Legend (10 page)

Read Legend Online

Authors: Marie Lu

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Dystopian, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Love & Romance, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Social Issues, #Death & Dying, #Dating & Sex, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Legend
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It took her a long time to put her hand in mine. “Okay,” she whispered, so softly that I could barely hear her.
That night, we camped out behind a pawn shop that had a pair of old chairs and a ripped-up couch lying in its alley. I cleaned the girl’s knees with alcohol stolen from a bar, letting her bite down on a rag so she wouldn’t shriek and draw attention to us. Other than when I was tending to her scrapes, she never let me get near her. Whenever my hand accidentally brushed her hair or bumped her arm, she would flinch as if burned by steam from a kettle. Finally I just gave up trying to talk to her. I let her have the couch, while I laid out my shirt as a pillow and tried to get comfortable on the pavement.
“If you want to leave in the morning, just go,” I said to her. “You don’t have to wake me up or say good-bye or anything.” My eyelids were growing heavy, but she stayed wide awake, staring unblinkingly at me, even as I fell asleep.
She was still there in the morning. She followed me around as I scavenged in garbage bins, picking out old clothes and edible bits of leftover food. I tried asking her to leave. I even tried shouting at her. An orphan would be a huge inconvenience. But although I made her cry a few times, when I looked over my shoulder she’d still be there, trailing me a short distance away.
Two nights later, as we sat together by a crude fire, she finally spoke to me. “My name is Tess,” she whispered. Then she studied my face, like she wanted to guess my reaction.
I only shrugged. “Good to know,” I said.
And that was that.
 
 
Tess bolts out of her sleep. Her arm whacks my head.
“Ouch,” I mutter as I rub my forehead. Pain runs through my healing arm, and I hear the silver bullets Tess took from my clothes clink together in my pocket. “If you wanted me to wake up, you could’ve just tapped me.”
She holds a finger up to her lips. Now I’m on the alert. We’re still sitting underneath the pier, but it’s probably a couple hours before dawn, and the skyline has already gone dark. The only light comes from several antique streetlamps lining the edge of the lake. I glance at Tess. Her eyes glint in the darkness.
“Did you hear something?” she whispers.
I frown. Usually I can hear something suspicious before Tess does, but this time I hear nothing at all. We both stay still for a long moment. I hear the occasional lap of waves. The churning sound of metal pushing water. Now and then, a passing car.
I look at Tess again. “What did you hear the first time?”
“It sounded like . . . something gurgling,” she whispers.
Before I can think much about it, I hear footsteps and then a voice approaching the pier above us. We both shrink farther into the shadows. It’s a man’s voice, and his footsteps sound oddly heavy. I realize a second later that the man is walking in step with someone else. A pair of street police.
I push myself farther back against the bank, and some of the loose dirt and rocks give way. They roll silently down into the sand. I keep pushing until my back hits a surface that’s hard and smooth. Tess does the same.
“There’s something brewing,” one of the police says. “Plague’s popped up in the Zein sector this time.”
Their footsteps clomp overhead and I see their figures walk along the beginning of the pier. Off in the distance, the first signs of light are turning the horizon a murky gray.
“I’ve never heard of the plague showing up there.”
“Must be a stronger strain.”
“What are they going to do?”
I try to hear what the other policeman has to say, but by now the two have walked far enough that their voices have turned to murmurs. I take a deep breath. The Zein sector is a good thirty miles away from here—but what if the strange red mark on my mother’s door means that they’re infected with this new strain? And what will the Elector do about it?
“Day,” Tess whispers.
I look at her. She turns against the bank so that her back now faces out toward the lake. She points at the deep indent we’ve made in the bank. When I turn around, I see what she’s pointing to.
The hard surface I’d had my back against is actually a sheet of metal. When I brush away more of the rocks and dirt, I see that the metal is lodged deep in the bank, so that it’s probably what’s holding the bank up in the first place. I squint at the surface.
Tess looks at me. “It’s hollow.”
“Hollow?” I put my ear against the ice-cold metal. A wave of noise hits me—the gurgling and hissing sound that Tess heard earlier. This isn’t just a metal structure to hold up the lake’s shores. When I pull away from it and look closer at the metal, I notice symbols carved on its surface.
One of these is the Republic’s flag, imprinted faintly against the metal. Another is a small red number:
 
 
318
“I SHOULD BE THE ONE GOING OUT THERE. NOT YOU.”
I grit my teeth and try not to look at Thomas. His words could have come right out of Metias’s mouth. “I’ll look less suspicious than you,” I reply. “People may find it easier to trust me.” We’re standing in front of a window in Batalla Hall’s north wing, watching Commander Jameson at work on the other side of the glass. Today they caught a spy from the Colonies who was secretly spreading propaganda about “how the Republic is lying to you!” Spies are usually shipped out to Denver, but if they’re caught in a big city like Los Angeles, we take them before the capital does. He’s dangling upside down in the interrogation room right now. Commander Jameson has a pair of scissors in her hand.
I tilt my head a little as I look at the spy. I already hate him as much as I hate anything about the Colonies—he’s not affiliated with the Patriots, that’s for sure, but that just makes him more of a coward. (So far, every Patriot we’ve hunted down has killed himself before getting taken in.) This spy’s young, probably in his late twenties. About the same age my brother was. I’m slowly growing used to talking about Metias in past tense.
From the corner of my eye, I can see that Thomas is still looking at me. Commander Jameson officially promoted him to fill my brother’s position, but Thomas has little power over what I choose to do on this test mission, and it drives him crazy. He would have balked at letting me go undercover in the Lake sector for days on end, without a pair of strong backups and a team to follow me.
But it’s going to happen anyway, starting tomorrow morning.
“Look. Don’t worry about me.” Through the glass, I see the spy arch his back in agony. “I can take care of myself. Day isn’t a fool—if I have a team following me through the city, he’ll notice it in no time.”
Thomas turns back to the interrogation. “I know you’re good at what you do,” he replies. I wait for the
but . . .
in his sentence. It doesn’t come. “Just keep your microphone on. I’ll take care of things back here.”
I smile at him. “Thanks.” He doesn’t look back at me, but I can see his lips tilt up at the edges. Maybe he’s remembering when I used to tag along after him and Metias, asking them inane questions about how the military worked.
Behind the glass, the spy suddenly yells something at Commander Jameson and thrashes violently against his chains. She glances over at us and motions us in with a flip of her hand. I don’t hesitate. Thomas and I, and another soldier standing close to the interrogation room’s door, hurry inside and spread out near the back wall. Instantly I feel how stuffy and hot the room is. I look on as the prisoner continues to scream.
“What’d you say to him?” I ask Commander Jameson.
She looks at me. Her eyes are ice-cold. “I told him that our airships will target his hometown next.” She turns back to the prisoner. “He’ll start cooperating if he knows what’s good for him.”
The spy glares at each of us in turn. Blood runs from his mouth to his forehead and hair and drips onto the floor beneath him. Whenever he thrashes, Commander Jameson stomps on the chain around his neck and chokes him until he stops.
Now he snarls and spits blood at our boots, making me wipe mine against the ground in disgust.
Commander Jameson bends down and smiles at him. “Let’s start again, shall we? What’s your name?”
The spy looks away from her and says nothing.
Commander Jameson sighs and nods to Thomas. “My hands are tired,” she says. “You do the honors.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Thomas salutes and steps forward. He tightens his jaw, then balls up his fist and punches the spy hard in the stomach. The spy’s eyes bulge out, and he coughs up more blood onto the floor. I distract myself by studying the details of his outfit. (Brass buttons, military boots, a blue pin on his sleeve. Which means he had disguised himself as a soldier, and we caught him near San Diego, the only city that requires everyone to wear those blue pins. I can tell what gave him away too. One of the brass buttons looks slightly flatter than those made in the Republic. He must have stitched on that button by himself—a button from an old Colonies uniform. Stupid. A mistake only a Colonies spy would make.)
“What’s your name?” Commander Jameson asks him again. Thomas flips open a knife and grabs one of the spy’s fingers.
The spy swallows hard. “Emerson.”
“Emerson
what
? Be specific.”
“Emerson Adam Graham.”
“Mr. Emerson Adam Graham, of East Texas.” Commander Jameson says it in a light, coaxing voice. “A pleasure to meet you, young sir. Tell me, Mr. Graham, why did the Colonies send you over to our fine Republic? To spread their lies?”
The spy lets out a weak laugh. “Fine Republic,” he snaps. “Your Republic won’t last another decade. And all the better, too—once the Colonies take over your land, they’ll make better use of it than you have—”
Thomas hits the spy across the face with the hilt of his knife. A tooth skids across the floor. When I look back at Thomas, his hair has fallen across his face and a cruel pleasure has replaced his usual kindness. I frown. I haven’t seen this look on Thomas’s face often; it chills me.
Commander Jameson stops him before he can hit the spy again. “It’s all right. Let us hear what our friend has to say against the Republic.”
The spy’s face is scarlet from hanging upside down for too long. “You call this a republic? You kill your own people and torture those who used to be your brothers?” I roll my eyes at that. The Colonies want us to think that letting them take over is a good thing. Like they’re annexing us or doing us some kind of favor. That’s how they see us, a poor little fringe nation, as if
they’re
the more powerful one. That idea
is
in their best interest, after all, since I hear the floods have claimed much more of their land than ours. That’s all it’s ever been about. Land, land, land. But becoming a union—that has never happened, and that
will
never happen. We’ll defeat them first or die trying. “I’ll tell you nothing. You can try as hard as you want, but I’ll tell you nothing.”
Commander Jameson smiles at Thomas, who smiles back. “Well, you heard Mr. Graham,” she says. “Try as hard as you want.”
Thomas goes to work on him, and after a while, the other soldier in the room has to join him to hold the spy in place. I force myself to look on as they try to pry information out of him. I need to learn this, to familiarize myself with this. My ears ring from the spy’s screams. I ignore the fact that the spy’s hair is straight and dark like my own, and his skin is pale, and his youth reminds me of Metias over and over again. I tell myself that Metias is not the one whom Thomas is now torturing. That would be impossible.
Metias can’t be tortured. He is already dead.
 
That night, Thomas escorts me back to my apartment and kisses me on the cheek before he leaves. He tells me to be careful, and that he will be monitoring anything that transmits through my microphone. “Everyone will keep an eye on you,” he reassures me. “You’re not alone out there unless you choose to be.”
I manage to smile back. I ask him to take care of Ollie while I’m gone.
When I’m finally inside the apartment, I curl up on the couch and rest my arm on Ollie’s back. He’s sleeping soundly, but has pressed himself tightly against the side of the couch. He probably feels Metias’s absence as much as I do. On the coffee table, stacks of our parents’ old photos from Metias’s bedroom closet are strewn across the glass. So are Metias’s journals, and a booklet where he used to save little mementos of the things we did together—an opera, late-night dinners, early practices at the track. I’ve been looking through them ever since Thomas left, hoping that the thing Metias had wanted to talk to me about is mentioned somewhere. I flip through Metias’s writing and reread the little notes Dad liked to leave at the bottom of their photos. The most recent one shows our parents standing with a young Metias in front of Batalla Hall. All three are making thumbs-up gestures.
Metias’s future career is here! March 12th.
I stare at the date. It was taken several weeks before they died.
My recorder sits on the edge of the coffee table. I snap my fingers twice, then listen to Day’s voice over and over. What face matches up to this voice? I try to imagine how Day looks. Young and athletic, probably, and lean from years on the streets. The voice sounds so crackled and distorted from the speakers that there are parts I can’t understand.
“Hear that, Ollie?” I whisper. Ollie snores a little and rubs his head against my hand. “That’s our guy. And I’m going to get him.”
I fall asleep with Day’s words ringing in my ears.

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