Legend (22 page)

“Thomas.” I tap him and point up to the roofs. “Executioners.”

No surprise on his face, no emotion in his eyes. He clears his throat. “So they are.”

“What are they doing?” My voice rises. I glance to the protesters in the square, then back up to the roofs. None of the soldiers have dust bombs or tear gas. Instead, each one has a gun slung around his shoulder. “They’re not dispersing them, Thomas. They’re trapping them in.”

Thomas gives me a stern look. “Hold steady, June. Pay attention to the crowd.”

As my eyes stay turned up toward the roofs, I notice Commander Jameson step out onto the top of Batalla Hall flanked by soldiers. She speaks into her mouthpiece.

Several seconds pass. A terrible feeling builds up in my chest—I know where this is going.

Thomas suddenly murmurs something into his mike. A response to a command. I glance at him. He catches my gaze for a second, and then he looks toward the rest of the patrol standing on the platform with us. “Fire at will!” he shouts.

“Thomas!” I want to say more, but at that instant, shots ring out from both the roofs and the platform. I lunge forward. I don’t know what I plan to do—wave my arms in front of the soldiers?—but Thomas grabs my shoulder before I can step forward.

“Stay back, June!”

“Tell your men to stand down,” I shout, scrambling out of his grasp. “Tell them—”

That’s when Thomas throws me to the ground so hard that I feel the wound in my side break open.

“Damn it, June,” he says.
“Stay back!”

The ground’s surprisingly cold. I crouch there, for once at a loss, unable to move. I don’t really understand what just happened. The skin around my wound burns. Bullets rain down on the square. People in the crowd collapse like levees in a flood.
Thomas, stop. Please stop.
I want to get up and scream in his face, to hurt him somehow.
Metias would kill you for this, Thomas, if he were alive.
But instead I cover my ears. The gunshots are deafening.

The gunfire lasts only a minute, if that—but it seems like forever. Thomas finally shouts an order to cease fire, and those in the crowd who haven’t been shot fall to their knees and throw their hands up over their heads. Soldiers rush to them, cuffing their arms behind their backs, forcing them together into clusters. I push myself up onto my knees. My ears still ring from the gunfire. . . . I scan the scene of blood and bodies and prisoners. There are 97, 98 dead. No, at least 120. Hundreds more are in custody. I can’t even concentrate enough to count them.

Thomas glances at me before stepping off the platform—his face is grave, even guilty, but I know with a sinking feeling that he feels guilty only for throwing me to the ground. Not for this massacre he’s leaving behind. He heads back toward Batalla Hall with several soldiers. I turn my face away so I don’t have to watch him.

THAT NIGHT, THOMAS SPENDS HALF AN HOUR STANDING
outside my door, trying out a dozen different kinds of apologies. He is really sorry. He didn’t want me to get hurt. He didn’t want me to resist Commander Jameson’s orders. He didn’t want me to get in trouble. He was trying to protect me.

I sit on my couch with Ollie, staring off into space. I can’t get the sound of those machine guns out of my head. Thomas has always been disciplined.

Today was not different. He didn’t hesitate—not for a second—to obey our commander. He’d carried out the extermination as if he were preparing for a routine plague sweep or for a night guarding an airfield. Is it worse that he followed the orders so faithfully or that he doesn’t even know that this is what I want him to apologize for?

“June, are you listening to me?”

I concentrate on scratching Ollie behind his ears. Metias’s old journals are still strewn on the coffee table, along with our parents’ photo albums. “You’re wasting your time,” I call back to him.

“Please. Just let me in. I want to see you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I won’t be long, I promise. I’m really sorry.”

“Thomas, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“June—”

I raise my voice. “I said
I’ll see you tomorrow.
”

Silence.

I wait another minute, trying to distract myself by petting Ollie. After a while I get up and look through the peephole. The hallway’s empty.

When I’m finally convinced he’s gone, I lie awake on the couch for another hour. My mind races from the events in the square, to Day’s appearance on the rooftop, to Day’s outrageous claims about the plague and the Trial, and then back to Thomas. The Thomas that follows Commander Jameson’s orders without question is a different Thomas from the one who worried about my safety in the Lake sector. Growing up, Thomas was awkward but always polite, especially to me. Or maybe it’s me who’s changed. When I tracked Day’s family down and watched Thomas shoot his mother, when I looked on today as the crowd in the square was gunned down . . . I stood by both times and did nothing. Does that make me the same as Thomas? Are we doing the right thing by following our orders? Surely the Republic knows best?

And as for what Day told me . . . my temper rises at the thought of it. My father had worked behind those double doors—Metias had mentored under Chian in overseeing the Trials. Why would we poison and kill our own people?

I sigh, sit up, and grab one of Metias’s journals off the coffee table.

This one is about an exhausting week of cleanup duty after Hurricane Elijah tore through Los Angeles. Another spells out his first week in Commander Jameson’s patrol. A third one is short, only a paragraph long, and complains about working two night shifts in a row. This makes me smile. I can still remember his words. “I can barely stay awake,” Metias had told me after his first night shift. “Does she honestly think we can guard
anything
after pulling an all-nighter? I was so out of it today that the Colonies’ Chancellor himself could’ve walked into Batalla Hall and I wouldn’t have known it.”

I feel a tear on my cheek and quickly wipe it away. Ollie whines next to me. I reach out and let my hand sink into the thick white fur around his neck, and he drops his head into my lap with a sigh.