Return to Zero

by Pittacus Lore

  Two grim-faced Peacekeeper medics knelt over him. One of them realized he was alert and met his eyes.

  “You’ve been badly hurt,” he said simply. “Don’t try to move.”

  There was a weight around his neck. A collar. Kopano looked past the medics and saw a third Peacekeeper holding one of those Inhibitor cannons. Kopano was hooked up to its electrified steel cord. The Peacekeeper watched him close, finger on the trigger, ready to shock him at the slightest provocation.

  “What’s he got there?” the Peacekeeper standing over him asked. “In his hand?”

  One of the medics pried Kopano’s fingers open and lifted John’s medallion. Kopano had ripped it off him during their fight. He couldn’t let him teleport to New Lorien. It was a small victory, but maybe it would protect the others.

  “Some weird alien thing,” the medic said, tossing the medallion into the sand. “Bag it up.”

  Kopano sensed that he could slip free if he wanted to. His Legacy was back. But he was weak. So, so weak. He didn’t think that he could muster the energy. He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much, maybe.

  But wait. If he could use his Legacy, that meant—

  John Smith. Where was John Smith?

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve unleashed down here?” a familiar voice shouted.

  Kopano turned his head just enough so that he could see Colonel Archibald pacing back and forth across the sand, a satellite phone pressed to his ear. The man’s cheeks were rosy with anger.

  “All due respect, sir, I don’t care how badly you want the Academy situation sewn up,” Archibald barked into the phone. “The asset you’ve selected is completely unstable.”

  Archibald paused to listen for a response. Kopano could tell by his white-knuckle grip on the phone that Archibald wasn’t happy with whatever was said.

  “I don’t have eyes on him, sir. He’s on the loose and he’s taken possession of some heavy ordnance. Nuclear grade. If you don’t pull him out now, you’re endangering the lives of every student at the Academy,” Archibald snarled into the phone.

  Kopano felt a pinch at his shoulder. Darkness began to creep in at the edges of his already blurry vision. He was fading. He clenched his teeth, tried to stay awake.

  The last thing he heard before slipping back into unconsciousness was Archibald’s final, grim pronouncement.

  “He’s liable to kill them all.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ISABELA SILVA

  LA CALDERA—DURANGO, MEXICO

  THE TOWN OF DEL NORTE WAS, BY ISABELA’S estimation, barely a town at all. It was one of those in-between places, used by people on their way to something better. No more than a dozen buildings poked up from the dust, all of them built conveniently along the highway—a gas station, a ramshackle inn, a sad little cantina. Beyond the buildings were parked trailers, some of their vinyl sides sun-bleached and filthy, others gleaming new and silver, standing out in the desert sun. There were, at a quick count, more mobile homes than buildings.

  Del Norte was the first livable place on the road out from La Caldera. It’s where they figured some of the prison guards would have eyes. A good place to get their attention.

  Isabela walked slumped forward with her hands bound in front of her. She stumbled theatrically, dragging one foot behind her. Einar gave her arm a hard yank and shoved her onwards. It was just the two of them now, walking right down the middle of the road where everyone could see. No more hiding.

  A man filling up his pickup truck at the gas station stared at them as they entered the town. Einar stood straight and proud, his pale skin already getting pink from the desert sun. Isabela, at his side, looked very much like his prisoner. She flashed the man at the gas station an imploring look.

  “I think it will be funny when they shock you,” Isabela said to Einar under her breath. “They will definitely shock you, right? And you’ll be flopping all around. But then I will be on my own and—”

  “What?” Einar asked. “What are you saying?”

  Isabela glanced at his face. Einar’s mind was clearly somewhere else, when it should definitely be on this very dangerous and stupid plan that Isabela already regretted agreeing to.

  She hissed at him. “I was asking what will happen if they zap you with an Inhibitor.”

  “Oh,” Einar said. “The Foundation sent me on some of the beta tests for Sydal Corp. Typically, if I could maintain consciousness, one shock would only put me down for three minutes or so.”

  “Three minutes that I will be on my own,” Isabela replied. “Assuming they don’t shock you too bad.”

  “Three minutes that my life will be in your hands,” Einar said absently. “I trust you, Isabela. This will work.”

  The words were confident, but the tone was all wrong. Einar sounded wounded and shaky.

  “What is wrong with you?” Isabela snapped. “Are you having a heat stroke?”

  Einar blinked, hesitating. “Do you think Takeda was right? About me?”

  “Oh my God,” Isabela moaned. “You choose now to develop a conscience?”

  Einar shoved her up the wooden steps of the cantina and through the swinging doors. The inside of the restaurant was dim and muggy. A large bug—Isabela thought it was some kind of mutant cockroach/scorpion hybrid—skittered across the floorboards. A middle-aged man and woman, probably husband and wife, stood at the counter. They openly stared at the two new arrivals. There was only one other customer, a bent old man who barely glanced up from his plate of eggs and beans.

  “Breakfast,” Einar demanded. “Por favor.”

  Without a word, the couple scurried into the kitchen. Isabela saw the recognition in their eyes, though. Even here, in this remote Mexican village, they knew Einar. He was the most wanted person in the world.

  Dragging her by her tied hands, Einar led Isabela to the counter. He shoved her onto a stool and sat down next to her.

  “I’ve always had a conscience,” Einar said after a few moments of heavy silence. “I’m not . . . I’m not a monster.”

  Isabela snorted. “Okay.”

  “We all haven’t had the luxury of being part-time pacifists like Ran,” Einar continued. “Some of us didn’t have a choice but to fight.”

  “Good, good,” Isabela replied. “Maybe you can debate this with Ran after we’re done.”

  “For our people to survive, someone has to be willing to get their hands dirty,” Einar continued like he hadn’t heard her. “Someone has to fight the Foundation on their level, in the dirt, with violence and blood, so that you Academy brats can go on being honorable.”

  Isabela was about to respond when the husband returned from the kitchen with two plates of rubbery eggs and gelatinous beans. No sooner had he set these down in front of them than he darted back into the kitchen, probably to slip out the same back door as his wife had. Isabela glanced over her shoulder and noticed the old man was gone too. They were alone.

  Einar dragged a fork through the beans, breaking apart the skin atop them.

  “But maybe Ran is right,” Einar said. “Maybe I need to decide when it’s time . . . when it’s time to stop. When I’ve done enough.”

  Isabela studied the cloudy, conflicted expression on Einar’s face. She thought about Lucas, how the boy had trapped her inside her own trauma, how he’d nearly killed Duanphen and probably would’ve slaughtered them all. She leaned in close to Einar.

  “Today is not the day you go soft, okay?” she said into his ear. “Maybe you are a monster. But you’re right. We need a monster to fight a monster. I don’t care about right and wrong. I don’t care about winners and losers. I want to survive. I want my friends to survive. And for that, you have to keep being bad.”

  Outside, four sets of tires screeched to a stop. Truck doors opened and slammed shut. In the quiet of the restaurant, they could hear the metallic jangle of weaponry. Isabela pushed her wrists against the bonds holding them together.

  Einar took a deep breath and pushed aside
his untouched food.

  “Do it,” he said calmly. “Make it look good.”

  Isabela smirked. “You know I will, baby.”

  She lunged forward, grabbed the back of Einar’s head and slammed his face into the bar. He cried out in pain, a cut opened up on the bridge of his nose. Even though the blow hadn’t knocked him out, Einar let his body go slack against Isabela. She looped her bound hands around his neck and yanked him off his stool. He was light. The guy needed to eat more.

  Breathing heavily, Isabela dragged Einar out the front door. The harsh desert sunlight greeted her. So did thirty armed guards. They all wore body armor printed with desert camouflage, presumably the uniform for La Caldera. The guards wielded a mixture of anti-Garde Inhibitor cannons and traditional assault rifles.

  “Hold your fire!” the point man shouted as Isabela burst into the light.

  “About goddamn time!” Isabela shouted back as she dumped Einar in the dirt. “They snatched me four hours ago and you’re just getting here now? Unacceptable!”

  Since walking into town, Isabela hadn’t been herself. She had taken the form of a middle-aged man with silver hair and a leathery tan. She added some bruises around the eyes and some scuff marks on his hands, to make it look like La Caldera’s warden had put up a fight. She didn’t even know the warden’s name and she’d only heard him speak a few sentences. That would have to be enough.

  Isabela strode forward with the confidence that her own men wouldn’t shoot her, worried that at any moment they might see through her disguise and do just that.

  “This idiot child got sloppy and let me get the drop on him,” Isabela said brusquely, nodding her head at Einar’s crumpled form. She held her wrists out to the nearest guard. “Stop staring and cut me loose.”

  The guard hesitated, staring at her. From his place sprawled in the dirt, looking bloodied and unconscious, Isabela knew that Einar was using his Legacy. Amplifying the confusion and bewilderment in the guards. But thirty was a lot of minds to control.

  The guard swung his weapon aside, pulled a knife from his belt and cut Isabela’s hands free. He turned to look at the team leader and so did Isabela, talking quickly, giving the guards no time to find their balance, to recall their training.

  “We gotta move,” Isabela ordered. “They got a shape-shifter on the inside.” She held up her bare hand, where the warden wore his mechanical glove. “It’s got my Skeleton Key.” She motioned to Einar. “His people are on their way. They got a breakout planned.”

  One of the guards had crouched down to get a closer look at Einar. She whistled through her teeth. “Holy shit, sir, that’s Magnusson.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Isabela snapped. “Get an Inhibitor on him quick before he comes to and makes us all act like chickens.”

  Another guard snapped to attention, pointed his Inhibitor and fired a collar around Einar’s neck. He depressed the trigger and Einar cried out in genuine pain, his body arching as electricity jumped through his synapses.

  That was the plan. Make them think Einar wasn’t a threat. Make them believe Isabela was the real deal. Let them get in close and create more confusion.

  Without Einar using his Legacy to further confuse the guards, the thirty men and women arrayed around Isabela now looked at her warily, on edge. Some of them tightened their grips on their weapons. Others, though, watched her respectfully, awaiting orders. She hadn’t sold them all, but she was getting there.

  “I’ve got to radio this in,” the team leader said, reaching for a walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder.

  Isabela stopped him. “No. You’ll alert the shape-shifter that we know. Give up our advantage.” The team leader’s eyes narrowed, but Isabela pressed on. She pointed at one of the guards with an Inhibitor cannon. “Zap me with that thing if you don’t believe me. I can take it.”

  She hoped she could take it. Isabela had plenty of practice maintaining a form through pain and discomfort. Back when Einar’s gang had jumped her in California, she’d held on to her shape through a car wreck and a beating. As long as she could stay conscious, she could beat the Inhibitor.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the team leader said. He pulled a mechanical scope from his hip. “I’ve got the portable retinal scanner.”

  Isabela swallowed. She would’ve rather taken her chances being shocked. She wasn’t confident that she’d mastered the warden’s shape down to that tiniest of details. She snuck a look at Einar. He was out. No help there.

  She stood firm before the team leader. “What are we wasting time for?” She widened her eye. At the same time, she subtly increased the swelling on the warden’s cheek and added a popped blood vessel by her pupil. If she failed the test, maybe she could blame it on her black eye. “Do it.”

  He scanned her. Isabela forced herself not to blink as the laser bounced across her pupil.

  The device beeped. Isabela couldn’t tell if that was a good sound or a bad sound. The team leader stared at her for a moment. She waited. A guard on her left hefted his rifle a bit, getting ready to train it on her. Isabela stared him down.

  The team leader reached for his walkie-talkie.

  And held it out to her.

  “Sir, if we’re breached, we should at least reach out to Lyon,” he said. “Give him a heads-up.”

  Isabela stifled a sigh of relief; it wouldn’t do to show them that. Instead, she nodded impatiently. She didn’t know who Lyon was or what she was supposed to say, but now that these men had bought their ruse, it would work to her advantage to cause trouble back at the prison. Maybe the men there would go ahead and arrest the real warden, make things easy.

  “Make it so,” she told the team leader, then turned around to inspect Einar. “Can’t believe we got him. Everyone here’s going to get a medal.”

  The team leader spoke into his walkie-talkie. “This is Roberts, requesting a line to Security Chief Lyon.”

  “Lyon, here,” a gruff voice responded. “What’s the situation there, Roberts?”

  “Are you with Warden Pembleton?” the team leader—Roberts—asked.

  “Not at the moment,” came the response. “You need him, too?”

  “No,” Roberts said firmly. “Because I’m with the warden. You’ve got an imposter in there, Lyon. Get every squad on alert.”

  Isabela stifled a smile. Perfect. The infighting at the prison would hopefully spread out the guards and cover the approach of the others. This plan might actually work. But first, Isabela had to keep these soldiers on her side.

  She grabbed the nearest guard’s shoulder and shoved him towards a truck.

  “Move out!” she bellowed. “We are under attack!”

  Within seconds, they’d piled into their armored SUVs and were tearing down the desert road towards the prison. It was only five miles away. A short ride with these jacked-up soldiers doing close to one hundred, all of them ready to kick some ass against an enemy they were at that moment letting inside. Isabela rode shotgun with Roberts and two other guards. They’d taken Einar in a separate truck, juicing him once more with the Inhibitor to be safe.

  “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, how did these freaks get to you?” That was Roberts, not taking his eyes off the road as they careened across the burnt terrain. “I didn’t think you’d left La Caldera in weeks.”

  Isabela didn’t have an answer prepared for that, so she sucked her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Are you my superior officer, Roberts? Do I report to you?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Roberts responded quickly.

  The prison appeared, rising up from through the heat haze that blurred the horizon. A sandstone fortress surrounded by tall fences, just as ominous as Einar had described. The place was completely unshaded from the scorching heat. Nothing could live out here. Isabela got the sense of movement on the rooftop, snipers watching their haphazard approach.

  Roberts worked up the courage to speak again. “How do you think they’ll come at us, sir?”

  Isabel
a opened her mouth to give him the brush-off again. As she did, a flare went up from the prison’s roof. A rocket. It cut through the blue sky and exploded some hundred feet above the building.

  At first, Isabela wasn’t sure what had happened. Some kind of misfire or warning shot? It looked as if the rocket had simply blown up in midair.

  But then Einar’s familiar skimmer flickered into view, its cloaking system failing as black smoke poured from a hole in its side. Isabela leaned forward, straining against her seat belt. The small ship banked onto its side, avoiding a second missile, but then corkscrewed out of control. The skimmer crashed onto the prison’s rooftop, sending up a glut of flames and dust. Even at this distance, the impact rattled the SUV.

  “Go!” Isabela screamed, doing nothing to hide the panic in her voice. “Get us there now!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  TAYLOR COOK

  THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA

  TAYLOR RAISED HER HANDS ALONG WITH HER VOICE. “Faculty and students who aren’t fit to fight! We’re going to teleport you somewhere safe. Please grab as much luggage as you can carry for the students that’re staying behind. We might need to follow in a hurry and can’t be looking for our stuff!”

  The student union bustled with activity, most of it around the new growth of Loralite in the room’s center. A line was formed there, mostly made up of teachers who shouldn’t be put in harm’s way and the younger Garde who wouldn’t be helpful in a fight. There was a stack of backpacks piled there. Nine had ordered everyone to pack what he called “bug-out bags”—warm clothes, food and water, whatever small items from home they couldn’t bear to leave behind.

  In a flash of blue light, Rabiya appeared, returning from another trip to the Himalayas. She was only back for a couple of seconds before moving close to Dr. Chen. The dean of academics teetered a bit, multiple backpacks slung across her shoulders, carrying as much as she possibly could for the students. A couple of young tweebs steadied her, these two also huddling close to Rabiya, all of them linking hands.