“Nice of you,” Reed remarks and I frown at him.
“I’m not a killjoy,” I snap.
“Yeah well, lately you’ve been a bit wearisome.” He raises his own glass to me and then turns and walks away.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I catch him halfway across the dance floor. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I yell, and a few people turn to stare at us.
Reed raises his eyebrows.
“Seriously? You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Tiny, maybe that you’re being a royal pain in the ass?”
“Me?” I hiss incredulously. “Me? That’s rich! What about Morgan, who won’t so much as say two words to me? What about Kwan, who will barely look me in the eye?”
“Oh, poor Rebecca, is everyone being mean to you?”
“Don’t patronise me, you son of a bitch!”
My voice rings out as there is a lull in the music and a large crowd around us comes to a standstill, regarding us curiously.
Reed takes a deep breath and visibly pulls himself together. He takes my hands and pulls me into his arms, moving slowly in time to the music that has thankfully started up again.
“Oh, so we’re dancing now?” I ask, trying to ignore how my body reacts to being this close to him.
“Look, Tiny,” he looks down at me as though trying to find the right words. When he does speak, his voice is much softer, so that nobody else can hear us. “Morgan lost Rellis in that battle, remember? She’s young, and she doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions. She tries to be this strong, unshakeable woman, but she’s just a girl. And she loved him. Try to remember that. Keep in mind that she can’t stop crying when she thinks no one is looking.”
“How do you know that?”
“I pay attention.”
“And I don’t?”
“Not at the moment, no,” he answers truthfully. I don’t answer, trying to think about what he is saying before reacting.
“And Kwan?” I ask eventually.
“Kwan lost his wife,” he states the obvious. I killed Eric’s prized soldier, Nina Lee, in self-defence. She had abandoned Kwan, letting him believe her dead, to work for Eric.
“But she left him. She tried to kill us,” I justify.
“She was still his wife.”
“Does he blame me?” I ask in a small voice.
“Why don’t you ask him? I’m not your go-between.”
I’m about to ask him what I should do about Morgan when a youthful male voice pipes up, “Can I cut in?”
Just for a moment, Reed’s hand tightens possessively around my waist, and then he grins at the newcomer, an older friend of Michael’s. Joey is about twenty-one years old, a big, brawny young man Gifted with the ability of strength. He had been on Eric’s list of suspected Gifted civilians and we had extricated him from the States along with a few others, just weeks before the final battle. He is now in Kwan’s training programme and is a newly inducted member of the Legion.
“Sure, Joey.” Reed releases me and walks away and is soon swallowed up in the crowd.
I smile at Joey, who looks delighted, and then instantly disappointed as the music changes tempo again, far more upbeat than before. We dance for a while and then Jenna joins us, holding out another glass of punch for me. I swallow it down, enjoying the burn as it makes its way down my throat and into my stomach. Joey has a serious case of the grab-hands, and he finds a way to touch me at every given opportunity.
Three glasses of punch later I am feeling more than a little tipsy, and I decide to find myself a seat to catch my breath. As I turn, I trip over my own feet and Joey catches me as I fall.
“My hero!” I giggle, squinting up at him, and then his mouth comes down on mine.
I do not have even a moment to react, and I hear Jenna’s sharp intake of breath when Joey is hauled off me. I clap my hand to my mouth and step between Reed and the younger man, before any more damage can be done.
Joey pulls himself up off the floor where he landed and takes a step towards Reed, his hands balling into fists at his side. Reed stands quite calmly, open palms at his sides.
“Easy, Tiger,” I warn, putting out an arm to restrain Joey, whose expression makes it clear that this is far from over.
“Get out of my way!” he snarls, and I realise that if he is drunk enough to be so disrespectful to me – his commanding officer – then the situation could escalate badly.
“Go and cool off,” I instruct firmly as Michael appears, Morgan just a step behind him. The only thing bruised is Joey’s ego, and I’m desperately hoping that this will be the end of it. Michael grabs Joey’s arm and tries to pull him out of the throng, but Joey jerks his arm away, knocking Michael into the guests around us. This is too much for Morgan who launches herself at Joey and knocks him back to the floor. Joey, in his drunken state, doesn’t seem to know who has attacked him and his fist slams up into Morgan’s jaw. This is entirely unacceptable. One of the first things our cadets are taught is that it is forbidden to use their Gifts against any member of our community.
“Joey, dude!” Michael’s outraged voice comes from a short distance away.
“Enough,” Reed flies past me, lifts Morgan off Joey and deposits her gently on the floor beside him. Then he hauls Joey to his feet, grabs him by his shirt collar and, holding his body down so that his back is bent at an almost ninety-degree angle to his legs, he frog-marches him outside. I turn to check that Morgan is okay.
“Don’t touch me!” she hisses and, heaving a sigh, I turn to Michael.
“I’m fine,” he insists.
“Get back to your party.” I try to make light of the situation and then I walk towards the door that Reed and Joey just disappeared through.
“I didn’t realise it was her!” I hear Joey’s protestations and I follow his voice to a nearby administration office. “I didn’t know it was Morgan!”
As I shove open the door Joey pushes past me, heading in the opposite direction. He spares me a scowl of dislike, and then saunters off back in the direction of the party. I close the door behind me and lean back against it, closing my eyes. Now that the adrenalin has worn off, I am once again feeling the effects of the alcohol.
“You see, I should have banned the booze and then we wouldn’t have had this problem,” I comment drily. I open my eyes in shock as Reed’s voice cuts through the air.
“No, Rebecca, what you should have been doing is not getting drunk and flirting with Michael’s friends to begin with.”
“What?” I stammer, taken aback by the anger in his voice.
“You caused a scene.”
“I did not!”
“Yeah, you did.” He stalks up to me and, ignoring the fact that I am leaning against it, he yanks the door open. I almost topple over and I grab his arm to steady myself.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Tiny.”
“Oh no, you don’t!” I slam the door back shut and glare at him. “What the hell is going on? Why are you all so angry with me?”
“I told you! Morgan and Kwan both lost people, people they loved!”
“Fine! That explains them. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Why are you so pissed at me? And don’t tell me that it has anything to do with what just happened in there,” I warn.
There is a deafening silence for the longest time and then he shrugs his broad shoulders.
“You’re supposed to be our leader. You’re the one who is supposed to make decisions, tell us what to do. In case you forgot, in the last four months of self-absorption, we are still at war.”
“The last four months of what?” I fume.
“You heard me. You’ve done nothing since we got back, nothing, except mope around and play house with Alex. Oh, and whine about your fath
er being missing. Good God, Rebecca, you’ve let the General take charge! Of your army! Don’t you think that’s a little stupid? Am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that he’s still here?”
“Wha . . . what?” I am so surprised by his last comment that I forget the rest of what he has said.
“Think about it! Why would your dad and the Vice-President go into the States alone with no bodyguards? Why did Smith and Wakeford stay behind with the General? Why did the General stay behind at all?” I open my mouth to reply, but I have no answer. Now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense.
“You think the General had something to do with . . .” No, that’s not possible.
“I don’t know what I think, Tiny, but at least I’m thinking. Not just feeling sorry for myself.”
“I lost someone too, okay! I lost Aidan!” I scream, fuelled with anger at his lack of sympathy. “You say Kwan and Morgan lost people important to them, well what about me? I have no one!”
“You have me!” he roars, louder and angrier than I have ever seen him, and I recoil automatically, trying to escape his fury.
He takes a few steps forward until we are practically touching and grabs me by the shoulders.
“I’m standing right here!” He shakes me like a rag doll. “You act as though I don’t exist, as though I don’t matter! As though nobody matters, except Aidan. You’ve put him on such a pedestal, the rest of us don’t have a hope of living up to his legacy!”
“Don’t talk about him like that!”
“Why not? I tried to save him and God knows I’m sorry that I failed, that it was him and not me. We both know that me living and him dying was not what you would’ve chosen! And I’m sorry it didn’t work out that way but I’m here, living and breathing and sick and tired of watching you feel sorry for yourself!”
His chest is heaving and I flinch as he raises his hand. He narrows his eyes and shakes his head in disbelief.
“I wouldn’t hurt you, Rebecca.” He takes my hand and holds it in his own and then raises it to his chest, placing my hand over his heart and his own on top of it. “I know you lost the most important person in your life, I do. You’ll never get over him, I know that. Believe me, I know . . .” he trails off, temporarily distracted. “But I’m still here,” he stresses the ‘I’. “I’ve never left your side, not since the day we met. But you’ve left me. You’ve left us. All of us.”
I am mesmerised by the reproach in his startling green eyes and, for the first time, I realise that I may just be the problem. I have withdrawn. I haven’t wanted to face what my life is now, the fact that Aidan really is gone and I need to move on. I haven’t considered anything else. It has been four months since the final battle and we have done nothing, learned nothing.
Aidan wouldn’t have wanted this. Jonathan and my mother – they would’ve given me a stern talking to. Reed is right, I have become so self-absorbed that I haven’t even spared a thought for how the people around me are feeling.
“It’s time to move on,” Reed’s voice interrupts my reverie. “You need to focus on what’s important. A better life for Alex. He can still have that. We can still do what we set out to do. If we don’t, they will have died for nothing.” Without another word he turns on his heel and walks out of the room, the door closing behind him with a gentle click.
Chapter 4
“Eight o’clock, why so early?” I hear Morgan grumbling as the doors open the next morning.
I have been in the Gold Room for almost an hour already, preparing. Michael, looking bleary-eyed, spots me first.
“Hey, Rebecca,” he calls, but without his usual good spirits. “I’m sorry about last night. Joey is a jerk. He can’t handle his alcohol.” He lowers his voice at the last, so that only I can hear. As if it isn’t already common knowledge that Michael’s birthday punch was anything but virgin.
“Joey’s cool,” I reassure him. “It was a crazy night, Michael, don’t worry about it.”
He grins with relief and sits down at the table with Morgan.
“Morgan,” I walk up to her and she glares up at me, her jaw set in a stubborn line. “I want you to know that I’m truly sorry about what happened to Bobby,” I say, and her eyes widen in surprise. Just for a moment I see the vulnerability and pain beneath the bravado and then her face hardens once again and she nods briskly. I don’t think she could speak even if she wanted to.
“What’s this all about, Miss Davis?” the General barks as he comes through the door, followed closely by Smith and Wakeford, and more leisurely by David and Kwan. “Why in the blazes have you got us all up so early? What’s the emergency?”
Reed follows a few steps behind them and right behind him, her face magenta for being the last to arrive, is Veronica. I wait until everyone is seated and then I stand up and take a deep breath.
“I’ve made a decision,” I address them confidently, and then I dive straight in. “We’re going to blow up the NUSA laboratory.”
There is a stunned silence followed by the General’s harsh laughter echoing around the vast room.
“Preposterous! Miss Davis, if this is another devious ploy to search for your father . . .”
“On the contrary, General, my father has nothing to do with it.”
“Well then, why the sudden interest in the lab?”
“Or the sudden interest in anything?” Morgan adds, spitefully. I ignore her.
“You said it yourself, General, the NUSA soldiers are growing in number. We won’t stand a chance if they keep increasing their forces the way they have been. The only solution is to destroy the lab, to make it impossible for them to create any more soldiers.”
“We still can’t beat them,” Kwan intercedes, but I can see that he’s intrigued. “We still won’t have the numbers.”
“That’s where you come in, sir,” I address the General. “You get to create new soldiers of our own.”
The collective intake of breath around the table is hardly surprising, but I have thought this through. We have already lost so many people to this war, and without the numbers we will not only lose many more, we will lose, period. One way or another there will be casualties, but at least this way it may just be worth it – we may have a chance at winning. I can sense the slight change in atmosphere, although nobody is saying anything. There is an excitement mounting among the council members that I haven’t seen for some time.
“Why the sudden change of heart?” the General sounds thoughtful and he is regarding me intently.
“Why did you send my father and Mr Williams into the States alone, unprotected?” I counter, and the abrupt change of subject has him temporarily stymied.
“I beg your pardon?”
“After the battle, when they entered the States to speak to the people, why did you send them in alone? Why didn’t you accompany them? And why did they not have any security? You never travel without guards, why did they?” I let the question hang in the air. I am in dangerous territory, falling just short of an outright accusation.
“I don’t like your tone, Miss Davis,” the General warns.
“I don’t really care, General. Answer the question.”
At this, Smith and Wakeford rise to their feet, and Kwan, Reed and Michael do the same only seconds later. Then David stands, uncertainly. I am not sure he even knows which side he is representing. Only Veronica and Morgan remain seated, Veronica staring deliberately at the table, Morgan looking bored.
“Sit down!” the General thunders at his two guards, and they sit down immediately. To my surprise, David remains standing along with the others. I nod at him, Reed, Kwan and Michael, and they all slowly settle back into their chairs.
“For your information, Miss Davis, I did try to send guards along with your father and Kenneth. They rejected them. They opted to go alone,” the General informs me haughtily.
�
��Why would they do that?” This sounds like an excuse. Why would they possibly refuse any guards when there were so many at their disposal? Why would they take the risk? I don’t believe the General for a second, but short of blatantly accusing him of lying there is nothing more I can do.
“I have absolutely no idea,” the General manages to sound sincerely resigned and regretful.
“How soon do you think you can start the procedures?” I change the subject again.
“Within the hour.” The answer is unexpected. He shrugs. “We’ve been ready for months, Miss Davis. The only thing stopping us was you.”
There are volunteers on standby, I learn. They have been preselected, and have gone through rigorous screening, their natural abilities assessed in order to make sure that the Gifts are maximised. They are mostly men between the ages of eighteen and forty, all in excellent health. The General produces a list of potential candidates and I briefly run my eye down the list, recognising a name here and there. There are over two hundred names, a tenth of our entire population. Swallowing down my desire to rip the paper apart, I hand it back to him.
“I’ll leave it to you.” He nods grimly, stowing the papers back in his folder and then he clasps his hands in front of him.
“How exactly do you plan on blowing up the lab? The States are inaccessible, or have you forgotten?”
“David?” I turn to the bespectacled man further up the table. Flustered, he stands, knocking one of his blueprints to the ground. Reed catches my eye and gives a ghost of a wink, and my spirits soar. I never realised how much his support and approval meant until last night, when I thought I might have lost him.
David spends about ten minutes outlining the plan to access the city through the underground tunnels. He is fairly confident it will work, as long as there has not been any major structural damage or cave-ins which could block our way.
“What about your father?” the General asks after we have formulated a basic plan, which will be expanded at a later stage and possibly adapted, once we have successfully gained access to the Capital.
The Legion Page 4
