Howling and spitting, the man groped to get his door open. Isabela relaxed her stranglehold with the seat belt enough so he could push the door open.
Before he was halfway out, Isabela yanked the door closed with her telekinesis. His head went through the window. He slumped there, head and one shoulder out the window, seat belt still looped around his neck, broken glass stuck in his face. Unconscious.
Now, Isabela moved quickly. Taking out this fool was one thing, but she didn’t want to get spotted by the local authorities or some random bystanders. That would make a mess.
She shape-shifted back to her preferred form, lifted both of her feet and kicked the guy out of his car. She exited right behind him, pulling him along towards Dr. Linda’s vehicle. Moments later, the Foundation idiot was laid out in Linda’s trunk, tied up with ripped shreds of his leather jacket. Isabela riffled through his pockets.
In his wallet, she found an ID for Alejandro Regerio. His real name or an alias? Isabela had no way of knowing. He had a local address, at least, so that would be her next lead. He also carried three hundred dollars cash, a pair of credit cards, a condom, and a half dozen punch cards to local taco trucks.
“Mr. Foundation,” Isabela murmured. “You are so basic.”
She took his gun and attached the holster to her own chest. It was a nice one—chrome plated and polished, with an ivory grip. Fancy firearm hadn’t helped him much. She also took his cell phone, which looked like a burner.
Isabela peered down at Alejandro, trying to get a good idea of his face. She’d messed him up pretty bad. In the end, she needed to consult his ID to make sure she got the details of his features correct.
When Isabela slammed the hood closed on Dr. Linda’s car, she did so as Alejandro Regerio. Foundation fixer.
That was easy. She wondered how far up the ranks she could climb like this.
Busting Alejandro’s window had been an oversight. True, it had been totally badass and felt great, but now Isabela had to dust all the broken glass off the seat, and she couldn’t roll up the window.
Hopefully, he had another ride stored back at his pad. He seemed like the type.
Isabela navigated towards the address on Alejandro’s ID. It wasn’t far, only about thirty minutes up into the hills, according to the GPS. She drove like she imagined Alejandro would, slouched, her elbow jutting out the window, shifting gears with exaggerated force like she was in a street-racing movie. Getting into character. She’d only met the man for a few minutes, but she had a pretty good grip on how he talked and acted.
Before ascending into the hills, Isabela picked up Dr. Linda’s satellite phone. She dialed the number she’d been forced to memorize—the one they’d all been forced to memorize after their last excursion off campus. Nine’s cell phone.
“Who’s this?” he asked gruffly after the third ring.
“Is that how you answer your phone?” Isabela replied, her normal voice issuing from Alejandro’s mouth.
“Isabela?” he exclaimed, then made an effort to lower his voice. “Where are you?”
“Off campus. But you knew we’d do that, didn’t you? Bad boy, giving Taylor your key card.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mm-hmm. I left a little present for you in the trunk of Linda’s car.” She gave him the address of the surf shop, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. “No one will notice he’s missing. Because he’s not.”
“What did you do?” Nine asked quietly. “This isn’t the plan we discussed . . .”
She snorted. “What plan? That went bye-bye with Ran, Kopano, and Nigel. I’m in. Taylor’s in. For infiltration class I think we should get As, yes?”
“We made arrangements for Taylor,” Nine said. “We have ways of keeping her safe.”
“I can handle my own protection. You know this.”
Isabela could hear Nine grinding his teeth, but when he spoke again she could hear something else in his voice—pride, maybe a little respect. The big doofus loved charging into battle. Of course he approved of Isabela’s play.
“Isabela, seriously, if things get dangerous—”
“Don’t worry,” she cut him off. “Escaping unpleasant situations comes very easy to me.”
With that, she hung up the phone. That was enough talk.
Isabela cruised into the hills, whipping over the winding roads at a breakneck pace. Her plan was simple. She would find this guy’s house and go through his shit. She’d dig up whatever she could about the Foundation and send it back to the Academy. Then, she would find Alejandro’s supervisor or boss or whatever, and do the same thing to that person that she had just done to Alejandro. Rinse and repeat, until there was no more Foundation to worry about.
It was a solid plan, she thought.
However, it did not account for a large man in a hooded sweatshirt walking into the road right in front of her.
He was like an apparition, emerging from the trees on the side of the road without warning. Isabela shouted and cranked the wheel to the left, slamming on the brake. The back of the Camaro lifted and jerked, fishtailing, as she swerved.
It happened too fast. She hit the guy at thirty miles per hour.
The impact was like she’d driven into a telephone pole. The front of the car buckled around the hooded figure’s body. Isabela was thrown forward. Her airbag deployed, but she still smashed her face, could immediately feel warm blood creeping down from her eyebrow and the bridge of her nose.
Black smoke curled up from the engine. Isabela’s eyes were filled with tears, but she blinked them back. Her head was swimming—a concussion, for sure. She felt her grip on Alejandro’s appearance slipping and tried to focus.
Through the cracked windshield, she saw the hooded figure struggling to free himself from the car. He was wedged in there pretty good. He was also alive. How was that possible? What the hell had she just hit?
Isabela didn’t wait around to find out. She scrambled out of the car and staggered desperately towards the trees, trying to put some distance between her and the attacker.
“Running will only make it worse, Alejandro.”
Isabela wiped blood out of her eyes. There was a boy on the side of the road. He was smartly dressed, his hair parted from the side, and spoke with a faint European accent. She’d never met him before, but she knew him immediately.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Einar said. “Surely your bosses told you I might pay a visit.”
“Merda, merda, merda,” Isabela spat and kept running. She knew that to listen to this boy was death. He would control her and—
As she reached the trees, someone grabbed her by the throat. A third attacker. Female, skinny and tall, Asian. An electric pulse ripped through Isabela, her whole body convulsing. The girl’s touch was like a lightning bolt.
Isabela fell and, as she did, she lost control. She was Alejandro when the girl touched her, but Isabela when she hit the ground. Not her preferred form of Isabela either. Her embarrassing, hideously scarred true shape.
Isabela tried to rally, tried to use her telekinesis, shape-shift, something—but the voltage combined with the head injuries were too much. She was already starting to fade when the three attackers gathered around her.
“Well,” Einar declared. “Isn’t this a surprise?”
Chapter Twenty
KOPANO OKEKE
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
“KOPANO!”
His head hurt. His eyelids were too heavy to open, limbs sluggish and numb. All Kopano wanted to do was go back to sleep.
“Kopano! Are you in there?”
Someone was shouting his name. A girl’s voice. Sounded like trouble.
“Can you hear me?”
With a groan, Kopano managed to open his eyes. He stared up at a single uncovered fluorescent light flickering in a water-stained ceiling that he didn’t recognize. His head felt clogged, like when he’d come down with a flu back home and his mom would force him to drin
k cough syrup. Where was he? What happened to him? He tried to remember.
A nice Peacekeeper in his room. She found some of Caleb’s old cologne or something? Sprayed it in his face?
“I hear you moving in there! Say something if it’s you.”
Kopano rubbed his eyes and worked some moisture into his mouth.
“Ran . . . ?” he asked, uncertain; her voice was coming through muffled. “Ran? Is that you?”
“Yes! Can you move?”
Kopano decided he couldn’t answer right away. He sat up on a firm cot and swung his legs over the edge. His bare feet touched cold concrete. He looked down at himself—a dull gray jumpsuit with no identifying marks, no zippers, no buttons, all Velcro. He was in a small room with nothing but his cot, a sink and toilet, and one empty shelf. The door—through which Ran’s voice was coming—was thick metal.
It all dawned on Kopano fast. He felt sick to his stomach.
“Holy shit, Ran. Are we in prison?”
She didn’t answer. “Can you move?” she asked instead, her voice taut.
Kopano got up unsteadily. He cringed at a sharp pain in his temple. He reached up and touched a bandage there, heavy gauze and medical tape, a sharp throb beneath. Had he hit his head?
“I . . . I can move,” he said.
“Then stand back from the door.”
The door began to glow. Kopano recognized the dark crimson of Ran’s explosive energy. He yanked up the mattress and used it as a shield, wedging himself in the far corner between the sink and the slab of concrete that held up the bed.
The explosion came seconds later, a burst of kinetic energy and tearing metal that made Kopano’s head ring all the more. The door to his cell rocketed backwards and smashed through his toilet, water and chunks of plaster spilling across the floor.
Ran padded into the room. She wore the same prisoner outfit as Kopano and had a similar bandage on her right temple. She had her sleeves rolled up and the knuckles of her right hand dripped blood. Kopano got the sense that she’d been in a fight.
The situation might have been dangerous and disorienting, but that didn’t stop Kopano from striding forward and sweeping Ran up in a hug. The brief terror of finding himself in prison was greatly diminished by her presence.
“I’m so happy to see you,” he said.
Ran gently brushed free of him. “No time for that. There are guards.” She squeezed his arm quickly. “I am happy to see you, too.”
“What the hell is this place?”
“I don’t know,” Ran said. “But I do not intend to stay and find out.”
Kopano followed Ran out into the hall. Dimly lit and dingy, its old concrete walls sweated with moisture. There were other cells like the one that Kopano had come out of, their doors left ajar to show that they were empty. Kopano looked to the right. He could tell that was the direction Ran came from because of the smoking husk of another cell door, this one blown outward, a security camera that dangled broken from the wall, and the bodies of three guards in body armor and helmets.
“Are they dead?” Kopano asked quietly.
“Unconscious,” Ran answered.
He frowned at the path of destruction. “Our first reaction to waking up in a place like this is to start hitting people and blowing things up,” he said. “Maybe we do belong here.”
“That was my first reaction, not yours,” Ran said coolly. “You do not have to come with me. But, we do not know if our captors are friends or enemies. Kidnapping and imprisoning us without any process would suggest to me they are the latter. But you do what you will, Kopano.”
“Okay, okay,” Kopano said, holding up his hands. “I’m with you. Just . . . let’s not hurt anyone too bad, at least until we know what’s going on.”
“I won’t hurt anyone who doesn’t try to hurt me,” Ran said. She picked up a chunk of shattered porcelain and charged it with her Legacy.
They crept down the hall in the opposite direction of Ran’s former cell. They went around two corners, encountering nothing else but more security cameras. Ran promptly ripped them out of the walls with her telekinesis.
“Where is everyone?” Kopano asked.
“They will come,” Ran replied. “Those others had weapons like you faced during the Wargames. Shock collars and chaff grenades to disrupt telekinesis. Be ready.”
They turned another corner and there was finally a break from the monotony of empty cells. Ahead, two thick double doors appeared to lead to a different section of the prison.
Between the Garde and the doors were a half dozen guards. They all wore heavy black body armor and helmets with face shields, a dim glow emanating from within suggesting they were using HUDs—heads-up displays that would assist with aiming, plus grant them night vision and heat vision. Two of them were armed with plastic riot shields, two with the crossbow-shaped Inhibitors that Kopano remembered from the Wargames, and two with long metallic sticks that resembled cattle prods. They were organized in a tight group and had clearly trained for exactly this kind of combat.
But they didn’t stand a chance.
Kopano’s first move was to try yanking their shields away with his telekinesis. All the guards were tethered to their weapons, though, thick cords connecting their armaments directly to their body armor. Kopano’s grab for their shields knocked the guards off-balance a bit, but it didn’t disarm them or break their formation.
Ran took a different approach. She tossed her charged chunk of toilet at the guards. They were prepared for that, the shield bearers knocked the explosive down and pinned it to the floor. When it exploded, the force sent them flying hard into the hallway walls, but they had managed to spare the rest of the group.
One of the back-row guards tossed a grenade at their feet. It released a puff of glittering chaff and then emitted a pulsing burst of blinding light, all this creating a highly disorienting strobe effect. That was their best method for disrupting telekinesis.
The guards fired their Inhibitors. Auto-locking collars attached to tensile cords that discharged crippling amounts of electricity, the projectiles programmed to seek the heat of the carotid artery. Kopano had been struck by one of these collars before. Not an experience he was looking to repeat.
With the chaff and the strobe, it all happened too fast for him and Ran to deploy their telekinesis. Still, Kopano was ready. He grabbed Ran’s arm and turned them both intangible. The collars sailed right through their ghostly necks, Kopano guided Ran to the side of the cords, then turned them solid again.
Before the guards could reel their collars back in, Ran screamed and charged.
She leaped into the air and hit one of them in the neck with a jump-kick, pinning him against the wall by grabbing hold of his partner and staying suspended between them. Her foot on the throat of one guard, she held the other by his Inhibitor and began charging his weapon, the crimson glow cutting through the strobe effect.
The guards with cattle prods came forward and Ran was out of limbs to fight them off with. Kopano moved to intercept. He phased through Ran and her two guards, then hardened his molecules in time to punch the nearest guard in the helmet, shattering the mask over his face and putting him down. The second one jabbed at Kopano’s abdomen with his cattle prod. He turned transparent again, let the guard stumble through him, then turned solid to grab him by the back of the head and slammed him face-first into the nearest wall.
Two down. But now the guards with the shields were starting to get back up.
As they did, the guard with the charged Inhibitor panicked and released his weapon, hitting a button inside his glove that disconnected it from his tether. Ran rolled to the floor, releasing the guard who she’d been pinning with her foot to let him gasp for breath, and slung the charged Inhibitor at the guards with shields.
This time, they were too slow. They took the brunt of the explosion and were flung back down the hall, their shields hanging limp from their armor tethers.
Four down.
The guard n
earest Ran snatched up one of the cattle prods and charged her before she could regain her feet. Kopano intercepted him, his diamond-hard elbow crunching through the guard’s mask in a single blow.
Seeing his colleagues decimated, the last guard tried to retreat. With her telekinesis, Ran looped one of the shield cords around his ankles so that he fell on his face. As he struggled to get back up, Kopano bounded over and put him down with a precise blow to the back of the head.
Ran stomped down on the grenade, cutting off the annoying strobe effect. Then, she looked at Kopano and wiped sweat off her forehead. He grinned.
“Practice makes perfect,” he said.
“Come on,” she replied. “Let’s keep going.”
They moved quickly towards the end of the hall. The double doors were sealed by a set of bars and a heavy-duty hydraulic contraption, but that couldn’t stop Kopano. He led the way, reaching behind him to grab Ran’s hand, going transparent while they were still in motion and passing right through the doors.
Kopano expected more hallways and more guards. Instead, their narrow confines opened into a large room with a vaulted ceiling. A bank of monitors dominated one wall, some of them tuned to static, thanks to all the cameras Ran had broken on the way in. There weren’t any guards, just one solitary woman seated at a conference table. Although she had a weathered look about her—auburn hair streaked with gray, scars on the side of her face—Kopano thought the woman to be in her forties. She raised an eyebrow at them and he felt almost embarrassed for bursting in on her.
“Let me start by saying that I don’t condone the way Greger brought you two in,” the woman spoke calmly, like they’d already been having a conversation. “I figured there would be some resentment on your part. That’s why I arranged for a little exercise out in the hall.” She waved back the way they had come. “Get that aggression out. Thank you for not hurting any of the guards too badly.”
“I know you,” Ran said quietly. “You were at Patience Creek.”
Patience Creek. Kopano had heard the place mentioned in hushed whispers. It was the secret military base from where the Garde and humanity waged their resistance against the Mogadorian invaders. A massacre happened there when the Mogs infiltrated the place. Ran, Nigel, and Caleb had survived—others weren’t so lucky.