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  Thanks, Einar.

  So yeah. School wasn’t exactly fine. But Nigel wasn’t about to tell Bea all that.

  “I talked to Jessa today,” Nigel said, changing the subject.

  Bea’s eyes lit up at the mention of her daughter. “How is she?” she asked. Her expression tightened a half second later. “What did you tell her?”

  Nigel let himself enjoy Bea’s discomfort for a moment. His sister, Jessa, didn’t know anything about Bea’s ties to the Foundation and it was clear Bea preferred to keep it that way. Nigel supposed it was important to Bea that at least one of her children thought of her as a good mother.

  “Well, for starters, I told her that we’re alive,” Nigel said flatly.

  In the process of kidnapping Nigel and fleeing to Switzerland, Bea had conspired to kill Nigel’s Earth Garde escort and then burned down their family estate. Jessa was completely in the dark about that plan and had spent the last month believing that her family was dead. Nigel had delayed contacting her until Lexa could provide a secure outside line—it was a certainty that Earth Garde was eavesdropping on all outgoing communications from the Academy. Nigel went back and forth on how much to tell Jessa. At first, he’d wanted to spill his guts, unmask their parents once and for all. But he ultimately decided that would just be cruel. Jessa had a happy, normal life. She deserved to stay that way.

  “I told her that some anti-Garde terrorists tried to kill us back in London,” Nigel continued. “I told her you’re with me in Earth Garde’s protective custody. So, not entirely a lie.”

  “But what about the money?” Bea asked. “Did she get it?”

  “That’s all you care about, isn’t it?” Nigel replied.

  The money in question was the hefty sum Wade Sydal had paid Bea for a supply of Mogadorian ooze. Sydal ended up exploding in his knockoff spacecraft moments later, thanks to a rocket fired by one of Bea’s mercenaries. As businesswomen went, Nigel figured Bea had to be one of the most cold-blooded alive.

  “I care about ensuring that our family survives the world to come,” Bea responded. “That we do more than survive. That we have the means to flourish.”

  “You were in MogPro, you dunce,” Nigel said, referencing the secret organization of Mog-supporting humans that the Foundation had grown from. “You thought our family and the rest of humanity would flourish under Setrákus Ra?”

  “Given the information we had at the time, we believed we were backing the winning side,” Bea replied with a flip of her hand. “Unfortunately, all the variables weren’t known to us. No one anticipated the Loric weaponizing our own children, for instance. The Foundation has a much stronger grasp of the current situation. Better informed. Better able to profit.”

  Nigel pointedly looked around Bea’s cell. “Mum, I don’t think you’ve got a grasp of your own situation, much less what’s going on in the world.”

  “This?” Bea smiled, plucking at one of her sweatshirt’s frayed strings. “This is only temporary. I’m happy to remain in your custody for now. With Einar on his little rampage, my position with the Foundation was quite shaky. I thought they might kill me themselves, if only to limit their own exposure. It’s what I would’ve done, after all. That’s why I needed to cut that deal with Sydal, to put something away for you children.”

  “And then you offed him,” Nigel said.

  “Well, for all his big ideas, the man was a simpleton. He was never actually part of the Foundation. He simply enjoyed the resources we could provide him. He cozied up to us and Earth Garde, playing both sides. It was only a matter of time until someone cut him off. Permanently, as it were.”

  “I still don’t understand why.”

  “Are they saying that I killed him?” Bea asked with an amused tilt of her head. “On the news, I mean. Are they blaming Bea Barnaby? The Blackstone mercenaries? Are they talking about the Foundation? Is that the story? No?”

  Nigel glared at her. She knew. Of course she knew that her name hadn’t come up in connection with Sydal. Even though Einar’s speech was everywhere, the parts where he ranted about the conspiracy had been fluffed off as the ravings of a teenager off his meds.

  “Here’s what I imagine is happening,” Bea continued, her eyes twinkling, like she’d been waiting to spring this trap. “The Garde are being blamed for what happened in Switzerland. People are afraid. The public is coming to realize how a random selection of superpowered teenagers can be a danger to society. They are realizing that a silly private school overseen by an impotent body like the UN is simply not enough to protect the world we know. As a result, the preciously idealistic vision of those who first founded Earth Garde is crumbling. How close am I?”

  “Not even,” Nigel lied. “Your face is all over the news. And they didn’t choose a nice picture either. Got a bit of the double chin, yeah? The Queen herself came on the telly to call you a disgrace to England. Even the other Tories think you’re scum.”

  Bea chuckled. “My dear, the Foundation was only a secret organization because that was more profitable in a post-invasion world where everyone wanted to believe the Loric and their Legacies would lead us towards utopia. A united Earth where we all link arms and stand together against alien invaders isn’t a place where old-fashioned free-market capitalists like your dearly departed father and I could thrive in the open. We recognized that. We understood that there was always going to be a blissful period of time where all the world’s countries pretended to get along. After all, we defeated an alien menace together, didn’t we? But that time is ending. Tell me, Nigel, when Earth Garde and the Academy come apart, who will the leaders of the free world call in to fix things? Perhaps a well-funded organization with a worldwide infrastructure already in place and a proven track record of controlling dangerous Garde? And what if that same organization, through a series of stock buyouts and a tragically untimely death, now owned a controlling stake in the world’s biggest manufacturer of anti-Garde technology, hmm?”

  Nigel stared at her, willing himself to believe that it was all the lies of a desperate woman trying to get into his head. “You’re talking out your ass.”

  “I give it two more weeks before I’m free,” Bea said. “Be a dear and, once you’ve finished your homework, go over to the faculty building and pick me out a nice office. I think the California air will agree with—”

  Bea doubled over suddenly, overcome by a coughing fit. Her stern posture fell away just as her magazine slipped onto the floor. Nigel stood up, cringing at the sounds she made. He had to stop himself from going to her side. For all the hate he felt, she was still his mother. It wasn’t easy to see her ill.

  After a minute, Bea caught her breath. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. Nigel handed her a tissue and she blotted at her nose and the corners of her eyes.

  He could see the black veins now. The dark slivers moving beneath Bea’s skin like worms. Back in Switzerland, Number Five had shattered a vial of that viscous ooze across Bea’s face, rubbed it into her cuts. The stuff was still inside of her, making her sick.

  “We can heal you,” Nigel said, standing over Bea now, making an effort to keep his voice steady. “All you have to do is provide us with a list of names. Everyone who’s in the Foundation. Tell us every way that they’ve weaseled their way into Earth Garde and we’ll fix you up before that poison kills you.”

  Bea looked up at her son and Nigel was surprised by what he saw in her eyes. She approved of his negotiation technique.

  “An interesting offer,” Bea said. “But I shall hold out for a better deal.”

  “It’s the only deal you’ll be getting.”

  “I’m afraid my answer is still no, dear,” Bea said. “Maybe if I actually believed that you’d let me die, I’d be more open to bargaining. But you and the Cook girl couldn’t even let that horrible shit Einar expire, after everything he put you through back in Iceland. After he murdered your father.”

  “He’ll pay for his crimes,” Nigel said. “And so will yo
u.”

  “Maybe. But in the meantime, I hardly believe you’ll let your own mother perish.”

  “We don’t know what that stuff could be doing to you,” Nigel countered, trying a new tack.

  “The Foundation ran experiments,” Bea said. “I know how much time I’ve got. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either. Like I said, two weeks. Maximum. And then one of my healers will come in here and fix me up, if your friend Taylor hasn’t caved already.”

  Nigel let a breath hiss through his nostrils. She wouldn’t give anything up. Not today. Maybe not ever. His mother would apparently rather let that Mogadorian sludge eat away at her insides than betray some of her rich friends.

  “Right, then,” Nigel said, making an effort to keep his voice breezy. “We’ll see how you’re feeling tomorrow. Ta-ta for now.”

  His mother said her own insufferably pleasant good-bye, but Nigel couldn’t hear her over the sound of him dragging the chair out of her cell. He sealed the bulletproof glass door behind him without taking a look back at Bea. He couldn’t bear to see her smug expression.

  Nigel made it partway down the row of cells before he let loose a roar and flung the chair away from him. It bounced harmlessly off one of the cell doors and Nigel heard a gasp. He turned his head and saw, in a narrow room identical to his mother’s, Dr. Linda Matheson. The Academy’s resident psychologist, guidance counselor and mole for the Foundation. Hair frazzled and eyes bloodshot, she stood pressed against the very back of her cell, clearly startled by his violent outburst. Linda relaxed a bit when she realized that it was Nigel out there having a tantrum and not some assassin come to kill her.

  “Nigel . . . ,” Linda began, having some difficulty capturing the soothing yet judgmental tone she once had such mastery of during their weekly sessions. “Is everything okay?”

  “Cram it, Linda,” Nigel replied, and continued on.

  He passed the cell where Miki slept facing the wall, snoring gently. The Academy’s secret little jail was built to withstand a Garde’s telekinetic abilities, but they weren’t designed to be airtight. Earth Garde obviously didn’t want anyone to suffocate. Therefore, Nigel figured, Miki could slip out whenever he wanted, but he hadn’t tried anything yet and Taylor didn’t think that he would. Like that Rabiya girl they’d brought back from Switzerland, Miki wanted to be good.

  Alejandro Regerio, on the other hand, seemed eager to escape. The Foundation’s pretty-boy thug-for-hire stood right up against the glass as Nigel walked by his cell. The guy’s face was still cut up from the beating Isabela gave him when she was posing as Dr. Linda. Nigel would have loved to have seen that. After Isabela escaped the Academy, she tipped Professor Nine to Alejandro’s location—locked in the trunk of Dr. Linda’s car. Nine took him into custody but had hesitated to report his existence to Earth Garde because doing so would create questions about why Isabela was off campus yet again.

  “You can’t keep me here,” Alejandro barked at Nigel, slapping his hand against the glass. “Let me out, you scrawny punk.”

  “Mate, nobody gives a shit about you,” Nigel replied, using his Legacy to throw his voice so that the sound came from behind Alejandro. He cracked a smile when the man flinched and spun around, only to find there was no one there. Everything else might suck, but at least he could still dunk on this loser.

  Nigel ignored Alejandro’s profanity-laden shouts. He punched in the key code he’d gotten from Malcolm and shoved through the heavy security door, the only exit from the Academy’s small prison. Or detention area. Apparently, that’s what Earth Garde had called it when they insisted on installing it. Of course Nine and Malcolm had been aware of the cells, but in over a year of operating the Academy they had never seen the need to use them.

  Funny that now most of the occupants were human.

  Still, Earth Garde had wanted them here, Nigel thought. If Nigel had been in a more optimistic mood, he would’ve seen that as the organization feeling it was better to be safe than sorry. But, in the mood he was in now, it seemed to Nigel like another example of humanity being scared of Garde. He wondered, not for the first time, what Ran would think of these cells. His best friend had lost so much trust for the Academy and Earth Garde that she’d gone and joined forces with the guy who nearly murdered Nigel, who successfully killed his dad and who had everyone in the world talking about what a danger Garde were to humanity. And, insanely, he didn’t even blame Ran for ditching him. He couldn’t bring himself to be mad at her. He just missed her.

  All Ran had wanted to do was opt out of fighting. All Nigel wanted to do was help people. And it seemed that all Earth Garde wanted to do, with the exception of the good people at the Academy, was stick them in cages.

  Maybe his mother was right. Maybe a war with humanity was inevitable. Maybe he was kidding himself to think otherwise.

  Damn it. She was in his head again.

  Beyond the detention area was a chilly passageway with corrugated steel walls and harsh lighting. Nigel moved through it at a swift clip—subterranean hallways took him back to Patience Creek and the terror he had faced there. He preferred to get to open space as quickly as possible.

  The prison was hidden beneath the administration building. Nigel made a series of turns through the dismal maintenance tunnels, picturing himself walking aboveground, in the sun. He was taking a mole’s route from admin to the training center.

  He pushed through another series of security doors until he found himself in the open chamber beneath Nine’s beloved obstacle course. The room always smelled like grease, the gears and wiring of Nine’s many sadistic traps visible in the ceiling. Not long ago, Nigel had relished sneaking down there with the rest of the Fugitive Six, making their plans to bring down the Foundation. There was the table where they’d bounced around ideas over tea supplied by Malcolm. There was the bulletin board upon which they had tacked up all their leads and information.

  It had almost seemed like a game.

  The room felt bigger now without all the others gathered here. Or maybe not bigger, exactly. Emptier.

  Since Switzerland, Lexa had set up a row of monitors and laptops on the table that the three of them—Lexa, Nine and Malcolm—took shifts keeping tabs on. There was no one else on the faculty they could trust with the task and, although Nigel had volunteered to help, the adults (and, well, Nine) didn’t seem eager to burden their students with that responsibility. The screens were tuned to a spiderweb of cameras around the Academy. The views included the subterranean prison that Nigel had just come from, but that wasn’t the biggest concern. Most of the cameras were focused on the Academy’s perimeter, specifically the Peacekeeper encampment and the routes patrolled by Colonel Ray Archibald’s soldiers. Nine and the others hadn’t come out and said it, but they were definitely expecting the Peacekeepers to, at some point, take a sterner hand with the running of the Academy. So far, the soldiers hadn’t changed their routine at all. They weren’t aiming their guns inward. But there were a lot of them. And more getting bused in every day.

  They were amassing an army out there. Just like Greger promised. Taylor had the student body primed to resist whatever came next, but Nigel wasn’t sure how long they could hold out. That’s why he needed to get information on the Foundation from his mother—armed with that, maybe they could expose the truth and make the public see that Garde weren’t the real enemy.

  Ugh. Now he was starting to think like Einar.

  Malcolm stood watch over the monitors. He flicked a glance in Nigel’s direction, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him. Malcolm held his phone out in front of him, a bewildered look on his face.

  “This isn’t the time for selfies, Doc . . .”

  Nigel began to trail off almost as soon as the joke started, his voice an awkward whisper by the end of his sentence. Something didn’t feel right.

  “Are you alone, Dr. Goode?” a voice asked.

  Nigel clamped his jaw shut as he realized Malcolm was on a video call.

  “Yes, Gr
eger, I’m alone,” Malcolm lied, purposely not looking in Nigel’s direction.

  “Where are you, exactly?” Greger asked. “That doesn’t look like your office.”

  “I’m doing some maintenance under the training center,” Malcolm replied. Nigel appreciated how easily the old scientist lied. Here was a man once interrogated by Mogadorians; he wasn’t going to give anything away to some slick pencil pusher like Greger.

  “Good. You’re keeping busy,” Greger said. “It’s quite important we maintain a sense of normalcy around the Academy during these fraught times.”

  “Excuse me, Greger,” Malcolm jumped in, an edge to his voice. “But how exactly did you get this number?”

  Even though he couldn’t see Greger, Nigel could hear the sleazy smile in his voice. He completely ignored Malcolm’s question. “I’ve always found you to be a pragmatic and intelligent man, Dr. Goode. That’s why I’ve nominated you to take over operations at the Academy.”

  Malcolm’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

  “You and I both know that Number Nine is out of control,” Greger continued. “He never should have been given such a powerful position there but, after the invasion, we all felt such a great debt to the Loric. While we certainly appreciate what his kind have done for us, considering his recent performance, it’s simply not practical to keep him on any longer.”

  “I disagree with that assessment,” Malcolm replied coldly.

  “We both know how this ends,” Greger said with a sigh. “Wouldn’t you rather be in charge there, Dr. Goode, rather than let Earth Garde appoint a total outsider? It would be a smooth transition. Not to mention, your support in these matters will go a long way to ensuring all our Garde remain happy and healthy.”

  “I don’t respond kindly to threats, Greger.”

  “I wouldn’t threaten you, Malcolm. I like you. I am merely trying to impress upon you the gravity of the situation.”