Prodigy (Legend 2)

The guns lower. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. The girl who let us in gestures for us to walk toward the second door, and when we reach it, she slides a little device similar to the one Kaede had across the door’s left side. A few more beeps. “Go on in,” she tells us. Then she juts her chin at me. “Any sudden moves and I’ll shoot you faster than you can blink.”

The second door slides open. Warm air pours over us as we step into a large room full of people bustling around tables and wall-mounted monitors. Electric lights are on the ceiling; a faint but distinct scent of mold and rust lingers in the air. There must be twenty, thirty people down here, and the room still feels spacious.

A large projection of an insignia decorates the room’s back wall, one that I immediately recognize as the abbreviated version of the official Patriot flag—a large silver star, with three silver V stripes below it. Smart to project it, I realize, so they can pick up and move out quickly if need be. Some of the monitors show the airship schedules I’d seen while onboard the Dynasty. Others show security cam–like footage streaming from officers’ rooms or wide shots of Lamar’s city streets or video from the flight decks of airships right in the warfront’s skies. One even has a short rotation of morale-boosting Patriot propaganda that reminds me a little too much of the Republic’s ads; it says BRING BACK THE STATES, followed by LAND OF THE FREE and then WE ARE ALL AMERICANS. Still others display views of continental America littered with multicolored dots—and two of them show world maps.

I gape at this for a while. Never in my life have I seen a world map. I’m not even sure if any exist in the Republic. But here I can see the oceans that wrap their way around North America, the cut-up island territories labeled SOUTH AMERICA, a tiny archipelago called the British Isles, gigantic landmasses called Africa and Antarctica, the country of China (with a bunch of little red dots sprinkled right in the ocean around the edge of its land).

This is the actual world, not the world the Republic shows to its civilians.

Everyone in the room is watching me. I turn away from the map and wait for Kaede to say something. She just shrugs and slaps me across the back. My wet jacket makes a squishing sound. “This is Day.”

They all wait in silence, although I can see the recognition light up their eyes when they hear my name. Then somebody wolf-whistles. That breaks the tension—there’s a chorus of snickers and laughs, then most people go back to whatever they were doing before.

Kaede guides me through the mess of tables. A couple of people are gathered around some diagram, another group is unpacking boxes; a few are just relaxing, watching reruns of some Republic soap opera. Two Patriots sitting in front of a corner monitor are tossing challenges back and forth as they play a video game, racing some sort of spiky blue creature across their screen by waving their hands in front of it. Even this must’ve been customized for the Patriots, as all the objects in the game are blue and white.

One boy snickers as I walk by. He has a shock of dyed blond hair spiked up into a faux hawk, dark bronze skin, and a slight hunch to his broad, hulking shoulders, as if he’s permanently ready to pounce. A chunk of flesh is missing from his earlobe. I realize it’s the same person who wolf-whistled earlier.

“So. You’re the one who ditched Tess, huh?” There’s an arrogance about him that annoys me. He looks me over in disdain. “Don’t know why a girl like her hangs with a con like you. A few nights in the Republic’s prisons squeeze all the air outta your chest?”

I take a step toward him and grin cheerfully. “With all due respect, I don’t see the Republic tacking up wanted posters with your pretty face on them.”

“Shut up.” Kaede pushes between us and stabs a finger into the other boy’s chest. “Baxter, shouldn’t you be getting ready for tomorrow night’s run?”

The boy just grunts at me and turns away. “Still don’t understand why we’re trusting a Republic lover,” he grumbles.

Kaede taps my shoulder and keeps walking. “Don’t mind that trot,” she tells me. “Baxter’s not the biggest fan of your girl June. He’s probably gonna give ya some trouble, so just try to stay on his good side, yeah? You’ll have to work with him. He’s a Runner too.”

“He is?” I say. I wouldn’t have expected such a muscular person to be a fast Runner—but then again, his strength might help him reach places I can’t.

“Yup. You bumped him down the hierarchy of Runners.” Kaede smirks. “And you once messed up a Patriot mission that he was on. You never even realized it.”

“Oh? And what mission was that?”

“Bombing Administrator Chian’s car, in Los Angeles.”

Wow—it’s been a long time since I faced off against Chian. No idea the Patriots had planned an attack at the same time. “How tragic,” I reply, searching the faces in the room after Baxter’s mention of Tess.

“If you’re looking for Tess, she beat us here. She’s with the other Medics.” Kaede gestures toward the back of the room, where several doors line the walls. “Probably in the med ward watching someone sew up a wound. She’s a fast learner, that Tess.”

Kaede leads me past the tables and the other Patriots, then stops in front of the world map. “I bet you’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Nope.” I study the landmasses, still boggled by the idea that so many societies are functioning beyond the Republic’s borders. In grade school we’d learned that the parts of the world not controlled by the Republic are just crumbling nations struggling to get by. Are this many countries struggling to get by? Or are they doing well—maybe even prospering? “What do you need world maps for?”