by Rebecca Rode
I growled in frustration. “Legacy is wandering the city alone in the middle of the night, and I’m supposed to stay calm?”
He paused. “I suppose that’s an unreasonable request, but try anyway.”
Several hours later, I considered tossing Travers’s request out the window and running down every street in the city. I now knew the fireplace in the living room held eighty-two bricks—sixty red and twenty-two orange—and the floor 103 tiles. The back of the front door, a dark blue with peeling paint, had at least two layers of paint underneath it—a fiery red and a putrid dark purple barely visible in a chipped corner. By the state of the ceiling, this house had been built at least a hundred years before the Old War and only the kitchen had been updated since. I felt like a hound pacing a shelter cell, anger ticking upward with every minute Legacy spent out there alone after promising me she wouldn’t.
I called Travers twice more until he finally responded, sounding exhausted. No sign of her. I tried Legacy’s radio again and got the same message. Out of range. Where in this city could be out of range? Had she gone for a walk in the forest? A swim in the ocean? Or had someone found her and disabled the radio?
My feet ached from all the pacing, and my headache intensified by the hour. I sat at the table and buried my head in my arms, the food forgotten. My earlier anger had run its course, and a thousand scenarios ran through my mind, each more gruesome than the last. Legacy lying in an alley somewhere with her throat slit. Legacy’s body rotting in a prison cell beneath the Block, hidden from the world. Legacy a splattered mess on a street somewhere, having been pushed off a building. Or maybe she stepped off herself. Travers and Gram had both said she suffered from the pressure. What kind of boyfriend was I if I hadn’t seen any of it? Worse, I’d added to her stress with my own problems. Now I would never have the chance to tell her how sorry I was.
The front door opened with a long squeak.
Legacy peered inside.
Twenty
Legacy
Kole rose from his chair as I stepped inside. He’d moved the kitchen table to the living room and set out what looked like a nice spread of food and two place settings. Oh, fates.
“Did I forget about an anniversary?” I asked weakly, then mentally kicked myself. Of all the insensitive things to say after a night of lies. I closed the door behind me, half wishing I hadn’t entered at all. The hurt and betrayal on Kole’s face nearly sent me right back to that train and its end-of-the-line stop for good.
He didn’t move, just stood there with his jaw clenched. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“Consider me surprised. Did you cook?”
“I thought you were dead, Legacy. Travers has been searching for you all night. I was planning how to tell your grandmother.”
A deep ache made me want to throw my arms around him, but the anger behind his eyes stopped me. “I . . . needed some time alone.”
Kole looked like he’d been struck. “I get that you want to make your own choices. I really do. But don’t lie to me.”
I ducked my head, shame coursing through me. He had a right to be angry. We had agreed to stay together. But was it a lie when I only wanted to protect him from a hard truth? I’d taken a risk worth taking to secure victory for my country. I wanted them safe . . . but I also wanted Kole. I refused to believe I had to choose between them.
“Fine, I won’t lie to you,” I said, the exhaustion heavy in my voice. “But please respect that I can’t tell you everything.”
His eyes narrowed, and the hurt fled, replaced with a suspicion that immediately brought my guard up. “You owe Travers an explanation. You owe me an explanation.”
“You’ll get it, but not now. I’m tired. Let’s discuss this later.”
His voice shook with anger. “I don’t know what you learned from that fancy tutor in that big house of yours, Legacy, but where I come from, we don’t treat people like that.”
“True,” I shot back. “You just put their bodies in dumpsters.”
He recoiled, shock spreading across his face.
I realized too late what I’d said. “Kole, I—that was uncalled for. I didn’t mean you, just your kind in general. I’m tired. I wasn’t even thinking—”
“No, you weren’t.” He strode toward me, his hand outstretched. I winced as he reached toward me, reminding myself he wouldn’t hurt me. Not Kole, not ever . . . and then his hand brushed past me, gripping the door handle. He yanked on it and stalked out through the open door.
It took me a second to realize what was happening. “Wait! I didn’t mean that. You need to believe me. We can fix this.”
He halted just before the steps leading to the front yard. “I thought so, too, but after last night, I’m not so sure.”
I glanced at the table again, taking in the meal he’d surely worked hard to prepare and realizing that he’d been up all night worrying. He cared about me. He wanted this to work as much as I did. That meant we still had a chance. “I want you to stay.”
“And I want to be able to trust you.”
“I want that too.” I swallowed, feeling my life unraveling like string at my feet. I couldn’t lose Kole. Not like this. “What would it take for you to trust me again?”
“Answers. Tell me where you were all night.”
I bit my lip, watching him follow the motion. If I told him the truth right now, he would be less likely to trust me, not more. “Last night was a mistake. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
His eyes went round in horror.
I realized what that sounded like. “No, no. I wasn’t with a guy. I mean, I was, but it’s not what you think. I knew he wasn’t dangerous, and I was right, but I shouldn’t have gone with him in the first place.”
His expression grew darker by the second. “Chadd. It was Chadd, wasn’t it? The guy I warned you had a meeting with the Firebrands the other day? The one who burned down my apartment building and killed five families while they slept?”
My face heated. “He said he didn’t, and I believe him.”
Kole stalked back inside, giving me barely a second to get out of the way before he slammed the door closed. Then he whirled on me. “Do you realize how stupid that was? And ditching your security team to go alone? You’re lucky to be alive. Tell me where he took you.”
I stared him down. “First tell me about your nightmares. The ones you keep insisting are no big deal.”
He looked down at me with a murderous expression. “Tell me where he took you!”
Startled, I backed up and slammed into something hard, causing a rattling sound. A fork hit the ground. I’d nearly knocked over the table and its contents. “It wasn’t Malrain, exactly,” I stammered before I’d thought it through. “More like a settlement of theirs within our borders.”
He roared, grabbed the chair beside me, and threw it over his head. It hit the brick fireplace and cracked clean in half.
“Kole!” I shouted, but then he turned on me, and I knew there wasn’t much of Kole left in this monster. His eyes, a bloodshot red, were the eyes of a wild animal. He grabbed a pot and launched it across the room. It smashed into the front door, shattering the glass lid and sending a brown substance all over the room. I smelled a sweet sauce. Some kind of meat? My stomach sank even further.
“I told you!” he shouted, grabbing the table.
“Kole, no—”
He knocked it over, sending the other two pots to the floor, their lids clattering as the plates crashed down with them. Our romantic dinner lay spread across the room now.
Kole stood over his handiwork, heaving, looking like a victorious mountain bear. Amidst the rage in his expression was pain, as if something twisted a knife in his gut. He turned to me. I tried to step back but couldn’t move, horror keeping me rooted in place.
Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed.
I stood there a second, staring at his limp form on the ground, disbelieving.
This couldn’t be happenin
g. Any second he would sit up, rise to his feet, and take me in his arms. But no matter how I willed it, his eyes remained closed.
It shook me back to my senses, and I fell to my knees next to him. “Kole.”
No answer.
I cupped his face in my palm, then nearly dropped it in my shock. His skin was hot to the touch. What in the fates?
“Kole, wake up,” I said in a shaky voice.
He didn’t move.
I sucked in a ragged breath before remembering the radio in my pocket. I fumbled for it, yanked it out, and turned the dial to Travers’s channel. “Travers? Are you there?”
A second later, his relieved voice answered. “Legacy. Where are you?”
“At the house.”
“What’s wrong?”
I choked back a sob. “It’s Kole. I—I need a medic right away.”
Twenty-One
Legacy
Travers and I dragged Kole upstairs to Dad’s empty bed. I felt utterly exhausted by the time we got him situated, but I could do nothing more than pace the floor, waiting for Physician Redd to arrive. In the absence of the beeping medical equipment and oxygen tank, the room felt big and silent, the quiet nearly driving me mad.
Travers pulled a blanket over Kole, then adjusted it lower as Kole’s face grew more flushed. My driver seemed to feel as helpless as I did. I recalled their whispered conversation yesterday and nearly asked what they’d discussed, but prying felt wrong with Kole lying there beyond my reach, hovering in the gray that bordered the darkness.
The physician arrived frazzled, his normally tidy hair in disarray. By the redness of his eyes and the crookedness of his collar, I could tell it had been a long night for him too. He and his medical team would have been setting up the new temporary hospital on the island and getting the comatose patients situated. I felt guilty pulling him away, but my desperation overshadowed everything else.
Kole had to be all right. I couldn’t lose him now, not when my country was falling apart around me and I’d rejected the very medicine that could have cured him.
Physician Redd rummaged through his hard-shell suitcase and retrieved a hand-held scanner, which he ran over Kole’s head, first one way, then the other. A quick sweep of Kole’s body took another minute. Then the man connected his scanner to a receiver of some kind and squinted at it for a long time. I watched with bated breath.
Finally, he replaced the device, closed the suitcase, and turned to me. That pain in my chest flared at his somber expression.
“I had hoped the damage would reverse itself,” he said. The words he didn’t say hung in the air between the three of us.
Kole was getting worse, just like Physician Redd warned.
“Perhaps if we’d put him under right away, we could have slowed the degeneration,” he said. Physician-speak for If you’d listened to me the first time, this wouldn’t have happened. But Kole had refused to even consider it, and I hadn’t fought him very hard. I should have.
I should have stopped my mom. I should have saved my dad. I should have convinced Kole. I should have made the bargain with Kadee so I could bring the medicine back with me. I should have, should have, should have . . .
I didn’t realize my cheeks were warm with tears until Travers put his arm around my shoulders. It was the most physical thing he’d ever done for me, and I gladly leaned into him as a second father. Not a replacement but a temporary substitute.
“He’s dying,” I said softly. The last word caught in my throat, coming out as a squeak. Travers squeezed me tighter.
“Not today, I would think,” the physician said. “His brain activity is already recovering—for now. But I recommend keeping him sedated, if not locked up somewhere safe. It won’t be long before he has another attack, a worse one he might not survive. By the state of things downstairs, you’re lucky to have survived this incident, too, Your Honor.”
Travers looked down at me, his face drawn with worry.
“I’m not locking him up,” I said firmly, avoiding Travers’s gaze. “He would have hurt me by now if he could. Can you put him into a coma like Dad?”
Physician Redd sighed and closed his eyes. “The degeneration is too advanced. Your father has scarring on his brain like the burn left behind by a fire, which the brain should eventually repair on its own. Kole’s damage is an imbalance of the body’s natural electrical system. It quite literally needs to be rewired, something the medical community has never successfully done, although I’ve seen some promising research in the area of brain science. Much of it has come out of Neuromen, naturally.”
Travers pursed his lips thoughtfully. “We retrieved everything we could from Neuromen and found no such research in Virgil’s files. Even if it were hidden somewhere, the second fire at the warehouse would have taken care of what was left. I’m very sorry, Legacy. I feel somewhat responsible.”
I barely heard him. A mantra ran through my head on repeat. Heal Kole. Fix Dad. Save the country. And now this new worry, with my biological-mother dictator who wanted to take over NORA. I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “If—when—Kole wakes up, can we move him to the island?”
“He’s safe to transport, but you don’t have sufficient medical equipment there. If he has another attack, it’ll take a hospital and a specialist to save him.” Physician Redd hesitated. “Which leads me to an uncomfortable subject, Your Honor. Now that the lab on the island is running sufficiently, I’m afraid I have to step away.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You aren’t coming with us?”
He looked away and swallowed. I finally saw something in his eyes, something I’d noticed for days but hadn’t wanted to consider. Guilt.
“Your patients aren’t the only ones under my care,” he said. “I have dozens of patients across town. I can’t possibly abandon them.”
His voice sounded hollow, much like mine when I lied. The realization hit me with the force of a slap. “You have a family. You’re afraid.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “My neighbor tried to join you and lost her home to fire, Your Honor. Her aged mother was lost. Thankfully, her children are all fine, but . . .” He trailed off.
I knew exactly what he meant to say. I don’t want my family to be next.
“But we still need to figure out how to safely remove the implants,” I told him. “Until Millian discovers how to get our comatose patients to heal, the entire country is vulnerable to future attacks. We’re counting on you.”
The words only seemed to deflate him. “I’ve done everything I can do. It’s up to Millian now. If anyone can unlock the secrets of the brain and the implant, it’s her. I’ve never had such a brilliant assistant.”
I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him. Millian couldn’t solve anything from a hospital bed. But he’d already made up his mind. I knew what it looked like to give up, and Physician Redd had.
“I understand,” I said, feeling limp with resignation. I didn’t just fight against my brother and his minions these days. I also fought between fear and love and loyalty and confusion. Country before family. Country before self. The Hawking family creed wasn’t for everyone, and I certainly wouldn’t be forcing it upon my followers. I thought about the sleep this man had missed over the past weeks and the risks he’d taken, and swallowed the rest of my objections.
“I hope you win, Your Honor. I truly do.” He paused. “Take care of him. He has two broken ribs.”
I stiffened. That hadn’t happened tonight, which meant I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. We truly were broken. “Thank you.”
He nodded, silently gathered his belongings, and left.
Travers and I sat in silence at Kole’s bedside for a moment before Travers spoke. “I’d be incredibly grateful to know what happened, Miss Hawking.”
The truth burned in my throat, desperate for escape, and then it all came rushing out in a series of bursts and sobs. My driver held me through all of it. I even told him about my biological mother
and her “offer.” He stiffened at that but didn’t say a word until I finished. In fact, he didn’t say a word for a very long time.
It was I who broke the silence. “I don’t know what to do. I want to beat Alex, but . . .”
“Not by recruiting your enemies to help,” he finished for me. “And now you’ve paid a heavy price for that visit last night, possibly bringing on a Malrain attack you didn’t expect and triggering an episode in the man you love—an episode that could divide you forever, both emotionally and physically. Is that a sufficient summary of your thoughts?”
I stared at him. “Actually, yes.”
“I thought so. My own thoughts have yet to sort themselves out, I’m afraid, but I do know one thing. You can barely stand upright. I insist you use the bed down the hall and give your mind a rest. I’ll watch over you and Kole until it’s time to travel. Solutions rarely present themselves to minds that can’t function properly.”
I looked at him in wonder, suddenly seeing Travers in a new light. His sacrifices over the past weeks came to mind—the boat drives, the transport chase, the cell under the Block, the wife he’d lost. I owed my life to him several times over.
“I lied to you about where I would be last night,” I told him, “yet you’re still here. Why?”
His eyes crinkled around the edges as his mouth formed a tight smile. “I didn’t have to become your driver, Legacy Hawking. Your father gave me a choice. It’s something I’ve never forgotten, and I . . . I want that freedom for everyone else. Every member of this country deserves that much. It’s you who will give that to them.” A note of deep sorrow filled his voice. I wondered if he thought about his wife. “Now, go, or I’ll shove you out myself.”
