“All right,” Sam replies. “We’ll be out in a minute.”
The twins raise an eyebrow in unison at Sam’s use of “we.” He shuts the door in their faces.
“Guess we’re on,” he says to me.
“Back to the war,” I reply with a bittersweet smile.
As I begin to get dressed, I nod my head in the direction of the door. There’s a lot about our situation that I still don’t know. Better to get my questions out of the way before we head off to this meeting with the military.
“What’s with the twins?”
“Caleb and Christian.” Sam tells me their names and shrugs. “They’re a couple of military school kids. They’re LANEs.”
“Yeah, they seemed like lames.”
Sam laughs. “No, not ‘lame.’ ‘LANE.’ L-A-N-E. Not sure why I’d expect you to know brand-new acronyms that the government just invented. It means Legacy-Afflicted Native Earthling.”
“Afflicted?” I pause while pulling on my shirt. “They make it sound like a bad thing.”
“Yeah, they use ‘augmented’ instead of ‘afflicted’ when you Garde are around, but my dad saw one of the internal emails.” Sam shrugs apologetically, like he’s the ambassador for all humanity. “I guess the people in charge aren’t entirely sure yet if Legacies are a good thing for a bunch of human teenagers to develop. They’re concerned there could be drawbacks or side effects.”
“Yeah, one of the side effects is that it makes it a lot harder for the Mogs to shoot you in the face.”
“Come on, I know that,” Sam replies. “For your average human, though? This is a lot to take in. I mean, we’ve got two brand-new types of intelligent life to wrap our heads around, and that’s before we even get to how you Loric mutated us.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Mutated in a good way,” Sam adds.
“So what do those twins do?” I ask, circling back.
He shrugs. “Only telekinesis, as far as I know.”
I’m fully clothed, but I’ve still got more questions. I stand in front of the doorway with my hands on my hips.
“So that Lawson guy. What’s his deal?”
“He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs back in the nineties, I guess. Retired.”
I give Sam a blank look.
“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is, like, the highest military posting in America. Reports directly to the president, yadda yadda yadda.” Sam rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t know what it was either, and I was actually born on this planet.”
“Okay, so what happened to the current chairman?”
“He was MogPro. They brought Lawson back because he’d been retired so long, no one bothered corrupting him. He’s like the human version of this place.”
“Speaking of MogPro, I saw Agent Walker hanging around last night, too,” I say, a little edge to my voice. “You trust her? You trust this Lawson guy?”
“Walker’s all right. She fought alongside us in New York. As for Lawson . . .”
Sam frowns. “I don’t know. Hard for me to trust any kind of organization after MogPro, but they’d have to be crazy to turn on us now—”
While Sam speaks, an old TV set perched on a stand against the far wall suddenly comes to life with a burst of static. We both turn in that direction.
“What the hell?” I ask.
Sam rubs his temples. “This old place is wired weird or something. That TV’s probably filled with spiders.”
“Or hidden cameras.”
Sam smirks at me. “I hope not. Anyway, I don’t think they’re organized enough to be spying on us yet.”
Sam wanders over to the TV and hits the button to turn it off. Nothing happens.
“See? Broken,” he says, before smacking the side of the TV. “Come on!”
When Sam speaks, all the electronics in the room—the TV, the nightstand lamp, the ancient rotary phone—they all flare to life for a second. A burst of static from the TV, a flicker of light from the lamp, a shrill ring from the phone. Sam doesn’t notice. He’s too busy unplugging the TV from the wall, which finally turns it off.
“See? Crazy. Whole place is nuts.”
I stare at him. “Sam, it’s not the wiring. It’s you.”
“What’s me?”
“You did that just now with the electronics,” I tell him. “I think you’re developing a new Legacy.”
Sam’s eyebrows shoot up, and he looks down at his hands. “What? Already?”
“Yeah, they come on quick once the telekinesis manifests,” I reply. “You saw that kid in Ella’s dream-share thing. The German.”
“Bertrand the Beekeeper,” Sam says, reminding me of his name. “Daniela got one, too. I guess I didn’t think it would happen so soon for me. I’m still getting used to being telekinetic.”
I don’t know who Daniela is, but I nod along anyway. “The Entity knew the world needs protecting in a hurry.”
“Huh,” Sam says, mulling this over. “So, it’s something to do with electronics.”
He turns back to the TV and thrusts his palms at it. He succeeds in emitting a telekinetic burst that knocks the TV off its stand and to the floor with a loud crash.
“Oops.”
“Well, you’ve got the telekinesis down at least.”
Sam turns to me. “If you’re right, how do I get it to work?”
Before I can tell Sam that I have no idea, we’re interrupted by another knock on the door. A second later, one of the twins’ muffled voice reaches us.
“Uh, whatever you guys are doing in there, could it wait? General Lawson told us if we didn’t round everyone up by oh-nine-hundred, it’d be our asses.”
I exchange a look with Sam. “We’ll talk about this later,” I say.
He nods, and we open the door to join the two sullen military cadets. As we head down the hallway, Sam stares at every overhead light like an enemy that needs to be conquered.
CHAPTER FIVE
NOT MUCH FOR CONVERSATION, THE TWINS LEAD us through the twisting corridors of the subbasement. Soon we’re outside the conference room. Malcolm arrives at the same time from a different hallway and waves to us. The twins dart inside, probably worried about being late, while the Goode men and I linger outside.
Malcolm puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “How you holding up, Six?”
I manage a smile. “I’m hanging in there.” I glance at Sam, and the smile doesn’t seem so forced anymore. “Your son’s helping me keep it together.”
Sam blushes and turns away from his dad a bit. Malcolm pats him on the back.
“Good, good,” he says. “In times like these, we need to lean on each other.”
“How’s Marina?” I ask Malcolm. The last I saw of her, he was wheeling her into the cabin on a gurney.
“The medics say her vitals are strong, and she woke up a little while ago to take some food,” Malcolm replies. “John healed her, yes, but when the damage is that severe, you don’t want to rush anything. She’s resting.”