United as One (Lorien Legacies #7)(99)

Across the bottom of the poster, the slogan reads: EARTH GARDE PEACEKEEPERS—YOU ARE THE BRAVE NEW WORLD.

Still invisible, I walk through the halls of the Academy. It doesn’t take long until I hear the sounds of training. I head in that direction, knowing that’s where he’ll be.

In an outsize gymnasium, a handful of kids practice their telekinesis with each other. Pairs of them toss footballs back and forth without using their hands, and, every time a whistle blows, they add another ball to the mix. When a group lets one of their balls drop, they heave a collective groan and start running laps.

Nine observes all this from a catwalk high above. He’s dressed like a football coach—sweatpants and hoodie. One of his sleeves is pinned up on account of his missing arm. His dark hair is tied back in a ponytail. I thought maybe the government would make him cut it, but no such luck.

“Professor Nine, how long do we have to keep doing this?” one of the kids complains, and I have to stifle my laughter.

“Until I get tired of watching you screw up, McCarthy,” Nine barks back.

I float up to the catwalk and land gently next to Nine. He senses the movement and turns his head just as I become visible.

“Look at this sellout, working for the gov— Oof!”

Nine nearly clotheslines me off the catwalk with his one-armed hug. When he’s done squeezing the life out of me, he holds me out at arm’s length, studying me like I was just secretly studying him.

“Johnny Hero, holy shit.” Nine shakes his head. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

Detecting a lack of movement from the kids below, Nine looks down. His group of orphaned Garde have all stopped practicing to stare up at us. To stare at me in particular.

“What the hell?” he shouts. “Back to work, you maggots!”

Reluctantly, the kids do as they’re told. I can’t help but grin at Nine’s control over them. He turns back to me and pinches my cheek, where I realize I’ve got a patchy beard growing. It’s probably been a few months since I shaved.

“This peach fuzz supposed to make you incognito?” Nine asks. “It ain’t working.”

“Professor Nine, huh?” I respond, smirking.

“That’s right,” he says, puffing out his chest.

“You never even finished high school, man.”

“It’s an honorary title,” he replies with a devilish smile. “Look at you, all reclusive mountain man and shit. Where you been? You know, it wasn’t cool you skipping out on us after my crippled ass spent a week nursing you back to health.”

I snort at that. “You weren’t nursing me. You were laid up in the next bed.”

“Yeah, providing important emotional support.”

I know Nine’s joking, but there’s a bit of truth to what he says. After West Virginia, as soon as I was feeling well enough, I did bail on the others. I rub the back of my neck. “I feel bad about that. I needed to get my head right after . . .”

“Ah, shut up about it,” Nine says, patting me on the shoulder. “You’re back now.” He nods his head at the kids below, many of whom are still furtively glancing at us, screwing up their telekinetic tosses, and thus running a lot of laps. “You want to say a few words to the next generation? They’d eat that shit up. These are my favorites. The messed-up ones. They remind me of us.”

I take a step back from the catwalk’s railing and shake my head. “I’m not ready for anything like that,” I tell him. From behind my back, I pull out the small box I’ve been carrying with me since the Himalayas. “I actually came here to give you something. Lexa, too, if she’s around. . . .”

Nine raises an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, let’s go say hi. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

Nine dismisses his class and leads me to an office on the building’s third floor. It looks out over the sprawling campus, or it will once the windows are put in—right now, there are a bunch of blue tarps covering the opens spaces in the wall. Lexa sits behind a desk, staring at a multiscreen computer rig. Like Nine, she’s dressed casually and seems at ease here. Her smile is wide when she recognizes me, and she immediately leaves her screens behind to give me a hug.

“So, are you a professor too?” I ask her.

Lexa scoffs. “No, Nine outpaced me there. I’m back to my favorite role: benevolent hacker.” She waves me around the desk for a look. “Check it out.”

At a glance, it’s hard to take in all the information that flows across Lexa’s screens. There are world maps with little blue dots, multiple search-bots trawling the internet, dark net forums and boxes of encrypted data speeding through processes I don’t understand.

“So, what am I looking at?”

“I’m keeping tabs on the Garde,” she explains. “Scrubbing their information if it gets made public. Keeping their families confidential. Even once they’re under the protection of the Academy, you can’t be too careful. Not to mention, some governments still aren’t super-enthusiastic about this whole initiative.”

“Is this necessary?”

“Better safe than sorry,” she responds. “Lawson and the other Earth Garde people have been good to us, but . . .”

“But then there’s shit like this that makes you wonder,” Nine interjects, handing me a piece of official-looking government stationery. I give it a quick read.