“Finally,” Kopano whispered to himself as he began wriggling free. “Finally.”

It had been three months since the invasion. Kopano, it turned out, was a late bloomer.

That evening, he strode into his family’s apartment to find his father napping on the couch. With his little brothers watching, Kopano used his telekinesis to levitate the couch high above the floor. Then he screamed, “Fire! Fire! Father, get up!”

His father sprung upright, swung his legs off the couch and fell five feet to the floor. As he groaned and picked himself up, staring aghast at the couch still floating above him, Obi and Dubem cackled with laughter. Kopano simply grinned at his father, squaring his shoulders in the same noble way he had on that humiliating morning months ago.

“You see, old man? What did I tell you?”

Udo stumbled over to his son, a smile slowly spreading on his face. He grabbed Kopano’s cheeks and pinched. “My beautiful alien son, you are the answer to all of our problems.”

Many months later, when Kopano finally made it to America, the psychologist Linda Matheson would ask him what life was like back in Lagos, before he came to the Human Garde Academy.

Kopano would think about his answer for a long moment before answering.

“Well,” he said, “I guess for a little while I was a criminal.”

EXCERPT FROM FUGITIVE SIX

ALREADY READ GENERATION ONE? HERE’S A SPECIAL LOOK AT FUGITIVE SIX, BOOK TWO

IN THE LORIEN LEGACIES REBORN SERIES!

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.