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Could he let Einar kill her?
And his mother was probably right. Einar’s going around slaughtering Foundation people—bad as they were—could set off a war. The psycho would ruin all their lives.
Nigel wanted to scream. So, he did. After all, the walls were soundproof.
That morning, his fourth day in captivity, the door to his room slid open.
His mom stood there, hair a bit tousled, cheeks puffy from last night’s drinking. There was no team of mercenaries behind her—she was alone, fragile. Nigel could’ve easily pushed her aside with his telekinesis and made his escape. She must have known that, but she opened the door anyway.
Bea said nothing. She clasped her hands and waited. It was on him.
“All right,” Nigel said, deciding right then what he would do. “I’ll help you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
CALEB CRANE
MELBOURNE, FLORIDA
CALEB’S SHOULDERS WERE STARTING TO BURN. With a groan, he rolled over on the blanket and reached for his T-shirt. He pulled it onto his sunbaked torso.
“Ow,” he said.
“Man, I told you to reapply,” Daniela scolded. She grabbed the tube of sunscreen and tossed it into Caleb’s lap. “Pale ass is gonna look like a lobster out here.”
“Yeah,” he replied, blowing out a sigh. “Yeah, you told me.”
It was a cloudless day, unseasonably warm, the white-capped waves sending salty spray up on a lazy breeze. The sand shimmered here, the beach pristine, without any other people in sight. Next to Caleb, Daniela reclined on her elbows, her lean body clad in a white bikini, sweat dimpling her abdomen. Caleb should’ve been enjoying the hell out of this.
So why wasn’t he?
A private beach, all to themselves on Florida’s Space Coast—so called because it was where NASA and any number of defense contractors, including Sydal Corp, were headquartered. Maybe it was their host that bothered him. Maybe that’s what kept Caleb from completely turning off his mind and enjoying this unearned vacation.
But Mr. Sydal—Wade, he insisted they call him Wade—had been nothing but nice to them. They stayed in guest rooms in his sprawling beachside mansion. He fed the visiting Garde lavish meals cooked by his personal chef, showed off his multitude of engineering projects, and let them use the beach and his infinity pool. Massages and tennis lessons were also on offer, although Caleb hadn’t partaken in either. It’d been almost a week of that pampering and Mr. Sydal—Wade—asked for nothing in return.
Sydal spent most of his time in his technology-filled basement workshop. The gadgets and gizmos in there would’ve made Dr. Goode jealous, Caleb thought. Sometimes, he took meetings at the navy base in the area. He had his own paid security detail.
This was a cream-puff detail. There was no reason for Caleb to feel so on edge.
And yet, he couldn’t shake that feeling.
Caleb thought about calling his uncle. But what would he tell Uncle Clarence? That Melanie Jackson was a huge wimp who needed a “break” from Earth Garde life after a week of photo ops and some light construction work? She’d been protected from the worst of the invasion by her president father, had never gone to the Academy, and was basically coddled at Earth Garde. Did she really need a vacation from her vacation?
Maybe that wasn’t the most charitable assessment of Melanie, but it didn’t help Caleb’s opinion that she mostly ignored him and Daniela, preferring instead to spend her free time video-chatting with people from her old life—prep school classmates, senators’ kids, future leaders of the free world.
No. Lawson wouldn’t care about that. That was kid stuff.
What did his uncle want him to uncover?
A crab scuttled past their blanket, black eyes like twin periscopes swiveling around. The little guys were called ghost crabs. Caleb had first spotted them scampering across the sand a few days ago. Bored and tired of swimming, he’d spent a solid hour reading about them online.
“Check it out,” Caleb said, pointing the gold-tinted crustacean out to Daniela. “Those guys change their colors to blend in with the sand. Pretty cool, huh?”
Daniela tipped down her paperback—some lurid romance novel she’d picked up at the airport—so she could regard Caleb.
“You could learn something from them,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
As they watched, the crab buried itself back in the sand, only its pair of elongated eyes visible.
“It means you could try going with the flow a bit,” Daniela replied. “I see you over there, wheels turning and shit. You’ve been sulking around since we got here.”
“I’m not sulking,” Caleb responded sulkily. “Don’t you just think . . . I don’t know? Like this is weird?”
“Man, we saved the world from an alien invasion,” Daniela replied, her braids shaking back and forth as she laughed. “I mean, the Loric did most of it, but we were there, too. They should be giving us free vacations for the rest of our lives. Be like the crab, man. Chill.”
“I think they blend in like that to avoid predators.”
“You see any predators out here, Caleb?”
Caleb turned his head to look back at the beach house.
“I don’t know.”
People were starting to gather on the house’s back deck. Caleb could see Wade there. The man was supposedly in his fifties, but his baby face and angular black goatee made him look younger. He wore his hair long like a surfer, not a strand of gray in there—just like his beard. In another bout of boredom, Caleb had watched some of Mr. Sydal’s TED talks from before the invasion, where he lectured on the possibility of achieving immortality—physical or digital. It all went over Caleb’s head, but just by looking at him and listening to him talk, Caleb could tell the guy wanted desperately to stay young forever.
Sydal was surrounded by the usual horde of assistants and interns. All of them were young and attractive, fresh out of Ivy League schools. They mingled with the more professionally dressed research-and-development reps from various engineering and military concerns, everyone gathered to watch the day’s launch from the comfort of Sydal’s estate.
Caleb could pick out the military brass from the crowd by their haircuts and rigid postures. For a second, he swore he saw his dad up there. Too much sun.
In the middle of it all, of course, was Melanie. Even at a distance, she looked especially vibrant. Her blond hair flowed loose around her head, the wind plucking at her tennis skirt and blouse. Sydal kept a fatherly arm around her shoulders, introducing her to his various guests. Just like on their missions with Earth Garde, Melanie held herself apart from Caleb and Daniela, so much so that he was always surprised to see how easily she turned on the social charms.
Waiters circulated through the crowd on the deck with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Caleb and Daniela had been invited to Sydal’s little party but had opted to watch the launch from the beach instead.
“Crazy that guys like him are still interested in space travel,” Caleb said to Daniela. “Especially when we know there’s nothing really out there. All the aliens are trying to come here.”
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“You’re just full of deep thoughts today.”
“Thanks.”
A loud chant started on the deck. A countdown from ten.
Caleb tipped his sunglasses down to watch the vessel take off. The sleek, silver-plated ship rose up from its launchpad down the beach and cut soundlessly through the perfect blue sky. The aircraft was disc-shaped, like the cliché idea of a flying saucer. Sydal probably thought that was clever. A crimson glow came from the wannabe UFO’s underbelly. It looked like it was on fire, but those were actually the thrusters.
That was repurposed Mogadorian technology. The military had recovered tons of Skimmers after the invasion and Sydal had been selected as one of the developers to work on reverse engineering it. Today was a big day for Wade and Sydal Corp: they were the first company to get a prototype flight-ready. In an effort to distance his work from the hostile aliens that provided its foundation, Sydal had christened the ship the Shepard-1, named for the first American to make it into space.
The Shepard-1 swooped around, propelled by its thrusters, stable and under control. It did a loop-the-loop, much to the delight of Sydal’s guests. Then, the ship went vertical, rising higher and higher, until it was just a silver speck. Caleb lost sight of it. The plan was for the Shepard-1 to reach the exosphere. The crowd on the deck fell silent, huddled around Wade and his tablet that displayed the craft’s diagnostics.
“Hope it doesn’t blow up,” Daniela remarked.
Moments later, a cheer went up from the deck. The Shepard-1 had reached the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Soon, the ship came back into sight, drifting gracefully back down and onto its launchpad.
Everyone applauded. A complete success.
“Cool,” Daniela said dryly, barely looking up from her book. “Nice to see we humans have got spaceships now. And it’s nice that thing didn’t shoot at us, huh?”
Caleb glanced back at the deck where Sydal was getting bombarded with back-patting and handshakes.
