Legend (5 page)

“You don’t have to sit here with me, you know,” I said to him after the pledge finished. “Go to your induction. I’ll be sick either way.”

Metias ignored me and placed another cool towel on my head. “I’ll be
inducted
either way,” he said. He fed me a purple slice of orange. I remember watching him peel that orange for me; he cut one long, efficient line in the fruit’s peel, then removed it all in one piece.

“But it’s Commander Jameson.” I blinked through swollen eyes. “She did you a favor by not assigning you to the warfront. . . . She’ll be upset you’re skipping. Won’t she mark it on your record? You don’t want to be kicked out like some street con.”

Metias tapped my nose disapprovingly. “Don’t call people that, Junebug. It’s rude. And she can’t kick me off her patrol for missing the ceremony. Besides,” he added with a wink, “I can always hack into their database and wipe my record clean.”

I grinned. Someday I wanted to be inducted into the military too, draped in the Republic’s dark robes. Maybe I’d even be lucky enough to get assigned to a renowned commander like Metias did. I opened my mouth so he could feed me another piece of orange. “You should skip going to Batalla more often. Maybe you’d have time to get a girlfriend.”

Metias laughed. “I don’t need girlfriends. I’ve got a baby sister to take care of.”

“Come on. You’re going to get a girlfriend
someday.
”

“We’ll see. Guess I’m picky like that.”

I stopped to look my brother directly in the eyes. “Metias, did our mother take care of me when I was sick? Did she do things like this?”

Metias reached over to push sweaty strands of my hair away from my face. “Don’t be stupid, Junebug. Of course Mom took care of you. And she was much better at it than I am.”

“No.
You
take care of me the best,” I murmured. My eyelids were growing heavy.

My brother smiled. “Nice of you to say so.”

“You’re not going to leave me too, are you? You’ll stay with me longer than Mom and Dad did?”

Metias kissed me on my forehead. “Forever and ever, kid, until you’re sick and tired of seeing me.”

 

I know something has gone wrong the instant Thomas shows up at our door. The lights in all residential buildings have gone off, just as Metias had said they would, and nothing but oil lamps light the apartment. Ollie is barking up a storm. I’m dressed in my training uniform and a black and red vest with my boots laced and my hair tied back in a tight ponytail. For a brief moment, I’m actually glad that Metias isn’t the one waiting at the door. He’d see my getup and know that I’m headed out to the track. Defying him again.

When I open the door, Thomas coughs nervously at the surprised look on my face and pretends to smile. (There is a streak of black grease on his forehead, probably from his own index finger. Which means he just finished polishing his rifle earlier in the evening, and his patrol’s inspection is tomorrow.) I cross my arms. He touches the edge of his cap politely.

“Hello, Ms. Iparis,” he says.

I take a deep breath. “I’m heading out to the track. Where’s Metias?”

“Commander Jameson has requested that you come with me to the hospital as soon as possible.” Thomas hesitates for a second. “It’s more of an order than a request.”

There’s a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Why didn’t she just call me?” I ask.

“She prefers for me to escort you.”

“Why?” My voice starts to rise. “Where’s my brother?”

Now Thomas takes a deep breath. I already know what he’s going to say. “I’m sorry. Metias has been killed.”

That’s when the world around me goes silent.

As if from a great distance, I can see that Thomas is still speaking, gesturing with his hands, pulling me to him for a hug. I hug him back without realizing what I’m doing. I feel nothing. I nod when he steadies me and asks me to do something. To follow him. He keeps an arm around my shoulders. A dog’s wet nose nudges my hand. Ollie follows me out of the apartment, and I tell him to stay close. I lock the door and stuff the key into my pocket and let Thomas guide us through the darkness to the stairs. He’s talking the whole time, but I can’t hear him. I stare straight ahead at the reflective metal decorations lining the stairwell, at the distorted reflections of Ollie and me.

I can’t make out my expression. I’m not sure I even have one.

Metias should have taken me with him. This is my first coherent thought as we reach the bottom floor of our high-rise and climb into a waiting jeep. Ollie jumps into the backseat and sticks his head out the window. The car smells damp (like rubber and metal and fresh sweat—a group of people must’ve ridden in here recently). Thomas sits in the driver’s seat and makes sure my seat belt is buckled. Such a small, stupid thing.

Metias should have taken me with him.

I run this thought over and over again in my head. Thomas doesn’t say anything else. He lets me stare out at the darkened city as we go, occasionally shooting me a hesitant glance. Some small part of me makes a mental note to apologize to him later.

My eyes glaze over at the familiar buildings we pass. People (mostly workers hired from the slums) pack the first-floor stands even with the lights out, hunched over bowls of cheap food in the ground level cafés. Clouds of steam float high in the distance. JumboTrons, always on, regardless of power shortages, display the latest warnings about floods and quarantines. A few are about the Patriots—this time for another bombing up in Sacramento that killed half a dozen soldiers. A few cadets, eleven-year-olds with yellow stripes on their sleeves, linger on the steps outside an academy, the old and worn
Walt Disney Concert Hall
letters almost completely faded. Several other military jeeps cross our intersection, and I see the blank faces of their soldiers. Some of them have black goggles on so I can’t see their eyes at all.

The sky looks more overcast than usual—signs of a rainstorm. I pull my hood over my head in case I forget when we finally get out of the car.

When I turn my attention back to the window, I see the part of downtown that sits inside Batalla. All the lights in this military sector are on. The hospital’s tower looms just a few blocks away.

Thomas notices me craning my neck for a better view. “Almost there,” he says.

As we draw near, I can see the crisscrossed lines of yellow tape surrounding the bottom of the tower, the clusters of city patrol soldiers (red stripes on their sleeves, like Metias), as well as some photographers and street police, the black vans and medic trucks. Ollie lets out a whine.

“I’m guessing they didn’t catch the person,” I say to Thomas.

“How do you know?”

I nod toward the building. “That’s really something,” I continue. “Whoever it was survived a two-and-a-half-story jump and still had enough strength to escape.”

Thomas looks toward the tower and tries to see what I see—the broken third-floor stairwell window, the taped-off section right below it, the soldiers searching alleyways, the lack of ambulances. “We haven’t caught the guy,” he admits after a moment. The rifle grease on his forehead gives him a bewildered look. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t find his body later.”

“You won’t find it if you haven’t found it yet.”

Thomas opens his mouth to say something, then decides against it and goes back to concentrating on the road. When the jeep finally rolls to a stop, Commander Jameson breaks away from the group of guards she’s standing with and marches over to my car door.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says abruptly to me. I feel a brief pang of guilt for my coldness and decide to nod back at him. His father had been a janitor for our apartment high-rise before he died, his late mother a cook at my grade school. Metias had been the one to recommend Thomas (who had a high Trial score) to be assigned to the prestigious city patrols, despite his humble background. So he must feel just as numb as I do.

Commander Jameson walks up to my car door and raps twice on the window to get my attention. Her thin lips are painted an angry stroke of red, and in the night her auburn hair looks dark brown—almost black.

“Move it, Iparis. Time is of the essence.” Her eyes flicker to Ollie in the backseat. “That’s not a police dog, kid.” Even now, her demeanor is unflinching.

I step out of the jeep and give her a quick salute. Ollie jumps down next to me. “You called for me, Commander,” I say.

Commander Jameson doesn’t bother to return my gesture. She starts walking away, and I’m forced to hurry along beside her, struggling to fall into step. “Your brother, Metias, is dead,” she says. Her tone doesn’t change. “I’m of the understanding that you are almost done with your training as an agent, correct? That you’ve already finished your courses on tracking?”

I fight hard to breathe. A second confirmation of Metias’s death. “Yes, Commander,” I manage to say.

We head into the hospital. (Waiting room is empty; they’ve cleared out all patients; guards are clustered near the stairwell entrance; that’s probably where the crime scene starts.) Commander Jameson keeps her eyes forward and her hands behind her back. “What was your Trial score?”

“Fifteen hundred, Commander.” Everyone in the military knows my score. But Commander Jameson likes to pretend not to know or care.

She doesn’t stop walking. “Ah, that’s right,” she says, as if it is the first time she’s heard it. “Maybe you’ll be of use after all. I’ve called ahead to Drake and told them that you are dismissed from further training. You were almost done with your coursework anyway.”

I frown. “Commander?”

“I received a full history of your grades there. Perfect scores—you’ve already finished most of your courses in half the number of years, yes? They also say you’re quite a troublemaker. Is this true?”

I can’t understand what she wants from me. “Sometimes, Commander. Am I in trouble? Did they expel me?”

Commander Jameson smiles. “Hardly. They’ve graduated you early. Follow me—there’s something I want you to see.”

I want to ask about Metias, about what happened here. But her icy demeanor stops me.

We walk down a first-floor hall until we reach an emergency exit door at the very end of it. There, Commander Jameson waves away the soldiers guarding it and ushers me through. A low growl rumbles in Ollie’s throat. We step out into open air, this time at the back of the building. I realize that we are now inside the yellow tape. Dozens of soldiers stand in clusters around us.

“Hurry up,” Commander Jameson snaps at me. I quicken my pace.

A moment later, I realize what she wants to show me and where we are walking. Not far ahead is an object covered in a white sheet. (Six feet long, human; feet and limbs look intact under the cloth; definitely didn’t fall naturally like that, so someone had to lay him out.) I start to tremble. When I look down at Ollie, I see that the fur on his back is standing up. I call to him several times, but he refuses to walk any closer, so I’m forced to follow Commander Jameson and leave him behind.

Commander Jameson halts in front of the white sheet, then bends down and throws it aside. I stare down at the dead body of a soldier clad in military black, a knife still protruding from his chest. Dark blood stains his shirt, his shoulder, his hands, the grooves of the knife hilt. His eyes are closed now. I kneel before him and smooth strands of his dark hair away from his face. It’s odd. I don’t take in any details of the scene. I still feel nothing but that deep numbness.

“Tell me about what might have happened here, cadet,” Commander Jameson demands. “Consider this a pop quiz. This soldier’s identity should motivate you to get it right.”

I don’t even inch from the sting of her words. The details rush in, and I start talking. “Whoever hit him with this knife either stabbed him from close range or has an incredibly strong throwing arm. Right-handed.” I run my fingers along the blood-caked handle. “Impressive aim. The knife is one of a pair, correct? See this pattern painted on the bottom of the blade? It cuts off abruptly.”

Commander Jameson nods. “The second knife is stuck in the wall of the stairwell.”

I look toward the dark alley that my brother’s feet point to and notice the sewer cover several yards away. “That’s where he made his getaway,” I say. I estimate the direction the sewer cap is turned in. “He’s also left-handed. Interesting. He’s ambidextrous.”

“Please continue.”

“From here, the sewers will take him deeper into the city or west to the ocean. He’ll choose the city—he’s probably too wounded to do otherwise. But it’s impossible to track him accurately now. If he has any sense, he’ll have taken half a dozen turns down there and done it in the sewer water too. He wouldn’t have touched the walls. He’ll give us nothing to track.”