NIGEL BARNABY
ENGELBERG, SWITZERLAND
ON THE FIRST DAY, NIGEL WOKE UP WITH A SCREAM.
There was a nurse standing over him, checking his blood pressure. Young and pretty, German-looking, her face quickly turning to a mask of horror as the decibels flying from his mouth shattered her eardrums. She stumbled backwards into a corner, covering her ears and cowering.
“Where the fuck am I?” he asked, getting out of bed and ripping off the Velcro sleeve she’d attached to his arm.
She couldn’t hear him. Or maybe she couldn’t understand English. Either way, she just crouched there and cried.
“Goddamn it,” Nigel muttered, looking around. He discovered he was wearing a set of baggy flannel pajamas. The indignities never ceased.
He was in a posh bedroom—wood-paneled, an oriental throw rug, a king-size bed behind him with silk sheets and lots of pillows. He felt well rested, despite being drugged. Whatever sedative his mom had used on him hadn’t left him with any hangover.
Bloody hell. His own mother had drugged him. She’d had goons—those Blackstone guys he fought back in Iceland. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out whose side she was on. She’d killed the Peacekeepers who were supposed to watch over him and then . . . what? Set fire to his home?
Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked at the nurse again.
“You always think maybe your parents are a little evil, right?” he asked her, even though she stared at him uncomprehending. “But you never expect them to go full Hitler on you, eh?”
He wanted to seem cavalier and unruffled by this sudden change in fortune because he suspected that he was being watched. There was a small camera mounted in one corner of the room. There was also a TV on the wall opposite the bed—could be a camera in there, too. Underneath the façade, though, Nigel felt like he might be sick. His own mother was some kind of evil Foundation bitch. The day of the funeral, they’d actually been getting along. For the first time since he was small enough to sit in her lap, Nigel had actually liked Bea Barnaby.
The room reminded him of where they’d been keeping Taylor in Iceland. There was no handle on his side of the door and he got the feeling that no amount of telekinetic force would dislodge the slab of reinforced wood from its frame. He figured that the windows were probably equally impenetrable, but he at least wanted to get a look at what was outside.
Through glass that appeared to be six inches thick, Nigel looked out at a quaint European village. He was on the fourth floor of what was probably the tallest building in this snowy hamlet. Down below, groups of people equipped for skiing moved towards the great silver mountainside at the village edge.
“The Alps,” Nigel said. “Never been to the Alps.”
Nigel took a deep breath. One of his favorite training activities was exploding wineglasses with high-decibel shrieks. What did Dr. Goode say? That every object on Earth had a frequency that caused it to vibrate and—if he could hit the right note—he could theoretically shatter anything? Well, maybe not anything. Nigel didn’t know. He hadn’t paid a ton of attention to the science part. He just liked breaking stuff.
He screamed, funneling the sound towards the window so he wouldn’t further injure the poor nurse. He went as high and shrill as possible and, once, he thought the window started to vibrate. But, when he finally ran out of breath, his throat scratchy and raw, the glass was still intact. Probably wasn’t glass at all, but that blastproof plastic they used all over the Academy. His mom would be prepared.
“Oh well, had to try,” he said with a cough. He went to the nurse and crouched over her. “Oi, sweetheart, how do you get out of here? There a key card or something? A secret knock?”
She stared at him blankly, her lower lip quivering. Nigel’s ear prickled at a brief burst of static behind him. The TV had come on.
“My dear, please don’t assault the help. It’s uncouth.”
His mother was on the screen. Bea Barnaby looked well rested, a steaming mug of tea cupped in her hands. She wore a woolly sweater and her reading glasses. She looked straight ahead at Nigel, proving his theory that there was a camera in the TV.
“Cheers, Mum,” Nigel replied, playing it cool. “Where are you?”
“I’m right downstairs,” she answered.
“Ah. Can I come down to see ya?”
She smiled. “I don’t know if that’d be a good idea yet. I don’t think you’ll behave.”
Nigel smiled back, all teeth, trying to keep control of his temper. It wouldn’t do to snap. Not yet. He needed to get some more information first and it seemed clear that his mother wanted to talk.
“Jessa down there with you?” He’d last seen his sister after the funeral—before he was drugged, before his mother killed his bodyguards and presumably burned their bodies. Was she alive? Was she in on this?
“She’s back in London,” his mom answered. “I sent her off to a hotel with her clod husband. Going to be a traumatic few days for her, I suppose. Losing her whole family. But I thought it best if we left her out of this.”
“Losing her whole family . . .”
“Papers should have it in a day or two. We burned alive. Least that’s what it’ll look like. Your friends at Earth Garde will see through that.” She shrugged. “They won’t be able to do anything about it, though.”
“You’re a murderer,” Nigel said, thinking now of the Peacemakers. “Sit there drinking your tea and you’re a murderer.”
“It’s not murder when you’re at war, dear,” his mom said flippantly. “And make no mistake, a war is what’s happening. A great battle for control of you and people like you.”
Nigel stepped aside so his mom could see where the nurse still crouched in the corner of the room.
“You want her back, you’re going to have to open the door,” he said. “Let me out, Mum. I’ll join you for tea.”
“Her? We don’t care about her,” his mom replied. A man in black body armor passed behind her. So she had mercenaries down there, too. “In fact, she was only meant to check your vitals. She wasn’t supposed to find out what you are. We’ll have to deal with her now.”
Nigel remembered the little girl they’d found at the cabin in Iceland, the one the Foundation had threatened to kill in order to keep Taylor in line. His skin crawled—that his own mother could be capable of something like that. How had he come from a person like that?
“You’re sick,” Nigel said, unable to keep his voice from shaking with disgust. He’d wanted to keep his cavalier attitude intact, but now a woman’s life was at stake. “You know that, right?”
“Individuals have the luxury of cloaking themselves in righteousness when it comes to innocent lives,” Bea said.
“You quoting the fascist handbook now?”
She ignored him. “Larger entities—governments, religions, corporations—they must weigh the greater good against the survival of the innocent. You’ll come to understand that, dear.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is? Indoctrination into the family business?”
His mother smiled, like she was proud of his perception. “I simply want us to have an open and honest conversation. I want you to see how the world works.”
Nigel pointed at the nurse again. “You do anything to her, I swear, that’ll be the end of it. I’ll find a way out of here. Failing that, I’ll fuckin’ off myself. You want a nice chat with sonny boy, stop killing people.”
“Fine. I agree. She won’t be harmed,” Bea said this flippantly, like whether or not one ordered a murder was the equivalent of looking at a dessert menu. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“What—”
Hss. A vent in the ceiling that Nigel had failed to notice opened up, emitting a rush of air. Some kind of gas. He tried to squeeze the slats shut with his telekinesis, but too late. The stuff acted quickly. He stumbled backwards and only barely managed to land lengthwise on the bed.
“Nigel Barnaby. You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
In the haze brought on by the gas, Nigel remembered Iceland. That’s what Einar had said right before he took control of Nigel’s emotions, brought him back to those Pepperpont days, made him walk out on the ice. Einar had looked up at one of the cameras.
“I hope you’re watching,” he’d said.
The psycho knew. He’d been taunting Nigel’s mother.
After that, the death collar had mysteriously detached from the Icelandic girl, and Taylor had been allowed to return to the Academy. She’d received a bloody thank-you note.
All because she’d saved Nigel.
On the second day, when Nigel woke up, the nurse was gone. But, there were other additions to his room.
The first thing Nigel noticed was that a record player had been placed next to his bed. An expensive one, glossy wood to give it that old-timey feel but with a totally digital display. A stack of records had also been arranged on the shelf beneath his nightstand. He expected the kind of stodgy crap that his parents might be into, jazz or whatever. Instead, he found a wide variety of his favorites—from the Clash all the way up to Pissed Jeans. Someone had done their research.
Attached to the record player was a short note in his mom’s elegant cursive. The walls are soundproof. No need to be considerate.
So after yesterday’s demonstration of dominance, this was the soft touch. Butter him up. Show him that life with the Foundation wasn’t so bad. They had tried the same thing with Taylor.
Also on the nightstand was a copy of the Guardian. The paper was folded to one of the interior sections, where Nigel immediately recognized a black-and-white photograph of the charred remnants of his family’s London home. Nigel skimmed the article—grieving family, wealthy philanthropists, accidental blaze, surviving daughter unavailable for comment—no mention of their names, Earth Garde, or any details that seemed indicative of foul play. It was as if his mother had written the article herself. He tossed the newspaper aside.
Across the room, a desk had been added and, on top of that, a tray of breakfast food. Pancakes and sausage, fruit, doughnuts, a carafe of juice and a kettle of tea. Nigel’s stomach growled. When was the last time he’d eaten? He had to remind himself that his mother was surely watching or else he would’ve lunged right for the food. He casually poured himself some tea and sipped.
On the table, there was a remote control for the TV. He turned it on, half expecting Bea’s face to pop up. Instead, the screen filled with icons—pretty much every streaming video service one could ask for.
Nigel looked up at the camera watching over him. “All the comforts don’t mean this isn’t a prison,” he said.
There was no response.
At first he thought he might resist and be Gandhi-like in his abstention, but Nigel was too hungry and too bored. He spent the day stuffing his face and listening to music.
He let himself smile and look content.
He knew his mother was watching. Let her go ahead and think it was this easy to break him down.
They’d wanted to get someone inside the Foundation. Here was their opportunity.
On the third day of his captivity, a strange glow woke Nigel in the middle of the night. He rolled over in bed and found his TV on. Bea was on-screen, a half-empty wineglass clutched in one hand, a nearly empty bottle visible in the foreground.
“Ah,” she said. “You’re awake.”
“I am now,” Nigel grunted. He worked himself up onto his elbows. “Were you watching me sleep?”
“Used to do that when you were a little boy,” Bea responded.
Was she drunk? Was this part of her manipulation? Nigel didn’t know what to think. He stayed quiet, waiting for her to speak.
“Your father’s greatest love was money,” his mom said wistfully. “Money or Asian call girls. One of the two.”
Nigel raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I liked the money, too,” Bea continued. “But I also wanted to make the world a better place. I truly believed in what he told us.”
“What who told you?”
“Setrákus Ra.”
Nigel sat up straighter, eyes wide. His mom had just casually mentioned the leader of the Mogadorians, the tyrant who had driven the Loric to extinction and then, when that wasn’t good enough, invaded the Earth.
“You picked a real wanker for a role model, Mum.”
“He promised us a world without sickness or hunger,” she continued like she didn’t hear him. “All we had to do was make ready for his arrival.”
“You were MogPro,” Nigel said quietly. “You were bloody MogPro.”
“Many of us in the Foundation were.” She sipped her wine. “We learned the error of our ways, believe me. No one wanted to follow Setrákus Ra once we learned what he really was. The US did a thorough job of exterminating our American counterparts, but once the invasion was over, we here in Europe slipped through the cracks. Some of us formed the Foundation as a way to deal with our changing world.”
“Out with one evil organization, in with another,” Nigel replied.
“We’ve since expanded, blossoming into a better network than MogPro ever was. With Setrákus Ra, it was all lofty promises to pave the way for tyranny. Not with us. Thanks to our carefully cultivated relationships with your kind, we can actually deliver results. Miracles, even. We’re in more countries than Earth Garde now. We turn a profit.”
“Carefully cultivated relationships,” Nigel repeated with a snort. “Why are you telling me all this?”
She raised her glass to him. “I don’t know, darling. I suppose it’s like you said. The family business.”
It would be too easy if Nigel just said, “Sure, great, I’m in,” and tried to join up with the Foundation. His mom would see through that. No, if she was going to believe he’d been won over, he needed to live up to his stubborn reputation.
So, Nigel made a wanking motion. “You really think I’m going to buy into this? A little drunken chat, some mild imprisonment, and we’re on the same team? Piss off.”
“Setrákus Ra told us the history of the Loric and why he overthrew them,” Bea continued. “How those with Legacies reigned over those without, a council of elders composed of the planet’s nine most powerful Garde. Did you know that’s how their society worked? Like something out of Nietzsche.”
Nigel could guess what the Mogadorian tyrant probably told his mother. The old bastard wrote an entire book of propaganda. But, on the day he first got his Legacies, Nigel had been sucked into a vision of Lorien’s past, just like all the first generation of Human Garde. He’d seen firsthand the truth of Setrákus Ra’s motivations. He wasn’t a liberator; he was petty and power-hungry.
“Setrákus Ra was a liar,” Nigel said simply.
“Perhaps. But then, history is written by the winners,” Bea countered. “True or not, there are lessons to be learned from what happened on Lorien.”
“Like?”
“Like how your Academy is destined to fall apart. It was formed during a time of unprecedented goodwill, the world’s nations bound together after confronting a common enemy.” She drained the last of her wine and poured herself another. “That goodwill’s all dried up now. Training teenagers to serve some nebulous global entity? Please. Countries will abandon Earth Garde—it’s already happening—and hoard their Garde like nuclear weapons.”
Nigel grimaced. What his mother said appealed to his cynical side, the anarchist side, the part of him that had lived through Pepperpont and that assumed all people were basically shit. But then he thought of Kopano and Ran, the heroic ones, how hard they tried to do good in the world. He thought about how he himself had run away from a bad situation—one caused by his parents, as it happened—to go fight an alien invasion.
“You’re wrong,” he replied, wishing he sounded more certain. “People are better than you give them credit for.”
She smiled, almost like she was proud that her offspring was capable of such optimistic thought. Her teeth were stained with wine.
“And then what will happen,” Bea continued, “is war. A war between those with powers and those without. The end result being either the extinction of Legacies—a great loss to humanity—or the subjugation of the nonpowered, which, well . . . not so rosy either way, is it? We in the Foundation believe we can head off these eventualities but, unfortunately, the first battles are already being fought and soon it will be too late to reverse course.”
Nigel squinted at the screen. “What first battles? What are you on about?”
“One of yours has already broken the Garde Declaration. He’s killed humans in cold blood. Colleagues of mine in the Foundation, their security, anyone who gets in his way.”
A cold feeling took hold of Nigel. He sensed where this conversation was going.
“He killed your father,” Bea continued. “He almost killed you.”
Nigel gritted his teeth. “Einar.”
A shadow crossed Bea’s face, as if the boy’s very name frightened her. She nodded once.
“He’ll come for me, eventually,” she said simply. “The security I have here won’t be enough to stop him.”
Nigel looked away. He said nothing.
“Will you let me die, Nigel? Your own mother?”
Nigel didn’t sleep that night. Bea’s words rattled around in his brain.
His parents were bad people. MogPro rejects, bloodthirsty capitalists, murderers. When Nigel was a boy, his father had sent him away as soon as his presence had become inconvenient. After Nigel fled Pepperpont, the old man had never even tried seeking him out. Too busy with the Foundation, probably. He didn’t love the bastard.
So why did he feel the cold yearning for revenge?
Well, he told himself, Einar did try to drown me. He owed him for that.
Now, his mother only wanted him around to save herself. Or did she still have some repressed maternal affection? She’d been happy to have him saved in Iceland. She’d been watching him sleep . . .
Could he let Einar kill her?
And his mother was probably right. Einar’s going around slaughtering Foundation people—bad as they were—could set off a war. The psycho would ruin all their lives.
Nigel wanted to scream. So, he did. After all, the walls were soundproof.
That morning, his fourth day in captivity, the door to his room slid open.
His mom stood there, hair a bit tousled, cheeks puffy from last night’s drinking. There was no team of mercenaries behind her—she was alone, fragile. Nigel could’ve easily pushed her aside with his telekinesis and made his escape. She must have known that, but she opened the door anyway.
Bea said nothing. She clasped her hands and waited. It was on him.
“All right,” Nigel said, deciding right then what he would do. “I’ll help you.”