Fugitive Six

  “Here we go,” Taylor said.

  The soldiers came in three at a time, one for each healer. They set down their rifles at the entrance, then stripped off balaclavas and gloves and whatever other pieces of body armor were in the way of their injuries. And they were always injured. Or maybe damaged was the more accurate way to put it. Regardless, by Taylor’s count, fifty went out each day and, without fail, fifty returned. A whole unit in need of healing.

  Soon, the tent smelled like body odor and cigarettes. Vincent did his work in timid silence, but Jiao kept on a running monologue in Chinese, barking sharply at any soldier that tracked snow or mud into their tent. The tent was usually quiet except for Jiao’s ravings; the soldiers didn’t talk to the Garde and they rarely talked to each other.

  Taylor’s first patient was a muscular Asian man who stared deferentially at the ground while she grasped his hands, healing the beginning of frostbite on his fingers. He had some deep cuts on his knee and shin—it looked like he’d fallen. She healed those, too. Then, she pressed her hands against the sides of his neck and healed the sickness.

  On their first day in Mongolia, Taylor had discerned that it wasn’t just bumps and bruises that the Foundation wanted them to heal. It was the sickness, present in everyone who returned from the mysterious expedition site. Taylor had trained in hospitals while at the Academy—she’d encountered the flu and strep throat, cancer and a random case of smallpox, even the Arab prince’s late-stage leukemia that had taken four of them to heal. None of those maladies felt like this sickness.

  It was as if a darkness were growing in the soldiers. Taylor could sense tendrils of it when she used her Legacy. She could swear that the illness fought back against her.

  Every day, she cleansed the soldiers’ bodies of the sickness. And the next day, they came back.

  By her fourth soldier, Taylor wasn’t cold anymore. Sweat shone on her forehead.

  A dislocated shoulder. More frostbite. Cuts and scrapes.

  And always the sickness.

  What was out there that was infecting these men? What did the Foundation want with it?

  Taylor needed to find out.

  “Hey, um, Taylor . . . ?” Vincent spoke up, already sounding exhausted. “Could you help me out over here? This guy’s real bad.”

  “Sure, one second,” Taylor replied, finishing up with her own patient before stepping over to Vincent.

  Taylor cringed when she saw the man standing in front of Vincent. He’d stripped down to his pants, pale skin nearly blue from the cold. His right side was entirely covered in dark burns, the skin cooked and blackened. Spreading out from that grievous wound were discolored black veins. He stood resolute, teeth gritted, like he wasn’t in an incredible amount of pain.

  “Kid bloody tells me it’s bad,” the soldier said, speaking out of turn in a thick Scottish accent. “What kinda bedside manner’s that, eh?”

  “S-s-sorry,” stammered Vincent.

  “How did this happen to you?” Taylor asked as she pressed her hands to the Scotsman’s burns, letting her healing energy slowly restore the skin. Next to her, she felt Vincent beating back the sickness—it was stronger in this guy than any of hers had been. She could actually see the black veins in his chest recede while they worked.

  “Finally some goddamn action, that’s how it happened,” the soldier said.

  “Shut up, MacLaughlan,” chided one of the other soldiers. “You know the rules.”

  “What?” MacLaughlan exclaimed innocently, eyeing Taylor as she tended to him. “The pretty American lass wants to hear some war stories, who am I to deny her?”

  Just then, the XO poked his head into the tent, a steely glare aimed in MacLaughlan’s direction.

  “MacLaughlan!” The XO shouted, sounding good-natured in the same way Professor Nine did right before he ordered you to run laps around the campus. “Did I hear you volunteering to do a double?”

  MacLaughlan gritted his teeth. “Aye, boss,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait to get back out there.”

  “Great!” The XO looked at Taylor. “That’s enough healing, then, my dear. He’ll be back in here tomorrow morning.”

  Taylor and Vincent both stepped back from MacLaughlan, his burns only half-healed, the black veins still creeping up his rib cage.

  “Sorry,” Taylor murmured.

  “No worries,” MacLaughlan replied with a wink. “I’ll rub some ice on it. Plenty of that, eh?”

  The rest of that day’s healing passed without incident. Afterward, they were brought what amounted to a feast on the dreary tundra—stale pumpernickel bread, canned oranges, a tasteless hard cheese, and sausage from a mystery animal. Of course, they all wolfed it down, even if Jiao did so while holding her nose. Healing that many people was exhausting work and left them all starving. Taylor felt the exhaustion creeping in, the emptiness inside her from too much healing, the tingling in her fingers from overusing her Legacy. It was the same as every day since she’d been here—wake up, freeze, heal, eat, sleep.

  She needed to break that pattern tonight. If only she could stay awake.

  After dinner, Vincent yawned and stumbled to his cot. “Man, I can’t believe we have to do that again tomorrow morning.”

  “Whatever gets us out of here quicker,” Jiao replied. She snorted. “Don’t know what you’re whining about, anyway. Taylor and I do way more work than you.”

  Taylor made no comment, although it was true. Vincent definitely didn’t have the same abilities that she and Jiao had. Or, at least, he wasn’t pushing himself as hard. Maybe he’d been promoted too quickly from the Academy. Or maybe this was Vincent’s small act of rebellion against the Foundation. Taylor didn’t know.

  The days were short in western Mongolia and night came on quickly. All three Garde were soon snuggled into their heavy-duty sleeping bags—Taylor had been assured by the XO that they were the same kind used by climbers when they summited Everest. They all shifted in unison, grumbling as they tried to get comfortable on their rock-hard cots. The healers didn’t talk to each other and Taylor found herself missing the camaraderie of the Academy.

  Taylor wormed her hand up her sweater and clutched the amulet Kopano had made for her, relieved that the Foundation people hadn’t taken it away. She wondered where Kopano was at that moment. She hoped he and the others were okay.

  The rest of the camp was still alive—the mercenaries talked loudly in a variety of languages, eating and drinking, cleaning their guns, playing cards. The wind howled. Taylor tried to keep her eyes open, waiting for a sign that the soldiers were going out on their night mission.

  She snapped awake at the sound of revving engines and one mercenary yelling at another to get his ass in gear. Damn it. She’d dozed off. The soldiers were already moving out. She would need to get going quickly if she wanted to slip into their midst.

  Taylor glanced in Jiao and Vincent’s direction. They were both sleeping, Vincent even snoring gently. The soldiers outside were noisy as hell, but after a nonstop healing session, the Garde could probably sleep through the apocalypse. Taylor’s whole body ached from the cold and the exertion as she pushed herself to get out of bed.

  She couldn’t just keep sitting around and doing the Foundation’s bidding. She needed to do something. Find out what they were up to out here at the ass-end of nowhere.

  Taylor crept towards the entrance of their tent and slowly undid the zipper enough to peek through. As usual, there was a guard posted-up right outside, but he was too distracted by the convoy of mercenaries leaving to notice her.

  Still, she would need a distraction to get by him.

  With her telekinesis, Taylor reached out and began unmooring the metal pylons from the tent nearest to hers. When they were loose enough, she waited for a strong gust of wind—those were never long in coming out here—and then gave the tent as firm a telekinetic shove as she could muster.

  The shelter went flying, exposing a half dozen soldiers sleeping within. Immediately, the
y started shouting and scrambling, flinging themselves out of bed to grab their flying tent. Just as Taylor hoped, the soldier watching the Gardes’ tent left his posting to go help.

  Taylor slipped into the night. She pulled her balaclava over her face and tried to puff herself up, walking like a man. No one paid her any attention. She speed-walked towards the headlights of the departing convoy.

  Of course, Taylor knew this was dangerous. Maybe a little crazy, like something Isabela might do. “Act confident,” Isabela had told her once, “and you can bullshit your way through any situation.” She leaned on that wisdom now. She also reasoned that no matter what she did out here, short of revealing herself as a spy, the Foundation wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was too valuable.

  Men all around her were climbing into trucks and driving into the night. Steeling herself, Taylor picked a random SUV and climbed into the backseat.

  She cringed immediately. The SUV she’d chosen was empty except for the driver, who was giving her a weird look in the rearview mirror. And the driver was MacLaughlan.

  “The hell ya sittin’ back there for?” he asked her. “I don’t got cooties.”

  Taylor made a noncommittal grunting sound and slouched. Maybe he’d think she was one of the mercenaries who didn’t speak English, tired and grumpy from having to do night work.

  “I know the feeling,” MacLaughlan replied with a snort. It had worked! He started to put the truck in gear, but then paused and looked at Taylor again.

  “You forget something, ya git?”

  She stared blankly at him. He patted the M16 attached to a rack along the truck’s middle.

  “Your weapon, dingus, where’s your weapon?”

  Taylor winced. It hadn’t even occurred to her to steal one of the rifles.

  She didn’t know what to say and now MacLaughlan was really looking at her.

  “Take your hat off,” he ordered.

  Swallowing, Taylor did as she was told. MacLaughlan’s eyes lit up immediately.

  “Ah, the curious gal,” he said, amused. He twisted around in his seat to eyeball her, wincing thanks to the burns that Taylor hadn’t finished healing. “You think this is a trip to the mall or something?”

  “I want to see why I’m out here freezing my ass off,” Taylor replied honestly, trying to sound self-assured. “Take me with you and I’ll finish healing you.”

  MacLaughlan stared at her for a moment. Then, he shrugged and awkwardly unbuckled his body armor so that Taylor could reach her hands inside.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “XO finds out, you tricked me with some alien magic, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  MacLaughlan put the truck in drive and followed the line of vehicles out into the darkness of the plains. Taylor leaned forward and pressed her hands against his side, healing him while he drove.

  “This reminds me of the time I stole my dad’s car to dog it with Betty Garretty,” MacLaughlan said with a laugh.

  Taylor recoiled a bit. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “I could throw you through that windshield in a heartbeat.”

  “Ah, don’t flatter yourself, little miss,” MacLaughlan snorted. “I got a wife and kids at home and you’re all’a twelve years old.”

  They drove in silence after that. Eventually, Taylor finished healing MacLaughlan and leaned back in her seat, peering out the window. It was pure darkness out there. The convoy drove in a straight line, headlights illuminating only the truck in front of them and what seemed like endless snow and ice. They were traveling uphill, cresting the western rise, going no more than twenty miles per hour as they rumbled across the slippery terrain.

  “What’s out there?” Taylor asked, growing impatient after thirty minutes spent driving in a straight line.

  MacLaughlan smirked. “Better you see it yourself. Almost there.”

  Indeed, Taylor saw lights up ahead. Not lights from a town, but flood lamps mounted on towering girders, like at a construction site. A crane came into view and some kind of heavy-duty drill that reminded Taylor of an oil derrick. Still, she couldn’t see what all that equipment was for, not until they reached the top of the rise and started heading downhill.

  Taylor leaned forward in her seat, eyes wide.

  “It’s a warship,” she said.

  The wreckage of one of the vast Mogadorian warships was spread out across the snowy valley. Even half-destroyed, the city-block-size ship was ominous. Clearly, where it hadn’t been blown apart, it had been scavenged, chunks missing here and there, other sections dissected. It looked to Taylor like the skeleton of a giant metal locust.

  “Aye,” MacLaughlan replied. “And the thing leaks like a son of a bi—”

  Before he could finish, a streak of red energy cut through the darkness and sizzled into the passenger side of the truck in front of them. MacLaughlan slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding the other truck as it skidded out of control.

  “Hell!” MacLaughlan shouted. He pulled on a pair of night-vision goggles and grabbed for his rifle. “I thought we killed all these bloody vermin earlier.”

  Taylor stared out her window. “You mean . . . ?”

  “Nasty bastards are out there, freezing their alien balls off,” MacLaughlan answered. “Stragglers come through every once in a while, probably mad we’re going through their stuff, ya know? Only a few of ’em. Nothing we can’t . . .”

  MacLaughlan trailed off as he looked through the goggles. The entire convoy had stopped, mercenaries taking cover behind their trucks, assuming defensive positions.

  “Bit . . . bit more than a handful,” MacLaughlan breathed. He shoved Taylor. “Get yer ass down!”

  Even as he did, the night lit up crimson. A hundred streaks of blaster fire sizzled across the plain, bombarding the convoy from both sides. The windows of their truck shattered and Taylor felt a blistering sensation on her cheek, smelled her hair burning. MacLaughlan let out a cry and was suddenly silent.

  They were under attack.

  There were Mogadorians on the tundra.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  KOPANO OKEKE

  ABU DHABI, THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

  A CUPCAKE INSIDE A BOX COVERED IN BARBED wire. That’s all it was. Simple as that.

  Kopano stared at himself in the dusty mirror. His face was dappled with sweat and not just from the dry heat of the Persian Gulf. The café bathroom was tiny, dimly lit, and smelled like hookah smoke. He wiped a smudge off the mirror with his shirtsleeve, as if being able to see himself clearly would make this easier.

  “Okay,” he told himself. “Just like the cupcake, cupcake. No big deal.”

  The barbed-wire box and the tasty treat inside had been one of Professor Nine’s favorite training games when they first learned Kopano could spread his molecules as well as harden them. It required him to keep part of his arm transparent while his solid hand reached for the cupcake.

  “Rest assured,” Dr. Goode told him once, “while it’ll take time to master your Legacy, it is part of your biology now. Your body won’t let you hurt yourself. It won’t let you solidify your arm when it’s sharing the same quantum space with the box in the same way that your lungs won’t let you hold your breath forever.”

  Kopano really, really wanted to believe that.

  He leaned close to the mirror and peered at the tiny wound on his temple. The bandage had come off a couple of days ago, leaving behind a glued-shut incision the same size as his little fingernail. The scab would probably come off in a couple of days and leave behind a barely noticeable scar. But, obviously, it wasn’t the cut that concerned Kopano; it was what was underneath.

  The chip. The one that gave Agent Walker and her people control.

  Kopano pressed his index finger against the side of his head, turned the digit transparent, and then slowly, cautiously pushed his finger into his cranium.

  There was a strange, fizzy sensation at the side of his head. He started to see spots and immediately yanked his finger out.


  He waited a moment, hands braced on the sides of the sink, to see if he would have an aneurysm or something. There was a mild throb around his incision, maybe the beginning of a headache, but nothing Kopano couldn’t handle.

  “You’re okay,” he reassured his reflection. “You can do this. Just like the cupcake.”

  “What took you so long?” Agent Walker asked when Kopano emerged from the café. She leaned against their rented town car, aviator sunglasses glinting in the late afternoon sun.

  “Sorry,” Kopano replied. He rubbed his belly. “I got used to American food where they don’t use any spices.”

  Walker made a face. “Ah. Condolences. You want to drive?”

  Without waiting for a response, she tossed Kopano the car keys. They climbed into the air-conditioned sedan where Ran waited, stoic and silent in the backseat. She hadn’t said much at all since they’d been “recruited” to Operation Watchtower, not even when she and Kopano were alone. Occasionally, he caught her staring daggers at Walker. Ran resented this whole thing and, since Kopano had more willingly gone along with the arrangement, she probably resented him, too.

  Behind the wheel, Kopano eased them out into Abu Dhabi’s stop-and-go traffic. He smiled, but caught himself before Ran or Walker saw. Abu Dhabi wasn’t nearly as crowded and the glittering skyscrapers were mostly new and ostentatious compared to Lagos’ gilded chaos, yet this place still reminded him of home. Maybe it was all the bad drivers—sports cars weaving through traffic at breakneck speeds, their operators paying more attention to their phones than the roads. Big men, probably, on important business. Kopano gripped the wheel and got into the flow. He glanced over at Walker, wondering what his father would think of him now, driving around this secret agent lady, on a mission.

  Walker, as it happened, was in the middle of thumbing through crime-scene photos. Kopano caught sight of a man’s body smashed on a sidewalk, dark blood and broken glass all around him, and gagged.