Champion: A Legend Novel (11 page)

Then he turns away and motions for June to accompany him. I let my breath out as I watch a soldier lead him and June toward a cluster of generals. June looks over her shoulder at me as they go. I know she’s thinking the same thing I am. She’s worried about what this war is doing to Anden. What it’s doing to
all
of us.

Lucy interrupts my thoughts. “Perhaps we should get your brother on the evacuation train,” she says. She gives me a sympathetic look.

“Right.” I look down at Eden and pat his shoulder. I try my best to have faith in the Elector’s promise. “Let’s head over to the train and get the details on how to get you out of here.”

“What about you?” Eden asks. “Are you really going to lead some kind of assault?”

“I’ll meet up with you in Los Angeles. I swear.”

Eden doesn’t make a sound as we make our way over to the train platform and let the soldiers escort us toward the front. His expression has grown serious and sullen. When we’re finally in front of the train’s closed glass door, I bend to his eye level. “Look—I’m sorry I’m not going with you right away. I need to stay here and help, yeah? Lucy’s got you. She’ll keep you safe. I’ll join up with you soon—”

“Yeah, fine,” Eden grumbles.

“Oh.” I clear my throat. Eden is sickly and tech-minded and occasionally obnoxious, but he’s rarely angry like this. Even after his blindness, he’s stayed optimistic. So his bluntness throws me off. “Well, that’s good,” I decide to respond. “I’m glad you’re—”

“You’re hiding something from me, Daniel,” he interrupts. “I can tell. What is it?”

I pause. “No, I’m not.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Eden pulls himself out of my grasp and frowns. “Something’s up. I could hear it in the Elector’s voice, and then you said that weird thing to me the other day, about how you were afraid the Republic’s soldiers would come knocking on our door . . . Why would they do that all of a sudden? I thought everything was fine now.”

I sigh and bow my head. Eden’s eyes soften a little, but his jaw stays firm. “What is it?” he repeats.

He’s eleven years old. He deserves to know the truth.

“The Republic wants you back for experimentation,” I reply, keeping my voice low so that only he can hear me. “There’s a virus spreading in the Colonies. They think you have the antidote in your blood. They want to take you to the labs.”

Eden stares in my direction for a long, silent moment. Above us, another dull thud shakes the earth. I wonder how well the Armor’s holding up. Seconds drag by. Finally, I put a hand on his arm. “I won’t let them take you away,” I say, trying to reassure him. “Okay? You’re going to be fine. Anden—the Elector—knows that he can’t take you away without risking a revolution among the people. He can’t do it without my permission.”

“All those people in the Colonies are going to die, aren’t they?” Eden mutters under his breath. “The ones with the virus?”

I hesitate. I never asked much about exactly what the plague’s symptoms were—I stopped listening the instant they mentioned my brother. “I don’t know,” I confess.

“And then they’re going to spread it to the Republic.” Eden turns his head down and wrings his hands together. “Maybe they’re spreading it right now. If they take over the capital, the disease will spread. Won’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I repeat.

Eden’s eyes search my face. Even though he’s nearly blind, I can see the unhappiness in them. “You don’t have to make all my decisions, you know.”

“I didn’t think I
was.
Don’t you want to evacuate to LA? It’s safer there, and I told you—I’ll catch up with you there. I promise.”

“No, not that. Why’d you decide to keep this a secret?”

This
is why he’s upset? “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why?” Eden presses.

“You would’ve
agreed
?” I move closer to him, then glance around at the soldiers and evacuees and lower my voice. “I know I declared my support for Anden, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what the Republic did to our family. To
you.
When I watched you get sick, when the plague patrols came to our door and dragged you out on that gurney, with blood blackening your eyes . . .” I pause, close my eyes, and shut the scene out. I’ve played it in my head a million times; no need to revisit it again. The memory makes the pain flare up at the back of my head.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Eden fires back in a low, defiant voice. “You’re my brother, not our mom.”

I narrow my eyes. “I am now.”

“No, you’re not. Mom’s dead.” Eden takes a deep breath. “I remember what the Republic did to us. Of course I do. But the Colonies are invading. I want to help.”

I can’t believe Eden’s telling me this. He doesn’t understand the lengths the Republic will go to—has he really forgotten their experiments? I lean forward and put my hand on his tiny wrist. “It could kill you. Do you realize that? And they might not even find a cure using your blood.”

Eden pulls away from me again. “It’s
my
decision to make. Not yours.”

His words echo June’s from earlier. “Fine,” I snap. “Then what’s your decision, kid?”

He steels himself. “Maybe I want to help.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You want to help them out? Are you just doing that to go against what I’m saying?”

“I’m serious.”

A lump rises in my throat. “Eden,” I begin, “we’ve lost Mom and John. Dad is gone. You’re all I have left. I can’t afford to lose you too. Everything I’ve done so far, I’ve done for you. I’m not letting you risk your life to save the Republic—or the Colonies.”

The defiance fades from Eden’s eyes. He props his arms up on the railing and leans his head against his hands. “If there’s one thing I know about you,” he says, “it’s that you’re not selfish.”

I pause. Selfish. I
am
selfish—I want Eden to stay protected, out of harm’s way, and screw whatever he thinks about that. But at his words, my guilt bubbles up. How many times had John tried to keep me out of trouble? How many times had he warned me against messing with the Republic, or trying to find a cure for Eden? I had never listened, and I don’t regret it. Eden stares at me with sightless eyes, a disability the Republic handed to him. And now he’s offering himself up, a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, and I can’t understand why.

No. I do understand. He is me—he’s doing what I would’ve done.

But the thought of losing him is too much to bear. I put my hand on his shoulder and start steering him inside. “Get to LA first. We’ll talk about this later. You better think this through, because if you volunteer for this—”

“I
did
think it through,” Eden replies. Then he pulls out of my grasp and steps back through the balcony door. “And besides, if they came for me, do you really think we could stop them?”

And then his turn comes. Lucy helps him step onto the subway, and I hold his hand for a brief moment before he has to let go. Despite how upset he seems to be, Eden still clutches my hand hard. “Hurry up, okay?” he says to me. Without warning, he throws his arms around my neck. Beside him, Lucy gives me one of her reassuring smiles.

“Don’t you worry, Daniel,” she says. “I’ll watch him like a hawk.”

I nod gratefully at her. Then I hug Eden tight, squeeze my eyes shut, and take a deep breath. “See you soon, kid,” I whisper. Then I reluctantly untangle his fingers from mine. Eden disappears onto the subway. Moments later, the train pulls away from the station and takes the first wave of evacuees toward the Republic’s west coast, leaving only Eden’s words behind, ringing in my mind.

Maybe I want to help.

I sit alone for some time after his train leaves, lost in thought, going over those words repeatedly. I’m his guardian now—I have every right to keep him from harm, and hell if I’m going to see him back in the Republic’s labs after everything I’ve done to keep him from there. I close my eyes and bury my hands in my hair.

After a while, I make my way back to the room where the Patriots are being kept. The door’s open. When I step inside, Pascao quits stretching out his arms and Tess looks up from where she’s finishing the bandaging of the wounded girl’s shoulder.

“So,” I say to them, my eyes lingering on Tess. “You guys came back to town to give the Colonies some hell?” Tess drops her gaze.

Pascao shrugs. “Well, it won’t matter if no one lets us back up there. Why? You have something in mind?”

“The Elector’s given his permission,” I reply. “As long as I’m in charge, he thinks we’ll be good enough not to turn against the Republic.” What a stupid fear, anyway. They still have my brother, don’t they?

A slow smile spreads on Pascao’s face. “Well. That sounds like it could be fun. What do you have in mind?”

I put my hands in my pockets and put my arrogant mask back on. “What I’ve always been good at.”

51.5
HOURS SINCE MY FINAL CONVERSATION WITH
T
HOMAS.

15
HOURS SINCE
I
LAST SAW
D
AY.

8
HOURS SINCE THE
C
OLONIES’ BOMBARDMENT OF
D
ENVER’S
A
RMOR CAME TO A LULL.

W
E’RE ON THE
E
LECTOR’S PLANE HEADED TO
R
OSS
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.

Secondly, I’m shocked to see us immediately ushered into a plastic tent by a team of people in white biohazard suits and gas masks. (The news of the Colonies’ plague must have spread here.) One of them quickly inspects my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and then runs a bright green light across my entire body. I wait in tense silence as the person (male or female? I can’t be sure) analyzes the reading on a handheld device. From the corner of my eye, I can see Anden undergoing the same tests—being the Republic’s Elector does not apparently exempt one from being possibly contaminated with plague. It takes a good ten minutes before we are all cleared for entry and led out from under the tarp.

Anden greets three Antarctican people (each dressed respectively in a green, black, or blue suit, cut in an unfamiliar style) waiting for us on the landing bridge with a few guards. “I hope your flight went well,” one of them says as Mariana, Serge, and I approach. She greets us in English, but her accent is thick and lush. “If you prefer, we can send you home in one of our own jets.”

The Republic is hardly perfect; that much I’ve known for a long time, and certainly ever since I met Day. But the Antarctican woman’s words are so arrogant that I feel myself bristle. Apparently our Republic jets aren’t good enough for them. I look at Anden to see what his reaction will be, but he simply bows his head and offers a beautiful smile to the woman. “
Gracias,
Lady Medina. You are always so gracious,” he replies. “I’m very grateful for your offer, but I certainly don’t want to impose. We’ll make do.”

I can’t help admiring Anden. Every day, I see new evidence of the burdens he shoulders.

After some argument, I reluctantly let one of the guards take Ollie away to the hotel quarters where I’ll be staying. Then we all fall into a quiet procession as the Antarcticans lead us off the platform and along the bridge toward the connecting building (colored scarlet, although I’m not sure if it’s in honor of our landing). I make a point of walking close to the bridge’s edge, so that I can look down at the city. For once, it takes me a while to count the floors (based on the bridges branching out from every floor, this building has over three hundred floors—approximately three hundred twenty-seven, although eventually I look away to shake off a sense of vertigo). Sunlight bathes the uppermost floors, but the lower floors are also brightly illuminated; they must be simulating sunlight for those walking at ground level. I watch Anden and Lady Medina chat and laugh as if they are old friends. Anden falls so neatly into it that I can’t tell whether he genuinely likes this woman or he is simply playing the role of an agreeable politician. Apparently our late Elector had at least trained his son well in international relations.

The building’s bridge entrance, an archway framed with intricately carved swirls, slides open to greet us. We halt in a lavishly decorated lobby (thick ivory carpet that, to my fascination, bursts with swirls of color wherever I put my feet down; rows of potted palms; a curved glass wall displaying bright ads and what seem like interactive stations for things I don’t understand). As we walk, the Antarcticans hand each of us a thin pair of glasses. Anden and many of the Senators immediately put them on as if they’re used to this ritual, but the Antarcticans explain the glasses anyway. I wonder whether they know who I am, or whether they care. They certainly noticed my puzzlement at the glasses.

“Keep these on for the duration of your visit,” Lady Medina tells us with her rich accent, although I know her words are directed at me. “They will help you see Ross City as it really is.”

Intrigued, I put the glasses on.

I blink in surprise. The first thing I
feel
is a subtle tickle in my ears, and the first thing I
see
are the small, glowing numbers hovering over the heads of each of the Antarcticans. Lady Medina has
28,627: LEVEL 29
, while her two companions (who have yet to utter a sound) respectively have
8,819: LEVEL 11
and
11,201: LEVEL 13
.
When I look around the lobby, I notice all sorts of virtual numbers and words—the green bulbous plant in the corner has
WATER: +1
hovering over it, while
CLEAN: +1
floats above a dark, half-circle side table. In the corner of my glasses, I see tiny, glowing words:

JUNE IPARIS

PRINCEPS-ELECT 3

REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

LEVEL 1

SEPT. 22. 2132

DAILY SCORE: 0

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 0

We’ve started walking again. None of the others seem particularly concerned about the onslaught of virtual text and numbers layered over the real world, so I’m left to my own intuition. (Although the Antarcticans aren’t wearing glasses, their eyes occasionally flicker to virtual things in the world in a way that makes me wonder whether they have something embedded in their eyes, or perhaps in their brains, that permanently simulates all of these virtual things for them.)

One of Lady Medina’s two companions, a broad-shouldered, white-haired man with very dark eyes and golden-brown skin, walks slower than the others. Eventually he reaches me near the end of the procession and falls into step beside me. I tense up at his presence. When he speaks, though, his voice is low and kind. “Miss June Iparis?”

“Yes, sir,” I reply, bowing my head respectfully in the way Anden had done. To my surprise, I see the numbers in the corner of my glasses change:

SEPT. 22. 2132

DAILY SCORE: 1

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 1

My mind spins. Somehow, the glasses must have recorded my bowing action and added a point to this Antarctican scoring system, which means bowing is equal to one point. This is also when I realize something else: When the white-haired man spoke, I heard absolutely no accent—he’s now speaking perfect English. I glance over to Lady Medina, and when I catch hints of what she’s saying to Anden, I notice that her English now sounds impeccable too. The tickle I’d felt in my ears when I put on the glasses . . . maybe it’s acting as some sort of language translation device, allowing the Antarcticans to revert to their native language while still communicating with us without missing a beat.

The white-haired man now leans over to me and whispers, “I am Guardsman Makoare, one of Lady Medina’s newer bodyguards. She has assigned me to be your guide, Miss Iparis, as it seems you are a stranger to our city. It’s quite different from your Republic, isn’t it?”

Unlike Lady Medina, the way Guardsman Makoare speaks has no condescension in it at all, and his question doesn’t rub me the wrong way. “Thank you, sir,” I reply gratefully. “And, yes, I have to admit that these virtual numbers I see all over the place are strange to me. I don’t quite understand it.”

He smiles and scratches at the white scruff on his chin. “Life in Ross City is a game, and we are all its players. Native Antarcticans don’t need glasses like you visitors do—all of us have chips embedded near our temples once we turn thirteen. It’s a piece of software that assigns points to everything around us.” He gestures toward the plants. “Do you see the words
Water—Plus One
hovering over that plant?” I nod. “If you decided to water that plant, for example, you would receive one point for doing so. Almost every positive action you make in Ross City will earn you achievement points, while negative actions subtract points. As you accumulate points, you gain levels. Right now, you are at Level One.” He pauses to point up at the virtual number floating over his head. “I am at Level Thirteen.”