’ll give you trouble,” he concludes.
“I already know that much.” Johnny drops his hand from my neck. “That’s what I like about her. She even executed a rather elaborate coup to release my merchandise on Entra. She failed, of course, but what a game.”
Leland’s frown is intense in the yellow glow. “You don’t get to play with my livelihood. Did you get them all back?”
“Most of them. But the only ones we lost were the too old and the too young.”
“Lost?!” I say before I can stop myself. “You dumped—” Johnny cuffs me on the back of the head so fast that I bite the edge of my tongue.
Leland huffs, but if I’m not wrong, he’s more than a little pleased by the swiftness of Johnny’s punishment. “The too old I can do without, but the too young . . . well, you’ll just have to owe me. You know I like to keep the young ones. Head count?”
“913.”
“Father wanted 1,500, John. I can’t bail you out with my personal stores this time. I’ll have to tell him that you ran short. Again.” Father . . . brothers? So the trade is not only Johnny’s business but his family’s business? Does Ben know that, and if he does, why didn’t he tell me?
“You work for your dad, Johnny?” I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me.
Leland laughs. “Work? That would involve choice. Right there, John-O?”
“Shut your mouth.” Johnny moves forward like he’s going to get in Leland’s face, but the blond, older brother doesn’t back down. In fact, his smile eerily grows until Johnny looks away.
“Johnny’s just an errand boy with a nice suit. I bet he’s duped you into b
elieving that he’s a real self-made sort of a man.”
I expect an explosion, but Johnny’s shoulders hunch. He crosses to the fish tank, laid bare, and it makes me less wary of him for once. And more fearful of this Leland. Every hair on my body has taken a stand against his all-white presence.
Leland pushes the candle in my hand closer to my hair. “Is your hair red or is that a trick of the flame?”
“It’s real,” I say in a small voice. I clear my throat. “It’s red.”
“Intriguing.” He glances at Johnny and then back to me. “Do you want to see the fish?”
“No.”
His thin lips spread into a horrible grin. The spaces between his teeth catch too much shadow, making them look sharp. “Clearly an Earth City girl. Always awed by the universe and then too terrified of it to get any closer.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Liar.” He blows out the candle, and I can’t stop a gasp.
“Play nice, Lee,” Johnny calls. His profile walks around to the other side of the huge tank.
He’s left me.
“Look for the ruby-toothed striper, John. She’s a new beauty,” Leland says.
I need Johnny’s lighter. I need to relight this candle. I can’t be here in the dark with this freak. . . .
Icy fingers caress my throat, and I freeze.
“Playing games with my merchandise. How rude.” Even his whispered voice is frigid.
“They’re people,” I manage.
He chuckles, and his hand squeezes my throat. “What a drumming pulse.” He gets even closer. “Tell me again that you’re not afraid of me.”
I don’t. I can’t.
“Those people are people, true enough, even if John doesn’t think so. But what they really are is mine, little red whore.” He lets go, but one finger hooks inside my shirt and caresses the edge of my breast. “I think . . . yes, I think I need to have you.” His touch is as cold as something that’s slithered up from a deep, wet place, and I feel terror unlike anything I’ve ever known.
“Yes. I will have you tonight.”
CHAPTER
26
I’ve stopped breathing. My mouth is open, but nothing comes in or out. Leland’s snaking finger digs deeper into my shirt until it’s close to where I stashed Lo’s mom’s picture. I have to run. I have to do something—but I can’t move.
A flame jumps into existence a few feet away.
Johnny holds up his lighter and knocks his brother’s hand out of my shirt. He relights my candle. “Fuck, Lee. I leave for one minute.”
Leland doesn’t seem to be listening. “I’ve changed my mind, John. I like this girl. I want her.”
Johnny’s arm folds around me, and I’ve never been so thrilled to feel it tighten me to him. I tuck my own arm around his waist and squeeze his belt. “Yeah, well, don’t get any ideas. I brought two others for you.”
Leland breathes a long, fake-sounding sigh. “They better keep their spirits longer than the last one. She only made it five hours. Hardly worth the pursuit.”
“If you want them to last, don’t be so rough.” Johnny strokes my hair. “They like it when you show a little tenderness.”
My heart snaps back and forth in its rhythm. What will he do to those girls?
What won’t he do?
Stride’s common room is lined by shadowy figures. The crew member who met us at the airlock isn’t the only zombie-like presence on the ship; there are dozens of them. All wearing a distant, weary look.
A large fire sits in a metal pit at the center of the room, casting orange light at the faces huddled around it. The two green girls hold each other, and Leland examines them from the other side of the flames where he lounges across an oversized chair. He seems disappointed.
He seems to have me on his mind.
I ignore the constant needling of his gaze, lying against Johnny’s knees while he drinks a black, sugary-smelling liquor with his brother.
“You tell our father I won’t do another run for less than sixty a head.” Johnny’s voice is getting wilder with each drink. “Tell him I’ll find another buyer. I’ll go to the Gate myself.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Leland responds. “You still think of Imreas as your passenger ship, but if you take her out of Void space to the deep outposts, you’ll lose all your valued respectability. Don’t pretend to be rash, John. You’re too vain for that.”
Gate. Deep outposts. I make a mental list to run by Ben, but then I realize that I won’t be able to. I’ll never have the chance if he jumps ship and hides on Stride before we leave the Pass.
I may never see him again.
I glance at the glass in Johnny’s hand. At his wide thumb and its unique print. Ben only needs something that Johnny touched, but how would I get it to him before Ben needs to act?
“You’re just like father.” Johnny’s voice has begun to slur. I try to take his drink from him, and he hits my hand.
Leland laughs and the sound streaks around the room like a rabid animal. “You’re running your mouth because you’re drinking. You need food.” He snaps his fingers, and one of the shadowy forms step forward with a tray of yellow bread. He yanks on the crew member’s uniform, bringing him down to eye level. “You will serve each person here from this tray,” he says. “Don’t step through the fire.”
How ridiculously specific.
The crew member walks around the pit, approaching the girls first. The smaller one shrieks. He comes to me next, and I wait for him to lean all the way down to where I sit. What could be so scary about him?
My fingers stop over the tray while my gaze locks onto unfocused eyes. The crew member’s jaw is slack and his hands shake.
“He’s Touched!”
Johnny and Leland laugh together. “Don’t look so shocked, Rain,” Johnny says. “What would they be worth if we couldn’t work them?”
“But how is he following directions? The Touched on Earth City can’t manage the smallest of tasks.”
Leland’s eyes glint. He snaps his fingers twice this time, and another zombie-like crew member steps forward. This one is a woman—or really just a girl a few years older than me. Her hair has been shorn unevenly, and her eyes are empty, but this doesn’t hide the fact that she was once rather pretty.
Leland tugs her arm until she’s across his lap. “They’re easily manipulated. You just have to adjust their brains a tad.” He takes her chin in his hand and rotates her face in the light, revealing three fingernail-sized puncture scars across her forehead.
“Adjust?”
“With this.” He pulls a small pick hammer from his belt and tosses it over the flames. I fumble to catch it, and the tip pricks my palm. A bead of red swells instantly.
I seal my hand into a fist and look over the tool. Its wooden handle is stained with old blood. “You mean, you use this to . . .”
“Lobotomize them. Ingenious, isn’t it? It’s my own design.” Leland’s voice is tickled with pleasure, and Johnny laughs as he downs more of his black drink.
A sickening taste fills my mouth. I can’t stand to touch the tool a second longer, and I throw the pick hammer back.
Leland catches it out of the air effortlessly. He tucks it back into his belt and then slips his hand between the missing buttons of the girl’s flight suit. He caresses her chest while staring me down. “Do you want to watch me do one?” he says in a tone so low that the words feel like they only find my ears.
Do one? Does he mean lobotomize one of them or . . .
“Don’t let my brother fool you, Rain. They’re still worthless.” Johnny is officially drunk. “You have to be so damn specific with your orders, and they work themselves to death sooo easily.” He laughs like this is the crowning joke to a wonderful evening.
This is far worse than I ever imagined. Does Ben know about this? Does anyone know that these people are not just abducted and enslaved, but tortured and warped into vacant robotic shells? How could the people who sell the Touched
be okay with something this inhumane? How could anyone?
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How is this possible? How come no one stops you?”
Leland is pleased by my honesty. “John, have you never explained the business of this universe?”
Johnny groans. “I don’t care.”
“The people who own Earth City—”
“Own?”
“Don’t be so naïve. The planet is owned by a corporate industry on the Gate. They take care in making things run smoothly, and there’s nothing less smooth than people cutting out of work to care for ailing family members. Think of the chaos!”
I stare into the red-orange embers of the fire pit. “They’re shipped away so that Earth City keeps producing.” That’s why they took my mom. And Jeremy. He wasn’t even Touched, but he was in the way, and they took him just the same. I feel Lo’s picture between my breasts. This is so much more than losing your existence. This is having it stolen.
And raped.
“Everything has a purpose in this universe, little whore,” Leland adds into my silence. “Weren’t you relieved to find yours between your legs?”
I clap eyes on Leland, feeling the stirring of my long numbed rage. “I’m more than Johnny’s girl,” I whisper. I don’t know if he hears me, but Johnny’s sudden snores snap the intensity of the room like a taut wire.
Leland’s ravenous gaze clicks onto my body until I have to tuck myself beneath Johnny’s arm. The protection works, but the dead weight of Johnny doesn’t block out the looming figures of Stride’s lobotomized crew, nor the sound of Leland playing with his two new girls. Ripping sounds. Snivels and crying.
And the intermittent punctuation of his shhh that sends ice down my spine.
He leaves much later, taking the girls with him. I want to be relieved by his absence, but I feel nothing close to it. He’ll torture them. Kill them. And not via a frozen death out the airlock . . . something much more horrid.
I picture Walker’s small face, and I can’t help but imagine puncture scars on his temples and a tray in his hand . . . and I begin to throw up. I stumble from beneath Johnny and heave my guts in the corner, choking on my breath until almost everything inside of me spills out. When I finish, I find the Touched girl who Leland fondled standing near me. Her eyes are dead and flat in the light from the fading fire, but she still looks like a person. A very, very lost person.
The Color of Rain Page 21