Page 29 of Generation One LLR (Lorien Legacies Reborn 1)

“He’s solid,” Caleb said.

Lofton shrugged. “Well, at least we didn’t come over here for nothing. You’re in.”

Kopano grinned. He turned to Taylor as the rest of Team Lofton made their way to the edge of the woods. “Wish me luck.”

“Do not wish these sexist lunkheads luck,” Isabela snapped.

“Good luck, warrior,” Taylor said with a smile, ignoring her roommate. “I’ve got a feeling you might need it.”

They lined up at the edge of the woods. Kopano stood between Nicolas and one of Caleb’s duplicates. With all the clones, there were a dozen of them, ready for battle. They were the first team to make a run.

“We head straight for the cabin,” Lofton said. “Take out anything in our way. Nothing to it.”

They all nodded in agreement. Kopano rubbed his hands together and focused. He searched for that feeling of heaviness that Dr. Goode mentioned, the sense of being weighted down. Nothing. He felt tragically normal. But Kopano was sure his Legacy would come when needed; it always did.

Professor Nine blew a whistle and they were off.

Team Lofton ran into the woods. For the first few hundred yards, they saw no sign of soldiers. The trees became clumped closer together and they had to weave through them. Kopano felt a rush flow through him—he was on a mission, charging towards a target! This was the kind of heroic experience he’d envisioned.

Soon, the cabin came into view, only partially visible through a veil of vibrant green foliage. Kopano sensed movement in the windows, but didn’t have a chance to examine that more closely.

“Hostiles!” Caleb shouted, his six clones echoing his words a moment later.

Three soldiers stepped out from behind trees. Kopano’s group skidded to a stop with a good bit of distance still between them and their opponents. Each of the soldiers carried what looked like a traditional shotgun.

“Take them out!” Lofton yelled. The sharpened spines that grew from his skin on command burst through his shirt. He plucked a few of them and flung them at the soldiers.

The soldiers bolted for cover as Lofton’s darts whistled by them, but not before they each fired a round into the air. Kopano extended his hands and threw up a barrier of telekinesis. His nearby classmates all did the same. It’s what they were trained to do. None of them could reliably stop bullets on their own—not quite yet, at least—but together they were strong enough to slow to a crawl any projectiles coming at them.

Kopano’s brow furrowed. He expected buckshot or rubber shrapnel like the kind Professor Nine had used on him that morning, but what hung in the air was much different. Each of the shotguns had discharged a metallic round about the size of a beanbag. They glowed and beeped with increasing frequency.

A countdown.

“Explosives!” Caleb shouted. At that moment, Kopano recalled how his roommate was what the Americans called an “army brat.” He probably had experience with military tactics and exercises like this one.

Perhaps they should have planned better, but Lofton’s bravado had been infectious and now it was too late.

The orbs burst apart with a piercing hiss. Each discharged a thick cloud of orange-tinted gas. Immediately, Kopano’s throat tightened and his eyes burned. The fiery aroma of cayenne filled his lungs.

Lofton gagged. “We need to pull back!”

“No!” Caleb shouted. “We’re committed! Push through! Maiken, use your speed, get a funnel going.”

Caleb’s duplicates didn’t need to breathe. They barreled through the smoke cloud and began to pummel the soldiers. Meanwhile, Maiken, coughing raggedly, began to speed around in a circle, creating enough wind to blow the gas away from them.

That’s when the rest of the soldiers struck from behind. In their haste to reach the cabin, Team Lofton had passed right by this squadron in hiding. They were surrounded.

Kopano heard a metallic twang. He turned just in time to see a soldier holding what looked to be a high-tech crossbow. The weapon fired a metal circlet attached to a length of tensile wire. Eyes burning, Kopano couldn’t get his telekinesis working fast enough. The circlet hit him right in the neck, opened on impact and snapped around his throat like a collar.

A charge went through the collar. An electric shock that drove Kopano to his knees.

With his telekinesis, Kopano tried to rip the electrified weapon away from the soldier. But just then, another Peacekeeper discharged an oddly shaped gun. The weapon looked like an old-fashioned blunderbuss and filled the air with hundreds of tiny projectiles, the harmless chaff spinning and flashing. The effect wreaked havoc on Kopano’s telekinetic control.

A trio of darts—tranquilizers, probably—thudded into Kopano’s chest. His Legacy kicked in, prevented the ammo from piercing his chest. A small victory.

All around him, his teammates were suffering similar attacks. Omar was down already, peppered with darts, and Lofton and Maiken had both fallen victim to collars like Kopano. Meanwhile, Nicolas had been locked into shackles around his wrists and ankles, the bonds magnetized together so that even his enhanced strength couldn’t keep him from folding over. Only Caleb and his clones were left standing, and they were steadily losing ground to the soldiers.

“Oh, this is bad,” Kopano grunted. He wrapped his hands around the wire that bound him to the soldier’s electric crossbow, but the voltage running through his body only increased. It was too much.

As Kopano fell face-first into the dirt, he spotted Professor Nine, Greger and Colonel Archibald at the edge of the fray. Archibald smirked, Greger jotted notes in his tablet and Nine scowled.

Team Lofton never even got close to the cabin.

Show me something, Professor Nine had said.

The only thing Kopano showed the administrators was how gracefully he could be knocked unconscious.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PROFESSOR NINE

THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA

PROFESSOR NINE STOMPED OUT OF THE WOODS, coming back to Colonel Archibald and Greger. Archibald’s smile was infuriating. Greger, busy feeding notes and ratings into his tablet, glanced up.

“Where’d you go, Nine?” he asked.

“To take a leak,” Nine grumbled. He glanced down and zipped up his fly.

“Are we about ready to wrap things up?” Archibald asked.

Nine glared at the military man. The day had not gone well for his students. After the first group of Garde had failed spectacularly to make it to the cabin—many of his most talented fighters among them—four more groups employing conservative tactics were similarly dismantled by Archibald’s team of Peacekeepers and their high-tech weaponry. He’d made his disappointment with the Garde obvious, although his stream of insults had dried up about twenty minutes ago, morphing instead into stewing disappointment.

“I, for one, gathered some interesting insight,” Greger said.

“Don’t think of this as a failure, Nine,” Colonel Archibald said smugly. “Think of it as a learning experience. Now you know how you can better hone your teaching methods.”

Before Nine could respond, Nigel approached the edge

of the woods. Behind him, the dejected student body sat in the grass, many of them nursing minor injuries. The scrawny Brit in his spiked-denim vest and combat boots didn’t cut the most impressive figure, even as he cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck.

“Can I give it a go?” he asked.

Colonel Archibald raised an eyebrow. “Just you alone, son?”

“What can I say?” Nigel replied. “I believe in myself.”

Nine crossed his arms and fixed Nigel with a stern look. “You’re sure you can play by the rules, Nigel?”

“Aw, of course, boss.”

“Nonlethal,” Nine said firmly. “Remember. These soldiers have families. They’re on our side. This is just a game.”

Archibald and Greger both gave Nine a strange look. Nigel raised his hand in a solemn pledge.

“Swear I’ll be gentle.”

“All right,” Nine said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Without any sense of urgency, Nigel strolled into the forest. Like they’d done with all the other attempts on the cabin, Nine and the other observers followed behind at a safe distance. Out of the corner of his eye, Nine watched Greger pulling up the Earth Garde dossier on Nigel. He skimmed the file quickly, lips pursed.

“Pardon me, Professor,” Greger began. “But why did you emphasize nonlethal activity with Mr. Barnaby? I have his powers down as sonic manipulation. I don’t have any notes here about deadly applications.”

Nine bit his lip. “Uh, well, it’s something we just discovered. The kid reached a frequency the other day that caused aneurysms in rats.”

Greger’s mouth opened. “You’re kidding.”

“Nah,” Nine replied. “Some of the research staff reported headaches afterwards, too. One of them had bleeding on the brain. Luckily, we caught it in time. Didn’t Malcolm send out a memo on this?”

“No,” Archibald said sharply. “He did not.”

“Fascinating,” Greger said, already making revisions to the file in his tablet.

“Yeah, well, it’s not something he’s been able to reproduce. Not that it’s something we’ve been trying to reproduce, you know? Probably just a freak thing.”

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