Legend

by Marie Lu

  I’m the first one to speak. “You and I may have the same enemy,” I say. “And they’ve pitted us against each other.”

  June takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure yet,” she says, even though I can tell by her voice that she agrees with me. “It’s dangerous for us to talk like this.” She looks away, reaches into her cloak, and pulls out something I thought I had lost at the hospital. “Here. I want to give this back to you. I have no more use for it.”

  I want to snatch it from her hand, but the chains weigh me down. In her palm is my pendant necklace, the smooth bumps on its surface scraped and dirty but still more or less whole, the necklace part lying in a pile in her palm.

  “You had it,” I whisper. “You found it at the hospital that night, didn’t you? That’s how you recognized me when you finally found me—I must’ve reached for it.”

  June nods quietly, then takes my hand and drops the pendant into my palm. I look at it in wonder.

  My father. I can’t keep the memory of him away now that I’m staring at my pendant again. I think back to the day he visited us after six months without a word. When he was safely inside and we’d draped curtains over the windows, he wrapped his arms around Mom and kissed her for such a long time. He kept one hand pressed protectively on her stomach. John waited patiently to greet him, hands in his pockets. I was still young enough to hug his leg. Eden wasn’t born yet—he was still inside Mom’s growing belly.

  “How are my boys?” my father said after he finally let go of Mom. He patted my cheek and smiled at John.

  John gave him a big, toothy grin. He had managed to grow his hair long enough to tie it back in a tail. He held up a certificate. “Look!” he said. “I passed my Trial!”

  “You did!” My father clapped John on the back and shook his hand as if he were a man. I can still remember the relief in his eyes, the tremor of joy in his words. Back then, we all worried that John would be the one to fail the Trial, considering his trouble with reading. “I’m proud of you, Johnny. Good job.”

  Then he looked at me. I remember studying his face. Dad’s official job in the Republic was to clean up after the warfront’s soldiers, of course, but there were always hints that this wasn’t the only job he had. Hints like the stories he sometimes told about the Colonies and their glittering cities, their advanced technology and festive holidays. At that moment, I wanted to ask him why he was always gone even after his warfront rotation should’ve returned him home, why he never came to see us.

  But something else distracted me. “There’s something in your vest pocket, Dad,” I said. Sure enough, a circular bump was pressed against the cloth.

  He chuckled, then took out the object. “So there is, Daniel.” He glanced up at our mother. “He’s very perceptive, isn’t he?”

  Mom smiled at me.

  My father hesitated, then ushered us all into the bedroom. “Grace,” he said to Mom, “look what I found.”

  She studied it closely. “What is it?”

  “It’s more proof.” At first my father tried to show it only to Mom, but I managed to get a good look as he turned it over in his hands. A bird on one side, a man’s profile on the other. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST, QUARTER DOLLAR embossed on one side, and LIBERTY and 1990 on the other. “See? Evidence.” He pressed it into her palm.

  “Where did you find this?” Mom asked.

  “In the southern swamplands between the two warfronts. It’s a genuine coin from nineteen-ninety. See the name? United States. It was real.”

  My mother’s eyes gleamed with excitement, but she still gave Dad a grave look. “This is a dangerous thing to own,” she whispered. “We’re not keeping this in our house.”

  My father nodded. “But we can’t destroy it. We have to safeguard it—for all we know, this might be the last coin of its kind in the world.” He folded my mother’s fingers over the coin. “I’ll make a metal casing for it, something that covers both sides. I’ll weld it shut so the coin’s secure inside.”

  “What will we do with it?”

  “Hide it somewhere.” My father paused for a second, then looked at John and me. “Best place might be somewhere obvious to everyone. Give it to one of the boys, maybe as a locket. People will think it’s just a child’s ornament. But if soldiers find it in the house in a raid, hidden under some floorboard, they’ll know for sure that it’s important.”

  I stayed silent. Even at that age, I understood my father’s concern. Our house had been searched on routine inspections by troops before, just like every other house on our street. If Dad hid it somewhere, they’d find it.

  Our father left early the next morning, before the sun even rose. We would see him only one more time after that. Then he never came home again.

  This memory flashes through my mind in an instant. I look up at June. “Thank you for finding this.” I wonder if she can hear the sadness in my voice. “Thank you for giving it back to me.”

  I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT DAY.

  When I lie down in my apartment for a brief rest later in the afternoon, I dream of him. I dream that Day has his arms wrapped around me and is kissing me again and again, his hands running up my arms and through my hair and around my waist, his chest pressed against mine, his breath against my cheeks and neck and ears. His long hair brushes against me, and his eyes drown me in their depths. When I wake up and find myself alone again, I can hardly breathe.

  His words run through my mind until I can’t even understand them anymore. That someone else has killed Metias. That the Republic is intentionally spreading the plague in the poor sectors. I think back to how we were on the streets of Lake, when he would risk his safety because I needed to rest. Then today, wiping the tears from my cheek.

  I can’t find the anger I used to have toward him. And if I discover proof that someone else killed Metias, for whatever reason, then I have no reason to hate him at all. I’d once been fascinated by his legend—all the stories I’d heard before I met him. Now I can feel that same sense of fascination returning. I picture his face, so beautiful even after pain and torture and grief, his blue eyes bright and sincere. I’m ashamed to admit that I enjoyed my brief time with him in his prison cell. His voice can make me forget about all the details running through my mind, bringing with it emotions of desire or fear instead, sometimes even anger, but always triggering something. Something that wasn’t there before.

  1912 HOURS. TANAGASHI SECTOR.

  78°F.

  “I heard you had a private conversation with Day this afternoon,” Thomas says to me as we sit together, eating bowls of edame in a café. The café is the same one that we visited when Metias was alive. Thomas’s choice of location doesn’t ease my thoughts. I can’t forget the rifle grease smeared on the hilt of the knife that killed my brother.

  Maybe he’s testing me. Maybe he knows what I suspect.

  I take a bite of pork so I don’t have to answer. I’m glad that the two of us are sitting a good distance apart. Thomas had spent a great deal of effort convincing me to “forgive” him, to let him take me out to dinner. Why he did this, I can’t be sure. To draw me out? To get me to say something by accident? To see if I would refuse, and then take this information to Commander Jameson? It doesn’t take much evidence to start an investigation against someone. Maybe this whole evening is just bait.

  But then again, maybe he’s really trying to make up with me.

  I don’t know. So I tread carefully.

  Thomas watches me eat. “What did you say to him?”

  There’s jealousy in his voice. My words come out cool and detached. “Don’t bother, Thomas.” I reach out and touch his arm, to distract him. “If a boy killed someone you loved, wouldn’t you keep trying to figure out why he’d done it? I thought he might talk to me if the guards weren’t around. But I’ve given up on him. I’ll be happier when he’s dead.”

  Thomas relaxes a little, but he still studies my face. “Maybe you should stop seeing him,” he suggests after
another long silence. “It doesn’t seem to be helping you. I can ask Commander Jameson to send someone else to give Day his water rations. I hate to think of you having to interact so much with your brother’s murderer.”

  I nod in agreement and take another bite of edame. To stay silent now would look bad. What if I’m eating dinner with my brother’s murderer? Logic. Caution and logic. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Thomas’s hands. What if those are the hands that stabbed Metias straight through the heart?

  “You’re right,” I say without missing a beat. I make myself sound grateful, thoughtful. “I haven’t gotten anything useful out of him yet. He’ll be dead soon, anyway.”

  Thomas shrugs. “I’m glad you think so.” He drops fifty Notes on our table as the waiter comes by. “Day is just a criminal on death row. His words shouldn’t matter to a girl of your standing.”

  I take another bite before answering. “They don’t,” I reply. “I might as well be talking to a dog.” But to myself I think, Day’s words will matter if he’s telling the truth.

  Long after Thomas has escorted me back to my apartment and left, and long after midnight has passed, I sit awake at my computer and study Metias’s crime report. I’ve looked at the photos enough times now to keep myself from turning away, but it still leaves a queasy feeling in my stomach. Every photo is taken from an angle facing away from his wounds. The longer I stare at the black smears on the knife hilt, the more convinced I am that they’re remnants of rifle grease.

  When I can’t look at the photos any longer, I go back to the couch and sift through Metias’s journals again. If my brother had any other enemies, surely there’d be a clue somewhere in his writing. But he was no fool, either. He never would’ve written down anything that could be used as evidence. I read through pages and pages of his old entries, all of them about irrelevant, mundane things. Sometimes he talks about us. These I have more trouble reading.

  One entry talks about the night of his induction ceremony into Commander Jameson’s squad, when I’d fallen ill. Another is about the celebration we had together when I scored a 1500 on my Trial. We placed an order for ice cream and two whole chickens, and at one point in the evening, I even experimented with making a chicken and ice cream sandwich, which maybe wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I can still hear us laughing, still smell the warm aromas of baked chicken and fresh bread.

  I press my fists against my closed eyes and take a deep breath. “What am I doing?” I whisper to Ollie, who tilts his head at me from where he’s lying on the couch. “I’m befriending a criminal, and pushing away people I’ve known my entire life.”

  Ollie looks back at me with that universal dog wisdom, then promptly goes back to sleep. I stare at him for a while. Not long ago, Metias would’ve dozed there with his arm draped around Ollie’s back. I wonder if Ollie’s imagining that now.

  It takes me a moment to realize something. I open my eyes, then look back at the last page I’d read in Metias’s journal. I think I saw something . . . there. I narrow my eyes at the bottom of the page.

  A misspelled word. I frown. “That’s odd,” I say out loud. The word is refrigerator, spelled with an extra d. Refridgerator. Never in my life have I known Metias to misspell anything. I study it for a second longer, shake my head, and decide to move on. I make a mental note of the page.

  Ten minutes later, I find another one. This time the word is elevation, but Metias spells it elevatien.

  Two misspelled words. My brother would never have done this by accident. I look around, as if there might be a surveillance camera in the room. Then I lean toward the coffee table and start sifting through all the pages of Metias’s journals. I store the misspelled words in my head. No reason to write them down for someone else to find.

  I find a third word: bourgeoisie, spelled bowrgeoisie. Then a fourth one: emanating, spelled emamating.

  My heart starts to pound.

  By the time I finish going through all twelve of Metias’s journals, I’ve uncovered twenty-four misspelled words. All of them come from the journals written in the last few months.

  I lean back on the couch, then close my eyes so I can picture the words in my mind. That many misspelled words from Metias can be nothing other than a message to me—the one person who was most likely to go through his writing. A secret code. This must be why he’d pulled all the boxes out of the closet that fateful afternoon . . . this might be the important thing he’d wanted to talk about. I shift the words around, trying to form a sentence that makes sense, and when that fails, I move the letters around to see if each one might be an anagram for something else.

  No, nothing.

  I rub my temples. Then I try something else—what if Metias wanted me to put together the individual letters that are either missing from each word or in the word when they aren’t supposed to be there? I quietly make a list of these letters in my head, starting with the d in refridgerator.

  D L W G W U N O W M J W U T C E E L O F O O M B

  I frown. It makes no sense. I scramble the letters over and over again in my head, trying to come up with various combinations of words. When I was little, Metias played word games with me—he’d throw a bunch of letter blocks onto the table and ask me what words I could form with them. Now I try playing this game again.

  I play it for a while before I stumble across a combination that makes me open my eyes.

  JUNE BUG. Metias’s nickname for me. I swallow hard and try to stay calm. Slowly, I line up the leftover letters and try to form words with them. Combinations fly through my mind until one of them makes me pause.

  FOLLOW ME JUNE BUG.

  The only letters left after that are three W’s, then CTOOMD. Which left one logical option.

  WWW FOLLOW ME JUNE BUG DOT COM

  A website. I run the letters through my mind several more times, to make sure my assumption is correct. Then I glance at my computer.

  First I type in Metias’s hack that allows me to access the Internet. I put up the defenses and shells that my brother taught me—there are eyes everywhere online. Then I disable my browser’s history, and type in the URL with trembling fingers.

  A white page pops up. Only one line of text appears at the top.

  Let me take your hand, and I will give you mine.

  I know exactly what Metias wants me to do. Without hesitating, I reach a hand out and press it flat against my monitor.

  At first, nothing happens. Then I hear a click, see a faint light scan across my skin, and the white page disappears. In its place appears what looks like a blog. My breath catches in my throat. There are six brief entries here. I lean forward in my chair and start reading.

  What I see makes me dizzy with horror.

  July 12

  This is for June’s eyes only. June, you can easily delete all traces of this blog at any time by pressing your right palm against the screen and typing: Ctrl+Shift+S+F. I have no other place to write this, so I’ll write it here. For you.

  Yesterday was your fifteenth birthday. I wish you were older, though, because I can’t quite bring myself to tell a fifteen-year-old girl what I found—especially when you should be celebrating.

  Today I found a photograph taken by our late father. It was the very last one in the very last photo album they owned, and I’d never noticed it before because Dad had hidden it behind a larger photo. You know I flip through our parents’ pictures all the time. I like reading their little notes, it feels like they can still talk to me. But this time I noticed that the last photo in that album felt unusually thick. When I fiddled with it, the secret photo fell out.

  Dad had taken a photo of his workplace. The lab in Batalla Hall. Dad never talked to us about his work. Yet he’d taken this photo. It was blurry and oversaturated, but I could make out the shape of a young man on a gurney pleading for his life with a bright red biohazard sign imprinted on his hospital gown.

  Do you know what Dad wrote at the bottom of that photo?

  Resigning, April
6.

  Our father had tried to resign the day before he and Mom were killed in a car wreck.

  September 15

  I’ve been trying to find clues for weeks. Still nothing. Who knew the deceased civilians database was so difficult to hack?

  But I’m not giving up yet. There’s something behind our parents’ death, and I’m going to find out what it is.

  November 17

  You asked me why I seemed so out of it today. June, if you’re reading this, you probably remember this day, and now you’ll know why.

  I’ve been hunting for clues ever since my last entry here. For the past few months I’ve tried asking subtle questions of other lab workers, and of Dad’s old friends, and searching online. Well, today I found something.

  Today I finally managed to hack the Los Angeles deceased civilians database. Most complicated thing I’ve ever done. I was going about it the wrong way. There’s a security hole on their servers that I hadn’t noticed before because they’d buried it behind all sorts of—well, anyway, it resulted in me getting in. And much to my surprise, I actually found a report on our parents’ car accident.

  Except it was not an accident. June, I’ll never be able to say this to you out loud, so I desperately hope that you’ll see it here.

  Commander Baccarin, another former student of Chian (you remember Chian, right?), submitted the report. The report said that Dr. Michael Iparis had roused the suspicions of the Batalla Hall lab administrators when he first questioned the true purpose of his research. He’d always worked on understanding the plague viruses, of course, but he must have uncovered something that upset him enough to make him quietly file for a change in work assignment. Remember that, June? It was just a few weeks before the car crash.