“Not bad,” Isabela said, watching Caleb from the corner of her eyes. “I won’t mind seducing him.”
Caleb looked at her. She pretended not to notice. He swallowed hard and then muttered. “If he even shows up.”
“It’s a near certainty he’ll be here,” Einar said with an exasperated sigh as he turned away from the TV. “The picture you’re looking at was taken in this very casino. The Blackstone Group has been charged with crimes in a dozen countries and is being sued by citizens in a dozen more. For all the wealth his private army has generated, there are only so many places where Mr. King is welcome. Morocco happens to be his favorite.”
“You know him pretty well,” Caleb replied. “He your best friend or something?”
“Yes, Caleb, he’s my best friend,” Einar replied sarcastically. “We did have dinner a few times, actually. He wanted to use my Legacies to ‘convince’ some governments to allow Blackstone to operate inside their borders. Bea always turned him down. Said it would be too much exposure. Anyway, you should be happy that I listened when he prattled on about hard eights and which hotels have the best complimentary massages, otherwise we’d have absolutely nothing to go on.”
Caleb picked up an apricot from the snack tray, then sullenly tossed it back down. “And you think we can get this guy to talk? A former Green Beret who’s been commanding mercenaries for a decade? A guy who’s gotten paid millions to clean up the Foundation’s messes?”
“He’s not a Green Beret anymore,” Einar replied. “He’s a suit.”
“He’ll talk,” Five said flatly.
“Without killing him?”
“Obviously, he can’t talk if he’s dead,” Einar replied with a chuckle. He shot Isabela a meaningful look. “As long as Isabela can do her part.”
She waved her hand in response. “Please. Horny old men are my specialty.”
Caleb looked at her, started to say something, but let it go. All out of objections, he started to disconsolately pick at the tray of cookies.
“You believe that this Blackstone man will know how to find Lucas Sanders.” Ran joined the conversation as she emerged from the other room, dressed in boring jeans and a T-shirt.
“If we assume that the Foundation is holding Lucas at a secure location, then it’s likely Blackstone provides security there,” Einar said. “King will know where his people are stationed. Isabela will lure him somewhere private, we’ll take out his bodyguards and find out what we want to know. And then—” Einar looked pointedly at Caleb. “We’ll let him go back to the casino floor and I’ll amp up his anger and envy to the point where he makes a scene and gets himself arrested. That will cover our escape and, I assume, satisfy Caleb’s humanitarian streak. A bad person gets thrown in a Moroccan jail and no one gets hurt.”
“Except the bodyguards if they step to us,” Five commented, chewing. “But we won’t hurt them too bad.”
“The hunted will become the hunter,” Duanphen said, settling in on one of the couches.
“I still feel pretty hunted,” Caleb said, gazing down at the cookies like they were some kind of battle plan. “What if King doesn’t know where that body-snatching jerk is operating from?”
“Then we will pry some other information out of him,” Einar said. “It will bring us closer to the Foundation.”
Caleb shook his head. “You keep saying stuff like that, but we aren’t getting anywhere.”
Einar’s eyes flashed. Isabela could tell he was trying to remain calm. It seemed easier to control others’ emotions than his own. But Einar had promised not to use his Legacy against any of them and so far he’d stuck by that. Not that his tricks worked on Caleb, anyway. But still. Caleb was so annoying sometimes; she wouldn’t have blamed Einar for giving it a shot.
“Why did you even come with us?” Einar asked. “To complain in my ear incessantly?”
“To stop you from making a bigger mess than you already have,” Caleb replied sharply. “To stop you from killing people.”
“I know we’re all trying to get along and play for the same team now,” Five said, “but, just so we’re clear, if I decide to kill someone, you won’t be able to stop me.”
“We stopped you in Switzerland,” Ran remarked from the couch, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, fine,” Five said. “But you had help.”
“I was going easy on you,” Ran replied.
Five laughed, thought this over and then shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Einar and Caleb were still glaring at each other, as usual. Isabela grabbed Caleb by the arm.
“Stop, okay?” She took a demonstrative deep breath of the room’s filtered, lilac-scented air. “It doesn’t smell like pits here. This is a step up. If this Blackstone guy doesn’t show up tonight, I say . . . so what? We can wait. Chill for a while.”
“There’s a killer Harvester Garde chasing us,” Caleb said. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Italy is far away and I doubt that creep has a spaceship,” Isabela replied. “We’re fine, Caleb. Seriously.”
“Oh, seriously?” He pulled his arm free. “You don’t take anything seriously.”
Isabela shrugged. This was true. She ambled across the room, taking in the view from the window. The Atlantic was pale blue here, choppy and beautiful. The horizon stretched on forever.
She could disappear over that horizon. It would be easy. Swipe a few stacks of the money Einar had just lying around on his spaceship. A hundred thousand or so would get her started. She could be anyone. She could go anywhere.
She didn’t need to put up with this shit. That terrible little spaceship and the constant bickering. No one was actively hunting her or, if they were, they didn’t stand much chance of ever finding her. She wasn’t a revolutionary like Einar or some wannabe pacifist like Ran. These Foundation people were bad, obviously, and deserved whatever they got—but Isabela wasn’t passionate about being the one to deliver justice. She could read the writing on the wall. They were screwed. There was always going to be corruption. There were always going to be people trying to kill and exploit them. Better to just opt out of the whole dumb conflict and live the sweet life that their Legacies provided.
So why hadn’t she bailed? It’d been two weeks of this crap. She was beyond tired of it.
In the window’s reflection, she saw Caleb’s dumb, handsome face, screwed up as usual with some inner turmoil. She really, really loved tormenting Caleb. That was it. She wouldn’t leave until she was thoroughly bored with that.
One of these days, though. Poof. Desenrascanço.
“We paid for two nights; we shouldn’t stay longer than that,” Caleb was saying. “We still don’t know how we’re being tracked. Not to mention”—he gestured at Isabela—“all we need is for your alter ego to post something on Instagram that says he’s in Spain or Italy or somewhere other than here, and then people will realize we’re imposters.”
Isabela closed her eyes, for a moment shutting out the allure of the ocean and escape. “What are the chances of that? You’re so paranoid.” She spun away from the window, gave Caleb a look and sauntered over to the luggage. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll keep an eye on his Insta.”
She pulled out the makeup bag that contained the pieces of her cell phone and tossed them onto a glass end table—the phone, its battery and the SIM card clattering around. She started to piece the device together when she realized that everyone was staring at her.
“What?” Isabela asked.
“Whose phone is that?” Caleb asked.
“Mine.”
“Whose phone was it before that?”
“That sacana from California,” Isabela replied. She couldn’t remember his name, so she looked to Einar. “The one I was impersonating when you jumped me.”
“Alejandro Regerio,” Einar supplied the name as he massaged his temples. “You still have his phone?”
“Uh, yes, you knew that I had it,” Isabela replied. “I recorded your whole stupid speech
on here. You used it to upload to YouTube.”
“Yes, but I thought you’d be smart enough to get rid of it after that,” Einar replied. “I can’t micromanage everything.”
“Why would I get rid of it?” Isabela asked. She popped the battery into the back of the phone. “This thing is prepaid. It’s still got minutes.”
“Isabela,” Ran said calmly. “The Foundation is tracking us. We aren’t sure how. Has it not occurred to you that they might be using the phone of one of their former employees?”
Isabela hesitated with her fingers poised to slip in the SIM card. She thought back to Italy, where that Lucas freak had first caught up with them.
“No,” Isabela said. “No way. I keep it in pieces. I never put it together in Italy. They can’t track it if it’s taken apart.”
“You don’t know if that’s true,” Caleb said. “They could have a tracking device in there or something.”
Five upended the dish of strawberries, which he had finished, and loudly slurped the juices. He didn’t look nearly as agitated as the rest of them.
“Look, as someone who spent years trying to stay off the grid, if the Foundation were able to track that phone, they’d be all over us,” Five said.
Isabela pointed at Five. “See? Listen to the crazy one.”
“We shouldn’t take any chances,” Caleb said. He came forward with his hand extended. “Come on. Let’s get rid of the thing.”
She shrank back from Caleb. “Hold up. The Academy has the number for this phone.”
“All the more reason to get rid of it,” Einar said.
“What if they need to call us?” Isabela focused on Caleb. “What if you want to drunk-dial Taylor?”
“I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” Caleb shook his head. “You can just steal another one, Isabela.”
“Am I the only one watching this?” Duanphen asked. She’d been staying out of this latest argument from her spot by the TV. She waved at the screen, where Al Jazeera was on, recapping some story from earlier in the day.
A story about Garde getting chips put in their heads. They all fell silent, listening to the latest report on the change in Earth Garde policy.
Einar was the first one to speak, although quietly. “This is my fault,” he said, slouching back into the couch. “I thought I could force them to give us justice. Instead . . .”
“Instead, you made it worse for all of us,” Caleb replied, though his heart didn’t seem into the rebuke.
“My Cêpan was a piece-of-shit coward,” Five grumbled. The dark splotches that broke up his skin writhed, a sure sign that he was angry. “This is what I was talking about,” he said to Ran. “This is what they do when they’re scared.”
Ran said nothing. She looked lost in thought, fingering the spot on her temple where a chip had once been installed.
“They’re going to do that to everyone at the Academy,” Isabela said with an incredulous laugh. “It’s insane.”
The urge to run came over her again, but not the urge to disappear. It was a feeling that she shouldn’t be halfway across the world in a lavish hotel suite. Her friends—Taylor, Nigel, Kopano, even her dumb-ass ex-boyfriend Lofton serving for Earth Garde somewhere—they were in danger. She wanted to do something.
Caleb took the cell phone out of her hands before she realized what he was doing. He popped the battery in and powered it on, then held the phone out to Isabela.
“Call them,” he said. “Tell them that we’re here to help.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TAYLOR COOK
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
NINE WAS ON A TEAR.
“I wake up—because, sorry, I needed to sleep. I mean, I barely slept at all because of all the shit running through my head, but I did close my eyes, okay? I wake up to this dumb-ass Greger making announcements about my students, so I hustle up to my office to try to figure out what’s going on. And there’s John. Sitting behind my desk. Reading through our files.”
Taylor stood in front of the Academy’s toolshed, a place she had never ventured before. She gave the door a tug before realizing that the maintenance staff who hadn’t shown up for work that morning had left behind a padlock. She glanced over her shoulder at Nine, who was glowering into the distance and ranting.
“He gives me a look like . . . Why aren’t you taking care of this?” Nine continued. “Why is this Greger guy all up in your shit?”
Taylor sighed. “Do you have a key for this?”
“What?” Nine patted his pockets. “Damn. I don’t know what I did with them.”
Nine grabbed the padlock and with little effort snapped it off the shed’s door. He crunched the useless hunk of metal in his cybernetic hand and then whipped it into the air, flinging the lock clear across campus. Taylor cringed.
“If that hits someone in the head, I’m going to have to heal them,” she said.
Nine didn’t hear her. “Guy shows up for a day and thinks he’s in charge,” he grumbled.
Taylor surveyed the inside of the toolshed, which basically looked like a larger version of what her dad had back at home. She started gathering what they would need—hammers and nails, a blowtorch, some loose boards that were lying around.
Meanwhile, outside, Nine dumped the contents of his wheelbarrow next to the shed. Thirty speakers in a pile, their wires tangled, some of them still featuring chunks of the drywall they’d been ripped from. Tearing down the Academy’s PA system as quickly as possible had turned into something of a contest that morning. Taylor wasn’t paying attention to the count, but she thought Maiken won. Now, Greger’s announcements only reached campus from the distant speakers of the Peacekeeper encampment.
That hadn’t stopped him. Greger’s announcements continued, running down the list of students in alphabetical order, one batch every hour.
“He’s not in charge,” Taylor said as she loaded up the empty wheelbarrow. “He’s just a really pushy guest.”
“I know what people think of me,” Nine said quietly. “I’m the meathead of the original Garde. I get it. But I’m also the one who stuck around. That tried to build something. And John . . .” The joints on Nine’s metallic hand creaked. “Dude always made his own plans and did things his way, whether the rest of us were on board or not. He’s the big hero, right? Except nobody knows about all the times he royally fucked up and almost got us all killed. It was like . . . every week.”
Taylor patted Nine on the shoulder. “Will it make you feel better to smash some stuff?”
“Yes. Yes, it will.”
So, they went to work.
Only one road led onto campus from the Peacekeeper encampment. That was where the students built their barricade.
They banged nails through boards and laid them in strips across the pavement. A chain of students ferried desks from the classrooms out onto the quad where they broke the furniture apart. They tangled the metal legs into brambles of steel, melting these sections together with either the blowtorch or Omar’s fire-breath. Other students took the ceramic desktops and wedged them vertically into the grass near the road, creating a low wall. At some point, John Smith joined them, wordlessly assisting their construction efforts with his stone-vision.
“Won’t stop the Peacekeepers from marching in through the woods, but at least they won’t be able to drive a convoy right to our front door,” Nine said to Taylor, wiping sweat off his forehead. The two of them stood near the student union, surveying the barricade-building from a slight rise. “Plus, everyone’s a lot less spooked now that we’ve got them working.”
“You should make a schedule,” Taylor said, shaking out her hand that was tired from gripping a hammer. “Assign students the tasks that the support staff would normally handle. Get some people to cook dinner. Set up patrol shifts.”
“Good idea,” Nine replied.
“I know.”
“We’ll see if you still feel that way when you’re fixing a clogged toilet,” Nine said w
ith a smile. “Hmm. What other students here annoy the shit out of—”
A noise from Nine’s back pocket cut him off. Bouncy and familiar, Taylor quickly identified the ringtone as a song by that other Taylor. She gave Nine an incredulous look as he quickly yanked his phone out of his pocket.
“Say something,” he snapped. “I dare you.”
She held up her hands. “It’s cool. I was a tween girl once too.”
Nine scowled at her. His eyebrows shot up as he looked at the caller ID.
“Huh,” he said, hitting the button for speakerphone. “Well, well, well,” he said loudly. “About time my field agents reported in.”
There was a long pause on the other line. Taylor’s face broke into a relieved smile when Caleb’s familiar, nervous voice responded.
“Um, are we really field agents?”
“I’m practicing for when I have to testify in front of the UN,” Nine replied.
“We aren’t agents of shit, idiota.” Taylor’s smile grew even wider as Isabela came on the line. “Did you let everyone’s brains get drilled, Professor Man-Bun? Are we too late?”
“Isabela! Caleb!” Taylor spoke up before Nine could say anything through his clenched teeth, elbowing in closer to the phone. “Are you guys okay?”
“Ah, good, someone smart is there,” Isabela said. Taylor could sense the genuine relief behind Isabela’s usual barbs. “Hello, my most beautiful friend. What’s new?”
Taylor chuckled. “Where to start . . .”
“Did you hook up with Kopano yet?”
“Isabela!” She glanced around to make sure Kopano wasn’t nearby, but he was off hauling desks out of a classroom.
“What?”
Return to Zero Page 13
