Generation One LLR

by Pittacus Lore

  Taylor swallowed hard. Maybe the sheikh hadn’t appreciated her insolence.

  “What is this?” Einar asked, apparently as surprised as Taylor to find their way barred.

  Jiao emerged from the crowd of guards. She looked fresh and awake—a sharp contrast to how Taylor felt after their marathon healing session. The smartly dressed Chinese girl smiled at Taylor like they were old pals, then fixed Einar with an icy look.

  “You can’t leave, Einar,” she said simply.

  “Excuse me?” he replied. “What are you still doing here, Jiao?”

  “The Foundation asked me to stay in case you got out of hand. But you’ll be a good boy, won’t you?” She wiggled her fingers in Taylor’s direction. “Come on, darling. You’re coming home with me.”

  “Um, what?” Taylor replied.

  “Einar will remain as a guest of the sheikh,” Jiao said.

  Einar took a step forward and put a hand across Taylor, preventing her from going to Jiao. Not that she made a move in that direction anyway.

  “I don’t understand,” Einar said flatly.

  Jiao snorted. “Really, man? You lost Rabiya. Probably got her killed.”

  “I made healing the prince possible,” Einar retorted.

  “Yeah, and I assume that’s why the sheikh hasn’t already beheaded you,” Jiao replied. “Doesn’t mean he’s happy that you threw his niece to the wolves.”

  “She belonged to the Foundation,” Einar said sharply. “That was the deal. We heal his beloved son and we gain the services of his niece.”

  Jiao shrugged blithely. “Guess you should tell the sheikh that.”

  Slowly, Taylor put the pieces together. The girl with the headscarves from the road was related to the sheikh. Einar had lost her in the process of kidnapping Taylor. Now, he was in trouble. She remembered the conversation she’d eavesdropped on between Einar and the British woman.

  Taylor ignored Jiao’s outstretched hand, not making any effort to push by Einar. This was an opportunity to make a move, but whose side should she take? She was frozen.

  “After everything I’ve done for the Foundation,” Einar said bitterly. “One screwup and—”

  “Oh, stop,” Jiao said. “You know how it works.”

  Jiao made a gesture and two of the guards stepped forward. One of them carried a pair of manacles, the other held out two microchips like Taylor had seen attached to the crippled healer.

  The two guards made it within five feet of Einar before they both began hysterically crying. They fell to their knees, clutching their faces, sobbing uncontrollably.

  He was playing with their emotions.

  “Einar—,” Jiao started to say.

  And then the shooting started.

  It came from the two guards farthest at the back. Their weapons went off, shots firing into the dirt. Taylor noticed that they looked surprised. They hadn’t pulled the triggers.

  It was Einar.

  The other guards spun around, startled, weapons coming up—and then Einar was telekinetically pulling all the triggers at once, a cross fire beginning, the sheikh’s guards gunning each other down.

  Jiao screamed. A bullet had struck her in the knee. She fell to the ground. Taylor remained rooted in place.

  “I find this very disrespectful of my talents,” Einar said. He lifted Jiao with his telekinesis and flung her through one of the second-story windows.

  Then, he grabbed Taylor by the hair.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But you need to come with me.”

  Taylor was too stunned, staring at the bloody bodies of the murdered guards, to immediately react. Or maybe that was Einar, making her docile.

  He dragged her to the Loralite stone and touched the cobalt surface.

  The spinning sensation. Blinking blue lights. The sudden chill of Iceland.

  Finally reacting, Taylor shoved away from Einar as soon as they were inside the wooden enclosure. He didn’t seem to notice. Einar was too focused on the crumpled body propped up against the wall. She’d been so badly beaten, it took Taylor a moment to recognize Rabiya.

  Einar laughed, looking down at the unconscious girl. “This is tremendously ironic.”

  “You asshole, what does this mean for—?” Taylor gasped. Outside the enclosure, Ran lay on her back, taking cover behind a pile of rocks. She was stunned to see her roommate there—and in rough shape. Ran had a gash along her cheek and a bullet wound in her thigh.

  “Get down!” Ran shouted at her as Taylor made to run across the grass. “Sniper!”

  Taylor ignored her friend’s instructions, hopping over the unconscious body of one of those Blackstone mercenaries as she rushed to Ran’s side. No bullets came from the upstairs window.

  “You’re hurt,” Taylor said as she slid in next to Ran. “How did you . . . ?”

  But then, it made sense. Rabiya. They’d gotten her to teleport them here.

  “We came to rescue you,” Ran said. She looked over Taylor’s shoulder, tensing up when she saw Einar.

  Einar edged out from the enclosure with more caution than Taylor, peering up at his cabin.

  Quickly, Ran grabbed a stone, charged it with her explosive energy and sent it flying towards Einar.

  He looked up just in time, swatting the rock away with his telekinesis. His lips curled in annoyance and he thrust a hand in Ran’s direction.

  Taylor recoiled as Ran’s entire body began to vibrate. Veins in her neck bulged, all her muscles tight. Blood from her cheek flattened out against the side of her face. It looked like Ran was trying to sit up, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot.

  Einar was using his telekinesis to grind her into the ground.

  “It’s funny how the instinct is to use our telekinesis to throw things at our enemies,” Einar said conversationally. “Even the Loric behave that way. You can see it in videos of them fighting during the invasion. They rip away guns, hurl around cars. But the body’s an object, just like anything else. My theory is, the Loric had an instinct bred into them, not to use their telekinesis on each other directly.” Einar shrugged. “I’ve been trained a different way.”

  “Let her go!” Taylor shouted.

  “How does that feel, Ran Takeda?” Einar asked. “Is it like Tokyo again? The feeling of being crushed?”

  If Taylor thought there was some glimmer of humanity in Einar, she’d been woefully mistaken. He was insane. With her telekinesis, she grabbed a sledgehammer that lay near the Loralite stone and flung it at him.

  The head of the hammer struck Einar right between the shoulder blades. He yelped and fell onto his hands, his grip on Ran broken. She grabbed her ribs, gasping for air.

  Taylor plucked the sledgehammer out of the air. She stood over Einar and cocked her arms back.

  “It’s more satisfying to hit people with things,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  She almost brought the hammer down. But then a feeling of deep sympathy came over her. Who knows what the Foundation had done to this poor kid. He wasn’t bad. He didn’t want to hurt her. It was all just a misunderstanding.

  No. That was Einar. Manipulating her.

  By the time Taylor realized that, it was too late. Einar stood and ripped the sledgehammer out of her hands. He cracked Taylor across the face with the wooden handle, knocking her down.

  “Hmm,” Einar said. “You’re right.”

  He raised the hammer and brought it down on Taylor’s ankle. She screamed as the bones shattered, and nearly fainted.

  “That should keep you busy,” Einar said. He tossed the sledgehammer across the yard, stepped by Ran and walked into the house.

  Tears stung Taylor’s eyes. Warm blood trickled down the side of her face from a gash on her eyebrow. Her ankle felt as if there were broken glass under her skin.

  “Tay . . . Taylor . . .”

  That was Ran. She struggled to sit up, clutching at a nearby rock. Patches of mud and bits of ice clung to her shoulders where she’d been driven into the ground. She
arched her back strangely and craned her head back, gulping air.

  Or trying to, at least.

  “I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . . ,” Ran said.

  Einar must have broken one of her ribs or crushed a lung. Taylor looked at Ran dazedly, trying to focus through the immense pain and her spinning head.

  “Hold on,” Taylor said, her voice cracking.

  As fast as she could manage, Taylor dragged herself across the yard towards Ran. Her lips were turning blue. Taylor needed to get there. Needed to heal her. Fight through it.

  Meanwhile, from inside the house, Taylor became vaguely aware of Kopano shouting.

  They’d come here to save her. All her friends.

  And Einar was killing them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  KOPANO OKEKE

  HOFN, ICELAND

  KOPANO STOPPED TRYING TO YANK THE MAGNETIZED handcuff loose from the side of the refrigerator when he saw Einar enter. A feeling of dread washed over him as the young man trained his beady eyes on Kopano. He was relieved to be stuck.

  If Kopano couldn’t move, Einar couldn’t make him hurt his friends.

  Einar sized Kopano up briefly, concluded he was trapped and ignored him. He went into the living room and pulled an attaché case out from underneath the couch. With his case in hand, he started to leave out the back door.

  That’s when Nigel bounded down the steps from upstairs.

  Einar paused. He smiled slowly.

  “Nigel Barnaby. You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

  Nigel took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air, ready to unleash one of his sonic screams.

  His mouth snapped shut, teeth clacking together hard. Einar had forced it closed with his telekinesis. Nigel’s eyes were wide with surprise. Kopano could tell Nigel was struggling, but he couldn’t break Einar’s telepathic grip.

  Kopano shoved Einar with his own telekinesis. Einar stumbled for a moment, but quickly regained his balance. A powerful telekinetic force overwhelmed his own and Kopano bounced back against the refrigerator.

  “They need to teach better telekinetic control at that school of yours,” Einar said.

  Helplessly, Kopano watched as his index finger bent all the way back to his wrist. The bone popped. Kopano shouted in pain.

  “Unbreakable skin, yes? But not unbreakable bones.” Einar glared at Kopano. “Stay still or I’ll rip you apart.”

  Fear clutched at Kopano’s stomach. He held his injured hand close to his belly. His lip quivered as he watched Einar, unable to do anything else.

  The anger had been bad. The fear was worse.

  Einar glanced up at one of the room’s cameras. “I hope you’re watching,” he said to whoever was on the other side. Then, he looped an arm around Nigel’s shoulders.

  The British boy, always so confident, possessed of so much swagger—his face crumpled into a mask of utter sadness. His entire posture changed—shoulders slumped and turned inwards, chin to chest, eyes downcast and watery. To see his friend like this made no sense to Kopano.

  “I want you to think about Pepperpont,” Einar said softly. “All those years, without a single friend. Abandoned by your parents. A worthless piece of forgotten shit. Something the better-looking boys passed around like a toy, hmm? Do you remember those days, Nigel?”

  Nigel shuddered, said nothing. Kopano stared. How did Einar know so much about Nigel?

  “Will they hold you down in bed tonight and beat you? Will they lock you in a closet? Will they force you to take a shower with the water boiling hot?” Einar’s lips were nearly against Nigel’s ear. He led Nigel towards the door. “Better to end it, isn’t it? Better to give up than endure another day?”

  “No . . . ,” Kopano croaked, the words hard to get out against the terror gripping him. He wanted to shrink back into himself, to get small . . . but he couldn’t let this evil bastard get into Nigel’s head. “Don’t listen to him, Nigel! Don’t listen!”

  But Nigel didn’t hear. Or, if he did, Kopano’s shouts didn’t penetrate the crushing depression that Einar was forcing Nigel to feel.

  “It will be over quickly,” Einar said. “Just walk out and let the cold take you.”

  He led Nigel out the front door. Kopano could hear their feet crunching across gravel.

  There was an iced-over lake out there.

  “Nigel!” Kopano shouted. “Ran! Someone!”

  No answer. The backyard was quiet.

  The fear disappeared. It turned off all at once, giving Kopano a nauseous feeling as the muscles in his abdomen unclenched. Einar must have gotten too far away from him. The effects of his control wore off.

  The fear was replaced by desperation.

  He had to save his friends.

  With a bellow, Kopano used his telekinesis to lift the refrigerator. Food spilled out of it as the doors swung open—a glass bottle of milk shattered on the floor. Kopano crunched through the broken glass, carrying the appliance like an albatross, his wrist aching from the manacle still attached to the fridge’s side.

  Kopano charged across the living room. The refrigerator crashed against a chair, knocked it over. He smashed the base into a TV, shattering the screen and knocking it off the wall. Didn’t matter. He maneuvered as best he could towards the front door.

  He could see Nigel. Walking out on the ice. Like a zombie. Einar watched him from the edge of the lake with his arms crossed.

  One second Nigel was there, the next second he was gone.

  The ice cracked beneath Nigel’s feet and the water sucked him down.

  Kopano shouted. He tried to run through the front door, but the refrigerator became wedged in the doorway. He pulled against it, using both the strength left in his handcuffed arm and all the power he could muster from his telekinesis. The metal of the appliance squealed and bent; the wooden door chipped and broke.

  But he was stuck. In the end, all Kopano’s tugging did was get the refrigerator jammed worse. His wrist was a raw and bloody mess from where he’d pulled against the manacle.

  Nigel had been under the water for thirty seconds.

  He glanced warily around the lake’s edge. Einar was gone. Out of sight.

  Kopano had to get his arm free. Brute strength wasn’t doing it. He tried to slip loose of the cuff, but it was fastened tight.

  He pulled and pulled. The bracelet had to give. Or else, let it slice right through his arm. Take his hand right off. He could get to Nigel, save his friend, and worry about that later. Kopano snarled, bracing one of his feet against the fridge, ignoring the pain as he wrenched against the handcuff with all his might.

  Kopano fell onto his back with a thud.

  It gave. He was free.

  His wrist was whole. The cuff was unbroken. It didn’t make sense.

  He didn’t pause to think about it.

  Nigel had been underwater for a minute. More, maybe.

  Kopano sprinted towards the crystalline lake. During training, Dr. Goode had told Kopano to think of himself as heavy. That seemed to help him control his power—he often focused on that feeling, making his skin impenetrable and his hands hard as bricks. But he didn’t want to be heavy now. He needed to be light. Nimble.

  He hit the icy lake at a full sprint, the frigid water filling up his sneakers. The surface was already cracked where Nigel had walked on it. Kopano’s long strides, his large body—he should’ve plummeted straight into the water.

  He didn’t. Somehow, Kopano’s feet were light as feathers. He practically floated across the ice. Was he moving so fast that the ice didn’t have a chance to break? Was it luck? Something else?

  Kopano didn’t care. He saw the dark and jagged hole where Nigel had fallen through. That was his goal.

  He sucked in as deep a breath as he could and dove.

  The water was so cold that it stunned Kopano and he nearly gasped. He steeled himself against the pinpricks and numbness, plunging deeper. He was never a strong swimmer and the water was dark. He couldn’t see
Nigel. He looked for bubbles but didn’t see any.

  Kopano needed to go deeper. He let himself get heavier, like Dr. Goode had taught him. He sunk farther down, his chest tightening.

  Spinning, Kopano began to pull with his telekinesis. He didn’t grab for anything in particular, he just made the water churn around him. He created a whirlpool with himself at the center.

  Two minutes? Three minutes? How long had Nigel been down here? Kopano’s lungs were beginning to burn.

  A broken chunk of an old rowboat was pulled into Kopano’s whirlpool. A school of fish spun past him. Smooth black stones from the lakebed began to blur his vision.

  There! It looked like a blond jellyfish waving back and forth, almost glowing in the dark water. Nigel’s bleached mohawk.

  Kopano reached down. The other boy wasn’t moving, unconscious, his mouth open to the water. Kopano grabbed him by the back of the shirt.

  Lighter, thought Kopano. Be lighter. Up, up, up.

  Dragging Nigel with him, Kopano kicked his feet and sped towards the surface. He was surprised by how buoyant he was; it felt like the water itself was trying to shove him towards the surface.

  A sheet of ice became visible above him. Kopano’s heart beat harder, his lungs screaming for air. As a boy, he’d read adventure stories about a young man traveling the globe; always, when he was in cold climes, someone ended up trapped beneath some ice. His stinging eyes couldn’t find the break in the ice that he’d jumped through.

  Kopano reached out towards the ice with his free hand—his injured hand, the broken finger hanging loose, forgotten about in his rush to rescue Nigel. He prepared to thrust out with his telekinesis, ready to break the ice apart.

  He didn’t need to. Kopano’s hand passed right through the ice, like he was a ghost. His eyes widened, uncertain what was happening. His whole body floated upwards, transparent, sliding through the frozen barrier. He could feel something happening within him—an opening sensation, like his body’s cells were spreading apart to allow the ice to pass through. He glanced down and saw that Nigel had gone transparent too.