Rebel (Legend, #4)(78)

Pressa stares sidelong at me. “Do you think she’ll relay this to Hann?” she whispers.

My lips tighten. “We’ll know soon enough.”

We stay where we are for what feels like an eternity. My eyes turn up. The skyscrapers overhead disappear into the air, and if I look for too long, the sheer endlessness makes me dizzy. What if Hann has people watching and waiting everywhere up there, their eyes turned toward us in case this deal goes wrong. I glance around us. We are as vulnerable as we can be now. If he wanted to, he could shoot us down right here. And for a moment, I think that’s exactly what he’ll do.

A new call comes on. I answer it. My hand trembles against my ear.

Even before he speaks, I know it’s him. His presence hangs in the air. “Your brother is already calling for me to meet with him,” he says. “Does he know you’re down here?”

So Daniel and June have already made their move. I tilt my head up, listening for their voices being broadcast. It’s faint, coming from the heart of the city where the advertisements jumble the closest on the skyscrapers.

“No,” I reply.

I can’t tell if he believes me or not. “And why is that? A change of heart?” he asks, a touch of amusement in his voice.

I will never be able to fool him. This will all go terribly wrong. But I still take a deep breath and answer. “I just want to meet again,” I say.

He’s silent for a moment. My eyes lock on a silhouette that appears at the entrance of the shuttered bar ahead of us. It’s one of his men; I recognize him as one of the people who had held me hostage in the Undercity. Beside me, Pressa stiffens.

He approaches us. His eyes are expressionless. “Come with me,” he says.





DANIEL



The main difference between the Antarctican military and the Republic one is that, back in the Republic, we knew exactly who we were fighting. The Colonies were pushing on our border, and their airships filled our skies.

Here, though, they hide in the shadows. Our enemies are ourselves. And it makes it that much harder to fight back.

I frown as we survey an area where we are to try to make an announcement to catch Hann’s attention. Ross City used to be filled with virtual billboards that stretch all the way across the entire sides of skyscrapers. Their 3-D advertisements wandered around on each floor, all the way to the ground. Now though, with the Level system shut down, only a few screens still work, ones that were physically installed and operated before the Level system was implemented. Old-fashioned tech.

June holds out a device to me. “Here,” she says, tapping its screen once so that it lights up with a blue glow.

I study it with a thoughtful frown. “What’s this?”

“When we send our message out to Hann, let’s send out different versions on different frequencies.” She nods down at the device. “With all of Ross City’s systems down, Hann will be using more primitive communication tech, just like we are. This will tell us whether or not he’s listening in on one of our frequencies.”

I look at her. “So we run a different message on each frequency,” I reply, puzzling out what she’s saying, “and based on how he responds, we get an idea of roughly where he might be in the city.”

She blushes a little at me. “It’s how I first tracked you down in Lake.”

A dark figure standing in the middle of a midnight street, holding up vials of plague cure. Me, crouched in the shadows of a second-story ledge, talking into a crackling speaker. The memory wavers in my thoughts. “So that was how you did it,” I murmur.

She looks away toward the city, as if sorry to bring it up. I wait a moment before I reach out to touch her hand. Her skin is cool to the touch.

Our beat of silence ends as an officer comes up to us to set the frequencies on the device. She nods toward the platform where we will be playing my statements. “We’re ready to start, whenever you are,” she says.

I nod back, then get up and head with June over to the platform. There, we run through several of the alternate statements we’ll be releasing. Finally, I clear my throat, and as they start recording my voice, I begin the first statement.

“We have a deal we’re ready to cut with you,” I say, forcing myself to stay calm and my chin to stay up. “I know there’s something you want from this city that we can offer you. But we want a meeting with you, face-to-face.”

My voice reverberates into the mike. It’s jarring to hear the silence around me as I record. Has Eden already found his way back to Hann? Has the man even responded to him?

“We are prepared to give you a good offer,” I go on. “But the city can’t go on like this. Both you and I know that. So let’s find a way to negotiate, unless you want to continue this stalemate. We will meet you in two hours in the Undercity, at the intersection that divides the four quadrants of Ross City. If you choose not to come, we’ll have to force you out. Let’s do what we can to avoid a bloody end to this.”

I finish. The message starts to play from the beginning again, looping endlessly until the meeting time. I listen to it several times. When we’re all sure that it sounds right, we move on to the next statement.

A half hour passes before I record every single variation. There are differences in the locations where we’re asking Hann to meet us, with the kind of deal we’re offering him. I feel a sense of hollowness as we go about it. He could easily not be listening at all—or he might have figured out what we’re doing in the first place. But it doesn’t matter if this works or not.