Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy Read Free Page B

Republic soldiers dressed in the attire of a city patrol—not
     street police, an actual
city patrol
—are shouting questions at a large man.
Charlie’s dad.
The shrieks come from Charlie, whom several of the crew members are holding back.
    One city patrol soldier punches her father squarely in the jaw. He falls to his knees.
    “You damn dogs!” Charlie shouts at the patrol. “You
liars
! We’re not behind on shipments—we’re not even in
charge
of that! You can’t—”
    “Calm down,” one of the soldiers snaps at her. “Or you’ll feel the bite of a bullet.
     Got that?” Then he nods to his companions. “Confiscate their shipment.”
    Charlie screams something I can’t make out, but her father shakes his head at her,
     giving her a firm warning. A trail of blood leaks from the edge of his mouth. “It’ll
     be okay,” he calls out to her even as the soldiers hurry along the end of the pier
     and load crates onto their truck.
    I wait quietly in the dark as they fill their truck. If they take Charlie’s whole
     shipment, then that means they won’t get paid for at least two weeks. Some of them
     would go hungry for sure. A memory rushes back to me of when the city patrols had
     once taken my dad away for questioning, how they’d brought him back bloodied and broken.
     Anger and recklessness rush through my mind. I narrow my eyes at the soldiers, then
     dart quietly from the shadows to the edge of the water. As the chaos continues to
     unfold at the end of the pier, no one notices as I slip soundlessly into the water
     and make my way off along the shore. My bad knee protests as I paddle, but I grit
     my teeth and ignore it.
    When I’ve swum far enough to reach the next set of piers, I make my way up to the
     banks, crawl up to street level, and melt into the early-morning crowds. Water drips
     down my chin; my soggy boots squish with each step I take. The soldiers will probably
     take another few minutes to finish loading everything up and checking off the crates—by
     the time they head back out this way to Lake’s police station, I’ll be ready for them.
     As I limp through the crowds, I reach down to my belt and tug open the pouch of trinkets.
     I’ve got a good stash of nails. I scatter them all across the street until I’m confident
     that I’ve covered a large swath of the road. Then I turn a corner, dart into a narrow
     alley, and crouch behind a large trash bin. My knee throbs in protest. I rub wet strands
     of hair impatiently away from my face.
    I gingerly stretch out my leg, wince, and rub at the old scar that runs across my
     knee. Gotta move fast if I want this to work. I check to make sure my pocketknife’s
     tucked securely against my boot, then settle in to wait.
    A few minutes later, I hear what I’ve been hoping for—the sound of a city patrol truck
     approaching from farther ahead, its recognizable beeping alarm ringing out down the
     street. My body tenses.
    The truck draws nearer. People clear to either side as it honks its way through the
     morning rush.
    Then—
    Pop!
    One of the truck’s tires bursts—it skids, then careens haphazardly to one side, sending
     up some shrieks from the crowd. It crashes to a halt several feet from where my alley
     is. I struggle to my feet. The back of the truck has popped open in all the chaos,
     and a dozen or so crates lie open and spilled on the streets.
    Two soldiers hop out from the truck right as crowds of people gather around the truck,
     some already eagerly picking up cans of meat that have rolled out of the broken crates.
     “Back up!” one soldier shouts in vain at the crowd. The other soldier pushes people
     back with his rifle.
    I rush in with the pack. If I could grab even
one
of the crates and bring it back to Charlie, I’d call that a win. The people tower
     over me, jostling me back and forth as everyone tries to snatch a small portion of
     the food. I duck my head, fold myself down as small as I can, and push doggedly