PROLOGUE
06.01.10.
The ground shakes—from the beast, from the Legacy, from its anticipation of ash and blood not yet spilt—beneath her feet. Tremors ripple up the trunk from the tree's roots, the vibrations dispersing out into the branches until they reach her tightly wound arms and legs, penetrate through her skin and finally her bones and spine. The whole exchange takes about half a second, and within that minutiae the tree tells her everything she needs to know.
About half a kilometer away, the shack stands empty.
So, they made it out. That was easier than she made it seem.
Closer to the tree but a safe distance from the hut—if you could call anything safe in its presence—looms the hulking form of the war beast. It paces about the perimeter, sniffing and exploring with careful, devastating strides. She can't see it, but her Legacy tells her it's close. Even now, thirty feet in the air, her skin sizzles with static the way it did three years ago, when she first came face to face with a Mogadorian behemoth.
Not that he'll be here to save you this time, she thinks. Speaking of—
He's killed her again.
She felt the death itching inside her skull, when he'd gouged out her eyes and smashed her head into the tree, but she was so preoccupied with tapping the earth she'd nearly missed it. The hunter checks her other pairs of eyes, but they all come up dark behind her own eyelids. Darkness, silence, save for the heaving, raspy breath of her murderer.
"No more tricks, Garde bitch!" the soldier roars into the canopy, like he knows she's there. "Come on out and fight me yourself."
Did he kill her whole troop?
He's no better for it. Even from a distance, she can tell he's exhausted, probably injured, but still….
She sends out one more clone. It's all she can manage after the small army she conjured half an hour ago, but her focus isn't spread thin. Instead, the Garde can pour her mind into this one duplicate. Shit, the copy might even have telekinesis if she concentrates hard enough. She leaps it out from the trees and behind the Mog, about ten paces away. He turns slowly, a large soldier in a tattered cloak, no doubt torn by her own nails. The soldier pulls a gun while she says, "I'm right here, you ugly fuck," but it's not him who splits her skull before she can speak the last word.
Dead again, this time so sudden that it knocks the wind out of her. It was getting irritating before, but now this is getting out of hand. The only way she'll make it out of here is on foot, in her own skin, with the powers at her disposal. So, the hunter creeps through the canopy, quiet as a cat and just as balanced, before she's able to swing out into plain view, with her camouflage dropped and the shack at her back.
The Garde whistles, getting the big soldier's attention. He was waving at somebody out of sight—the sniper, probably. That's good; she's out of range now, like she suspected. But the Mogadorians will be repositioning soon. She needs to make this quick, needs to kill them before they can send reinforcements.
"You real?" demands the Mogadorian.
"Are you?" she retorts.
"Real as they come, obviously," he chuckles, but she doesn't know what he means. She doesn't care. "Your little boyfriend in there?"
She shrugs. "I guess you'll have to come and see."
"He still needs his shot." The Mogadorian's gun begins to change, the weapon extending to fit around his forearm. Overhead, she can hear the branches creaking as the gun prepares to absorb the life from the trees, rendering it unstoppable. "You might need one too, right there between your—"
The Garde reaches out with her mind and tugs down as hard as she can on the barrel of the gun until she hears the one-two snappp of the bones in the Mogadorian's forearm. As he winces, shocked, and cries out in pain, the cannon slips from his wrist and falls to the grass, dormant. But she doesn't let it touch the forest floor. Instead, she uses telekinesis to kick it back up into the air. The now cylindrical weapon clanks into the Mogadorian's nose and continues its trajectory into the canopy, though a little more force would have sent it rocketing through his skull. She covers the space between them in an instant and is practically on top of him before he hits the ground. The Garde wrestles his good arm from his oozing face and tries to gouge out his eyes, but the Mog is quick to grab hold of her curly blond mane and squeezes until her scalp is taut.
She yelps, the pain sending her hands to her head in a frantic attempt to free herself. The Mogadorian fumbles for a knife with his ruined right arm but can't get a grip on the handle, so instead he lets her go and wraps his arms around her in a tight bearhug. She manages to punch him in the jaw hard enough to dislodge teeth before she is fully ensnared, but it doesn't seem to faze him. His bulk is beginning to cut off circulation, starting to compress organs and crack bones. Bursts of light start to fill her blurring eyes.
A static charge shoots through her body, pouring out of her and into the Mogadorian. He spasms the second it reaches his system, probably because the electrical conductivity of Mogadorian body fluid is as good as any other living thing. The Garde feels this Legacy still sending pinpricks to her own body as she rolls off and away from her attacker, stands shuddering and scarlet-sighted. Literally, strands of her hair fall in front of her face and appear red.
Pavis.
Of course, one of those Legacies that only works when she really needs it.
The Legacy dances across her skin and nervous system, patching up fractures and repairing damaged tissue. A healing factor wouldn't be too much to ask for, but if she had to pick between one or the other, the ability to immobilize an enemy at will and save her life in combat beats regeneration every time.
But each Legacy has its side effects, as she knows. It just so happens that the Pavis running through her system corresponds so well with something else, something more feral and erratic, something she had to fight and fool and fuck into submission when it first became manifest.
In LA.
In London.
Mogadishu.
So many dead.
The ground shakes again as rage builds inside her against her will. She approaches the crippled, seizing Mogadorian, fists clenched and eyes irate.
"That's it?" she roars. "Come on, what was it you said earlier?"
She sends a kick into his sternum, and the Mog tightens himself into a convulsing ball, his shakes matching the vibrations in the ground. Pathetic.
"What happened to that 'American pride?'" The Garde kicks him in the stomach, then the face, then the groin. "You go down that easy?"
He's choking on his own pain, now. Pupil-less eyes bulge from his skull, but there is nothing he can do. The Mogadorian is at the mercy of the Garde, and she has none left to spare. They're facing the shack now, and she's grateful that it's empty. Last thing she wants right now is a lecture from Hilde.
"How about I show you," the girl picks him up by the neck and applies pressure, ignoring the weak elbows he delivers to her left flank, "the value of your kind's pride?"
Another burst of static courses through her body just before she's about to snap his neck.
But this one doesn't come from her Legacy.
It hits her in the back—hard—and knocks the air from her lungs. Her chokehold disintegrates as her nerves give out, and she collapses beside the Mogadorian.
An instant later, the ground falls still. The forest is quiet; all she hears is the comatose Mogadorian nearby, the distant roar of a beast, and the steady rhythm of footsteps approaching her from behind, accompanied by the electrical hum of a cannon.
She tries to drag herself back toward the shack, but her limbs won't move. Reaching out with her mind, the Garde can just barely inch herself over the red clay. She doesn't make it far before a boot slams into her side.
"I can't believe it's you," a voice says, almost wistful. "You have no idea…."
The Mogadorian rolls her onto her back so he can observe her face. Her Garde dermis has reverted to her family's colors—silver and blue—so she's certain her camouflage Legacy has gone dormant like the others. Suddenly the horror creeps in where free will has abandoned her. She is alone. Paralyzed, with no means of defense or escape, and pinned under the boot of a Mogadorian with a gun to her head.
A Mogadorian who knows that she can actually be killed.
Past the green, glowing barrel of the Mogadorian cannon, she sees him, tall and lean and smiling down at her with triumph in his dark eyes. He says, "…how longed I prayed for this, Number One."
