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  For everyone who guided me along the way

  —R. V.

  For Kahlan and Asher

  —D. H.

  PROLOGUE

  ALL LIVING THINGS, FROM ANT to elephant, share the same primary goal: survival.

  In his long and decorated career as an officer in the Unites States Army, General Mortimer George Breckenridge had become convinced of this undeniable truth. It’s the reason alligators have sharp teeth, cheetahs fast legs, and eagles wings that carry them to the sky.

  Survival is also the reason nations since the dawn of civilization have built armies, and it’s why men and women have always volunteered to join them. The very best of those men and women—exceedingly skilled individuals like General Breckenridge—are picked as leaders because the rest of civilization understands it will require the very best to ensure their survival in the most desperate of moments. George Washington at Valley Forge during the American Revolution. George Meade at Gettysburg, the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War. And, of course, the legendary George S. Patton, who charged to the rescue and beat back the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge.

  General Breckenridge’s father, a military man himself, had designated the very general-ish moniker “George” as the middle name of all three of his sons. Mortimer, the eldest, asserted he was named after Patton, whom his father had served under during World War II. Randall, the middle brother, claimed as his namesake George Washington. Chester, the youngest, hadn’t the foggiest clue who George Meade was and joined the navy instead. Mortimer, Randall, and Pa Breckenridge never spoke of Chester again.

  Anyway, desperate moments.

  Every generation has one, that point in history when civilization teeters on the verge of destruction . . . then rejoices when one hero steps forward to snatch survival from the forces of evil that would otherwise cause the death of everything.

  General Breckenridge had always believed—knew down in his marrow—that he was destined to be that person. (Not the death-of-everything causer. The other person—the heroic snatcher of survival.) He had waited his entire life for his desperate moment to come. When extraterrestrial creatures had attacked the city of Atlanta last fall—yes, you read that correctly; aliens had, in fact, attacked one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States—the General was sure his moment had arrived at last.

  Much to the General’s chagrin, however, it proved to be another’s time to shine.

  On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (the same age Patton was when he died), the General began to worry that he would end up the most unfortunate type of hero—the kind with no desperate moment to triumph over. Oh, how he worried. Desperately, you might say.

  Finally, the General realized what he should have known at the start. All those years spent searching for his desperate moment, and it had been right before his eyes the entire time. As he watched the mechanized infantry he’d built load crates filled with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment into an idling military truck, he knew that his lifetime of waiting had been worth every second. He would not fail.

  “The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you,” the General announced. “So calibrate your weapons, infantry. Then calibrate them two times more. We’re hunting the biggest game there is.”

  “Calibrating,” the infantry responded in unison.

  The General permitted a tight-lipped smile to fall into line beneath his thick, bottle-brush mustache. Washington, Meade, and even the legendary Patton himself had never faced a moment as desperate as this. He was about to embark on a campaign against nothing less than the greatest threat the United States of America—and the world—had ever known.

  He was declaring war on the wearer of the golden cape.

  The General was going to destroy Gilded.

  CHAPTER

  1

  RRRRNNNG!

  Miles Taylor was a superhero, but he still had to wake up for school.

  Miles dropped his hand heavily onto his alarm clock. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, his mind filling with thoughts of what the new school year had in store for him.

  If eighth grade was anything like seventh, he wasn’t particularly excited. Rising with the sun. A slapdash breakfast of cereal or toast. Trudging downstairs to wait in front of Cedar Lake Apartments for the bus that was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and too smelly year-round. All for the privilege of spending the next nine months at Chapman Middle School, taking tests, getting homework, and dodging run-ins with local football god and scourge of nonathletic kids everywhere, Craig “the Jammer” Logg.

  Ugh.

  But at least he was a superhero. Hard as it was sometimes for Miles to believe, he really was. Not a dress-up-for-Halloween-and-pretend superhero. A living, breathing, pound-bad-guys-into-the-dirt superhero. He was the Golden Great. The Halcyon Hero. Atlanta’s Twenty-Four-Karat Champion. He was Gilded, the only for-real superhero the world had ever seen.

  Miles rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom mirror. He frowned at his reflection. It’d be nice if looking back at him was Gilded, the barrel-chested, six-foot-plus exemplar of good. Instead, all he saw was an average eighth grader from suburban Atlanta who presently had a particularly painful zit asserting itself on his nose.

  Miles would’ve liked to tell the world that he was the hero who, for the past year, had kept Atlanta safe. It was Miles who’d foiled robberies, doused infernos, and even flown apart a tornado. It was he who’d saved the greater Atlanta area—and the rest of humanity—from planetary annihilation at the hands of Lord Commander Calamity and his horde of alien, lizard-monster warriors called the Unnd.

  (Seventh grade had been a busy year.)

  But Miles couldn’t let anyone know those things. Letting anyone know was the ultimate no-no. An old man—the man who’d clandestinely served as Gilded for decades; who’d captivated the minds of every man, woman, and child; who’d been the focus of newspaper articles, TV reports, and comic books beyond number—had told Miles so. He’d warned Miles with his dying breath, imparting that one piece of wisdom before giving Miles the golden cape and changing his life forever.

  The golden cape. The source of all of Miles’s powers. Miles smiled as he remembered the way he’d felt the first time he’d clasped the cape around his neck. It had transformed him from a nobody into the ultimate somebody. It allowed him to fly, run faster than the eye could see, and lift . . . Actually, he wasn’t sure how much weight he could lift. He’d hoisted a full water tower once, but he hadn’t been able to find anything heavier to test himself against.

  He’d definitely tested his toughness, though. He’d been punched, hit with a baseball bat, and shot by an alien death ray without shedding a single drop of blood. With the cape, Miles could do anything.

  Anything good, at least.

  Miles brushed his teeth and spat a glob of toothpaste into the sink. The Gilded cape came with a catch. A safety feature. It granted powers to him only if he used it for good.

  Simple enough. Like everyone else, Miles wanted to be a hero, didn’t he?

  Sure, but also like everyone else, Miles wanted to be rich, famous, and have a packed social calendar. Too bad the cape didn’t let him use it to acquire any of those things. Miles had learned that through trial and e
rror (mostly error) and with the help of his best friend and confidant, Henry Matte.

  Miles walked to his dresser. He took socks from his sock drawer, jeans from his jeans drawer, and a T-shirt from his T-shirt drawer. (Collared shirts were hung in the closet, where they wouldn’t get creased from being folded. Like everything else in his life, Miles liked his clothes to be just so.)

  Whenever Miles saw his organized clothes, he was reminded of Henry. Probably because Henry had never organized anything in his life. Miles thought of how he’d tried to keep secret that he’d become the new Gilded. He’d almost made it one whole day. But he had figured out very quickly that he needed help. Henry, a super-genius Gilded fanatic whom Miles had crossed paths with in a school bathroom, turned out to be just the kid to give it to him. Together, they’d figured out how the cape worked, and they’d been a team ever since.

  It was because Miles understood what the cape would and wouldn’t allow him to do that he combed his mouse-brown hair and pulled on his socks, jeans, and T-shirt at the same speed as every other kid ever. It was also the reason he didn’t use the cape to dash to Vermont for a stack of those flapjacks with fresh maple syrup he’d heard about and was instead going to start the new school year with an ordinary breakfast of Cheerios and milk drunk from a glass. Because why bother with having to wash a spoon?

  Miles grabbed his backpack and opened his bedroom door.

  The glorious sounds and aromas that greeted him indicated this morning was going to be anything but ordinary. He heard the popping of bacon frying in a pan, accompanied by the cheery whopwhopwhop of eggs being whisked in a mixing bowl. And he’d eaten enough Southern breakfasts to recognize the scent of biscuits baking in an oven.

  These were things Miles hadn’t enjoyed since before his mom had traded in him and his dad for a moneyed accountant and moved to South Florida. After that, meals had been handled by Mr. Taylor, the innovative culinary mind who’d invented the concept of cereal served in a drinking glass. Not that Miles blamed him. A master electrician at Atlanta Voltco, Hollis Taylor worked long hours to keep the roof of their cramped, two-bedroom apartment over their heads. That left little opportunity for playing chef. Nevertheless, maybe he’d found time to up his game.

  Stomach growling, Miles bounded down the hall toward the kitchen. “Dad? Do I smell country ham?”

  When Miles saw who was doing the cooking, he stopped short. It wasn’t his dad at the stove. It was the next-door neighbor, Dawn Collins.

  “Good nose,” Dawn said, beaming. “Big day today, Mr. Eighth Grader. I told your dad I thought you could stand to start your morning right.” She tipped a mixing bowl full of beaten eggs into a frying pan coated with a rich sheen of melted butter.

  Mr. Taylor looked up from setting the table—Dixie plates and folded paper towels arranged with care. He rubbed a hand through his trimmed beard and shifted his feet. He seemed to get fidgety whenever Miles saw him and Dawn together, an increasingly common occurrence of late.

  “I finally took Dawn up on her offer to fix us a meal. Isn’t that neighborly of her?” Mr. Taylor locked eyes with Miles and nodded at Dawn, as if to prod Miles into giving a proper show of thanks.

  Miles didn’t need the prodding. “Absolutely.”

  Even before Mr. Taylor had become friendly with Dawn, Miles had liked her. She had a generous smile and made the best sweet tea he’d ever tasted. She was also the only person who’d welcomed Miles and Mr. Taylor when they’d moved into Cedar Lake Apartments the summer before Miles started seventh grade.

  Up until a year ago, Dawn had been married to a no-account named Tom Collins. The last time Miles had seen him was the morning he’d overheard Mr. Collins berating Dawn for botching his breakfast. Worried for Dawn’s safety, Miles had put on the cape for the first time and burst into apartment 2G as Gilded. He’d explained to Mr. Collins in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t to be mean to Dawn ever again. Mr. Collins had lit out that afternoon, Dawn happily went from Mrs. to Ms., and Cedar Lake Apartments was all the better for it.

  Watching Dawn drain bacon, stir eggs, and pull biscuits from the oven with ease, Miles couldn’t help wondering if her treatment of Mr. Collins’s breakfast had been a show of defiance. She definitely knew how to drive a stove.

  “You two sit,” Dawn said, turning off the burners. She carried the frying pan to the table and spooned eggs onto the plates.

  You didn’t have to tell a Taylor twice. Miles plopped his backpack on the floor and was reaching for his fork even before his butt hit the chair.

  “Everything looks great, Dawn.” Mr. Taylor smiled hungrily, pushing bacon and two biscuits onto his plate. He raised his plastic cup of orange juice. “A toast. To a breakfast that isn’t toast.”

  Miles clunked his cup against his dad’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Wait!” Dawn shrieked.

  Mr. Taylor jolted and dropped a forkful of eggs onto his lap.

  “I forgot the finishing touch.” Dawn hurried to the freezer. She reached in and pulled out an ice cube tray. She cracked a pair of cubes shaped like peaches into each of their drinks. Dawn’s prized collection of novelty ice cube molds was ever growing, and she seemed to have one for every occasion. If she was keeping her trays in Mr. Taylor’s freezer, things were getting serious.

  “Peaches?” Mr. Taylor asked, plucking the eggs from his work pants.

  “August is National Peach Month,” Dawn said with a grin. “We do live in the Peach State, after all.”

  Every occasion.

  Mr. Taylor shrugged. “Good enough for me. Sit down and join us. Miles and me can’t polish off this spread by ourselves.”

  Dawn looked around hesitantly. “Um . . . where should I sit?”

  Mr. Taylor had purchased their tiny dinette set for fifteen dollars at a garage sale because the full dining table from the old Taylor homestead was too big for the apartment. The set had come with only two chairs. This was the first time they’d ever needed a third.

  “Shoot,” Mr. Taylor said, frowning. “Here, take my spot.” He started to stand.

  Dawn placed a hand on his shoulder, easing him back down. “Nonsense. I need to leave for work anyway.”

  Dawn had recently earned a coveted waitressing spot during a shift with better tips at the Biscuit Barrel just down the street. Sinking his teeth into a piping-hot, scratch-made biscuit, Miles wondered how long it’d be before the manager wised up and had her switch aprons with the cook.

  “You’re on your own for cleanup,” Dawn said. Then she leaned down and pecked Mr. Taylor on top of his head. With that, she was out the door.

  Miles and his dad sat in uncomfortable silence. Mr. Taylor wouldn’t look up, but Miles could tell his cheeks were burning red enough to fry eggs over easy. Mr. Taylor was embarrassed, like a kid caught smooching his girlfriend beneath the gym bleachers. Hollis and Dawn, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  It was kind of awkward, Miles seeing his dad dating. Like he was peeking through a window at something he wasn’t meant to watch. But it was kind of awesome, too. “It’s okay, Dad,” Miles said. “She’s really nice. She’s amazing, actually.”

  Mr. Taylor sat back in his chair, relieved. “She is, isn’t she? Heck if I know what she wants with me.” He smiled a bemused smile that Miles understood meant he was kidding but wasn’t kidding, too. “Wooing girls has never been my strong suit. Just ask your mother.” He leaned over his plate and forked a hunk of country ham.

  “Think she can make corn bread?”

  Corn bread was a Taylor favorite. Miles’s mom had tried to make it once, but she’d baked it dry as a clay brick.

  It wasn’t that Miles’s mom was bad. She was his mom, and he loved her. She and Miles’s dad just weren’t good together. No one was to blame—things just worked out that way sometimes.

  Last Friday, when Miles had had his weekly phone call with his mom, he’d told her about Dawn. It had felt weird to talk about it with her, like he was telling her that her replacement h
ad been hired.

  Everyone deserves to be happy, she’d said.

  Part of Miles wished her idea of happiness wasn’t married to a CPA seven hundred miles away.

  “I think Dawn can do just about anything,” Mr. Taylor answered.

  Mr. Taylor was entitled to happiness, too, and Miles truly hoped he’d found it. Sitting at their tiny table with a heaping breakfast between them, Miles thought about how far they’d come together. For the first time in a long time, everything seemed right with the world. Miles had a genuinely positive feeling. About himself. About life. About everything. The Taylor boys could take their lumps, but you couldn’t keep them down.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Mr. Taylor said. “About school.”

  Positive feeling: gone.

  “Summer break is over. I gave you a lot of leeway these past three months, but it’s time to get back to focusing on your studies. The days of being a superhero all the time are over.” Mr. Taylor glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Eight twenty-two a.m., and I’ve already said something completely ludicrous. That might be a new record.”

  Right. In addition to Henry, Miles had also revealed to his dad that he was moonlighting as a superhero courtesy of the golden cape that—literally—could do no wrong. Miles remembered the stupefied expression on his dad’s face the first time he saw Miles transform. It was the total opposite of the way his dad looked now, talking matter-of-factly about Miles’s one-of-a-kind pastime over breakfast. Miles probably wasn’t supposed to let his dad know, but he didn’t beat himself up about it. Who was to say the old man who’d passed the Gilded mantle on to him hadn’t ever told anyone? Sure, he’d instructed Miles not to, but grown-ups were notoriously espousing the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do philosophy.

  Besides, Miles hadn’t had much choice. It was either let his dad know on the spot, or be forced to head for the hills with him and Dawn when the Unnd had attacked the city last fall. And anyway, there were more than seven billion people in the world, but Miles had told only a measly two. All things considered, he had a pretty good average. He hadn’t even told Josie Campobasso. If that wasn’t a heroic show of restraint, what was?