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Something was wrong.
Caleb attempted a lurching step forward and fell onto his hands. His legs were heavy.
They were stone. Literally.
With a groan, Caleb rolled over. He sensed movement in the trees behind him and a glint of silver-tinged energy.
“Oh, what up, Caleb?”
Daniela.
He hadn’t seen the girl for more than a year, not since she was sent directly to Earth Garde instead of the Academy. Daniela looked much the same except for her gear—she wore an armor-plated black bodysuit that hugged her lean sprinter’s body, and her usually unruly braids were collected into a thick ponytail. She stood over Caleb, a team of Peacekeepers with night-vision goggles picking through the woods behind her.
“How—how’d you find us?” Caleb stammered.
“We didn’t find you, we found them,” Daniela replied conversationally, waving in the direction of Apache Jack’s and the Harvesters. “Everyone’s looking for you guys, glad you’re in one piece. The others okay?”
Caleb didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked through his clone’s eyes, stopping the duplicate in his tracks as his friends dragged Rabiya across the field towards the woods.
“Stop!” he had the clone yell. “Earth Garde’s here! They’ve got me.”
In the distance, the whup-whup-whup of helicopters became audible.
“Hell,” Nigel said. He elbowed Rabiya. “Hurry up. Make the Loralite now.”
Rabiya glanced nervously over her shoulder, worried the Harvesters might be on them at any moment. “Here—?”
Daniela shook Caleb’s shoulder and he focused back on her. She’d crouched down beside him as the Peacekeeper soldiers continued on towards Apache Jack’s.
“Hey, man, where’d you go?”
“Why’d you stone me?” Caleb replied. “I can help.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” she replied. “Earth Garde’s running this operation and you aren’t authorized for combat. Can’t let you get hurt.” She touched a radio mounted on her shoulder and spoke into it. “I’ve got Caleb Crane down here . . .” She listened to a response, then smirked at Caleb. “Oh man, Professor Meathead isn’t happy.”
“Nine? Nine’s here?”
The helicopters came into view. Three of them, all circling. Their spotlights swept across the wooded hillside around Apache Jack’s.
Caleb checked in with his duplicate hiding at the front of the bar. Many of the Harvesters were bailing, scrambling for motorcycles and trucks and tearing down the road. Some of them took potshots up at the helicopters. They were quickly cut down by sniper fire.
“Harvesters retreating, Earth Garde closing in,” Caleb reported through his clone.
A funnel of cobalt-blue energy rippled out from Rabiya’s outstretched palms and struck the ground. With a groan from the earth, a craggy pile of Loralite slowly began to rise up.
The blue light caught the attention of one of the helicopter pilots. They swung the spotlight around, illuminating the group of Garde, and soon the chopper was almost right overhead.
“How much do you need to make?” Kopano asked Rabiya.
“Almost . . . ,” she said tiredly. “Almost there.”
“Que porra é essa?” Isabela said, pointing up at the helicopter.
Something had fallen out of the chopper’s open bay door.
THOOM! Nine hit the ground with an explosion of dirt and broken bits of wood. He landed right in front of his students. All their eyes widened at the shallow crater he made and Rabiya yelped, cutting off her creation of the Loralite stone. Nine smirked as he straightened up.
“It’s way after curfew, guys.”
Nigel was the first to recover his wits. “Fancy meeting you here, teach.”
Nine gave them the once-over, checking for injuries. Perhaps satisfied none of them were gravely wounded, he put his hands on his hips. His eyes widened a fraction when he noticed Rabiya and the steady pile of glowing stone at her feet.
“That’s Loralite,” Nine said, and they could all tell their professor’s mind was working. “We found some at the spot where you guys were ambushed, been trying to figure out where . . .” He took a step towards Rabiya. “What’s your name? Where’d you come from?”
Ran put herself between Nine and Rabiya. He stopped short, an eyebrow raised.
“Keep going,” Ran said to Rabiya over her shoulder.
“We’re going to find Taylor,” Kopano told Nine.
“No, we’re going to find Taylor,” Nine insisted, gesturing around at the Peacekeepers and Earth Garde. There were sounds of a small firefight from in front of Apache Jack’s. Meanwhile, Daniela led stone-booted Caleb out of the woods, her team of Peacekeepers fanning out. Caleb and his clone exchanged a look.
“Been doing a bang-up job of that, haven’t ya?” Nigel asked.
Nine raised an eyebrow. “We found you, didn’t we?”
“You stumbled onto us,” Caleb had his clone say.
Nine waved this away. “Same difference.”
“We know where she is,” Kopano said. “She’s in Iceland. We’re going to get her.”
“No. You’re not.”
Nine took another step forward. Or, at least, he attempted to. As one, Nigel, Ran and Kopano extended their hands, gently pushing Nine back with their telekinesis. Isabela, still holding her wounded side with one hand, joined them a second later.
“Oh, give me a break with this shit,” Nine said. He dug his heels in and powered forward. Caleb watched with a growing tightness in his chest. Nine was strong. He could probably break their telekinesis if he wanted to.
“Stop, Professor,” Kopano appealed. “We’ll bring Taylor back. I promise.”
“Like your lot never ran off half-cocked to save someone’s life,” Nigel added.
“I can’t let you go,” Nine replied, the words sounding hollow. “What you’re doing isn’t safe. I’m su
re it’s in violation of one of those stupid Garde bylaws, too.”
“Nowhere is safe for us,” Ran said. “That was proven at Patience Creek.”
“That was during the war,” Nine replied. “It’s different now.”
“Doesn’t feel so bloody different,” Nigel said. He glanced in the direction of the approaching Peacekeepers, noting that some of them were armed with the nonlethal weaponry that had been used during the Wargames. “You want to tell us how these wackjob Harvesters got hooked into the same weapons as your mates in the army?”
“I don’t know,” Nine replied. “We’re looking into that.”
“Yeah. Right. So, you keep doing that, behind your desk,” Nigel replied. “We’ll handle the hero shit.”
Nine sneered and started to say something more, but Ran cut him off.
“You knew,” she said suddenly, as if the fact had just dawned on her. “That night on the beach. You were warning me. Telling me to keep an eye on Taylor. You knew someone might be after her.”
“I . . .” Nine glanced up at the helicopter circling above. “There’s a lot going on you guys don’t know about.”
Rabiya took a breath and sagged against Nigel. The Loralite stone was done, the blue stone reflecting the small fires still burning at the bar.
“Mate, you can fill us in when we get back,” Nigel said. “Who do you trust to go get Taylor? Us or these Earth Garde blokes?”
Nine sighed. Through his clone’s eyes, Caleb saw something like nostalgia on the Loric’s face. He was relenting.
Caleb tried to drag his feet, which wasn’t difficult considering they were encased in stone. He wanted to slow up Daniela and the Peacekeepers, give the others a chance to convince Nine and escape.
“We’ll come back,” Kopano said solemnly, reading the hesitation in Nine’s face. “We’ll be safe.”
“Yeah,” Nigel added. “Just gonna pop on over to Iceland for a bit. No biggie. Things get hinky, you come pick us up.”
