Return to Zero

by Pittacus Lore

  “Stop,” she said. “They need our help here, Five. Or at the Academy.”

  Five took a shuddering breath. His lips were red with his own blood from some injury deep inside him that he was still ignoring. He looked at Ran with wet, fearful eyes. He was afraid for her, she realized.

  “You need a healer,” Five said. “You need—”

  “There’s a doctor in the village, I’m told,” Malcolm said. He shouted across the room to a girl with a badly bruised face that Ran barely recognized as Maiken. “Maiken! I need you to make a run—”

  In a flash of light, someone new teleported into the cave. A slow smile spread across Ran’s face.

  “Head count!” Nigel shouted breathlessly. “Where we at?”

  Rabiya yelled back to him from the mouth of the cave. “Almost everyone! Still missing Taylor and Nine . . .”

  A gangly blond girl—Ella, Ran realized—stood up from where she’d been meditating in one of the few clear spots in the cavern.

  “I sense him,” Ella said, looking at Nigel. “He’s coming.”

  Ran recognized the look on Nigel’s face. He was conflicted. Hesitating about something. She didn’t know what—this entire situation was basically chaos to her—but she knew the decision was eating at him.

  “You have to do it,” Miki said, his voice small and weak. “We can’t chance it. Destroy the stone.”

  “Wait,” Five snapped. “What?”

  Ran squeezed Five’s arm. Destroying the stone would cut them off from the Academy. From a healer. But if that’s what the Garde needed to do, then Ran would take her chances with the town doctor.

  Nigel sucked in a deep breath. Ran knew that motion too and she smiled again, even as she continued to bleed out. That was how Nigel prepared for one of those shrieking punk rock notes that he loved so much. The kind that could shatter glass. Or stone.

  But then he saw her. His eyes widened. The breath whistled out of him as he hesitated.

  “Ran?” he said.

  Behind him, the Loralite stone lit up anew.

  John Smith waved a hand over his face where Nine had broken his jaw, healing the damage. Then, he laughed, practically grinning at Nine.

  “A true demon in the flesh,” John said. “This day keeps getting better.”

  “Dude,” Nine said. “You’re nuts.”

  Lightning struck the ground around him, but Nine threw himself forward, charging towards the possessed body of his best friend.

  The ground shook, but that was of little consequence to someone with Nine’s antigravity Legacy, balance and speed. He flung himself through a burst of fire, dodged around a stabbing icicle and aimed a punch for John’s temple. Just one good shot; that’s all he needed. That would be enough to make it all stop.

  He felt his strength go out of him. His Legacies sapped. Cut off. Stupidly, Nine had hoped that this imposter wouldn’t know how to do that.

  John caught his fist in midair, crunched his fingers through Nine’s metallic knuckles and yanked. In a moment that Nine found humiliatingly familiar, John ripped his cybernetic arm free from the moorings on his shoulder. In the same motion, he kneed Nine in the stomach, putting him down on the ground.

  “Oh well,” John said, looking down at him. “Nice try, partner.”

  With his telekinesis, John wrapped Nine’s own metallic arm around his neck and began to choke him. Nine clawed at the metal, gasping and coughing, trying to work his fingers underneath it to get himself some air. Without his enhanced strength, though, there was little he could do. Nine started to see spots. The world got darker.

  “Praise be!” Taylor shouted. “I prayed and thank God you’ve come!”

  John’s grip on Nine’s neck loosened as he turned to look at Taylor walking towards him with her arms raised high above her head. She stumbled a bit—the ground was still shaking—and flinched with each hailstone that pelted her on the cheek. But on she came, hair wet, eyes wide and teary, like some kind of apocalyptic vision.

  And on her forearm she’d drawn the symbol for the Harvesters. The snake and scythe she’d seen tattooed on her father’s farmhand all those months ago, before she even knew that she was Garde.

  “I’ve been waiting so long for the harvest to come!” she shouted into the rain, trying to remember all the stupid platitudes she’d heard in the past. “The culling of the snakes that crawl up from our corrupted Earth! You can help me, right? You can take these awful Legacies away!”

  John grinned at her and let Nine drop, the Loric completely forgotten. She saw something in his face then—he was like a boy, eyes shining with eagerness, delighted to find a kindred spirit.

  “I knew it,” John said. “I always knew there’d be others like me out there. Ones who understood their own sickness.”

  John left Nine in the mud and glided towards Taylor. As he came, he used his telekinesis to pick up the warhead, the gleaming bomb floating nearby.

  “This body had a vision,” John said, referring to himself. “It showed me what I have to do. It showed me the way.”

  Taylor remembered what Ella said—John’s vision of an explosion in New Lorien. How that’d driven him to seek out the force field generators. How meddling with the future only screwed things up. By looking forward, John had only assured this moment would come. It was difficult for Taylor to keep her faithful smile in place with the knowledge of what this monster was planning to do.

  “Can I help you?” Taylor asked.

  “You can be my witness,” John said grandly. He landed in front of her and took her hand. “Come on, now. Let’s go see where the evil has scuttled away to.”

  “First,” Taylor said, stalling. “Will you pray with me?”

  John hesitated, so Taylor amped up the wattage of her smile. The Academy seemed deserted now, but she wanted to buy Nigel a bit more time to get everyone clear and destroy the Loralite in New Lorien.

  “Of course,” he said. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Our Father—”

  Taylor lunged forward and stabbed a tranquilizer dart into John’s neck.

  His rage was immediate and terrible. The ground shook violently and the front of the student union collapsed, the stone façade crumbling. Jagged bolts of lightning slashed into the ground beside Taylor, knocking her down.

  John pulled the dart out of his neck. He blinked his eyes. Glared at her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he whined. “Snake!”

  Then he was on her. Hand around her throat. And up they went, flying, his fingers generating heat that charred Taylor’s skin. She struggled, but John was too strong, and the tranquilizer wasn’t working fast enough.

  He drove her down, through the open roof of the student union, and smashed her back-first onto the Loralite stone. Taylor felt her ribs crack, at the very least. The breath went out of her. John held her down there, then reached back with his telekinesis and called the warhead to him. Taylor tried to push it away with her own telekinesis, but she could barely slow it down.

  The bomb touched John’s palm.

  Nigel, Taylor thought. Please. Don’t let him in.

  Pinning her beneath him, John pressed his free hand to the Loralite.

  A flash of blue.

  No, Taylor thought. She would’ve screamed it if she could. NO!

  And then, they were in the cave. Nigel stood just feet away. Beyond him, the terrified faces of all the other Garde. Taylor saw Ran—somehow, Ran was there—bloody and pale, staggering towards her.

  “Too late,” John said. Somehow, Taylor knew he wasn’t talking to them. He was talking to someone else somewhere else. “You’re too late.”

  John—the thing controlling John—he didn’t hesitate. He poured all his power into the warhead. Fire and lightning and pressurized telekinesis. Pure rage, channeled into the bomb.

  He laughed as it exploded.

  The room filled with white light.

  In a subbasement prison hundreds of miles away, Einar and Isabela stood ove
r the prone body of a boy. For such a monster, Isabela thought, he wasn’t that scary in person. In fact, he was sort of sad. His dark curls fanned out on the pillow beneath him, his ribs poking up through his jumpsuit, dark circles under his half-open eyes. He looked so small and so, so young.

  “What should we do?” Isabela asked, looking to Einar.

  “We should do nothing,” Einar said.

  Einar held the warden’s pistol loosely in his hand. He tapped it against the side of his thigh.

  “I thought I could be a leader. Thought I was so gifted, so smart. But I’m like . . . I’m like him,” he said, staring at Lucas. “I’m bad.”

  Isabela didn’t say anything. She edged back from Einar. Something in her made her feel calm. Something inside her told her to walk away.

  “Leave us. Get the others out of this hell,” Einar said. “Let me do this. So the rest of you can be good.”

  In Mexico, a gunshot.

  In the Himalayas, John Smith regained control over his own body with a frustrated scream. He fought against the sedative coursing through his system, fought to reel back in the insane force of his Legacies that had been discharged so carelessly.

  He was too late. Too late to pull all that power back.

  His cave lit up in white. New Lorien. Gone in an instant.

  Ran Takeda sucked in a deep breath. She sucked in—

  She pulled in.

  She opened her every molecule.

  She made space.

  It was one of the first tricks she learned. Sitting on the beach outside the Academy, pushing the raging energy inside her into an egg, then yanking it back out. The result? A hard-boiled egg.

  She’d done it to Nigel in Iceland. Charged him up, pulled the energy back. The result? Her best friend’s heart started.

  Ran did that now. She pulled energy in. Swallowed heat and force and destruction. She let it all collect inside of her.

  More.

  And more.

  Then, silence.

  The cave stood. Quiet and cold. The Garde and their allies blinked their eyes, dropped their hands that had been shielding their faces, stood up from the ground. They all stared at her.

  Ran vibrated. She was white-hot. She felt like the sun.

  She stood over the warhead. The bomb was cold and empty.

  It was inside Ran now. Fighting to get loose. Tearing her apart.

  Nigel’s was the first face she saw. It was his expression that made Ran know it was bad. She couldn’t tell that all her hair had burned off. She was barely aware that she was glowing. That there were fissures on her skin cracking open, burning energy glowing through, aching for release.

  “Ran?” Nigel said, tears on his cheeks. “What . . . what did you do?”

  “Nakama,” she said, her words crackling with power. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

  Without thinking, she reached out to touch Nigel’s cheek, to brush his tears away. He let her, even though her touch left fingerprints scalded on his cheek. He tried not to flinch. He tried to be strong like her.

  “No, Ran,” Nigel said. “No.”

  “I can’t . . .” Ran’s voice was barely a whisper now. She couldn’t find air that wasn’t boiling. Her insides were melting away. “I can’t hold it.”

  She saw John Smith stumble towards her, looking like he might pass out. But someone shoved him aside.

  “Not you,” Five said to John. “You make this worth it.”

  And then, Five’s arms were around her. His metal skin melted as soon as he touched her, molten steel dripping down to pool on the cave’s floor. That didn’t stop him. He carried her and they flew out of the cave.

  Once, there was a prophecy about Five drawn on one of those walls.

  Now, he chose his own fate.

  Up, up, up.

  The Himalayas disappeared beneath them. The sky got darker.

  Higher.

  Ran heard Five shudder. His grip loosened. She could see bone in his arms, where his skin had burned away. She looked up at him, wanted to apologize, tell him to go, but Ran couldn’t speak. The force was too much. It was eating its way out of her.

  It was time.

  She sought out Five’s eye. He looked back at her. At peace.

  “You were right,” he whispered. “We do have these Legacies for a reason.”

  High above the Himalayas, the girl who made things explode detonated for the last time.

  AFTER

  A TOP SECRET LABORATORY—LOCATION UNKNOWN

  “I THOUGHT THESE THINGS TURNED TO ASH WHEN you killed them,” a man said, sounding bored.

  “Only the ones they grew in vats do that,” responded a woman. “Didn’t you read the briefing?”

  “Skimmed it,” the man replied. “That’s pretty fascinating. Cloning division is on that, right?”

  “Yeah. Wish I was assigned there instead of down here trying to figure out why this one isn’t decomposing like the others.”

  Vontezza Aoh-Atet’s eyes snapped open. She gasped, filling lungs that had been dormant for—days? weeks?—she couldn’t be sure. She sat bolt upright on the cold metal slab and made a quick assessment of her situation. She was nude in a brightly lit room that smelled like formaldehyde. There was a line in marker drawn down her sternum, presumably where the two scientists—at that moment, stumbling away from her in shock—planned to cut her open with the array of scalpels that gleamed on a nearby table.

  “Unacceptable,” she said, then lunged off the table and punched the male scientist in the throat.

  The woman screamed and dove for a button on the wall. That would call for help, probably. Vontezza couldn’t allow that. At least, not until she found her armor.

  Vontezza swept the woman’s legs with her telekinesis, then leaped on top of her. She floated a scalpel to her, snatched it out of the air and pressed it to the woman’s neck.

  “Where am I?” Vontezza asked. She noted the strange emblem on the woman’s lab coat. A logo for something called Sydal Corp. “How long have I been dead?”

  “You’re—you’re in Vancouver,” the woman stammered. “And weeks, I think. I don’t know. I just got transferred here.”

  “Vancouver,” Vontezza said, tasting the unfamiliar word. “How far is that from Alaska?”

  The complete destruction of Sydal Corp’s Vancouver research station went unreported on the news.

  THE HAGUE—SOUTH HOLLAND, THE NETHERLANDS

  “State your name and role for the record.”

  “Karen Walker. Formerly of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Formerly an agent for the clandestine organization known as MogPro. Most recently, assigned to a top secret operation known as Watchtower within Earth Garde.”

  “Please begin, Ms. Walker.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the court, what I hold in my hand is a vial of corrupted Loralite, better known as Mogadorian ooze, a substance created by Setrákus Ra. This sample was recovered by an agent of Earth Garde, Caleb Crane, after he served on a protection detail for the late Wade Sydal. It is my sworn testimony that Mr. Sydal operated outside the Garde Accord to further his own self-interest, his efforts to reproduce dangerous alien technology. He was funded in these efforts by a group of people calling themselves the Foundation . . .”

  SOMEONE’S EXPENSIVE VILLA—SANTIAGO, CHILE

  Caleb did one last lap through the heated water, then climbed out of the infinity pool and toweled off. The afternoon sun beat down on his shoulders, a nice reprieve from the cold of New Lorien. The towel was puffy and soft—rich-people soft, Caleb thought. Of course, the villa was decadent, just like all the places Isabela chose to stay at. Caleb sighed. He liked it here, but it also made him nervous. These spaces reminded him too much of the abandoned haunts of the Foundation that they’d traveled through all those months ago. He still felt the urge to look over his shoulder. Maybe that would never go away.

  “I forgot to ask who you’re posing as this time,” Caleb said as he padded across the deck to w
here Isabela reclined on a lounger.

  She tipped her sunglasses down her nose and eyed him. “Do you really want to know that, Boy Scout?”

  Caleb thought about it. “No. I guess not.”

  This was the third time that Caleb had come to see Isabela and the third different mansion she’d been squatting in. He didn’t ask her how she found these places or where she got her money. They had an unspoken agreement that certain topics were off-limits. Like Mexico. The one time Caleb brought that up, a dark cloud had settled over Isabela for the rest of their visit. She didn’t want to think about that—about responsibility or the fight or any of the things they’d done. She wanted to live the good life.

  So, Caleb let her.

  He sat down on the lounger next to Isabela. Duanphen got up from the one on Isabela’s opposite side and dove into the pool. After everything, Duanphen had decided to stick with Isabela rather than come to New Lorien. That made Caleb happy. He felt good knowing someone was watching out for Isabela.

  There was another change that Caleb never remarked upon. Whenever Isabela checked in and invited him to one of her mansions, it inevitably had some kind of pool. And at those pools, with only Caleb and Duanphen around, she wore her true form. Scars and all.

  “You’re ogling me,” Isabela said.

  Caleb swallowed. “Sorry.”

  She smirked, never happier than when she could make him uncomfortable. “I don’t mind.”

  “Have you been watching the hearings at all?” Caleb asked, eager for a change of subject.

  Isabela snorted. “Of course not. What am I? Boring?”

  “They’re going pretty well, I think,” Caleb continued lamely. “We might be able to come out of hiding soon.”

  “I like hiding,” Isabela said. “I think you like it, too.”

  Caleb reached for his shirt, pulling it on. Then, he picked up his medallion and slipped it on over his head. The Loralite stone keyed to the cave in New Lorien glimmered in the afternoon sunlight.

  “You know, we’re building something there,” Caleb said. “I think it’ll be good. We could use your help, if you wanted . . .”

  Isabela swatted him away. “Every time with this. No, Caleb. I don’t want to build anything in some cold-ass monk cave under a force field. I’m good.”