TAYLOR COOK
BAYAN-ÖLGII PROVINCE, MONGOLIA
“YOU KNOW, I WAS LED TO BELIEVE THAT LIFE with the Foundation didn’t suck,” Taylor said, trying and failing to keep her teeth from chattering. “There wasn’t anything in the brochures about freezing my ass off in Russia.”
“Mongolia,” the woman on the video chat corrected.
“Whatever,” Taylor replied. She burrowed deeper into her parka, clutching the tablet with numb fingers despite a pair of thick wool gloves. “It’s negative thirty degrees here.”
“I sincerely apologize for rushing you into your first assignment,” the woman said. She was the middle-aged lady with the chopped blond hair who Taylor had caught a brief glimpse of talking to Einar back in Iceland. Her name was Bea, allegedly. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but Taylor couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Seeing the cozy fire and steaming mug of tea at Bea’s location did little to improve Taylor’s mood. “Normally, we let our recruits enjoy the lifestyle the Foundation provides before asking them to fulfill a task, but you were needed urgently.”
“Needed,” Taylor repeated. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
“Healing. That’s all we’ll ever ask you to do, Taylor. Save lives, make them better.”
Always the same Foundation propaganda, Taylor thought. The lady was like a broken record.
“Would you mind taking me through the events that led you to leave the Academy?” Bea asked. “In your own words.”
Taylor raised an eyebrow. “I already told your people everything.”
“Indulge me.”
So Taylor went through it all again. It helped that she didn’t have to lie. She told Bea how Earth Garde had taken Ran and Kopano, arrested them without charges for crimes that were actually self-defense. She talked about how Nigel had disappeared in London and how Earth Garde was keeping that information from them. She said she didn’t trust the administration to keep her safe or look out for her best interests.
“Thank you, Taylor. Very enlightening,” Bea said when Taylor was finished. She glanced over her shoulder—someone else was in the room with her, listening in—and flashed a self-satisfied smile in their direction. “We’ll be in touch soon.”
The connection went dead. Immediately, the soldier standing watch over Taylor reached out and took the tablet away from her. They were even more strict here than at the Academy about communication with the outside world. That shouldn’t have surprised her—she was part of an international conspiracy now.
Taylor touched her forearm surreptitiously. Her key to getting out of this and hopefully bringing down the Foundation was hidden there. They’d done a full body scan on her the day after she left the Academy, but hadn’t found it. Just like Malcolm Goode had said, what she was carrying wouldn’t set off any alarms; it couldn’t be detected. Not until it was activated, at least.
And for that, she would need to gain access to a phone.
A week had gone by since Miki spirited her away from the Academy. He had dropped her on a boat where a couple of mercenaries disguised as fisherman were waiting. They’d been very polite about tranquilizing her.
She’d woken up on a private airplane beside a redheaded woman with a faint Russian accent. She never introduced herself, but she was kind and deferential to Taylor. Even though the woman was just some Foundation go-between, Taylor tried to memorize her face. The Russian carried one of the tablet computers that Taylor soon learned most of the important Foundation people had—password protected and coded to their fingerprints, so it wouldn’t be an easy thing to hack. The steward fed Taylor truffle french fries while the redhead asked her questions.
“The Foundation will provide you with a private residence. Where would you like that to be?”
“Somewhere warm and tropical,” Taylor answered. “Would a private island be too much to ask for?”
The woman smirked. “We have more private islands than we know what to do with. I see in your file that your father is a farmer in South Dakota. It’s possible that we could slip him out of America . . .”
“No,” Taylor replied quickly. “He won’t want to come. But . . . could you help him? In other ways?”
The woman nodded. “Some investments will be placed in his name. Of course, I probably don’t need to remind you that all of this is contingent on your continued cooperation.”
“Of course,” Taylor said, detecting the implicit threat in the woman’s words and smiling like she didn’t mind. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Ukraine,” the woman replied.
That was the first hint Taylor got that her private island would be a while in coming.
From the tiny airfield in Ukraine, a helicopter had flown her here, five days ago, to the freezing edge of the middle of nowhere. The ride in had been one of the most harrowing experiences of Taylor’s life, the chopper buffeted back and forth by savage winds, snow flurries limiting visibility.
They’d made it. And she’d been cold ever since.
Wordlessly, her soldier chaperone led her out of the tent and the small radius of its struggling space heater. He was dark-eyed and bearded, maybe Middle Eastern, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Taylor had given up trying to communicate with any of the hundred soldiers stationed here. Even if they spoke English—which often wasn’t the case—they were under strict instructions not to talk to her. They were a hodgepodge of nationalities, probably mercenaries, like the Blackstone guys she’d encountered in Iceland. Only the executive officer—the XO, as he was called, a lean, blond-haired South African in his early fifties—ever spoke to her, and that was usually to give her an order.
Outside, the cold hit Taylor immediately, but at least the snow had stopped. She pulled her balaclava down to protect her face and then followed the soldier back to her tent. The mercenary encampment looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, like they’d colonized an alien world. Twenty tents stood in a grid, a convoy of ATVs and jeeps parked around them, some concrete barriers erected at the edge of camp to cut the wind. Beyond that, there was nothing but hilly plains covered in pure white snow, with the occasional patch of brown scrub grass poking through. The sky today was big and blue, reminding her a bit of South Dakota.
“Weather reports say we got three days without any snow,” said a guard posted in front of the XO’s tent, his voice muffled by his own ski mask.
“You know what that means,” his companion muttered. “They’ll have us out there doing night work.”
“Ah, Christ,” the first one replied. “You’re right.”
“Least it means we might get out of here quicker.”
Just because the guards weren’t speaking to her didn’t mean that Taylor had stopped listening. She still didn’t know what they were up to out here, what the Foundation was after. Every day, half the detachment drove out somewhere over the western rise, not returning until sunset. That’s when Taylor did her healing, when the men came back fatigued and sullen and with ailments they weren’t allowed to explain.
She’d been looking for a chance to poke around ever since she’d gotten here. A night shift might be exactly the opportunity she’d been waiting for. It was hard enough to tell anyone apart during the days, with all the face masks and winter clothing. Under cover of darkness Taylor thought she might have an even better chance to slip in with the soldiers unnoticed.
Her silent escort brought Taylor back to her tent at the center of camp, where he nodded to the guard posted outside and left. Taylor glanced at the man standing watch and felt a pang of sympathy—even his eyes, the only part of him she could see, looked cold. Taylor had wondered aloud on her first day in Mongolia why she was being guarded like a prisoner. Weren’t they all on the same team? The XO had assured her that it was for her own protection. His people were disciplined, yes, but some had been on the frozen wasteland for months.
“You understand,” he’d said. “Pretty teenagers bring trouble with them.”
Taylor’s skin had crawled then and she hadn’t asked any questions about her chaperones since. She would need to give them the slip tonight, though, if she wanted to see what the mercenaries were up to out here.
“Oh my God, close the damn flap before we all catch pneumonia!”
Lost in thought as she entered her tent, Taylor was slow to seal out the elements and thus earned a sharp rebuke from Jiao. Taylor had first met the slim Chinese healer in Saudi Arabia, where she’d been domineering, fashionable, and almost killed by Einar. Jiao didn’t seem so chic and intimidating now, perpetually stuck in the same frumpy winter gear as Taylor. She hated this assignment and made sure to keep the others as miserable as she was.
“Calm down,” Taylor replied, rubbing her hands together. “If you catch pneumonia, we’ll just heal you.”
Their tent was far from the glamorous lifestyle that the Foundation promised its recruits. Three cots, a card table, a hot plate, and a stockpile of blankets and thermal underwear. The XO assured Taylor that they had one of the best-working space heaters in the company, although that did little to chase away the perpetual chill.
“Gin,” Jiao declared, ignoring Taylor’s response to slap her cards on the table. “I win again, Meat Boy.”
“It’s Meatball,” Vincent corrected. “And please don’t call me that.”
“Which?”
“Either.”
Dark-haired and pudgy, Vincent was the final part of the healer trio assigned to Mongolia. Unlike Jiao and Taylor, the Italian boy hadn’t joined the Foundation willingly. He had been trained at the Academy and promoted to Earth Garde before getting kidnapped by the Foundation last year and pressed into service. Now, he seemed perpetually on the verge of tears and always jumpy, although that could’ve been the shivering. Taylor had been looking for an opportunity to talk with him one-on-one, but Jiao or one of the guards was always around.
Vincent fumbled the cards, trying to shuffle them. “Play again?” he asked.
“No,” Jiao replied, standing up from the table and stretching. “We’ll have to work soon and I’m tired of beating you.” She turned to Taylor. “You talked to Bea? She say how long we’ll be stuck out here?”
“No,” Taylor replied, not bothering to hide her own disappointment. “She wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”
“Typical,” Jiao said. “You must be questioning your decision to come back to us.”
“A few more weeks of this and maybe I will,” Taylor said, glancing at Vincent. “But the Academy was terrible, too. You have no idea.”
Vincent said nothing and simply looked away from Taylor, fiddling with his deck of cards. She thought maybe he would defend the Academy, but Vincent was probably too broken for that. Maybe he’d come to like the Foundation lifestyle—they could promise a lot, that much Taylor knew. They could also blackmail and extort. Taylor wasn’t sure whether Vincent was a sellout or a coward. Neither would be particularly useful to her.
“Well, for what it’s worth, this is the worst assignment they’ve ever sent me on,” Jiao said.
Taylor wondered how committed Jiao was to the Foundation’s work. These little conversations helped her probe deeper into her companions, but they weren’t revealing anything that would truly bring down the Foundation.
“Worse than when Einar got you shot and threw you through a window?” Taylor asked.
Jiao smirked and flexed her knee, remembering the fight back in the UAE. “Please, that was nothing,” she said. “I healed those wounds in ten minutes and spent the night dancing with one of the prince’s handsome bodyguards.”
Taylor rolled her eyes. Before anything else could be said, they heard the rumble of trucks returning to camp. The mercenary convoy had returned. Jiao breathed a sigh out through her nose, the air turning to mist. Vincent stood up, put away his cards, and paced nervously.
“Here we go,” Taylor said.
The soldiers came in three at a time, one for each healer. They set down their rifles at the entrance, then stripped off balaclavas and gloves and whatever other pieces of body armor were in the way of their injuries. And they were always injured. Or maybe damaged was the more accurate way to put it. Regardless, by Taylor’s count, fifty went out each day and, without fail, fifty returned. A whole unit in need of healing.
Soon, the tent smelled like body odor and cigarettes. Vincent did his work in timid silence, but Jiao kept on a running monologue in Chinese, barking sharply at any soldier that tracked snow or mud into their tent. The tent was usually quiet except for Jiao’s ravings; the soldiers didn’t talk to the Garde and they rarely talked to each other.
Taylor’s first patient was a muscular Asian man who stared deferentially at the ground while she grasped his hands, healing the beginning of frostbite on his fingers. He had some deep cuts on his knee and shin—it looked like he’d fallen. She healed those, too. Then, she pressed her hands against the sides of his neck and healed the sickness.
On their first day in Mongolia, Taylor had discerned that it wasn’t just bumps and bruises that the Foundation wanted them to heal. It was the sickness, present in everyone who returned from the mysterious expedition site. Taylor had trained in hospitals while at the Academy—she’d encountered the flu and strep throat, cancer and a random case of smallpox, even the Arab prince’s late-stage leukemia that had taken four of them to heal. None of those maladies felt like this sickness.
It was as if a darkness were growing in the soldiers. Taylor could sense tendrils of it when she used her Legacy. She could swear that the illness fought back against her.
Every day, she cleansed the soldiers’ bodies of the sickness. And the next day, they came back.
By her fourth soldier, Taylor wasn’t cold anymore. Sweat shone on her forehead.
A dislocated shoulder. More frostbite. Cuts and scrapes.
And always the sickness.
What was out there that was infecting these men? What did the Foundation want with it?
Taylor needed to find out.
“Hey, um, Taylor . . . ?” Vincent spoke up, already sounding exhausted. “Could you help me out over here? This guy’s real bad.”
“Sure, one second,” Taylor replied, finishing up with her own patient before stepping over to Vincent.
Taylor cringed when she saw the man standing in front of Vincent. He’d stripped down to his pants, pale skin nearly blue from the cold. His right side was entirely covered in dark burns, the skin cooked and blackened. Spreading out from that grievous wound were discolored black veins. He stood resolute, teeth gritted, like he wasn’t in an incredible amount of pain.
“Kid bloody tells me it’s bad,” the soldier said, speaking out of turn in a thick Scottish accent. “What kinda bedside manner’s that, eh?”
“S-s-sorry,” stammered Vincent.
“How did this happen to you?” Taylor asked as she pressed her hands to the Scotsman’s burns, letting her healing energy slowly restore the skin. Next to her, she felt Vincent beating back the sickness—it was stronger in this guy than any of hers had been. She could actually see the black veins in his chest recede while they worked.
“Finally some goddamn action, that’s how it happened,” the soldier said.
“Shut up, MacLaughlan,” chided one of the other soldiers. “You know the rules.”
“What?” MacLaughlan exclaimed innocently, eyeing Taylor as she tended to him. “The pretty American lass wants to hear some war stories, who am I to deny her?”
Just then, the XO poked his head into the tent, a steely glare aimed in MacLaughlan’s direction.
“MacLaughlan!” The XO shouted, sounding good-natured in the same way Professor Nine did right before he ordered you to run laps around the campus. “Did I hear you volunteering to do a double?”
MacLaughlan gritted his teeth. “Aye, boss,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait to get back out there.”
“Great!” The XO looked at Taylor. “That’s enough healing, then, my dear. He’ll be back in here tomorrow morning.”
Taylor and Vincent both stepped back from MacLaughlan, his burns only half-healed, the black veins still creeping up his rib cage.
“Sorry,” Taylor murmured.
“No worries,” MacLaughlan replied with a wink. “I’ll rub some ice on it. Plenty of that, eh?”
The rest of that day’s healing passed without incident. Afterward, they were brought what amounted to a feast on the dreary tundra—stale pumpernickel bread, canned oranges, a tasteless hard cheese, and sausage from a mystery animal. Of course, they all wolfed it down, even if Jiao did so while holding her nose. Healing that many people was exhausting work and left them all starving. Taylor felt the exhaustion creeping in, the emptiness inside her from too much healing, the tingling in her fingers from overusing her Legacy. It was the same as every day since she’d been here—wake up, freeze, heal, eat, sleep.
She needed to break that pattern tonight. If only she could stay awake.
After dinner, Vincent yawned and stumbled to his cot. “Man, I can’t believe we have to do that again tomorrow morning.”
“Whatever gets us out of here quicker,” Jiao replied. She snorted. “Don’t know what you’re whining about, anyway. Taylor and I do way more work than you.”
Taylor made no comment, although it was true. Vincent definitely didn’t have the same abilities that she and Jiao had. Or, at least, he wasn’t pushing himself as hard. Maybe he’d been promoted too quickly from the Academy. Or maybe this was Vincent’s small act of rebellion against the Foundation. Taylor didn’t know.
The days were short in western Mongolia and night came on quickly. All three Garde were soon snuggled into their heavy-duty sleeping bags—Taylor had been assured by the XO that they were the same kind used by climbers when they summited Everest. They all shifted in unison, grumbling as they tried to get comfortable on their rock-hard cots. The healers didn’t talk to each other and Taylor found herself missing the camaraderie of the Academy.
Taylor wormed her hand up her sweater and clutched the amulet Kopano had made for her, relieved that the Foundation people hadn’t taken it away. She wondered where Kopano was at that moment. She hoped he and the others were okay.
The rest of the camp was still alive—the mercenaries talked loudly in a variety of languages, eating and drinking, cleaning their guns, playing cards. The wind howled. Taylor tried to keep her eyes open, waiting for a sign that the soldiers were going out on their night mission.
She snapped awake at the sound of revving engines and one mercenary yelling at another to get his ass in gear. Damn it. She’d dozed off. The soldiers were already moving out. She would need to get going quickly if she wanted to slip into their midst.
Taylor glanced in Jiao and Vincent’s direction. They were both sleeping, Vincent even snoring gently. The soldiers outside were noisy as hell, but after a nonstop healing session, the Garde could probably sleep through the apocalypse. Taylor’s whole body ached from the cold and the exertion as she pushed herself to get out of bed.
She couldn’t just keep sitting around and doing the Foundation’s bidding. She needed to do something. Find out what they were up to out here at the ass-end of nowhere.
Taylor crept towards the entrance of their tent and slowly undid the zipper enough to peek through. As usual, there was a guard posted-up right outside, but he was too distracted by the convoy of mercenaries leaving to notice her.
Still, she would need a distraction to get by him.
With her telekinesis, Taylor reached out and began unmooring the metal pylons from the tent nearest to hers. When they were loose enough, she waited for a strong gust of wind—those were never long in coming out here—and then gave the tent as firm a telekinetic shove as she could muster.
The shelter went flying, exposing a half dozen soldiers sleeping within. Immediately, they started shouting and scrambling, flinging themselves out of bed to grab their flying tent. Just as Taylor hoped, the soldier watching the Gardes’ tent left his posting to go help.
Taylor slipped into the night. She pulled her balaclava over her face and tried to puff herself up, walking like a man. No one paid her any attention. She speed-walked towards the headlights of the departing convoy.
Of course, Taylor knew this was dangerous. Maybe a little crazy, like something Isabela might do. “Act confident,” Isabela had told her once, “and you can bullshit your way through any situation.” She leaned on that wisdom now. She also reasoned that no matter what she did out here, short of revealing herself as a spy, the Foundation wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was too valuable.
Men all around her were climbing into trucks and driving into the night. Steeling herself, Taylor picked a random SUV and climbed into the backseat.
She cringed immediately. The SUV she’d chosen was empty except for the driver, who was giving her a weird look in the rearview mirror. And the driver was MacLaughlan.
“The hell ya sittin’ back there for?” he asked her. “I don’t got cooties.”
Taylor made a noncommittal grunting sound and slouched. Maybe he’d think she was one of the mercenaries who didn’t speak English, tired and grumpy from having to do night work.
“I know the feeling,” MacLaughlan replied with a snort. It had worked! He started to put the truck in gear, but then paused and looked at Taylor again.
“You forget something, ya git?”
She stared blankly at him. He patted the M16 attached to a rack along the truck’s middle.
“Your weapon, dingus, where’s your weapon?”
Taylor winced. It hadn’t even occurred to her to steal one of the rifles.
She didn’t know what to say and now MacLaughlan was really looking at her.
“Take your hat off,” he ordered.
Swallowing, Taylor did as she was told. MacLaughlan’s eyes lit up immediately.
“Ah, the curious gal,” he said, amused. He twisted around in his seat to eyeball her, wincing thanks to the burns that Taylor hadn’t finished healing. “You think this is a trip to the mall or something?”
“I want to see why I’m out here freezing my ass off,” Taylor replied honestly, trying to sound self-assured. “Take me with you and I’ll finish healing you.”
MacLaughlan stared at her for a moment. Then, he shrugged and awkwardly unbuckled his body armor so that Taylor could reach her hands inside.
“Fuck it,” he said. “XO finds out, you tricked me with some alien magic, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
MacLaughlan put the truck in drive and followed the line of vehicles out into the darkness of the plains. Taylor leaned forward and pressed her hands against his side, healing him while he drove.
“This reminds me of the time I stole my dad’s car to dog it with Betty Garretty,” MacLaughlan said with a laugh.
Taylor recoiled a bit. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “I could throw you through that windshield in a heartbeat.”
“Ah, don’t flatter yourself, little miss,” MacLaughlan snorted. “I got a wife and kids at home and you’re all’a twelve years old.”
They drove in silence after that. Eventually, Taylor finished healing MacLaughlan and leaned back in her seat, peering out the window. It was pure darkness out there. The convoy drove in a straight line, headlights illuminating only the truck in front of them and what seemed like endless snow and ice. They were traveling uphill, cresting the western rise, going no more than twenty miles per hour as they rumbled across the slippery terrain.
“What’s out there?” Taylor asked, growing impatient after thirty minutes spent driving in a straight line.
MacLaughlan smirked. “Better you see it yourself. Almost there.”
Indeed, Taylor saw lights up ahead. Not lights from a town, but flood lamps mounted on towering girders, like at a construction site. A crane came into view and some kind of heavy-duty drill that reminded Taylor of an oil derrick. Still, she couldn’t see what all that equipment was for, not until they reached the top of the rise and started heading downhill.
Taylor leaned forward in her seat, eyes wide.
“It’s a warship,” she said.
The wreckage of one of the vast Mogadorian warships was spread out across the snowy valley. Even half-destroyed, the city-block-size ship was ominous. Clearly, where it hadn’t been blown apart, it had been scavenged, chunks missing here and there, other sections dissected. It looked to Taylor like the skeleton of a giant metal locust.
“Aye,” MacLaughlan replied. “And the thing leaks like a son of a bi—”
Before he could finish, a streak of red energy cut through the darkness and sizzled into the passenger side of the truck in front of them. MacLaughlan slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding the other truck as it skidded out of control.
“Hell!” MacLaughlan shouted. He pulled on a pair of night-vision goggles and grabbed for his rifle. “I thought we killed all these bloody vermin earlier.”
Taylor stared out her window. “You mean . . . ?”
“Nasty bastards are out there, freezing their alien balls off,” MacLaughlan answered. “Stragglers come through every once in a while, probably mad we’re going through their stuff, ya know? Only a few of ’em. Nothing we can’t . . .”
MacLaughlan trailed off as he looked through the goggles. The entire convoy had stopped, mercenaries taking cover behind their trucks, assuming defensive positions.
“Bit . . . bit more than a handful,” MacLaughlan breathed. He shoved Taylor. “Get yer ass down!”
Even as he did, the night lit up crimson. A hundred streaks of blaster fire sizzled across the plain, bombarding the convoy from both sides. The windows of their truck shattered and Taylor felt a blistering sensation on her cheek, smelled her hair burning. MacLaughlan let out a cry and was suddenly silent.
They were under attack.
There were Mogadorians on the tundra.