Five's Legacy (7 page)

But I know that’s something I can’t escape. Not entirely. Either I’ll fight alongside the Garde—seven super-powered soldiers who’ve never met one another, trying to take down an entire army—or the Mogs will kill all of us and take Earth as well.

I wish there was another way: a third option I’m not thinking of. But for the life of me I can’t think of one.

I might as well enjoy my time on this planet while I can.

One night, I spot the perfect target.

Emma and I are hanging out behind one of the fancy hotels that back up to the beach, divvying up what we’ve taken throughout the day. It’s nighttime, and the only people to bother us are a few late-night joggers who just nod to us as they pass us by.

The mark is in his midthirties or so and well dressed in a crisp black button-down shirt, gray pants and shiny black shoes that are impractical for a walk on the beach—even if he is keeping to the sidewalk. His dark hair is swept back and accentuates his pale skin, meaning he’s almost certainly not from Miami. And, most importantly, he’s alone.

Perfect
. He’s practically begging us to lift his wallet.

I glance at Emma, who gives me a mischivious grin, one I recognize easily by now.

“What’s the story?” she asks.

“We lost our cat,” I say. “It’s black as night and we’ve been looking for hours.”

She smiles and nods, backing away from me. This is what we do. I provide the story and she does the “heavy lifting.”

As the man approaches, his eyes drift between the two of us but he doesn’t pay much attention. When he’s passed Emma, I step into his path. Emma positions herself behind him.

“Hey, mister. Have you seen a black cat running around here? We’ve been trying to—”

The man moves fast—faster than I would have thought—and in the blink of an eye he’s got Emma out beside him, her arm twisted in his grip. A red leather wallet falls from her fingers and bounces on the sidewalk. The man tightens his fingers around her, and Emma falls to the sand with a small cry. She lets out a string of curses in Spanish.

Shit
.

I move forward, but he raises a hand to me, and there’s a command about his presence that causes me to stop. I don’t know what to do. He speaks to Emma in Spanish, saying something that makes her eyes go wide. She mutters back to him, and he responds. His voice is low and smooth. There’s some kind of dawning recognition that sweeps over Emma’s face. Clearly she’s puting things together that I don’t understand, and I start to feel like I’m completely in the dark about what’s actually happening in front of me.

All I know is that I have one friend in the world right now, and she’s on the ground in front of a man who she’s obviously afraid of. So when he reaches for her, I can’t help but react.

I send him stumbling backwards with a telekinetic blast.

The attack isn’t much—more of a flinch of my Legacy than anything—but it serves to put some distance between all of us. The man looks surprised for a moment, and then narrows his eyes at me. I puff out my chest and clench my fists.

“Cody, what are you . . .” Emma looks confused. “Listen, I know who this guy is. Sort of.”

The man bends down slowly, hands out in front of him, and picks his wallet up off the ground. He flicks two cards out from it. They land on the sidewalk.

“If you’re ever looking for work, call this number,” he says. Then, as if it’s an afterthought, he tosses a fifty-dollar bill onto the ground as well.

Then he walks right past us. Away. Like he doesn’t have a care in the world. There’s something about him that permeates the air and makes him seem untouchable.

When he’s out of earshot, I turn to Emma.

“Are you okay?” I ask, concerned.

“You have no idea who that is, do you?” Emma asks, her eyes never leaving the man’s back.

“No. Who?”

Emma picks up the two cards and holds one out to me. It’s white, with nothing but a black phone number printed in the center of it.

“His name is Ethan,” she says. “I’ve heard my brother talking about him lately. He’s some big important guy who is shaking things up around the city now. Do you know what this means?” She stares at me, but I just shake my head. She grins. “He’s our ticket to the next level.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

E
MMA CALLS
.

She doesn’t talk to Ethan, but the person on the line seems to know who both she and I are. It makes me nervous, but it’s only a fake name that they know.

Ethan is apparently in dire need of couriers—people to run packages and documents across the city for him. It’s not exactly what Emma had in mind when she called, but she agrees on behalf of both of us.

“I thought you didn’t want someone telling you what to do,” I say when she’s off the phone.

“I
don’t
.” She frowns a little bit. “But I’m getting bored lifting off of randos every day. Aren’t you?”

Not really,
I think, but I just shrug.

“So, what, you’re going to work your way up to master cat burglar or something?” I ask with a smirk.

She punches me in the arm and laughs.

We call in for our assignments. Usually they include picking up envelopes at specific stores or locations and delivering them to stores on the other side of town. Emma hates it, but I don’t mind. I get to see parts of the city I never knew existed. Voodoo shops in Little Haiti and chandeliers hanging in store windows in the Design District. Sometimes we have to split up to get the work done. Mostly we’re running around the city together.

One day on a solo assignment, I meet Ethan again.

He sits in a big corner booth at the back of a restaurant. I have a package for him. The place is fancy, or at least fancier than the fast food and street vendor food that I usually eat. He grins widely when he sees me, flashing perfect white teeth.

“There’s my best worker,” he says, motioning to the other side of the booth. “Please, have a seat.”

“Thanks, uh . . .” I realize I don’t know what to call him.

“Please, call me Ethan.”

“Ethan.” I nod.

I plop down in the booth, setting my duffel down at my feet. Before I can say anything else, food starts arriving: plates upon plates of seviche and roasted chicken and pasta swimming in sauce. Ethan encourages me to eat as much as I want, and I practically shovel food into my mouth.

Ethan talks while we eat. “I don’t normally get my hands dirty with small-time crooks or gangs in this city,” he says, cutting into a shrimp on his plate. “But reports get back to me. From people on the streets. From cops. When someone of interest pops up, I know about it. And you and your friend are definitely people of interest. You had a solid partnership before you came across me. Tell me, what brought you to pickpocketing? Why do you do it?”

“To survive.”

Ethan smiles. He gestures to me with his fork.

“You’re young. About fourteen I’d say, right?”

I nod. He continues.

“I lived on the streets when I was your age. It made me a damned good thief and forced me to grow up fast. But it’s not an easy life. And it’s dangerous. My brother didn’t make it.” His voice goes quieter. I freeze. It feels inappropriate to keep eating while he’s telling me about his dead brother, so I sit there with a huge chunk of cheese squirreled away in one of my cheeks as he keeps talking. “I had to look for him for days before I finally found him. Another gang had . . . Well, it’s not important. I don’t want to scare you. More importantly, I see a lot of him in you. It’s uncanny, really. I think he would have survived if he had your talents.”

I tense up. As far as Ethan knows, my talents include delivering mail and taking wallets. I think back to when we met on the beach and I stupidly pushed him with my telekinesis. Has he figured out what that was?

No,
I tell myself.
He probably thinks it was the wind. How could he know?

“Uh, yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother.”

“It’s all in the past,” Ethan says. “But you—you’re the future.”

Ethan’s lips curl up in a smile.

“Tell me more about yourself,” he says.

And so I start talking. Nothing about Lorien or the island, but about the things I like. Arepas, movies, books, arcades. And Ethan looks fascinated. It turns out he’s a movie buff. He’s waxing on about a long list of films I should have seen when I suddenly start to wonder how I managed to end up in a fancy Miami restaurant talking movies with some high-ranking criminal mastermind.

What would Rey say? I wish he were here. I wish he could see how well I was doing on my own. How important I’m becoming.

Emma is always hungry for more, wanting bigger and better assignments.

Eventually, we get one.

Ethan wants a series of warehouses bugged to keep tabs on competitors or something like that. As usual, we don’t ask questions. Emma and I are supposed to sneak in at night when the buildings are empty and plant a few tiny devices Ethan has supplied us with. It’s an extremely simple task.

So of course everything goes wrong.

Emma and I split up to get the work done, and I’m halfway through planting the bugs in a small warehouse filled with row upon row of boxes and shelves when a dozen guys show up. If I lived in a superhero movie, they’d be stereotypical henchmen.

“Uh,” I say as they form a half circle around me. “Hi. I was just looking for a place to sleep tonight. I’ll move along and—”

“Ethan sent you, didn’t he?” one of the men asks.

“Ethan?” I ask. “Who’s that?”

The man answers by throwing a punch at me.

At first the rudimentary training Rey had given me during hand-to-hand fighting comes in handy, but I’m rusty and was never really that good at it to begin with. And there are just so many of them. I dodge a few punches and then a fist lands in my gut and I crumple. Then I’m on the ground, kicks coming from every direction, my vision sparking as someone’s heel meets the back of my head.

They can’t kill me—there are still two Garde standing between me and death—but they can break me. Incapacitate me. Send me to the emergency room or abduct me.

I only have one chance of getting out of this.

Telekinetic energy erupts from my body, sending all the attackers sprawling backwards. I don’t give anyone a chance to recover. I use my Legacy to send them flying into walls and one another, lifting them into the air and then slamming them down onto the concrete. I lash out and use my powers in ways I never imagined. It’s strange how naturally it comes to me, this destruction. It feels so good—like I’m stretching a muscle I haven’t used in a while. I realize that I miss using my telekinesis so often, like I had on my little island or when I was first picking pockets. Bodies fly all around the room, crashing into shelves and lights, until someone calls my name and I freeze.

Emma.

I turn to see her standing in one of the open loading bay doors, half silhouetted by the moonlight. She makes no move to come forward. There’s a look on Emma’s face I’ve never seen before. Her eyes are wide, the whites standing out in the near darkness. Her hands are shaking.

She’s terrified.

Around me, all the attackers fall from the air, hitting the ground with thuds.

“Emma,” I say, stepping towards her.

She takes a step back.

“What are you? How did you—” she says.

Her eyes fall on someone lying a few yards away from me.

“Marcus?” she asks. And then she’s running towards him. He doesn’t respond when she shakes him, and tears start to fill her eyes.

It takes a moment for me to figure out why I know the name Marcus, and then it clicks. I hadn’t immediately recognized the name because she usually just calls him her brother.

Marcus appears to be alive but his leg is twisted in a way that I know means it’s broken. He’s probably cracked a few ribs from the drop in the air too.

What have I done?

“I’m sorry, I—” I start, but I’m cut off by Emma’s glare, one of pure hatred.

“You monster,” she says. “You fucking freak. Are you possessed? How did you do this?”

I take a step forward but she’s on her feet, a pipe from one of the shelves I knocked down in her hands.

“Emma . . .”

“Don’t you take another step closer.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s me. Cody.”

She shakes her head. Or maybe it’s just trembling—it’s hard to say. At her feet, her brother gurgles something unintelligible.

I take another step forward.

“Let me help you—”

And then she swings. The pipe connects with the side of my head and everything goes black.

When I wake up I’m in a car. A really
nice
car, all gray leather and touch screens. A man in a suit drives. I sit in the back passenger seat. Ethan sits beside me.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” he says.

My head pounds. I raise my fingers to find a throbbing knot on the side of my skull.

“Emma . . .” I murmur.

“It was quite the swing. You’ve probably got a concussion. I can have one of my doctors look at you if you feel dizzy or off.”

“Where is she?”

“She stayed behind. Apparently one of the men was her brother. She called for help. I came in as soon as I heard there was trouble and took you. Didn’t want you getting hurt more or arrested or anything like that.”

I nod my head a little, but that just makes it hurt more. The pain makes it difficult to piece together everything that’s just happened. A hundred different places on my body hurt. My white T-shirt is stained with drops of blood. My Loric Chest . . . there’s a thump in my heart when I think of it. I look around the car. My dirty duffel bag sits at my feet on the floorboard. I reach for it, frantically ripping back the cover. The Chest is still there. I exhale.

Ethan continues. “So, you have a few tricks up your sleeve you hadn’t bothered to tell me about. No wonder the two of you were so good at the jobs I gave you.”

“She didn’t know,” I say.

I regret the words immediately. They’re an accidental admission of truth—that I do have powers. That I’m different.