“But is this my dream, or your dream?” she asked.
Then new people appeared out of thin air, all of them seated at the ornate table in the room’s center. Everyone in the audience recognized John Smith and the other Loric from TV and YouTube. Questions were shouted—What’s going on? Why did you bring us here? Are you going to save our planet? Kopano stayed quiet. He was too in awe and he wanted to know what his new heroes had to say.
John Smith spoke to them. He was confident in a humble way. Kopano liked him immediately. He told them—the humans sitting in the gallery—that they all had Legacies.
“I know this seems crazy,” John Smith said. “It also probably doesn’t seem fair. A few days ago, you were leading normal lives. Now, without warning, there are aliens on your planet and you can move objects with your minds. Right? I mean . . . how many of you have discovered your telekinesis?”
A lot of hands went up, including the Japanese girl’s. Kopano looked around, jealous and disappointed in himself. These other kids were learning telekinesis while he was sitting around watching TV.
A glowing Loric girl at the table with a strangely echoing voice displayed a map of Earth with locations marked. Loralite, a stone native to Lorien, now grew in these places. Those with Legacies—Human Garde, like Kopano was supposedly—could use these stones to teleport across the planet. They could join the fight.
“I obviously can’t make you join us,” John Smith said. “In a few minutes, you’ll wake up from this meeting back wherever you were before. Where it’s safe, hopefully. And maybe those of us who do fight, maybe the armies of the world, all of us . . . maybe that will be enough. Maybe we can fight off the Mogadorians and save Earth. But if we fail, even if you stay on the sidelines for this battle . . . they will come for you. So I’m asking you all, even though you don’t know me, even though we’ve royally shaken up your lives—stand with us. Help us save the world.”
Kopano cheered. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He was ready!
Suddenly, the evil Setrákus Ra was shouting threats, his black eyes scanning the room, his gaze boring into everyone. People started to disappear, blinking out of the dream. Kopano woke with a start, sweaty, his head aching.
Little Dubem was the only one still awake and he was staring at him. “Kopano,” Dubem whispered. “You were glowing!”
The next day, with his family once again gathered around the television, Kopano made his announcement.
“The Loric visited me in my sleep. John Smith himself asked me to come join them in the defense of Earth. They showed me a map of the world with the locations of stones that I may use to teleport to them. One of them is located at Zuma Rock. I must go there immediately to meet my destiny.”
Dubem nodded along solemnly while the rest of Kopano’s family stared at him. Then his father and uncle broke into laughter, soon joined by his brother Obi.
“Listen to this one!” his father shouted. “Meet his destiny! Shut up now, we can’t hear the news.”
“But I saw him,” Dubem said, his small voice shaky. “Kopano glowed!”
Their mother made the sign of the cross. “A devil has invaded our house.”
Udo regarded his son through eyes narrowed to slits. Kopano stood tall, chest puffed out, hoping to cut a striking figure.
“Okay, Mr. Superhero,” said Udo measuredly. “If you are an alien now, please show us your powers.”
Kopano took a deep breath. He looked down at his hands. He didn’t feel any different than he had yesterday, but that didn’t necessarily mean the great powers of the Loric weren’t lurking within him, right?
With a flourish worthy of a martial arts movie, Kopano thrust his hands towards his father. He hoped that his telekinesis would come rushing forth and knock his old man out of his chair. But while Udo flinched at the sudden move, nothing else happened.
Kopano’s uncle laughed again and slapped Udo on the back. “Your face! You looked like you might crap in your britches!”
Udo scowled, then snorted in Kopano’s direction. “You see? Noth—” His father’s face suddenly contorted in anguish. Udo clutched at his chest, feet kicking out in front of him in spasms. His eyes went wide in panic. “My insides!” he screamed. “My insides are boiling!”
Kopano’s mother screamed.
Kopano and his brothers all rushed to their father’s side. Their uncle took a frightened step back. Kopano grabbed his father’s arm.
“Father, I’m sorry! I don’t know what—”
His father slapped him on the side of the head and grinned. Just like that, he was miraculously recovered and already turning back to the television. A practical joke.
“You stupid boy, I’m fine. Or perhaps my alien powers are just greater than yours, hmm?” He waved Kopano away. “Go on. See to your mother. You scared her bad.”
Kopano slunk away. Had it really all been a dream? What would he have done with Legacies, anyway? A boy from Lagos rushing off to save the world? Even Nollywood didn’t make movies with premises so far-fetched.
Little Dubem clasped his hand.
“I believe you, Kopano,” his youngest brother whispered. “You will show them all.”
At least, for a few days after his embarrassing announcement, Kopano’s family was too glued to the news to mock him. But then the invasion ended, suddenly and brutally, with the nations of Earth coming together to simultaneously attack every Mogadorian warship. Meanwhile, the Garde, the ones who had invaded Kopano’s dreams and promised him bigger things than Lagos, went to the Mogadorians’ secret base in West Virginia and killed Setrákus Ra. Kopano imagined being there, fighting alongside the Garde, and melting Setrákus Ra with his fire-breath.
Fire-breath, Kopano had decided, would be his Legacy.
When the news broke that Earth was saved, they celebrated in the streets. His father hugged him close as they danced down the road, fireworks going off overhead. Kopano couldn’t remember the last time Udo had hugged him like that. Not since he was a boy.
But the next day, it started.
Alien son, go down to the market before school and pick up the items I am thinking about right now! Use your telepathy!
Alien son, did you finish your homework?
Alien son, use your telekinesis to get me a beer, eh?
Kopano grinned through it all, but inside he seethed. His unemployed father had nothing better to do than sit home all day and think up ways to humiliate him.
Worse still, his bigmouthed brother, Obi, had spread the word around school. Soon, Kopano’s classmates were teasing him, too. A stall in the marketplace had started selling rubber Mogadorian masks, hideous gray things with empty black eyes and tiny yellow teeth. A group of his older classmates chased Kopano through the halls wearing these masks and, when they caught him, they used rolls of duct tape to bind him to one of the football goals. They took turns kicking balls at him.
Until one day, when Kopano stopped a football in midair. When that happened, they all ran away screaming.
“Finally,” Kopano whispered to himself as he began wriggling free. “Finally.”
It had been three months since the invasion. Kopano, it turned out, was a late bloomer.
That evening, he strode into his family’s apartment to find his father napping on the couch. With his little brothers watching, Kopano used his telekinesis to levitate the couch high above the floor. Then he screamed, “Fire! Fire! Father, get up!”
His father sprung upright, swung his legs off the couch, and fell five feet to the floor. As he groaned and picked himself up, staring aghast at the couch still floating above him, Obi and Dubem cackled with laughter. Kopano simply grinned at his father, squaring his shoulders in the same noble way he had on that humiliating morning months ago.
“You see, old man? What did I tell you?”
Udo stumbled over to his son, a smile slowly spreading on his face. He grabbed Kopano’s cheeks and pinched. “My beautiful alien son, you are the answer to all of our problems.
”
Many months later, when Kopano finally made it to America, the psychologist Linda Matheson would ask him what life was like back in Lagos, before he came to the Human Garde Academy.
Kopano would think about his answer for a long moment before answering.
“Well,” he said, “I guess for a little while I was a criminal.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE PATIENCE CREEK SURVIVORS
AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
FOR THOSE FIRST HUMAN GARDE WHO DID ANSWER John Smith’s call to arms right after their visions, the invasion wasn’t as glorious as Kopano had enviously imagined.
The story of Patience Creek wasn’t reported on the news networks. The battle there didn’t make it into any of the retrospectives made after the invasion. It was kept secret. Remembered by only the survivors.
Patience Creek was a secret government facility in Michigan where the Loric hid out after the invasion, plotting their counterattack on the Mogadorians. They were joined by a host of military personnel and a handful of Human Garde, those who had answered John Smith’s telepathic plea or who had otherwise crossed his path.
Daniela Morales. Stone-vision.
Nigel Barnaby. Sonic manipulation.
Caleb Crane. Duplication.
Ran Takeda. Kinetic detonation.
There were others, but they didn’t survive the assault when the Mogadorians discovered Patience Creek. Most of the military didn’t make it out alive either. John Smith himself was nearly killed. It was bloody and brutal and not at all heroic. The ordeal showed John Smith that maybe the humans he’d recruited weren’t ready for a full-scale war. They needed training that the Loric didn’t have time to give them. Not then, at least. The humans needed protecting.
So, John Smith sent them away.
“Bloody Guantanamo Bay,” Nigel groused.
Daniela rolled her eyes. “This isn’t Cuba, man.”
Nigel bent down and gathered a handful of bright white sand. He opened his fingers and let the grains blow across the crystalline blue ocean. The sun beat down on him—skinny bordering on bony, pale, a sunburn growing around his bleached mohawk, his cheeks pocked by persistent splotches of acne. He wore a black Misfits tank top in defiance of the heat. He gestured from the waves to the austere military base two hundred yards away—their accommodations for the last few days—and looked back at Daniela.
“Ominous military base on a tropical island,” Nigel countered. “Where do you think we are?”
“It isn’t that ominous,” Caleb said. He brushed a hand across his buzz cut and skipped a stone into the ocean. Biscuit, Daniela’s Chimæra, the shape-shifting Loric animal who preferred the form of a golden retriever, bounded into the water after the rock. “There’s a snack bar.”
“Not ominous to you, mate,” Nigel replied. “You grew up in one of these places, didn’t ya? And besides, your uncle’s running the show.”
“Guantanamo’s where they bring the bad guys and shit,” Daniela told Nigel. “We aren’t prisoners. This is just a stopover.” She looked at Caleb. “Right?”
Caleb’s uncle was General Clarence Lawson. He’d been called out of retirement and put in charge of coordinating the armies of Earth with the Loric during the invasion. Since then, it had seemed to Caleb like his uncle was awaiting orders. Like he didn’t know what would happen next.
Back at Patience Creek, Caleb had acted as his uncle’s bodyguard. “In case any of these aliens get out of line, you’re the ace up my sleeve,” Lawson told his nephew. Caleb didn’t think he could go toe to toe with John Smith or one of the Loric, but he didn’t argue. It had been his uncle’s idea for Caleb to pose as twins. He was having problems controlling his duplication Legacy—a second body would pop out of him without warning—so it was better for his clone to simply hide in plain sight.
Since they arrived at the island, Caleb had dinner with his uncle every night in the man’s windowless office. These meals were largely silent, especially after one of Caleb’s duplicates manifested and hurled a plate of food into his uncle’s face. Since Patience Creek, the dupes were becoming harder to control. Rowdier. With minds of their own.
Caleb didn’t tell anyone this. He kept his mouth shut, like a good soldier.
To Daniela, he simply nodded. “You’re probably right.”
Nigel snorted. He didn’t buy anything that Caleb said. He turned away, watching his own Chimæra, the raccoon-shaped Bandit, root around for seashells.
Daniela clapped her hands together. “I just want to get back to New York, man,” she said. “Find my mom. Do something useful.”
They all nodded in agreement, even the silent Ran Takeda, the Japanese girl sitting in the sand nearby with her turtle-shaped Chimæra, Gamora, lightly stroking the back of her hand across his craggy shell. This was their life—watching news feeds of the aftermath of the invasion, eating microwaved military base food and hanging around on the beach. Sometimes, they practiced their telekinesis, copying the rudimentary games Nine had hastily taught them during their brief training session with him. They looked ahead, hoping they could eventually be of some use. And they tried their best not to think about Patience Creek.
Eventually, Daniela and Caleb drifted away, leaving Nigel alone on the beach with Ran.
“So, what do you think, silent and violent?” he asked. “We princes and princesses or prisoners?”
Ran looked over at Nigel. “I don’t think anyone knows what we are,” she said after a long pause.
Nigel grinned. He still couldn’t get over Ran speaking in her precise English. He thought she’d been mute when he first met her at the Niagara Falls Loralite stone and all the way through the ordeal at Patience Creek. Everyone assumed that she couldn’t speak English.
She had saved his life back at Patience Creek, maybe more than once, and so he stuck close to her. He started to notice the keen way her eyes tracked conversations happening around her.
And then he caught her smiling during one of his colorful rants. He confronted her and she admitted that she could speak English. Why hadn’t she said anything sooner? Because no one had bothered to ask. As far as Nigel knew, the others were still under the impression that she was either mute, couldn’t understand them or both.
That was how their alliance started. In the days after her confession, with nothing to do but sit on the beach and wait for news, Nigel and Ran got to know each other better. He told her about his dreary past in London, and she told him about her shattered life in Tokyo. They found they had something in common.
Neither of them had lives to go back to.
Nigel crouched down next to Ran and scratched under Gamora’s chin. “Of course they gave you the Chimæra named after a Godzilla monster, right? Bit stereotypical, innit? Thought the refugees of the advanced alien society would be better than that.”
“I don’t mind. I have always liked turtles.” She looked at him evenly. “You do not need to complain about everything, Nigel.”
Nigel sighed, glancing over his shoulder to where Daniela and Caleb had meandered down the beach. “You agree with me, though. That this situation we find ourselves in is bloody mental.”
“Yes,” Ran replied.
“So, you could speak up about it,” Nigel pushed. “Get my back when soldier-boy tells me everything’s peachy. I mean, you gotta start talking to the others eventually, yeah?”
Ran gazed out at the waves, thinking.
“I did not think I would survive the invasion,” she said at last. “All I wanted to do was fight. There was no point to talking, to making friends.” She paused. “After we came here, I kept it up so that General Lawson and those watching over us would speak freely around me. Our situation is a strange one, as you said. We need to know who we can trust, nakama.”
The four of them spent weeks on that island in a weird limbo while the rest of the world shakily recovered from the invasion.
Then, finally, they watched from the beach as a squadron of black helicopters arrived
at the base. The choppers carried military personnel and posh people in suits and bookish-looking types with crates of high-tech equipment.
“The unholy triumvirate,” Nigel observed. “Soldiers, senators and scientists.”
“Something’s going to happen today,” Caleb said.
“No shit,” replied Daniela.
General Lawson spent his entire day in meetings with these new arrivals. The Garde twiddled their thumbs until almost sunset, when Lawson finally called them into one of the base’s dull conference rooms. Arranged on the table were a bunch of glossy brochures, all of them depicting a beautiful blond teenager in the process of lifting a chunk of brick wall over her head, freeing a family that had been trapped underneath. The caption read: OUR PLANET—OUR PROTECTORS—EARTH GARDE.
“A delegation from the United Nations arrived today,” General Lawson began without fanfare. “A decision has been made regarding—”
“Hold up,” Daniela interrupted, tapping one of the brochures. “Why does this bougie girl look so familiar?”
“That’s Melanie Jackson,” Caleb answered.
Daniela stared at him blankly.
“The first daughter? You know, of our president?”
“Oh yeah,” Daniela said. “She’s strong, huh?”
Nigel squinted at his copy of the Earth Garde pamphlet. “Lotta makeup for a spontaneous act of heroism.”
General Lawson pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed on. “Ms. Jackson is the first enrollee in the Earth Garde program, a UN-administered initiative to train and deploy you LANEs—excuse me, you Human Garde.”
LANE was a term first coined by the US military, possibly by Lawson himself. Depending on who one asked, it meant either Legacy-Augmented Native Earthling or Legacy-Afflicted Native Earthling.
Daniela smirked. “That what they’re calling us now? Human Garde?”
Lawson sighed. “It’s simple and less . . . offensive than LANE, apparently. There are PR gurus involved. Not my area of expertise.”
“Oi,” Nigel broke in. “Did you say deploy? As in, like, stormtroopers?”