Rebel (Legend, #4)(52)

“I don’t blame the Undercity,” Dominic Hann says, snapping me to the present again. “People are businessmen. They step in when no one else will. There’s a need for services like illegal loans down here, for the people forgotten by your government.” He points up at the ceiling. “No, I blame this entire damn system, the Levels and the floors and the hierarchy of this place that made it impossible for us to get out of our predicament. I blame the fact that the President sells the Undercity the dream that, if they only worked hard enough, they too could Level themselves up to the Sky Floors. I blame the fact that the dream is a fantasy.”

It’s as if he’s having the exact same conversation I’d had with Daniel. The Undercity has no choice but to be the way it is. I find myself staring back at Hann with a confused look, trying to understand how a ruthless, notorious killer can make so much sense. Can grieve a family he had lost, just as I’d lost mine.

“Is it still true, though?” I manage to say at last. “The things you’ve done to people here? You killed that councilman the other night. You—” I swallow hard. “You’ve murdered Undercity citizens in the same way that your own family was murdered.”

“You want to play a game?” he says coolly. “Play it down here, where there are no rules at all. Then it’s fair. You do what you have to do to survive. Everyone knows what the game they’re playing is. There are no unfulfilled promises, no special favors. It’s just business here.” His eyes harden. “That, I can work with.”

I look for that taunting edge in his expression—but Dominic Hann looks genuine now, his eyes lit up in earnest as if trying to convince me of his words. And for an instant, I can see him rising up the ranks of this dangerous world, drawing people to him with nothing but his own resolve.

Like Daniel.

The thought is so startling that I shove it away in fright.

“And if someone doesn’t want to work their way up like you?” I say through gritted teeth. Every hair on my skin feels like it’s standing on end.

His cold ease has returned. “Few don’t,” he replies. “Why wouldn’t they, when the system’s decks are stacked against them anyway? Surely you, of all people, can understand that.”

“Stop comparing me with you.”

“Why not?” He leans toward me. “You’re instinctively drawn to this place. This is where you feel at home, down here, where you can keep all those memories swirling in your head at bay.”

I wince. In spite of everything, I find myself struggling to breathe, impressed that this criminal—this murderer—has figured out secrets about me that my own brother hasn’t been able to understand. He knows me better than Daniel does. His words pierce straight through me, as if he could see the dreams that swallow me whole every night.

“You can’t understand why your brother is no longer in the same place you are,” Hann adds. “Hadn’t he been just like me, made his entire reputation off fighting for the people? But he’s left behind that dark place from his past. Now he works for the government, helping to enforce this system that’s crushing us. Working to dismantle what people like me are trying to do.”

He’s trying to turn me against my brother, convincing me of something I’ve always disliked—his work for the AIS, his siding with this government that is crippling its people. And if he were saying this to someone else, maybe it would even work. I see Daniel’s face, his worried expression. I think of the way he’d argued with the director, how he’d railed against this system. He doesn’t support the Level system, either. But it doesn’t matter. He still works for the AIS.

Hann sips from his glass. “So you see, Eden,” he says as I hesitate, “I’m not trying to force you into anything. But what I am saying is that I think you’re a better fit down here than you think. Even if you left—even if I let you go or you escaped … you’d come back. You belong here.”

You belong here. A part of me wonders if this is what he tells everyone before he kills them. But another part of me … knows he’s right. Because I do keep coming back.

“What is the machine that you’re building, then?” I finally ask him. It’s the question that has been waiting on the tip of my tongue. “What does that have to do with anything you’ve just told me? What exactly am I helping you to do?”

Hann gives me a pointed look. “Finish installing your engine today,” he says, “and we can run a blank sample test. Then you can see for yourself.”

*

When we head out after dinner to the construction site, there’s no hint at all on Dominic Hann’s face that he had revealed any weakness to me. Instead, he seems cool, almost cold. There’s none of the weight and the anguish that he’d let me witness when he told me about what happened to his family. I wonder whether he’s genuinely confiding in me.

“How much longer?” Hann asks me now as he walks over to where I’m working.

I look up at the structure. The new engine I’ve installed is mostly in place now, the new pieces expanding on top of the original drone engine I’d built so that it can conduct enough power for the whole machine. The rest of Hann’s workers are already securing the final pieces.

I point at one end of the machine, the portion that’s supposed to send some sort of signal out. It’s all I’ve managed to puzzle out about what the whole thing does. “They’re installing the last piece now,” I say to Hann. “This signal needs to be amplified more than you thought if you plan on making it hit the entire city. So I needed to make sure it gets that boost.”