Isabela reconsidered Archibald. When they did the Wargames event against the Peacekeepers, he had seemed proud of the way his soldiers dismantled the young Garde—at least until Isabela and her friends tricked their way to a victory. Isabela still savored the memory of Archibald’s surprised face when she’d held a tranquilizer gun under his chin. Listening to Archibald now, she wondered if he really did have it out for the Garde, or if that whole training scenario was just his way of teaching the students—and their cocky professor—a hard lesson.
“We were supposed to be getting a new student to the Academy tomorrow.” Archibald continued his briefing. “But the Italians are keeping her, on account of the incident in the Philippines. If any press contact you about Italy’s participation in Earth Garde, you have no comment.”
Isabela zoned out. Was Archibald just an uptight military goon or did he harbor the kind of anti-Garde sentiment that would make him a perfect mole? Isabela would find out soon enough.
“We’ve got the holidays coming up,” Archibald said, oblivious to Isabela’s scrutiny. “The Academy’s headshrinker wants us to be aware that this can be a tough time of year for young people, especially considering most of them won’t be allowed to leave campus for home visits. Let’s be aware of students acting out and potentially trying to sneak off campus. We don’t want a repeat of our recent lapse.”
Isabela allowed herself a small smile. As if they could keep her here if she really wanted to escape.
Archibald opened up a folder on the table in front of him. “As for those home visits, if I call your name, you’ve been assigned to one of those detachments.”
That was enough spying for Isabela. With a telepathic nudge, she pushed Archibald’s folder off the table. With an annoyed grunt, the colonel bent to pick up the papers, and Isabela ducked out the door.
With as many times as she’d snuck off campus, Isabela knew the layout of the Peacekeepers’ base well. The mess hall, the barracks, the armory, the fence that cordoned off the Academy, the gatehouse that led to the road and the outside world, and the private trailer where Archibald stayed.
Pff. If Isabela was a big-shot army guy, she would’ve demanded a much nicer house.
As everyone was in the briefing, no one noticed Halima Ouma approach Archibald’s trailer. Isabela popped the flimsy lock with her telekinesis and slipped inside.
The colonel’s abode was as dull as Isabela expected. His bed was made with such tight precision that Isabela imagined she could hear the mattress squeaking in anguish from the choking hospital corners. There were four books stacked on the nightstand, all of them biographies of US presidents. The man’s vitamins were lined up in a row ordered by size next to the trailer’s small sink. The entire room smelled like piney aftershave. Archibald’s laptop sat on the dust-free linoleum-topped table next to a tin of unsalted peanuts.
Isabela powered up the laptop—background a waving American flag, of course—and inserted into the port the USB drive Lexa had given her. Immediately, some computer stuff started to happen—numbers and progress bars, that kind of crap. Lexa had told Isabela that all she needed to do was plug the drive in for a few minutes and let it do its work.
In the meantime, Isabela ruffled Archibald’s bedcovers. Because why not?
The portable drive emitted a sharp beep when it finished mirroring Archibald’s hard drive. Isabela slipped it back in her pocket, paused, went on the internet, found an image of some hot guys playing volleyball in very small eighties bathing suits, and changed Archibald’s desktop wallpaper.
“Mission accomplished,” she said to herself.
Isabela popped out of Archibald’s trailer and immediately bumped into a soldier rushing towards the mess hall. Both of them nearly fell over from the collision. Isabela cringed. She should’ve peeked out of the trailer first. Was this what Professor Nine meant when he called her impetuous?
“Ouch, Halima, damn,” the soldier said, rubbing his face where it had clipped Isabela’s shoulder. He was young, American, his uniform sloppy. The name on his chest read Pvt. Rhodes. “You late for the briefing, too? My asshole bunkmates turned off my alarm.”
Isabela formed Halima’s lips into a sheepish smile. “Yes,” she said. “I overslept, too.”
“Well, let’s . . .” Rhodes trailed off. He squinted at Isabela, realizing where she’d been coming out of. “Wait. What were you doing in the XO’s . . . ?”
Isabela grabbed Rhodes’s upper arm and squeezed. “Please, don’t say anything,” she said. “It was just a fling and I don’t want to get Ray in trouble.”
Rhodes looked supremely uncomfortable, like he regretted ever bumping into Halima. Isabela smiled inwardly. Good thing that she’d picked a woman to impersonate. It wouldn’t have been so easy to explain away her carelessness if she’d been posing as a male soldier sneaking out of the colonel’s trailer.
“Hi, guys!”
The awkward silence between Halima and Rhodes was broken by Caleb’s chipper greeting. Not Caleb, Isabela could tell immediately, but one of his duplicates. The clone stood there with its unblinking stare, grinning stupidly at the two soldiers.
“I’m Caleb’s sense of adventure and spontaneity,” the duplicate declared. “Do you guys want to shoot some guns or something?”
Rhodes took a cautious step back from the clone. Before he or Isabela could say anything, the real Caleb appeared on the other side of the fence, waving his arms.
“Hey, sorry!” Caleb called. “I lost control of that one.”
Isabela grabbed the duplicate by the arm. “I’ll escort this . . . thing back to campus,” she said to Rhodes. “You can still make the briefing.”
Rhodes nodded, relieved to be away from both Halima and Caleb. The clone went silent as Isabela walked it towards the nearby gate where Caleb waited. Isabela ground her teeth, not wanting her annoyance with Caleb to show.
“Escorting this stray back to campus,” Isabela said to the Peacekeepers at the gate.
They waved her through. Caleb absorbed his duplicate and sulked alongside Halima until they were out of sight of the gate. Only then did Isabela shape-shift back into her true form. They walked back to campus side by side, like they were just out for a stroll.
“I had that under control,” Isabela said sharply.
“Oh,” Caleb replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought that soldier was going to bust you. Figured I could provide a distraction.”
“I had a juicy cover story all ready to go,” Isabela said, her eyes shining. “The boring-ass colonel is having a secret affair with Halima.”
“Um, that would be really inappropriate,” Caleb countered. “You could get Archibald in a lot of trouble if that got out.”
Isabela rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so uptight. Besides, if we find out he’s the mole, the dirty rumors I made up will be the least of his worries.”
“I don’t think Archibald’s our guy,” Caleb said.
“Of course not. You love your army men.”
Caleb frowned at that. “Just because I grew up on a base doesn’t mean I think everyone in a uniform is a saint. But my uncle told me when I first came here that Archibald was a good man. That I could trust him.”
“This is the same uncle who Nigel curses to this day because he stole his pet raccoon?”
“Our Chimæra, yeah,” Caleb replied, looking off into the distance. “They needed to quarantine them, I guess. Not saying my uncle’s always right but . . .”
“And this is the same uncle who pulled some strings so you can go home for Christmas this year while the rest of us are stuck here,” Isabela added.
“I didn’t ask for that,” Caleb replied. “I don’t even want to go home.”
“Sure.”
Caleb looked over at her like he might defend himself further. Instead, he blew out a sigh and fell silent. The two of them walked back to the dorms without speaking. Isabela wasn’t sure why she felt the need to pick on Caleb so much. He’d just been trying to h
elp and she even agreed with him—Archibald probably wasn’t the mole. He was too boring for that.
“Well, sorry I got in your way back there,” Caleb said flatly when they reached the dorms.
“Apology accepted,” Isabela replied with a huff.
Caleb trudged into the dorms while Isabela continued on towards the faculty building to deliver the USB drive to Lexa. She pursed her lips, feeling bad for how she’d spoken to him. Oh well. He’d get over it. Hopefully.
“This teamwork shit,” Isabela muttered, “is not for me.”
Chapter Five
NIGEL BARNABY
HEALTH AND WELLNESS OFFICE
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
THE NIGHTMARE ALWAYS STARTED THE SAME. NIGEL was barefoot, in the cozy pajama pants he used to wear as a kid, his arms shoved inside his T-shirt sleeves and crossed over his stomach to keep warm. His breath misted in a cloud in front of his face. His toes were numb, but he could still feel the brittle ice beneath him, cracking and buckling with his every step.
He was back in Iceland. Out on that frozen lake.
Nigel looked over his shoulder. There should’ve been land behind him, a cabin, but there was nothing. Nothing except for ice in all directions.
So, he staggered onwards, unable to do anything else. His teeth chattered. The sound of the ice snapping echoed in his ears. A snow flurry blew across his face and he could feel snot frozen to his upper lip.
There were shadows in front of him. People, barely visible in the gloom. If he could just make it to them . . .
But then he heard their voices, their cruel laughter. Mocking him for his stupid pants. They were the boys from the Pepperpont Young Gentlemen’s Preparatory Academy. His old school, the one he’d left behind when the invasion happened, when he leaped at the opportunity to become someone else. The old dread came over him. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go.
They were coming towards him now. Some of them brandished lacrosse sticks and riding crops.
Nigel gritted his teeth to stop them from chattering. He wasn’t weak anymore. He had Legacies. But somehow, he knew, they wouldn’t work out here. Not on the ice. He couldn’t decide whether to run back the way he had come or submit to whatever humiliations the prep schoolers had in mind.
It was in that moment of painful indecision that Nigel fell. Always the same. The ice parted underneath him and the dark water swallowed him up, freezing cold as it rushed into his lungs.
“And then I wake up, gasping for breath,” he told Dr. Linda. “What do you make of that, eh? Used to be I dreamt about cool shit, like the one where I’m running round the burbs, busting windows with Siouxsie Sioux.”
Dr. Linda stared at him blankly, her pen poised over her notebook.
“Siouxsie Sioux?” Nigel reiterated, aghast. “Siouxsie and the Banshees? Bloody hell, Linds, weren’t you alive in the seventies?”
“Yes, Nigel, I was alive.”
“Don’t sound like it,” Nigel replied. “Anyway, what’re we going to do about these nightmares?” He ran the back of his hand across his pockmarked cheek. “Not getting my beauty sleep.”
Nigel sunk deeper into the cozy couch in Dr. Linda’s office, his gaze flitting around the room. Her office was cluttered with tchotchkes from all over the world; the little objects served as conversation pieces for Dr. Linda to break the ice with some of the foreign students. On the walls were variations of the same multicolored splotchy painting, which, considering Nigel still had to come here at least once a week, he was totally sick of looking at.
“It isn’t unusual for two traumatic experiences to bleed into each other, particularly when they share a unifying theme—”
“Huh?”
“Your experience in Iceland and your background at the prep school,” Linda explained patiently. “There are similarities.”
“What’re you on about?” Nigel replied. “Buncha pricks who tormented me for years got nothing to do with drowning.”
“Is it the drowning that frightens you?”
“Drowning sucks, don’t it? I was playing would-you-rather the other night with the lads and we had total agreement that we’d all rather burn to death. You’d think that would hurt more, right?”
“Nigel.”
“But the thing of it is, you pass out from the smoke long before your actual skin gets to roasting.”
“Okay, Nigel. That’s lovely.” Dr. Linda sighed. “The point I’m trying to make is that, despite your close call, you don’t have anxiety about drowning.”
“Says you,” Nigel replied. He put his combat boots up on the coffee table. He’d been meeting with Dr. Linda often enough that this no longer got even a raised eyebrow from the woman.
“The similarity, Nigel, is your feeling of powerlessness,” Dr. Linda said.
“Whoa now. Aren’t we skipping the part of the therapy where you ask me what I think the connection is and gradually lead me to that conclusion?”
Dr. Linda smiled dryly. “I’ve learned that a direct approach works better with you.”
Nigel gazed out the window, the California sky crisp and blue, bright even in this so-called winter. He made a fist and kissed the first knuckle, thinking it all over.
“That why I’m thinking about revenge all the time? Against those assholes from Pepperpont once in a while, but more often against that fancy-dressing mind-boy who brainwashed me?”
“Revenge, I think, can be a lot like thin ice, Nigel,” Dr. Linda said. “It won’t hold you up for long.”
“Wow, Linda, that’s a heroic reach for that metaphor, eh?” Nigel turned and smiled coldly at her. “Thing I still can’t figure, all these weeks later, is how that Icelandic wanker knew so much about me.”
Dr. Linda met Nigel’s eyes for a moment, then looked down at her notebook. She tapped her pen thoughtfully.
“If you’re truly having trouble sleeping, I could prescribe you something.”
“Now we’re talking, love. Something that I can get a solid buzz off, yeah?”
She looked at him levelly over the rim of her glasses. “Obviously not.”
“Then never mind,” Nigel said with a wave of his hand. “I’m right as rain, Linds. As always.”
Nigel had been suspicious for weeks. After the first time he had the nightmare—Einar and the Pepperpont boys, the great villains of his life uniting to torment him in the middle of the night—he’d lain awake wondering.
How did Einar know?
The thing was, Nigel actually liked Dr. Linda. He’d felt dumb for spilling his guts to her, but it was nice to have an adult take an interest. So, he’d buried that suspicion. Hadn’t wanted to believe.
Not until they were sure the mole was one of the administrators. Once they knew that, there was no way to keep denying it. He didn’t need to make a copy of her hard drive or hack her email like the others were doing with Greger and Archibald.
Nigel could see the guilt in Dr. Linda’s eyes.
In the empty hallway outside her office, Nigel clenched his fists and let loose a scream. With his Legacy, he could’ve amped that scream up loud enough to break all the windows on the floor. Instead, he muted himself. The rush of air left his lungs soundlessly—all the catharsis of shouting, none of the noise.
He knew.
That night, beneath the training center, Nigel stood in front of their board of clues and suspects, glaring at Dr. Linda’s picture.
“Lady looks me right in the eye,” Nigel growled. “Right in the eye and pretends she doesn’t know.”
“Did you give it away?” Ran asked. “You are talking like you gave it away.”
“No,” Nigel said sharply. “At least, I don’t think so. Not bloody easy for me to be so chipper with her.”
“I know.”
“Like to scream at her smug ass until she goes flying out her window.”
“Perhaps,” Ran said evenly, “that would be too far.”
“Evil crone,” Nigel grumbled. He g
rabbed a marker and doodled devil horns on Dr. Linda’s forehead. “Gotta sit there and let her bloody treat me when . . .” He shook his head. “Think she even cares that her big mouth about got me killed? Not to mention the violation of her freaking sacred oath!”
Ran bumped her shoulder against Nigel’s affectionately. Her voice was as coolly dispassionate as ever. “I know it isn’t easy, but we must maintain appearances. We can do more harm to our enemies when they think we are ignorant.”
“Bloody Sun Tzu over here,” Nigel replied. “You didn’t almost drown.”
“No. I was only shot in the leg by a sniper and then had my chest compacted by telekinesis.” Ran eyed him. “Also, Sun Tzu was Chinese, but I have read his book. It’s a little dry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nigel replied, and he smiled in his wild way at Ran. “I’m just saying, I’m not a revenge-served-cold type’a bloke. I like it hot and I like it often.”
“Mhm, we know,” Ran replied, used to Nigel’s bravado.
Their group gathered once again around the conference table. The data they had hijacked from Archibald and Greger came back clean. Lexa, meanwhile, had simply been able to hack Dr. Chen’s email and hard drive without any assistance from the students—Chen had the lax data protection of an innocent person. That left only Dr. Linda, who Nigel laid out the case against, limiting his curse words as much as possible.
When Nigel was finished, Nine looked over at Malcolm and Lexa.
“I’m sold,” he said. “But then, I’ve been told that I don’t always think things all the way through. What do you two think?”
Malcolm grimaced. “I really wish it wasn’t her, but the evidence seems to add up.”
Lexa nodded in agreement. “I think it’s time for phase two,” she said.
“Let’s see how Linda handles a terrible student who wants to escape the Academy,” Nine said.
All of them turned as one to look at Taylor.
She slouched in her chair just like Nigel had showed her, eyes drooping like she was about to fall asleep, loudly chewing gum. With a toss of her hair, she sat up slightly, glaring at her friends.
Fugitive Six Page 4