Rebel (Legend, #4)(48)

“I never shaft my talent, Eden. You’ll be paid handsomely. More than anyone in the Republic would offer you, I can guarantee it. Anyone you love and care for will be taken care of.”

“Like how you’re taking care of my brother right now? Like how you had your guys show me a video of someone following him home?”

He shakes his head. “My methods are unconventional. It’s a result of the world I operate in. But I’m not interested in hurting your brother, Eden. What good would that do me, when I’m trying to earn your trust? Cooperate with me, and your brother will be released unharmed, with no knowledge of where he was held, and he and the AIS can go back to hunting me like they always do.”

If you lure Hann out into a space where our agents are ready for him, we can take him down before he can escape.

The AIS director’s words come back to me now, haunting in their premonition. I’d refused to do it, but now the choice has been taken out of my hands. Now I’m down here, and my brother is in real danger, with no promise that AIS will be able to find him in time should I refuse or displease Hann.

I turn my head back to the towering machine, to its soft glow. On a small scale, my engine was able to turn the drone into one of the fastest racers I’ve ever seen. What is this engine for? What is Hann planning to do with it?

At this very moment, Daniel is somewhere down here, wondering whether I’m still alive.

Hann sighs when he sees my hesitation. “When I was younger,” he says, “I lived in the Undercity with my family. My mother once sent me on an errand to buy groceries in a part of the Undercity far from our home. That’s what happens to single-Level folks who don’t qualify for the good stores, you see? We have only a few shops to choose from, and the only one with what we needed was on the other side of the city. I got lost on the way there, and ended up in an alley where I witnessed an attack.

“I hid behind a trash bin and watched several people holding down a man. His attackers all had knives. The man they held down was sobbing, apologizing for stealing a crate of canned food.” Hann glances at me. My heartbeat quickens. “Do you know what they did to him?”

Is he telling me a story from his past, or is he threatening me? All I can see is the blurred edges of my vision, the sharpened focus on this criminal. All I can think about is the way I’d crouched beside my brother on the floor of our kitchen years ago, holding his hand as he fought through the pain in his head.

The way he’d screamed and collapsed. The way I’d shouted for an ambulance. The bright lights of the hospital.

Hann looks grave at my pale expression. “Some of us aren’t born with the luxury of a good childhood. Isn’t that right, Eden? Some of us know what it’s like to carry a burden on our shoulders for the rest of our lives, something that no one can understand except those who have experienced it for themselves.”

And in spite of everything, I find myself drawn to what he’s saying, like he knows me from the inside out. I wonder what had happened to Hann in his past, and why he sounds like he has a chronic condition of the chest or the lungs. He looks so sharp and proper now. It’s impossible to imagine him as a young boy hiding behind a trash bin.

“I’m not trying to hurt your brother,” Hann says quietly to me now. “But I know talent when I see it, and I don’t like wasting it. Your brother is only my way to you. You don’t have to work for me forever. If you don’t like it, I swear that I will let you leave. And your brother will be unharmed.”

In this moment, I am a small boy again, and every word Hann says brings me back to the dark years, and I hear John’s shouts in my mind, I hear the shaking of my mother’s voice, I am strapped down to the gurney and being taken away from my family. I am blind, helpless against the onslaught.

So I hold up my hands, and when I speak, my voice comes out quiet.

“Leave him alone,” I hear myself say. “Don’t hurt my brother.”

Hann frowns at the tears blurring my vision. “And in return?”

“We can talk about what I can do for you. Just talk, no guarantees. All right?”

He doesn’t answer at first. All he does is give me a steady smile. “A good start,” he says.





DANIEL



I can’t remember how many hours or even days might have passed. The lack of windows down here is disorienting, and a lack of water is making me weaker than I should be. Guards change rotation around me.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m just delirious now, but I find myself continuously thinking about June. This time it’s a recent memory, of the night when Tess first set up a dinner between June and me.

I’d seen June walking toward me at a train station in Los Angeles, right after Eden had finished interviewing for his Batalla Hall internship. Eden and I had been in a good mood that day—he was chatting up a storm beside me, explaining all that he wanted to do, while I’d walked quietly and listened to him, grateful that we were walking down the streets of a peaceful Republic. Then I’d looked up and seen her heading toward us.

It’d been the briefest, most significant meeting of my life. A glance, a flash of a memory. Her dark eyes had locked for a second on mine, and I’d stopped in the middle of the path, overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia. I’d looked back at her, and then decided on a whim to introduce myself to her.