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there’s no way to . . . talk to you?” he wondered. He descended again for another kiss, this as deep as those before but much more gentle. “I mean,” he murmured, parting, “if I needed to.”
    Legacy cleared her throat. “I’ve got, uh . . .” She shook her head clear. “Audio Swan. Scan for Audio Sw –Wait . . . wait.” She shook her head again. Her pupils seemed to shrink in diameter, just a fraction. “Why wouldn’t I go to this rally?”
    “It’s a trap. They’re all going to be arrested on sight.”
    “Arrested?” Legacy repeated, extricating herself from their anti-gravity knot of limbs. “Did Trimpot defect?”
    “Well–”
    “What, is he in alliance with Malthus now?” Legacy demanded. Her passion had cooled to calculation.
    “M-Malthus is dead,” Kaizen replied. He broke eye contact, still unsure how he was supposed to feel. If he should’ve felt anything at all. Why did he have to feel anything at all for that prick?
    Legacy pulled a deep breath. “Then it’s you,” she said. “He’s in alliance with you, and you’re arresting all the rebels.”
    “It’s for their own good,” Kaizen retorted, looking up to her again. “You don’t know.”
    “When is a trap ever in someone’s best interest?” Legacy asked, moving away from him. “And if it was, why would you tell me not to go?”
    “Do you want to be arrested?” he countered.
    “Do they? ”
    “I have my reasons,” Kaizen said. “You wouldn’t understand, Legacy. You think –you think everyone can win. But sometimes –sometimes there are only degrees of loss. Trust me–”
    “Trust you?” Legacy stooped to wrench the broad, metallic case up from the porch where it’d fallen. “Why, because you have nothing to gain by arresting the rebel force beneath you? You just want to snuff out the fire.” She moved rapidly down the stairs, using two hands to tote the unmentioned instrument. Kaizen glared and bolted after her, uninterested in its nature. Legacy called over her shoulder, “You want the fire smothered because it’s under your ass now!”
    “Do you think I care about the damn crown?” he demanded, circling down to the third porch. “Have I ever led you to believe that I wanted, really wanted to be the duke? I was born into this, and I’m just –doing what I have to!”
    “Yeah, well, everyone was born one way or another,” Legacy replied, thundering across the second porch. “And that’s what Chance for Choice is about. People who weren’t born into stations quite as accommodating as royalty.” She trundled down the last set of steps. “The CC isn’t fighting for themselves and what’s ‘best’ for them. They’re fighting for people everywhere, people never given the choice to be anything else. People like Dax.” She pounded down onto the last porch with both feet, setting off a shrill, tinny Rrrah! Rrrah! from deeper within.
    Kaizen, distracted, glared toward Unit #1 for a moment before turning back to face Legacy.
    “Who’s–”
    But she was already halfway across the lot, carrying that case as if it were a child and heading toward the line of dumpsters that signaled the boundary between the factories, the domestic district, and Groundtown.
    Meanwhile, Dax Ghrenadel gazed down onto the retreating figures below. Having heard the bang of the falling case, he’d slipped onto his porch to discern its source, and there found Legacy three floors down, lulling backwards with a shameless expression of rapture, being mauled by every girl’s earl. He hadn’t been able to hear everything they’d said: something about people wanting to be arrested, Legacy seeming incredulous that she should trust Kaizen, Kaizen seeming incredulous that he had struck her as ever wanting the crown.
    And if Kaizen had the crown, that meant that Chance for Choice had killed Malthus Taliko after all.
     

Chapter Three
     
                  Source: Vault footage, Liam etched as a footnote to the Tuesday