Rebel (Legend, #4)(59)

I start to shake. “You’re offering me a job,” I repeat incredulously.

He nods. “Yes. I’m offering you the chance to come work for me, permanently. Think of the things you could do, Eden, without restrictions placed on you. Think of not having to cater to anyone else when it comes to your schedule and your life.” Hann laces his fingers together. “You’re free to come and go as you wish. Should you need to contact me again, you can use this.”

A series of six numbers appears in front of my view. I stare at it for a second, memorizing it, before it vanishes.

Hann smiles briefly at me. “I never intended for you to be my prisoner, Eden, and now I want to prove that to you in the most obvious way.”

I don’t trust him. I don’t believe him.

And yet, I think he’s telling me the truth. Somehow, this killer—the most-wanted criminal in all of Ross City, someone whom Daniel fears and hates, a person who has ruled the Undercity with an iron fist—is the only person I’ve ever known who seems to see me straight to my core.

Now he’s offering me a chance to work with him.

“I can’t do this,” I tell him. “We aren’t the same person. We don’t have the same beliefs.”

Hann stays even-tempered. “You can tell yourself whatever you want,” he replies. “I understand that it would be difficult to do this, because you would be separating yourself completely from your brother. But I know this is what’s in your heart. You want to change things, just like I do. And you’re tired of other people getting in your way. Tired of being unable to help the ones you care about the most. Tired of being unseen.”

I stay where I am, my mind whirling with confusion. On a surface level, he’s someone I’d need to avoid at all costs. But this …

“What if I choose not to work for you?” I say. “Will you still let me go?”

Hann nods. “If you choose not to, then what’s the point of keeping you here? Life is too exhausting to hold someone hostage every time I need something to get done.” He waves at the door. “Go. Confide in your friends. Find your brother. Never see me again. I won’t hunt you down at races; I won’t have my guards stalk what you do. All I can tell you is that you’re about to see what Ross City should actually be like, once it rises from its ashes. It’s time for someone else to run this place.” He leans forward on his knees. “Then you’ll soon ask yourself … who are you helping, exactly, by refusing my offer?”

I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to prove him wrong. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Ross City.

All I do is step toward the door. I go through the entrance and into the hall. Just like he’d said, his guards are waiting to take me wherever I want to go. And Hann is still behind me, sitting in my chamber.

I turn my back on the estate. Hann’s words ring in my mind, lingering, haunting.

Who are you helping, exactly, by refusing my offer?

And right as I consider those words, a high-pitched sound crackles around us.

I press my hands to my ears. The chip implanted near my temple seems to grow warm. My heart jumps into my throat.

Then everything goes silent.

It’s over as quickly as it happened, like an electric shock that blitzed right through the walls and floors and us. The guards, too, felt it—they hunch for a second, flinching, then look at one another in bewilderment before everything settles back down.

But something is missing. I open my eyes and see nothing virtual hovering in my view. No numbers, no account, not even the persistent warning that I’m unable to connect down here. There’s a weight to the silence, like the kind of quiet that you hear when you’re truly severed from civilization. The buzz and hum of technology. It’s all just gone.

He’s done it. It worked.

Dominic Hann has ordered the real signal to trigger. And he has just eliminated Ross City’s entire system.





DANIEL



It happens the next morning, right as June and I reach the AIS headquarters.

I’m awake by dawn, pulling my shirt and trousers on and tugging smooth my suit. Beside me, June’s already ready, as impeccably neat as any soldier trained in the Republic.

I don’t know what to say about what happened between us last night. Neither does she, I think. All we can do is glance occasionally at each other as we get ready. When I do speak, it’s about Eden.

“AIS messaged,” I tell her as we step out of the apartment and into the hall. “No luck hunting down Eden’s location. But my description of the underground has narrowed it down to a rough patch of the city.”

“What part?” June asks.

I bring up a map between us as we enter an elevator station, then point to a section of the grid. “This area was once in development to expand the Undercity to floors beneath the surface,” I explain. “They were going to house Undercity folks down there, in cramped spaces underground. It turned out to be a disaster, though—not enough escape routes up to the surface in case of fire or flood, not enough emergency ventilation. There was a huge fire that ripped through the space. After that, no one bothered with the maze of tunnels.”

“And it sounds like what you saw when you were down there?”

I nod. “The kind of building I saw, the construction site … it had the kind of infrastructure that reminded me of that story.”