Legion Lost (28 page)

“There!”
Malcolm yells with triumph minutes later. “It’s Stirling!”

I
can see his bright red hair as Stirling bounds up the stairs past a
fourth-floor window. Dozens of people are following him from the floors below,
using his tall frame as a guide to lead them to their freedom. I check again
that my line is secure, watching fervently for signs that Stirling has reached
the top floor at last.

He
has a child in his arms when I see him next, a small, pale girl who clings to
his neck with desperation. Stirling leaps onto my line from the balcony,
crossing the precarious gap with great agility to deliver the terrified child
to Malcolm.

“Make
sure they only come two at a time,” Malcolm barks. “The lines can’t hold more
than that.”

Stirling
gives a nod, his feet touching our side of the crater for mere seconds before
he’s turning to return to the prison.

“It’s
easier than we thought,” he tells Malcolm with a grin. “The guards are barely a
quarter of the number we were expecting.”

When
Stirling's back on the line again, Malcolm hands the rescued child off to one
of our number for safekeeping. His triumphant expression is gone, replaced by
one of worry as he watches the first wave of captives making their way across
the crater.

“What
is it?” I demand. “Malcolm, what’s the matter?”

“A
reduced guard,” he replies. “Prudell would have guessed that we were coming
here. Why would she reduce the guard instead of doubling or tripling it?”

“Does
it matter?” I ask, my heart warmed by the sight of the first pairs of captives
touching down beside us.

There
are even a few people that I recognise from my own tunnels here now. Their
smiles fill me with optimism, and I reason that perhaps Prudell doesn’t want to
waste good soldiers on a fight she knows she’s going to lose. Maybe she’d
rather let us reclaim our people than cause more bloodshed here.

But
even as I think it, I know that can’t be the case. Malcolm’s worries are catching
as I watch dozens of people reach their freedom. They are barely a fraction of
those we still need to recover, although the operation is moving swiftly. All
the foot soldiers of the four Highland groups are within the prison, and it
seems that they have taken total control of the tiny group of System soldiers
inside. Something is wrong with how easily the operation is succeeding, but I
can’t figure out what exactly.

But
suddenly, those worries no longer matter.

Stirling
has emerged outside on the balcony again, with a woman who he is strapping into
a harness to attach them at the waist together. Her kind, graceful face is
weeping joyously, her dark skin and plaited hair unmistakable, even at my
distance from the scene. Stirling is preparing my mother to making the
crossing. She’s coming over on Malcolm’s line, and the rebel leader holds it
extra-steady for their considerable combined weight. I watch their every
handhold, and with every inch they progress, more relieved tears cloud my eyes.

When
her feet touch the ground, she praises the sky to thank her good fortune, and
as her eyes flutter back to ground level, they fix on mine. Even over the
deafening commotion of the escape, her shriek of utter joy rings out like the
blast of a shotgun. Stirling can barely get the harness detached before Mumma
is rushing towards me, wrapping her arms around me in a way that part of me
thought I might never feel again.

“Oh,
my child,” she sobs. “You’re safe! I’d hoped so. Oh God, I’d hoped so!”

“You
have to go,” I tell her, trying to hold onto her and my line at the same time.
“Follow where the others are running. There are machines waiting to take you to
safety.”

My
mother shakes her tear-stained face.

“Not
without you and your brothers,” she insists.

The
flame of hope burns brighter in my heart.

“They’re
here?” I ask with utter relief. “Pranjal, Mukesh, and Bhadrak?”

Mumma’s
face falls a little.

“Not
Bhadrak, darling girl,” she whimpers.

I
don’t have time to feel the painful stab of that news, because a shout from my
line gets my attention. Pranjal has a thick cast all the way up one of his
arms, so Stirling has had to bring him across via the harness too. They are
struggling slowly across my wire, and beyond them, my heart leaps at the sight
of Mukesh waiting to be next in line. His oversized ears are masked by
overgrown hair, and he waves to my mother with a hopeful, toothy grin. I wonder
if he recognises me from across the few feet of wire between us.

“Help
me lift him down!” Stirling shouts, waving at me as he and Pranjal dangle from
my line.

I
take hold of my brother’s legs as Stirling detaches them from the harness, and
Mumma and I make sure that he lands without hurting himself. I look across to
Stirling as he rotates on the line and, for the first time in days, he gives me
a smile. It’s his bashful smile, and I know by that alone that things are going
to be all right between us soon. After the grand victory of the Valkyrie
rescue, we will celebrate together and patch things up for good.

As
I watch Stirling climb deftly back along the line toward Mukesh, my heart lets
loose a searing a burst of emotion. Whether I was a boy, a girl, a soldier, or
a rebel, Stirling held me close and kept me safe. I love him. I love him just
as much as I love the family I’ve been desperately searching for, and I know
that I can never leave him behind again.

This
is the moment when the rumbling begins.

Stirling
has just arrived back at the balcony as a terrifying sound thunders out. It
shakes the ground beneath us a little at the crater’s edge, but within the
chasm itself, the effect of the quake is far more devastating. The rumble
transforms into a rip-roaring explosion in mere seconds, and its epicentre is
directly underneath the Valkyrie building itself.

The
prison gives a violent shudder, and my hearts leaps into my throat as two
escapees fall from our rescue lines. Malcolm is holding up his palm, shouting
at the captives to stop climbing until the earthquake halts. Mukesh and
Stirling are clinging to the outer walls of the prison, looking all around as
they try to figure out what’s going on. I bite my lip, holding onto my line and
praying that the shaking and the explosive noises will stop soon.

But
they don’t.

The
earthquake is not a natural occurrence. It’s been caused by a bomb planted
beneath the bottommost floor of Valkyrie, which is now in the process of caving
in. I stare down into the crater, dumbfounded to see the entire storey
crumbling away to nothing. The Valkyrie’s foundation is falling apart, and will
soon take the rest of the building down with it. This, I realise with horror,
is Prudell’s great plan. By sacrificing the lives of a thousand prisoners,
Prudell will also wipe out more than a hundred Highland rebels in one
horrifying blast.

I
grab my wire and give it a tug, ready to hurl myself across it to the balcony.
I have to get to Stirling and Mukesh. I have to bring them back here, before
it’s too late. As my hands connect with the wire, I can already feel it going
slack. The prison before me is leaning to one side and shaking with a
terrifying force as the floors below begin to crumble all at once. It’s hard to
make Mukesh out in the panicked crowd now, but I can see Stirling. He’s
approaching the balcony again, looking straight at me as he shakes his bright
head of hair. The gesture tells me that wordless message that I don’t want to
accept. It’s too late now, far too late.

Stirling
reaches for my grappling hook, slamming down on the release button to stop me
from using the line.

“No!”
I scream, but the wire is already falling into the destruction below,
disappearing into the cloud of dust as each storey of the Valkyrie smashes down
into the one below it. Mere seconds pass before Stirling is lost in the dust,
the building sinking into the death-bringing cloud.

Frantic
and desperate, I look around in the chaos for another wire to use, trying to
deny the reality of the collapsing building in the corner of my eye. There has
to be a way to save them. There have to be a few precious seconds left to do
something, even if it gets me killed for trying.

“Raja.”

It’s
Malcolm. I look to him with tearful, desperate hope. Malcolm will have a plan.
Malcolm will know the very best thing to do right now.

“Raja,”
he says again, “I’m sorry.”

And
he smacks me hard across the jaw. It’s enough to spin my head, enough for the
Highland leader to lift me up and throw me across his shoulder whilst I’m dazed.
I feel his feet thumping as my world spins in a fitful, painful haze, and all I
can think of is running back to Valkyrie, and of trying again to save Stirling.
Malcolm will not let me go. I thump my fists against his back as the shock of the
smack wears off, but he’s got an impossibly tight hold on me. It’s no use
fighting him. It is definitely too late now.

Mumma
and Pranjal are running behind Malcolm, and I can hear the whirring blades of
the helicopters that will take us far away from the carnage of the collapse. I
thought that when I found my family, things would be all right again. I thought
that I could find a way out of this war, once we were all together. But now, as
my eyes flicker shut on the building which has disappeared before me, it feels
like I’m more lost than ever before.

END OF BOOK ONE

There
now follows a preview from LEGION FOUND, book two in the Legion series:

Stirling
is dead. It is the thought which hits me every morning, before I even open my
eyes.

Sometimes,
in my dreams, I still have long, black hair. I meet Stirling in the dark,
earthy tunnels of my Underground home, where my family is safely tucked away in
our two small rooms, eating bare rations and keeping spirits high. There was no
raid on my precious home. Nothing at the Legion ever happened. I did not sign
up as a boy soldier, hiding from the System and the vicious Governor Prudell. I
did not fall in with the South Tower Rejects, and stage a rebellion that led to
us escaping and enlisting with the Highland rebel forces. In my dreams, I am
just a girl living in the dark, and Stirling arrives, with his flame-bright
hair and oceanic eyes, to show me the light.

But
then the earthquake begins. It rumbles, as real in my imagination as it was at
Valkyrie, and I find that I’m rooted to the spot. There is no time to save
Stirling from the earth that buries him, no way to act against what has already
passed. There is only the moment when he gives me that sad look, the one where
he knows we’ll never see each other again. He is distant then, distant as the
crater which separated us on the day that he fell into the dust cloud, never to
reemerge.

Stirling
is dead.

When
I open my eyes from that haunting dream, I find my quarters black as pitch.
Night still has the world in its clutches. I’m still living at the mountain
base of the West Highland Revolt, run by the notorious rebel leader Malcolm
Stryker. He is grieving too, though you can hardly see it in the lines of his
battle-worn face. It is only when someone mentions his nephew by name that
Malcolm’s frosty eyes begin to shine. Sometimes Malcolm leaves the room in
those moments. Other times, he manages to carry on, and I admire the control he
has over his pain. I wish I didn’t fall to pieces every time I’m reminded of
Stirling’s lanky frame and his ever cocky grin.

I
have woken in the wee small hours of a fresh April morning, and I know exactly
where Malcolm will be. I put on my boots, those tough, black boots that the
Legion issued me only two months ago, and I walk out into the corridor system
etched into the side of the mountain. I am only moments out of my room when a
whisper catches my attention, and I glance back down the corridor to see a face
which fills my heart with pain. My mother’s curious eyes peep out from her
doorframe.

“Where
are you going, M-?”

“Don’t.”

I
cut her off before she can say my name. Mumma has tried to take me back to that
time when we were all a happy family, using the name she gave me before the
Legion changed me forever. I can’t bear to hear it. That girl was Bhadrak’s
sister, the man who was shot by a spy before the rebels infiltrated the
Underground, left bleeding and dying in the dirt. That girl was the one who
used to steal Mukesh’s hats, Mukesh who went down in the quake beside Stirling.
The person Mumma wants me to be comes from a broken memory, and one that I
cannot belong to any more.

“Go
back to sleep, I’m fine,” I reply.

Mumma
furrows her brow.

“You
speak to your mother like that?” she chides.

The
bitterness and grief swell inside me with a black and heavy force.

“I
do now, I guess,” I answer.

I
walk away, and Mumma doesn’t try to call after me again. She wants to leave the
Highland base, and travel further north to the place where Malcolm sent Vinesh
to safety. After we recovered my blinded, half-deafened middle brother from the
ruins of the Underground, he travelled north into the wild Highlands, where the
System would never be able to reach him. Mumma says it’s best for me, her and
Pranjal to travel there too. We have to be safe, and together. We have to get
away.