Rebel (Legend, #4)(14)

Maybe he’s thinking about seeing June tomorrow. A needle of guilt pricks me as I remember how I’d brought her up to him earlier in the day. He’d switched the topic back to me so quickly. But that’s the thing about him now. He’ll spend all his time digging into my life without ever telling me anything about what’s going on with him. I don’t even know if he’s still in love with her.

There used to be a time when all I wanted to do was talk to Daniel. Now I don’t know what I want. For him to understand me, I guess, except that seems impossible.

I watch him until he stands up on the ledge, turns, and hops back down. He disappears back inside his room.

A call from Pressa comes in. I accept it, then answer in a hushed voice, “Hey.”

“Hey.” She sounds breathless and excited. “Looks like you’re officially on the racing roster. You still in for tonight?”

For just a second, I hesitate.

I made a promise to Pressa, said it right to her face. But Daniel is still an AIS agent.

If the AIS ever gets a whiff of how Pressa really makes her money, how she’s been paying her father’s medical bills by betting on illegal drone races, she’ll be jailed and her Level flattened before I can take a breath to speak for her. Even Daniel doesn’t have the kind of power to save her.

I fold the drone notice back into my pocket and hide it away. The Undercity. The danger and noise and chaos. The need for it to fill my mind and push everything else out.

“I’m heading down now,” I confirm. “Meet you at midnight.”





DANIEL



It’s a cold night, but I don’t mind the sting of the air against my skin. There’s something familiar about the wind against my face at a place high above the city, where I can see everything—the pulse of the hundreds of floors below me, the menagerie of bright lights lining the walkways that connect each high-rise, the flickering of virtual notations over people shuffling by below. Tonight, the skyscrapers nearest ours have a set of virtual murals of the ocean overlaid against their walls, of bright corals and rainbow-hued fish swimming between each building. As I look on through the augmented-reality system installed in my chip, a virtual whale colored neon turquoise and pink glides lazily in the air between two skyscrapers, its massive body materializing out through one wall and into another like a ghost.

I admire the moving art in silence.

Back in the Republic, I would climb to the top of a building and look down at a scene of haze and dirt, concrete and steel and red banners and metal waterwheels. At night, there would be patches of the city that were completely dark, areas where they cut the power to conserve it for military use. I have fragments of memories about those rolling blackouts, nights when Tess and I would light a roll of trash as a torch to navigate the pitch-dark alleys. It was a place that always seemed broken.

All I see here is a sea of eternal lights and colors. Yet, somehow, everything still has a feeling of precarious balance—like this whole goddy city’s sitting on a neglected, crumbling foundation, teetering on the brink of something sinister.

Dominic Hann.

The AIS has been tracking him for so long, and yet we still have no good leads. Not even a public sighting of him. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s got some powerful friends and a lot of spies. No doubt he knows that we’re after him, and he’s found a way to keep out of our sights.

I check my messages again in my view. No new updates from Jessan or Lara. No luck hunting down where the next drone race might be happening in the Undercity.

I run a hand through my hair and try not to remember the feeling of that woman’s body going limp in my arms, her head lolling to one side as the life left her. Every time I close my eyes, I picture the foam flecks at her mouth and feel the weight of her. The memory makes me shudder. I’m too afraid to see her in my dreams.

It was easier when I had an enemy I could face: the old Republic, the military jeeps and the airfields and the plague patrols, those shining epaulettes and black boots. Not that I’m itching to go back to living on the streets anytime soon.

The thought reminds me of Eden, and I look instinctively over my shoulder toward the darkness of his room. At least he can get some sleep. Maybe in the morning I’ll be able to catch him before he heads off to the university and get a few words in with him. A part of me itches to check his location again, just to make sure he’s where he should be—but Eden’s outburst from this afternoon makes me pause. I force myself to leave him alone.

Instead, I look up to the few floors above our apartment. Tomorrow, the Republic’s Elector and his entourage are going to land on the Sky Floor of a nearby building. June will be with him. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since I bumped into her on the street in Batalla a month ago.

A knot of excitement and fear tightens in my chest. I look to my side and imagine our meeting, picture her standing here beside me and leaning against the railing. My memories have been so shattered since I left the Republic, and for years I couldn’t even remember who June was at all. I’d only see a nameless girl in my dreams, her long, dark ponytail swinging behind her, and wonder how I could never seem to catch up. I’d study the paper clip ring around my finger, something I’ve always worn since I left the Republic, and try to remember why it mattered so much to me.

It wasn’t until I saw her in the Republic a month ago, purely by accident, that fragments of her in my memories came rushing back to me. That I remembered June was the one who’d give me that paper clip ring.