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.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TAYLOR COOK
TURNER COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA
TAYLOR DISCOVERED THAT SHE WAS ONE OF THEM on the Wednesday morning when she reached for her buzzing alarm clock and accidentally sent the thing flying across her bedroom. The clock smashed against the wall, made a squawking sound like a dying goose and was silent. Taylor was 99 percent sure she hadn’t laid a finger on it.
“Okay, get a grip,” she told herself. “You were still half dreaming. It was an accident. You’re freaking out over nothing.”
Taylor held her hand out toward the broken alarm clock, gasping when it levitated and floated back to her.
“Dad!” she shouted.
Brian didn’t hear her. He was already out of the house. Taylor threw open her bedroom window and gazed out over their small farm. The barn doors were open, her dad probably in there feeding the hogs.
A dented pickup truck made its way up their dirt driveway. That would be Silas. He got out of his truck, hair slicked back as usual, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his flannel shirt, like a dingy version of some old movie star. Over the last few months, ever since she spoke up to him during the invasion, he’d started looking at Taylor in a new way, a creepy way. He always made a point of telling her how much she’d grown. He saw her watching and waved.
Taylor shut her window. Took a step back.
“This isn’t happening,” she told herself.
It’d been almost a year since the world got crazy. Things had been normal here, though, just like Taylor had hoped. She’d even gotten comfortable with the idea of aliens and superpowers in the world. But now . . .
“I . . . I can’t be one of them.”
But she was. Taylor realized she hadn’t used her hands to shut her window just then. She’d used her mind. She went back to the glass, peering out, praying that Silas hadn’t noticed anything. Taylor watched him saunter into the barn like nothing had happened and breathed a sigh of relief.