I slip out, leaving behind a half-finished dinner, and I return to my house, enjoying the quiet darkness of my room. With the withering looks my father’s been giving me since London, I’m sure he’s glad I left early. Without me there, he can pretend Ivan is his trueborn son. They’ll both love that.
It’s a pleasant, breezy night, but I close my window, wanting to seal out the noise from the banquet. I gaze through narrowed eyes at the lights from the community hall, my neighbors enjoying their biggest celebration since coming to Earth thanks to the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed child.
When I turn away from the window, One is standing in the middle of my room. It’s the first time that she’s appeared to me since London. Her look is cold and accusing, far worse than the disdainful stares I’ve been receiving from my father.
“You watched her die,” she says.
I push my knuckles into my temples and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to will her away. When I open my eyes, One hasn’t budged.
“Whatever part of my brain you’re hiding out in,” I snarl, “go back there and leave me alone.”
“You could’ve at least kicked the gun to her,” she says, ignoring me. “Given her a fighting chance.”
It’s a scenario I’ve agonized over: Two’s silly little gun lying at my feet, her only a short distance away. I’ve played out the possibilities in my head and managed to rationalize the fear I was feeling at the time as strategic self-preservation. There was no way Two was getting out of that room alive, whether I helped her or not. But knowing that doesn’t make me feel any less a coward.
“They still would have killed her,” I say, voice shaking. “And then they would’ve killed me.”
“Which is what you’re really worried about,” replies One, rolling her eyes. “Saving your own skin.”
“If I die, what happens to you?” I ask, my voice rising. I want One to understand.
“I’m already dead, dummy.”
“Are you? Because it sure seems like you’re here now, making me feel worse than I already do. I’m sorry I couldn’t save Two, but—”
I’m interrupted by a soft knock on my bedroom door. I was so distracted by One I didn’t even hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Without waiting for me to invite her, my mother slowly opens my door, looking concerned. I wonder how much of my conversation with my imaginary friend she overheard.
“Who are you talking to?” she asks.
I shoot a surreptitious glance to where One was standing a moment ago. She’s gone now, retreated back into my brain.
“No one,” I snap, sitting down on the foot of my bed. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to check on you,” she says, and gently takes my chin in her hands. She examines the yellowing bruise on my jaw, the scabbed-over spot on my bottom lip. “He should not have done this.”
“I was being insubordinate,” I say, the token reply to one of the General’s rebukes coming easily.
My mother sits down on the bed next to me. I get the feeling that she wants to say more but is having trouble finding the words.
“He told me what happened,” she begins, hesitating. “With you and the Garde child. He wanted to send you to West Virginia, but I talked him out of it.”
There’s a mountain base in West Virginia where intensive training classes take place. I’ve heard the “training” is really endless hours of laboring in underground tunnels. For a trueborn like me to be sent there would be the equivalent of a human teenager being sent to military school.
“Thanks,” I reply, not entirely sure why my mother is telling me this.
She stands up and goes to my window, looking out at the lights of the banquet.
“Get back to your studies,” she says quietly. “Grow stronger. And the next time you have a chance to take down a Garde, do it.”
My mother kneels in front of me, cupping my bruised face in her hands. She stares into my eyes, her look beseeching.
I stare back at her in disappointment, sensing that there’s something more she wants to say.
“Yes, Mother,” I reply. She opens her mouth to speak, but closes it without saying a word.
CHAPTER 21
I am a model young Mogadorian.
I am dedicated to my studies. My understanding of Ra’s Great Book is lauded by my instructors, my dedication to Mogadorian progress unquestioned. I finish top of my class in Advanced Tactical Planning, my final essay on how a Mogadorian guerrilla force could overwhelm a well-defended human city with a minimum of Mogadorian casualties trumpeted as something my father might have written in his younger days.
“Your son makes me certain that our military will continue to flourish well into the next generation,” I overhear one of my instructors tell the General. My father replies with only a grim nod. We have not spoken since London. It has been two years.
I keep my other tactical plans to myself. Secreted away in my room, I scribble out a plan for how a human army with proper strategic intelligence could repel a Mogadorian force. When I’m satisfied with the plan, I burn the pages in the bathroom sink and rinse away the ash.
Hand-to-hand combat is still not my strong suit. Ivan always chooses me as his partner for drills. Afterward, I’m always bruised and sore, and Ivan has barely broken a sweat. He is bigger and stronger than any of the other students, and when we spar I see an emptiness in his eyes. It’s the same dark look he gave me when standing over Number Two’s body in London. It’s like he thinks we’re still in competition for the General’s favor, even though I’ve long dropped out of that race. He’s won, but he’s too dense to realize it, still viewing me as a rival. When we train with blades, he “accidentally” cuts my arm, the wound requiring three sutures.
“I’ll toughen you up yet, Adamus,” he sneers, standing over me, blood squeezing through my fingers as I hold my arm. “Make your father proud.”
“Thank you, Brother,” I reply.
What little free time I have, I spend in the capital. I don’t bring Ivan along on these trips anymore, and I no longer waste time human-watching at the National Mall. I find a quiet bookstore where I entertain myself for hours reading what titles I can remember from Two’s favorite books lists. I begin with George Orwell.
“Why did I have to get stuck in the brain of the universe’s most boring Mogadorian?” complains One during a weekend trip to the bookstore. She visits me often, sometimes more than once a day. In a way, she’s sort of my only friend. She teases me, but I know she doesn’t mind these quiet periods of reading something other than the Great Book. During my Mogadorian classes, I can feel her mind growing restless inside me. Sometimes she manifests, commenting on how heinously pale my instructors are, or when I’m sparring with Ivan, how the discovery of deodorant would be a great step in Mogadorian progress. I’ve learned not to acknowledge her in public, to limit our conversations to the night, when everyone else is asleep.
It’s then that we plan. I lie in bed, thinking. One paces around the room, anxious and bored.
“We should escape tomorrow,” she says. “We could tell the president that there are a bunch of gross aliens planning war right in his backyard.”
“Not yet,” I reply, shaking my head. “We’ll know when the time is right.”
“What if the time is never right?”
I’ve spent two years like that, acting the part, waiting for an opportunity to make a difference. Even with their vast resources, my people are slow in finding the other Garde. There are successful operations from other cells: a mission in upstate New York yields a captive Garde. More often there are missions that never get off the ground because the target disappears, or the scout team does. I’m not sure how long the Garde can keep this up. I hope they manage to get organized soon, but I worry that One is right, that I’m biding my time for an opportunity that will never come.
And then, finally, word comes to us about Africa.
CHAPTER 22
For the first time in years I’m invited into the General’s briefing room.
“We have reliable intelligence that a member of the Garde might be hiding in Kenya,” says my father, handing out a printout of an article from a travel magazine. The article is a few months old, and considering its vague content, it is no wonder it took our techs so long to unearth it. In the article, while gushing about a small marketplace in Kenya, the writer describes a kid with a strange ankle branding that’s unlike anything he’s seen on other local tribespeople. The description bears a striking resemblance to the Loric charm.
“Has this been confirmed?” I ask, getting in my question before Ivan is even finished dragging his finger along the article’s middle sentences.
“Obtaining confirmation using normal methods has proven an obstacle.”
“We can’t exactly blend in with this kind of community,” I say, earning a sharp look of annoyance from my father, even though he knows I’m right.
“What’s that mean?” asks Ivan, slow on the uptake as usual.
It is just the two of us being briefed by the General. Whatever my father has planned in Kenya, it will be the first time Ivan and I will be out on our own. We both know what a prestigious and dangerous mission this is. I’m a little surprised the General chose me for this assignment—for any assignment, really. Could it be that he doesn’t worry about placing me in harm’s way anymore? I decide now is a good time to play the apt pupil, to demonstrate my commitment to Mogadorian progress.
“Assuming they’re in an African village environment,” I explain to Ivan, keeping my words insultingly slow, “it would make slipping in a scout team extremely difficult. They’d know we weren’t locals, and we’d risk tipping our hand to the Loric prematurely. It’s smart planning on the Garde’s part. Isn’t that right, Father?”
“Yes,” my father concedes, “that is correct.”
“Why don’t we just go wipe out this village?” asks Ivan. “Who cares about blending in?”
I snort. “How many incidents like London do you think we can have before the humans start asking questions?”
“So what if they ask questions?”
“You’d endanger the security of the entire war effort to massacre one village, then?”
“Adamus,” says the General, his voice a menacing rumble, “would you like to run this briefing?”
“No, sir,” I reply. Ivan smirks.
“As for your question, Ivanick, subtlety is the correct course of action here.”
I feel Ivan deflate a little next to me. Subtlety is not something I’m sure Ivan even knows the meaning of.
“We have managed to secure you cover identities that will not unduly disturb the locals,” continues my father. “You two will infiltrate this village and determine whether there is indeed a Garde presence. I will have a strike team mobilized in the jungle should you obtain confirmation.”
My father gives me a long look, sizing me up. Then he turns to Ivan.