“What do you mean?” Nine replied. “So we can bust them out, obviously.”
“Bust them out,” Malcolm repeated. He put his hand on Nine’s shoulder. “You’re thinking like it’s the old days, Nine. These aren’t Mogadorians who have captured the students. Their lives aren’t in danger.”
“You don’t know that,” Taylor butted in. “And anyway, even if they are safe with Earth Garde, they still shouldn’t be under arrest or detained or whatever. The whole scandal is bullshit. We had every right to defend ourselves against those Harvesters.”
Malcolm turned to her. “Earth Garde are our allies. People we’ve trained and fought alongside work for them. They’re good people. If this is what they think is best . . .”
“Then why are they acting like snakes?” Isabela asked, her voice calmer than Taylor’s but no less sharp. “Why do this behind your backs?”
“I don’t agree with their methods and I wish we were kept more in the loop,” Malcolm conceded. “But, I imagine Greger knew that, if he was up front about Earth Garde’s decision, he would encounter . . . resistance.”
“I would’ve tried to stop them,” Nine grumbled.
“And what kind of damage would that have led to?” Malcolm asked. “No. I think our research down here has made us all a bit paranoid. We can trust Earth Garde. I truly believe that.”
“The only people I trust are either in this room,” Taylor said, “or somewhere they shouldn’t be.”
Before Malcolm could respond, Lexa made a noise. Her breath caught in her throat, eyes widening. Whatever information she’d hacked into, it wasn’t good news. Nine was immediately beside her, reading over her shoulder, his mouth moving as he went.
“You better look at this,” she said to Malcolm.
Taylor and Isabela exchanged a look. While the administrators were all huddled on one side of the table, Taylor and Isabela were being kept in the dark as usual.
“Secrets don’t make friends,” Isabela said with an annoyed toss of her hair.
Malcolm had gone a shade paler from whatever he read. “I think . . . I think we better adjourn this meeting for now so we can discuss some, ah, administrative matters.”
“Oh, hell with that,” Taylor replied.
With her telekinesis, Taylor took hold of Lexa’s laptop and levitated it out of reach before the Loric woman could grab it. Nine stepped back—the computer almost hit him in the chin—but made no effort to stop Taylor.
“Hey!” Lexa shouted as she shot up from the table. “That is not okay!”
“Let them see it,” Nine said grimly. “They deserve to know.”
Taylor turned the laptop in the air so she could read the screen, Isabela coming over to stand next to her. Lexa had accessed a report filed to Earth Garde’s top secret security database.
INCIDENT REPORT 0010319
. . . developing . . .
Earth Garde Central contacted by SIS agents in London responding to a fire in the Saint John’s Wood neighborhood where a detachment of Peacekeepers was deployed. A home registered to Reginald Barnaby, deceased father of Earth Garde asset #003-NB was burned to the ground. Preliminary investigation by local authorities indicates arson.
Bodies of Peacekeeper detachment recovered on scene. All operatives KIA. Autopsies suggest fatalities occurred prior to fire. Involvement of foreign government and/or terrorist organization suspected. Investigation in process.
Whereabouts of #003-NB and mother remain unknown. #003-NB sister and brother-in-law were staying at a nearby hotel and have been detained until investigation concludes. Media blackout protocol in place with assistance from SIS and local authorities. Minimizing dissemination of sensitive information is a priority.
. . . developing . . .
As she finished reading, Taylor forgot to maintain her telekinetic grip on the laptop. It would’ve fallen to the floor if Nine hadn’t snagged it with his own telekinesis and returned it to the table in front of Lexa.
“They . . . they got Nigel,” Taylor said, covering her mouth with her hand. “Jesus. What the hell is going on?”
“He’s not dead,” Isabela replied, her voice cracking a little. “The report said they couldn’t find him, right?”
“Yes,” Malcolm quickly jumped in. “Those Peacekeepers that went with him, however . . .”
“They’re keeping this stuff from us,” Nine said, and he resumed his pacing. “Someone burned down Nigel’s house three days ago and took him and no one’s told us. Greger’s people came in here and grabbed two of my students . . .”
“And don’t forget Caleb,” Isabela said. “You think that is a coincidence, hm? That he would be transferred out just now?”
“Let’s not get paranoid,” Malcolm said. “We need to keep our heads.”
“You keep your head, old man,” Isabela snapped. “You’re not the one in danger.”
Malcolm pursed his lips and turned to Nine, again using that fatherly tone to try calming him down. “We will figure this out, Nine,” he said.
Taylor understood that Malcolm was only trying to protect them and to abide by the rules—she imagined her father would’ve taken a very similar tact. Still, that didn’t make her any less angry. Her friends were being picked off one by one by sinister forces and the people tasked with protecting them were basically sitting on their hands. She strode forward and put herself in Nine’s path.
“What are you going to do about this?” she asked hotly.
Nine flexed the fingers on his cybernetic arm, looking down at Taylor. His eye twitched as he tried to keep his emotions in check.
“We’ll start making inquiries,” Malcolm said. “We’ll talk with our allies.”
“You’ll sit around,” Taylor said. “And wait for them to come for the rest of us.”
“We have an entire student body to think about,” Malcolm piped in again. “Taylor, please believe us when we say that we’ll do everything we can to help Nigel, Ran, and Kopano. I’m—I’m as angry about this as the rest of you. But we can’t do something that would endanger what we’ve built here.”
“Malcolm’s right,” Lexa said. “We need to play it smart.”
Taylor ignored the others, still looking up at Nine. He was the one with Legacies. He’d been chased across the world, fought for his life, battled the Mogadorians. Only he could understand what Taylor was feeling—the need to do something, anything.
Nine’s shoulders slumped. He looked away from Taylor.
“They’re right,” he said quietly. “We have to think about the bigger picture here. There’s a right way to attack these problems . . .”
Taylor snorted and started to turn away, but Nine grabbed her hand.
“Believe me, I’d love to rush out of here and start punching things until this was all straightened out,” Nine said quietly. “But life doesn’t work that way anymore. Not for me.”
“We aren’t actually going to listen to those peidão, are we?”
“No. Of course not.”
Taylor and Isabela moved briskly away from the training center on the path back to the dorms. The night was cold enough to make Isabela dramatically chatter her teeth and rub her arms. The campus was deserted, the rest of the student body happily asleep, ignorant to all the forces that would exploit their Legacies if given half the chance. Taylor envied them.
“Good,” Isabela said. “Because, the way I see it, you owe every one of us a rescue. Time to pay up.”
Taylor snorted and shook her head. She was glad to have Isabela at her side, her own confidence bolstered by the Brazilian’s brashness.
“Should I sneak us out of here?” Isabela asked. “Even the added security is no match for my skills. We could be on our way to the nearest secret Earth Garde facility in no time.”
“That’s the thing about secret facilities, though,” Taylor replied. “They’re secret. What happened to Ran and Kopano is totally screwed up, but at least we know they’re still in the Earth Garde system somewhere. Safe. I?
??m more worried about Nigel. That fire . . .”
“Smells like the Foundation, yes?”
“Yeah.”
Isabela shook her head vigorously. “Professor Nine—pah. I can’t believe him. He hulks around all badass but when it comes down to it, when Nigel is taken and people murdered he’s like, Oh, sorry, we must listen to the dorks and stay here. All those boring nights planning and when something finally happens, they puss out. Hey, where are we going?”
Taylor had turned off the path that would lead them back to the dorms, instead leading Isabela towards the cul-de-sac of small cabins where the on-site faculty lived.
“Nine’s not totally neutered yet,” Taylor replied. She held up an access card with the faculty emblem on it, the kind that would unlock any door in the Academy. “He slipped me this.”
“Aha. Good boy.”
“Way I see it, we’ve only got one lead to the Foundation. I know we’ve spent the last couple of months trying to set her up, to get her to recruit me, but . . . the situation has changed.”
“Dr. Linda,” Isabela said quietly, a predatory smile spreading across her face. “You want to confront her.”
“I’m going to wake her up and get answers out of her,” Taylor answered darkly. “One way or another.”
The two of them slipped between cabins, the windows all dark, everyone asleep. They closed in on the one where Dr. Linda lived. She had a few flowerpots on her doorstep and a peace sign pinwheel that turned lazily in the night air. Not exactly the lair of a blackhearted spy. That’s what makes her so dangerous, Taylor reminded herself.
“You are thinking of beating answers out of her, yes?” Isabela whispered, reading her mind. “Torture, maybe?”
Taylor frowned. “If that’s what I have to do . . .”
“I think . . . ,” Isabela replied, smirking now. “I think I know a better way.”
Chapter Seventeen
CALEB CRANE
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD, A TEAM OF Calebs hefted a steel beam onto their shoulders and marched forward. The duplicates were sweating, their light blue Earth Garde T-shirts stuck to their backs. Caleb wiped his face, sweating too—he wasn’t sure if the clones were perspiring because he was, or because they actually had sweat glands of their own. He tried not to ponder weird questions like that anymore. He cringed as the thought called to mind that time in class when he suggested harvesting organs from his duplicates.
Still couldn’t believe he said that one out loud.
The clones were a silent centipede, carrying the girder down the rocky slope of the construction site and stacking it with the others. Caleb was in control. There were no stragglers mouthing off, voicing Caleb’s private thoughts. They all moved as one.
Ever since the trip home for Christmas, Caleb had felt more relaxed, more centered. Nigel would have been proud of him, Caleb thought. Bloody zen-like, Caleb could imagine him saying. He hoped his friend was all right.
He also hoped that feeling would last.
Caleb stood on the edge of the pit, supervising his duplicates from there. His muscles ached, but not from lifting anything. It was the dull throb that happened whenever he had a lot of duplicates active for a protracted period of time. They’d been out here all afternoon, Caleb and the others doing the work of a whole construction crew all on their own.
He stood on the edge of what used to be the Sydney Opera House. Caleb had seen pictures of the place, the overlapping concrete shells that looked like shark mouths popping out of the ocean. It had been a cool place, at least until a Mogadorian warship turned it into a crater.
And now they were here to rebuild. That was Caleb’s first assignment as a member of Earth Garde—to travel the world and help areas still recovering from the Mog invasion.
Caleb turned to look out over the water, smiling as a cool breeze prickled his skin with mist. Uncle Clarence had warned him to keep an eye out for anything suspicious while on assignment, but there wasn’t any of that here.
They were doing good work. Helping actual people.
“Uh, excuse me,” piped up a voice at Caleb’s elbow. “Are you . . . the one in control?”
Caleb turned to find a short, middle-aged man at his side, a laminate badge around his neck identifying him as press. Five vans full of them had shown up an hour ago, there for a preplanned photo op and to write some positive coverage about Earth Garde’s humanitarian efforts. None of them had paid much attention to Caleb until now.
“In control of . . . ?” Caleb asked.
“Them,” the reporter said, motioning at the mass of clones currently carrying another steel beam into the pit.
“Yeah,” Caleb said. He smiled and extended a hand. “I’m Caleb Crane, sir. Duplicator. What can I do for you?”
“Yeah, uh, nice to meet you.” The reporter quickly shook his hand. “Would you mind getting your duplicates out of the way for a bit? They’re visually confusing and a little, um, creepy.”
“Oh,” Caleb replied. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Caleb tried not to take the request personally. He already knew that he wasn’t the main attraction here. That honor belonged to Melanie Jackson, the blond-haired and blue-eyed daughter of President Jackson who had shepherded the United States through the Mogadorian invasion. Through the eyes of his duplicates, Caleb saw her in the center of the construction site, flowing hair pulled back by a bandanna, wearing a cutoff T-shirt that showed off her tan arms. She carried a broken chunk of pipe on her shoulder—part of the works they were clearing out—the five-hundred-pound burden held with an impossible ease as she casually chatted with reporters.
To Caleb, Melanie seemed nearly as alien as the Mogadorians. She was a celebrity. The face of Earth Garde. Always so cool and self-possessed. She even sweated in the perfect amount. With the press around, she was smiling and gregarious, but at the hotel they were staying in, she mostly kept to herself. Caleb was pretty sure she had already forgotten his name.
Caleb sent a mental instruction to his duplicates to set down the steel beam they were lugging around and clear out of Melanie’s background. Maybe he was distracted or maybe the reporter’s request annoyed him more than he realized. Either way, instead of gently laying down the beam, his clones simply dropped it on the stack.
The resulting noise was sharp and loud, like a massive hammer being struck. Pretty much everyone around the construction site flinched.
Melanie did more than that. She flung the section of pipe off her shoulder and lunged for cover behind a pile of debris. It was as if she’d come under attack.
Everything suddenly felt slow motion to Caleb. The section of pipe fell towards a pair of slow-moving reporters, big enough to crush them. They shielded their faces and shouted.
The pipe stopped. Suspended in midair. Telekinesis, but not Caleb’s. And definitely not Melanie’s.
“Got it!” Daniela Morales cried with a daring smile. “Just a little teamwork demonstration for you guys.”
Daniela. Caleb had been relieved to see her on his first day, even if the last time they ran into each other she’d been turning his feet to stone. He was even more relieved to see her now. She’d been down in the pit using her stone-vision to shore up a salvageable section of foundation, another background sidekick for Melanie. But, a more useful one than Caleb. With her telekinesis, she set the pipe down in a nearby scrap heap. Danger averted, Daniela was quick to take a flamboyant bow for the camera, eliciting relieved laughter from the reporters and a smattering of applause. She made it look like the entire incident was intentional.
Caleb blew out a relieved sigh.
A Peacekeeper-assigned press secretary was soon on the scene, telling the reporters that Melanie and the other Garde were tired and that it was time to call it a day. Melanie, no longer hiding behind the rubble, waved shakily to her audience as she was escorted away by a half dozen armed Peacekeepers. Daniela dusted off her hands and climbed up the rocky slope to where Caleb awkwardly stood
around. None of the lingering reporters paid them any attention.
Even though she was the same age as Caleb, he felt like she was older—Daniela acted like she’d seen it all. Well, she once battled a fifty-foot-tall Mogadorian monster specifically engineered to kill Garde so, Caleb supposed, in a way she had. Daniela was one of the first Human Garde to make contact with the Loric. She had fought alongside John Smith in the battle of New York City. There were stories that she’d even saved his life. Because of her friendship with John and experience in the field—even if that experience was really only a couple of crazy days—Daniela had been allowed to skip the Academy and go directly to Earth Garde.
As she approached, Daniela worked a finger in and out of her ear and smiled playfully at Caleb.
“Busted my eardrum with that shit, man,” she complained. “Your clones got butterfingers.”
“Sorry,” Caleb replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “I got distracted.”
“I’m messing with you. Relax.”
They stood next to each other on the edge of the site. On the other side of the pit, Melanie and her entourage had already made it to where the armored cars were parked. They drove away, leaving a handful of Peacekeepers and a couple of cars behind for Caleb and Daniela.
“I didn’t mean to scare her,” Caleb said quietly.
Daniela snorted. “Not your fault. Girl is jumpy as hell. Last week she about punched a hole through some poor guy’s chest because he happened to be standing close by when a car backfired.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. They won’t be putting that shit in any of the press releases, though.”
The two of them started around the edge of construction site, taking their time.
“Why is she like that?” Caleb asked, looking around. “I know I’ve only been here a couple of days, but this doesn’t seem like a very stressful job.”
Daniela tucked a stray braid behind her ear, her face turning somber. “They didn’t tell you what happened last year?”
Caleb shook his head.
“She was doing relief work in the Philippines. Some crazies attacked her. Kidnapped the kid she was working with, even. Some Italian. A healer.”