Projected on the wall behind my father is the image of a red-haired man in his early forties. The picture is grainy; it looks as if it was culled from surveillance footage.
“This man,” my father intones, midbriefing, “calls himself Conrad Hoyle. We believe, based on several tips from sources as well as extensive surveillance, that he is a member of the Loric insurgency. A Cêpan.”
My father clicks a button on the remote in his meaty hand. Conrad Hoyle’s face is replaced by an image of a burned-down cottage in some rural area.
“One of our scout teams had an altercation with Hoyle at this location in the Scottish Highlands. We sustained heavy losses. Hoyle was able to escape.”
Another image appears. Conrad Hoyle, seated on a train, his face intent on a laptop screen. Whoever took this picture clearly did so with a camera-phone hidden a few rows ahead of Hoyle.
“A secondary scout team was able to pick up Hoyle’s trail and has been following him ever since. We believe he and his charge, a priority Garde target we know to be roughly thirteen years old and female, have split up. It stands to reason that Hoyle and his Garde have a safe house where they plan to reunite.”
A city appears behind my father, and I recognize it from my studies of Earth’s prime urban targets.
London.
“Conrad Hoyle is headed to London,” continues the General. “There, we believe he will reunite with his Garde and attempt to disappear.”
My gaze drifts over the warriors in the room. All of them are paying strict attention to my father, yet something is off.
“We will follow Hoyle to London and wait for him to lead us to the girl. And we will terminate or apprehend them both. Preferably terminate.”
As the General makes this pronouncement, I notice her. She’s sitting in the front row. Her blond hair stands out in this gathering of burly, dark-haired Mogadorians, but no one else notices her.
No one else can even see her.
Slowly, One turns around in her seat. She looks right at me.
“You have to stop them,” says One.
CHAPTER 14
The briefing room has emptied out except for the General and Ivan. I’m seated at one of the desks previously occupied by a Mogadorian warrior. My head is swimming, just like it was when I first woke up.
My father looms over me, studying me. He sets a glass of water down on the desk and I drink greedily.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You fainted,” snickers Ivan.
My father spins on Ivan. “Boy,” he snarls. “Leave us.”
As Ivan sulks from the room, I think back to the briefing, to One appearing. Was I hallucinating? It felt so real, just like all those times when we spoke inside her memories. But all that was like a dream, a construction of my mind. She shouldn’t be able to appear to me now. It doesn’t make sense.
Yet somehow I know it wasn’t a hallucination. Somehow One is still inside my mind.
I realize that I’m shaking. I put my head in my hands, try to focus, to steady myself. The General won’t tolerate this kind of weakness.
My father’s large hand comes to rest on my shoulder. I look up, surprised to find him staring at me with something approaching concern.
“Are you well?” he asks.
I nod and try to steel myself for the lies that come next.
“I haven’t eaten,” I say.
My father shakes his head. “Ivanick,” he growls. “He was supposed to make sure you were ready before bringing you to me.”
The General lifts his hand from my shoulder, the brief moment of affection forgotten. I can tell by the return of rigidity to his spine that, just like that, he’s back to business. Mogadorian progress. First and foremost. No matter the cost.
“What did you learn from One’s memories?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I reply, meeting his hard eyes. “It didn’t work. I remember being strapped down, then darkness, and now this. Sir,” I quickly add.
My father mulls this over, appraising me. Then he nods.
“As I feared,” he says.
I realize that he never thought Dr. Anu’s machine would work. My father will believe my lie because he expected failure. Clearly he didn’t care what happened to me in the process.
I remember Dr. Anu’s gamble with my father, wagering his life that his untested technology would succeed. It did work, and Anu was still killed.
The Mogadorian way.
“Three years wasted,” broods my father. “Three years of you getting weaker, falling behind your peers. For what?”
My cheeks burn with humiliation. With frustration. With anger. But what would my father do if I told him Anu’s machine worked, that it gave me One’s memories and, with them, doubts.
Obviously, I hold my tongue.
“This folly reflects poorly on our bloodline. On me,” continues my father. “But it is not too late to remedy that.”
“How, sir?” I ask, knowing he expects me to respond eagerly to any opportunity to increase my honor.
“You will come with us to London,” he says. “And hunt this Garde.”
CHAPTER 15
The next twelve hours are a blur. My father has me fitted for a new uniform; my mother feeds me mammoth meals, like the kind athletes eat before big games—if those athletes had the appetite of full-grown piken. I am allowed a few hours sleep in my own bed, and later on the flight across the Atlantic. I’m almost thankful for this blur of activity; it leaves me no time to think of the Loric stowaway in my brain, or about what my father expects me to do.
We arrive in London the next morning. The General has brought Ivan along, as well as two dozen handpicked warriors, most of them trueborn.
As a Prime Urban Target, London is already home to a Mogadorian presence. The London-based Mogadorians have commandeered five floors in a downtown skyscraper to serve as their base of operations. They run a tight ship, but they’ve never been visited by a trueborn as high ranking as my father. They snap to attention when the General passes through the halls, even eyeing Ivan and me respectfully as we follow on his heels.
None of these loyal warriors detects the uncertainty I’m feeling inside. To them, I appear as one of their own.
My father assumes command of the London nerve center. A wall of monitors manned by a pair of scouts provides a constant real-time feed of London’s camera network. Another set of terminals crawls the internet in search of suspicious activity and certain Loric-related keywords. Before heading out to track Conrad Hoyle, my father wants to get the lay of the land. He orders the scouts to flip through various video feeds, the General quietly appraising several locations around the city for strategic advantages.
“Our unit trailing Hoyle reports he’s on a bus nearing the city center, sir,” declares one of the scouts, relaying this information from his earpiece.
“Good,” intones my father. “Then it’s time for us to go.”
While my father was studying video and plotting bloodshed, I was collapsing into a nearby chair, still feeling light-headed. Ivan stands next to me, his arms folded sternly across his chest, looking more like a young version of the General than ever. When my father turns to face us, Ivan shoots me a sidelong glance.
“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, sir,” begins Ivan, “but I’m not sure your son is up to this.”
My father’s fist coils into a ball. His first instinct is to strike Ivan for his impudence. But then he looks at me, one eyebrow arched.
“Is that true?” he asks.
I know what Ivan’s doing. He’s spent the last three years worming his way into the General’s good graces, calling him “Father,” assuming my rightful place as his son. Figuring I was gone, Ivan’s only concern has been his own advancement. Before, I never would have given him an opportunity to make me look bad. Before, I’m not sure he would have tried. The thing is, I don’t know how much I care about fighting back. During all that time spent in One’s memories, and even now that I’ve woken up, I haven’t once fantasized about my promised inheritance of Washington DC. How could I, now that I know the price that would be paid?
Ivan can have it.
“Perhaps he’s right,” I say, meeting my father’s steely glare. “In my weakened state, I could be a liability to Mogadorian victory.”
Liability. Mogadorian victory. I know all the buzzwords to use on my father. Those haven’t changed. He takes one last look at me, a hint of disgust in his face, before turning to Ivan.
“Come, Ivanick,” he says, sweeping from the room.
I’m left alone with the two techs. They ignore me, glued to their bank of monitors, watching as the bus containing Conrad Hoyle trundles through the city. I realize this is the first moment of peace I’ve had since waking up from my coma. I close my eyes and lower my head into my hands, trying to keep my mind blank, pushing away the conflicting feelings I’ve been having about my people. I’m relieved that I don’t have to go on this operation. I don’t know what I’d do if faced with the task of actually killing a Garde. But then, who am I? I was raised as a ruthless hunter.
“So that’s your plan?” asks a familiar voice. “To just sit here and do nothing?”
I look up to find One sitting next to me. I jerk back in my chair, nearly toppling over, eyes wide.
“Booga booga,” she says, wiggling her fingers at me. “Seriously, dude. Get off your ass and do something.”
“Do what?” I snap. “You think they’d hesitate to kill me too?”
One of the techs glances over his shoulder, frowning at me.
“Did you say something?” he asks.
I give him a blank look, then slowly shake my head. He turns back to his monitors. When I look over to where One was sitting, the chair is empty.
Great. Now I’m crazy.
“Look,” says one of the techs, “something is happening.”
I turn my attention to the screen, where Hoyle’s bus has jerked to a sudden stop. The doors fly open, and panicked passengers begin streaming off.
One of the rear windows explodes outward, a man flying through it. Before he can hit the ground, his body disintegrates into ash.
“He’s onto us,” observes the other tech, both of them leaning forward to watch the action.
Bright flashes of gunfire pop across the screen, and then the back of the bus goes up in flames. As it does, I watch Conrad Hoyle emerge from the front doors. He’s much larger than his picture indicated.
Hoyle holds a submachine gun in each hand.
“By Ra,” says the tech, sounding almost giddy, “he’s going to be a tough one.”
“We should be out there!” grumbles the other.
Most of the pedestrians are fleeing the scene of the flaming bus, like any sane person would. Except there are others that move towards the wreck: men in dark trench coats, shoving their way through the frightened crowd. The Mogadorian strike team has arrived. They’re greeted by a hail of gunfire from Hoyle, and they quickly take cover before shooting back.
If my father and Ivan aren’t out there yet, enduring Hoyle’s fire, they will be soon. I should take pleasure in this noble combat, like the techs are, but I don’t. I don’t want to see Hoyle, a Loric enemy whom I’ve never even met, be murdered. Yet despite my conflicted feelings about the mission, I also don’t want to see my father turned into a pile of ash.