Fugitive Six

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books by Pittacus Lore

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  IN A DISTANT GALAXY, THE PEACEFUL PLANET LORIEN WAS DECIMATED BY THE BRUTAL MOGADORIANS.

  The last survivors of Lorien—the Garde—were sent to Earth as children. Scattered across the continents, they developed their Legacies and readied themselves to defend their adopted home world.

  The Garde thwarted the Mogadorian invasion of Earth.

  In the process, the Garde changed the very nature of Earth. Legacies, the extraordinary powers from the planet Lorien, began to manifest in human beings.

  These new Legacies frighten some humans, while others look for ways to manipulate the new Garde to their benefit.

  And while the Legacies are meant to protect Earth, not every Garde will use their powers for good.

  I AM PITTACUS LORE.

  RECORDER OF THE FATES, CHRONICLER OF THE LEGACIES.

  I TELL THE TALES OF THOSE WHO WOULD SHAPE WORLDS.

  Chapter One

  DUANPHEN

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  DUANPHEN WATCHED THE BEGGAR AS HE SCURRIED through traffic with his bucket and rag. The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, small, with a mop of greasy black hair. He picked his cars smartly—shiny ones with tinted windows and drunk passengers. He splashed dirty water on windshields and stretched across hoods to ineffectively clean up, mostly smearing around more grime. Drivers rolled down their windows to curse at him but usually relented, shoved a note into his hand to make him go away, and turned on their wipers.

  It was after midnight and Royal City Avenue still pulsed with life. Motorcycles weaved through the traffic. Drunk clubbers stumbled into the street. Neon lights flashed in unison with their bars’ competing bass lines.

  Duanphen rubbed the handcuff around her wrist, which attached her to the executive’s briefcase. The metal irritated her. Just like this place.

  Three months since she was last here. She hadn’t missed it.

  The beggar spotted Duanphen and her limo. Well, not her limo, precisely—it belonged to the executive; she was only watching over it. The black stretch was double-parked obnoxiously in front of a club where go-go dancers gyrated in the windows. The executive had been so excited when he saw the place that he was practically drooling; they just had to pull over. The rest of the executive’s security had gone in with him, but not Duanphen. She was too young.

  “Sweet ride,” the beggar said in Thai as he stopped in front of her. He held out his rag threateningly. “Dirty, though. For a few bucks I’ll wash it for you.”

  Duanphen regarded him coldly. “Go away.”

  The kid stared up at her, as if trying to decide if he should press his luck. At seventeen, Duanphen wasn’t that much older than him, although her steely gaze made her seem it. She stood a shade over six feet tall, her long-limbed body like a switchblade. She kept her hair buzzed and wore no makeup except for some extra-dark eyeliner. Her petite nose was a crooked zigzag; it looked like it’d been erased and redrawn.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You’re a hooker,” he said with a laugh. “No! That’s not right. Where have I seen you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Duanphen said. “Get lost.”

  The beggar hopped in the air as the realization hit him. “You’re a fighter!” he said, shaking his rag at her. “I know you! You’re the one who cheats. The one—”

  As if by magic, the boy’s bucket tipped towards him and spilled water down the front of his pants. He gasped and shut up, staring at Duanphen.

  Not magic. Telekinesis.

  “If you do know me,” Duanphen said, “then you know what I will do when I run out of patience.”

  The beggar looked at her wide-eyed, then took off into the crowd with a yelp. Duanphen pursed her lips. Calling her a cheater. What did that little idiot know about anything?

  Duanphen had been doing Muay Thai fights since she was fourteen, a necessity to supplement the pittance she got working sixty hours a week at the garment factory, all to pay her rent at a roach-infested boardinghouse. Before her Legacies kicked in, Duanphen had lost more fights than she won, often getting her face smashed to a bloody pulp by girls twice her age.

  Telekinesis, she discovered after the invasion, made the fights easier. An assisted leg-trip here. A deflected punch there. She went on a winning streak. She began to bet on herself. The competition got tougher, but her telekinesis got stronger, too.

  It wasn’t until an opponent managed to get her in a choke hold and Duanphen’s electrified skin unexpectedly triggered that the fight promoters got wise. They called what she’d been doing “stealing” and gave her a choice: work off the debt or die. She considered fighting her way out, but they had a lot of guns, and blocking punches wasn’t the same as stopping bullets.

  Word soon got out that the local mob had a Garde for hire. That was how the executive found her. He knew a lot of people. He was a talker. An excellent negotiator.

  That’s what made him so valuable to the Foundation.

  The Foundation paid off her debt and gave Duanphen a fresh start. They gave her more money than she could hope to earn in a thousand fights, plus clothes and a splashy apartment in Hong Kong. All she needed to do in exchange was watch over this smarmy executive and carry around his briefcase.

  Not a bad deal at all, she’d thought. At least until she got to know the executive better. Men liked him, of course, because he was always making gross jokes and buying drinks. But, to Duanphen, he was a middle-aged creep, the kind of tourist she’d encountered a million times in Bangkok. He was always complaining about his cold wife and his kids who didn’t talk to him.

  The executive sauntered out of the club surrounded by a phalanx of brutish bodyguards. He had a lot of security—more added in the last few weeks, for reasons no one explained to Duanphen. The muscle cleared a path on the sidewalk, shoving aside gaudily dressed revelers as they escorted the executive to his armored limo. People craned their necks to catch a glimpse of what kind of man commanded such an entourage. The executive didn’t look like much—a thatch of thinning blond hair, short, a potbelly, his designer suit wrinkled from the humidity, his salmon-colored shirt damp with sweat. Not famous, the onlookers probably thought, disappointed. Just some rich jerk. Bangkok was full of them.

  Duanphen opened the car door for her rich jerk. He pinched her cheek affectionately and sh
e died a little inside.

  “Missed a banging good time, Dawn,” he said, his words slurred from too much champagne.

  “Mm,” Duanphen offered noncommittally. She despised his butchered farang version of her name.

  The executive interpreted Duanphen’s murmur as encouragement. “One of these days you’ll be old enough to make a proper piece of arm candy,” he told her.

  Duanphen smiled mirthlessly and clenched her fist. She slid into the backseat beside the executive, one of the other bodyguards taking the wheel.

  “Meant to ask you,” the executive said. “Happy to be back home?”

  “No,” she replied. “I hate this place.”

  “Really? I’ve always loved Bangkok.” He waved his hand airily out the window. “Although it’s more fun when you aren’t bloody surrounded.”

  Duanphen knew the executive chafed at the extra security. His bodyguards weren’t just the average bruisers anyone could hire around Bangkok; they were highly trained mercenaries. The Blackstone Group detachment had been his wife’s idea—or, rather, his wife’s command. She was in the Foundation too and seemed to wield more power than her husband. That, at least, cheered Duanphen.

  The rest of the executive’s security piled into two cars, one behind and one in front. The executive sighed as his ungainly security force began the journey through the crowded streets back to his hotel.

  The executive checked his watch. “Ah, running a bit late.” He wiggled his fingers at Duanphen. “Let’s get to business, shall we?”

  Ostensibly, the executive was in Bangkok to sign some paperwork on a hotel he’d invested in. But while that work had made the executive rich, it was no longer his true occupation.

  Duanphen offered him the briefcase. The executive unlocked it with his thumbprint, then lifted out its contents—a sleek tablet computer. This, too, the executive unlocked with his fingerprint, followed by a nine-digit code that he kept hidden from Duanphen. The tablet connected to a secure server via satellite uplink. The executive settled back, waiting to connect.

  “A good turnout,” the executive said approvingly. He liked showing off, so he didn’t mind if Duanphen peeked at the tablet.

  There were twenty people waiting for the executive in the e-conference. They were represented by icons—an infinity symbol, a snarling fox, a silver-and-blue star that Duanphen thought was the logo for an American football team. The mundane avatars of the very rich people in the executive’s club.

  A slithering blob of shadows appeared among the icons. That represented the executive himself. That was always how the auctioneer looked during one of these Foundation events.

  “Good evening, all,” the executive said, after unmuting his side of the conference and activating his voice modulator. “On the block tonight, we have the services of Salma G., for the weekend of January third through the fifth.”

  The executive called up Salma’s picture and sent it out to the bidders. The girl had wavy brown hair that was long and unruly, plus a thick unibrow that made her look like she was deep in thought. In the image, Salma wore a tangle of scarves that were nearly indistinguishable from her billowy dress, patterns upon patterns. She sat cross-legged, fingers pinched together like she was meditating, her eyes gazing into the middle distance.

  He muted the conference so he could smirk at Duanphen. “Nice costume on her, eh? The lads in marketing thought it’d be clever to give her a sort of gypsy fortune-teller vibe.”

  “I see,” Duanphen replied.

  “Don’t need any of that when you’re on the block, eh? Your face conveys exactly what you’re for.”

  Duanphen touched her crooked nose but didn’t reply. The executive had already unmuted the video conference and was again speaking to his international audience.

  “The following specs were included in your dossier, but I’ll summarize. Salma is sixteen years old. Moroccan. Speaks fluent Arabic, passable French and passable English. No health concerns. Buyer must provide a halal diet. Salma’s telekinetic control remains middling at best, so, if that’s what you’re interested in, we’ve got better assets available. Her real allure is her precognitive ability. She’s perfect for a visit to the track or the casino, although we don’t recommend attempting to use her Legacies to choose stocks or other long-term investments. Salma is geo-restricted; you’ve already been provided with lists of approved locations. Bidders are also reminded that you are purchasing only the use of Salma’s Legacies and that any behavior viewed by the Foundation as untoward or detrimental to the asset will result in swift expulsion from the organization.”

  Duanphen knew that expulsion, in this case, meant death. It didn’t matter how wealthy and powerful the Foundation’s members were; if they broke the rules, they’d be punished.

  “Righto.” The executive cleared his throat. “As there’s a great amount of interest in dear Salma, I believe we shall start the bidding at five million euros. Do I hear five million?”

  Immediately, a handful of the icons logged out of the conference. The price was too high for some, but not all. The bidding went back and forth. Each time one of the icons pulsed, a little beep sounded and the bid increased by 250,000 euros.

  Five minutes later, the auction was over. A weekend with Salma had gone for 10.6 million euros. The executive checked his account. The payment had already come through.

  “Bastard’ll probably make that back in a night.” The executive sniffed. He handed his tablet back to Duanphen and she returned it to the briefcase. “We ought to take a percentage of what the girl makes them at the tables, eh?”

  “It is a lot of money,” Duanphen said, in awe of the price the Moroccan Garde commanded.

  “Eh.” The executive shrugged. “Not so much.”

  They arrived at the executive’s hotel. It was a lavish place, where the staff wore silk vests and bow ties and were always underfoot with warm towels and glasses of rose water. The executive loved it. He had the penthouse suite all to himself. Well, not quite all to himself. Duanphen slept in an adjoining room and a handful of the other bodyguards were always camped out in the hallway.

  Some of the guards stayed in the lobby to keep an eye on things; the rest piled into the elevator with them. When they reached the top floor, they met two more bodyguards who were stationed outside the executive’s suite.

  “Keeping watch on an empty hallway,” the executive groused. “What a great use of our resources.”

  But, as he neared his suite, the executive suddenly began to whistle a jaunty little tune. Duanphen raised an eyebrow. The little man was practically swaggering, swinging his arms back and forth like he was in a wonderful mood. Maybe he was drunker than she thought.

  “Aw, you lads are just doing your jobs,” he said. “I don’t mean to be such a bastard. I just made a tidy pile of quid tonight, y’know? Ought to spread the wealth, as the poors love to say.” He stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway. “Come on, ya blokes,” he said. “Gather round, eh?”

  The guards did as they were told. Normally, they were a stoic bunch, but now they looked as upbeat as the executive. Some of them grinned as they formed an impromptu huddle. Duanphen arched an eyebrow. The Blackstone mercenaries were usually much more professional.

  “It isn’t easy work, what you do. I want to show my appreciation.” The executive pulled out his overstuffed money clip and started slapping high-denomination Thai baht into the outstretched hands of his security guards. “Bangkok’s a damn fine place for strapping bucks like you lot. Take the night off. Go out and enjoy yourselves. On me, of course.”

  As if the money wasn’t enough, the executive handed over his Black Card to one of the guards, then tossed his entire wallet to another. He winked and waved them off, watching like a generous father as the hardened mercenaries jostled their way back to the elevator, arm in arm, laughing and cracking jokes.

  Duanphen watched it all happen with her mouth half-open in disbelief.

  “What . . . ?” She sounded bewildered
. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The executive grinned at her. “What’s the matter, Dawn? You sure you don’t want to join them? Go on, then. Have fun.” He slapped his pockets. “Afraid I’m out of money, though . . .”

  Duanphen stared into his eyes, which had a wide and spacey quality. “You’re—” She gave up on the stupidly grinning executive. “Hey, wait!” she called after the mercenaries, but the elevator was gone. Had they all gone crazy?

  “Sir,” Duanphen said, balling her fists. “You’re acting strange.”

  “Nonsense,” the executive replied. He swiped his key card and pushed open the door to his suite.

  Immediately, Duanphen could sense something wrong. The air was warm and sticky, not meticulously temperature-controlled like the executive preferred. And where was that breeze coming from?

  The executive stopped suddenly and pinched the bridge of his nose. He shook his head as if he were coming out of a dream.

  “Dawn, what— Did our boys just rob me? Or—what came over me?”

  The answer stood right in the middle of his suite.

  The young man was slender, his brown hair combed from the side into a meticulously gelled swoop. He wore expensive clothes—gray slacks, a black vest, a white dress shirt. Duanphen thought he looked almost like a magician; appropriate, as he’d somehow slipped in past the executive’s security. The broken glass from the balcony window probably explained that . . . although how had he managed to climb all the way up here?

  The executive was frozen. “You.”

  “Not easy, putting you in a generous mood while making those Blackstone morons go all frat boy,” Einar said. There were dark circles around his eyes and he was out of breath, like he’d just greatly exerted himself. He held up a finger. “Give me a minute, will you?”

  Duanphen didn’t hesitate. Clearly, this Einar boy was a threat. Maybe even the reason for the executive’s added security. She charged towards him, the executive’s metal briefcase held over her head as a weapon.

  Wumpf! She didn’t see it coming. A second intruder slammed into Duanphen’s side, trucked her clean off her feet and sent her crashing through a coffee table. A burly and hunched figure in a dingy gray sweat suit, the hood pulled up.