The Legend Trilogy Collection (20 page)

T
HAT NIGHT
, T
HOMAS 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.

Metias had fretted over such small things.

My eyes grow heavy as I continue to read. The words start to blur together on the page, until I can’t quite understand what each entry means anymore. Finally I put the journal aside and drift off into sleep.

Day appears in my dreams. He holds my hands in his own, and my heart pounds at the touch. His hair falls around his shoulders like a silk drape, one streak of it scarlet with blood, and his eyes look pained. “I didn’t kill your brother.” He pulls me close. “I promise you, I couldn’t have.”

When I wake up, I lie still for a while and let Day’s words run through my head. My eyes wander over to the computer desk. How had that fateful night played out? If Day hit Metias’s shoulder, then how did the knife end up in my brother’s chest? This brief thought makes my heart ache. I look at Ollie.

“Who would want to hurt Metias?” I ask him. Ollie looks back at me with mournful eyes. “And why?”

I push myself off the couch several minutes later, then wander over to my desk and turn on my computer.

I go back to the crime report from the Central Hospital. Four pages of text, one page of photos. It’s the photos that I decide to take a closer look at. After all, Commander Jameson had given me only a few minutes to analyze Metias’s body, and I’d used the time poorly—but how could I have concentrated? I’d never doubted that the murderer was anyone but Day. I hadn’t studied the photos as closely as I should have.

Now I double-click on the first photos and enlarge them to full screen. The sight makes me light-headed. Metias’s cold, lifeless face tilts up to the sky, and his hair fans out in a small circle under his head. Blood stains his shirt. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and tell myself to concentrate this time. I’d always managed to get through reading the text of the report, but I could never bring myself to study the photos. Now I have to. I open my eyes and focus back on my brother’s body. I wish I’d studied the wounds more closely in person when I had the chance.

First I make sure the knife in the photo is indeed buried in his chest. Bits of blood stain the hilt. I can’t see any of the blade. Then I look at Metias’s shoulder.

Although it’s covered up by his sleeve, I can see that a sizable circle of blood stains the cloth there. It couldn’t all be spillover from the chest—there must be another wound. I enlarge the photo again. Nope, too blurry. Even if there is a knifelike slice in the sleeve over his shoulder, I can’t see it at this angle.

I close the photo and click on another one.

That’s when I realize something. All the photos on this page are taken at an angle. I can barely make out the details on his shoulder and even on the knife. I frown. Poor crime scene photography. Why weren’t there close-up photos of the actual wounds? I scroll through the report again, searching for pages I might have missed. But that was it. I go back to the same page, then try to make sense of it.

Maybe the other photos are classified. What if Commander Jameson took them out to spare me the pain? I shake my head. No, that’s stupid. Then she wouldn’t have sent any photos with this report at all. I stare at the screen, then dare to imagine the alternative.

What if Commander Jameson took them out to hide something from me?

No, no. I sit back and stare at the first photo again. Why would Commander Jameson want to hide the details of my brother’s murder from me? She
loves
her soldiers. She was outraged by Metias’s death—she even arranged for his funeral. She
wanted
him on her patrol. She was the one who made him captain.

But I doubt the crime scene photographer was so rushed that he would take such a bad set of photos.

I think about it from several angles, but keep coming to the same conclusion. This report is incomplete. I run a hand through my hair in frustration. I don’t understand it.

Suddenly I look closer at the knife in the photo. It’s grainy, and details are almost impossible to make out, but something triggers an old memory that makes my stomach churn. The blood on the knife’s hilt is dark, but there’s another mark there too, something darker than the blood. At first I think it’s a part of the faint pattern on the knife, but these marks are on top of the blood. They look black, thick and textured. I try to remember what the knife looked like on the night it happened, when I had a chance to look at it myself.

These black marks look like rifle grease. Almost like the streak of grease that was on Thomas’s forehead when I first saw him that night.

WHEN JUNE VISITS ME AGAIN THE NEXT MORNING,
even she looks shocked—if just for a second—at my figure, slumped against one wall of my cell. I tilt my head in her direction. She hesitates at the sight of me but quickly regains her composure.

“I assume you made someone angry,” she says, then snaps her fingers at the soldiers. “Everyone out. I want a private word with the prisoner.” She nods up at the security cameras positioned in each corner. “And cut those too.”

The soldier in charge salutes. “Yes, ma’am.” As several of them hurry to click off the cameras, I see her take out two knives sheathed at her belt.
Somehow I must’ve made her angry too.
A laugh bubbles out of my throat and turns into a coughing fit. Well, I guess we should just get it all out of the way.

When the soldiers leave and the door slams shut behind June, she walks over and crouches beside me. I brace myself for the feeling of a blade against my skin.

“Day.”

She hasn’t moved. Instead, she puts her knives back by her belt and pulls out a canteen of water. Just a display for the soldiers, I guess
.
She splashes some of the cool liquid on my face. I flinch, but then I open my mouth to catch some of it. Water never tasted so good.

June squirts some water directly into my mouth, then puts the canteen away. “Your face looks awful.” There’s concern—and something else—in her expression. “Who did this to you?”

“Nice of you to ask.” I’m amazed she even cares. “You can thank your captain friend for this.”

“Thomas?”

“That’s the guy. I don’t think he’s very happy that I got a kiss from you and he hasn’t. So he interrogated me about the Patriots. Apparently Kaede’s a Patriot. Small world, huh?”

Anger flashes across June’s face. “He never mentioned this to me. Last night he—well, I’ll take it up with Commander Jameson.”

“Thanks.” I blink water out of my eyes. “I was wondering when you’d come.” I hesitate for a second. “Do you know anything about Tess yet? If she’s alive?”

June looks down. “Sorry,” she replies. “I have no way of knowing where she is. She should be safe, as long as she stays low. I haven’t mentioned her to anyone. She hasn’t appeared in any of the recent arrests . . . or deaths.”

I’m frustrated by the lack of news, but relieved at the same time. “How are my brothers?”

June tightens her lips. “I have no access to Eden, although I’m sure he’s still alive. John is doing as well as can be expected.” When she looks up again, I see confusion and sadness in her eyes. “I’m sorry you had to deal with Thomas yesterday.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I whisper. “Is there any particular reason why you’re nicer than usual today?”

I don’t expect June to take this question seriously, but she does. She stares at me, and then seats herself in front of me with her legs folded underneath her. She seems different today. Subdued, maybe, even sad. Uncertain. An expression I’ve never seen before, even when I first met her on the streets. “Something bothering you?”

June stays silent for a long while, with her eyes cast down. Finally, she looks at me.
She’s searching for something,
I realize.
Is she trying to find a way to trust me?
“I studied my brother’s crime scene report again last night.” Her voice trickles to a whisper so that I have to lean forward to hear her.

“And?” I say.

June’s eyes search mine. She hesitates again. “Day, can you say, honestly and truly . . . that you didn’t kill Metias?”

She must have found something. She wants a confession. The night at the hospital flashes through my thoughts—my disguise, Metias watching me as I entered the hospital, the young doctor I’d held hostage, the bullets bouncing off the refrigerators. My long fall to the ground. Then the face-off with Metias, the way I’d thrown my knife at him. I’d
seen
it hit his shoulder, so far from his chest that it couldn’t possibly have killed him. I hold June’s gaze with my own.

“I did not kill your brother.” I reach out to touch her hand and wince at the pain that shoots up my arm. “I don’t know who did. I’m sorry for injuring him at all—but I had to save my own life. I wish I’d had more time to think it through.”

June nods quietly. The look on her face is so heartbreaking that I wish for a second that I could hold her.
Someone
needs to hold her. “I really miss him,” she whispers. “I thought he would be around for a long time, you know, someone I could always lean on. He was all I had left. And now he’s gone, and I wish I knew why.” She shakes her head slowly, as if defeated, and then lets her eyes meet mine again. Her sadness makes her impossibly beautiful, like snow blanketing a barren landscape. “And I
don’t
know why. That’s the worst part, Day. I don’t know why he died. Why would someone want him dead?”

Her words are so similar to my thoughts about my mother that I can barely breathe. I didn’t know that June had lost her parents—although I should have guessed it from the way she carries herself. June was not the one who shot my mother. She was not the one who brought the plague into my home. She was a girl who’d lost her brother, and someone had led her to believe I did it, and in anguish she had tracked me down. If I’d been in her place, would I have done anything differently?

She’s crying now. I give her a small smile, then sit up straighter and stretch my hand out toward her face. The shackles on my wrist clank together. I wipe away the tears from under one of her eyes. Neither of us says anything. There’s no need to. She’s thinking . . . if I’m right about her brother, then what else am I right about?

After a moment, June takes my hand and holds it against her cheek. Her touch sends warmth coursing through me. She’s so lovely. I ache to pull her to me now and press my lips against hers and wash away the sorrow in her eyes. I wish I could go back to that night in the alley for just one second.

I’m the first one to speak. “You and I may have the same enemy,” I say. “And they’ve pitted us against each other.”

June takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure yet,” she says, even though I can tell by her voice that she agrees with me. “It’s dangerous for us to talk like this.” She looks away, reaches into her cloak, and pulls out something I thought I had lost at the hospital. “Here. I want to give this back to you. I have no more use for it.”

I want to snatch it from her hand, but the chains weigh me down. In her palm is my pendant necklace, the smooth bumps on its surface scraped and dirty but still more or less whole, the necklace part lying in a pile in her palm.

“You had it,” I whisper. “You found it at the hospital that night, didn’t you? That’s how you recognized me when you finally found me—I must’ve reached for it.”

June nods quietly, then takes my hand and drops the pendant into my palm. I look at it in wonder.

My father. I can’t keep the memory of him away now that I’m staring at my pendant again. I think back to the day he visited us after six months without a word. When he was safely inside and we’d draped curtains over the windows, he wrapped his arms around Mom and kissed her for such a long time. He kept one hand pressed protectively on her stomach. John waited patiently to greet him, hands in his pockets. I was still young enough to hug his leg. Eden wasn’t born yet—he was still inside Mom’s growing belly.

“How are my boys?” my father said after he finally let go of Mom. He patted my cheek and smiled at John.

John gave him a big, toothy grin. He had managed to grow his hair long enough to tie it back in a tail. He held up a certificate. “Look!” he said. “I passed my Trial!”

“You did!” My father clapped John on the back and shook his hand as if he were a man. I can still remember the relief in his eyes, the tremor of joy in his words. Back then, we all worried that John would be the one to fail the Trial, considering his trouble with reading. “I’m proud of you, Johnny. Good job.”

Then he looked at me. I remember studying his face. Dad’s official job in the Republic was to clean up after the warfront’s soldiers, of course, but there were always hints that this wasn’t the only job he had. Hints like the stories he sometimes told about the Colonies and their glittering cities, their advanced technology and festive holidays. At that moment, I wanted to ask him why he was always gone even after his warfront rotation should’ve returned him home, why he never came to see us.

But something else distracted me. “There’s something in your vest pocket, Dad,” I said. Sure enough, a circular bump was pressed against the cloth.

He chuckled, then took out the object. “So there is, Daniel.” He glanced up at our mother. “He’s very perceptive, isn’t he?”

Mom smiled at me.

My father hesitated, then ushered us all into the bedroom. “Grace,” he said to Mom, “look what I found.”

She studied it closely. “What is it?”

“It’s more proof.” At first my father tried to show it only to Mom, but I managed to get a good look as he turned it over in his hands. A bird on one side, a man’s profile on the other.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST, QUARTER DOLLAR
embossed on one side, and
LIBERTY
and
1990
on the other. “See? Evidence.” He pressed it into her palm.

“Where did you find this?” Mom asked.

“In the southern swamplands between the two warfronts. It’s a genuine coin from nineteen-ninety. See the name? United States. It was
real
.”

My mother’s eyes gleamed with excitement, but she still gave Dad a grave look. “This is a dangerous thing to own,” she whispered. “We’re not keeping this in our house.”

My father nodded. “But we can’t destroy it. We have to safeguard it—for all we know, this might be the last coin of its kind in the world.” He folded my mother’s fingers over the coin. “I’ll make a metal casing for it, something that covers both sides. I’ll weld it shut so the coin’s secure inside.”

“What will we do with it?”

“Hide it somewhere.” My father paused for a second, then looked at John and me. “Best place might be somewhere obvious to everyone. Give it to one of the boys, maybe as a locket. People will think it’s just a child’s ornament. But if soldiers find it in the house in a raid, hidden under some floorboard, they’ll know for sure that it’s important.”

I stayed silent. Even at that age, I understood my father’s concern. Our house had been searched on routine inspections by troops before, just like every other house on our street. If Dad hid it somewhere, they’d find it.

Our father left early the next morning, before the sun even rose. We would see him only one more time after that. Then he never came home again.

This memory flashes through my mind in an instant. I look up at June. “Thank you for finding this.” I wonder if she can hear the sadness in my voice. “Thank you for giving it back to me.”