KOPANO OKEKE
RAN TAKEDA
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
KOPANO HATED TO RUN.
That’s not to say he didn’t like to exercise. He enjoyed training; he loved games and competition. But running simply for the sake of running? What was the point of that?
Breathing hard, Kopano chugged past the four-mile marker on the dirt track that snaked around the Academy grounds. Only one more mile of this boredom to endure. It still disappointed Kopano that not all training at the Academy was cool Legacy-related activities. In fact, the good stuff only really took place under Nine’s tutelage, while the vast majority of their exercise regimen was overseen by other faculty—strength coaches, boot camp sergeants, world-renowned personal trainers. Sadists, all of them, their shared goal to turn the young Garde into perfect athletic specimens.
Kopano wasn’t supposed to use his Legacies on this five-mile run. But if he made his body a little lighter as his calves got sorer, who would know the difference?
Footsteps pounded behind him. Kopano glanced over his shoulder, saw Nic Lambert bounding along behind him. The Belgian kid was broader and taller than Kopano, more powerful, thanks to his enhanced-strength Legacy, and clearly the better runner. He’d started a full ten minutes behind Kopano.
“Come on, Kopano, pick it up!” Nic yelled in a way that was probably meant to be encouraging.
Kopano’s brow furrowed, but he was too winded to form a reply, and then Nic was by him anyway. He couldn’t wait to return to the dorms and commiserate with Nigel, who also hated these purposeless runs. The thought of venting to his friend actually got Kopano to pick up some speed.
Except, Kopano realized, there was no one back in his suite to complain to. His pace returned to its dogged norm as the disappointment set in. Caleb had been transferred to Earth Garde and Nigel was home mourning his father for at least a few more days.
It had dawned on Kopano three days ago, during that first night having the pod to himself, that he had never really been lonely before.
At first, the solitude had seemed like a cool novelty to Kopano. Back in Lagos, he shared a room with his little brothers. Personal space there was a foreign concept. Of course there were times when he could sneak off and be alone, but even then there was always a reassuring bustle of activity nearby, the voices of his parents or neighbors audible through the thin walls of their apartment. Even though he had his own room at the Academy, it was still pretty much the same deal. Either Nigel or Caleb (sometimes many Calebs) were in the common room and, if not, he could still sense them moving about in their own rooms.
The first night, Kopano had thrilled at sitting around in the common room wearing nothing but his boxers, singing along loudly to whatever came on the radio. But, that got boring quick, and the quiet of his pod started to feel unnatural.
He spent most of that night in Taylor’s suite, lingering there late enough that Taylor could barely keep her eyes open. He only left when Isabela started mocking him about being too scared to stay in his own room by himself.
This wasn’t an easy time for Kopano to be without his friends. The coverage about him and Ran was still playing around the clock on all the cable news networks. Apparently, there was nothing those journalists liked more than speculating what might happen next. Would the Garde be sent to jail for assault? Would they be deported to their home countries? Would there be another attack? The hypothetical questions were answered by experts whose fields ranged from international law to child psychology, and all their opinions were somehow considered to be breaking news.
Up ahead on the track, Kopano spotted Ran. He grimaced. She wasn’t part of his endurance training seminar, which meant she was out here for the fun of it. He slowed his pace so that he wouldn’t catch up to her, then veered off the track entirely and headed for the dorms. If his instructor noticed, Kopano would just lie and say he’d gotten a cramp.
Ran was the reason Kopano hadn’t spent every night hanging out in Taylor’s suite. He was avoiding her. He knew it was stupid—Ran was just as much a victim as him—but being around her reminded him of the whole Harvester controversy. It’s not like Ran tried to talk to him about the incident—the girl didn’t say much of anything, especially without Nigel around to coax words out of her—but he knew that she’d been hanging around the student union, watching the news as much as possible, letting the demented coverage of their misdeeds buffet her.
He wanted to forget about the whole thing, ignore it until it went away. He couldn’t understand why Ran was so obsessed with watching the men on the news call her a monster.
From the corner of her eye, Ran watched Kopano veer off the track and head for the dorms. She had slowed her pace to see if he would like to run with her, but wasn’t offended that he instead chose to run away. She didn’t take it personally. Their faces were often together these days, grainy screengrabs on television, newspapers, and blogs. Ran couldn’t blame Kopano for wanting some space.
Ran picked up speed, relishing the burning in her lungs. Soon, Nic Lambert came into view. She passed him easily, a faint smile on her lips as she felt the boy increase his pace in a valiant attempt to keep up with her.
Ran had spent a lot of time on the track lately, exhausting herself on purpose, burning away the angry energy inside her that welled up whenever she watched Wolf News, which, lately, was often. If Kopano had asked why she watched so much of the channel’s distorted coverage, she would’ve told him how it confirmed her own concerns about her Legacies. She’d sworn off her destructive powers for the same reasons the newscasters on Wolf News articulated—she was dangerous, unpredictable, deadly.
And yet, hearing herself described this way, knowing how the media had twisted the details of their encounter with the Harvesters beyond recognition—this all infuriated Ran. She couldn’t reconcile those two feelings.
So she ran. And she kept watching.
Actually, it was about time for Don Leary to come on. He was the worst of all the Wolf News blowhards, which meant Ran never missed an episode. Ran left the track and headed for the student union, stretching out her back and legs as she went.
It was late afternoon, the sun just starting to dip low—that weird time when it was too early for dinner but too late for lunch. That meant the student union wouldn’t be crowded. No one would compete with her for use of the TV.
As Ran approached, she noticed a group of Peacekeepers in jumpsuits milling around outside. They were a maintenance crew, engaged in breaking and pulling up tiles around the entrance and dumping the fragments into a nearby Dumpster. They had blocked off the student union’s entrance with yellow caution tape. Ran stopped short and raised a questioning eyebrow at the nearest Peacekeeper.
“Mold,” he explained with a shrug. “We’ll be done before dinner.”
“I see,” Ran said, not letting her disappointment show. She started to turn away, but the Peacekeeper stopped her.
“You look like you could use something to eat,” he said, noting Ran’s sweaty appearance. He lifted up the yellow tape. “If you don’t mind the noise, I think they left some cold sandwiches out from lunch.”
Ran bowed her head and smiled. “Thank you.”
“Sure,” he replied. “Gotta keep our best and brightest fueled up, eh?”
She ducked under the caution tape and entered the student union, deserted except for the sweating Peacekeepers, immediately making a beeline not for the sandwiches but for the remote.
Kopano stopped outside his dorm room and listened, hoping to hear the abrasive chords of one of Nigel’s punk bands. No such luck. Only silence waited for Kopano. He sighed and loosened his molecules, passing through the door like a ghost.
“Another night alone in my underwear,” Kopano declared to the empty room.
“Um, maybe you could hold off on that?”
Kopano practically jumped out of his skin at the sound of a woman’s voice. He turned and found a smiling Peacekeeper standing in the doorway to Caleb’s room. She was in her thirties, with short brown hair and freckles, and wore the blue-and-white jumpsuit of a cadet, the ones they sometimes sent onto campus to do jobs that didn’t fall under the Garde’s comprehensive chore list—usually maintenance stuff. From her accent, Kopano could tell she was American.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, stepping aside so that Kopano could see past her. There was a second Peacekeeper, a male, in Caleb’s old room, this one pulling the sheets off the bed and loading them into a large hamper.
“You didn’t scare me,” Kopano said, and puffed out his chest. “Okay, maybe a little,” he added and the Peacekeeper chuckled. “What are you doing in there?”
“Got to get the room ready for the next occupant. All kinds of stuff we have to do,” she replied. The woman waved a handheld Geiger counter at Kopano. “Would you believe we have to test the mattress for radiation?”
“Seriously? But that’s got nothing to do with Caleb’s power.”
“Yeah, we know that. Still, it’s one of the regulations.” She rolled her eyes. “We should be out of your hair in thirty minutes or so.”
“No rush,” Kopano said. He actually felt grateful for the company. “Will there be a new roommate coming soon?”
The Peacekeeper shrugged. “No idea.” She snapped her fingers as if remembering something. “Oh, hey, we found this in the closet. Think your friend left it behind.”
She held up a gray canister. It looked like hair spray without a label. Kopano squinted and walked forward for a closer look.
“What is it?”
“We are going on five days since we here at Wolf News first broke the story of two Garde going on a rogue rampage across California,” proclaimed Don Leary, the red-faced goon whose abrasive manner of speech Ran had somehow grown inured to since she became a voracious viewer of his channel. “And what has the response been from Earth Garde?”
Leary paused for rhetorical emphasis and Ran found herself hesitating with a square piece of tuna salad sandwich poised just in front of her mouth. A statement from Earth Garde appeared on the screen next to Leary’s head. He proceeded to read it out loud, inflecting some of the words with sarcastic emphasis.
“We at Earth Garde are aware of the incident in California. We are currently conducting an internal investigation into the matter and are confident that the Human Garde Academy and Earth Garde complies with the UN standards in the Garde Declaration.”
Leary shook his head in disgust. His words echoed around the virtually empty student union. Ran sat right under the mounted big-screen television, legs crisscrossed, half-eaten sandwich in her lap. She used to sit like this back home when she was a kid, right in front of the TV, letting her favorite anime engulf her. Wolf News wasn’t nearly as entertaining, but she still couldn’t look away.
“What are the bureaucrats at Earth Garde really saying here?” Leary asked his viewers. “They’re saying that we here—in America—basically don’t have any rights. Attacked on our own soil by superpowered foreigners, and this is a matter not for the California state police, not the FBI, not the NSA—for the UN. The United Nations, folks. Are you kidding me? Who put them in charge?”
Ran sensed movement behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that a couple of Peacekeepers from outside had come in to rummage through a toolbox, although she caught them surreptitiously peeking at her and the TV. She wondered what the soldiers thought of this whole mess. After all, she and Kopano weren’t the only ones getting dragged by Leary. The Peacekeepers were getting it bad as well. She turned her attention back to the news.
“Ms. Takeda.”
Ran’s shoulders tensed. Now there was a voice even more unwelcome than the broadcaster.
Greger, dressed as usual in one of his expensive suits, stepped between the Peacekeepers as he entered the student union and approached.
“You shouldn’t watch this ill-informed buffoon,” he said, waving at Leary. “He’s too one-sided.”
Ran wasn’t in the mood for another one of Greger’s slimy recruitment speeches. She wrapped what was left of her sandwich back in its plastic and stood up.
“I was just going,” she said.
“Ah, I see,” Greger replied. “Well, have a nice rest. We’ll talk soon.”
“A nice—?”
Ran felt a pinch. She twisted her head. Something was sticking out of her neck. She groped for her throat and yanked out a tranquilizer dart.
“What ith thisss . . . ?”
Her mouth was already numb. As her vision dimmed, Ran noticed that the Peacekeepers by the door had found what they were looking for in their toolbox. Tranquilizer guns with suppressors. One of them had shot her.
Ran stumbled. Greger caught her under the arms and supported her weight.
“I know you don’t trust me,” he said. “But this is for your own good.”
“What is that?” Kopano asked. “Cologne or something?”
The Peacekeeper shrugged again, her smile unwaveringly pleasant. As soon as Kopano got close, she pressed down a button on the top of the canister. With a pressurized hiss, the bottle sprayed an odorless mist right in Kopano’s face. He laughed in surprise at the sudden numbing sensation.
“Weird,” Kopano muttered. “I don’t think . . . that’s . . . Caleb’s . . .”
He fell on his face, knocked out.
The two Peacekeepers picked him up and dumped him in the hamper, covering his body with the old sheets from Caleb’s bed.