Rebel (Legend, #4)(29)

“I’m saying that’s a real possibility,” I argue back.

Min shakes her head in frustration. “Hann doesn’t have that kind of power. You’re telling me he’s going to try seizing the capital of the most advanced nation in the world?”

“A nation that’s still too young,” I argue back. “That can topple just like anything else.”

She rubs her temples in irritation. “Give me something I can work with. I’ll never be able to convince the council that this is even a remote threat.”

Her expression makes me want to scream. These cracked Antarcticans have never lived through a revolution before. Their country is barely a few decades old. They have no idea how fragile this entire system is. Everything always seems like it’s going fine until suddenly, one day, it’s not.

“All of you think this place is invincible,” I snap. “You don’t see the poison bubbling under the surface, that’s been here since day one.”

“What do you propose we do, then?”

“Find a way to Hann’s side. We’ve had no luck hunting him because our relations with the Undercity are so poor.”

“And how are we going to do that when we don’t know the first thing about him?”

I smile grimly. “I’ve got some insight into how a notorious criminal can be caught by someone from the inside. She did it by becoming someone I could trust. But you need to tell the President that this system is unsustainable. We’re setting the Undercity up for a revolution, and I don’t even think they’re wrong to do it.”

Min still looks unconvinced. She shakes her head. “The President’s not going to like me bringing up this conversation again,” she says. “You know how much he supports the Level system.”

These Sky Floor bastards always try to maintain order by giving themselves all the advantages. Eden’s words linger in my mind, along with his disgust at my working for the AIS.

Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten where you come from.

But I was never the same as someone like Dominic Hann. Hann is a killer.

“You don’t have to talk the President into taking it down,” I reply. “Just tell him how much his own life is at risk. Hann isn’t going to stop at killing a councilman. President Ikari is the prize at the top, and if he wants to stay alive, he needs to do something to quell this.”

Min’s eyes have gone cold again, but she doesn’t dismiss my words. Instead, she nods at me. “Go join the others to gather eyewitness accounts,” she says. “We’ll talk again later.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond before walking away with her hands in her pockets.

Jessan comes up to me as I watch the director go. “I think we’re narrowing down where the drone race’s final is happening,” she says to me, sending me a virtual map of the Undercity.

“Yeah?” I answer.

“Yeah. It might be the same place as the semifinal. We’ve pinpointed a few scattered crowds idling on the sides of the streets. Looks like they’re waiting around for drones to pass through.”

“Then it’s happening very soon.”

She nods. “It’s too hard to track the drones, since they move so fast. We can only rely on the gathered crowds.”

“Once those spectators catch on that they’re being watched, they’re going to scatter in a second.” I force myself to turn away from the crime scene. “Show me where the crowds have been spotted.”

As I start to follow Jessan away from the crime scene, I bring up my directory of names and instinctively pick out Eden’s account to send him a message. But he’s offline again, the tracker on his system disabled. Barely a day since our argument, since he almost got a knife to the stomach down in the Undercity, and he’s already at it again, off to do hell knows what. I sigh. What do I have to do to force him to stay put—tie him down in a chair?

Maybe he’s back home, I tell myself. Or out celebrating, as he should be. Today had been his last day of classes, after all, and he could be out with his friends, laughing his head off in some Sky Floor bar.

If I track his location and find him again, he’ll know. And that won’t get me anywhere with getting him to open up. I take a deep breath and try to ignore the nagging feeling in my gut.

But all that swirls through my mind are memories of the days when Eden was lost to me, when the Republic had taken him somewhere and I had no idea where he was. All I remember is seeing him stumble forward through the ash and fog of war from the hospital, and me scooping him into my arms.

Screw this. I give in to my worries, then tap on the icon for Eden’s location. My AIS privileges let me bypass permissions, so that I can track him without his consent.

A small loading icon swirls in the center of my vision as my system traces him.

Ahead of me, Jessan pauses to bring up a virtual map between us. “See?” she says. “We’ve noticed hints of drone spectators crowded along these locations. It’s not much evidence to go off of, but it puts the rough estimate of where the race is happening tonight right … here.”

She points to a spot on the virtual map.

At the same time, my system finishes tracking where Eden is. His location dot appears, bright red, over almost the same spot where Jessan is pointing.

I blink, then frown and shake my head. “Hang on a sec,” I mutter, reloading the geolocator. “I think my system glitched. Show me where the race is on the map again?”