Champion (Legend 3)

15 HOURS SINCE I LAST SAW DAY.

8 HOURS SINCE THE COLONIES’ BOMBARDMENT OF DENVER’S ARMOR CAME TO A LULL.

WE’RE ON THE ELECTOR’S PLANE HEADED TO ROSS City, Antarctica.

I sit across from Anden. Ollie’s lying at my feet. The other two Princeps-Elects are in an adjacent compartment, separated from us by glass (3 × 6 feet, bulletproof, Republic seal carved on the side facing me, judging from the edges of the cut). Outside the window, the sky is brilliant blue and a blanket of clouds pads the bottom of our view. Any minute now, we should feel the plane dip and see the sprawling Antarctican metropolis come into view.

I’ve stayed quiet for most of the trip, listening on as Anden takes a stream of endless calls from Denver about the battle. Only when we’re almost over Antarctican waters does he finally fall silent. I watch how the light plays on his features, contouring the young face that holds such world-weary thoughts.

“What’s the history between us and Antarctica?” I ask after a while. What I really want to say is, Do you think they’ll help us? but that question is just silly small talk, impossible to answer and thus pointless to ask.

Anden looks away from the window and fixes his bright green eyes on me. “Antarctica gives us aid. We’ve taken international aid from them for decades. Our own economy isn’t strong enough to stand on its own.”

It still unsettles me that the nation I once believed so powerful is in reality struggling for survival. “And what is our relationship with them now?”

Anden keeps his gaze steadily on me. I can see the tension in his eyes, but his face remains composed. “Antarctica has promised to double their aid if we can draft a treaty that can get the Colonies talking with us again. And they’ve threatened to halve their aid if we don’t have a treaty by the end of this year.” He pauses. “So we’re visiting them not just to ask for help, but to try to persuade them not to withhold their aid.”

We have to explain why everything has fallen apart. I swallow. “Why Antarctica?”

“They have a long rivalry with Africa,” Anden replies. “If anyone with power will help us win a war against the Colonies and Africa, it’ll be them.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. His gloved hands are a foot away from my legs. “We’ll see what happens. We owe them a lot of money, and they haven’t been happy with us for the past few years.”

“Has the President ever met you in person?”

“Sometimes I visited with my father,” Anden replies. He offers me a crooked smile that sends unexpected flutters through my stomach. “He was a charmer during meetings. Do you think I have a chance?”

I smile back. I can sense the double meaning in his question; he’s not just talking about Antarctica. “You’re charismatic, if that’s what you’re asking,” I decide to say.

Anden laughs a little. The sound warms me. He looks away and lowers his eyes. “I haven’t been very successful at charming anyone lately,” he murmurs.

The plane dips. I turn my attention to my window and take a deep breath, fighting down the pink rising on my cheeks.

The clouds grow nearer as we descend, and soon we are engulfed in swirling gray mist; after a few minutes we emerge from their underbelly to see a massive stretch of land covered in a dense layer of high-rises that come in a wild assortment of bright colors. I suck in my breath at the sight. One look is all I need to confirm just how much of a technological and wealth gap there is between the Republic and Antarctica. A thin, transparent dome stretches across the city, but we pass right through it as easily as we sliced through the clouds. Each building appears to have the ability to change colors on a whim (two have already shifted from a pastel green to a deep blue, and one changes from gold to white), and each building looks brand-new, polished and flawless in a way that very few Republic buildings are. Enormous, elegant bridges connect many of the towering skyscrapers, brilliantly white under the sun, each one linking one building’s floor to its adjacent building and forming a honeycomb-like web of ivory. The uppermost bridges have round platforms in their centers. When I look closer, I see what seem like aircraft parked on the platforms. (Another oddity: All of the high-rises have enormous silver holograms of numbers floating over their roofs, each ranging between zero and thirty thousand. I frown. Are they being beamed from a light at each rooftop? Perhaps they signify the population living in each skyscraper—although if that were the case, thirty thousand seems like a relatively low ceiling given the size of each building.)

Our pilot’s voice rings out over the intercom to inform us of our landing. As the candy-colored buildings gradually fill our entire view, we zero in on one of the bridge platforms. Down below, I see people hurrying to prepare for our jet’s landing. When we’re finally hovering over the platform, an abrupt jolt jerks all of us sideways in our seats. Ollie lifts his head and growls.

“We’re magnetically docked now,” Anden tells me when he sees my startled expression. “From here on out, our pilot doesn’t need to do a thing. The platform itself will pull us down for the landing.”

We touch down so smoothly that I don’t feel a thing. As we step out of the plane along with our entourage of Senators and guards, I’m shocked first by how nice the temperature is outside. A cool breeze, the warmth of the sun. Aren’t we at the bottom of the earth? (Seventy-two degrees is my assumption, southwest wind, a breeze surprisingly light considering how high up from ground level we are.) Then I remember the thin, substance-less dome we passed through. It might be a way the Antarcticans control the climate in their cities.