Vanishing Rain (Blue Spectrum Chronicles Book 2)

  Vanishing Rain

  lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

  L.L. Crane

  Blue Spectrum Chronicles

  Book 2

  www.llcrane.com

  lisa@llcrane.com

  For Lily

  “All I need, all, all I need, all I need is you smiling…”

  (Awolnation)

  Vanishing Rain is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, are entirely coincidental.

  ©2015 L. L. Crane

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Cover Design: L. L. Pix Design

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1 Good-bye

  Chapter 2 Plan

  Chapter 3 Vanishing

  Chapter 4 Tools

  Chapter 5 Liquid

  Chapter 6 Caught

  Chapter 7 Garment

  Chapter 8 Haven

  Chapter 9 Blush

  Chapter 10 Fire

  Chapter 11 Fever

  Chapter 12 Injection

  Chapter 13 Heartbeat

  Chapter 14 Fighter

  Chapter 15 Practice

  Chapter 16 Vanish

  Chapter 17 Rain Drops

  Chapter 18 Map

  Chapter 19 Warning

  Chapter 20 Bad-Bye

  Chapter 21 Free

  Chapter 22 Shots

  Chapter 23 Hiding

  Chapter 24 Dog

  Chapter 25 Subway

  Chapter 26 Troll

  Chapter 27 Beast

  Chapter 28 Mutant

  Chapter 29 Fingers

  Chapter 30 Necklaces

  Chapter 31 Wire

  Chapter 32 Father

  Chapter 33 Promise

  Chapter 34 Friends

  Chapter 35 Killings

  Chapter 36 Waiting

  Chapter 37 Run

  Chapter 38 Blues

  Chapter 39 Acceptance

  Chapter 40 Home

  Chapter 41 Lordess and Love

  Chapter 42 Invitation

  Chapter 43 Surprise

  Chapter 44 Reunion

  Chapter 45 Ice

  Chapter 46 Choice

  Chapter 47 Arms

  Chapter 48 Kick

  Chapter 49 Attack

  Chapter 50 Kiss

  Chapter 51 Shattered Heart

  Chapter 52 Go

  Chapter 53 Awakened

  Chapter 54 Patience

  Chapter 55 War

  Chapter 56 The Peanut

  Chapter 1

  Good-bye

  That last morning was also the first. I kissed Snow good-bye, pecking his forehead like the mother bird I had always been to him. The knowledge that I would probably never see him again was painful, a sledge hammer pounding relentlessly against my already battered chest. Inside of that bird-like ribcage of mine was an equally injured heart, which had nothing to do with Snow and everything to do with Orion. Snow wouldn’t understand, even if I tried to explain it to him. Gods, he was only eight years old. Still, I fiercely held him to me, probably a little too harshly.

  “Geez, Rain,” he stammered, rubbing his eyes as he sat up groggily. “Why are you squeezing me?”

  “I just love you that much, little buddy,” I told him with a fake laugh. He knew something was up, casting his blue, almond shaped eyes at me, almost suspiciously. His dark hair had just been trimmed, and even though he was only eight, there was something about him that screamed thirty. It had always been that way with Snow.

  I hadn’t seen him that sad since we lived with our mom, and thoughts of her turned my body cold, as if the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Of course, whenever my mom came onto the scene, everything took a turn for the worse. I ruffled Snow’s hair and left him, striding away from his boyishly decorated room as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  But everything was out of the ordinary.

  I searched for Sun and Storm, waiting for Snow to kick up a fuss. He didn’t. Part of me was disappointed by that. Another part was proud, that maybe he had moved on and had begun to trust. Gods knew, I needed to.

  Finding the toddlers in their playroom, I snuggled them both to me, breathing in their soft, blonde curls and sweet baby scent.

  Baby scent.

  Baby scent.

  Those words stalled me, even as the toddlers both took it all in stride, too busy with their toys, at being perfectly S.L.A.G. free to even wonder what I was up to. Their careful, non-biological, and very legal conception made it so.

  Dove was next. For some reason, she was the hardest of all. Even harder than my dad, who was in such a rush, he just waved good-bye to me, as if it were any other ordinary day.

  It wasn’t.

  “I’m off now,” I told Dove, pretending I was going to school. She was preoccupied, picking up the toddler’s toys and searching for her lost tablet.

  She lifted up her flaxen head, soft brown eyes fixing on me with love. “Don’t forget about getting the Shot after your shift at the Clinic,” she reminded me, just as Sun and Storm waged a sibling war over the same toy. She turned to them, fussing at them about their behavior.

  Forgetting all about mine.

  I stared at them all, wistfully, wishing I could stay with them forever.

  I couldn’t.

  “I won’t,” I answered with more fake happiness. Fortunately, Dove was so busy with the toddlers that she gave me no mind.

  What I told her was simple, an agreement we had made the day before. It was also a lie.

  I pushed a button and watched the door glide shut, gathered my bag and satchel, and left the apartment, knowing I would never be back.

  Not by choice.

  I walked with determination to my air glider, hating every moment of what I was doing, every movement that my body made. More than anything else, I wanted to stay with my family, remain in Citizen School, become the scientist I was training to be and find a cure for S.L.A.G. But that wasn’t an option.

  Sighing forlornly, I punched in the coordinates for downtown, to the recognizable mirrored building I hoped would give me the answers I needed. I had nine point seven three minutes to calculate what I was doing, if it was even worth it.

  Thoughts had been circling in my mind, a cyclone of craziness from the moment I first discovered that I was pregnant less than a day ago. It wasn’t too late to back out now. I could show up at school, just be disciplined for being late, probably get a mini-detention. Number 74 was sweet on me, and to be honest I had never seen him give the “charge” to anyone, so chances were that I could escape the electrical punishment the Administration reserved for those of us who couldn’t seem to follow their mandates.

  I could get the Shot, and the baby would automatically be aborted. No harm done. Chances were the baby would be born with S.L.A.G., anyway.

  But this wasn’t just any baby. It was my baby. And Orion’s. For whatever that was worth, which at that moment wasn’t much. I let out a huge gust of frustrated air at the thought of Orion. Gods, where could he be?

  My glider landed quietly without even a bump, and I grudgingly tugged myself away from those thoughts. No, I was going through with this, with or without Orion. At all costs, this baby would be born, and I knew without a doubt that the price would be great. Not financially, but personally. If anything, Dove had taught me that.

  It was one of those rare spring days in Province A where the air was actually clean and you
could see beautiful, green trees, something besides smog and skyscrapers. At another time, I might have even enjoyed a day like that. But not on that particular day.

  Sighing deeply, I reached into my satchel, the one I had packed so carefully, and pulled out one of Sun and Storm’s sippy cups. I had already filled several of them with my dad and Dove’s brandy. Well, I guessed it was brandy. It was a dark amber liquid, and when I smelled it, I knew it was booze of some sort. Brandy just seemed like a good name at the time. As far as I knew it could have been rubbing alcohol.

  I tipped back the cup, downing the liquid in one gulp, feeling it burn my throat as if a wildfire was blazing through my chest. I took another swig and then stopped. I wanted my senses to be numb, didn’t want to feel what I was about to do. At the same time, I couldn’t be entirely drunk, either. If that happened, I couldn’t carry through with my plan. I had to be a little drunk but not recklessly so. The only other alcohol I had ever consumed was a bit of champagne.

  I giggled out loud at the thought. Garment’s champagne. Garment. One of the only people I trusted enough to help me. There was Ivy, but she was at Citizen School, and that was the last place I could show up, even with my tracker-timer.

  I pulled the scissors I had taken from Dove’s wrapping paper box out of my satchel and doused them with the nameless amber liquid. It was the best antiseptic I had. Hell, it was the only antiseptic I had, and I knew that the scissors had only been used to cut wrapping paper for presents, so I doubted if they were too dirty. But I still didn’t want to take any chances. Not for myself, but for the baby.

  I took another swig, and as if on cue, my head began to feel fuzzy. My teeth were floating in my mouth and everything before me…the buildings, the gliders, the rapidly moving people on the street were spinning in colors of greens and gold. Of a blurry spring day that should have boasted of happiness.

  Oh Gods, I thought, I am getting drunk. Then, everything became humorous, like when the guards had injected me with truth serum. I hysterically giggled out loud, finding the fuzzy city landscape to be the funniest thing I had ever seen.

  Groggily, I stared at the scissors. Or rather, the two sets of scissors. It was difficult for me to discern which pair was real and which was the one that floated innocuously beside it. Still, my mind was alert enough to wonder if the scissors in my hand were sharp enough.

  Busting up with my own private joke, I thought, too bad. Those scissors, sharp or not, would have to work. Another giggle erupted, like one of those squiggly snakes that jumped out of a can. For a joke. That seemed to be the funniest thing I had ever heard, and as I laughed, I fell off the glider chair onto the floor. That seemed even more humorous, and I continued with my tirade of laughter.

  Get your shit together, Rain, I told myself. Over and over again. This was much worse than the bit of champagne I had at Garment’s…under Dove’s watchful eye.

  Fuck. Where was Dove now? I snickered under my alcoholic fog, thinking of the scolding I would get for swearing. Ha. That’s only if they heard me.

  With great effort, I hoisted myself back up onto the glider seat. Scissors in hand, I reached for the first aid kit, settling it down beside me. I had to struggle to open it, because it kept moving on me, just like the scissors, and the clasp was blurry, floating in a golden arc. This caused another set of the giggles, and my head was so woozy, I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep.

  But then I thought of Orion, and that sobered me right up. He had left me. Alone and pregnant. Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore, and I started bawling like a little baby, like Storm or Sun when they were injured or had lost a toy. I had been hurting inside for so long, I didn’t know it could get any worse, but with the alcohol, my pain was intensified. At least a thousand times over. Maybe more. I clutched my heart, thinking I would blow up, just bust up into a million tiny pieces and turn to bloody dust.

  I bit my lower lip until I could taste real blood, wet, metallic and earthy. Staring at my forearm, at the ugly tracker-timer that flashed its horrific numbers at me, I knew it was now or never. I held the scissors in my right hand and carefully examined the rectangular tracker-timer. It had been implanted when I was an infant, but if I was to carry through with my plan it had to go. I definitely could not be traced.

  Taking in a sharp breath, I dug into my skin with the scissors right next to the tracker-timer, slicing my flesh away from it. As the sharp scissors impaled my skin, I screamed out loud, and my head swirled in dark colors; blacks and greys and ugly browns.

  I shook my head and focused on my arm, blood gushing from the slash I had just made. My head spun in woozy circles as pain rambled through my arm. My hands shaking, I held the scissors as tightly as I could and sliced into my arm again, just on the other side of the tracker-timer. This time I threw my head back and roared, the rough noise exiting my lungs, an injured animal fighting for its life.

  I should have thought of the people who might hear me, but by then, I was too far gone. Shaking my head, as thick, crimson blood gushed from my arm, I quickly cut into the other two sides of the rectangular device on my forearm. I howled in pain, louder now, piercing echoes that slammed violently into my ears. Tears flew down my cheeks from the pain, and I wanted to run to Dove, to have her make everything okay.

  Gods, I wondered, was I even making the right decision? Blood was gushing everywhere, my stomach churning into a nausea pit at the sight of the crimson waterfall flowing from my arm.

  I took another swig from the sippy cup and yanked the tracker- timer from my arm. Pain shot ruthlessly through me as I drunkenly examined it. The tiny wires and electrodes that had been implanted so long ago stretched from my forearm like a spider, its legs protruding like wiry, bloody tentacles.

  Rivers of red spurted onto my clothes, washing down my uniform, staining my skin. I woozily grabbed the scissors and snipped the wires, cutting at anything that was attached to me…to the tracker-timer. At last, hands shaking, I yanked it out, holding the wretched device in my hand, red and metal and ugly.

  As quickly as I could, I reached into the first aid kit and wrapped my arm with cottony, white gauze, watching with fascination as blood leaked from my arm, immediately staining the bandage red. As my head twirled a crazy ballet of circles, my arm bleeding, and my heart breaking, I realized one thing.

  For the first time since I was born, I was free.

  Without my tracker-timer, nobody could track me.

  Nobody could find me.

  Rain 24-A had all but vanished.

  Chapter 2

  Plan

  It must have been several hours later when I awoke with muddled images filling my head, splotchy and ugly. I gagged, nausea taking over my stomach, my body. Somehow even my brain. My head was spinning and the glider was twirling around in circles. But I knew I hadn’t moved.

  My eyes slowly drifted to my arm, blood oozing out of the white gauze, a red inkblot of freedom. I moved my eyes to the severed tracker-timer that had settled on the floor of my glider, a reminder to my poor head and body of what I had done. There was no going back after removing it, but with the stupid thing lying right there, I realized in my foggy state, that I could still be traced. Paranoia kicked in, clenching my body into a vice. They had probably put out an alert for me, and it wouldn’t take them long to find me if I didn’t get going. The faster the better.

  But I couldn’t seem to move, to form a plan beyond getting away from parking garage.

  Orion had left clues, or so I thought. He and my S.L.A.G. brother, Ice, had disappeared at about the same time, and I didn’t know if that was just a coincidence or my mind playing tricks on me, a nasty, merciless magician nestled inside my brain. There was the letter K. For some stupid reason, the letter K had kept popping up. On the back of the necklace he had given me. In the stars. In the dirt of our hedge gap meeting place. I hadn’t known if they were real clues or if I was losing my mind. Probably a little of both, but it didn’t change my situation. I was pregnant, alone, and dete
rmined that the Administration was not going to kill my baby, S.L.A.G. or not.

  My head spun furiously as grey clouds swirled above the parking garage, the small amount of light that snuck in splitting my head into two, maybe three distinct pieces. Thick nausea overtook me again, and in an instant, I leaned over and vomited, filling the floor of my glider with a golden bile that burned more coming out than going in. I gagged, saliva dripping off of my lips. My arm screamed in pain, demanding that the tracker-timer that had been there for eighteen years be replaced. Gods, what had I done?

  I ignored the pain and nausea as I struggled to sit up, thankful that I had at least wrapped my arm with gauze before I passed out.

  I thought about Province K…the Asters…the elusive, dead Province that supposedly housed the Exiles.

  Could I really become an Exile? While pregnant and alone? And how would I get there?

  I had scoured my tablet, searching for information on Province K, but all I could find was typical Administration bullshit. What did Ivy say that day at the teen center? I scrunched my face up, trying to remember. The past few weeks wobbled and teetered in my mind. Then it came to me. She said the Exiles took the abandoned sewer routes under the city and survived by eating rats.

  Always a gagger, I retched at the thought, then I threw up again. It had become a normal morning activity, and I had been blaming it on nerves. But the previous day, when Dove had told me I missed the Shot while I had been incarcerated, I easily pieced it all together. I vividly recalled the previous month when I had passed, maybe before they could give me the Shot. That meant two missed months of birth control shots, and so much had been happening that I didn’t even connect that I had been throwing up almost every morning since Orion had disappeared. Since that night in the hedge…

  Just then, I spilled the contents of my stomach again, my heart aching as if a giant hand were squeezing it. I puked repeatedly, spewing my insides out onto the floor of the already soiled glider. I wondered if I would just vomit out a tiny baby, because I was sure there was nothing left in my stomach. It was as empty as my heart, as bloody as my arm.