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Taylor winced. It hadn’t even occurred to her to steal one of the rifles.
She didn’t know what to say and now MacLaughlan was really looking at her.
“Take your hat off,” he ordered.
Swallowing, Taylor did as she was told. MacLaughlan’s eyes lit up immediately.
“Ah, the curious gal,” he said, amused. He twisted around in his seat to eyeball her, wincing thanks to the burns that Taylor hadn’t finished healing. “You think this is a trip to the mall or something?”
“I want to see why I’m out here freezing my ass off,” Taylor replied honestly, trying to sound self-assured. “Take me with you and I’ll finish healing you.”
MacLaughlan stared at her for a moment. Then, he shrugged and awkwardly unbuckled his body armor so that Taylor could reach her hands inside.
“Fuck it,” he said. “XO finds out, you tricked me with some alien magic, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
MacLaughlan put the truck in drive and followed the line of vehicles out into the darkness of the plains. Taylor leaned forward and pressed her hands against his side, healing him while he drove.
“This reminds me of the time I stole my dad’s car to dog it with Betty Garretty,” MacLaughlan said with a laugh.
Taylor recoiled a bit. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “I could throw you through that windshield in a heartbeat.”
“Ah, don’t flatter yourself, little miss,” MacLaughlan snorted. “I got a wife and kids at home and you’re all’a twelve years old.”
They drove in silence after that. Eventually, Taylor finished healing MacLaughlan and leaned back in her seat, peering out the window. It was pure darkness out there. The convoy drove in a straight line, headlights illuminating only the truck in front of them and what seemed like endless snow and ice. They were traveling uphill, cresting the western rise, going no more than twenty miles per hour as they rumbled across the slippery terrain.
“What’s out there?” Taylor asked, growing impatient after thirty minutes spent driving in a straight line.
MacLaughlan smirked. “Better you see it yourself. Almost there.”
Indeed, Taylor saw lights up ahead. Not lights from a town, but flood lamps mounted on towering girders, like at a construction site. A crane came into view and some kind of heavy-duty drill that reminded Taylor of an oil derrick. Still, she couldn’t see what all that equipment was for, not until they reached the top of the rise and started heading downhill.
Taylor leaned forward in her seat, eyes wide.
“It’s a warship,” she said.
The wreckage of one of the vast Mogadorian warships was spread out across the snowy valley. Even half-destroyed, the city-block-size ship was ominous. Clearly, where it hadn’t been blown apart, it had been scavenged, chunks missing here and there, other sections dissected. It looked to Taylor like the skeleton of a giant metal locust.
“Aye,” MacLaughlan replied. “And the thing leaks like a son of a bi—”
Before he could finish, a streak of red energy cut through the darkness and sizzled into the passenger side of the truck in front of them. MacLaughlan slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding the other truck as it skidded out of control.
“Hell!” MacLaughlan shouted. He pulled on a pair of night-vision goggles and grabbed for his rifle. “I thought we killed all these bloody vermin earlier.”
Taylor stared out her window. “You mean . . . ?”
“Nasty bastards are out there, freezing their alien balls off,” MacLaughlan answered. “Stragglers come through every once in a while, probably mad we’re going through their stuff, ya know? Only a few of ’em. Nothing we can’t . . .”
MacLaughlan trailed off as he looked through the goggles. The entire convoy had stopped, mercenaries taking cover behind their trucks, assuming defensive positions.
“Bit . . . bit more than a handful,” MacLaughlan breathed. He shoved Taylor. “Get yer ass down!”
Even as he did, the night lit up crimson. A hundred streaks of blaster fire sizzled across the plain, bombarding the convoy from both sides. The windows of their truck shattered and Taylor felt a blistering sensation on her cheek, smelled her hair burning. MacLaughlan let out a cry and was suddenly silent.
They were under attack.
There were Mogadorians on the tundra.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
KOPANO OKEKE
ABU DHABI, THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
A CUPCAKE INSIDE A BOX COVERED IN BARBED wire. That’s all it was. Simple as that.
Kopano stared at himself in the dusty mirror. His face was dappled with sweat and not just from the dry heat of the Persian Gulf. The café bathroom was tiny, dimly lit, and smelled like hookah smoke. He wiped a smudge off the mirror with his shirtsleeve, as if being able to see himself clearly would make this easier.
“Okay,” he told himself. “Just like the cupcake, cupcake. No big deal.”
The barbed-wire box and the tasty treat inside had been one of Professor Nine’s favorite training games when they first learned Kopano could spread his molecules as well as harden them. It required him to keep part of his arm transparent while his solid hand reached for the cupcake.
“Rest assured,” Dr. Goode told him once, “while it’ll take time to master your Legacy, it is part of your biology now. Your body won’t let you hurt yourself. It won’t let you solidify your arm when it’s sharing the same quantum space with the box in the same way that your lungs won’t let you hold your breath forever.”
Kopano really, really wanted to believe that.
He leaned close to the mirror and peered at the tiny wound on his temple. The bandage had come off a couple of days ago, leaving behind a glued-shut incision the same size as his little fingernail. The scab would probably come off in a couple of days and leave behind a barely noticeable scar. But, obviously, it wasn’t the cut that concerned Kopano; it was what was underneath.
The chip. The one that gave Agent Walker and her people control.
Kopano pressed his index finger against the side of his head, turned the digit transparent, and then slowly, cautiously pushed his finger into his cranium.
There was a strange, fizzy sensation at the side of his head. He started to see spots and immediately yanked his finger out.
He waited a moment, hands braced on the sides of the sink, to see if he would have an aneurysm or something. There was a mild throb around his incision, maybe the beginning of a headache, but nothing Kopano couldn’t handle.
“You’re okay,” he reassured his reflection. “You can do this. Just like the cupcake.”
“What took you so long?” Agent Walker asked when Kopano emerged from the café. She leaned against their rented town car, aviator sunglasses glinting in the late afternoon sun.
“Sorry,” Kopano replied. He rubbed his belly. “I got used to American food where they don’t use any spices.”
Walker made a face. “Ah. Condolences. You want to drive?”
Without waiting for a response, she tossed Kopano the car keys. They climbed into the air-conditioned sedan where Ran waited, stoic and silent in the backseat. She hadn’t said much at all since they’d been “recruited” to Operation Watchtower, not even when she and Kopano were alone. Occasionally, he caught her staring daggers at Walker. Ran resented this whole thing and, since Kopano had more willingly gone along with the arrangement, she probably resented him, too.
Behind the wheel, Kopano eased them out into Abu Dhabi’s stop-and-go traffic. He smiled, but caught himself before Ran or Walker saw. Abu Dhabi wasn’t nearly as crowded and the glittering skyscrapers were mostly new and ostentatious compared to Lagos’ gilded chaos, yet this place still reminded him of home. Maybe it was all the bad drivers—sports cars weaving through traffic at breakneck speeds, their operators paying more attention to their phones than the roads. Big men, probably, on important business. Kopano gripped the wheel and got into the flow. He glanced over at Walker, wondering what his father would think of him now, driving around this secret agent lady, on a mission.
Walker, as it happened, was in the middle of thumbing through crime-scene photos. Kopano caught sight of a man’s body smashed on a sidewalk, dark blood and broken glass all around him, and gagged.
