Rebel (Legend, #4)(90)

I think of the night we shared, all our moments of awkwardness, the slow dance of getting to know each other again. The potential of a lifetime with June. If there’s any reason to make it back up to the surface, it’s for that—and I’ll be damned if Dominic Hann takes that chance away from me. I have lived through revolutions and war, massacres and illness. I’m going to survive this too, and so will my brother.

I bend toward her. My lips gently touch hers, and for a moment in time, we stay locked together. Then I pull away. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I say.

*

The cool night air bites at my cheeks. The tracker June put on me, a patch of metal at the middle of my back, feels cold against my skin. There’s a cap pulled down securely over my eyes, and a black half-mask covering the bottom of my face. As I head deeper into the quiet outskirts of Ross City, the familiar sense of being alone on the streets comes back to me. There’s something oddly comforting about it. I pull my cap lower on my head, then pick up my pace and dart through the shadows.

With the city’s system offline, I can’t bring up a map before me like I usually could. All I’m relying on is the memory of the location that June showed me on a map back at central control, the last location we’d received from Eden when he went down with Hann’s men. I won’t have anyone guiding me to where they happen to be. I’ll have to find my own way there.

Finally, I stop at an intersection nearest to where I remember the location dot was. This street corner looks abandoned, but Hann’s guards could be hiding in some building, watching for anything suspicious.

I pause in the shadows of one of the buildings, pull myself up to the second-f loor ledge, and then take out a small metal sphere from my pocket. The AIS has a number of weapons that remind me of the Republic’s. This one is like a homemade smoke bomb, what I used to make back in Lake—except it’s much stronger, and the smoke spreads over a wider area.

I glance up at the buildings around me, looking for any telltale signs—a glint of light, the flash of a mirror—anything indicating someone lying in wait.

For a while, I don’t see anything.

Then, the slightest movement in one of the windows. Someone’s up there.

I smile a little. Then I edge along the side of the second floor until I reach a balcony. I crouch in the shadows and lift the smoke bomb. Then I fling it as far from the intersection as I can.

It clinks once as it hits the ground. Then it explodes.

Smoke bursts in every direction, filling every crevice and alley in its wake.

I turn to look back at the window where I’d seen movement. Sure enough, there’s another flicker—and an instant later, shadows shudder through the darkness on the street below me. Hann’s minions, off to check what’s happened.

I push my mask higher. When the coast seems clear, I drop back down to the first floor without a sound and dart toward the last building, where the location marker had been.

The space looks like a factory sitting on the edge of the city. It’s enormous. Its exterior is almost completely solid, except for a row of glass windows wrapping around the very top of the building, reflecting the lights of the city.

Behind me, the guards’ shouts are already starting to echo in my direction. They’re heading back. I rush to the building and scan it for any easy entryways. Everything looks locked down, though. My eyes turn skyward to the glass windows again. Then I step onto the hinges of a metal gutter and start pulling myself up the wall.

I’m making my way to the third floor by the time two of the guards return to their stations. They’re clearly agitated, their voices sharp and harsh. No doubt someone has already alerted Hann about the smoke bomb. But there’s no time to dwell on what they might do next. If Eden’s not contacting us, he’s already in trouble.

I freeze on the fourth floor, right below the glass windows, as one of the guards shines a flashlight in my general direction. The sweeping light barely misses me. Sweat drips down my brow. If I can just leap up to grab the window ledge, I can pull myself up out of his angle. As he steps closer below, I edge around the side of the wall until I’ve turned the corner. Then I jump and stretch out my arm, seeking the ledge.

I catch it. With all my strength, I pull myself up and shove the window slightly. It slides open by a sliver.

Inside the building, dim light filters through the glass to illuminate a seemingly endless maze of computers. Their blue sensors blink in unison.

This is the construction site that I’d glimpsed when I was first captured.

An instant later, I notice a circular platform in the center of it all. The disc of metal on the floor glows with a faint light, and virtual holograms—a web of white nodes—hover over it.

I take one last look over my shoulder, toward the guards approaching the outside of the building below. Then I swing inside the building, pull the window shut behind me, and lower myself carefully into the shadows that slant against the wall. There I cling, barely gripping the hand-and footholds I can find.

A noise from the center of the space makes me turn in its direction. Three figures silhouetted by the light have stepped onto the circular platform. When I recognize them, my chest tightens into a knot.

It’s Eden and Pressa, their bodies turned to face a man who is unmistakably Hann. Guards are already approaching them from the shadows of the halls.

They’ve been caught.