Rebel (Legend, #4)(55)

Eden. My heart lurches. The guards had said he was working on some site. Was that where it was?

It’s all I have time to see. Then I’m twisting my body up, my boots pushing off against the windowsill and propelling me up toward the roof. My hands catch the edge of the roof and pull me up. I land in a firm crouch. Below me, I can hear shouts coming from inside. A spotlight starts to sweep across the estate.

This must be just one of Hann’s many hideouts. How many other places does he have? I duck behind a chimney as the spotlight sweeps close. My eyes narrow. As if bred out of years of muscle memory, my body knows exactly how to avoid the light, thinks it’s in Batalla Hall again and trying to find a way out. Thinks it’s on the Colonies’ airfield again and searching for a way to get close to their parked fighter jets.

I dart across the roofs. The construction site nears.

Then a bullet scrapes the roof nearest me. It misses me—but it chips the roof tiles hard enough to shatter them into fragments. My boot catches in just the wrong way against the breaking tiles.

I slip.

My hands scramble to grab the edge of the roof, but they’re too slippery with blood. I tumble off and to the ground.

Immediately, I try to scramble up again, but now a guard has reached me.

A Republic soldier, seizing me as a bullet shatters my knee. My scream, hoarse with rage and grief.

The memory is like a flint in me, lighting up the dark. A vicious growl rumbles in my throat, and I whirl on the guard, catching him hard in the jaw. I hit him once, twice—

—and then my strength gives way again, and I fall, dizzy from the exertion.

The guard stands over me. Several others rush to join him. I look back down to the ground and realize that I’m not sweating at all. There’s no water left in me.

That’s when I hear one of them say something above me that I swear I must have hallucinated.

“No,” one of the guards says to the others. “Let him go.”

“Hann’s order just came in. We’re to take him back up to the surface.”

I look up, thinking that maybe my weakness has left me too delirious to think straight. They’re letting me go.

I must be dreaming.

But then they’re taking me by the arms and dragging me up and throwing something dark across my eyes. I struggle with all the strength I have left. I’m misunderstanding what they’re saying, I tell myself. That’s the only way this makes sense. They’re not going to let me go. Hann has ordered them to kill me instead.

But I wait for the bullet through my head and it doesn’t happen. My feet drag against the floor. My consciousness is flickering in and out now. I can’t even tell when I’m awake and when I’m gone because, in this suffocating darkness, it’s all the same.

Eden. I have to find where they’re keeping him. My mind struggles to remember the path we’re taking.

I don’t know when they drag me into what seems to feel like an elevator. All I can do is try to remember how long we’re in it. Five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty.

My mind starts to fade. The guards’ voices above me are still talking, barking sharp orders at one another, but I can’t tell what they’re saying anymore.

I have to find my brother.

And then, suddenly they’re gone. The hands holding my arms vanish, and I crumple to the floor. It feels like asphalt, cement. The darkness lifts from over my eyes, and I suddenly see myself lying on the street somewhere in the Undercity, the smoke from nearby food stalls hazing the air.

AIS agents are here. They’re everywhere. The red dots of their guns are shining on me, and their shouts are deafening.

Hands in the air! Hands in the air! For an instant, I feel like a criminal again.

Then someone is shouting. “Stand down!” It’s the AIS director, Min. Her voice echoes against the concrete walls, forcing the guns to lower in a tidal wave. “Stand down! It’s Daniel. Stand down!”

Pushing through their ranks, too, is June. Her eyes lock on me and never steer away. I must be dreaming now. I lie where I am, the edges of my vision slowly fading into black, while she bends down beside me, her hands touching both sides of my face. Agents swarm around us.

“We’re here,” she’s saying. Then she raises her voice to those crowding around us, the authority in it returning. “Get back. Give him room. He’s injured!”

They listen to her instinctively, parting around us like a school of fish. I close my eyes, savoring her presence beside me. “They’ve got him,” I whisper through my parched lips. “Eden.”

June says something else. I think she’s ordering me to relax, that paramedics are going to take me to a hospital. I strain to understand what she’s saying, but her voice sounds muffled now. It’s still the loveliest voice I’ve ever heard. I want to stay awake to hear it.

And then everything is a blur of ambulance sirens and a chaos of other voices. June is nearby, holding my hand. Through it all, I keep looking back at where I’d come from. My thoughts blur together as I try to make sense of everything.

Hann ordered them to release me. They’d let me go. Why would he do that?

What does he want with Eden?

Where has he taken my brother?





EDEN



Dominic Hann keeps his promise to release Daniel.

I watch it numbly on a live feed in my view that night. My brother’s figure is undeniable—he’s tied down to a chair in some other part of this estate, struggling against his bonds. As I look on, he gets into a scuffle with the guards, and somehow—miraculously—breaks free. Shouts echo as he slithers out of a window with others on his tail.