Legacy (Alliance Book 3)

Legacy (Alliance, #3)

RECRUIT

AWAKE

HISTORY LESSON

THE FLIGHT

THE HOSTAGE

THE ROOF

ALLIES

LANCER

THE DRESS

EMBERS

PORTRAITS

LEVERAGE

LEGACY

ROGUE

THE SACRIFICE

ORPHAN

LINEAGE

EXECUTIONERS

REVENGE

CONFESSION

EPILOGUE

Also By inna hardison

About the Author

PART I

Laurel, May 24, 2236, Woods Outside Waller.

S
he couldn’t do this, what Brody was asking her to do. There was no way she could do this. He was standing in front of her, not three meters away, and telling her to shoot him with the stun gun. He had taken his shirt off, and he had Loren draw a target on his chest for where she was supposed to aim. He was looking directly into her eyes, telling her to just walk up to him and pull the trigger, but she couldn’t do it. Trelix and Loren watched them at this for a while now, and she felt bad, felt like she was failing some kind of test. She tried telling him that it would be different for her if she were shooting at people she didn’t know, people she hated, that he shouldn’t expect her to be able to shoot him, of all people, but for some stupid reason, he did.

She saw Riley come into the clearing, looking at her, a smirk on his face. He pulled his shirt off and walked over to her, reaching for her gun with his bandaged hand, “You don’t need me to draw you a target, Brody, do you?” Brody shook his head, took the gun from him, aimed it at his chest, and pulled the trigger, as if it was no big deal. Riley was on the ground, not moving, and she ran over to him, shaking him, but he wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t move at all. Brody finally pulled her away, “You have to give him a few minutes, Laurel. It knocked him out cold. He’ll be up and whole in five, I promise. Now please, just point the damn thing at me and shoot, so I know you can, so I know you won’t freeze if you have to.”

And she did then, only she kept doing it, kept squeezing the trigger, without meaning to, and Trelix and Loren ran to her, taking the gun away, and then ran to Brody, looking frantic, shaking him, and then whispering into their comms. She didn’t know why she didn’t let go, but she could tell she really hurt him. He was barely breathing... somebody must have gone to get Ella, because she saw her running to Brody with the med kit after a short while, Drake following behind her, looking paler than she ever saw him. She was crying hysterically, trying to get to Brody, only there were hands on her and they wouldn’t let her move.

She heard Riley saying something to her, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She was watching Ella doing something to Brody, but he still wouldn’t move, wouldn’t wake up. She felt Riley’s arm around her, and she could tell he was still talking to her, because his lips kept moving, and finally she couldn’t take it any more and she broke away from him and ran to where Brody, her Brody, was lying like a corpse in the grass. She screamed at him to bloody wake up, over and over to please just wake up, telling him that she would never use any of these damn things again, would never touch them, but to please, just wake up. Her voice was hoarse from all the screaming, but she couldn’t make herself stop, not until he moved, not until he woke up.

His eyes finally flew open and he looked at her, surprise and concern written all over his face. Ella told him then that his heart had stopped, and they weren’t sure they could get it going again. That what he got was as close to lethal as it gets, with him still being alive, and that she would be eternally grateful if they didn’t practice on live subjects again. And she and Drake left after that.

Brody got up and hugged her, wiping the tears off her face for a while, and then handed her the gun again. He took a few steps back from her and told her to pull the trigger, but there was no way in hell she was ever doing that again. “Laurel, forget what just happened. Point and shoot. One pull on the trigger. All you have to do is let go. Now shoot.”

She was shaking her head at him, “No. I am not doing this to you again. I’ll shoot anybody else, but I am not shooting you again.”

He walked back towards her, looking uncomfortable, “I can’t ask anyone else, Laurel. Being shot with these things, it kind of hurts. So it’ll have to be me, I am sorry. You have to get comfortable with shooting at people.”

Riley walked up to Brody and handed him his shirt and a marking pen, looking at him without any smiles now, eyes serious, “I got this, Brody. You can’t take any more. Your heart might just stop. It’s not safe for you, and you know that. Draw the target. I got this.” Brody nodded and drew a target around Riley’s heart, the dot she had to point at in the middle, and then Riley was standing just a few steps away from her, telling her to do it, that it was okay, telling her that she wasn’t going to kill him, to just pull the damn trigger, but she couldn’t do it, and then he was screaming at her to just bloody shoot, over and over again, and finally, she did, because she couldn’t take him screaming at her like that any more, and he was on the ground, a burn mark on his chest. She knelt next to him, checking his pulse, making sure he was breathing. He was, and she reached over and hugged him, and let herself cry on his chest, rising evenly under her.

She heard Brody and his boys laughing behind her, but she didn’t care that they found any of this funny, not when she almost accidentally stunned Brody to death. Trelix and Loren volunteered to let her shoot them after that, and she let go both times just as soon as she pulled the trigger and they didn’t even fall down, just stood there smiling at her, and Brody made her do it again, until she got it right, until they were on the ground, not moving.

She walked away from them after that; she needed to be alone for a while, to process all of it. She needed to talk to Ams, tell her about what these things can do, and that she really had to let go or she’d hurt somebody. She didn’t think Ams would have to do this part for a few days yet, as she just started with the targets on the trees, but she wanted her to know anyway, so she could prepare herself.

Ams was in the flier with Drake. He was making her load and reload the old school weapon, and she seemed good at it, her small hands moving quickly, clicking things into place. She watched her for a long time, and then caught Drake looking at her and shaking his head. He didn’t want Laurel to tell her about Brody, she got that, only she couldn’t figure out why. She had to know she could kill Riley or somebody, whoever they’d make her shoot at, because she didn’t want her to go through what she just went through out there. Nobody should ever go through that. She’d talk to Drake then, she’d have to.

He put his arm around her and walked her down to the clearing, leaving Ams with the old guns and a timer.

“Do you love him? Brody, do you love him?”

She did, even if she hasn’t said as much to anybody yet, not even him, so she nodded.

“Then you will let him do this his way. He is good at it, really good. And he is trying to teach you in a week what should take years. You have to let him. And it will hurt, and you will feel like you are screwing up all the time, but you have to trust him and you have to let him. What you saw, him lying there like that, not moving, you needed to see that. You needed to know that’s what happens when you actually shoot somebody. It’s the hardest thing to do, Laurel. But no matter how many holes you can put into your targets on the trees, if you can’t do that to a person, it won’t mean anything. So let him do his job, and you can’t tell Ams anything. She needs to learn this, the way you did. I am sorry,” and he walked away from her then, back into the flier.

She went to her own little target range and stayed there until it was too dark to shoot, until she couldn’t see the targets clearly any more. Everybody was at the fire when she got back, chatting comfortably, laughing, as if what happened today was entirely normal. She took a bowl from Ella and sat by herself, not talking to anybody, watching the flames move.

“Mind if I sit?” Brody asked, leaning over her with a cup of that stuff nobody liked in his hands. She could smell the bitterness in it. She nodded. She was still mad at him for making her shoot at him today, and for making her shoot at Riley like that. She knew she could kill anybody else, anybody she actually had to, felt it somehow, and they didn’t need to risk her hurting them to make her know that for sure. They could have just asked.

He watched her, not saying anything, and as soon as she was done with her food, he got up and pulled her up with him. “We are going for a walk,” and that was that.

He took her to the stream. The moon was making light tracks on it, enough to see each other by, and they hiked for a while alongside it, climbing the bank, not talking. She raced ahead of him for a bit and then couldn’t hear him behind her, and when she turned around, he was sitting against a rock down below, holding his chest in his hands. She ran to him, but he just looked at her, stopping her with that look. She could see sweat on his face, his jaw clenched. He was in pain, no matter what she knew he’d say when it was all over, if it was ever going to be over.

And then it was, and he seemed like himself again, only embarrassed now when he looked at her, “I am sorry, I didn’t think that would happen. I am okay, Laurel. I promise I am okay.”

She put her arms around him and held him, playing with his hair, running her fingers down his back, feeling his breathing return to normal and then suddenly not normal again, and she stopped, staring at his face.

He smiled at her, “Good idea. I don’t think my heart can take anything more today. Sit. We need to talk. Instructor, not boyfriend talk.” She didn’t want to have one of those. Didn’t like it, the whole instructor thing from him. It made her feel like a little girl who kept doing things wrong. Not that he was ever mean to her, or to anybody; he wasn’t. It’s just that he was so disgustingly good at all of the stuff he wanted them to learn, there was no way he was still human. She watched him shoot, and throw knives, and go hand to hand with Riley and Loren, and she hated him for how easy it was for him. She remembered that morning at the cave, when she came out and he had all those bruises on him, and it didn’t make any sense to her now. There is no way Riley could have landed a single punch on him, unless Brody really wanted him to, and that didn’t make any kind of sense. That he’d just let him beat him like that.

“Can I ask you something before you go into full on instructor mode?”

He nodded, looking at her.

“I’ve seen you fight, seen you and Riley fight, and it doesn’t add up for me. I get why you wouldn’t hit him back, but I’ve watched you, the way you move, and you wouldn’t have needed to. It’s like you wanted every punch to land on you.”

He shook his head, looking embarrassed for some reason, like this was some big secret between Riley and him. She kept staring at him. She wasn’t going to let him dodge everything that made him uncomfortable.

“I owed him, Laurel. The way Anders pummeled him, I let it happen. I couldn’t do it myself, not to him. I would have never hurt him like Anders did, and I knew it, knew it even then. So I owed him. I’ve been asking him to beat me up ever since. He needed to do it, whatever the reason in his head for when he finally did. I just knew he needed to,” he said in a quiet voice, and put his head down again for a little while, and she let him be.

“Instructor mode, Laurel. I am sorry, but we have to. What happened with you when you shot me? I need to know if the gun locked up or you froze, stopped thinking. Need to know what it was, so I can help you.”

She thought back on it for a long time, and knew that it was her, not the gun, “I think I was angry at you for shooting Riley like that, for scaring me. It wasn’t the gun. I didn’t know what would happen, or that I would hurt you, but I know I was angry at you when I shot you. I am sorry, Brody.”

“Just the facts, Laurel. Not boyfriend,” he snapped at her. She nodded, hating how cold his voice was.

“We are going to need to work on that. You can’t be shooting at anyone out of anger, not even at people who are trying to kill you. You need to learn to shoot to kill, but only if you absolutely have to, and you only have to if they can kill you or one of us first, not if they make you angry. Do you understand?”

She did, but she felt awful enough for what she did to him today already that he really didn’t need to lecture her. She nodded and stood up, turning to the trail to the flier. She was done with this conversation for the night. She felt his hands grab her shoulders roughly and turn her around. He looked angry now, angry like she’d never seen him before, and she didn’t know what she did, other than shoot him like that, to make him look at her that way.

“You insisted on coming with us, Laurel. Nobody asked you to do that. I sure as hell didn’t ask you to do that, but I am not going to throw you into a situation I can’t control or one where you can’t control yourself, because that would put everybody else in danger. I have to know I can trust you to do what I tell you to do and how I tell you to do it at all times, if I have any hope of keeping you and the rest of us alive. We are not done here until I say we are done, and that means you don’t get to walk away when you think you’ve had enough. Not boyfriend, Laurel,” he said in his clipped soldier voice, as if she were one of his boys.