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“No rush,” Kopano said. He actually felt grateful for the company. “Will there be a new roommate coming soon?”
The Peacekeeper shrugged. “No idea.” She snapped her fingers as if remembering something. “Oh, hey, we found this in the closet. Think your friend left it behind.”
She held up a gray canister. It looked like hair spray without a label. Kopano squinted and walked forward for a closer look.
“What is it?”
“We are going on five days since we here at Wolf News first broke the story of two Garde going on a rogue rampage across California,” proclaimed Don Leary, the red-faced goon whose abrasive manner of speech Ran had somehow grown inured to since she became a voracious viewer of his channel. “And what has the response been from Earth Garde?”
Leary paused for rhetorical emphasis and Ran found herself hesitating with a square piece of tuna salad sandwich poised just in front of her mouth. A statement from Earth Garde appeared on the screen next to Leary’s head. He proceeded to read it out loud, inflecting some of the words with sarcastic emphasis.
“We at Earth Garde are aware of the incident in California. We are currently conducting an internal investigation into the matter and are confident that the Human Garde Academy and Earth Garde complies with the UN standards in the Garde Declaration.”
Leary shook his head in disgust. His words echoed around the virtually empty student union. Ran sat right under the mounted big-screen television, legs crisscrossed, half-eaten sandwich in her lap. She used to sit like this back home when she was a kid, right in front of the TV, letting her favorite anime engulf her. Wolf News wasn’t nearly as entertaining, but she still couldn’t look away.
“What are the bureaucrats at Earth Garde really saying here?” Leary asked his viewers. “They’re saying that we here—in America—basically don’t have any rights. Attacked on our own soil by superpowered foreigners, and this is a matter not for the California state police, not the FBI, not the NSA—for the UN. The United Nations, folks. Are you kidding me? Who put them in charge?”
Ran sensed movement behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that a couple of Peacekeepers from outside had come in to rummage through a toolbox, although she caught them surreptitiously peeking at her and the TV. She wondered what the soldiers thought of this whole mess. After all, she and Kopano weren’t the only ones getting dragged by Leary. The Peacekeepers were getting it bad as well. She turned her attention back to the news.
“Ms. Takeda.”
Ran’s shoulders tensed. Now there was a voice even more unwelcome than the broadcaster.
Greger, dressed as usual in one of his expensive suits, stepped between the Peacekeepers as he entered the student union and approached.
“You shouldn’t watch this ill-informed buffoon,” he said, waving at Leary. “He’s too one-sided.”
Ran wasn’t in the mood for another one of Greger’s slimy recruitment speeches. She wrapped what was left of her sandwich back in its plastic and stood up.
“I was just going,” she said.
“Ah, I see,” Greger replied. “Well, have a nice rest. We’ll talk soon.”
“A nice—?”
Ran felt a pinch. She twisted her head. Something was sticking out of her neck. She groped for her throat and yanked out a tranquilizer dart.
“What ith thisss . . . ?”
Her mouth was already numb. As her vision dimmed, Ran noticed that the Peacekeepers by the door had found what they were looking for in their toolbox. Tranquilizer guns with suppressors. One of them had shot her.
Ran stumbled. Greger caught her under the arms and supported her weight.
“I know you don’t trust me,” he said. “But this is for your own good.”
“What is that?” Kopano asked. “Cologne or something?”
The Peacekeeper shrugged again, her smile unwaveringly pleasant. As soon as Kopano got close, she pressed down a button on the top of the canister. With a pressurized hiss, the bottle sprayed an odorless mist right in Kopano’s face. He laughed in surprise at the sudden numbing sensation.
“Weird,” Kopano muttered. “I don’t think . . . that’s . . . Caleb’s . . .”
He fell on his face, knocked out.
The two Peacekeepers picked him up and dumped him in the hamper, covering his body with the old sheets from Caleb’s bed.
Chapter Sixteen
TAYLOR COOK
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY are?” Taylor shouted.
Nine ground his teeth together as he paced back and forth. “Relocated for their own protection. That’s all Earth Garde told me. After they already took them.” He pressed his knuckles into his metal palm. “Greger didn’t even have the balls to tell me in person.”
Their words echoed off the walls of the service area beneath the training center. Their hidden lair seemed so much bigger now that two-thirds of the Fugitive Six were gone. Taylor stood next to the bulletin board covered in their intel about the Foundation. All that digging seemed pointless now and the room, once a safe place for Taylor and her friends, felt cold and empty.
“They took them,” Taylor said, still in disbelief. “Snatched them up just like the Foundation would have.”
“I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison,” Malcolm said. He stood in the middle of the room, between Nine and Taylor, his hands out and open, perpetually ready to calm someone down. “We don’t actually know the full story here. It’s possible Earth Garde got wind of some threat and took them into custody for their own protection.”
“I thought the Academy and Earth Garde were the same thing,” Isabela said. She sat at the table, looking more cool and collected than the others. Her nails clicked repeatedly against the laminate surface, the only sign she was feeling any anxiety about what was going on. Taylor envied her friend for being so in control.
“Our responsibility here is to train and take care of young G
arde,” Malcolm replied. “Once you’re promoted to Earth Garde, the UN is in charge until your five-year service period is over. Ultimately, they call the shots, especially considering how this incident with the Harvesters happened outside the Academy.”
A chill crept up Taylor’s spine. Wasn’t this exactly what Einar had described to her back in Iceland—that Earth Garde was just a bigger, more public version of the Foundation? She bit the inside of her cheek.
Nine snorted. “Oh, bullshit, Malcolm. If there was some threat from this dumb-ass scandal, there’s nowhere safer than here.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Malcolm replied. “I’m just explaining the way the laws—”
“How do you figure?” Taylor interrupted, staring at Nine.
“What?”
“How do you figure they’d be safer here?” She asked. “You couldn’t keep them safe from these Earth Garde people, couldn’t keep us safe from those Harvesters and the Foundation in the first place. How would you keep them safe from whatever comes next?”
Nine stopped pacing and glared at her. “Are you doing your little bad-girl routine right now? Because I am not into it. And blaming me for you guys running off and stepping in shit, I mean, wow, that’s rich.”
“I’m not blaming you for that,” Taylor replied. “I’m blaming you for being crap at your job.”
Nine locked eyes with Taylor for a tense couple of seconds, no one else in the room saying a word. Then, he turned pointedly away and looked at Lexa, her fingers bouncing seamlessly across the two keyboards. Her eyes were slightly red-rimmed from a recent lack of blinking.
“Tell me you’ve got something,” Nine said.
“When we hacked Greger’s account, I left open a back door into Earth Garde’s network,” she replied. “If there’s something here about where they took Ran and Kopano, I’ll find it.”
Malcolm cleared his throat, peering uncomfortably over the top of his spectacles. “I have to ask . . . to what end?”
