“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.