Legion Lost (12 page)

The
conversation descends into a filthy supposition of what Moss and Shandie might
have been doing when Briggs found them, so I escape quickly to swap out my
cloth for a clean one. Brash idiot he may be, but useless Boon is not. His
boasting has given me my first opportunity to see what secrets the Legion has
to hide. I don’t know what kind of security might await me after dark, but it
strikes me that the distance between the South and West towers is shorter than
if I had to sneak out across the floodlit inner compound. If a fool like Boon
can get access to Briggs’s secrets, then so can I.

It
seems to follow in the Legion that every triumphant moment I have is
interrupted by disaster. A loud scream catches my ear and I spin on the spot,
just in time to see Lucrece rushing toward a heavyset soldier who must be about
eighteen. A wild fire lights Lucrece’s eyes, making them shine like headlights
out of her dark bruises. She raises her slim arms, fingers curled like cat’s
claws, lashing out at the boy-soldier’s face.

“Don’t
you touch me!” She screams the words at him. “Don’t you
dare
ever touch
me!”

Lucrece
gets a good swipe at his face before the boy has time to defend himself. A long
line of raw, scratched skin begins to seep with blood on his cheek. The soldier
rises, looking violently shocked, and before I know what I’m doing, I streak
across the dining hall at top speed. Stirling is closer to the fray than me,
but we arrive at the same time, and with the same goal in mind. Just as the
outraged soldier raises his fist to thump Lucrece, Stirling and I bound
full-force into his barrel chest, knocking him clean off his feet.

“What
the hell do you think you’re doing?” barks a vicious voice behind us.

I
don’t even have time to watch Lucrece’s attacker collapsing to the floor,
because Stirling is already turning me to face the man shouting at our backs.
The whole dining hall is rapt with silence as Commander Briggs bears down on us
with his punishing stare. His sharp teeth gleam as he huffs out an impatient
breath.

“Well?”
he demands. “Explain yourselves, recruits!”

“He
was going to attack Lucrece,” I say in a single, petrified breath.

Briggs’s
expression doesn’t falter.

“She
scratched his face up. Fair’s fair,” he croons.

Stirling
scoffs at that. He doesn’t quiver in Briggs’s presence like I do, and I wish I
could learn how to seem so unafraid.

“He
started it,” Stirling insists. “He touched her. She said so.”

“Oh,”
Briggs exclaims. “Well, that’s
different
then, isn’t it?”

The
words are exactly what I wanted him to say, but his tone is the extreme
opposite. His answer cuts deep with sarcasm as the massive commander turns to
Lucrece, who is staring vacantly at the blood beneath her fingernails. Without
warning, Briggs grabs her by her wrist, stretching her arm up high and
squeezing so hard that her caramel-coloured hand turns pale.

“You
think you have rights, reject?” he taunts, his hideous face level with
Lucrece’s terrified eyes. “You belong to the Legion now. It does with you as it
pleases.”

All
sorts of mad instincts run through my mind, but they come to nothing when
Stirling steps forward before I can act.

“Let
her go,” he demands.

Briggs’s
eyes narrow over him, like a gleeful beast at the first glance of its prey.

“Do
you think you’re gonna make me, Highlander?” Briggs seethes.

Stirling
makes a leap, both his hands landing on Briggs’s massive fist. He forces his
weight onto the commander’s grip, prying his fingers loose enough for Lucrece
to suddenly break free. She runs from the hall at once, but Briggs is quick to
react to her loss. With a mighty, deafening smack, he knocks Stirling to the
ground. I feel the impact in my stomach, and then again at the sound of
Stirling’s head hitting the floor with a crack.

Briggs
approaches him, placing one massive boot on the lanky boy’s chest.

“My
office. Now,” the commander demands.

Stirling
does not return from Briggs’s office during our afternoon break, and neither of
them are present at dinner. After the violent episode at lunch, even the
teasing of the rejects is subdued this evening in the dining hall. Nobody seems
keen to mention Stirling's absence, right up until the point where the sun has set
and our cramped little tower is only lit by the halogen glow. It’s now that
Apryl lets loose a huge, worried sigh. She rests her face between her palms,
leaning forward and tracking the tiny particles of dust that fly around in the
heat.

“Okay,
this is bad,” she suddenly exclaims. “Briggs has never kept him this long
before.”

I
want to ask Apryl what she thinks is happening to Stirling, but I fear the
answer will set Lucrece off crying once again. It seems a miracle to me that
the bruised girl has any water left in her body to produce more tears. She sits
in that familiar position where she’s hugging her knees, but her face is buried
against them as her shoulders tremble. I’m on the floor in the middle of my
fellow rejects, feeling the weak tingle of the halogen’s warmth as I rub my
hands together in its glow.

“Maybe
dey sent him to Medical after Briggs,” Goddie suggests. “Sheila might be
lettin’ him sleep der.”

Lucrece
sucks in a deep breath, looking up at Goddie from under her bruised brow.

“I’m
sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so,
so
sorry.”

Goddie
raises a dark finger, his kind face making a mock-strict expression.

“No
more sorry, girl,” he chides. “I saw what dat boy Berkeley did. Now, I’m a
touchy-feely guy, dat’s for sure, but I’m not gonna grab nobody where he tried
to grab you. It ain’t right, and I’m glad ya scratched his face up for it.”

Lucrece
doesn’t look glad. She’s scrubbed her fingers raw trying to get the soldier’s
blood out from under her nails. As much as the Legion is supposed to be a place
to erase and forget your past, I’m starting to get the feeling that Lucrece
would probably benefit from getting hers off her chest. I know that the weight
of my secrets is bearing down on me too. Finding someone I could trust enough
to confide in would be the best thing that could happen to me right now.

It’s
wishful thinking, though, and nothing more. Apryl and Goddie wait up a little
longer in the faint hope that their captain will return, but soon all three of
my fellow rejects are curled up under their blankets, lost to sleep. I sit for
a little longer by the halogen light, knowing that my private mission for the
night will be a cold and lonely one. Apryl’s snores are loud and proud at the
far end of the room, and Goddie’s slack-mouthed slumber is the first moment
where I’ve been able to see past his flawlessly handsome facade.

It’s
easy to tell that Lucrece is asleep, because tonight I’m wide awake to hear her
crying. Her face is turned away from me, but I can see every violent jolt in the
petite girl’s shoulders as she mumbles and sobs every few minutes. Her
subconscious is even more violent and unpredictable than when she is awake, and
when she suddenly kicks out at the wall, I know it’s time for me to head out.
If Apryl and Goddie are woken by Lucrece’s nightmares, I have to be long gone
so they can’t follow me.

The
South Tower is a deserted structure, save for the rejects’ room, so creeping
down the metal stairs in my socks is fairly easy. At the foot of the spiral
staircase, I stick to the shadows and throw on my boots, then chance a peek out
into the long corridor on either side of the tower entrance. My destination is
to the left, where low green-tinted lighting makes the Legion’s passageways
look like the empty corridors of a sunken ship. I listen hard for the sound of
any signs of life, but there’s nothing to hear.

There
might be cameras, of course—how else would Briggs have caught the pair of teens
that Boon was talking about earlier—but I’m hoping my speed will help me look
like a passing shadow on their lenses. It’s a lengthy trek along the southwest
perimeter, but I have to try whilst the place is so deserted. From my position
in the shadowed doorway of the tower, I crouch and ready myself to sprint. I
think of the soldiers in the Underground, and of Bhadrak’s confidence in my
skills. My lips murmur a speedy countdown, in time with the racing thump of my
heartbeat.

“Three,
two, one.”

The
chilly air in the Legion’s concrete corridors blasts past my face as I bolt up
the hall. Offices and doorways fly by as I reduce a long walk to a matter of
minutes, my feet barely touching the ground as I speed on. The food at the
Legion might not be appetising, but its protein and carbohydrates have done my
bony body good. I feel stronger and faster than I ever have as I see the corner
wall appearing ahead of me in the darkness.

I
skid to a sudden halt as the corner approaches, ducking into a shadowy alcove
to catch my breath before I chance a peek around the next bend. Again, the
corridor here is deserted, and I’m beginning to see why Boon made it all sound
so easy. Why is nobody patrolling any of these halls? It’s all becoming
disturbingly simple as I ready myself to take off again to the west. Another
corridor length flies by under my feet, until I can see the archway for the
West Tower coming into view.

The
base of this tower is wider than that of the south one, and the staircase here
is more narrow, suggesting that there are more floors and rooms kept within.
The metal steps have been covered in carpet here, perhaps for the benefit of
the technicians that Boon mentioned at lunch. He said that Information was on
the second floor, so I take the first bend of steps two at a time. The first
floor staircase leads to a dark, unmarked door, which I’m creeping past as the
first real noise of the night erupts from beyond it. I flee past the door in a
sudden panic, bounding up a few more steps until I’m sure that nobody is
emerging from the room.

I
pause for a moment, listening hard to the echo within. It sounds like an impact,
like someone dropping something heavy every now and then. When I was younger,
my father used to fill a sack with old rags for my brothers to punch, to help
their muscles grow strong despite our living conditions. The noise beyond the
door sounds just like the dull, echoing thumps of their punch bag training.
Whoever’s within the unmarked room, they seem to be occupied by their business.

I
creep up the rest of the stairs, hastened by the idea that someone is awake
just below my feet. Every step I take must now be careful and silent as I pass
through the open archway that leads into the information department. This has
to be Information, for there are rows of screens with keyboards that are still
illuminated, the System’s symbol rotating slowly on their displays. I approach
the nearest one and tap it with my finger, and immediately the picture changes
to a box with green and black borders. A white text box asks me for a password,
and I remember Boon’s boasting once again.

Legion.

It
doesn’t work, so I try the next screen, and the next, until the whole room is
lit with a bright green glow from all the machines I’ve touched. Praying that
the glow doesn’t attract attention, I finally find a computer that accepts
Legion
as its password. The words
Welcome Sheila
flash onto the screen as the
device wakes up. So Sheila works here as well as in the medical building.

I
scan the icons available to me on the first screen that’s displayed.

Most
of the icons involve sending or receiving communications, but a bright white
option labelled
Search Records
catches my eye. I tap it, opening a box that
flashes as it awaits my command. I type
Underground
. Surely, this is the
term that will lead me to my family. Several results appear in a list on the
screen, but one with a familiar date grabs my attention:
24FEB2126
. The
date that I ran away during the raid. My whole hand is trembling as I tap on
the record to retrieve it.

The
report was filed by Augustus Briggs on the night that I escaped, and it gives
me the same figures that I heard him discuss with Sheila, but in different
terms:
431 Saved, 8 Collateral, 1 Unknown
.

Saved.
So the System thinks it’s helping us by ripping us out of our homes and
upsetting our lives forever. I bristle at the word
collateral,
thinking
that
murdered
might be a better fit, but then the
unknown
label
forces a cruel smile to my lips. Even here, in the Legion’s private records,
Briggs can’t bear to admit that there was one who got away.

Beneath
the report on the raid, some updates have been made regarding the
transportation of the captured rebels. I follow the trail of data down the
page. The final location of the prisoners reads
Containment Centre: Valkyrie
,
and nothing more. I try to tap on the centre’s name, but nothing happens, and
even a new record search with those terms brings me nothing with the centre’s
address. I have the name of the prison that holds my family, but no idea how to
find it.

Consoling
myself that I have taken a small step towards victory, I start to close the
searches down. My eyes catch one last item on the Underground search results—a
record named
PROPOSED RECON: 02MAR2126
. Something related to the
Underground is happening in two days’ time. I bring up the record, scanning the
page for information. A map outline tells me that this mission relates to my
part of the Underground, the one that Briggs has recently emptied, and the
mission’s primary objective seems to be to search the wreckage for information.
At first, I think that this must be the mission that Boon was talking about,
but the assignation line tells a different story: