“Hmm,” Ran replied noncommittally.
“Point is, you don’t want to use your Legacies for Earth Garde, that’s fine with me. I don’t know if those UN tools will be chill about it, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But what I gotta know, if I’m going to graduate you from the Academy, is that should push come to shove, if your life or someone else’s life depends on it—I need to know you won’t hesitate to drop all this pacifist horseshit and blow up some bad guys. Because whether you like it or not, you’re a Garde, and situations like that tend to happen to us.”
Ran considered Nine’s words.
“I will not hesitate,” she said quietly.
Nine nodded once, satisfied, and stood up. He laid his towel out in the sand and began the process of detaching his prosthetic limb. Ran realized he planned to go swimming.
“By the way,” he said, “how’s the new roommate?”
Ran tilted her head. “Taylor? She is fine. Adjusting, I think.”
“Good,” Nine replied, and set his arm down in the towel. “Keep an eye on her, yeah? You wouldn’t think it, but healers got it worse than badass types like us. The whole savior thing, it can mess ’em up.”
There was something in Nine’s tone—almost like a warning, almost like he wasn’t saying exactly what he meant. Before Ran could ask him any further questions, he jogged towards the water and dove into the waves.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CALEB CRANE
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
“YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS, MAN?”
Caleb Crane shook his head. No. He did not know what his problem was.
“You don’t have any balls. That’s what your problem is.”
Caleb’s brow creased. He grew up with two older brothers and a drill instructor for a father. He was used to this kind of talk. That didn’t mean he appreciated it.
“You like this Taylor girl, right? But it’s been weeks and you haven’t said anything to her. That’s pathetic, man. I’m not even saying you should flirt with her. I’m not sure you’re capable of that without embarrassing yourself.”
Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. He sat on the foot of his bed, the door to his room closed. This lecture—on the topic of how huge a loser he was—had already been going on for some time.
“You could be like—‘Hey, how are your classes going? What kind of music do you like? What are your favorite movies?’ They call that small talk, you creep. I mean, if she asks you those questions back, you’ll have to lie because your taste sucks and your life is lame, but whatever. Anyway, probably better to lie, just say you like what she likes. Always agree with her. That’s a good strategy. How hard is that, dude?”
“It isn’t really my style,” Caleb replied. “To, um, be so manipulative.”
“You don’t have a style! Look, I know your confidence is shot because of, like, your brothers beating the shit out of you all the time and kids at school making fun of your big ears . . .”
This was true. Caleb had been mocked mercilessly in elementary school for his ears—which he had since grown into. His classmates would flop their arms in front of their faces like an elephant’s trunk and make trumpet noises with their mouths. It had stuck with him.
“. . . but you’re good-looking now. I mean, you’re okay. Your clothes suck. We can work on that. But listen, all you need to do is be nice, chat her up a little—and then, boom, you’re her friend.”
“The friend zone,” Caleb said. “I heard that was bad.”
“What? Did you read that in some ladies’ magazine? Don’t say ‘friend zone.’ Ever. Look, stupid, here’s what a guy with your limited charms has to do. You get in tight. Buddy up. And then—well, school here is stressful. She’s probably emotional. Most girls are. You wait for her to let her guard down, for her to need a good cry—and whose shoulder is she going to look for?”
“Mine?”
“Bingo!”
“But . . .” Caleb’s brow furrowed. “The goal is to make her cry?”
“No! The goal is to take advantage of an emotional situation. God, you’re a hopeless case. Why do I even bother?”
Caleb looked up at himself. A duplicate. Him . . . but different. A fast talker, mean, with highly questionable opinions about the opposite sex.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” Caleb said.
The duplicate held up his hands. “Whoa, hold on—”
Caleb stood up. He could reabsorb a duplicate without wrapping his hands around the duplicate’s neck, but this one had really gotten on his nerves.
“Ack—! Stop!”
And then he was gone. The room was quiet. Caleb was alone.
Outside, in the common room, Caleb found Kopano watching a martial arts movie. The Nigerian smiled and waved.
“This part is good!” Kopano said. “You guys should come watch.”
Caleb glanced over his shoulder. “It’s just me.”
“Oh,” Kopano said, paying more attention to his movie than Caleb. “I thought I heard you talking to someone in there.”
“No,” Caleb said. He watched a few seconds of the movie, then headed for the door. “I’ve got Dr. Linda. See you later.”
Dr. Linda pushed her reading glasses up her nose and peered down at Caleb’s file, thumbing through notes on his recent training activities. “I see here you were able to create nine duplicates this morning,” she said. “A new personal best.”
Caleb sat opposite Dr. Linda on her couch, back straight, hands on his thighs. “Yes,” he affirmed.
“And did you have any issues with control?”
“No, ma’am,” Caleb answered, then frowned. “Well, not during the training, anyway.”
Dr. Linda looked up from his file. “What happened, Caleb?”
“Afterwards, in my room, I duplicated without realizing it,” Caleb confessed. “One minute I was thinking about . . . I don’t know. Stuff. And the next minute he was there. He was a jerk. Really mean to me.”
Dr. Linda tapped her pen against her chin. “Are you angry with yourself, Caleb?”
“What? No.”
“We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?”
“We have?”
“The duplicates are completely in your control,” Dr. Linda said, standing up. “When one of them talks to you, when you talk back—this is you having a conversation with yourself.”
Caleb shook his head. “The stuff this guy was saying—I wouldn’t say anything like that.”
Dr. Linda went to her filing cabinet. “No. You wouldn’t. But your subconscious? Able to communicate without a filter? One can only imagine what kind of truths might tumble out. It seems pushing your powers can exacerbate these incidents. Tiredness, stress, strain—these conditions create adverse behavioral reactions in regular people. In someone with your Legacy, the problem is—no pun intended—multiplied.”
Caleb crossed his arms. “It’s not just me being tired. Or, if it is, it’s because I keep them in check and then lose my grip. I swear, Dr. Linda, they have minds of their own.”
“They literally do not.”
Dr. Linda handed Caleb a slim file. He already knew the contents; she had shown it to him during their last session. A few weeks ago—spurred on by Caleb’s continued insistence that the duplicates were their own people as well as the discussion of anatomy in one of his classes—Dr. Goode and the Academy’s medical staff had given one of Caleb’s clones an MRI. Not only was no brain activity detected, but the duplicate appeared to be made from a substance that only approximated human flesh. There was something not quite right in the molecules, but samples proved hard to examine because they kept being reabsorbed into Caleb. At the same time, the researchers gave Caleb his own MRI. They found that his brain responded whenever a duplicate acted or was stimulated.
Last session, the results had given Caleb pause. He’d had a week to think about them, though. He set the file down without looking at it.
&nb
sp; “All due respect, Dr. Linda, because I sure do appreciate all you guys have tried to do to help me, but . . .” Caleb looked down at the floor. “Since we’re dealing with, y’know, alien powers and stuff? Couldn’t the science here be wrong? Maybe my duplicates think in a way that’s beyond what your machines can register.”
Dr. Linda narrowed her eyes a fraction. Caleb knew that look. He had disappointed her.
“In my opinion, and in the unanimous opinion of the doctors and scientists who work here, that is simply not the case.”
Caleb nodded stiffly. That was his habit whenever an adult said something authoritative, even if he didn’t necessarily agree.
“Maybe,” Dr. Linda continued once it was clear Caleb wouldn’t say anything else. “Maybe you could bring one of your duplicates to our next session. Do you think that might help you better express yourself?”
Caleb shook his head. “Oh no, I don’t think so. With another one of them here, I don’t think I’d get a word in edgewise.”
Back in his room, the duplicate wasn’t happy with him.
“Talking shit about us to your therapist. That’s real cool, bro.”
It was the same duplicate as before—the aggressive one. He’d started to think of this one as Kyle, like his brother. The duplicate paced back and forth, agitated, while Caleb again sat on the foot of his bed.
“You’ve always been a tattletale,” the duplicate growled. He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “Look. This is getting pathetic. You should let me take over for a while. Watch how much better I make your life. You’ll love it.”
“I don’t know. I think Dr. Linda might be right,” a second duplicate said. This one stood next to Caleb’s bookshelves, perusing the small collection of paperback sci-fi novels he’d amassed. The reasonable one. He didn’t show up too often. Caleb was glad for his presence.
“Dr. Linda’s a goddamn quack,” said Aggressive-Caleb, striding over to glare at his fellow duplicate.
“On the contrary,” Reasonable-Caleb countered. “She seems like she knows what she’s doing. I’d say there’s a fair chance that we’re simply figments of Caleb’s imagination made manifest. Or aspects of his personality that he’s repressed. You’ll recall that his childhood—our childhood—didn’t have a lot of room for expression.” Reasonable-Caleb turned to smile gently at his counterpart. “Perhaps it would do you good, friend, to consider your own existence with a more open mind.”
Aggressive-Caleb responded by punching the other duplicate in the face.
And then they were brawling. The duplicates knocked over Caleb’s books and went crashing into his desk. He couldn’t tell which one was which anymore. Caleb sighed and stood up.
“Okay, enough,” he said, concentrating briefly so that he could reabsorb the duplicates. “It’s time for dinner.”
Caleb preferred to eat early, before the dining hall got too crowded. As soon as he sat down at a table in the back with his tray, he noticed Taylor across the room. Normally, she would eat with Isabela or Kopano, but tonight she was alone except for the huge textbook spread out in front of her.
Here was the opportunity Caleb had been waiting for. They were both alone and in a casual, no-pressure setting. Why shouldn’t they eat dinner together? He could ask her all the questions he’d been cataloging in his head—what music did she like? What movies? What was it like growing up in South Dakota? Caleb’s heart fluttered at the possibilities.
And then, he was sitting down across from her. He was actually doing it! Taylor smiled up at him—casual, relaxed, happy to see him—and he could smell her shampoo from across the table. She was like an oasis in this desert of foreign weirdos and mutant teenagers; a girl just like the ones from back home. The ones he never got up the nerve to talk with. But this was a new Caleb.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied. “How’s it going? Caleb, right?”
“That’s me.”
Except it wasn’t.
Caleb watched as his duplicate settled in across from Taylor. He could see from the duplicate’s eyes and hear through the duplicate’s ears. Doing so created a disorienting echo effect, but Caleb had long ago gotten used to that.
“How you making out so far?” the duplicate asked Taylor. “Pretty big change from back home, huh?”
“Oh, that’s right. You said you’re from . . .”
“Nebraska.”
“Right, right.” Taylor closed her textbook and smiled at Caleb. “It’s pretty nuts. A lot different than home, that’s for sure.”
“No kidding,” the duplicate replied with a casual good humor that Caleb envied. “I’d never even been to Canada before this and now we’re in like the world’s biggest exchange student program.”
Taylor chuckled. “I was really intimidated at first. I didn’t want to be here at all. But I’m starting to get used to it.”
A dinner tray thunked on the table in front of Caleb, startling him. Nigel took a seat with his usual cocky smile. Caleb blinked at him.
“Evening, my good man,” Nigel said. “Up for a bit of roommate bonding?”
Caleb had noticed how lately Nigel seemed more social. The Brit was making a point to invite Caleb to watch movies with him and Kopano, or to eat together, or walk to class. Caleb suspected this was Dr. Linda’s doing. If she’d gotten Nigel to finally forgive him for what happened on the island—what his uncle made him do—then that was a relief. But this was really bad timing.
“Um, I’d like to be alone, actually.”
Taylor raised a confused eyebrow. “Ha—but you sat with me?”
Caleb squinted. The duplicate had spoken the words he intended for Nigel. Through his clone’s eyes, Caleb could see Taylor now wore one of those weirded-out looks he was familiar with from back in Nebraska.
“Now isn’t a good time,” he told Nigel through gritted teeth.
“Sorry, I spaced out there,” the duplicate said to Taylor, talking fast. “My roommate is always blasting this crazy death metal in our suite. I was just thinking about that. I’ve got two older brothers, so I’m used to sharing a living space but man, our dad would’ve never allowed us to listen to music at that volume.”
“Oh. Got it,” Taylor replied with a benefit-of-the-doubt smile. She shrugged. “I’m an only child and I actually don’t mind the roommates, they—”
Caleb didn’t hear the rest of what Taylor said. Nigel distracted him.
“Not a good time?” Nigel asked with a laugh. “Looks to me like you’re sitting here by yourself having a wank. Of course it’s a good time.” When Caleb responded with silence, Nigel began looking around the dining hall. “Unless you’re expecting somebody else . . . ?”
It took Nigel only a moment to notice Taylor and the duplicate engaged in conversation across the room. Slowly, he turned back to Caleb with an openmouthed look of bewilderment.
“The hell are you up to, Caleb? This like one’a them old TV shows where the bloke hides in the bushes feeding his mate lines?”
“Please, Nigel, just be quiet,” Caleb pleaded.
“Some kinda weird hetero courtship ritual?” Nigel continued, laughing now. “You got your bloody clone over there talking you up? Is that it? He asking that bird—have you met my mate Caleb?”
Across the room, Taylor screamed, “I can see through you!”
At first, Caleb interpreted these words metaphorically—she’d spotted him and Nigel, discovered that he wasn’t man enough to talk to her on his own. But no, Taylor spoke literally—his clone had gone transparent, ghostlike, as Caleb’s concentration floundered. A moment later, the clone simply winked out of existence. Taylor screamed again.
“Uh-oh,” Nigel said.
Everyone in the student union stared in Taylor’s direction. Taylor, however, stared at Caleb, at last noticing him at his back table. Nigel worked a finger under the collar of his T-shirt and slid his chair innocently away from Caleb’s table.
“What the hell was that?” Taylor sh
outed at Caleb.
In response, Caleb got up from his seat and fled.
After dinner, as Nigel crossed the quad headed back to the dorms, the duplicate caught up with him.
“Hey! You really screwed that up for me, asshole!”
Before Nigel could turn around, the duplicate shoved him in the back. Caught off guard, Nigel stumbled a few feet and fell, landing hard on his hands and knees. He rolled over, skinny arms extended in defense, blood trickling from a scrape on his elbow.
“Oy! What the hell, Caleb?”
“I’m not Caleb, mate,” the duplicate responded, unblinking eyes staring down at Nigel. The duplicate’s fists clenched as he loomed over the scrawny Brit. “You like running your mouth. Maybe I should teach you—”
From out of nowhere, Caleb raced across the lawn and shoulder-blocked the duplicate to the ground. The duplicate bellowed as Caleb dove on top of him. Caleb began to pummel his mirror image, raining down punch after punch. The duplicate didn’t bleed; but Caleb’s fists left indentations in the thing’s head like he was slamming his knuckles into clay. Nigel watched all this wide-eyed, crab-walking backwards.
Caleb’s final punch thudded into the dirt. The duplicate went transparent and disappeared. Out of breath, he turned towards Nigel.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I . . . they’ve been out of control lately.”
Caleb stood, then reached down to help Nigel up. Nigel slapped away his hand and got up on his own, brushing himself off.
“You’ve lost the plot, mate,” Nigel growled. “I been trying to let bygones be bygones but you’re bloody mad, aren’t you? Got it out for me.”
“I don’t. I don’t have a problem with you. That—that wasn’t me.”
Nigel snorted. “Dr. Linda, she wants me to buddy up with you, thinks you need a friend. But you got friends, don’t ya?” Caleb flinched as Nigel tapped on his own forehead. “Your friends are all up here, eh? Bloody nutter. They should commit you.”