Legacy (Alliance Book 3) (3 page)

Brody dropped the pills on his palm, looking at Stan, “For how long? How long will they knock me out for?”

“A day, maybe two.”

Brody counted out half the pills and handed the rest to Stan. He knew he was going to argue with him, like he did with Drake that time, so he gently pulled him away from Brody, whispering, “It’s okay, Stan. I promise you won’t get anywhere with him. Just get him some water for those. He’ll be all right.”

Ella seemed ready. Brody leaned in and kissed Laurel quickly on the lips. She looked like she was going to cry at any moment, and he hoped she’d wait until Brody was asleep. He watched him take his shirt off, not saying anything to anybody, and lie down, letting Ella strap him in. She had him take the pills and they waited until it looked like he was asleep and then Ella was running the scanner thing over his chest, making marks on him with something that looked like a pen but probably wasn’t, drawing lines on his chest.

She called him and Drake over then, and they pressed their hands on Brody’s shoulders, holding him down in case he moved, in case he woke up. He saw Laurel turn away when Ella cut into one of the lines she drew, and there was blood everywhere, not like it was with Drake, and he was worried something was wrong, so he watched Ella’s face, but she seemed calm enough. She was running the scanner Stan had given her over him again, and it made a noise of some kind, and then she was putting something into him, under all the cuts she made in his chest, a glowing skinny metal rod, and moving it around, watching the scanner, Stan standing next to her, pointing, and they were at it for a long time, long enough for his hands to feel numb. Suddenly Ella’s face didn’t look so calm anymore.

He looked at Brody, and almost jumped. His eyes were wide open. He was bloody awake, and nobody seemed to know what to do now.

“I am guessing not done yet,” Brody whispered, his voice strained, “unless you have a better idea, you should probably finish it. I’ll close my eyes again,” and he did.

Ella and Stan went back to it, and he saw Laurel huddling in the corner, crying into her hands. He wished more than anything he didn’t make Brody bring her now. Brody looked asleep, just breathing too fast for it, and his jaw was clenched, but he didn’t move and didn’t open his eyes again, until Ella was done stitching him up. He tried to sit up then, only he and Drake pushed him back down on the bed.

Brody ignored them, looking at Ella, “Did it work?” Her face was drawn, tension around her eyes.

“I won’t know for a little while, Brody. I’ll have to run some tests, and then we’ll know, but you should probably rest first. And maybe take the rest of those pills.”

Brody shook his head, “I’m okay, Ella. Please, run your tests. I need to know.” And she did then, and it seemed he would be all right after all. Laurel came up to him, and tentatively put her hand in his hair. He didn’t move, letting her. And after a little while, he closed his eyes, and he could see his face relax a little bit. They filed out of the room, all but Laurel, and sat in the hallway, not talking, not knowing what to say.

“I am going to get us something to drink,” Stan, that, and he was gone, and he wished that he’d thought of it earlier, instead of the bloody pills. Maybe he wouldn’t have been completely awake like that.

He caught Ella watching him, “It’s not what you think, Riley. It happens sometimes. People just wake up. It wasn’t Stan’s fault, is what I am saying. And at least when he was asleep, it was easier for him than Drake, I promise you, and he was asleep for the worst of it.”

Drake was leaning on the wall away from everybody, his eyes closed. Maybe Ella was right, and it wasn’t as bad as it looked for Brody after all. He nodded to her, and went back in.

Laurel was still crying softly over Brody, “I don’t think he is asleep, Riley, if you want to talk to him,” and she ran out of the room. He crouched by his head, watching his face, noting a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Anything I can do, Brody?”

Head shaking. Not asleep then. Brody looked at him, and he could see the pain in his eyes, all dark, no color in them at all. And he knew he was holding it all in because of Laurel. That it would have been easier for him if he didn’t make him bring her here. He would have let himself scream if he needed to, and he looked like he needed to even now.

“Stan is getting us a bottle of something that’ll make it easier. It’ll knock you out or at least take the edge off,” he whispered.

Brody nodded to him softly, and reached for his hand, squeezing it hard, making his scars hurt.

“Make sure she gets some of that, Riley, enough to not feel so bad. That’s why I didn’t want her here, not because I was angry at her. I wasn’t. I just didn’t want her here if something went wrong. Didn’t want her to feel worse that she does already. I am sorry I didn’t just tell you that. Frankly, I don’t know why the hell I didn’t,” and he let go of him.

And when he got up, everybody was in the room again, Stan carrying a bottle of something over to Brody, but he shook his head at him, telling him to give it to Laurel first, and he did. Afterwards, everybody passed out on the floor, Drake hugging Ella, Laurel by Brody, Stan snoring softly in the corner.

He slid against the back wall and wrapped his arms around his knees, watching them, hoping this doesn’t become a habit for them. Hoping that he never had to see the inside of this room again.

Drake, May 28, 2236, Reston.

I
t only took Stan a few days to pull up everything he asked him for. He was really liking this strange man more and more. He hovered over him at the holo screens in the giant tower while the kids were shooting their guns or throwing knives, or whatever Brody was making them do. Brody was supposed to stay put for a week, or so Ella told him, but short of keeping him strapped in, there was no way he was doing that, and nobody had the heart to tie that boy down anymore.

He remembered the pain he felt when Ella was cutting into him to get the tag out, and how it took everything he had for him not to scream then, and he knew it was worse for Brody after he woke up like that, but the kid just bloody took it somehow, not making a sound. There was something in both of these kids, Riley and him, that made them hide whatever pain they were in from everybody, even their friends, and he felt a danger in it.

Stan was explaining what he was looking at now, speaking far too fast, as if he had a finite amount of time to get through it before he forgot what he was saying. He didn’t know when he decided that it was important for them to know enough about all the Zoriner-Alliance history, but he just knew that it was, especially for the girls. Knew they would need something more than just trying to save a few Zoriner kids from what Trina went through to be able to shoot at these people, people who looked like them.

Stan was finally done. He smiled at him thinly, apologetically, as if any part of what he walked him through was his fault, and handed him the screen with the holo embedded into it, so he could explain to the rest of the group what he had just learned. He’ll have to do it tonight after supper, so they’d all have enough time to process it. They all seemed in a rush to go now, and it worried him. Ams and Laurel were nowhere near trained enough, but he could tell they were becoming restless. Maybe it was being in this city that was doing it to them. He hoped that’s all it was.

Brody demanded that somebody take him to that field with all the bones in it, but nobody wanted to go there again, not even Riley, so he finally took him, hoping the kid could take it, and Riley and Laurel both screamed at him for doing it afterwards. But he felt Brody had his reasons for asking, so he walked with him, slowly, not wanting to take the flier, and they didn’t say anything to each other the whole walk there. Brody stopped when he saw the first patch of black grass ahead of him and just stood there staring at it, panting.

He put his arm around him then, telling him that it was all like that, so he could turn around now and they could go back, but Brody shook his head at him and after a while kept going farther and farther in, off the path, walking right into the field where all the bones were, and then knelt there in the charred grass looking at it for the longest time, not saying anything, not making a sound. He turned away from him, letting him be, and after a while, he heard his footsteps on the road behind him, Brody not saying a word until they were back in the city again.

He stopped when the houses just started to get taller and looked at him, face serious, “I know how they did it, Drake, what happened to all these people... I think I know how they made them do this. It’s how Hassinger took control of my crew, only with my crew she used their implants because they have them, so it was easier to just connect through those. What I’m saying is, I think they found a way of basically making everybody have an implant, if they need to. They just had to find a way of disbursing a bunch of microscopic transmitters, the same kind they use for the soldier implants, or what Ams and Laurel have in them, and they can control anything then. I talked to Trelix and Loren and they didn’t even remember what they were doing when Hassinger had them like that... It’s like it wasn’t them doing it at all. Only if they have the ability to do this, it doesn’t make any sense for them to still be stealing people or torturing them like they did with Trina. If they could do anything they wanted to any of us with a push of a button, why would they need to do any of the other stuff, Drake? It just doesn’t make sense....”

They picked up the pace some after that, and then Brody stopped abruptly, and leaned on the fence outside of a house they were passing, looking at him strangely, “I’ll catch up, Drake. I know where I am now. I’ll be right behind you,” and he put his head down. He could see he was breathing hard, his hands digging into the wood of the fence behind him. He ran over to him, Brody shaking his head, not wanting him to touch him for some reason. He seemed okay after a few minutes of this, looking up at him, eyes angry, “Why doesn’t anybody ever listen to me anymore? I said I’d catch up, Drake. I would have,” and he wouldn’t talk to him after that.

He told Ella about it, Brody looking in pain like that, but she just smiled at him softly, “That’s why I wanted him to stay put for a week. It’ll take a bit of time for him to heal, and hiking for however long you did today wasn’t part of the recovery plan. But he’ll be all right. I’m surprised he made it all that way and back at all. I fully expected you to end up carrying him.”

That was yesterday, and he remembered now why he thought of all of this, and what Brody said to him, why it suddenly seemed important. There was a lab in the holo they were looking at earlier with Stan that had something to do with these transmitter things, Neuro-Tech or something written on the door, but the people running it weren’t scientists, they looked military, only not like Brody’s boys, older, and their clothes were different. But they were definitely soldiers. He remembered it now. They would have to try to figure that out with Stan.

Ella made sandwiches for supper and brewed some tea and coffee. Riley must have asked her for some. He was getting addicted to that stuff. They ate in silence at the huge table, less the occasional giggle from the girls. He liked that they could still do that.

He connected the holo, got up, and went through it as quickly and calmly as he could, starting with the wars in 2106, and the economic mess that followed. He told them, showing old footage on the holo how everybody, even the city folk were suddenly poor, too poor to feed their kids, and everybody was getting desperate. And how there was this man who couldn’t take it any more, and he collected a small group of people from outside Carthage, farmers mostly, people who were all desperate because for some reason nobody in Carthage would trade with them any more, and they couldn’t keep their loved ones alive now. Anyway, they were pissed off, so they set the council building in Carthage on fire. Blew themselves up in it too. And after that, they pushed all the cities to stop trading and started making their food differently somehow.

And over the next decades, they made it so that nobody who looked like those men could get work anywhere in any of the cities or trade anything... They were all pushed out and pretty much forgotten for a while after that. He told them about Dr. Groning and how she tried to make it so people couldn’t get pregnant the way they were, not unless they really wanted to, and they made every girl in the cities like that, infertile until she was ready, and then they’d give her a different shot to make it okay for her to have a kid, only something went wrong, and after a few generations fewer and fewer of them could have kids at all. And when that happened, the Alliance council made it illegal for any Zoriner to be with one of their people, because they were scared they were losing their populations already. Only human nature doesn’t work that way.”

He looked over at Ams and Riley at that, smiling, and took a few sips of his tea, “that’s why they made all these walls around their cities and did all the other stuff that you all grew up with, to keep the populations completely separate, but they knew that even that might not be enough. So they spent all these resources for many decades to make the Alliance people believe that Zoriners were a different species, animals, no better than apes, so they didn’t ever feel sorry for anything they were doing to them, but mostly, so no Alliance girl would ever want to be with one of them.”

Riley got up, a strange smile on his face, and started dancing around Trelix and Loren, making monkey noises, scratching himself, staring at them. The boys had their heads down, looking embarrassed. He grabbed him by the neck, not too gently and turned him around, glaring at him, “What the hell is wrong with you, Riley? These boys are volunteering to give their lives alongside you, and you are going to shame them for something they didn’t bloody do? Apologize. Now.”

Riley shook his head, looking him dead in the eyes. “No.”

He grabbed him by the face, staring at him, “Riley, you will apologize to Trelix and Loren or you are not coming. I will leave you here with Stan, I swear I will.” He watched him flush, but he was still shaking his head at him.