THE FUGITIVE SIX
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
KOPANO SAT ON THE COUCH IN TAYLOR’S DORM suite with his head in his hands. She sat next to him, watching him closely and occasionally reaching out to pat his back.
“I feel like I just want to hide,” Kopano said.
“Psh!” Isabela answered with a wave of her hand. She sat on a chair opposite, air-drying her freshly painted fingernails. “Why should you hide? They should be giving you a medal and a movie deal for crushing those punheteiros.”
“I didn’t want to crush anyone,” Kopano replied. He peeked out from between his fingers and looked over at Ran. She stood next to the window, quiet, watching as most of the student body gathered in the courtyard below. A makeshift stage had been set up there for the talent show, part of the festivities the administration had cooked up for New Year’s Eve.
“We know you didn’t,” Taylor told him gently.
“They had it coming,” Isabela insisted. “I say it’s too bad you didn’t crush more of them.”
Kopano looked up at her. “You didn’t see the video.”
“Nope. I didn’t see it happen in person either, because they had already shot me. You remember? If not for you and the others, I would probably be dead in a ditch or on a hook in a meat locker like that girl the Harvesters kidnapped. I feel nothing for them. You shouldn’t either, you softie.”
“What did Professor Nine and Malcolm say about it?” Taylor asked.
“They were mad, obviously,” Ran replied. She looked at Kopano. “They will protect us. They promised.”
“Where are your two boyfriends?” Isabela asked him with a smirk. “They should be here.”
Kopano shrugged and started to say he didn’t know, but Ran interrupted with a chin jerk in the direction of the courtyard.
“They’re getting ready to perform,” she said. “I see them down there.”
Isabela snorted. “I thought Nigel said such a nonpaying gig would be beneath him.”
Kopano stood up abruptly, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and put on a resolute face.
“We must go,” he said.
Taylor looked up at him. “Weren’t you just talking about hiding out for the rest of your life?”
“I’m over it,” Kopano said.
Isabela shook her head and Taylor gave him a look—they both knew that wasn’t true. For all his braggadocio, Kopano was probably the most sensitive one of them all. Or at least the most idealistic. That video of him hurting the Harvesters would gnaw at him.
Kopano caught their looks and shrugged. “Fine. I’m not over it. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.” He waved his hand dramatically. “And what kind of friend would I be if I missed the debut performance of Nigel and the Clones, huh?”
“A friend with eardrums,” Isabela replied.
The four of them arrived on the lawn while Lisbette was still onstage. She used her Legacies to create towering ice sculptures of fairies and nymphs while doing interpretive dance to some tinkling new-age track. Most of the student body, along with many administrators, were already there, watching from picnic blankets and politely clapping whenever Lisbette pulled off a flourish.
“I hate this ballet crap,” Isabela said a little too loudly. Some instructors turned around to give her a look. She ignored them. “There’s no beat. No passion.”
“You have to admit the sculptures are pretty,” Ran replied, gazing up at the delicate glass-like wings that Lisbette crafted with deft motions of her fingertips.
“I admit nothing,” Isabela said.
Taylor rubbed her arms. “She’s making it cold out here.”
Kopano interpreted that as a signal and happily put his arm around Taylor’s shoulder. Isabela smiled at that and tried to catch Taylor’s eye, but Taylor deliberately avoided her look. She’d been very cagey about whether Kopano and she were a thing now, ever since their kiss. Isabela could tell that Kopano at least thought they were.
Giving up on exchanging glances with Taylor, Isabela craned her neck to look around. “I wonder if anyone smuggled in some booze.”
“Doubt it,” Taylor said.
“I knew this would be too wholesome for me.”
The New Year’s Eve festivities were a campus-wide thing. There was the talent show stage out there in the courtyard, where they would later play some outdoor movies once the student entertainment ran out. There were board-game stations set up in the student union, where all-night breakfast was being served. Supposedly, Professor Nine had traveled to Mexico to personally procure a “butt-load” of primo fireworks. The students and faculty were all there, plus even some UN Peacekeepers who hadn’t drawn guard duty. It reminded Taylor of the yearly lock-in her old school had done to raise money for whatever charity the seniors selected.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Not as good of a time as Isabela would’ve wanted, but still. A few people shot uneasy looks at Kopano and Ran—those came more from the administrators and soldiers than the other Garde, actually—but the Wolf News video failed to cast a major pall over events. Even Taylor let some of her carefully cultivated bad-girl persona slip for the night. She leaned into Kopano.
“I think everything’s going to be fine,” she told him.
“Really?” he replied.
“Just a feeling I’ve got.” Taylor smiled. “First time I’ve had that feeling in a while, actually.”
After Lisbette finished up with her ice sculptures, a team of duplicates hustled by her. They set to work plugging in guitars and assembling a drum kit.
Kopano rubbed his hands together. “Yes! Here we go!”
Nigel slapped Caleb on the shoulder. “You ready, mate?”
Through the eyes of his duplicates already onstage, Caleb could see the crowd. Altogether, there probably weren’t more than one hundred people out there, but they were the one hundred people who he’d spent nearly every day around for the last year. Normally, it would be pretty embarrassing to flame out in front of them.
“If we bomb, I might not have to see most of these people again,” Caleb replied, thinking about his looming departure from the Academy.
“That’s the spirit,” Nigel said. He grabbed a bottle of water and dumped the entire thing over his face and head, soaking through his white tank top. “Let’s go!”
Nigel jogged out onto the stage and Caleb followed. Caleb, like all his duplicates, wore a black button-down shirt, dark slacks, and a red bow tie. Nigel, of course, had chosen the outfits. A round of applause that Caleb thought sounded skeptical greeted their arrival. Nigel swaggered right up to the mike stand where the lead guitar was propped and slung it on. Meanwhile, Caleb positioned himself behind the keyboard.
There weren’t a lot of keys in the songs they’d chosen, but this spot afforded Caleb the best view of the stage and his duplicates. It helped him multitask the parts if he could oversee his clones rather than have to look through each one’s eyes. There was a clone on bass and one on drums, plus one carrying a megaphone and dancing around, a role Nigel referred to as “hype man.”
Caleb focused. Simultaneously, all the duplicates readied their instruments.
“We are Nigel and the Clones,” Nigel growled. He looked down at the mike, then kicked the stand over and used his Legacy to amplify his voice. “And we’re here to make you shit your britches!”
That was Caleb’s cue. “One, two . . . ,” he said into his mike. “Onetwothreefour!”
“I GET NERVOUS!” Nigel shrieked.
And they were off, beginning with a loud and jangly rendition of “I Get Nervous” by the Lost Sounds, followed by “Vertigo” by the Screamers, and closing with the Sweet’s “Blockbuster.” Nigel played his lead guitar like he was trying to choke it. He writhed across the edge of the stage, kicked wildly at the air, and punctuated every shouted lyric with an appropriately dramatic snarl. At one point during the set, Caleb was pretty sure Nigel lay down on his back and did some hip thrusts.
Caleb couldn’t pay too much attention to Nigel during the performance. He was too busy making sure the duplicates stayed in time with each other, that the messy punk songs didn’t get too incomprehensible. He felt like a conductor almost, flitting between his duplicates, putting the bass guitarist on autopilot so he could slow down the drummer, who had gone out of control. His own fingers stabbed at the keyboard almost without thought. He was in total control, yet it also felt to Caleb like an enormous act of letting go. He wondered, briefly, what his dad and brothers would think if they saw him up here.
Caleb wasn’t the only one up there using his Legacy. Nigel pitched in too, although Caleb could never be sure how much his friend’s sonic manipulation played into their band’s sound. If one of the clones went off-key, Nigel bent their sound until Caleb could fix it. If one of them played too fast or too slow, Nigel lowered the volume on them until they got back in time.
Even though Nigel thought it would be more theatrical if the duplicates performed with stony stoicism, Caleb couldn’t help but let his grin spread onto all of their faces.
It was a team effort. A masterpiece. It was the most in sync Caleb had felt in his entire life.
They rocked it.
When it was over, the crowd clapped politely. A lot of the instructors stuck fingers in their ears to make sure they could still hear, then blew out sighs of relief. The students made faces at each other, laughed, and mimed headbanging.
Isabela took her hands away from her ears. “Is it over?”
Taylor nodded. “They’re done.”
“Thank God,” she said.
“You have to admire their . . . enthusiasm,” Ran said diplomatically.
Taylor snickered, then glanced over at Kopano. He stood a few yards in front of the girls, both hands over his head in the shape of devil horns, bellowing for an encore.
“Well,” she said. “At least they’ve got one groupie.”
With the talent show over, most of the student body broke off into smaller groups, the same cliques that always tended to form up in the dining hall—tweebs, elemental Legacies, fans of the Smiths, the Academy’s fledgling drama club, et cetera. They mingled, played board games, stuffed their faces or watched TV in the student union. They had the New Year’s Eve countdown on. It was the first time that the ball would be dropping in the rebuilt Times Square. New York City still looked bombed-out and emptier than it used to, big gaps in the skyline, like the city had gotten punched in the mouth. But there were crowds and bands and noisemakers and the countdown—the process repeating twice until it was finally the West Coast’s turn.
The Fugitive Six didn’t hang out to watch. None of them would’ve been able to explain exactly why, but it felt weird for them to mingle with the rest of the student body. There was a strange sense after Nigel and the Clones’ performance that this was a special night, a momentous night. The six of them all snuck down to the beach. They didn’t even talk about doing it. They just went.
At some point, Isabela had slipped away and returned with two bottles of champagne and some beers filched from one of the faculty apartments. The popped cork on the first bottle sounded like a gunshot on the empty beach and for a second they all stared at each other, ducked low and stayed still like they were trying to hide, but no one came looking for them.
They passed the bottle around. They tossed smooth rocks into the cold waves, dancing away from the foamy tide. They ran up and down the beach, playing some game of tag that no one was really sure of the rules for.
Distantly, they could hear chanting from the student union. The countdown. They joined in, screaming numbers into the night.
Professor Nine timed his fireworks display to erupt with the New Year. It was as badass as he’d promised—chaotic blooms of red and gold, fizzy bolts of silver, yellow bursts that expanded into the shape of smiley faces. The sand under their toes became like a kaleidoscope.
Nigel tossed his arm around Ran’s shoulder and kissed her wetly on the cheek. She scrunched up her face and laughed.
Taylor and Kopano kissed. A peck on the lips that lingered. Caleb’s mouth fell open when he saw that. Nigel didn’t have the heart to tell him about Kopano’s success over Christmas. Although Caleb’s stomach did a loop, the warm feeling from the champagne softened the blow.
Maybe Isabela saw Caleb staring at Taylor and Kopano and that’s why she flung her arms around his neck and planted a wet kiss on him, all tongue and heat. When it was over, Caleb stammered and Isabela held a finger in his face. “Don’t get any ideas, weirdo. It’s just New Year’s.”
She kissed all the others too after that, but none the way she’d kissed Caleb.
At some point, Nigel climbed up onto a sand dune and got everyone’s attention. He held his beer bottle like a microphone.
“Well, since the lad is too shy to tell you lot himself, it’s on me to announce that tonight’s performance of Nigel and the Clones will likely be our last for a while.” Nigel held the bottle out like he was making a toast. “Our friend Caleb here is off to Earth Garde. Ready to protect the world with his legion of basic white-bread meatheads. We’re going to miss you, mate!”
Everyone was surprised, taken aback as a group because partying down on the beach had started to feel like it was a place they would never leave. Kopano hugged Caleb, patting him hard enough on the back to knock the wind out of him. Ran went over to him and held both of his hands, bowing to him in a very traditional Japanese way, made a little wobbly because Ran didn’t have much of a head for champagne. Caleb watched Isabela dance through the waves with her dress hiked up to mid-thigh; she was smirking at him and he wondered if she knew he was thinking about kissing her again. These moments stretched out, the night a blur.
At one point, Taylor stood next to Caleb. Everyone else was down the beach. It was quiet.
“I’m sorry you’re going,” Taylor said, realizing it was true only as she spoke the words. “I wish we’d gotten to know each other better.”
“Yeah,” Caleb replied. “Sorry I was so weird at first.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Taylor looked around. “I think we’re all a little weird.”
They didn’t talk about the Foundation, or Einar, or any of the crap they’d been through. They just celebrated. Only Taylor had ever actually been to summer camp, but that’s what it felt like. The end of summer camp.
Until Dr. Linda appeared.
Ran was the first to see the diminutive psychiatrist as she waddled up the beach with a flashlight held out in front of her. At first, Ran thought that maybe she was seeing things, so she pulled on Nigel’s sleeve and pointed at Dr. Linda.
“Is she real?” Ran asked.
“What the shit . . . ?” Nigel replied quietly.
Dr. Linda paused when she saw their little group and let out a sigh of relief. She plucked a walkie-talkie off her belt and spoke into it.
“I found him down on the beach,” Linda said. “It’s okay.”
The moment was surreal. The Garde stood in a loose semicircle, facing Dr. Linda, their good mood dashed, uncertain what would happen next. Some of them—like Nigel and Taylor—had spent too much time staring at Linda’s picture on the bulletin board in their secret lair under the training center. They were paranoid. Was this the night the Foundation made their move? What else could she be doing here? Others, like Isabela, had more grounded concerns. Were they going to get in trouble again? Technically, the beach wasn’t off-limits.
Caleb discreetly kicked a spent champagne bottle behind a piece of driftwood.
Finally, Dr. Linda spoke. She didn’t seem mad. Or villainous. She seemed . . . oddly somber.
“Nigel,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Me?” Nigel replied, squinting at her. “Looking for me?”
“Yes. You need to come with me.”
The Garde all tensed up, tightening their ranks around Nigel. Dr. Linda stared at them like she couldn’t comprehend.
“The hell would I go anywhere with you, Linda?” Nigel replied.
But before Dr. Linda could reply, more flashlights appeared on the beach. There were a couple of Peacekeepers, Malcolm Goode, and Professor Nine in the lead. He bounded ahead of the others, almost as if he’d anticipated this particular crew of Garde might have an adverse reaction to being confronted by Dr. Linda.
“Nigel,” Nine said breathlessly. “Damn, dude. We’ve been looking for you.”
Now, seeing Nine acting weird, was the first time Nigel actually felt worried. Ran put a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s what she said,” Nigel replied, waving a hand at Dr. Linda. He put on a cavalier smile. “What’s the hubbub, then? People clamoring for an encore?”
“Nigel . . .” Nine frowned, he looked over his shoulder at the other administrators as if for help. When Dr. Linda opened her mouth to say something, Nine cut her off and plowed ahead. “There’s no easy way to say this, buddy.”
“Spit it out, Nine.”
“Nigel, your dad died.”