Rebel (Legend, #4)(45)

Alive. Unharmed. It’s all I want to know.

I stare at the man for a while before studying the room again. There’s no obvious clue of where exactly we are, and as expected, my system has been powered off, with nothing but a warning blipping in the corner of my view. Wherever this place is, it’s nowhere I can connect online.

One of the others near the door leans back from the wall and strolls over to me. She looks bored. “How long do we have to stay down here?” she mutters as she reaches me and bends over to inspect my face. “I didn’t sign up to be a babysitter.”

“You’ll stay until you’re told otherwise,” the man replies in exasperation.

She smiles slightly at me. I glare back at her. “So this is the world-famous Day,” she muses. “He’s even younger than I thought.” Then she directs her words at me. “You don’t look like you’ve lived through a war, kid.”

Too bad this goddy gag is in my mouth, or I’d be able to answer her. Instead, I meet her gaze steadily until it seems to unnerve her. She shoves my chin away so roughly that I have to catch myself to keep the chair from tipping over.

“What the hell are you looking at?” she snaps, then straightens and crosses her arms.

Behind her, one of the other women by the door sighs. “Leave him alone,” she says. “We’re not supposed to touch him.”

“Or what? He was staring at me.” The first woman scowls.

“Just wait until the others head down to get us, all right?” the man on the couch says with a sigh. “It’s not like he’s going to do anything or get anywhere like this.”

Head down. We’re probably somewhere in the Undercity. My head pulses with pain again, and I wince, my thoughts scattering. Leaning against the wall at midnight, being wheeled down a hospital corridor in a gurney, collapsing to the fl oor of a train. Bright fragments of memories come back to me now, along with a phantom pain of what I’d once gone through.

I’m suddenly filled with a rush of anger. I did not live through a revolution and take my brother all the way to Antarctica to be strapped down by some stupid mob boss who somehow thinks he’s important. I did not come here to be intimidated by a bunch of trigger-happy trots.

The AIS’s communication system. If I can get close enough to one of the guards, I can try to tether my system to theirs, get a connection going—if only for a second. Had June received my last message? I have a vague memory of trying to send her a call with nothing but a few seconds of static, but I can’t be sure it ever reached her. Or if she knows that it means I’m in trouble.

I jerk hard against my bonds. The chair clatters forward, scraping against the tiles.

To my satisfaction, all my guards startle at my movement. I smile a little behind my gag. Haven’t lost my touch yet.

“Stay still,” the man on the couch orders me, his frown deepening. He looks reluctant to come to me, though, and his hesitation just makes me more reckless.

Or you’ll do what? They can’t kill me if I’m supposed to be collateral. They need Eden to stay compliant and do what the boss says. So I push harder and bang my chair loudly against the floor. My hands wring behind my back.

“Damn it all,” the man hisses between his teeth as he finally gets up and walks toward me. He smacks me once in the face and then grips my chin hard. “Stay still, unless you want your fingers to go missing one by one.”

Idle threats. I stare fiercely back at him. In his eyes, I can see that what he’d said earlier is true. Hann had instructed them not to touch me, and it bothers this man right now to be forced to discipline me.

Link.

I send out the command on my system with my mind, and it catches his nearby account. A loading circle spins in my view. Attempting to connect, it says.

The man shoves me roughly back away from him. The connection attempt stalls.

I pretend to choke on my gag, coughing uncontrollably. At first the man laughs, smug at the thought of my suffering—but when I keep going, putting on a show of struggling to breathe, his smile wavers a bit. One of the women nods at him.

“Readjust his gag, for chrissakes,” she calls out. “Don’t want him choking to death.”

The man grimaces but does as she says. He comes over, pauses in front of me, and unties the gag from my mouth.

I instantly lash out at him. My teeth close down hard on one of his fingers.

He lets out a yell and shoves me back so hard that I topple over with my chair. My body hits the ground with a painful thud and my head rings from the impact. The coppery taste of blood lingers on my tongue. Above me, the man stalks around in a circle, swearing up a storm, his hand cradling his bleeding finger. In rage, he spins around and kicks me hard in the stomach.

It knocks all the wind out of me. I gasp, my eyes widening at the blow.

“Goddamn little AIS shits,” the man shouts down at me, spitting once on my face as the woman hurries over to force the gag back on over my mouth. Behind her, the man snaps his fingers impatiently, shouting for servants to come clean up the spots of blood on the rug.

I just squeeze my eyes shut and act like I can’t hear anything he’s saying, because at that moment my connection starts up again.

Link successful.

The warning in the bottom of my view disappears, replaced with a glowing green circle. I’m online.