TAYLOR COOK
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
DR. LINDA SLEPT CURLED UP ON HER SIDE. THE floorboards creaked under Taylor’s feet as she approached the woman’s bed. The psychiatrist stirred. Taylor made no effort to hide her footfalls. As Dr. Linda blinked awake, Taylor clapped a hand over the woman’s mouth, gentle but firm.
“Please don’t scream,” Taylor said. “I need your help.”
Taylor made her eyes wide, the whites shining in the near darkness of Linda’s bedroom. She forced her hand to tremble, knowing that Linda would be able to feel the tremor. She wanted to seem desperate and cornered. After weeks of perfecting her badass act, Taylor wasn’t totally sure she could pull this off.
Linda’s hands were still pinned under the sheet. Taylor had checked the room quickly before waking her up. She didn’t find any weapons—just novels, scented candles, and collections of crossword puzzles. There was also the tablet computer that all the faculty carried, the one connected to the Academy’s systems. Linda would be able to summon security with that. Even so, Taylor had left it on her nightstand within reach.
It was important that Linda feel like she was in control.
If there was a momentary flare of panic at being woken up by Taylor looming over her, Linda had tamped it down. Her eyes now regarded Taylor with the customary calmness, like they were in session. She nodded her agreement. She would be quiet.
Taylor took her hand away and stepped back. Linda sat up in bed but didn’t reach for her tablet. No one would ever consider the therapist an intimidating presence, and in her oversized flannel pajamas, her graying hair all wild and uncombed, Taylor could only think of how fragile she looked. Hard to believe this woman could be her enemy.
“Taylor . . . ,” Dr. Linda said quietly. “This is highly inappropriate.”
“I know, I know . . .” Taylor paced back and forth in front of Linda’s bed and pushed her hands through her hair. The woman watched her, gaze steady. Taylor hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. “I didn’t know where else to turn, what to do . . . they took Kopano and Ran.”
It wasn’t hard to work emotion into her voice. Stealing her friends away, taking Kopano just when they were starting to get closer—Taylor wasn’t sure she could forgive Earth Garde for that. Use it, Isabela had told her outside Dr. Linda’s house. Make her believe.
“Yes. I received a memo about that,” Linda replied measuredly. “I believe they’re calling it protective custody. It’s for their own good—”
“This is already protective custody!” Taylor snapped. “We’re already prisoners! And this just shows . . . just shows that Earth Garde will do whatever they want with us. They don’t actually care. We’re just . . . weapons.”
“Now, Taylor, I understand you’re upset . . .”
Taylor put her hands over her face. “I should’ve listened to the Foundation. They were right about everything.”
Linda was quiet. Taylor peeked at her through her fingers. Her mouth was quirked to the side, eyes narrowed as she studied Taylor.
“Why did you come here?” Linda asked. Her voice betrayed nothing.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Taylor said shakily. She took a deep breath to make it seem like she was trying to get a grip. If this was going to work, Linda needed to believe this next part. “I went to confront Nine about what happened to my friends. Outside his office, I heard him and Dr. Goode talking. They’re going to send me away, too, to whatever Earth Garde prison they shipped the others. They’re afraid the Foundation will try to take me again and don’t want to endanger the other students. They talked about how safe I’d be there because the security is impenetrable. Because I’m a healer, they said, I’m too valuable to lose. They don’t care—they don’t care what I want!”
“Hmm,” was all Dr. Linda said in response. She picked up her tablet and turned it on, but to Taylor’s relief she didn’t call security. Instead, it looked like she was scrolling through her messages.
“I know . . . I know I’ve been a pain lately.” Taylor pressed on with her begging. “I know I’ve made it seem like I don’t want to be here. But I’d rather stay here than be in some Earth Garde prison for the rest of my life! Please, can you tell them? Tell them I’ll be good?”
“Calm down,” Linda replied. “I’m looking at your file. There’s nothing here about you being transferred.”
“I swear, I—”
Taylor jumped theatrically as someone pounded loudly on Linda’s door. Right on time.
Linda’s eyebrows shot up and she got out of bed. Taylor intercepted her before she could go far, clinging desperately to her arms.
“It’s them!” she whispered. “Please! Please don’t tell them I’m here!”
“It’s okay,” Linda said. “Stay here.”
Taylor let her go and watched, peeking around the corner of Linda’s bedroom door, as the psychiatrist straightened her pajamas and went to answer the knock. She cracked the front door open just enough to see Nine standing there, leaning against the frame, smiling smugly.
“’Sup, Linda,” Nine said. “I wake you?”
Linda feigned a yawn. “Yes, but it’s okay. What’s wrong?”
“Taylor Cook isn’t in her dorm,” Nine said. “Earth Garde decided to transfer her out with the others after all. We think she might have caught wind and run off again. Trying to keep this on the down low right now. Not going to look good for me if I let the same dumb-ass bounce out of here twice. But . . . any ideas where she might have gone?”
Linda hesitated. The moment of truth. Taylor had laid the groundwork with her story and now Isabela—in the guise of Nine—made it seem real. If Linda was truly spying for the Foundation and if they really wanted Taylor back, then Linda would have to act.
“Let me get dressed,” Linda told Nine. “I’ll meet you at the administration building.”
“Hurry up, okay? Or it’s going to be my ass—”
Linda shut the door in his face. She turned to face Taylor.
“We have to move quickly,” she said.
“What—?” Taylor still playing dumb. “What are we going to do?”
Linda said nothing as she crouched down in her living room. She pushed aside a throw rug and pried up a loose floorboard. Linda reached into the gap and produced a satellite phone. Her finger hesitated over the buttons as she looked at Taylor.
“I can get you to the Foundation,” Linda said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
Taylor was taken aback. There was something about Linda’s voice—she sounded conflicted, like she didn’t want Taylor to make this choice.
“Seriously?” Taylor asked. “You’re—”
“Yes,” Linda said quickly. “Should I make the call?”
Taylor nodded, doing her best to sound sincere. “Yes! Thank God! What they’re offering—it’s definitely better than here. They’re right about Earth Garde. About everything.”
“Hm,” Linda said noncommittally. Then, she dialed a preprogrammed number on the satellite phone. Someone answered on the first ring. “I have an emergency,” Linda said.
A pause. Taylor could hear a man’s voice. He sounded curt and displeased.
“I know,” Linda replied. “I know. But they are transferring Cook out tonight.” A pause. “Somewhere more secure than here. I don’t know.” Another pause. “No. My cover is intact. Only Cook knows now.” Pause. “Yes, she’s here with me.” A sharp response from the man on the phone, enough to make Linda flinch. “I can meet you tonight, yes. Let me write it down.” Linda grabbed one of her crossword puzzles and scratched down an address in the margin. “Okay,” Linda said meekly, then hung up the satellite phone.
The psychiatrist took a shaky breath, then returned the phone to its hiding place under the floorboards. Taylor took a step towards her.
“Is everything okay?”
“I have to go,” Linda replied. “You stay here. The Foundation will send someone to get you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. We aren’t allowed to cross paths. They’ll get you out.”
There was someone else. Another Foundation mole. Someone capable of sneaking her off campus. She’d half expected Linda to smuggle her out in the trunk of her car. This complicated things.
Linda disappeared into her room to get changed. She came back a few moments later, Taylor still standing there dumbfounded—although not all of it was feigned this time. Linda grabbed her car keys and the piece of paper she’d written the address on. Then, she came to stand before Taylor.
“Why . . . ?” Taylor asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you worked for them?”
“I’m sure you can guess the answer to that,” Linda replied. She put her hand gently on Taylor’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t tell you this. It’s . . . it’s too late to change anything. But you need to be careful with these Foundation people, Taylor. Maybe they can offer you a better life than Earth Garde. Maybe that’s true. But they are dangerous.”
Taylor hadn’t expected this. “I . . . I know.”
Dr. Linda kept speaking, looking through Taylor as she did. Taylor got the feeling that Linda had never said these words out loud before.
“Two months after I was offered the job with Earth Garde, my sister became ill. A brain tumor. A man from the Foundation contacted me, said they could heal her if I would report to them about the students here. I . . .” Linda looked down, blinking. “I knew it wasn’t ethical. But my sister has three kids. I don’t have any of my own, you see . . . but I imagined my nieces and nephews growing up without their mother and . . .”
Linda trailed off. A cold feeling came over Taylor. In the weeks since the Fugitive Six realized Dr. Linda was the mole, they had built her up into a treacherous villain. But she wasn’t that at all. She was just another victim of the Foundation.
Before too much sympathy developed, Taylor remembered her role. She still needed Dr. Linda to think she believed in the Foundation’s philosophy.
“They healed her, right?” she asked. “They kept good on their promise?”
“Yes. They sent someone like you.” Linda squeezed her arm. “But my part of the agreement, well . . . that appears to never end. A deal made with these people—I hesitate to use the metaphor—but it is like selling your soul. I hope you know what you’re getting into.”
“I . . . I’ll be fine,” Taylor replied, but Dr. Linda had already turned away. Without another word, she walked out the front door, leaving Taylor alone in her little home.
Stay here. Stay here and wait for someone. But who? And how long? Linda had told the man on the phone that she would be transferred out that night. That meant the Foundation would be acting quickly.
Taylor’s first move was to uncover the loose floorboard and grab Linda’s satellite phone. There was only one number programmed in there. She set the phone on the coffee table, in plain view. Maybe Isabela would come in here and grab it, show it to Nine and Lexa so they could trace the number.
Isabela. She’d done her part, pretending to be Nine. She was supposed to be hiding outside, keeping watch. What would she make of Dr. Linda leaving the house? Taylor went to one of the windows to try to signal Isabela, let her know that everything was going to plan. Well, sort of. How would she communicate that a second Foundation spy was on the way? If they spotted Isabela, the whole game might be given away.
Taylor approached one of the windows. A cool breeze blew in, stirring up some of Dr. Linda’s papers. She peeked outside, but couldn’t see Isabela in the darkness.
“Taylor.”
She spun around at the sound of a boy’s voice behind her. Miki stood in the middle of Dr. Linda’s living room, his diminutive form dressed in a tank top and basketball shorts like he’d just rolled out of bed. He looked tired and Taylor thought she glimpsed uncertainty in his dark eyes.
“Miki,” Taylor said, trying not to sound too surprised. “You’re . . . ?”
“Yeah,” he said quickly. “I’m supposed to get you out of here.”
“How . . . ?”
How did you get in here? How long have you been working for the Foundation? How did they recruit you? How is a tweeb supposed to help me escape from the Academy? These questions caused a traffic jam in Taylor’s brain, so she ended up standing there staring dumbly at Miki.
“Better if we don’t talk here,” he said. He stepped forward and offered Taylor his hand. “Grab on.”
“Grab on?” Taylor tentatively took his hand. “Miki, what do you do?”
“I turn into wind.”
“What?”
“It’s going to feel weird at first,” Miki replied. “Try not to panic.”
Taylor tried to ask a follow-up question, but her mouth was gone. Her whole body was gone. She was weightless, disoriented and dizzy. Her vision expanded —she could see all of Dr. Linda’s room at once, a complete 360. She twisted and rose, spun and circulated. If she’d still had a stomach, she probably would’ve thrown up.
She could still feel Miki. He was holding her, even though neither of them had hands anymore. They were intertwined. This whole thing was disconcertingly intimate.
Then they started to move and Taylor forgot about all of that. They squeezed out through Dr. Linda’s window, dipped low, and then gusted out across the Academy. Soon, they were high and soaring. A leaf got caught up with them; it felt weird and prickly. The experience reminded Taylor of riding in her dad’s truck when she’d hang her arm out the window and let it ride the wind.
She only panicked a little bit, when she realized that she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t need to breathe, though. She was air. Still, not having those functions we take for granted, not really having a body—it messed with her mind.
And then they were on the beach, twenty miles north of the Academy. It was dark and she was human again, on her hands and knees, gasping for breath and trying not to throw up from the dizziness. She spit in the sand, panting.
“You okay?” Miki asked. He stood a few feet away, looking windblown but mostly unruffled.
“God, a little warning would’ve been nice.”
“I did warn you.”
“A little more warning.”
“Sorry,” Miki replied. “I know it’s tough to get used to. And I don’t get to practice very often, since I’m not allowed to show the instructors.”
Taylor sat in the sand catching her breath and looked up at him, trying to get a read. He caught her watching and frowned.
“So how did you play Dr. Linda?” he asked.
Taylor’s hands tensed. “What do you mean?”
“I know she buys into that act you’ve been doing since you guys got back,” Miki replied. “But . . . I’m the wind, you know? I’ve been through every air duct in the Academy. I saw your guys’ dope underground hideout.”
Taylor swallowed. She got up slowly and squared up with Miki. He was a master at telekinesis and could probably carry her out to sea and drop her with his weird wind Legacy. But if she had to fight, she would.
“Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “I haven’t told anyone. And I won’t. The Foundation’s got something on me, but I’m not on their side.”
Taylor stared at him, incredulous. “If you knew about us, if you aren’t against them—why didn’t you tell us? We could help you. You could help us.”
Miki gazed out at the ocean. “Obviously I don’t trust them, but tonight’s the first time they actually asked me to do something. Called me on a cell phone they smuggled in for me, told me it was urgent I helped you escape. I figured your plan had finally worked.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Miki shrugged. “I didn’t want to approach you guys until . . . well, until I was sure you could actually stop them. No offense.”
Taylor pursed her lips. “Some offense taken.”
Out on the ocean, a small boat’s light broke the inky darkness. It blinked three times, went dark for a few seconds, then blinked three more times.
“That’s your ride,” Miki said.
Taylor shook her head silently. About thirty minutes had gone by since she first broke into Dr. Linda’s house. The Foundation had arranged this extraction in less time than it took to cook a pizza.
Miki held out his hand. “I’ll fly you out there, if you’re up for it.”
“Better than swimming,” Taylor replied, trying to recapture some of the badass energy that had gotten her this far. It wasn’t easy—this was really happening. She was returning to the Foundation. She nervously took Miki’s hand.
“Seriously, good luck,” he told her. “I hope you take these bastards down.”
Whatever response Taylor might have made, it was swallowed up in the wind.