KOPANO OKEKE
LAGOS, NIGERIA
WORD OF THE INCIDENT ON THE FOOTBALL PITCH traveled fast. Kopano was famous. Yesterday’s tormenters were today’s spokespeople, telling all their friends that Alien Boy Kopano was for real. Despite his mistreatment at their hands, Kopano didn’t harbor any resentment towards those witnesses to his big day. In fact, he regarded them fondly, like a reluctant baby bird might view the cruel mother that launched him from the nest. Kopano didn’t hold a grudge.
Everyone wanted to see what Kopano could do. “Prove it,” they kept saying, the same challenge over and over. “Prove it.”
By the end of the next school day, Kopano’s face hurt from grinning. He’d spent much of the day doing tricks—levitating desks, juggling objects, even flying a couple of his screaming classmates through the lunchroom. His teachers were in awe, uncertain what the protocol was in matters of superpowered disruption. Kopano was one of their better students, usually quiet and courteous, so they let him have his day. After dismissal, the principal pulled him aside.
“What is happening to you is very good,” the principal said. “You will be the pride of Nigeria. But please, Kopano, you must understand, this is a place of learning. You must try not to be so distracting to the other students.”
“Not to worry,” Kopano boasted. “Soon, I will be joining the Garde in America.”
Kopano went home and told his family about what the principal said. His mother shook her head wearily. She’d spent the entire day at church. She told Kopano that she was praying for his safety, but Kopano was certain that meant she was trying to pray away his Legacies.
“Be careful, Kopano,” his mother warned. “If you keep making a spectacle of yourself, they will come take you away. Or worse.”
Kopano knew what his mother was talking about. Ever since the invasion, he’d been devouring every bit of news about the Loric and the changes they’d wrought. He had begged his father to drive him to Zuma Rock, where an outcropping of Loralite stone had grown, but Udo complained it would be a waste of time since the UN Security Council had set up a base there and weren’t letting just anyone take tours. Also, Udo reasoned, the government might snatch him up if they got that close.
The prospect excited Kopano. The Americans had just finished building a school with the support of the UN that eventually all Human Garde from participating countries would be required to attend. It was only a matter of time before he would leave to begin his training with the other Garde.
That was what worried his mother.
“They will steal my child away to America and turn him into one of the aliens,” she moaned.
“I want to go, Mom,” Kopano said. “I’m not turning into an alien.”
His parents ignored him, Udo dismissing his wife’s concerns with a wave of his hand. He paced back and forth across their living room, a man possessed of a great idea.
“We have nothing to worry about,” Udo said. “Kopano isn’t going anywhere.”
“You dumb man! You know how people in Lagos talk. Everyone already knows what he is . . .”
“Yes, they talk, that’s true. But I know how to make it so that nobody important listens. The good people of Lagos will respect our family’s privacy,” Udo concluded. Kopano knew this meant his father would generously bribe as many people as necessary, although he wasn’t sure where the old man would scrounge up the money. “And if this principal doesn’t want our son in his school?” Udo stomped his foot. “Then we will give the man what he wants.”
Kopano sighed, deciding not to argue. The Academy wasn’t open yet, anyway. Let his parents have their way for now; eventually Earth Garde would come for him, no matter how many palms his father greased.
The next day, Udo made good on his promise. Instead of school, Kopano found himself sitting shotgun in his dad’s old Hyundai, stuck in Lagos’s bumper-to-bumper morning traffic. Already, the sun was hot overhead. The car’s air conditioner needed fixing.
“Okay, I have come along,” Kopano said with a sigh. “Now tell me what crazy scheme you have planned.”
“It is not a scheme!” Udo yelled, pounding the horn as another driver cut him off. “You have a reputation now, Kopano. We would be stupid not to take advantage of that.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothing! That is the beauty of reputations.” Udo glanced in his son’s direction. “Yes. That is good. Make that mean face just like that.”
Kopano turned to look out the window. His gaze drifted to a roadside stall where a thin man with shifty eyes sold what he claimed were authentic alien artifacts. To Kopano, they looked like broken hunks of common electronics—toasters, TV parts, melted cellular phones—the kind of crap one would find in a dump. He shook his head again.
They drove across the bridge to Victoria Island, the slumped and crowded buildings of Kopano’s neighborhood replaced by glittering skyscrapers, many of which were still under construction. A few of the wealthier kids Kopano went to school with lived on the island. Kopano also knew that this was where many of the foreign corporations set up—the banks and oil companies and real estate developers. A banner overhung the street reading WELCOME TO AFRICA’S BIG APPLE. Kopano rolled his eyes.
His father parked them in front of a fat hexagonal building. The windows were tinted gold, their glow reflecting onto the sidewalk and street. Udo told Kopano to wait, hopped out of the car and sauntered by the security guards at the door. He returned with a backpack slung over his shoulder, which he tossed into the backseat.
“What’s in there?” Kopano asked, once they were driving again.
“None of our business,” his father answered. “We are only deliverymen.”
Kopano made to reach for the bag, but his father shouted and slapped his hand, accidentally swerving into the opposite lane. Kopano laughed. If he really wanted, he could wrestle the bag away from his father using telekinesis. But, he decided then, maybe it was better he didn’t know. This work Udo had involved him in wasn’t exactly battling Mogadorians for the fate of the world, but at least there was some excitement, a cloak-and-dagger feeling, like he was a spy. Kopano didn’t want to ruin it by finding out they were ferrying bank contracts or something equally boring.
They drove halfway across the city, far away from Victoria Island, into an area where the roads were cluttered with potholes and the ramshackle buildings looked like they were jostling each other for room. Scrawny street vendors peered hungrily into their car. Kopano sat up a little straighter.
Udo parked them in front of a block where the buildings had collapsed in on each other, like a house of cards after a strong wind. The area was blocked off by police tape. A sign advertising the property developers who promised to revitalize the neighborhood was covered in graffiti.
Kopano spotted a group of men picking through the debris. Most of them looked like vagrants, sweaty from work, not much older than him. Supervising them was a chubby man in a hard hat who stood out all the more because of his wrinkled white suit.
Kopano turned to his father. “What now?”
Udo rolled down Kopano’s window. “Give him the bag.” He stopped Kopano from getting out of the car. “Use your powers!”
Kopano frowned. “Are you serious?”
“Just this one time,” his father insisted. “Then they will know we’re for real.”
With shaky control—he was still mastering his telekinesis—Kopano lifted the bag from the backseat, floated it out the window and into the waiting hands of the man in the white suit. His whole crew had stopped to watch. Kopano got a kick out of how their mouths hung open in awe.
Days, and then weeks, went on like that. There were always more mysterious errands to run, an increasing volume of men in expensive suits and glittering sunglasses nodding their approval at Kopano’s telekinetic deliveries. It got so that Kopano was going to school only a couple of days each week, and then only at the insistence of his mother. He didn’t show off anymore, so busy was he catching up on schoolwork. His teachers didn’t make a fuss over his absences; they assumed it had to do with his training as a Human Garde, and Kopano suspected that Udo had played a role in that. He heard whispers about special treatment from his classmates, but no one had the guts to say anything to Kopano’s face.
His father was, once again, an important man. All thanks to Kopano.
“Safest courier in Lagos!” he heard his father brag on the phone. “No one else will have their deliveries protected by a genuine superpowered Garde!”
They worked the banks, the oil companies, the developers. They delivered to hotels and hovels, to the slums and to resorts. Sometimes, they took duffel bags from policemen and delivered them to embassy employees. Kopano visited parts of Lagos he’d never seen before. He never looked in the bags, never asked what they were transporting. The family once again had a TV in their apartment. The rent was paid. Soon, his brothers would be transferred to better private schools. It was not America, it was not the Garde, but Kopano told himself he was doing good, at least for his family. He practiced a steely look on his deliveries but had a hard time keeping the grin off his face.
It was months before someone decided to test him.
Udo was navigating them to their drop-off, their sleek, newly purchased gray Lexus badly out of place in one of Lagos’s more hardscrabble neighborhoods. Kopano had long ago gotten used to the slums. He didn’t quite feel comfortable there but had begun to feel like their car was a bubble of protection.
Kopano noticed how suspiciously devoid of life this block was. He opened his mouth to say something. That was when a pickup truck accelerated out from the alley and slammed into the back of their car.
They were spun around. His father shouted. Kopano’s ears rang.
When they came to a stop wedged against a street sign, Kopano saw them. Five men in bright red balaclavas. There were two in the truck and three on foot. They were all fit and Kopano thought they looked young but couldn’t quite tell because of the masks.
“Bastards!” Udo shouted. “My car!”
The men descended on them. His father tried to drive away, but the Lexus sputtered. One of the men smashed through the driver-side window with a tire iron and began to punch Udo in the face. Another smashed through the back and grabbed the duffel bag they were transporting. Kopano watched all this in shocked disbelief.
Kopano’s door was ripped open and two of the men dragged him into the street. One of them laughed; Kopano thought he sounded like a hyena. That was when he came to his senses.
He thrust his hands out and sent his two attackers flying with a burst of telekinesis. Their bodies looked like rag dolls as they hit a nearby wall.
The man punching his father stopped doing that and flung his tire iron at Kopano. The metal bar struck Kopano in the back of the head, caused him to stumble. He touched his scalp and found no blood. He was surprised by how little it hurt.
Kopano picked up the tire iron with his telekinesis and whipped it back at the man. He ducked out of the way and the tire iron crashed through the window of a vacant building across the street.
Another man jumped onto Kopano’s back. Kopano ducked his shoulders low as if he were play-wrestling with his brothers, and threw the man off. He got back to his feet fast, but Kopano was ready, his fist cocked back.
Kopano was stout and had been in a few fights before, but he didn’t expect the punch to knock the man fully off his feet. He didn’t expect to hear the crunch of the man’s jaw breaking. He looked down at his fist. It was as hard as a brick.
“Stop this!” Kopano shouted. “I will only keep hurting you if you force me to!”
One of the men he’d tossed into the wall rushed forward with a butterfly knife and stabbed Kopano in the stomach.
“Kopano!” yelled his father, spitting blood.
Kopano looked down. Where there should have been a wound, there was only a hole in his shirt. The knife’s blade was folded up like it was made from paper.
His skin. It looked normal, but it was as durable as titanium.
Kopano backhanded the knife-fighter away from him, eyes wide with sudden fury. “You would have killed me! For what? For what?”
“Kopano!” his father shouted again, as Kopano loomed over his would-be murderer. “The bag! He’s getting away with the bag!”
Kopano whipped around, spotted the man who’d taken the duffel bag sprinting down the street, laboring under the weight. The runner was already nearly a hundred yards away. Kopano squinted, tried to bring his telekinesis to bear. He’d never used his Legacy at this distance. He thrust out his hand, a telekinetic shove—and flattened the windshield of the car nearest the runner. The thief glanced over his shoulder, then hooked down an alley. Gone.
“I . . . I missed,” Kopano said. The other thieves had used his distraction to scurry off, except for the two Kopano had knocked out.
“You let him get away!” his father barked. He came around the car, kicked one of their fallen assailants and tore off his mask. Neither of them recognized the guy. He was nobody. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”
On the ride home, Kopano rubbed his knuckles and forearms. His skin didn’t feel different. His sense of touch was unchanged. Yet, he knew, there was a new hardness lurking within him. He wondered if his new Legacy was a result of the jobs he’d been doing with his father.
“I do not think we should do this anymore,” he said quietly.
“What!” his father bellowed. “Do you not understand what just happened, boy? We lost a delivery! The next job is the least of our worries. We will need to make amends and quickly.”
Kopano didn’t know what that meant. He shook his head and stared out the broken window, hot air rushing into the car. “This is not what I wanted,” he said.
His father snorted, ignoring him. They rode home in silence.
That night, when he tried to sleep, Kopano could hear his father’s pleading voice through the walls. Udo had been on the phone almost nonstop since they returned home, talking to whatever mysterious big man was in charge of the package they’d lost. He spoke in a meek voice that Kopano wouldn’t have thought his father capable of. Kopano tossed and turned, Udo’s wheedling apologies the worst kind of lullaby.
Kopano must have drifted off, because he did not hear the door to his room open, nor notice the shadow that padded across the floor. His eyes snapped open only when a cool hand pressed over his mouth.
“Kopano,” a voice said. “It is time to go.”