THE ESCAPISTS
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
RAN KNEW THE BRAZILIAN WAS UP TO SOMETHING the minute Lofton rejected her from his team. Ran recognized the spark in Isabela’s eyes—part mischief, part vengeance.
She approved.
The plot hatched while Team Lofton was being picked apart by the Peacekeepers. Isabela would impersonate Professor Nine. With Nigel’s help, she would concoct a story about the deadliness of his sonic powers. Taylor would pop up at the end and sell the entire ruse with her healing.
“We will win without even having to fight anyone,” Isabela declared.
Nigel snorted. “Yeah. Except for me, right? Taking one for the bloody team.”
“Stop complaining and act like a man,” Isabela replied with a dismissive wave.
“It’s kind of like cheating, though, isn’t it?” Taylor asked.
“No!” Isabela replied sharply. “I did not hear any rules. So how can it be cheating?”
Ran stayed silent throughout the discussion, at least until Nigel looked questioningly in her direction. Out of solidarity with her, Nigel had announced that he wouldn’t be participating in the competition. He didn’t know what to make of her renouncement of her Legacy—Nigel was trying to support her, but he still loved using his own powers. For all his put-on cynicism, he really wanted to be a hero. Last year, he’d been the first to volunteer to join the original Garde in the fight against the Mogadorians. Her own vow against using her Legacy aside, Ran would never deny her friend the opportunity to participate in Wargames—something he clearly itched to do.
Ran bowed her head to Nigel. “It is a good plan. You should do it.”
They all grinned, especially Isabela, at her approval.
Now, all they had to do was wait for Professor Nine to separate from Archibald and Greger.
When it became clear what Isabela and her team had pulled off, a cheer went up from the dejected student body, many of whom had spent the afternoon getting beaten down by the Peacekeepers. Colonel Archibald and his people loudly questioned the validity of the results.
“What were we supposed to do?” the soldier with the red beard, the one who Taylor had convinced he was dying, complained. “Shoot at Professor Nine? He wasn’t part of the exercise!”
Greger, the Earth Garde liaison, watched Isabela with new admiration. “I must say, it was an excellent ploy. True outside-the-box thinking is not easy to teach.”
Professor Nine beamed, an entire day of losses forgotten. “I taught her that.”
Isabela smirked, but didn’t say anything in response to Nine taking the credit.
Archibald shook his head. “That would have never worked in a true battlefield scenario.”
“Indeed?” Greger cocked his head. “In the chaos of a true battlefield, I think her technique would have been even more successful. She could have slipped in and out, undetected, as one of your own soldiers, Archibald . . .”
Isabela tuned out all the praise and commentary. She’d only wanted to show up Lofton and collect the recreation hours for herself. The beach called to her, classes did not. As they walked back to campus among their cheerful peers, Isabela hugged Taylor, and stroked the spot on Nigel’s face where she’d punched him as Nine.
“Did I hurt you too bad, skinny boy?”
Nigel chuckled. “Don’t flatter yourself, Izzy. I had to sell that punch like a professional wrestler, yeah? You got none of Nine’s strength.” He stroked his neck. “Those shock collars, though. Nasty bit of business.”
“Yes. I did not enjoy those either,” said Kopano. The Nigerian’s usual grin hadn’t yet reappeared after his defeat by the Peacekeepers.
“There she is! The champion scammer!” Lofton swooped in and pulled Isabela into a hug, literally sweeping her off her feet. Her face remained expressionless while he spun her around. When, at last, he set her on the ground, Isabela put a hand on his face and shoved. Lofton stepped back, his features drawn in confusion.
“You mad at me, babe?” he asked.
“Bloke’s good at picking out those subtle details, huh?” Nigel said in a loud aside to Ran, who nodded in agreement.
Isabela lifted her chin and rolled back her shoulders, her chest out, as she fixed Lofton with a withering stare. She had fully intended to let their relationship come to a painless close with his departure in a few days, but this morning’s slight was too much to let slide.
“You boys, always mistaking boredom for anger,” Isabela declared, her voice loud enough that the other students on their way back to campus couldn’t help but overhear. “I am tired of your dumb face and soft brain. Good-bye forever, Lofton.”
Isabela turned on her heel. Lofton, stunned, grabbed her arm.
“Whoa, wait! What about—?” He lowered his voice. “What about our plans for tonight?”
“Those plans are canceled,” Isabela replied. She stuck her finger in his face. “You would be wise to forget they ever existed. Furthermore, I forbid you from thinking about me in that way during your many lonely nights to come. Now, get off me.”
Lofton let her go and Isabela resumed her walk to the dorms. Nigel and Kopano were both holding in laughter. Taylor came up alongside Isabela and hooked her arm through her roommate’s.
“You okay?” Taylor asked.
“Why would I not be okay?”
“You just broke up with your boyfriend.”
“Pfft. I have already forgotten him. My only disappointment is that we cannot . . .” Isabela trailed off. She’d been looking forward to her evening plans with Lofton. Just because he was out of the picture didn’t mean those plans had to change. “Come,” she said excitedly to Taylor. “We must celebrate our victory!”
Back in their suite, Isabela pulled clothes out of her closet, trying to decide what she would wear for the night.
“You’re crazy,” Taylor said, leaning in her doorway. “I’m not sneaking out.”
“No, I am not and yes, we are,” Isabela replied. “Come on, Taylor! You will love San Francisco. I found a bar where they don’t ID.”
“I don’t really drink.”
“Ha. Well, whatever, we can get you some new clothes, at least. Have dinner. Sit in a restaurant like normal people. Check out some boys who lack delusions of grandeur.” Isabela turned to face Taylor. “Does that not appeal to you?”
“When you said you could help me escape, I didn’t think you were serious.” Taylor shook her head, slightly in awe of her roommate’s secret life as a jail-breaker. “How long have you been doing this?”
“I went for the first time a few weeks after I got here. Just to see if I could. And I could.”
“How many times since?”
“Like, every other week?” Isabela pressed her hands together in a steeple pointed at Taylor. “Please, roommate! You must come! I am getting over a breakup. I cannot stand to sit around this dormitory and do nothing.”
Taylor snorted. “Oh, now you’re broken up about Lofton, huh?”
“I feel a deep emptiness yawning open beneath me and will surely sink down into it if you do not come with me to San Francisco,” Isabela said with a straight face.
“I will go,” Ran said.
Neither Taylor nor Isabela was aware that Ran had been listening to their whole conversation. Taylor turned with a small smile to look at Ran. Isabela’s eyebrows shot up and she dropped a dress onto her bed.
“Eavesdropper!” Isabela yelled.
“I apologize,” Ran replied. “But you are a very loud talker.”
“You want to go?” Taylor asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“Yes,” Ran said. “I have been stuck on this campus since before it officially opened. I would like a break.”
“You know we aren’t going down there to do meditation, right?” Isabela asked with a sternly arched brow. “We’re going to party.”
“Yes,” Ran replied. “Good.”
“Well, if you’re both going, I can’t just sit here by myself,” Taylor relented. “You sure we won’t get in trouble?”
“We will never be caught!” Isabela declared.
Ran turned to her. “I would like to invite Nigel.”
Isabela stuck out her tongue. “Why don’t we just invite the whole school?”
“Well, he was on our team today,” Taylor said. “He should get to partake in the victory party.”
“He enjoys drinking, like you,” Ran observed to Isabela. Then, she cocked her head. “Unless it will be too difficult for you to sneak that many people out.”
Isabela tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Of course not. I already know how I will do it.”
“In that case,” Taylor said, unable to keep the blush out of her cheeks, “could I invite someone, too?”
Shirtless, Kopano stood on the common room couch and punched the air. “What was the name of this band?” he yelled to be heard over the music blasting from Nigel’s iPod.
“The Dead Kennedys, mate,” Nigel replied, already thumbing through his collection to choose the next song.
“I cannot understand anything they’re saying!” Kopano shouted.
“I know! Isn’t it great?”
“Yes! It makes me want to throw this couch out the window!”
The door to their suite banged open. Isabela entered with a flourish, dramatically covering her ears. Taylor and Ran followed behind her.
“Ugh, turn those terrible sounds off,” Isabela complained.
With a smirk, Nigel released his Legacy’s hold on the music. The screaming of the Dead Kennedys was reduced to a tinny buzz, emanating as it was from a pair of simple headphones. He slouched down in his chair and eyed the three girls. Meanwhile, Kopano hopped down from the couch and began to search for his shirt.
“Are we interrupting something?” Taylor asked with a smile.
“Not at all, not at all.” Nigel winked at Ran. “It’s a rare occasion for us to be graced by all three of the lovely ladies of room 308. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, stop flirting when you don’t mean it,” Isabela said with a dismissive wave. She put her hands on her hips, surveying the boys’ messy living environment. “It is truly disgusting in here.”
“I was just going to clean up,” Kopano said, unreasonably intimidated by the fiery shape-shifter. He began to gather up some loose clothes. Isabela slapped them out of his hands.
“Stop that!” she said. “Chores later. Tonight, we are going out.”
Nigel leaned forward, bony elbows on his knees. “What’s this, then?”
Isabela explained the plan to sneak away from the Academy. Her tone made it clear that the boys joining them was something of a foregone conclusion.
“My, my, my,” Nigel said. He shot Ran a baffled look. “You’re into this, even?”
Ran folded her arms. “We have been cooped up here too long, have we not?”
“Gods yes, I could use a pint,” Nigel said, his smile crooked. “When do we leave?”
“Dark,” Isabela said. “Obviously.”
“I always wanted to see America,” Kopano said dreamily. He finally found a shirt that was clean enough and tugged it on. “I thought they would show us more when we came to the Academy. There should be field trips.”
“Yeah. Instead they bring in military guys to beat us up,” Taylor added. “We deserve a night off after that ordeal today.”
Kopano smiled at her. He liked the rebellious glint that he saw in Taylor’s eye. He spoke to her in a tone of faux virtue. “It is my duty to warn you, Taylor, that this activity does not sound very boring.”
She smiled at him. “Nope. It does not.”
Just then, they all heard a loud bang from Caleb’s room, followed by a pair of identical voices agitatedly whispering to each other. Everyone slowly turned towards Caleb’s closed door. Except for Isabela. She whipped around to glare at Nigel.
“Your freak roommate is here? The whole time?”
Nigel ran a hand over his spiky hair, exchanging a look with Kopano. “We, ah . . . we didn’t check.”
Isabela stomped her foot and yelled at the closed door, “Spy! Come out of there!”
Slowly, the door to Caleb’s room creaked open and Caleb poked his head out.
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
Isabela groaned and flailed her arms. “This one! He is the ultimate tattletale. We must tie him up and gag him until we return.”
Kopano laughed until Isabela turned to glare at him. “Wait. You are serious?”
Taylor watched Caleb warily, their weird encounter the week before not forgotten. Ran and Nigel, meanwhile, exchanged a subtle look. For his part, Caleb seemed to regret stumbling into the whole plan. He held up his hands.
“I won’t say anything. I promise,” he said.
“No. He cannot be trusted,” countered Isabela.
Suddenly, Caleb stumbled forward. A duplicate hidden behind him had pushed Caleb out of his room. “Tell them you want to go, pansy,” the duplicate hissed.
Nigel sighed and stepped forward. “Caleb, mate, what did we say about the duplicates?”
Caleb glanced over his shoulder, then absorbed the duplicate back into himself. Isabela shuddered.
“Sorry,” Caleb said.
“Our roommate, he’s got difficulties expressing himself proper like,” Nigel declared, turning to face the rest of the group. “Bit of a weirdo, innit he? He owes it to his rigid upbringing and troubled childhood or some such.”
“Um, we don’t need to get into all that, thanks, Nigel,” Caleb said quietly.
“I don’t suppose any of us have similar back stories?” Nigel continued. “Or have had some trouble fitting in around this bloody Academy?”
“I am not a weirdo,” Isabela declared.
Taylor smirked. “You aren’t?”
Isabela shot Taylor a look. “No.”
Kopano shrugged happily, like he’d missed most of the discussion. “You should come with us, Caleb. We are going to San Francisco!”
“I . . .” Caleb looked uncertainly at Isabela. “I mean, I would go if . . .”
“Six is too many,” Isabela said, stomping her foot. “I cannot sneak out a small army.”
“Yes, you can,” Ran said, breaking her long silence.
Isabela glared at Ran. The Japanese girl stared back impassively. After a few seconds, Isabela relented with a toss of her hair.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine. I will do it because my heart is so big and full of charity.”
The six of them waited until dark before they set out from the dorms. There were no rules about the students roaming the grounds at night—at least not before the midnight curfew—so they made their way towards the woods at a casual pace.
They hiked deep into the trees, until the fence that surrounded the Academy came into view. Isabela stopped them before they got too close.
“Do we climb over?” Kopano asked.
Isabela gave him a deadpan look. “I do not climb.” She checked her watch. “We need to wait about seven more minutes.”
“For what?” Caleb asked.
“Perimeter patrol.”
Sure enough, seven minutes later, a Peacekeeper truck rumbled by on the dirt road that encircled the fence. As soon as the red taillights were out of sight, Isabela stepped out of hiding. The others followed, cautiously.
“First,” she said, “we deal with the camera.”
The others hadn’t even noticed the little camera mounted on top of the fence. With a gentle nudge of her telekinesis, Isabela turned the device so it pointed in the other direction.
“Doesn’t someone notice that?” Taylor asked.
“Of course they notice,” Isabela replied. “But it is very windy out here. A technician will come out, turn the camera back around, tighten the screws. No big deal.”
Next, Isabela stepped carefully back into the overgrown woods. She returned with a huge dead log, levitating the mossy debris with her telekinesis.
“It took me awhile to find one exactly the right size,” she said. “I keep worrying that one night it will be gone, that the groundskeepers will clean it up.”
Isabela propped the log up against the fence. She took off her heels and gracefully scaled the improvised ramp. Lightly, she jumped down on the other side of the fence, dusted off the soles of her feet and put her shoes back on.
“Coming?” she asked the others through the fence.
One by one, they each ascended the ramp and jumped down. Kopano caught Taylor when she leaped down. Caleb watched them, biting his lip. When they were all on the other side, Isabela used her telekinesis to shove the log away from the fence.
“What happens now?” Nigel asked. “It’s a long walk to San Francisco.”
Isabela pointed across the dirt road. “Now, you wait here. There is a ditch over there. Hide in it until I return.”
“Where are you going?” Taylor asked.
“You are all so nosy! Please. I know what I’m doing,” Isabela complained. The others stared at her, so she threw up her hands resignedly. “Look, I am going to get us a car. Then, we drive off. Nothing to it. Get in your ditch so the patrols won’t see you.”
Isabela sauntered off into the darkness, leaving the others to hunker down in the grass on the side of the road. They stared up at the stars—blinking and visible out here in the middle of nowhere. They were nervous at first, but as the seconds turned into minutes, a peace settled over the five of them.
“This is kinda nice,” Caleb said.
“Don’t ruin the moment by talking about it,” Nigel replied. Ran elbowed him.
They tensed up when another car rolled by, the headlight beams gliding right over their position. The patrol didn’t even slow down.
“It’d be kind of funny if she just left us out here,” Caleb said.
“She wouldn’t do that,” Taylor replied.
“I know . . . I’m just joking.” Caleb shrugged. “We could camp out here. Worse comes to worst.”
Kopano chuckled. “Sleeping outside on purpose. Something I will never understand about this wonderful country.”
Another vehicle puttered up the dirt road. This time, it was a van. And this time, it slowed to a stop right above their ditch.
“Gotta be Isabela,” Nigel said, standing up before Ran could stop him.
He was greeted by the face of the red-bearded soldier who he’d scared in the competition earlier, the man staring at him through his rolled-down window. “The hell are you doing out here, boy?”
Nigel tensed up. “Uh . . .”
In a blur of flesh that looked like melting clay, the soldier’s face changed into Isabela’s. She grinned at him. “Just kidding. Come on, get in!”
Laughing and excited, they scrambled out of the ditch and into the van. Taylor sat shotgun. There weren’t any seats in the back—Isabela explained that the van was meant for doing supply runs, which was the pretense she used to sign it out from the vehicle pool, all under the identity of one of the many soldiers she’d memorized. The four others held on to leather cargo straps that dangled from the van’s walls and ceiling.
“You’re really something else,” Taylor told Isabela.
“I know.”
“In addition to something else, I hope you are also a good driver,” Kopano said.
“Oh, I am,” Isabela replied, setting off at a breakneck pace that jostled the four in the back. They were too amped up to complain, a game soon developing where they tried to keep their balance as Isabela zoomed through the curves of the patrol road. She slowed down when they reached a paved turnoff that led toward the Peacekeeper base proper and the final checkpoint before their exit.
“You should hide in the back. I need to put my face back on,” Isabela told Taylor. The five of them all crouched in the shadows of the cargo area, holding in laughter, even Caleb giddy with the possibility of escape. “Are you ready?” Isabela asked. “Soon, there will be no turning back.”
“We’re ready,” the others said in unison, not at all nervous as they approached the checkpoint. Isabela’s confidence was contagious.
They were waved through without incident.