Return to Zero

by Pittacus Lore

  “Heartening,” Nigel said.

  “So what you’re saying is that we’re going to have to fight,” Nine said.

  “Or run,” added Taylor.

  Whatever else was said, Nigel didn’t hear it. He drifted back towards the student union. His mother was in custody, taken down as much as someone like her could ever be. His father was dead. His best friend was halfway around the world with his dad’s killer. And here, the Academy, which had finally started to feel like home to him, was on the verge of being swallowed up.

  Fear, distrust, corruption.

  And nothing would change. That was basically what Archibald had said.

  Nigel thought back to the invasion. How he’d rallied the first few Human Garde to race off to fight the Mogadorians. He’d thought that he was going to be a hero.

  What had Nigel ever done that had made a bit of difference?

  He found himself standing in the student union. The place was noisy and active, students bustling around, chatting with each other as they prepared dinner. Omar Azoulay waved to him from the kitchen. They’d gotten to work without Nigel’s prompting this time. They were taking care of each other.

  The TV was tuned to the news, where, of course, the anchors were talking about the situation with Earth Garde. “At this hour, we’re hearing that there’s skepticism from many European countries about the so-called Cêpan program, with many advocacy groups claiming that the forced installation of Inhibitors is a bridge too far and perhaps borders on child abuse. While nothing’s been confirmed, we’re hearing additional rumors that some countries, such as Germany and Canada, are considering pulling out of the UN-backed Earth Garde coalition . . .”

  Nigel took a deep breath and looked around. He smelled baking bread and curry. Someone was laughing in the kitchen.

  His mother was wrong. She’d always been wrong. He couldn’t let her thinking infect him; he refused to inherit her cynicism. There was still good to be done in the world. It started here, with protecting these people, with making sure that they had a safe place to learn and grow and become the heroes this messed-up world needed.

  Nigel clapped his hands. “Oi, ready to teach me how to boil water?” he yelled over to Omar. “Got a spare apron for me?”

  As Nigel started across the student union, the TV suddenly turned off. So did the overhead lights. Nigel glanced over his shoulder and saw that the lamps that lit the Academy’s pathways were off as well.

  Earth Garde had cut off their power.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  RAN TAKEDA

  EINAR’S SKIMMER—SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC

  “HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” RAN ASKED.

  “I am breathing,” Duanphen replied. “That is enough.”

  Duanphen sat against one of the bulkheads, her injured arm cradled in her lap. She still looked deathly pale from all the blood lost in Morocco. Dark purple bruises spread from her temple to where her right eye was nearly swollen shut. While Ran crouched in front of her, Duanphen’s eyelids began to flutter and her head lolled to the side. Gently, Ran touched her cheek.

  “You need to stay awake now,” Ran told her. “You might have a concussion.”

  “Isabela hit me with a champagne bottle,” Duanphen declared.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Isabela said from across the cockpit’s seating area, where she huddled with her knees pulled tightly to her chest. Caleb was next to her, staring off into the distance while one of his duplicates paced back and forth in front of him. No one had bothered to mention that Caleb had popped a clone. They were all too tired and rattled to bother.

  “It’s fine,” Duanphen replied dreamily to Isabela. Then, something clicked on in her mind and she leaned forward to peer around Ran. “I don’t have a crush on you. That was a lie.”

  Isabela tossed her hair. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  “Okay,” Duanphen said, leaning back. “Good.”

  “We would make a hot couple,” Isabela said thoughtfully.

  The duplicate stopped pacing to look from Isabela to Duanphen and back, seeming to consider this statement. Caleb looked up, realized there was a second him walking around and immediately absorbed it.

  “How’s her arm?” Caleb asked.

  Ran took Duanphen’s hand and carefully turned her arm over so that she could examine the gash in her forearm. The stitches weren’t the neatest Ran had seen in her life—no one would mistake them for the work of an actual doctor—but they were straight and clean and they’d successfully stopped the bleeding.

  “It looks okay, actually,” Ran said.

  “One of the only things my idiot Cêpan taught me was first aid,” Five said as he climbed out of the pilot’s seat, the skimmer set on a course to Mexico. The Loric had been the one to stitch Duanphen’s cut closed, his thick hands surprisingly gentle. Now, he stood over Ran’s shoulder and looked down at his handiwork. “You want me to take a turn keeping her awake?”

  Ran stood up, arching her back. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Five took her place on the floor in front of Duanphen, his one eye watching her closely. They’d loaded Duanphen up on some painkillers that Einar had stashed and she was loopy enough to put her legs in Five’s lap. He didn’t move them. Instead, he awkwardly patted Duanphen on the shin—he’d broken that bone during their first meeting, or so the story went, then carried her back to Einar’s ship and made a splint for her.

  Lucas had called them monsters. Ran didn’t believe that, though. None of them were beyond saving.

  “Any word from our friends at the Academy?” Einar asked. He sat on the arm of the copilot’s seat, his body angled to face the rest of them. He didn’t glance up from his tablet when he spoke.

  Isabela uncurled enough to check her cell. Now that they knew the Foundation was using a precognitive Garde to track them, one little flip phone didn’t seem like such a big deal. They had tried calling the Academy as they fled Moroccan airspace, but the call went straight to voice mail. Isabela had left a message—“Professor Dumdum, it is Isabela. There is a body-snatching Garde that’s super into Jesus headed your way. Call back, please!’—but they hadn’t gotten a response. That didn’t bode well.

  “No service,” Isabela said. “Maybe once we’re across this ocean . . .”

  “It’s possible that Earth Garde cut off their communication,” Einar said contemplatively. “It’s what I would do.”

  “Shouldn’t we be going there?” Caleb asked. “If they’re in danger . . .”

  “We can do more to help them by not flying directly into Earth Garde’s clutches,” Einar said curtly.

  “No, instead we’re flying straight to a Garde prison,” Caleb responded. He looked at Ran, probably expecting her to back him up. She thought of Nigel and the others back at the Academy, already surrounded by Peacekeepers who planned to enslave them, and now Lucas was headed there for some nefarious purpose. It wasn’t an easy call to make.

  Ran reluctantly shook her head. “They can take care of themselves,” she told Caleb gently. “And, right now, I think we can do more to help them from the outside.”

  Caleb didn’t respond. He looked down at his feet, hands balled up in front of him. Clearly, something was still eating at him, and Ran didn’t think it was entirely the fate of their friends at the Academy.

  “Do we even have a plan yet?” Isabela asked.

  Ran wondered the same thing. She went to stand next to Einar, glancing at the information displayed on his tablet. She saw a floor plan for a large cube-shaped building that was then divided into many smaller boxes. A very efficiently constructed prison. Einar gave Ran a sour look—he liked to be the one in control and wasn’t yet ready to do his whole briefing thing—but relented when Ran placidly gazed back at him.

  “This is the prison where King said Lucas would be housed. The locals used to call the place La Caldera . . .”

  “The boiler,” Isabela said.

  “They’d sweat c
onfessions out of criminals there,” Einar said with a nod. “Or the cartels would rent cells to torture their enemies. The Mexican government shut it down for corruption a few years back and that’s how the Foundation snapped it up. Since then, they’ve installed a number of high-tech upgrades.”

  “You learned all this from King?” Ran asked.

  Einar nodded again. “He was nice enough to grant me access to his company’s internal server. Blackstone still had details of the prison from when they staffed it in the early days, before the Foundation cleaned it up so they could rent it to Earth Garde.”

  It occurred to Ran that they hadn’t carried out the rest of their plan back in Morocco. They’d wanted to set King up for arrest on the casino floor, but had gotten sidetracked running for their lives. That meant King was still in play.

  “King will cut off your access soon, won’t he?” Ran asked. “He could warn the Foundation.”

  Einar hesitated. “Yes. You’re right. I’ll make sure to download what we need. As for warning them, we’ll just have to take our chances.”

  Caleb made a noise, like a solitary laugh that got caught in his throat. He was staring at Einar in the usual way he did right before an argument broke out. But, for once, he didn’t say anything. He just sat there grinding his teeth. That silence concerned Ran.

  “What is it, Caleb?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Einar added, meeting Caleb’s eyes. “Do you have something to add?”

  The question hung in the air for a couple of seconds and something passed between the two boys; Ran wasn’t sure what. The skimmer bobbed back and forth on a rough wind and Duanphen let out a low moan.

  Finally, Caleb spoke. “Who were those guys back there? The ones who came in shooting?”

  “If I had to guess, it was a security detail assigned to King, kept off-site so that they would’ve give the trap away,” Einar said with a shrug. “Or, they could have been local cops. Interpol. Peacekeepers. Overzealous hotel security. At present, there are no shortage of people who’d like to take shots at our kind. Why does that matter now?”

  “I just never thought it would get like this,” Caleb replied, looking down at the floor again. “For you, maybe. I could see why they’d want to shoot at you. You’ve earned that. But they didn’t care who they hit when they came into the room.” Caleb tapped his forehead. “One of my duplicates took a bullet right here. That could’ve been me.”

  Ran hadn’t even considered this. She’d been in enough dangerous situations since developing her Legacies that a few bullets no longer fazed her.

  “And unleashing that Lucas guy on us . . . ,” Caleb continued, his eyes drifting over to Duanphen. “She could’ve died. He cut her open like she’s not even a person.”

  “He’s sick,” Isabela added. “Crazier than any of you.”

  “That’s why we’re going to get him, aren’t we?” Five asked gruffly. “Can we get back to talking about el crackpot?”

  “La Caldera,” Einar corrected, but he was still looking at Caleb. “What do you say, Caleb? Should we move on?”

  It surprised Ran to hear a bit of patience in Einar’s typically clipped words. Caleb crossed his arms and rubbed his shoulders—Ran could tell there was something nagging at him, he looked too haunted for this to just be about a duplicate getting shot—but he eventually nodded in agreement. “Go ahead. Tell us how we get to Lucas.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Einar said, paging through floor plans on his tablet. “The prison is fifty miles west of the nearest city, in the middle of the desert. Only one road leads in and the surrounding area is nothing but scrubland.”

  “Was our plan to drive up and knock on the door?” Isabela asked.

  “I’m just painting a picture,” Einar said. “There’s a wall . . .”

  Ran eased the tablet out of Einar’s hands and flipped it over so the rest of them could see the prison’s layout. He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat and continued.

  “As you can see, there’s a wall five hundred yards out with an initial checkpoint. Then, past that, another stretch of open ground covered by snipers in the guard towers. Beyond that is the fortified main entrance.”

  “So, we don’t go that way,” Five said. “We’ve got a ship that can turn invisible. We land on the roof and blast our way in.”

  “That seems to be the better option, but there are still issues,” Einar said. “For one, I stole this skimmer from the Foundation. They know its capabilities. I don’t know for certain that they can beat our skimmer’s stealth mode. But I do know that they’ve installed antiaircraft weaponry on their roof. There’s a chance we could come under fire.”

  “Does this ship have any weapons?” Caleb asked. “Could we shoot back?”

  Five grunted. “No. The weapons are down. Honestly, this piece of shit is barely holding together.”

  Isabela stared at him. “We’re over the ocean and you’re just now telling us that?”

  “I thought everyone knew,” Five said. He knocked on the metal floor beneath him and the skimmer seemed to groan in response. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Isabela countered. “You can fly.”

  “Okay, say we land on the roof,” Caleb said. “What then?”

  “Well, even if we take them by surprise, there will still be some sentries to get by. But then, as we move inside . . .” Einar highlighted the top story of the prison. “This floor is the guards’ barracks. The staff works in five-day shifts, sleeping on the premises.”

  “We’d be breaching at their strongest point,” Caleb said with a frown.

  “Yes,” Einar said. “Not ideal.”

  “How many guys they got?” Five asked.

  “Based on the rooms in this blueprint and assuming they’re fully staffed? I’d estimate three hundred.”

  “I can take three hundred,” Five said with a shrug.

  Isabela snorted. “You sound like Professor Nine.”

  Five glared at her. “Take that back.”

  “These Peacekeepers won’t be like the ones guarding the Academy,” Einar said. “I don’t think even you can do this alone, Five.”

  Five wilted a bit when Einar spoke. “I wouldn’t be doing it alone,” he muttered. “Ran’s good. Caleb is a small army by himself. We can take them.”

  Ran tapped her finger on Einar’s tablet. “Does it get easier? Assuming we can make it through the barracks?”

  “The second floor houses the medical center, the control room, the warden’s office and the armory,” Einar replied. “Assuming we can push through the barracks, it’s likely we’ll find a second wave of Peacekeepers waiting at the armory.”

  “What can we do from the control room?” Caleb asked.

  “Their surveillance cameras feed there. The prison’s internal defenses are operated from there as well.”

  “What kind of defenses?” Five asked.

  “Titanium doors for a lockdown, gas dispersal mechanisms in the vents and electrified tiles. They don’t mean for Garde to escape this place, much less break in.”

  “Oh, there are traps,” Isabela said. “Of course.”

  “Sounds like Nine’s obstacle course,” Caleb said.

  Einar went on. “The ground floor is a central processing area, a cafeteria for prisoners and a small yard for exercise. The two basement levels are nothing but isolation cells. That’s where we’ll find our target.”

  “Once we make it to the control room, we’ll have the advantage,” Ran mused.

  “Yes and no,” Einar replied. “There’s also something here they call the Skeleton Key. It’s a remote mechanism keyed to the warden’s biometrics that gives him control of the prison’s systems. We’ll need to track him down.”

  Isabela leaned forward, her voice more serious now. “I saw this warden. I know what he looks like. The Skeleton Key is a silly glove thingy he wears.”

  Caleb raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

  “Something got scre
wy when Lucas tried to jump into your duplicate,” Isabela replied. “I could see out through his eyes. He was in a cell with the warden and one of those Cêpan people. The warden activated his Inhibitor to bring Lucas back to his own body.”

  “Could you shape-shift into the warden?” Ran asked.

  “Of course,” Isabela replied. “I made sure to memorize the bastard’s face.”

  “Perhaps that might be an easier way in than fighting down from the roof,” Ran suggested. “At least for Isabela.”

  “They’ve got retinal scanners at the front gate,” Einar said, looking to Isabela. “Can your shape-shifting beat those?”

  She thought for a moment. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Caleb repeated. “You’d be taking a big chance.”

  Isabela turned to look at Caleb, and Ran noted a look of resolve on the Brazilian’s face that she’d never seen before.

  “I want to get this guy,” she said icily. “What he did to me—it can’t happen to anyone else.”

  Einar cleared his throat. “Well, our options appear to be either brute force or subterfuge, neither of which seem to have a high likelihood of success.”

  “Why not both?” Five asked, looking at Einar. “No offense, but if it comes to a brawl, you and Isabela won’t be much help. Better off trying every angle.”

  “We’ll be outnumbered and spread thin, either way,” Einar said. He glared down at the tablet, like it had betrayed him by not presenting an easier way in.

  “Sounds like a suicide mission,” Duanphen said, her head lolling to the side. “Fun.”

  “We cannot think like that,” Ran replied. “Taylor told us that they could be holding other Garde in this place. Sam Goode, Number Six, maybe others that Earth Garde and the Foundation have taken prisoner. If we can make it to the cells and set them free, the battle could turn in our favor.”

  Caleb began ticking off his fingers. “We fight our way in. We take over the control room. We track down the Warden and his Skeleton Key. We make it to the cells and start letting Garde loose. We find Lucas . . .”

  A silence settled over the cockpit. They weren’t only contemplating the enormity of the task before them, Ran knew. They were also grappling with a bigger question, one that they’d avoided discussing even though all of them had probably thought about it.