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“Here we go,” Taylor said.
The soldiers came in three at a time, one for each healer. They set down their rifles at the entrance, then stripped off balaclavas and gloves and whatever other pieces of body armor were in the way of their injuries. And they were always injured. Or maybe damaged was the more accurate way to put it. Regardless, by Taylor’s count, fifty went out each day and, without fail, fifty returned. A whole unit in need of healing.
Soon, the tent smelled like body odor and cigarettes. Vincent did his work in timid silence, but Jiao kept on a running monologue in Chinese, barking sharply at any soldier that tracked snow or mud into their tent. The tent was usually quiet except for Jiao’s ravings; the soldiers didn’t talk to the Garde and they rarely talked to each other.
Taylor’s first patient was a muscular Asian man who stared deferentially at the ground while she grasped his hands, healing the beginning of frostbite on his fingers. He had some deep cuts on his knee and shin—it looked like he’d fallen. She healed those, too. Then, she pressed her hands against the sides of his neck and healed the sickness.
On their first day in Mongolia, Taylor had discerned that it wasn’t just bumps and bruises that the Foundation wanted them to heal. It was the sickness, present in everyone who returned from the mysterious expedition site. Taylor had trained in hospitals while at the Academy—she’d encountered the flu and strep throat, cancer and a random case of smallpox, even the Arab prince’s late-stage leukemia that had taken four of them to heal. None of those maladies felt like this sickness.
It was as if a darkness were growing in the soldiers. Taylor could sense tendrils of it when she used her Legacy. She could swear that the illness fought back against her.
Every day, she cleansed the soldiers’ bodies of the sickness. And the next day, they came back.
By her fourth soldier, Taylor wasn’t cold anymore. Sweat shone on her forehead.
A dislocated shoulder. More frostbite. Cuts and scrapes.
And always the sickness.
What was out there that was infecting these men? What did the Foundation want with it?
Taylor needed to find out.
“Hey, um, Taylor . . . ?” Vincent spoke up, already sounding exhausted. “Could you help me out over here? This guy’s real bad.”
“Sure, one second,” Taylor replied, finishing up with her own patient before stepping over to Vincent.
Taylor cringed when she saw the man standing in front of Vincent. He’d stripped down to his pants, pale skin nearly blue from the cold. His right side was entirely covered in dark burns, the skin cooked and blackened. Spreading out from that grievous wound were discolored black veins. He stood resolute, teeth gritted, like he wasn’t in an incredible amount of pain.
“Kid bloody tells me it’s bad,” the soldier said, speaking out of turn in a thick Scottish accent. “What kinda bedside manner’s that, eh?”
“S-s-sorry,” stammered Vincent.
“How did this happen to you?” Taylor asked as she pressed her hands to the Scotsman’s burns, letting her healing energy slowly restore the skin. Next to her, she felt Vincent beating back the sickness—it was stronger in this guy than any of hers had been. She could actually see the black veins in his chest recede while they worked.
“Finally some goddamn action, that’s how it happened,” the soldier said.
“Shut up, MacLaughlan,” chided one of the other soldiers. “You know the rules.”
“What?” MacLaughlan exclaimed innocently, eyeing Taylor as she tended to him. “The pretty American lass wants to hear some war stories, who am I to deny her?”
Just then, the XO poked his head into the tent, a steely glare aimed in MacLaughlan’s direction.
“MacLaughlan!” The XO shouted, sounding good-natured in the same way Professor Nine did right before he ordered you to run laps around the campus. “Did I hear you volunteering to do a double?”
MacLaughlan gritted his teeth. “Aye, boss,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait to get back out there.”
“Great!” The XO looked at Taylor. “That’s enough healing, then, my dear. He’ll be back in here tomorrow morning.”
Taylor and Vincent both stepped back from MacLaughlan, his burns only half-healed, the black veins still creeping up his rib cage.
“Sorry,” Taylor murmured.
“No worries,” MacLaughlan replied with a wink. “I’ll rub some ice on it. Plenty of that, eh?”
The rest of that day’s healing passed without incident. Afterward, they were brought what amounted to a feast on the dreary tundra—stale pumpernickel bread, canned oranges, a tasteless hard cheese, and sausage from a mystery animal. Of course, they all wolfed it down, even if Jiao did so while holding her nose. Healing that many people was exhausting work and left them all starving. Taylor felt the exhaustion creeping in, the emptiness inside her from too much healing, the tingling in her fingers from overusing her Legacy. It was the same as every day since she’d been here—wake up, freeze, heal, eat, sleep.
She needed to break that pattern tonight. If only she could stay awake.
After dinner, Vincent yawned and stumbled to his cot. “Man, I can’t believe we have to do that again tomorrow morning.”
“Whatever gets us out of here quicker,” Jiao replied. She snorted. “Don’t know what you’re whining about, anyway. Taylor and I do way more work than you.”
Taylor made no comment, although it was true. Vincent definitely didn’t have the same abilities that she and Jiao had. Or, at least, he wasn’t pushing himself as hard. Maybe he’d been promoted too quickly from the Academy. Or maybe this was Vincent’s small act of rebellion against the Foundation. Taylor didn’t know.
The days were short in western Mongolia and night came on quickly. All three Garde were soon snuggled into their heavy-duty sleeping bags—Taylor had been assured by the XO that they were the same kind used by climbers when they summited Everest. They all shifted in unison, grumbling as they tried to get comfortable on their rock-hard cots. The healers didn’t talk to each other and Taylor found herself missing the camaraderie of the Academy.
Taylor wormed her hand up her sweater and clutched the amulet Kopano had made for her, relieved that the Foundation people hadn’t taken it away. She wondered where Kopano was at that moment. She hoped he and the others were okay.
The rest of the camp was still alive—the mercenaries talked loudly in a variety of languages, eating and drinking, cleaning their guns, playing cards. The wind howled. Taylor tried to keep her eyes open, waiting for a sign that the soldiers were going out on their night mission.
She snapped awake at the sound of revving engines and one mercenary yelling at another to get his ass in gear. Damn it. She’d dozed off. The soldiers were already moving out. She would need to get going quickly if she wanted to slip into their midst.
Taylor glanced in Jiao and Vincent’s direction. They were both sleeping, Vincent even snoring gently. The soldiers outside were noisy as hell, but after a nonstop healing session, the Garde could probably sleep through the apocalypse. Taylor’s whole body ached from the cold and the exertion as she pushed herself to get out of bed.
She couldn’t just keep sitting around and doing the Foundation’s bidding. She needed to do something. Find out what they were up to out here at the ass-end of nowhere.
Taylor crept towards the entrance of their tent and slowly undid the zipper enough to peek through. As usual, there was a guard posted-up right outside, but he was too distracted by the convoy of mercenaries leaving to notice her.
Still, she would need a distraction to get by him.
With her telekinesis, Taylor reached out and began unmooring the metal pylons from the tent nearest to hers. When they were loose enough, she waited for a strong gust of wind—those were never long in coming out here—and then gave the tent as firm a telekinetic shove as she could muster.
The shelter went flying, exposing a half dozen soldiers sleeping within. Immediately, the
y started shouting and scrambling, flinging themselves out of bed to grab their flying tent. Just as Taylor hoped, the soldier watching the Gardes’ tent left his posting to go help.
Taylor slipped into the night. She pulled her balaclava over her face and tried to puff herself up, walking like a man. No one paid her any attention. She speed-walked towards the headlights of the departing convoy.
Of course, Taylor knew this was dangerous. Maybe a little crazy, like something Isabela might do. “Act confident,” Isabela had told her once, “and you can bullshit your way through any situation.” She leaned on that wisdom now. She also reasoned that no matter what she did out here, short of revealing herself as a spy, the Foundation wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was too valuable.
Men all around her were climbing into trucks and driving into the night. Steeling herself, Taylor picked a random SUV and climbed into the backseat.
She cringed immediately. The SUV she’d chosen was empty except for the driver, who was giving her a weird look in the rearview mirror. And the driver was MacLaughlan.
“The hell ya sittin’ back there for?” he asked her. “I don’t got cooties.”
Taylor made a noncommittal grunting sound and slouched. Maybe he’d think she was one of the mercenaries who didn’t speak English, tired and grumpy from having to do night work.
“I know the feeling,” MacLaughlan replied with a snort. It had worked! He started to put the truck in gear, but then paused and looked at Taylor again.
“You forget something, ya git?”
She stared blankly at him. He patted the M16 attached to a rack along the truck’s middle.
“Your weapon, dingus, where’s your weapon?”
