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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?”
Lawson began again. His patience for being interrupted had grown exponentially since he started working with Garde. “Participating countries, which include England and Japan—” He looked in Ran’s direction. “Ah, damn. Forgot to get the interpreter in here for this.”
“Not necessary,” Ran said. “Please. Continue.”
Everyone stared at her except for Nigel, who belted out a laugh. General Lawson puffed out his cheeks and shook his head, taking Ran’s revelation in stride.
“As I was saying, the Earth Garde program has been agreed upon by most UN member nations. All Human Garde from participating nations will be required to register with Earth Garde and undergo training and observation at the Human Garde Academy, which is currently under construction in California.” Lawson slid packets across the table, filled with forms and dense contracts. “The legal details are in here. If you want, we can have your parents flown in before you sign anything.”
“Bollocks to that,” Ni
gel said with a snort, thumbing through the pages.
