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“Shoot back, asshole!” The mercenary screamed in her face. He didn’t recognize her, but quickly registered that she was unarmed. “Idiot! Where’s your weapon?”
Taylor’s heart beat savagely against her breastbone. Adrenaline flowed through her. They’d tried to prepare her for fights like this at the Academy, but training rooms and obstacle courses didn’t get across the blood, mud, and madness. She was in over her head, but that didn’t matter. She was Garde. And why were Garde put on Earth?
To kill Mogadorians.
“Here’s my weapon,” Taylor said to the soldier.
With her telekinesis, Taylor hefted a door that had gotten blown off one of the trucks and sent it careening into the Mogadorian line. She was pretty sure that she sheared one of them clean in half.
“Ho-ly shit,” said the soldier. He grabbed his walkie-talkie and shouted into it. “It’s one of the assets! XO! It’s one of the assets!”
Taylor didn’t see the XO anywhere, couldn’t really make out any individuals. It was chaos. The Mogs returned fire and she ran, pushing her way behind a group of mercenaries taking cover beneath the base of a flood light. When a Mog stepped into view, she used her telekinesis to rip his blaster away.
A mercenary collapsed beside her and Taylor immediately smelled burned skin. He’d been shot in the shoulder, the Mog blaster searing through his armor. Taylor crouched down and pressed her hands against his chest, healing him. The soldier stared at her wide-eyed, then brushed her off, reoriented his rifle, and returned fire on the Mogs.
“A thank-you would be nice,” Taylor said, her words drowned out by gunfire.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulder. Taylor reacted by spinning around and elbowing the person in the face. The XO ducked just in time, narrowly avoiding getting his nose broken.
“The hell are you doing out here, Cook?” he screamed.
A howling Mogadorian charged into view. These things were practically suicidal. As he leveled his blaster, Taylor jerked on it with her telekinesis, causing him to discharge the weapon right under his own chin.
She tried not to think about how she’d learned that trick from Einar.
“I’m helping you not die,” she responded to the XO.
He smirked at that. Taylor noticed that his mouth was bloody and that there was a sizable cut over his eyebrow. She reached out to touch him but he slapped her hand away.
“Don’t waste your energy,” he said. “Focus on the ones that need it.”
Taylor started to turn from him, but then came a piercing shriek of metal. The steel beam holding up the floodlight above them had taken too much fire. It teetered and started to fall, a half ton of metal and spotlights collapsing right into their midst.
“Go!” screamed the XO. “Take cover inside the ship!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DUANPHEN
A NICE RESTAURANT—SOMEWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES
DUANPHEN HAD SEEN RESTAURANTS LIKE THIS before, but only from the outside, while she waited with the executive’s limo, scowling at anyone who got too close. Places like this, with its candlelight, white tablecloths, and clinking wineglasses—they weren’t for people like her. They were for the wealthy, the powerful. Standing in the restaurant’s dimly lit vestibule, Duanphen felt the same rising nerves as she used to before a fight.
“Why do you look like you’re going to barf?” Isabela asked her.
Duanphen looked down at the Brazilian girl, who had settled comfortably onto one of the posh leather couches in the waiting area. “I feel out of place,” she said.
“Psh.” Isabela dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “This spot isn’t even that cool. And we are definitely the hottest people here.”
Both of them wore new dresses—Isabela’s a low-cut red one, Duanphen a more modest black sheath. They had gone shopping just that afternoon, spending some of the Foundation’s money on appropriate attire. Duanphen had been relieved when Isabela offered—no, more like insisted—to pick out clothes for her.
Duanphen was glad they had kidnapped Isabela and happier still that the girl had agreed to Einar’s plan and stuck around. Einar was very serious all the time, always preaching about how they couldn’t trust humanity. It got exhausting. And The Beast—or, Number Five, as Duanphen reminded herself to call him—wasn’t exactly friendly. Having someone normal in their group made Duanphen feel less insane for joining Einar’s cause.
“Ladies? Shall we?” Einar said, as he returned from talking with the maître d’. “A table for three just happened to open up.”
“What did you do?” Isabela asked, standing up. “Mess with his brain?”
“Why would I waste my energy on something so trivial?” Einar replied. He flashed the thick wad of bills he carried in his suit pocket. “The world’s oldest form of mind control worked just fine.”
Einar was polished as always. He hadn’t needed to buy a new suit for the occasion, but he did anyway. He held his arm out to Isabela. She laughed at him.
“What do you think this is, some creepy date?” Isabela asked. “Ugh. Do you have a boner right now?”
“I—no,” Einar replied. “You aren’t even my type. I was just being gentlemanly.”
Isabela breezed past him with a snort, following the host into the dining room. Einar followed, Duanphen smiling quietly as she came last. Those two were bickering nonstop, with Isabela usually the victor. Duanphen knew the girl got under Einar’s skin, but no matter how infuriating the exchange, Einar never did anything. He could’ve controlled Isabela’s emotions and made her docile, assaulted her with his telekinesis, or sicced Five on her. Instead, he showed restraint.
It was one thing to talk about not using your Legacies against other Garde. It was another to actually live by those rules and self-police. Thanks to Isabela constantly needling him, Duanphen had actually grown to trust Einar more.
The host led them to a booth near the front window, twinkling city lights visible beyond the glass. Duanphen sensed eyes on them. Surely, the other diners must have been wondering how these three teenagers could afford to get a table here. She ran a hand over the stubble atop her head. It was strange to be on this side of the glass.
“Ah, now this is more like it,” Einar said, settling in across from the girls. “This is how all our kind should be living.”
Isabela’s eyes flicked around the room. “It’s nice to be off that smelly-ass ship of yours, but aren’t you worried about being seen?”
Einar waved this objection away. “They won’t expect us to be here. It’s fine.”
“The Foundation will come back at you for what you’ve done,” Duanphen pointed out. “They’ll come back at us.”
“Of course. But not tonight. And anyway, they’ve got nothing in their arsenal capable of stopping us. Or him.”
Einar pointed towards the ceiling. Five was up there, in the air, keeping watch from the sky above the restaurant. He hadn’t seemed offended that he wasn’t invited to dinner. His broken skin would’ve been too conspicuous and Isabela was far from willing to hold his hand during the entire meal.
“He’ll be hungry, probably,” Duanphen said.
“Do you see the way he scarfs down that fast food?” Isabela asked. “He is always hungry.”
“We’ll get him some takeout,” Einar said.
They studied their menus. The meals were complicated and none of them had prices. When their skeptical looking waiting arrived, Einar ordered himself a lobster. Isabela asked for a medium-rare filet mignon.
“Just a salad, please,” Duanphen said. “Dressing on the side.”
Isabela stared at her once the waiter was gone. “I need to teach you how to spend other people’s money.”
Einar cleared his throat. “Where were you during the invasion, Duanphen?”
She blinked at him. The question had come out of nowhere.
“Bangkok,” she said.
“Did you have your Legacies already?”
“No. They di
d not come until later.”
Einar turned to Isabela. “What about you?”
“None of your business,” Isabela said, her lips pressed together. “Now, is this the part where I ask where you were and you get to the point of this random conversation?”
Einar breathed out through his nose. “Do you remember how Setrákus Ra went on TV and demanded that Earth’s governments turn over all Human Garde to him?”
Isabela shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“My father was an investment banker. My mother was an international lawyer. Normal people, I thought. When Setrákus Ra made that request, they tried to tie me up.” The candlelight flickered in Einar’s eyes as he looked out the window. “They were part of a group called MogPro. You know what that means?”
