Dubem nodded along solemnly while the rest of Kopano’s family stared at him. Then his father and uncle broke into laughter, soon joined by his brother Obi.
“Listen to this one!” his father shouted. “Meet his destiny! Shut up now, we can’t hear the news.”
“But I saw him,” Dubem said, his small voice shaky. “Kopano glowed!”
Their mother made the sign of the cross. “A devil has invaded our house.”
Udo regarded his son through eyes narrowed to slits. Kopano stood tall, chest puffed out, hoping to cut a striking figure.
“Okay, Mr. Superhero,” said Udo measuredly. “If you are an alien now, please show us your powers.”
Kopano took a deep breath. He looked down at his hands. He didn’t feel any different than he had yesterday, but that didn’t necessarily mean the great powers of the Loric weren’t lurking within him, right?
With a flourish worthy of a martial arts movie, Kopano thrust his hands towards his father. He hoped that his telekinesis would come rushing forth and knock his old man out of his chair. But while Udo flinched at the sudden move, nothing else happened.
Kopano’s uncle laughed again and slapped Udo on the back. “Your face! You looked like you might crap in your britches!”
Udo scowled, then snorted in Kopano’s direction. “You see? Noth—” His father’s face suddenly contorted in anguish. Udo clutched at his chest, feet kicking out in front of him in spasms. His eyes went wide in panic. “My insides!” he screamed. “My insides are boiling!”
Kopano’s mother screamed.
Kopano and his brothers all rushed to their father’s side. Their uncle took a frightened step back. Kopano grabbed his father’s arm.
“Father, I’m sorry! I don’t know what—”
His father slapped him on the side of the head and grinned. Just like that, he was miraculously recovered and already turning back to the television. A practical joke.
“You stupid boy, I’m fine. Or perhaps my alien powers are just greater than yours, hmm?” He waved Kopano away. “Go on. See to your mother. You scared her bad.”
Kopano slunk away. Had it really all been a dream? What would he have done with Legacies, anyway? A boy from Lagos rushing off to save the world? Even Nollywood didn’t make movies with premises so far-fetched.
Little Dubem clasped his hand.
“I believe you, Kopano,” his youngest brother whispered. “You will show them all.”
At least, for a few days after his embarrassing announcement, Kopano’s family was too glued to the news to mock him. But then the invasion ended, suddenly and brutally, with the nations of Earth coming together to simultaneously attack every Mogadorian warship. Meanwhile, the Garde, the ones who had invaded Kopano’s dreams and promised him bigger things than Lagos, went to the Mogadorians’ secret base in West Virginia and killed Setrákus Ra. Kopano imagined being there, fighting alongside the Garde, and melting Setrákus Ra with his fire-breath.
Fire-breath, Kopano had decided, would be his Legacy.
When the news broke that Earth was saved, they celebrated in the streets. His father hugged him close as they danced down the road, fireworks going off overhead. Kopano couldn’t remember the last time Udo had hugged him like that. Not since he was a boy.
But the next day, it started.
Alien son, go down to the market before school and pick up the items I am thinking about right now! Use your telepathy!
Alien son, did you finish your homework?
Alien son, use your telekinesis to get me a beer, eh?
Kopano grinned through it all, but inside he seethed. His unemployed father had nothing better to do than sit home all day and think up ways to humiliate him.
Worse still, his bigmouthed brother, Obi, had spread the word around school. Soon, Kopano’s classmates were teasing him, too. A stall in the marketplace had started selling rubber Mogadorian masks, hideous gray things with empty black eyes and tiny yellow teeth. A group of his older classmates chased Kopano through the halls wearing these masks and, when they caught him, they used rolls of duct tape to bind him to one of the football goals. They took turns kicking balls at him.
Until one day, when Kopano stopped a football in midair. When that happened, they all ran away screaming.
“Finally,” Kopano whispered to himself as he began wriggling free. “Finally.”
It had been three months since the invasion. Kopano, it turned out, was a late bloomer.
That evening, he strode into his family’s apartment to find his father napping on the couch. With his little brothers watching, Kopano used his telekinesis to levitate the couch high above the floor. Then he screamed, “Fire! Fire! Father, get up!”
His father sprung upright, swung his legs off the couch, and fell five feet to the floor. As he groaned and picked himself up, staring aghast at the couch still floating above him, Obi and Dubem cackled with laughter. Kopano simply grinned at his father, squaring his shoulders in the same noble way he had on that humiliating morning months ago.
“You see, old man? What did I tell you?”
Udo stumbled over to his son, a smile slowly spreading on his face. He grabbed Kopano’s cheeks and pinched. “My beautiful alien son, you are the answer to all of our problems.”
Many months later, when Kopano finally made it to America, the psychologist Linda Matheson would ask him what life was like back in Lagos, before he came to the Human Garde Academy.
Kopano would think about his answer for a long moment before answering.
“Well,” he said, “I guess for a little while I was a criminal.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE PATIENCE CREEK SURVIVORS
AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
FOR THOSE FIRST HUMAN GARDE WHO DID ANSWER John Smith’s call to arms right after their visions, the invasion wasn’t as glorious as Kopano had enviously imagined.
The story of Patience Creek wasn’t reported on the news networks. The battle there didn’t make it into any of the retrospectives made after the invasion. It was kept secret. Remembered by only the survivors.
Patience Creek was a secret government facility in Michigan where the Loric hid out after the invasion, plotting their counterattack on the Mogadorians. They were joined by a host of military personnel and a handful of Human Garde, those who had answered John Smith’s telepathic plea or who had otherwise crossed his path.
Daniela Morales. Stone-vision.
Nigel Barnaby. Sonic manipulation.
Caleb Crane. Duplication.
Ran Takeda. Kinetic detonation.
There were others, but they didn’t survive the assault when the Mogadorians discovered Patience Creek. Most of the military didn’t make it out alive either. John Smith himself was nearly killed. It was bloody and brutal and not at all heroic. The ordeal showed John Smith that maybe the humans he’d recruited weren’t ready for a full-scale war. They needed training that the Loric didn’t have time to give them. Not then, at least. The humans needed protecting.
So, John Smith sent them away.
“Bloody Guantanamo Bay,” Nigel groused.
Daniela rolled her eyes. “This isn’t Cuba, man.”
Nigel bent down and gathered a handful of bright white sand. He opened his fingers and let the grains blow across the crystalline blue ocean. The sun beat down on him—skinny bordering on bony, pale, a sunburn growing around his bleached mohawk, his cheeks pocked by persistent splotches of acne. He wore a black Misfits tank top in defiance of the heat. He gestured from the waves to the austere military base two hundred yards away—their accommodations for the last few days—and looked back at Daniela.