Return to Zero

by Pittacus Lore

  He made as many duplicates as he could. Found himself peering out through fifteen sets of eyes.

  The Calebs led the charge onto the rooftop, surging through the hole in the skimmer’s side. Many of them were cut down immediately as the prison’s guards took aim on them with their rifles. No Inhibitors. No tranquilizer darts. These men weren’t here to take prisoners, only keep them.

  Ran, Duanphen and Caleb followed behind the wall of Calebs, hunkered low. Caleb counted at least twenty guards on the rooftop, with others streaming up from the stairwell at the far end. Every duplicate that fell, Caleb tried to replace. His muscles felt taut and dehydrated, he was cramping up, but not from the heat. He was spreading himself thin.

  Caleb clenched his fists and made more. More bodies to throw at these bastards.

  Ahead of them, Five smashed into a group of guards. He ripped their weapons away with his telekinesis, punched through their visors with his hardened fists. When one tried to get away, Five turned his skin to rubber and snagged him around the feet, lifted him and bashed him face-first into the rooftop.

  As they edged forward, Ran picked up bits of debris, charged them and hurled them into a pocket of guards. The ensuing explosion knocked many of them down, scattered others.

  A pair of guards had circled around the crashed skimmer and tried to get in behind the Garde. Caleb didn’t see them coming. He was too focused on what was ahead of them.

  Duanphen saw what was happening. She shoved the guards’ guns aside with her telekinesis, grabbed each of them by the throat and shocked them until they collapsed.

  From the other side of the roof, a sniper drew a bead on Five. The first shot pinged harmlessly off his metallic chest, but the second one hit Five in one of the dark, ooze-tinged spaces that his Legacy didn’t cover, right below the collar. Through the ears of his many duplicates, Caleb heard the wet, sucking sound the bullet made as it entered Five’s body.

  The Loric grunted and fell down to his knees. He’d been hurt. Caleb had almost convinced himself that wasn’t possible.

  Caleb sent a surge of duplicates rushing forward to cover Five. They huddled around him as Five gasped for breath.

  “Are you okay?” Caleb asked through five different mouths.

  As Caleb’s duplicates watched, the bullet reappeared, pushed out of Five’s body by the congealed ooze. His lips were wet with blood, but he nodded once at Caleb, then flew forward in a blur. Five grabbed the sniper, spun him and chucked him off the roof.

  Another explosion generated by Ran and the guards started to fall back. Caleb’s duplicates tackled some of them as they tried to escape, pinned them down and pummeled them until they were unconscious.

  A guard in the stairwell doorway fired wildly at them with his sidearm. With his other hand, he screamed into a walkie-talkie. “This is Lyon! We’re being overwhelmed up here! We need reinforcements!”

  “How do I know this is really Lyon?” came the response over the walkie-talkie.

  “What?” Lyon screamed. “Are you out of your fu—?”

  Five was on him. He grabbed the walkie-talkie and smashed it into the guard’s face, then shoved him out of the way.

  Caleb liked what he heard. Their ruse with Isabela and Einar had actually worked. The guards were disorganized and distrustful.

  Suddenly, the rooftop was quiet. The gunfire had tapered to a stop. All around them, guards moaned in pain or were unconscious. At least, Caleb hoped they were unconscious. Actually, he realized grimly, he didn’t care either way.

  They took cover in the stairwell. Caleb remembered the map. Their next floor down would be the guards’ barracks. They’d encounter more resistance there.

  “Everyone okay?” Caleb asked. He realized he was shouting. All the gunfire had deafened him a bit.

  “Yes,” Duanphen said, nodding. She looked pale and a little woozy, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. Caleb wasn’t sure how much longer she would last.

  “Fine,” Five replied, but then he coughed, more blood bubbling up from his lungs. He spit it onto the steps. “Fine,” he said firmly, before Caleb could ask him again.

  Ran said nothing. She met Caleb’s eyes and looked away, her mouth a hard line. This attack was against everything she stood for, yet she’d come along anyway.

  They moved down the stairs towards the barracks. One of Caleb’s duplicates led the way, ready to absorb more gunfire if any guards leaped out at them.

  Before they could make the next landing, the door to the barracks burst open and a squadron of guards filled the stairwell. Five growled and started to lunge forward, but Ran put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She had noticed the same thing that Caleb had through the eyes of his duplicate.

  These guards weren’t heading up. They were heading down.

  “Get the armory secured!” one of them said. “Then figure out what’s happened to the warden!”

  They waited for the guards to hustle down the stairwell, then Caleb and the others slipped into the barracks. They were looking for the path of least resistance.

  “It’s too quiet on the roof!” a guard shouted. “I want eyes up— Oof!”

  A second group of guards were exiting the barracks as soon as Caleb and the others entered. Duanphen shocked two of them before they even got their weapons up. Five slammed the head of another through the plaster wall. Caleb’s duplicates and some precise telekinesis from Ran took care of the rest. It was over in seconds without a single shot fired.

  “Missiles and rifles and snipers,” Five growled raggedly. “These assholes aren’t so tough up close.”

  The rest of the barracks appeared deserted. They moved through them quickly, passing by bunk beds, piles of magazines and round tables with multiple games of poker abandoned in progress. Seconds later, they reached the showers—communal stalls, tile floors, the strong aroma of mildew.

  “This is the place,” Caleb said.

  Ran nodded and stepped forward. “Stand back.”

  She knelt down and placed her hands on the tiles. Soon, a whole section of them glowed with the crimson energy of Ran’s Legacy. The floor vibrated slightly beneath them and Caleb took another step back. He knew that she was reaching down, charging more than just the top layer of the floor. Einar had noticed this spot on the blueprint. Told them it might be a shortcut.

  The charge set, Ran jumped backwards and took cover in the hallway with the rest of them. It was a three count until the floor exploded, sending a shower of tile and stone spraying into the hallway.

  When the dust cleared, Caleb sent a couple of duplicates to peer into the hole. Water poured from pipes that looked as if they’d been sheared clear in half by Ran’s precision detonation. Down below, an empty hallway waited. They would be right outside the warden’s office and the control room.

  “Let’s go,” Five said.

  He floated down, then helped the others as they jumped from the floor above. Ran was the last one to make the leap. Caleb thought that she hesitated, maybe wavered a little bit on the edge. Charging the floor must have taken something out of her.

  Five caught Ran when she jumped. She started to pull away from him, but Five held her by the upper arm.

  “Hey,” Five said. “What the hell?”

  He held up his hand. Where he’d touched Ran’s side was covered with blood.

  “Scratched,” Ran said. “It’s nothing.”

  Her voice sounded weak. Caleb took a step towards her. “Ran? Are you . . . ?”

  Gruffly, Five yanked up Ran’s shirt, exposing her abdomen. Two dark, puckered holes marred her stomach. Gunshot wounds. Caleb’s eyes widened; she must’ve gotten hit during that first battle on the roof.

  “I’m okay,” Ran said, looking down at the wounds. “They don’t even hurt.”

  No sooner had she said that than Ran’s legs buckled. Five caught her around the waist and held her up.

  “No, no, no,” Five growled. “I actually like you, Ran. You aren’t dying on me.”
/>   Ran smiled wanly. “That’s nice, Five.”

  Five pointed to the control room. “Get in there and check the monitors,” he told Caleb. “They’ve got to have a healer locked up here. They have to.”

  “We need to find the warden and that Skeleton Key thing,” Caleb said. “Get the place unlocked.”

  “Einar’s on it,” Five said. “He’ll get it done.”

  “We should check his office. Maybe he left something behind,” Duanphen said.

  They split up. Caleb went into the control room and the others into the warden’s office.

  As soon as he stepped into the control room, a guard lunged out from behind the door and pointed a pistol at Caleb’s chest. He popped a duplicate just in time to absorb the first shot, then ripped the man’s gun away before a second shot could be fired. Caleb floated the gun over to himself and aimed it at the guard.

  He raised his hands. “Okay, kid, okay. I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”

  “You would’ve killed me,” Caleb said flatly. He thought of Ran, gut-shot in the other room, maybe dying if they didn’t get lucky and find a healer locked up here. “You’d kill all my friends.”

  “We’re just defending ourselves,” the guard said. “From you.”

  Caleb’s finger twitched on the trigger. He didn’t fire. Instead, he ejected the weapon’s clip, then used his telekinesis to fling the empty gun into the guard’s face. The weapon struck him right between the eyes, knocking him out.

  Duanphen appeared in the doorway. “I heard a shot.”

  “It’s over,” Caleb said. “Help me look.”

  The two of them were confronted with an overwhelming network of screens and control panels. Caleb’s first thought was to try something on one of the computers—open the cells, for instance—but everything was password protected. Caleb turned to the screens.

  “Where’s the damn warden?”

  “There,” Duanphen said, pointing to one of the dozens of monitors that streamed every inch of the prison.

  On the screen, the warden led a large group of guards through the first floor’s intake area. The warden in question also carried an Inhibitor cannon with Einar attached to its leash. That was Isabela, a fact Duanphen quickly realized as well.

  “No, wait, there,” Duanphen said, pointing at a different monitor.

  The warden—the real warden—led a second cadre of guards, all of them heavily armored. They were headed down a stairwell, on a collision course for Isabela and Einar. Caleb squinted at the monitor, trying to catch a glimpse of the mechanical glove that controlled the prison’s systems. He spotted it.

  “Tell Five there’s nothing to find in the warden’s office,” Caleb said. “We need to go help the others.”

  As Duanphen left, Caleb took a moment to take stock of the monitors that broadcast views of the cells, praying that he’d see a healer there.

  On one screen, Daniela Morales stood with her ear pressed against the door of her tiny compartment. She must’ve been able to tell there was some kind of disturbance in the prison. Caleb grimaced, realizing that her presence here meant that Earth Garde had turned on Daniela. That was maybe a little his fault.

  On another screen, a young woman knocked out a set of push-ups. It was only when she sprang to her feet and furiously banged her fists against the reinforced door that Caleb realized who she was. Number Six.

  In a different cell, Caleb spotted Sam Goode. He was lying down on his cot with an IV hooked up to his arm.

  And there, on another screen, Caleb saw the enemy. A scrawny boy with wild curls, also unconscious in his bed, while a woman dressed like a Sunday school teacher kept watch over him. Lucas.

  Finally, Caleb spotted a boy with dark, curly hair, huddled on his bed and shivering. It took Caleb a moment to remember his name. Or, anyway, his nickname.

  “Meatballs,” Caleb said. “Hell yeah, Vinnie Meatballs.”

  Caleb rushed out of the control room and over to the warden’s office. He was just in time to see Five finish bandaging up Ran’s side using a first aid kit he’d found. The warden’s office was decorated in a way that suggested its owner would be totally cool imprisoning and torturing teenagers—the taxidermy heads of animals ranging from buffalo to mountain lions, a bearskin rug, a blown-up picture of the warden shaking hands with Dick Cheney. Caleb was glad to see the place had been trashed as Duanphen and Five looked for the Skeleton Key.

  “There’s major reinforcements and a healer if we can get them free of the cells,” Caleb reported. “The real warden and a lot of the guards are heading for the first floor. Einar and Isabela . . .”

  Five nodded, then looked to Ran. “You ready?”

  She didn’t look good to Caleb. Ran was pale and appeared unable to fully straighten. Five had to support most of her weight.

  “Let’s finish this,” Ran said.

  “You stick close to me,” Five replied. “Blow stuff up. I’ll take care of you.”

  “I can do that,” Ran replied.

  “Here, let me help,” Caleb said.

  He made a duplicate to ease in on Ran’s other side. They might need Five to fight, after all. He created a second duplicate to take point as they exited the warden’s office and started towards another battle—all of them hurting, bloodied, maybe even dying. But still pressing on. They could only go forward.

  “Wait,” Duanphen said, stopping in the office. “What are those?”

  Caleb had missed them in his quick perusal of the office. Hanging from a nail beside the mounted head of a buck were two strange pendants. These looked like the latest additions to the warden’s gross trophy collection. The two medallions gave off a faint blue glow that was unmistakable to Caleb—Loralite. Each of them were etched with a Loric symbol that he didn’t understand.

  “What the hell?” Five said. With his free hand, he yanked one of the pendants off the wall. “My people make these, they—”

  Five’s fingers brushed the Loralite. There was a flash of blue light.

  For the briefest of moments, through the eyes of his duplicate that was supporting Ran, Caleb caught a glimpse of a strange cave. A cave on the other side of the world. A cave crowded with familiar faces. The faces Caleb saw were panicked and frightened. They were running from something.

  And then, being too far away from Caleb, the duplicate evaporated. His window into New Lorien closed.

  Caleb and Duanphen stared at each other. The other pendant remained on the wall, swinging gently.

  Five and Ran were gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NIGEL BARNABY

  THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA

  FROM THE ROOFTOP OF THE ADMINISTRATION building, Nigel watched as everything his mother had promised about the Academy came true. It was falling. Just like she said it would.

  They had started out so well. Nigel had cheered when Taylor managed to teleport that entire first squad of Peacekeepers away, her crazy-ass plan working to perfection. Plus, there’d been the Peacekeepers who attempted to sneak in via the beach. They slammed their speedboats right into a series of icebergs that Lisbette had hidden in the shallows. With most of the other Garde tied up with Taylor, Nine personally teleported down there to handle the bedraggled Peacekeepers that waded ashore.

  Now, Nigel watched as his classmates sprinted away from an expanding cloud of tear gas. Their barricade was down, the road into campus unblocked except for some scattered debris. The Garde took shelter in the dorms. A team of Peacekeepers with gas masks gave chase. Nigel knew that Taylor had another trick up her sleeve, but he didn’t think it would be enough. There were too many soldiers.

  In a flash of light, Nine teleported in from the beach using the rooftop Loralite stone. He was scuffed up—knuckles bloody, a burn mark on his neck, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Did you have fun?” Nigel asked.

  “Felt good, haven’t gotten a solid workout in a while,” Nine replied, cracking his neck. “How we looking?”
>
  “She’s trying the dorm maneuver,” Nigel said. “The other side’s got too many bodies, Nine. They’ll just keep coming.”

  “And here I was hoping they’d pull back once we showed them our mean faces,” Nine said.

  “You having a laugh?” Nigel replied. He shook his head. “We might as well be playing capture the flag down there, mate. They’ll keep sending more men. No reason for ’em not to. All we’re doing is inconveniencing them. Would be just as effective to chain ourselves to the trees or burn our bras, yeah?”

  Nine gave him a look. Nigel knew what it sounded like he was suggesting. That unless they hurt the Peacekeepers—really hurt them—there was no way they’d stop their attack on the Academy. But Nigel wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like Einar, willing to sacrifice everything for the cause. He wouldn’t kill Peacekeepers, no matter how screwed up things got.

  “I’m just saying, we can’t win,” Nigel continued. “The rest of us should evacuate the hell out of here. Let ’em have this dump.”

  Nine made a face when he referred to the Academy as a dump, but let it go. “If they know we’re going on the run, they’ll start looking for us,” Nine said. “If they start looking for us and find New Lorien before John’s got his whole force field network hooked up—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Nigel cut in. “We hold out until we get the signal. I know the score. Don’t mean I don’t feel like a right idiot up here . . .” Nigel peeked over the edge of the roof. He’d seen enough Peacekeepers plow into the dorms. He cleared his throat. “Hold that thought, trap to spring.”

  Nigel smirked as he pictured the fifty or so Peacekeepers that had charged after the Garde. Right that very second, they were probably kicking over couches or peering under beds, searching for the Garde they thought were hiding in there. Except the Garde weren’t hiding. As soon as Taylor’s crew hit the dorms, they’d used the Loralite stone to teleport to the training center.

  “NOW!” Nigel shouted, funneling the sound so that it rattled the training center’s windows.

  Taylor and the other Garde spilled out of the training center with a war cry and charged towards the dorms. The few Peacekeepers standing watch outside the building looked completely spooked. Soon, they collapsed under telekinetic shoves, or were knocked out with redirected darts from their own tranquilizer guns. A group of Garde, including Nic, split off to tip over the trucks the Peacekeepers had driven through the barricade.