Legion Lost (22 page)

“I
saved you from him,” Stryker states. “A little ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss,
whenever you’re ready.”

There’s
a lump in my throat that tells me not to give in to his suggestion.

“I
might thank you,” I reply, “once I know what you intend to do with us.”

Malcolm
Stryker glances at Stirling briefly before he answers me.

“Do?”
he begins. “Are you simple, boy?”

The
rasp of threat returns to his tone as he stares me down.

“Do
you think it was by providence alone that I cornered you that night in these
very woods?” he asks. “Do you think it was fate that I was waiting to take hold
of the boy you found in the Underground? Do you think I have
these
by
pure coincidence?”

The
Highlander slaps the side of his belt, where I see two familiar objects hanging
at his thigh. One is the tablet containing the maps that Goddie thought he’d
lost on the hovercraft. The other is his minesweeper.

“Hey,
dat’s—” Goddie begins, but the Highlander raises a finger to silence him.

“Do
you think I laid those markers on the minefield for fun?” he continues. “Or
could it be possible that they were there to lead
you to us
?”

I
can’t answer, because too many facts and connections are racing to the
forefront of my mind. It’s all too coincidental. The Highlanders have been
right where we needed them all this time. It explains where Stirling vanished
to when we discovered Vinesh, and his nonchalant attitude about losing vital
equipment. Last night, when Apryl saw him at the window with his torch, he must
have been watching Stryker’s men paint out the pathway among the mines. Stryker
turns to Stirling with a smug little grin.

“Have
a word with your friend here, laddie,” he quips. “He’s got some serious trust
issues.”

“Tell
me about it,” Stirling replies with a roll of his eyes.

“So
you two know each other?” I ask, the pieces clicking together in my head.

“I
should say so,” Stryker answers with a laugh. “He’s my nephew. This is Stirling
Douglas, Junior Captain of the West Highland Revolt.”

*

Delilah
was right about us not staying long near the forest’s edge. Now that Goddie has
been treated and made mobile, Malcolm’s men are already mobilising to pack up
and leave. It is our responsibility to push and carry Goddie through the woods;
the thick black tyres on his wheelchair are ready to serve their all-terrain purpose.
There are nearly fifty Highlanders in total, and once they’re all packed up,
they snake through the woods in a tightly regimented line.

Briggs
is still unconscious. The senior commander is bound at his massive wrists and
ankles and being carried on a stretcher by the two heavyset men who attended to
Goddie earlier on. Sheila walks behind the stretcher, flanked by guards on all
sides. She has a sad slump in her shoulders, though her hands are not bound at
all, and every now and then, the tall woman looks back at us rejects farther
down the line. Every time she does this, Stirling puts his head down and stares
at the floor. I wonder if he might be feeling guilty about dragging her into
this situation. It’s bad enough for me, and I’m not even a hostage.

“So,
where are we going now?” I ask as we lift Goddie’s chair up over a thick tree
root.

“To
one of the Highlanders’ proper bases in the mountains,” Stirling explains.
“Somewhere strong enough to hold Briggs when the evil swine wakes up.”

“So
Briggs is your uncle’s hostage,” Apryl muses. “That kind of makes him
your
hostage, Stir.”

“Ya,”
Goddie adds brightly. “De tables have turned at last. You gotta be pleased with
dat, boss.”

It
takes us all a moment to register that Stirling is
not
pleased. Not even
a little bit.

“It’s
going to cause problems when the System makes a move to get him back,” Stirling
explains. “We were only supposed to take Sheila. She’s a medic, a low-profile
body. No one would have bothered to try and recover her.”

“But
what’s the use of a hostage that nobody wants back?” Apryl asks.

“Yeah,”
I add, “what’s so special about Sheila?”

When
Stirling looks up, Sheila is watching us yet again. This time, my captain meets
her eyes, and it’s Sheila’s turn to look away. Her usually stoic features are
filled with sadness and regret.

“I
can’t tell you,” Stirling answers. “Not yet, anyway. It depends on what happens
at the negotiations.”

“Malcolm
asked for Governor Prudell personally,” I say as his demands echo in my memory.
“Do you think she’ll come?”

“I
don’t doubt it,” Stirling replies. “Briggs is a seasoned war hero, commander of
the Legion, and a leading strategist for crushing the rebel threat. It’d be
like losing an arm if Prudell let him die at the Highlanders’ hands.”

“Something
like dat would be really bad for de System’s image,” Goddie agrees.

Prudell,
the leader of the System, is going to be with us in person. My mind is already
racing with hatred at the remembrance of her snide, satisfied face on the
Legion’s screens. Malcolm Stryker’s dark words echo in my mind.
I don’t kill
children. I’m not Governor Prudell.
She and Briggs have let people like
Reece fight and die on their behalf. They prey on the innocent, like Lucrece,
and leave them nowhere to turn but into military slavery. With every passing
minute, I understand the desperation in my father’s old chant with greater and
more terrible clarity.

Death
to Prudell. Death to Prudell. Death to Prudell.

“If
anything happened to someone so central to the System,” Apryl muses, “it could
start a revolution.”

“Yeah,”
I mutter, a horribly dark idea forming in my mind. “I suppose it could.”

We
march through the night, arriving on a secluded mountainside sometime around
midmorning. Halfway up the slope, there are numerous flat-roofed buildings
hidden among the clumps of thick, dark trees. Their structures seem to continue
into the mountain itself, where the roofs disappear, becoming connected to the
ashen rocks. These half-embedded buildings spiral upwards until the trees end,
where they peter out and leave the sharp face of the mountain itself to rise
like a spire into the cloudy sky. With hardly any sleep and several hours of
slugging Goddie’s wheelchair, all I can manage to do is ask for somewhere to
sleep.

The
next time I wake, it takes me several minutes to remember where I am. The room
is square with concrete walls, and the stiff mattress on which I lie smells too
clean, like it’s recently been disinfected. There is one high rectangular
window with a view of the sky beyond, at which a spider bobs ominously around
its web. It seems to be packing up its home now that I’ve arrived.

When
I can drag myself into a sitting position, it disturbs me to see clean clothes
waiting for me on the small table beside the bed. Someone has been in here
whilst I’ve been sleeping, and I must have been out so heavy that I didn’t even
know they were there. What’s even stranger is the second, head-shaped dent in
my pillow beside the divot I’ve made. Someone was sleeping here too, perhaps
only inches from my exhausted form.

“You’re
finally up. I thought you were going to sleep for a week.”

Stirling
speaks as he pushes the bedroom door open with his foot. His hands are filled
with a grey plastic tray, upon which a heap of food and a bottle of juice have
been placed. I take the clothes from the side table so he can put the tray
there, clutching the fabrics nervously as he sits down beside me.

“Were
you in here with me last night?” I ask.

“You
didn’t notice?” Stirling answers, slightly disappointed. “You don’t get a room
to yourself at Chez Malcolm. You’re lucky we don’t have four hairy Highlanders
kipping on the floor too.”

He’s
changed his clothes. It’s strange to see Stirling in something other than the
Legion’s black fatigues, but I like the cut of his emerald green T-shirt and
his grey denim trousers. The clothes in my hands are mostly dark, but there’s a
forest green jumper that feels soft and warm in my aching, exhausted hands.

“Bathroom’s
the next one on the left, if you want to clean up,” Stirling offers. “I promise
I won’t eat all the breakfast whilst you’re gone.”

“You’d
better not,” I say as my stomach gives a longing rumble.

In
the bathroom, I realise that I haven’t looked at my reflection for quite some
time. There are scrapes and bruises all over my skin from traversing through
the woods, and my hair has grown back long enough to start tufting out at funny
angles, which I don’t seem to be able to control. When I wash and dress in the
new, comfortable clothes Stirling has brought for me, I realise that the green
and black combination must be to help us blend in to the trees with the rest of
the Highlanders here. They have a uniform, just like the Legion did.

Does
this make me one of them now? I am sorely grateful to be out of the Legion, and
Malcolm Stryker and I do have a common enemy in Governor Prudell, but I’m not
sure that means I’m ready to enlist in another army just yet. Trading one
ruthless corps for another doesn’t seem like the wisest plan right now. Until I
can find out what use the Highlanders might be to me, I can’t afford to get too
relaxed in these new surroundings.

When
I return to the little bedroom, Stirling has left exactly half of the breakfast
plate, as promised. He has divided it perfectly to leave one half of the plate
full, with half a grilled sausage, half a tomato, and even half a fried egg
running out across the porcelain surface. I tuck in gleefully as I look to the
sunlit window again. I remember that we’re in one of the higher-up buildings
that juts from the mountainside, but I feel strangely secure in this enclosed
little space.

“How
long was I asleep?” I ask.

Stirling
grins.

“Eighteen
hours,” he replies, “and it looks like you needed every minute.”

No
wonder I’m so hungry. I wolf down my food, thankful that my boy-disguise
negates the need for the kind of ladylike manners my mother always tried to instil
in me. I gulp down half a bottle of juice without drawing breath, then continue
to attack the food before me, barely tasting its tangy flavours before it goes
down my gullet. When I’m sure that every morsel is gone, I look to Stirling
again, ready to ask him what’s been happening whilst I’ve been out cold. I
almost speak, but I can tell by the way he’s playing with his fingertips that
there’s something on his mind. It takes him a moment to realise I’m watching
him, and I relish in the sight of his bashful smile when he does.

“So,
now you know,” he states quietly. “You know all about me, the boy-spy of the
Highlanders. And I still know absolutely nothing about you.”

When
Stirling reaches for my hand, I let him take it, feeling the jumpy nervousness
of his fingers locked with mine. He’s still not sure about being close to me,
and again the urge to tell him everything is rising within me. The sad truth
is, I’m too scared now to reveal who I really am. This lie has gone on for far
too long, and Stirling’s not likely to enjoy having been deceived from the very
first moment that we met. There is one thing that I can tell him, though. One
thing I need to say.

“I
came to the Legion for my family. They were captured by the System,” I explain.
“I thought that if I got inside the Legion, I could find out where they were
being held.”

Stirling
looks pleased that I’m finally sharing something with him. I feel him squeeze
my hand tighter as he grins.

“I
thought it had to be something like that,” he surmises. “Did you get the
information you needed?”

I
shrug. “Only the name of the prison. No location or anything. Containment
Facility Valkyrie. Does it ring any bells with you?”

Stirling
shakes his head.

“No,
but it might with Malcolm. You could ask him.”

Stirling
doesn’t miss the twitch in my shoulders at the mention of the Highlander’s
name. His hand moves up my arm, steadying me with his warming touch.

“He’s
not that bad once you get used to him,” he assures me. “You know, so long as
you’re on his side.”

“I
hope so,” I reply, though I’d like to avoid getting used to Malcolm for as long
as possible.

“You’ll
get your chance, anyway,” Stirling adds brightly. “He wanted to talk to you as
soon as you were up.”

“Talk
to
me
?” I ask, feeling a sudden tightness in my chest. “What about?”

“Relax,”
Stirling soothes. “It’s just a chat. He’s already spoken to Apryl and Goddie,
and they made it through without being thrown off the top of the mountain.
You’ll do fine.”

I
wish I could believe him, but I can already feel my nerves rising as I get up
to step into my boots. It’s one thing lying to Stirling and the other rejects,
but I’m not sure how I’ll fare against Malcolm’s suspicion one-on-one. As I
stamp down to secure my boot, Stirling’s hands settle on my shoulders. From
behind me, he’s so tall that his chin rests against the top of my ear. I lean
back against his chest, listening to the sudden hitch in his breath.