The Fallen Legacies

CHAPTER 21

I am a model young Mogadorian.

I am dedicated to my studies. My understanding of Ra’s Great Book is lauded by my instructors, my dedication to Mogadorian progress unquestioned. I finish top of my class in Advanced Tactical Planning, my final essay on how a Mogadorian guerrilla force could overwhelm a well-defended human city with a minimum of Mogadorian casualties trumpeted as something my father might have written in his younger days.

“Your son makes me certain that our military will continue to flourish well into the next generation,” I overhear one of my instructors tell the General. My father replies with only a grim nod. We have not spoken since London. It has been two years.

I keep my other tactical plans to myself. Secreted away in my room, I scribble out a plan for how a human army with proper strategic intelligence could repel a Mogadorian force. When I’m satisfied with the plan, I burn the pages in the bathroom sink and rinse away the ash.

Hand-to-hand combat is still not my strong suit. Ivan always chooses me as his partner for drills. Afterward, I’m always bruised and sore, and Ivan has barely broken a sweat. He is bigger and stronger than any of the other students, and when we spar I see an emptiness in his eyes. It’s the same dark look he gave me when standing over Number Two’s body in London. It’s like he thinks we’re still in competition for the General’s favor, even though I’ve long dropped out of that race. He’s won, but he’s too dense to realize it, still viewing me as a rival. When we train with blades, he “accidentally” cuts my arm, the wound requiring three sutures.

“I’ll toughen you up yet, Adamus,” he sneers, standing over me, blood squeezing through my fingers as I hold my arm. “Make your father proud.”

“Thank you, Brother,” I reply.

What little free time I have, I spend in the capital. I don’t bring Ivan along on these trips anymore, and I no longer waste time human-watching at the National Mall. I find a quiet bookstore where I entertain myself for hours reading what titles I can remember from Two’s favorite books lists. I begin with George Orwell.

“Why did I have to get stuck in the brain of the universe’s most boring Mogadorian?” complains One during a weekend trip to the bookstore. She visits me often, sometimes more than once a day. In a way, she’s sort of my only friend. She teases me, but I know she doesn’t mind these quiet periods of reading something other than the Great Book. During my Mogadorian classes, I can feel her mind growing restless inside me. Sometimes she manifests, commenting on how heinously pale my instructors are, or when I’m sparring with Ivan, how the discovery of deodorant would be a great step in Mogadorian progress. I’ve learned not to acknowledge her in public, to limit our conversations to the night, when everyone else is asleep.

It’s then that we plan. I lie in bed, thinking. One paces around the room, anxious and bored.

“We should escape tomorrow,” she says. “We could tell the president that there are a bunch of gross aliens planning war right in his backyard.”

“Not yet,” I reply, shaking my head. “We’ll know when the time is right.”

“What if the time is never right?”

I’ve spent two years like that, acting the part, waiting for an opportunity to make a difference. Even with their vast resources, my people are slow in finding the other Garde. There are successful operations from other cells: a mission in upstate New York yields a captive Garde. More often there are missions that never get off the ground because the target disappears, or the scout team does. I’m not sure how long the Garde can keep this up. I hope they manage to get organized soon, but I worry that One is right, that I’m biding my time for an opportunity that will never come.

And then, finally, word comes to us about Africa.