I Am Number Four:The Lost Files Six's Lagacey's

CHAPTER ONE

Katarina says there is more than one way to hide.
Before we came down here to Mexico, we lived
in a suburb of Denver. My name then was Sheila, a
name I hate even more than my current name, Kelly.
We lived there for two years, and I wore barrettes in
my hair and pink rubber bracelets on my wrists, like
all the other girls at my school. I had sleepovers with
some of them, the girls I called “my friends.” I went
to school during the school year, and in the summer
I went to a swimmers’ camp at the YMCA. I liked my
friends and the life we had there okay, but I had
already been moved around by my Cêpan Katarina
enough to know that it wasn’t going to be
permanent. I knew it wasn’t my real life.
My real life took place in our basement, where
Katarina and I did combat training. By day, it was
an ordinary suburban rec room, with a big comfy
couch and a TV in one corner and a Ping-Pong
table in the other. By night, it was a well-stocked
combat training gym, with hanging bags, floor mats,
weapons, and even a makeshift pommel horse.
In public, Katarina played the part of my mother,
claiming that her “husband” and my “father” had
been killed in a car accident when I was an infant.
Our names, our lives, our stories were all fictions,
identities for me and Katarina to hide behind. But
those identities allowed us to live out in the open.
Acting normal.
Blending in: that was one way of hiding.
But we slipped up. To this day I can remember
our conversation as we drove away from Denver,
headed to Mexico for no other reason than we’d
never been there, both of us trying to figure out how
exactly we’d blown our cover. Something I said to
my friend Eliza had contradicted something
Katarina had said to Eliza’s mother. Before Denver
we’d lived in Nova Scotia for a cold, cold winter, but
as I remembered it, our story, the lie we’d agreed to
tell, was that we’d lived in Boston before Denver.
Katarina remembered differently, and claimed
Tallahassee as our previous home. Then Eliza told
her mother and that’s when people started to get
suspicious.
It was hardly a calamitous exposure. We had no
immediate reason to believe our slip would raise
the kind of suspicion that could attract the
Mogadorians to our location. But our life had gone
sour there, and Katarina figured we’d been there
long enough as it was.
So we moved yet again.
The sun is bright and hard in Puerto Blanco, the air
impossibly dry. Katarina and I make no attempt to
blend in with the other residents, Mexican farmers
and their children. Our only regular contact with the
locals is our once-a-week trip into town to buy
essentials at the small store. We are the only whites
for many miles, and though we both speak good
Spanish, there’s no confusing us for natives of the
place. To our neighbors, we are the gringas,
strange white recluses.
“Sometimes you can hide just as effectively by
sticking out,” Katarina says.
She appears to be right. We have been here
almost a year and we haven’t been bothered once.
We lead a lonely but ordered life in a sprawling,
single-level shack tucked between two big patches
of farmland. We wake up with the sun, and before
eating or showering Katarina has me run drills in
the backyard: running up and down a small hill,
doing calisthenics, and practicing tai chi. We take
advantage of the two relatively cool hours of
morning.
Morning drills are followed by a light breakfast,
then three hours of studies: languages, world
history, and whatever other subjects Katarina can
dig up from the internet. She says her teaching
method and subject matter are “eclectic.” I don’t
know what that word means, but I’m just grateful for
the variety. Katarina is a quiet, thoughtful woman,
and though she’s the closest thing I have to a
mother, she’s very different from me.
Studies are probably the highlight of her day. I
prefer drills.
After studies it’s back out into the blazing sun,
where the heat makes me dizzy enough that I can
almost hallucinate my imagined enemies. I do
battle with straw men: shooting them with arrows,
stabbing them with knives, or simply pummeling
them with my bare fists. But half-blind from the sun, I
see them as Mogadorians, and I relish the chance
to tear them to pieces. Katarina says even though I
am only thirteen years old, I’m so agile and so
strong I could easily take down even a well-trained
adult.
One of the nice things about living in Puerto
Blanco is that I don’t have to hide my skills. Back in
Denver, whether swimming at the Y or just playing
on the street, I always had to hold back, to keep
myself from revealing the superior speed and
strength that Katarina’s training regimen has
resulted in. We keep to ourselves out here, away
from the eyes of others, so I don’t have to hide.
Today is Sunday, so our afternoon drills are
short, only an hour. I am shadowboxing with
Katarina in the backyard, and I can feel her
eagerness to quit: her moves are halfhearted, she’s
squinting against the sun, and she looks tired. I love
training and could go all day, but out of deference to
her I suggest we call it a day.
“Oh, I suppose we could finish early,” she says. I
grin privately, allowing her to think I’m the tired one.
We go inside and Katarina pours us two tall
glasses of agua fresca, our customary Sunday
treat. The fan is blowing full force in our humble
shack’s living room. Katarina boots up her various
computers while I kick off my dirty, sweat-filled
fighting boots and collapse to the floor. I stretch my
arms to keep them from knotting up, then swing
them to the bookshelf in the corner and pull out a tall
stack of the board games we keep there. Risk,
Stratego, Othello. Katarina has tried to interest me
in games like Life and Monopoly, saying it wouldn’t
hurt to be “well-rounded.” But those games never
held my interest. Katarina got the hint, and now we
only play combat and strategy games.
Risk is my favorite, and since we finished early
today I think Katarina will agree to playing it even
though it’s a longer game than the others.
“Risk?”
Katarina is at her desk chair, pivoting from one
screen to the next.
“Risk of what?” she asks absently.
I laugh, then shake the box near her head. She
doesn’t look up from the screens, but the sound of
all those pieces rattling around inside the box is
enough for her to get it.
“Oh,” she says. “Sure.”
I set up the board. Without asking, I divvy up the
armies into hers and mine, and begin placing them
all across the game’s map. We’ve played this
game so much I don’t need to ask her which
countries she’d like to claim, or which territories
she’d like to fortify. She always chooses the U.S.
and Asia. I happily place her pieces on those
territories, knowing that from my more easily
defended territories I will quickly grow armies
strong enough to crush hers.
I’m so absorbed in setting up the game I don’t
even notice Katarina’s silence, her absorption. It is
only when I crack my neck loudly and she neglects
to scold me for it—“Please don’t,” she usually says,
squeamish about the sound it makes—that I look
up and see her, staring openmouthed at one of her
monitors.
“Kat?” I ask.
She’s silent.
I get up from the floor, stepping across the game
board to join her at her desk. It is only then that I see
what has so completely captured her attention. A
breaking news item about some kind of explosion
on a bus in England.
I groan.
Katarina is always checking the internet and the
news for mysterious deaths. Deaths that could be
the work of the Mogadorians. Deaths that could
mean the second member of the Garde has been
defeated. She’s been doing it since we came to
Earth, and I’ve grown frustrated with the doom-andgloom
of it.
Besides, it’s not like it did us any good the first
time.
I was nine years old, living in Nova Scotia with
Katarina. Our training room there was in the attic.
Katarina had retired from training for the day, but I
still had energy to burn, and was doing moores and
spindles on the pommel horse alone when I
suddenly felt a blast of scorching pain on my ankle. I
lost my balance and came crashing down to the
mat, clutching my ankle and screaming in pain.
My first scar. It meant that the Mogadorians had
killed Number One, the first of the Garde. And for all
of Katarina’s web scouring, it had caught us both
completely unaware.
We waited on pins and needles for weeks after,
expecting a second death and a second scar to
follow in short order. But it didn’t come. I think
Katarina is still coiled, anxious, ready to spring. But
three years have passed—almost a quarter of my
whole life—and it’s just not something I think about
much.
I step between her and the monitor. “It’s Sunday.
Game time.”
“Please, Kelly.” She says my most recent alias
with a certain stiffness. I know I will always be Six to
her. In my heart, too. These aliases I use are just
shells, they’re not who I really am. I’m sure back on
Lorien I had a name, a real name, not just a
number. But that’s so far back, and I’ve had so
many names since then, that I can’t remember what
it was.
Six is my true name. Six is who I am.
Katarina bats me aside, eager to read more
details.
We’ve lost so many game days to news alerts
like this. And they never turn out to be anything.
They’re just ordinary tragedies.
Earth, I’ve come to discover, has no shortage of
tragedies.
“Nope. It’s just a bus crash. We’re playing a
game.” I pull at her arms, eager for her to relax. She
looks so tired and worried, I know she could use the
break.
She holds firm. “It’s a bus explosion. And
apparently,” she says, pulling away to read from the
screen, “the conflict is ongoing.”
“The conflict always is,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Come on.”
She shakes her head, giving one of her frazzled
laughs. “Okay,” she says. “Fine.”
Katarina pulls herself away from the monitors,
sitting on the floor by the game. It takes all my
strength not to lick my chops at her upcoming
defeat: I always win at Risk.
I get down beside her, on my knees.
“You’re right, Kelly,” she says, allowing herself to
grin. “I needn’t panic over every little thing—”
One of the monitors on Katarina’s desk lets out a
sudden ding! One of her alerts. Her computers are
programmed to scan for unusual news reports, blog
posts, even notable shifts in global weather—all
sifting for possible news of the Garde.
“Oh come on,” I say.
But Katarina is already off the floor and back at
the desk, scrolling and clicking from link to link once
again.
“Fine,” I say, annoyed. “But I’m showing no mercy
when the game begins.”
Suddenly Katarina is silent, stopped cold by
something she’s found.
I get up off the floor and step over the board,
making my way to the monitor.
I look at the screen.
It is not, as I’d imagined, a news report from
England. It is a simple, anonymous blog post. Just
a few haunting, tantalizing words:
“Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there?”
CHAPTER TWO
There is a cry in the wilderness, from a member of
the Garde. Some girl or boy, the same age as me,
looking for us. In an instant I’ve seized the keyboard
from Katarina and I hammer out a response in the
comments section. “We are here.”
Katarina bats my hand away before I can hit
Enter. “Six!”
I pull back, ashamed of my imprudence, my
haste.
“We have to be careful. The Mogadorians are on
the hunt. They’ve killed One, for all we know they
have a path to Two, to Three—”
“But they’re alone!” I say. The words come out
before I have a chance to think what I’m saying.
I don’t know how I know this. It’s just a hunch I
have. If this member of the Garde has been
desperate enough to reach out on the internet,
looking for others, his or her Cêpan must have
been killed. I imagine my fellow Garde’s panic, her
fear. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my
Katarina, to be alone. To consider all I deal with . . .
without Katarina? It’s unimaginable.
“What if it’s Two? What if she’s in England, and
the Mogs are after her, and she’s reaching out for
help?”
A second ago I was scoffing at Katarina’s
absorption in the news. But this is different. This is
a link to someone like me. Now I am desperate to
help them, to answer their call.
“Maybe it’s time,” I say, balling my fist.
“Time?” Katarina is scared, wearing a baffled
expression.
“Time to fight!”
Katarina’s head falls into her hands and she
laughs into her palms.
In moments of high stress, Katarina sometimes
reacts this way: she laughs when she should be
stern, gets serious when she should laugh.
Katarina looks up and I realize she is not
laughing at me. She is just nervous, and confused.
“Your Legacies haven’t even developed!” she
cries. “How could we possibly start the war now?”
She gets up from the desk, shaking her head.
“No. We are not ready to fight. Until your powers
are manifest, we will not start this battle. Until the
Garde is ready, we must hide.”
“Then we have to send her a message.”
“Her? You don’t know it’s a she! For all we know,
it’s no one. Just some random person using
language that accidentally tripped my alert.”
“I know it’s one of us,” I say, fixing Katarina with
my eyes. “And you do too.”
Katarina nods, admitting defeat.
“Just one message. To let them know they’re not
alone. To give her hope.”
“‘Her’ again,” laughs Katarina, almost sadly.
I think it’s a girl because I imagine whoever wrote
the message to be like me. A more scared and
more alone version of me—one who’s been
deprived of her Cêpan.
“Okay,” she says. I step between her and the
monitor, my fingers hovering over the keys. I decide
the message I’ve already typed—“We are here”—
will suffice.
I hit Enter.
Katarina shakes her head, ashamed to have
indulged me so recklessly. Within moments she is
at the computer, scrubbing any trace of our location
from the transmission.
“Feel better?” she asks, turning off the monitor.
I do, a little. To think I’ve given a bit of solace and
comfort to one of the Garde makes me feel good,
connected to the larger struggle.
Before I can respond I’m electrified by a pain, the
likes of which I’ve only known once before; a lavahot
lancet digging through the flesh of my right
ankle. My leg shoots out from beneath me, and I
scream, attempting to distance myself from the
pain by holding my ankle as far from the rest of me
as I can. Then I see it: the flesh on my ankle sizzling,
popping with smoke. A new scar, my second,
snakes its way across my skin.
“Katarina!” I scream, punching the floor with my
fists, desperate with pain.
Katarina is frozen in horror, unable to help.
“The second,” she says. “Number Two is dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
Katarina rushes to the tap, fills a pitcher, and
dumps it across my leg. I am nearly catatonic from
the pain, biting my lip so hard it bleeds. I watch the
water sizzle as it hits my burned flesh, then it floods
the game board, washing the army pieces off onto
the floor.
“You win,” I say, making a feeble joke.
Katarina doesn’t acknowledge my attempt at wit.
My protector, she has gone into full-on Cêpan
mode: pulling first-aid supplies out from every
corner of our shack. Before I know it she’s applied
a cooling salve to my scar and wrapped and taped
it with gauze.
“Six,” she says, her eyes moist with fear and pity.
I’m taken aback—she only uses my real name in
moments of extreme crisis.
But then I realize that’s what this is.
Years had passed since One’s death, without
incident. It had gotten easy to imagine it was a
fluke. If we were feeling really hopeful, we could
imagine One had died in an accident. That the
Mogadorians hadn’t caught our scent.
That time is over. We know for sure now. The
Mogadorians have found the second member of
the Garde, and killed him or her. Two’s message to
us, to the world, was the last thing he or she would
ever do. Their violent death was now written across
my skin.
We know two deaths is no fluke. The countdown
has truly begun.
I almost faint, but pull myself to consciousness by
biting my lip even harder. “Six,” Katarina says,
wiping the blood from my mouth with a cloth.
“Relax.”
I shake my head.
No. I can never relax. Not ever.
Katarina is straining to keep her composure. She
doesn’t want to frighten me. But she also wants to
do the right thing, to honor her responsibilities as a
Cêpan. I can tell she’s torn between every possible
reaction, from outright panic to philosophical cool;
whatever is the best for me and for the fate of the
Garde.
She cradles my head, wipes the sweat from my
brow. The water and the salve have taken the
sharpest edge off the pain, but it still hurts as bad
as the first time, maybe worse. But I won’t comment
on it. I can see that my pain, and this evidence of
Two’s passing, is tormenting Katarina enough.
“We’ll be okay,” says Katarina. “There are still
many others. . . .”
I know she is speaking carelessly. She doesn’t
mean to put the lives of the Garde before me—
Three, Four, and Five—ahead of my own. She is
just grasping for consolation. But I won’t let it pass.
“Yeah. It’s so great others have to die before
me.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I can see my words
have upset her.
I sigh, putting my head against her shoulder.
Sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I use a
different name for Katarina. Sometimes to me
she’s not Katarina or Vicky or Celeste or any of her
other aliases. Sometimes—in my mind—I call her
“Mom.”
CHAPTER FOUR
We’re on the road an hour later. Katarina whiteknuckles
the steering wheel of our truck through
country roads, cursing her choice of hideaway.
These roads are too rough and dusty to go faster
than forty miles per hour, and what we both want is
the speed of a highway. Anything to put as much
distance as possible between us and our now
abandoned shack. Katarina did what she could to
scrub our tracks, but if what we imagine is true—the
Mogadorians killing Two seconds after we saw her
fatal blog post—then they moved fast, and they
could be racing towards our abandoned home right
now.
As I watch the fields and the hills pass through
the passenger window, I realize that they could
already be at the shack. In fact, they could already
be following us on the road. Feeling like a coward
as I do it, I crane my neck and look through the rear
window, through the dust trail our truck kicks up in
our wake.
No cars trail us.
Not yet, at least.
We packed light. The truck was already loaded
with a first-aid kit, a lightweight camping set, bottled
water, flashlights, and blankets. Once I was ready to
walk again, all I had to do was pick out a few items
of clothing for the road and retrieve my Chest from
the lockbox under the shack.
The panic of flight gave me little time to feel the
searing pain of my second scar, but it returns to me
now, lacerating and insistent.
“We shouldn’t have responded,” says Katarina. “I
don’t know what we were thinking.”
I look at Katarina for signs of judgment on her
face—after all, I’m the one who insisted we write
back—and I’m relieved to find none. All I see is her
fear, and her determination to get us as far away as
possible.
I realize that in the confusion and haste to flee I
forgot to notice if we turned north or south at the
crossing at the edge of Puerto Blanco.
“U.S.?” I ask.
Katarina nods, pulling our most recent passports
from the inside pocket of her army jacket, tossing
mine into my lap. I flip it open and peer at my new
name.
“Maren Elizabeth,” I say aloud. Katarina puts a lot
of time into her forgeries, though I usually complain
about the names she chooses for me. When I was
eight and we were moving to Nova Scotia, I
begged and begged to be named Starla. Katarina
vetoed the suggestion. She thought it was too
“attention getting,” too exotic. I almost laugh to think
about it now. A Katarina in Mexico is about as
exotic as you can get. And of course she’s keeping
it. Katarina has grown attached to her own name.
Sometimes I suspect that Cêpans aren’t so
different from parents after all.
Maren Elizabeth . . . it’s no Starla, but I like how it
sounds.
I reach down and cradle my calf, just above the
throbbing scars on my ankle. By squeezing my calf I
can muffle the pain of my sizzled flesh.
But as the pain fades, the fear returns. The fear
of our present situation, the horror of Two’s death. I
decide to let go of my calf, and I let my leg burn.
Katarina refuses to stop the car for anything but gas
and pee breaks. It’s a long trip, but we have ways to
pass the time. Mostly we play Shadow, a game that
Katarina made up during our previous travels, out
of our desire to keep training even when we
couldn’t do physical drills.
“A Mogadorian scout races at you from two
o’clock, wielding a twenty-inch blade in his left arm.
He swings.”
“I crouch,” I say. “Dodge left.”
“He swings around, the blade above your head.”
“From the ground, a kick to the groin. A leg
sweep, from his right side to his left.”
“On his back, but he grabs your arm.”
“I let him. I use the force of his grip to swing my
legs free, up, and then down to his face. Step on his
face, pull my hand free.”
It’s a strange game. It forces me to separate the
physical from reality, to fight with my brain and not
my body. I used to complain about games of
Shadow, saying it was all made up, that it wasn’t
real. Fighting was fists, and feet, and heads. It
wasn’t brains. It wasn’t words.
But the more Shadow we played, the better I got
at drills, especially hand-to-hand drills with
Katarina. I couldn’t deny that the game made good
practice. It made me a better fighter. I have come to
love it.
“I run,” I say.
“Too late,” she says. I almost complain, knowing
what’s coming. “You forgot about the sword,” she
says. “He’s already swung it up and nicked your
flank.”
“No he didn’t,” I say. “I froze his sword and
shattered it like glass.”
“Oh did you, now?” Katarina is tired, eyes
bloodshot from ten straight hours of driving, but I
can see I’m amusing her. “I must’ve missed that
part.”
“Yeah,” I say, starting to grin myself.
“And how’d you pull off that feat?”
“My Legacy. It just kicked in. Turns out, I can
freeze stuff.”
This is make-believe. I have yet to develop my
Legacies, and I have no idea what they’ll be when
they arrive.
“That’s a good one,” says Katarina.
CHAPTER FIVE
We crossed the U.S. border hours back, without a
hitch. I have never understood how Katarina
manages to make such incredible forgeries.
Katarina is pulling us into a dusty pit stop off the
highway. There’s a tiny, single-story motel, an oldfashioned
and decrepit diner, and a gas station,
newer and brighter than the other two buildings.
It is barely dusk when we step out of the truck.
The faintest pink of sunrise creeps over the horizon,
just enough to add a strange hue to our flesh as we
stumble out onto the gravel.
Katarina curses, getting back into the car.
“Forgot to get gas,” she says. “Wait here.”
I do as I’m told, watching her pull the truck from
the motel parking lot towards one of the pumps. We
have agreed to rest up at the motel for a day or two,
to recover from our grueling, fifteen-hour drive and
the shock of recent events. But even though we’ll be
here for some time, the tank must be filled: that’s
Katarina’s policy.
“Never leave an empty tank,” she says. I think she
says it as much to remind herself as to educate me.
It’s a good policy. You never know when you’ll
have to leave in a hurry.
I watch Katarina pull up to the pump and start
filling the car.
I examine my surroundings. Through the front
window of the diner across the lot, I can see a few
grizzled-looking truckers eating. Through the scent
of exhaust and the faint odor of gas fumes from the
pumps, I can smell breakfast food in the air.
Or maybe I’m just imagining it. I am incredibly
hungry. My mouth waters at the thought of
breakfast.
I turn my back on the diner, trying not to think
about food, and look at the town on the other side
of the fence from the pit stop. Houses only a step
up from clapboard shacks. A ragged, desolate
place.
“Hello, miss.” Startled, I whizz around to see a
tall, gray-haired cowboy strutting past. It takes me a
second to realize that he’s not starting a
conversation, merely being polite as he passes. He
gives a little nod of his ten-gallon hat and proceeds
past me into the diner.
My heart rate is up.
I had forgotten this aspect of the road. When
we’re settled in a place, even a remote one like
Puerto Blanco, we get to know the local faces. We
know, more or less, who to trust. I’ve never seen a
Mogadorian in my life, but Katarina says that most
of the Mogadorians look like anyone else. After
what happened to One and Two, I feel a deep
unease all around me, a new alertness. A roadside
rest stop is especially troublesome in that everyone
is a stranger to everyone, so no one raises any
eyebrows, not really. For us that means anyone
could be a threat.
Katarina has parked the car and approaches me
with a weary grin.
“Eat or sleep?” she asks. Before I can answer,
she’s raised her hand hopefully. “My vote for sleep.”
“My vote is to eat.” Katarina deflates at this. “You
know eat beats sleep,” I say. “Always does.” It is
one of our rules of the road, and Katarina quickly
accepts the verdict.
“Okay, Maren Elizabeth,” she says. “Lead the
way.”
CHAPTER SIX
The diner is humid with grease. It is barely six a.m.
but almost all of the booths are full, mostly with
truckers. While I wait for our food I watch these men
shovel hearty, well-syruped forksful of breakfast
meat—sausage, bacon, scrapple—into their
mouths. When my food finally comes I find myself
more than holding my own. Three pancakes, four
strips of bacon, a side of hash, one tall OJ.
I finish with a rude belch that Katarina is too tired
to chastise me for.
“Do you think . . . ?” I ask.
Katarina laughs, anticipating my question. “How
is that possible?”
I shrug. She nods, and calls the waitress over.
With a guilty grin, I order another stack of
pancakes.
“Well,” says the waitress, with a dry smoker’s
cackle, “your little girl sure can put it down.” The
waitress is an older woman, with a face so lined
and haggard you could mistake it for a man’s.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. The waitress leaves.
“Your appetite will never cease to amaze me,”
Katarina says. But she knows the reason for it. I
train constantly, and though I’m only thirteen years
old I already have the tightly muscled body of a
gymnast. I need a lot of fuel, and am not ashamed
of my appetite.
Another customer enters the crowded diner.
I notice the other men give him a suspicious
glance as he makes his way to a booth in the rear.
They looked at me and Katarina with similar
suspicion when we first entered. I took this place for
a way station, filled with strangers, but apparently
some strangers are worthy of suspicion and others
aren’t. Katarina and I are doing our best, dressed in
generic American mall clothes: T-shirts and khaki
shorts. I can see why we stand out—apparently they
have a different definition of “generic” here in the far
reaches of West Texas.
This other stranger is harder to figure, though.
He’s dressed the part, more or less: wearing one of
those Texas ties, with the dangly strands of black
leather. And like the rest of the men here, he’s
wearing boots.
But his clothes seem somehow out-of-date, and
there’s something creepy about his thin black
mustache: it looks straight at first glance, but the
more I consider it, something about it just seems
crooked.
“It’s impolite to stare.” Katarina, chiding me
again.
“I wasn’t staring,” I lie. “I was looking, with
interest.”
Katarina laughs. She’s laughed more in the past
twenty-four hours than she has in months. This new
Katrina is going to take some getting used to.
Not that I mind.
I stretch out luxuriantly on the hotel bed while
Katarina showers in the bathroom. The sheets are
cheap, polyester or rayon, but I’m so tired from the
road they may as well be silk.
When Katarina first pulled the sheets down we
found a live earwig under the pillow, which grossed
her out but didn’t bother me.
“Kill it,” she begged, covering her eyes.
I refused. “It’s just an insect.”
“Kill it!” she begged.
Instead, I swept it off the bed and hopped into the
cool sheets. “Nope,” I said stubbornly.
“Fine,” she said, and went to shower. She turned
the faucets on, but stepped out of the bathroom
again a moment later. “I worry—” she started.
“About what?” I asked.
“I worry that I haven’t trained you well.”
I rolled my eyes. “’Cause I won’t kill a bug?!”
“Yes. No, I mean, it’s what got me thinking. You
need to learn to kill without hesitation. I haven’t even
taught you to hunt rodents, let alone Mogadorians . .
. you’ve never killed anything—”
Katarina paused, the water still running behind
her. Thinking.
I could tell she was tired, lost in a thought. She
gets like that sometimes, if we’ve been training too
gruelingly. “Kat,” I said. “Go shower.”
She looked up, her reverie broken. She chuckled
and closed the door behind her.
Waiting for her to finish, I turned on the TV from
the bed. The previous tenant had left it on CNN and
I’m greeted with the site of helicopter footage of the
“event” in England. I watch only long enough to learn
that both the press and English authorities are
confused as to what exactly happened yesterday.
I’m too tired to think about this; I’ll get the details
later.
I shut off the TV and lay back on the bed, eager
for sleep to take me.
Katarina steps out of the bathroom moments
later, wearing a robe and brushing out her hair. I
watch her through half-closed eyes.
There is a knock on the door.
Katarina drops her brush on the bureau.
“Who is it?” she asks.
“Manager, miss. I brought ya some fresh towels.”
I’m so annoyed by the interruption—I want to
sleep, and it’s pretty obvious we don’t need fresh
towels since we only just got to the room—that I
propel myself right off the bed, barely thinking.
“We don’t need any,” I say, already swinging the
door open.
I just have time to hear Katarina say, “Don’t—”
before I see him, standing before me. The crooked
mustache man.
The scream catches in my throat as he enters the
room and shuts the door behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I react without thinking, pushing him towards the
door, but he flings me back easily, against the bed.
I clutch my chest and realize with horror that my
pendant is out from under my shirt. In plain view.
“Pretty necklace,” he growls, his eyes flashing
with recognition.
If he had any doubt about who I am, it is long
gone.
Katarina charges forward but he strikes her hard.
She crashes against the TV set, smashing the
screen with a bare elbow, and falls to the ground.
He pulls something from his waist—a long, thin
blade—and raises it so quickly I don’t even have
time to stand. I see only the flash of his blade as he
swings it down—straight down, like a railroad spike
—into my brain.
My head floods instantly with warmth and light.
This is what death feels like, I think.
But no. The pain doesn’t come.
I look up—how can I see? I think. I’m dead. But I
do see, and realize that I’m covered, from head to
toe, in hot red blood. The Crooked Mustache Man
still has his arm outstretched, his mouth is still
frozen in victory, but his skull has been split open,
as if by a knife, and his blood is spilling out across
my knees.
I hear Katarina wail—it’s such a primal noise that
I can’t tell if it’s a cry of grief or a scream of relief—
as the man, emptied of blood, turns quickly to dust,
collapsing in on himself as an ashy heap.
Before I can take a breath, Katarina is up,
shedding her robe and throwing on clothes,
grabbing our bags.
“He died,” I say. “I didn’t.”
“Yes,” Katarina replies. She puts on a white
blouse, which she instantly ruins with the blood from
her elbow, shredded from the TV screen. She
throws it out, blots the blood from her elbow with a
towel, and puts on another shirt.
I feel like a child, speechless, immobile, covered
in blood on the floor.
That was it—the moment I’ve been training for my
whole life—and all I managed was a feeble, easily
deflected shove before getting tossed aside and
stabbed.
“He didn’t know,” I say.
“He didn’t know,” she says.
What he didn’t know is that any harm inflicted on
me out of order would instead be inflicted upon my
attacker. I was safe from direct attack. I knew it, but
I also didn’t really know it. When he stabbed me in
the head, I thought I was dead. It took seeing it to
believe it.
I reach up and touch my scalp. The flesh there is
unbroken, it’s not even damp. . . .
There’s the proof. We are protected by the
charm. As long as we stay apart from each other,
we can only be killed in the order of our number.
I realize his blood has now turned to dust along
with his flesh. I am no longer drenched in it.
“We have to go.” Katarina has shoved my Chest
into my arms, her face pressed right up to mine. I
realize I’ve spaced out, gone to a place inside my
own head, reeling from the shock of what just
happened. I can tell from the way she says it that
this is the third or fourth time she’s repeated it,
though I am only just hearing her.
“Now,” she says.
Katarina drags me by the wrist, her bag slung over
her shoulder. The hot asphalt of the parking lot
burns the soles of my shoeless feet as we rush
outside towards the truck. I carry my Chest, which
feels heavy in my arms.
I have been preparing for battle my whole life,
and now that it’s come all I want is to sleep. My
heels drag, my arms are heavy.
“Faster!” says Katarina, pulling me along. The
truck’s unlocked. I get into the passenger seat as
Katarina tosses our stuff in the bed of the truck and
hops into the driver’s seat. No sooner has she
closed her door than I see a man racing towards
us.
For a moment I think it’s the motel manager,
chasing us for fleeing our bill. But then I recognize
him as the cowboy from before, the one who gave
me the polite nod of his cowboy hat. There’s
nothing polite about the way he’s racing towards us
now, his fist upraised.
His hand smashes through the glass of the
passenger door and I’m sprayed with glass. His fist
closes around the fabric of my shirt and I feel myself
lifted out of my seat.
Katarina screams.
“Hey!” A voice from outside.
My hand scrambles, looking for something,
anything to keep me in my seat. It finds only my
unbuckled seat belt, which gives easily as the Mog
starts pulling me through the window. I feel
Katarina’s hand clutching the back of my shirt.
“I’d think twice ’bout that!” I hear a man’s voice
shout, and soon I am released, falling back into the
seat.
I am breathless, my head spinning.
Outside the truck, a crowd has formed. Truckers
and cowboys, ordinary American men. They’ve
encircled the Mog. One of them has a shotgun
raised, pointed right at him. With a wry, bitter smile,
the Mog lifts his arms in surrender.
“The keys.” Katarina is panicking, near tears. “I
left them in the room.”
I don’t think, I just move. I don’t know how long the
Mog will be contained by the protective mob, our
saviors, but I don’t care: I race back to the room,
swipe the keys off the night table, and head back
out into the heat of the parking lot.
The Mog is kneeling on the ground now,
surrounded by angry men.
“We called the cops, miss,” says one of them. I
nod, my eyes teary. I’m too keyed-up even to say
thanks. It’s strange and wonderful to consider that
none of these men know us but they came to our
aid, yet frightening that they don’t understand this
Mog’s true power, that if he hadn’t been instructed
to keep a low profile he’d have torn the skin clean
off each of their bodies by now.
I get in the car and hand Katarina the keys.
Moments later, we pull out of the lot.
I turn back for one last glance and lock eyes with
the Mog. His eyes brim with reptilian hate.
He winks as we pull away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Katarina was wrong. I have killed before. Years
ago, in Nova Scotia.
It was early winter and Katarina had released me
from our studies to go play in our snowy backyard. I
took to the yard like a demon, running circles in the
snow in my baggy clothes, leaping into snowbanks
and aiming snowballs at the sun.
I hated my cumbersome jacket and waterproof
pants, so once I was sure Katarina had turned from
the window I shed them, stripping down to my jeans
and T-shirt. It was below freezing outside, but I’ve
always been tough about the cold. I continued to
play and race when Clifford, the neighbors’ St.
Bernard, came bounding over to play with me.
He was a huge dog and I was small then, even
for my age. So I climbed on top of him, clutching the
warm fur of his flank. “Giddyup!” I squealed and he
took off. I rode him like a pony, running laps around
the yard.
Katarina had recently told me more about my
history, and about my future. I wasn’t old enough to
fully understand, but I knew it meant I was a warrior.
This sat well with me, because I had always felt like
a hero, a champion. I took this ride with Clifford as
another practice run. I imagined chasing faceless
enemies around the snow, hunting them down and
taking them out.
Clifford had just run me to the edge of the woods
when he stopped and growled. I looked up and saw
a pale brown winter rabbit darting between the
trees. Seconds later, I was on my back, tossed off
by Clifford.
I picked myself up and dashed after Clifford into
the woods. My imaginary chase had become a very
real one, as Clifford ran after the darting rabbit and I
followed him.
I was delirious, breathless, happy. Or I was, until
the chase ended.
Clifford caught the rabbit in his jaws and
reversed course, back to his owners’ yard. I was
equally dismayed by the end of the pursuit and by
the likely end of the rabbit’s life, and I now stalked
after Clifford, attempting to command the rabbit’s
release.
“Bad dog,” I said. “Very bad dog.”
He was too content with his achievement to pay
me any mind. Back in his yard, he happily nuzzled
and nipped the damp fur of the rabbit. It took
shoving him forcibly from the rabbit’s body for him
to give it up, and even then he snapped at me.
I hissed at Clifford, and he grumpily padded off in
the snow. I looked down at the rabbit, matted and
bloody.
But it wasn’t dead.
All of my hardness gave way as I lifted the light,
furry beast to my chest. I felt its tiny heart beating
furiously, at the brink of death. Its eyes were glassy,
uncomprehending.
I knew what would happen to it. Its wounds were
not deep, but it would die of shock. It wasn’t dead
now, but it was past life. The only thing this creature
had to look forward to was the paralysis of its own
fear and a slow, cold death.
I looked to the window. Katarina was out of sight.
I turned back to the rabbit, knowing in an instant
what the kindest thing to do was.
You are a warrior, Katarina had said.
“I am a warrior.” My words turned to frost in the
air before my face. I grabbed the gentle creature’s
neck with both hands and gave it a good hard twist.
I buried the rabbit’s corpse deep beneath the
snow, where even Clifford couldn’t find it.
Katarina was wrong: I have killed before. Out of
mercy.
But not yet out of vengeance.
CHAPTER NINE
Katarina pulls the truck off the dirt road and we get
out. It’s been a day of straight driving and it’s now
three in the morning. We’re in Arkansas, in the
Lake Ouachita State Park. The park entrance was
closed so Katarina broke through a chain barrier
and snuck the truck in, off-roading in the dark of the
woods until we came to the main camp road.
We’ve been here before, though I don’t
remember it. Katarina says we camped here when I
was much younger, and that she had thought it
would make a good burial site for my Chest, if it
ever came to that.
It has, apparently, come to that.
Outside the truck I can hear the lake lapping
weakly at the shore. Katarina and I walk through the
trees, following its sound. I carry the Chest in my
arms. We’ve decided it’s too cumbersome and too
dangerous to hold on to. Katarina says it must not
fall into Mogadorian hands.
I don’t press her on this point, though there is a
dark implication to this task that haunts me. If
Katarina thinks it’s come to the point of burying the
Chest to keep it safe, then she must think our
capture has become likely. Perhaps inevitable.
I shiver in the cool of the night, while swatting
mosquitoes away. There are more of them the
closer we get to the water’s edge.
We finally come to the shore. In the middle of the
lake, I see a small green island, and I know
Katarina well enough to know what she’s thinking.
“I’ll do it,” she says. But she only barely gets the
words out. She is exhausted, on the brink of
collapse. She hasn’t slept in days. I’ve barely slept
either, only a few quick minutes here and there in
the car. But that’s more than Katarina’s had, and I
know she needs rest.
“Lie down,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
Katarina makes a few weak protests, but before
long she’s lying on the ground by the shore. “Rest,” I
say. I take the blanket she brought out to use as a
towel and instead use it to drape her, to hide her
from the mosquitoes.
I strip off my clothes, then grab the Chest tight
and step into the water. It’s bracing at first, but once
I’m submerged it’s actually fairly warm. I begin an
awkward doggy paddle, using one arm to stroke
through the water and the other to clutch the Chest.
I’ve never swum at night before, and it takes all of
my will not to imagine hands reaching up from the
murky depths to grab at my legs and pull me under.
I stay focused on my goal.
I arrive at the island after what feels like an hour
but is more likely ten minutes. I step out of the
water, trembling as the air hits my bare skin, and
walk awkwardly over the stones littering the shore. I
walk to the center of the small island. It is nearly
round, and probably less than an acre, so it doesn’t
take long to reach.
I dig a hole three feet deep, which takes
considerably longer than the swim out. By the end
my hands are bleeding from clawing through the
rough dirt, stinging more and more with each
barehanded shovel through the soil.
I place the Chest in the hole. I am reluctant to let it
go, though I have never seen its contents, never
even opened it. I consider saying a prayer over it,
the source of so much potential and promise.
I decide against praying. Instead, I just kick dirt
into the hole until it’s covered, and smooth over the
mound.
I know I may never see my Chest again.
I return to the water and swim back to Katarina.
CHAPTER TEN
It’s been a week since we arrived in Upstate New
York. We’re at a small motel adjacent to an apple
orchard and a neighborhood soccer field. Katarina
has been plotting our next move.
There have been no suspicious announcements
on the news or on the internet. This gives us some
measure of hope for the future of Lorien, and also
that the Mogadorians’ trail on us has gone cold.
It’s silly but I feel ready to fight. I may not have
been back at the motel, but I am now. I don’t care if I
don’t have my Legacies. It is better to fight than to
run.
“You don’t mean that,” she says. “We must be
prudent.”
So we wait. Katarina’s heart has gone out of
training but we still do as best we can, push-ups
and shadowboxing in our room during the day,
more elaborate drills out in the unlit corners of the
soccer field at night.
During the day I’m allowed to wander through the
orchards, smelling the sweet rot of fallen apples.
Katarina has told me not to play on the soccer field
during the day, or talk to the children who practice
on it. She wants to continue to keep a low profile.
But I can watch the field from behind a tree at the
edge of the orchard. It’s a girls’ team playing today.
The girls are all in purple jerseys and bright white
shorts. They’re about my age. From beneath the
shade of the apple tree I wonder what it would be
like to give myself to something as light and
inconsequential as a game of soccer. I imagine I’d
be good at it: I love being physical, I’m strong and
quick. No: I’d be great at it.
But it’s not for me to play games of no value.
I feel envy creep up my throat like bile. It’s a new
sensation for me. I am usually resigned to my fate.
But something about this time on the road, about
the near miss with the Mogadorians, has opened
me to hating these girls with their easy lives.
But I choke it down. I need to save my spite for
the Mogs.
That night we allow ourselves to watch a little TV
before bed. It is a luxury Katarina usually denies
me, as she thinks it rots my brain and dulls my
senses. But even Katarina softens sometimes.
I curl up next to Katarina on the queen bed. She’s
turned the TV to a movie about a woman who lives
in New York City and complains about how hard it
is to find a good man. My attention wanders quickly
away from the screen to Katarina’s face, which has
gone soft with attention to the film’s plot. She has
succumbed to it.
She catches me looking at her, and turns red in
an instant. “I’m allowed to be sappy sometimes.”
She turns back to the screen. “I can’t help it. He’s
handsome.”
I look back at the TV. The woman is now yelling
at the handsome man about how he’s a “sexist pig.”
I’ve seen very few movies in my life but I can
already guess how this one ends. The man is
handsome, I suppose, though I’m not as transfixed
by him as Katarina is.
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Back on Lorien, yes. I was married.”
My heart seizes, and I blush at my own selfabsorption.
How could I have never asked her this
before? How could I not have known that she had a
husband, a family? I hesitate before asking another
question, because I can only assume her husband
died in the Mogadorian invasion.
My heart breaks for my Katarina.
I change the subject. “But since we’ve been on
Earth?”
She laughs again. “You’ve been with me the
whole time. I think you’d know if I had!”
I laugh too, though my amusement is mixed with
sadness. Katarina couldn’t have had a boyfriend
even if she wanted one—and it’s all because of me.
Because she’s too busy protecting me.
She raises an eyebrow. “Why so many questions
all of a sudden? Do you have a crush? Seen any
cute boys out on the soccer field?” She reaches
over and pinches my side, tickling me. I squirm
away, laughing.
“No,” I say, and it’s the truth. Boys practice out
there some days and I watch them, but usually just
to measure their athleticism and reflexes and to
compare them to my own. I don’t think I could ever
like any of them. I don’t think I could love anyone
who wasn’t locked into the struggle with me. I could
never respect someone who wasn’t part of the war
against the Mogs, to save Lorien.
Back on the TV, the woman is standing in the
rain, tears streaming down her face, telling the
handsome man that she’s changed her mind, that
love is all that matters after all.
“Katarina?” I ask. She turns to me. I don’t even
have to say it out loud; she knows me well.
She switches the channels until we find an action
movie. We watch it together until we fall asleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day after drills and studies I make it back
out to the orchard. It’s a warm day and I dodge from
the shade of one tree to another as I stroll. I walk
over mushy, sweet-stinking apples, feeling them
turn to goop beneath my feet.
Despite the heat of the sun, the air is crisp and
pleasant today, not too hot or cold. I feel weirdly
happy and hopeful as I tramp around.
Katarina is booking us plane tickets to Australia
today. She thinks it’ll make as good a hiding place
as any. I’m already excited for the journey.
I turn, ready to walk back to the motel, when a
soccer ball comes rolling past me, scudding over
broken apples. Without thinking I leap forward and
hop on it with one foot, stopping it in its tracks.
“You gonna give that back or what?” Startled, I
turn around. A pretty girl with a chestnut ponytail
stares at me from the edge of the orchard. She’s
dressed in soccer clothes and her mouth is open,
smacking on bubble gum.
I step off the ball, pivot around it, and give it a
quick kick, right to the girl. I use more strength than I
should: when she clutches it with her hands, the
force of the impact nearly sends her off her feet.
“Easy!” she yells.
“Sorry,” I say, instantly ashamed.
“Good kick, though,” says the girl, sizing me up.
“Damn good kick.”
I am on the field moments later. The girls’ team was
short a player for scrimmage and the gum-chewing
girl, Tyra, somehow convinced the coach to let me
play.
I don’t know the rules of soccer but I pick them up
soon enough. I owe Katarina for that, for keeping
my brain sharp enough to process rules quickly.
The coach, a dour, squat lady with a whistle in her
mouth, puts me in as a fullback and I quickly
establish myself as a force. The girls on my team
catch on fast and soon enough they’re putting up a
wall, forcing the other team’s forwards to run past
me on the right side of the field.
Not one of them gets through without losing their
hold on the ball.
Before I know it I’m covered in sweat, blades of
grass sticking to the sweat on my calves—
fortunately, I wore high socks today, so no one can
see my scars. I’m dizzy and happy from the sun and
the appreciative cheers of my teammates.
There’s a reversal to my left. Tyra’s seized the
ball from a charging opponent before getting
chased by another member of the opposing team.
I’m the only free player and she manages to kick
the ball right at me.
Suddenly, almost the entire opposing team is on
my tail. My teammates chase after them, trying to
keep them away from me, as I make a mad dash
with the ball towards the goal. I can see the goalie
steeling herself, ready for my approach. My
opponents break free of my blocking teammates.
Even though I am still nearly half the field from the
box, I know it’s my only chance.
I kick.
The ball swings in a long, curving arc, propelled
like a jet. I acted too fast, too thoughtlessly, and
have aimed right at the goalie’s position. I’m sure
she’ll catch it.
She does. But I’ve kicked the ball with such
power that it lifts her off her feet and the ball goes
out of her hands, spinning against the net behind
her.
My teammates cheer. Our opponents join in; this
was only a scrimmage, so they can acknowledge
my skills without sacrificing too much pride.
Tyra gives me a pat on the shoulder. I can tell
she’s excited about having been the one to coax
me out of the orchard. The coach pulls me aside
and asks where I go to school. She clearly wants
me for her team.
“Not from here,” I mumble. “Sorry.” She shrugs
and congratulates me on my playing.
I grin and walk away from the field. I can tell the
girls are eager for my friendship, standing in a
cluster and watching me depart. I imagine a
different life for myself, a life like theirs. It has its
charms, but I know my place is by Katarina’s side.
I walk back to the motel, doing my best to wipe
the grin of victory off my face. I feel a childish urge
to blab about the game to Katarina, even though
she told me not to play. In spite of myself I find I’m
running back to the room, ready to start crowing.
The door’s unlocked and I swing it open, still
grinning like an idiot.
The grin doesn’t last long.
There are ten men in the room—Mogadorians.
Katarina is tied to the motel’s desk chair, her mouth
gagged and her forehead bloody, her eyes filling
with tears at the sight of me.
I turn to run, but then I see them. More men, some
in cars, some just standing there, all over the
parking lot. There must be thirty Mogadorians total.
We’ve been caught.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My hands are cuffed and my legs are bound in
rope. Katarina’s are too, though I can’t see her. The
Mogadorians threw us in the back of a big rig’s
trailer, tied together, so the only proof of Katarina I
have is the place where our spines touch.
The trailer bucks wildly and I know we are on the
highway, going somewhere fast.
Katarina is still gagged, but they never bothered
to gag me. Either they sensed I would stay quiet to
keep Katarina safe, or they figured the roar of the
road would swallow any sound I made.
I don’t have any idea where we’re being taken or
what the Mogadorians plan to do to us once we get
there. I assume the worst, but I still murmur soft,
soothing things to Katarina in the dark of the trailer.
I know she’d be doing the same thing for me if she
could.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “We’ll be okay.”
I know we won’t. I know with sick certainty that
this journey will end in our deaths.
Katarina presses her back against mine, in a
gesture of love and encouragement. Hands tied
and mouth gagged, it’s the only way she can
communicate with me.
It’s dark in the trailer save for a small sliver of
light shining through a break in the trailer’s
aluminum roof. Sunlight dribbles in through the
crack. Sitting in the dark, musty chill of the trailer, it
is strange to think it’s day outside. Ordinary day.
I’m achy everywhere, sore from sitting and too
uncomfortable to sleep. In my exhausted delirium, I
have the ridiculous thought that I should’ve stayed
behind with the soccer girls. At least long enough to
have some of the Gatorade the coach offered me.
Something murmurs inside the trailer. A low,
guttural growl.
There is a cage, tucked up against the front of
the trailer. I can dimly make out its thick steel bars
in the dark.
“What is it?” I ask. Katarina mumbles through her
gagged mouth, and I feel bad for asking her a
question she can’t possibly answer.
I lean forward, as far as I can, pulling Katarina
with me. I can hear Katarina protest from beneath
her gag, but curiosity pushes me forward. I stretch
into the darkness, bringing my face as close to the
steel bars as I can.
Another rustle in the dark.
Another captive? I wonder. Some kind of beast?
My heart fills with pity.
“Hello?” I speak into the void. The person or
creature makes low whimpers of distress. “Are you
okay?”
Jaws snap with sudden force against the bars of
the cage, eyes the size of fists flashing red in the
dark. The breath of the beast sends my hair back. I
pull away in terror and disgust, the smell so
revolting I almost retch.
I try to scoot away, but the huge beast,
unappeased, keeps its head pressed to the bars,
its red eyes fixed on me. I know that were it not for
the bars, I’d be dead already.
This is no captive. No fallen ally. This is a piken.
Katarina told me about these beasts before,
savage accomplices and hunters for the
Mogadorians, but I had taken them for fairy tales.
Katarina helps me nudge us back towards the
rear, giving me more space to pull away from the
beast. As I back farther away, so does the piken,
disappearing into the dark of its cage.
I know I am safe for the moment. But I also know
this animal, this foul, fearsome creature, may be
pitted against me in the coming days or weeks. My
stomach turns in fear and helpless rage: I don’t
know whether to vomit or pass out or both.
I nestle my damp head against Katarina’s,
wishing this nightmare away.
I fall into an agitated half-sleep, awoken only by
Katarina’s voice.
“Six. Wake up. Six.”
I snap to.
“Your gag?” I ask.
“I worked it off. It’s taken this whole time to get it
off.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly. I don’t know what else to say,
what good it does us to speak. We are caught,
without defense.
“They bugged our car. Back in Texas. That’s how
they found us.”
How stupid of us, I think. How careless.
“It was my job to think of that,” she says, as if
reading my thoughts. “Never mind that. I need you
to prepare for what’s coming.”
What’s that? I think. Death?
“They will torture you for information. They will . . .
” I hear Katarina succumb to weeping, but she pulls
herself together and resumes. “They will inflict
unthinkable torments on you. But you must bear
them.”
“I will,” I say, as firmly as I can.
“They will use me to make you bend. You can’t let
them . . . no matter what. . . . ”
My heart freezes in my chest. They will kill
Katarina in front of me if they think it will make me
talk.
“Promise me, Six. Please . . . they can’t know
your number. We can’t give them any more power
over the others than they already have, or power
over you. The less they know about the charm, the
better. Promise me. You have to.”
Imagining the horrors to come, I can’t. I know my
vow is all Katarina wants to hear, but I just can’t.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I have been in my cell for three days. I have nothing
in here with me but a bucket of water, another
bucket to use as a toilet, and an empty metal tray
from yesterday’s meal.
There is not a speck of food left on the tray: I
licked it clean yesterday. When I woke up in my cell
three days ago it had been my intention to mount a
hunger strike against my captors, to refuse all food
and water until they let me see my Katarina. But two
days passed with no food or water from them
anyway. I had begun to imagine I’d been forgotten
in my cell. By the time the food arrived, I was so far
out of my mind with hopelessness that I forgot my
original plan and wolfed down the slop they shoved
through the little slot of my cell door.
The odd thing is that I wasn’t even particularly
hungry. My spirits were low but I didn’t feel weak
from hunger. My pendant throbbed dully against my
chest during my days in the dark, and I began to
suspect the charm was keeping me safe from
hunger and dehydration. But even though I wasn’t
starving, or dehydrated, I’d never gone so long
without food or water in my life, and the experience
of being deprived drove me to a kind of temporary
madness. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty physically, but I
was mentally.
The walls are made of heavy, rough stone. It feels
less like a prison cell and more like a makeshift
burrow. It seems to have been carved out of a
natural stone formation instead of built. I take this
as a clue that we’re in some natural structure: a
cave, or the inside of a mountain.
I know I may never find out the answer.
I have attempted to chip at the walls of my cell,
but even I know there is nothing I can do. In my
attempts, all I accomplished was to wear my nails
down until the tips of my fingers bled.
The only thing left now is to sit in my cell and try to
hold on to my sanity.
That is my sole mission: to not let my solitary
confinement drive me to madness. I can let it
harden me, I can let it toughen me, but I must not let
it make me crazy. It’s a strange challenge, staying
sane. If you focus too hard on maintaining your
sanity, the slipperiness of the task can only make
you crazier. On the other hand, if you forget your
mission, if you try to maintain your sanity by not
thinking about the matter at all, you can find your
mind wandering in such dizzying patterns that you
wind up, again, at madness. The trick is to forge a
middle ground between the two: a detachment, a
state of neutrality.
I focus on my breathing. In, out. In, out.
When I’m not stretching or doing push-ups in the
corner, this is what I do: just breathe.
In, out. In, out.
Katarina calls this meditating. She used to try to
encourage me to do meditation exercises to keep
my focus. She felt it would aid me in combat. I never
followed her advice. It seemed too boring. But now
that I’m in my cell, I find it is a lifeline, the best way
for me to keep my sanity.
I am meditating when the door to my cell opens. I
turn around, my eyes straining to adjust to the light
coming in from the hall. A Mog stands in the light,
backed by several others.
I see he’s holding a bucket, and for a second I
imagine he’s brought fresh water for me to drink.
Instead, he steps forward and empties the bucket
over my head, dousing me in cold water. It is a
harsh indignity and I shiver at the cold, but it’s also
bracing, restorative. It brings me back to life, back
to my pure hatred of these bastard Mogs.
He lifts me off my feet, dripping wet, and wraps a
blindfold around my head.
He drops me again and I struggle to stay upright.
“Come,” he says, shoving me out of my cell and
into the hall.
The blindfold is thick, so I am walking in total
blackness. But my senses are keen and I manage
a nearly straight line. I can also sense other Mogs
all around me.
As I walk, my feet cold against the rough stone
floors, I hear the varied screams and moans of my
fellow prisoners. Some are human, some are
animal. They must be locked inside cells like mine. I
have no idea who they are or what the Mogs want
them for. But I am too focused on my survival right
now to care: I am deaf to pity.
After a long march, the Mog leading the guard
says “Right!” and shoves me to the right. He shoves
me hard, and I land on my knees, scraping them
against stone.
I struggle to get to my feet, but I am picked up
before I can, two Mogs throwing me against a wall.
My hands are raised and chained to a steel cord
dangling from the ceiling. My torso is stretched, my
toes just barely touching the ground.
They remove my blindfold. I’m in another cell; this
one is lit, brightly, and my eyes feel like they will
burn out adjusting from three days of nearly total
darkness. Once they do, I see her.
Katarina.
She is chained to the ceiling, as I am. She looks
far worse than me, bloody, bruised, and beaten.
They started with her.
“Katarina,” I whisper. “Are you okay . . . ?”
She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with
tears. “Don’t look at me,” she says, her eyes drifting
down to the floor.
A new Mog enters the room. He is wearing, of all
things, a white polo shirt and a crisp pair of khaki
pants. His haircut is short. His shoes—loafers—
scuff quietly across the floor. He could be a
suburban dad, or the manager of a neighborhood
store.
“Howdy,” he says. He grins at me, his hands in
his pocket. His teeth are white like in a toothpaste
commercial.
“Hope you’re enjoying your stay with us so far.” I
notice the bristly hair on his tan arms. He is
handsome, in a bland way, with a compact but
strong-looking build. “These caves can be awfully
drafty, but we try to make it as cozy as possible. I
trust you have two buckets in your cell? Wouldn’t
want you to go without.”
His hand reaches out so casually that for a
second I think he is going to caress my cheek.
Instead, he pinches it, hard, giving my flesh a twist.
“You are our guests of honor, after all,” he says, the
venom at last creeping into his salesman’s voice.
I hate myself for doing it, but I begin to cry. My
legs give out entirely, and I dangle hard against my
cuffs. I don’t allow myself to sob audibly, though: he
can see me cry, but I won’t let him hear it.
“Okay, ladies,” he says, clapping his hands
together and approaching a little desk tucked into
the corner of the cell. He opens a drawer and pulls
out a vinyl case, which he unwraps on the surface of
the desk. The ceiling light glints off an array of
sharp steel objects. He picks them up, one at a
time, so I can see them all. Scalpels, razors, pliers.
Blades of every kind. A pocket-size electric drill. He
gives it a few nerve-shattering whirs before putting
it down.
He strides over to me, putting his face right up in
mine. He speaks, and his breath forces its way into
my nostrils. I want to retch.
“Do you see all of these?”
I don’t respond. His breath smells like the breath
of the beast in the cage. Despite his bland exterior,
he’s made of the same foul stuff.
“I intend to use each and every one of them on
you and your Cêpan, unless you answer every
question I ask truthfully. If you don’t, I assure you that
both of you will wish you were dead.”
He gives a hateful little grin and walks back over
to the desk, picking up a thin-looking razor blade
with a thick rubber handle. He returns to me,
rubbing the dull side of the blade against my cheek.
It’s cold.
“I’ve been hunting you kids for a very long time,”
he says. “We’ve killed two of you, and now we have
one right here, whatever number you are. As you
might imagine, I hope you are Number Three.”
I try to inch away from him, pressing my back
hard against the cell wall, wishing I could disappear
into the stone. He smiles at me, again pressing the
dull side of the razor into my cheek, harder this
time.
“Oops,” he says, tauntingly. “That’s not the right
side.”
With a single dexterous motion, he reverses the
blade in his wrist, the sharp side now facing me.
“Let’s try it this way, shall we.”
With reptilian pleasure he brings the blade to the
side of my face and swipes hard against my flesh. I
feel a familiar warmth, but no pain, and watch with
shock as his own cheek begins to bleed instead.
shock as his own cheek begins to bleed instead.
Blood flows from his wound as it splits open like
a seam. He drops the blade, clutching his face, and
begins stamping around the room in pain and
frustration. He kicks over the desk, sending his
instruments of torture scattering across the cell,
then flees the room. The Mog guards who’d been
standing behind him exchange indecipherable
glances.
Before I even have a chance to say anything to
Katarina, the Mogs move forward, unshackle me,
and drag me back to my cell.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two days pass. In the dark of my cell I now have
more than madness and boredom to contend with. I
must also work to burn the image of a bloody and
broken Katarina from my mind. I want to remember
Katrina as I know her: wise and strong.
I continue with my breathing exercises. They help.
But not much.
Eventually the cell door opens, and again I’m
doused with cold water, gagged this time,
blindfolded, and dragged back to the same cell.
Once I’ve been chained to the ceiling, my blindfold
is removed.
Katarina is right where I last saw her, as broken
and battered as before. I can only hope she’s been
let down at some point.
The same Mog as before sits across from us, on
the edge of the desk, a bandage across his sliced
cheek. I can see he is straining to be as menacing
as he was before. But he regards us with a new
fear.
I hate him. More than anyone I have ever met. If I
could tear him apart with my bare hands I would. If I
couldn’t use my hands, I would rip him apart with my
teeth.
He sees me looking at him. He leaps forward
suddenly, tearing the gag from my mouth. He wields
the rubber-handled razor in front of my face again,
twisting it, letting the ceiling light dance across its
edge.
“I don’t know what number you are . . . ” he says. I
cringe involuntarily, expecting him to try and cut me
again, but he holds back. Then, with sadistic
deliberateness, he crosses over to Katarina, pulling
on her hair. Still gagged, she manages only a
whimper. “But you’re going to tell me right now.”
“No!” I scream. He grins with satisfaction at my
anguish, like he’s been waiting for it. He presses
the blade to Katarina’s arm and slides it down her
flesh. Her arm opens up, pouring blood. She
buckles against her chains, tears flooding her face.
I try to scream but my voice gives out: all that
comes out is a high, pained gasp.
He makes another cut beside the first, this one
even deeper. Katarina succumbs to the pain and
goes limp.
With my teeth, I think.
“I can do this all day,” he says. “Do you
understand me? You’re going to tell me everything I
want to know, starting with what number you are.”
I close my eyes. My heart burns. I feel like a
volcano, only there’s no opening, no outlet for the
rage filling up inside of me.
When I open my eyes he’s back at the desk,
tossing a large blade from his left hand to his right
hand and back. Playfully, waiting for my gaze. Now
that he’s got it, he holds the blade up so I can see
its size.
It begins to glow in his hands, changing colors:
violet one second, green the next.
“Now . . . your number. Four? Seven? Are you
lucky enough to be Number Nine?”
Katarina, barely conscious, shakes her head. I
know she’s signalling me to keep silent. She has
kept her silence this long.
I struggle to keep quiet. But I can’t handle it, can’t
watch him hurt my Katarina. My Cêpan.
He walks over to Katarina, still wielding the
blade. Katarina murmurs something beneath her
gag. Curious, he lowers it from her mouth.
She spits a thick wad of blood onto the floor by
his feet. “Torturing me to get to her?”
He eyes her hatefully, impatient. “Yes, that’s
about right.”
Katarina manages a scornful, slow-building
laugh. “It took you two whole days to come up with
that plan?”
I can see his cheeks turn red at the well-aimed
jab. Even Mogadorians have their pride.
“You must be some kind of idiot,” she howls. I
thrill at Katarina’s impudence, proud of her
defiance but afraid of what the consequence will
be.
“I have all the time in the galaxies for this,” he
says flatly. “While you are in here with me, we are
out there with the rest of you. Don’t think anything
has stopped us from moving forward just because
we have you. We know more than you think. But we
want to know everything.”
He cruelly strikes Katarina with the butt of the
knife before she can speak again.
He turns to me.
“If you don’t want to see her sliced into little
pieces, then you better start talking, and fast. And
every single word that comes out better be true. I
will know if you’re lying.”
I know he isn’t playing games, and I can’t bear to
see him hurt Katarina again. If I talk, maybe he’ll be
merciful. Maybe he’ll leave her alone.
It comes out so fast I barely have time to order
my thoughts, so fast I barely know what I’m saying
when I say it. I have one intention, but it’s a murky
one: to tell him everything I know that he can’t use
against me or the other Loriens. I tell him pointless
details about my previous journeys with Katarina,
our previous identities. I tell him about my Chest,
but I don’t give its burial location, claiming it was
lost in our journey. Once I start talking I’m afraid to
stop. I know that if I pause to measure my words he
will smell my deceit.
Then he asks me what number I am.
I know what he wants to hear: that I am number
Four. I can’t be Three, or else they would have been
able to kill me. But if I’m Four then all he’ll need is to
find and kill Three before he can begin his bloody
work on me.
“I am Number Eight,” I say finally. I am so scared I
say it, with a desperate, cringing sigh, that I know
that he’s fooled. His face falls.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I croak out.
His disappointment is short-lived. He begins to
beam, victorious. I may not be the number he
wanted, but he got my number out of me. Or what
he thinks is my number.
I search out Katarina’s eyes, and though she is
barely conscious, I can see the faintest hint of
gratitude in her eyes. She is proud of me for giving
him the wrong number.
“You really are weak, aren’t you?” He stares at
me with contempt. Let him, I think. I feel a surge of
superiority over him: he was dumb enough to
believe my lie.
“Your relatives on Lorien, as easy as they fell, at
least they were fighters. At least they had some
least they were fighters. At least they had some
bravery and dignity. But you . . .” He shakes his
head at me, then spits on the floor. “You have
nothing, Number Eight.”
At that, he raises his arm with the blade and
thrusts it, deep into Katarina. I hear the sound of
bone cracking, of the knife pushing through her
sternum, right into her heart.
I scream. My eyes search out Katarina’s. She
meets my gaze for one last instant. I will myself past
my chains towards her, struggling to be there for
her in her last moment.
But her last moment goes fast.
My Katarina is dead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Weeks turn into months.
Some days they don’t feed me, but my pendant
keeps me from dying of thirst or starvation. What’s
harder is the absence of sunlight, the endless
immersion in darkness. Sometimes I lose track of
where my body ends and the darkness begins. I
lose sense of my own existence, my own borders. I
am a cloud of ink in the night. Black on black.
I feel forgotten. Incarcerated, with no hope of
escape, and with no information that can lead them
to the others, I am useless to them for now. Until
they’ve killed the ones before me, until my extinction
date.
The urge to survive has gone dormant in me. I
live not because I want to but because I can’t die.
Sometimes, I wish I could.
Even so, I force myself to do the work of staying
as fit and limber and as ready for combat as I can.
Push-ups, situps, games of Shadow.
In these games of Shadow I have learned to play
Katarina’s part as well as my own, giving myself
instructions, describing my imagined attackers,
before I respond with my commands.
I loved this game before, but now I hate it. Still, in
Katarina’s honor, I continue to play.
As I was lying to the Mog, I thought I was doing it
so he would spare Katarina, let her live. But as
soon as I saw his knife pierce her heart I realized
what I was really doing: hastening her end. I was
giving him everything I knew so he would finish her
off, so she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, so I
wouldn’t have to watch her suffer anymore.
I tell myself that was the right thing to do. That it’s
what Katarina would’ve wanted. She was in such
pain.
But I’ve been without her so long at this point that
I would give anything for another moment with her,
even if she had to suffer unimaginable torments for
it. I want her back.
The Mogadorians continue to test the boundaries of
my conditional immortality. These trials take time to
plan and construct. But every week or so I am
dragged out of my cell and brought to another, juryrigged
for my destruction.
The first week after Katarina’s death I was
brought to a small chamber and made to stand on a
sharp steel grill several feet off the floor. The door
was sealed behind me. I waited for a few minutes
as the room filled with noxious-looking gas, curling
up from beneath the grill in green tendrils. I covered
my mouth, trying not to breathe it, but I could only
hold my breath for so long. I gave up, gulping in
their poison, only to discover it smelled like the
coolest and freshest of mountain breezes to me.
Furious Mogs dragged me out of the room minutes
later, pushing me quickly back to my cell, but I could
see the pile of dust beside the door on the way out.
The Mog who had pushed the button releasing the
gas had died in my place.
The next week they tried to drown me; the week
after, they tried burning me alive. None of these
affected me, of course. Last week, they served me
food laced so heavily with arsenic I swear I could
taste each poison grain. They had brought a cake
to my cell. They had no reason to treat me with
dessert, and I knew at once that it was their hope to
trick me with the cake—and in turn trick the charm.
They hoped that if I didn’t know my life was in
danger, the charm wouldn’t work.
Of course I suspected them at once.
But I ate the cake anyway. It was delicious.
By eavesdropping against the slot of my cell
door, I later learned that not one but three
Mogadorians perished from the attempted
poisoning.
How many Mogadorians does it take to bake a
cake? I asked myself later. Then, with malevolent
satisfaction, I answered: Three.
I allow myself to imagine a happy outcome in
which the Mogadorians, who seem to place little
value even on their own lives, keep trying to kill me
and end up dying in the attempt, until there are no
Mogadorians left. I know it is just a fantasy, but it’s a
happy one.
I have no idea how long I’ve been here. But I have
grown so hardened to their execution attempts that I
am fearless as they drag me through the halls to yet
another. This time I am thrown into a large, drafty
space with dim lights, larger than any room I’ve
been in so far. I know I am being watched through
one-way glass or a video monitor, so I wear my
face in a sneer. A sneer that reads: Bring it on.
Then I hear it. A low, guttural moan. It’s so deep I
can feel it, rattling through the floor. I whirl around to
see, deep in the shadows of the room, a large steel
cage. It looks familiar.
I hear jaws snapping hungrily, followed by the
sounds of massive lips smacking.
The piken. The beast from our trip out here.
Now I am scared.
There’s a bright flash. Suddenly I’m bathed in
strobing red lights, and the steel bars of the cage
retract.
Weaponless, I fall back against the opposite
corner of the room.
Clever, I think. The Mogs have never pitted me
against a living creature before.
The piken steps out. A four-legged monster, it
stands like a bulldog the size of a rhino: forelegs
bowed, mouth all dripping, sagging jowls. Massive
teeth jut from its mouth like tusks. Its skin is a putrid,
knobby green. It smells of death.
It roars at me, drenching me in a spittle so thick I
fear I will slip on it. Then it charges.
I can’t believe my own body. I’m stiff from solitary
confinement, I haven’t practiced combat in months,
but instinct and adrenaline kick in, and soon
enough I am dodging the beast like a pro,
careening off corners, ducking between its legs.
The piken roars, frustrated, getting more and
more worked up, battering the walls with its head.
I haven’t had this much fun in years, I think, as I
manage to give it a roundhouse kick across the
face.
I land on the ground, beaming from my wellplaced
kick, but I land in one of its spit puddles and
my arms and legs give out in the slime. It’s a
momentary lapse, but it’s enough: The beast has
me in its jaws.
My whole body floods with warmth, and I am sure
that this is the end.
But no pain comes. The creature lets out a long
whimper and then releases me from its jaws. It’s a
five-foot drop from its mouth to the floor and I land
on my knee, which hurts worse than the bite.
I turn to see the piken sprawled out, mouth open,
chest heaving powerfully. A massive crescent of
puncture wounds stud its chest. It took the brunt of
its own bite.
It lets out another low, pitiful moan.
Of course, I think. A Mogadorian beast is as
much a Mogadorian as any of the rest. It’s
susceptible to the charm too.
I whirl around, trying to get the attention of
whoever is watching. It is clear to me that the
creature, though wounded, will live. Left to their own
devices, the Mogs will nurse their beast back to
health so it can live to spoil another day.
I stride over to it, remembering the rabbit I killed
all those years ago in Nova Scotia. I hear the
footsteps of approaching guards and know I must
act fast.
A Mog guard bursts into the room. He wields a
long blade, and is about to swing at me when he
thinks twice, realizing he will only kill himself in the
process.
I use his hesitation to my advantage. I leap off the
ground and hit him with a high swing kick, his blade
clattering to the floor. One more kick to keep him
down, and then I swipe the blade from the floor.
I approach the heaving, panting beast as more
guards enter the room and I bring the blade straight
down, through the piken’s skull.
Dead in an instant.
The guards swarm around me and drag me out
of the cell. I am dazed but happy.
No mercy.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I have come to appreciate the tiny differences in the
food they serve me. It’s always the same gray slop,
some protein and wheat blended into a paste and
ladled onto my serving tray. But sometimes it is
made with more water and less wheat, more wheat
and less protein, etc.
Today is a heavy protein day. I swallow it down
without joy but with some gratitude: my muscles still
hurt from my battle with the piken and the guard,
and I figure the protein will do me good.
I take my last bite and back into the corner.
It is dark in my cell, but there is just enough light
from the foodslot that I can see my feet, and my
hands, and my food tray.
Except today I can’t see my hand. I can see my
left one, but not my right one.
It has taken a long time to hone my vision to this
state of sensitivity in the dark, so I’m furious at its
failure. I wave my right hand in front of my face,
twisting it left and right in my sleeve. But still all I see
is darkness. I slap my face, blink, trying to bring my
vision back.
But still my right hand is a void.
Finally I reach down and pick up my fork, holding
it in front of my face.
I feel a thrill in my stomach as I push it down into
my hand. I don’t want any false hope. I know I can’t
survive any false hope.
But I can see the fork. And I still can’t see my
hand.
At that moment my cell door opens and a lowly
Mog enters. He’s come to retrieve my serving tray.
All it takes is the light from the hallway flooding the
room to confirm my suspicion.
My right hand is invisible.
My first Legacy has arrived.
I gasp. Of all the skills I could develop, this seems
like the one—the only one—that might get me out of
this prison alive.
The Mog grunts at me suspiciously, and I tuck my
hollow-looking sleeve behind my back, hoping he
didn’t see. I am dizzy with joy.
He’s a stupid one, and doesn’t notice a thing. He
lifts my tray from the floor and exits the room.
I am plunged back into darkness, and wait
impatiently for my eyes to adjust to the point where I
can see my new ability again. There it is. Hollow
sleeve, invisible hand. I roll up my sleeve and look
at my arm. My hand is completely invisible, my
forearm milky, nearly translucent, but by my elbow
I’m fully visible.
I can see I’ll need to practice this skill.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It has taken two days, but I have learned to wield my
first Legacy. My control is not perfect yet:
sometimes my invisibility stutters, and I panic,
struggling to restore it. Turning it off and on is not
like turning a light switch up or down; it takes a
certain kind of concentration.
Katarina’s breathing exercises have come in
handy. When I struggle to control my invisibility, I
turn my focus to my breathing—in, out—and then
back to the ability. After I’m able to make my hand
invisible at will, I start practicing with other parts of
my body. It’s like flexing a new muscle—it feels
strange at first but quickly feels natural. Next, I let
my whole body fade out. It’s no more difficult than
making my hand disappear; in fact, it seems to
take less precision.
I am ready.
I go fully invisible and wait for the next food drop.
It takes some of my energy to maintain the
invisibility, energy I wish I could conserve, but I have
only that single instant for my snare to work and I
can’t risk them seeing me transform.
Finally, a Mog appears. The food slot opens, the
tray is tossed in. It shuts.
I worry the snare hasn’t worked. Maybe the Mogs
don’t bother to check on me, to look for me in my
cell? In which case my power is totally useless—
The slot opens again. Two beady eyes peer into
the shadows, squinting.
In, out. Sometimes nerves can send me back
into visibility and I can’t spoil this moment. In, out.
The worst-case scenario is them discovering my
power before I can use it against them.
It is a strange thing, willing someone to see my
absence.
The slot closes again. I hear the Mog walk away
and my heart plummets. Where’d he go? Didn’t he
notice that I’m not here—
The door opens suddenly. Soon, my tiny cell is
filled with Mogadorian guards, four in total. I press
myself against the far corner, hiding. They are
huddled close, conferring about my apparent
disappearance. No way out.
One leaves and runs down the hall. His exit
creates more space in the room, less chance that
someone will stumble onto me, and I breathe
easier.
One of them whirls his arm in frustration, and I
have to duck as quickly as I can. He barely misses
me. Close call.
I dodge, quiet as a cat, into the corner nearest
the door. Two of the Mogs stand deep in the cell,
but one of them blocks the exit.
Move, I think. Move.
I can hear footsteps, racing towards the cell.
More Mogs. I know that all it will take is one Mog
brushing my shoulder or sensing my breath for me
and my new Legacy to be discovered. The
footsteps are getting closer. The Mog by the door
steps further into the cell to accommodate those on
their way and I lunge out into the hallway.
I nearly fall on the stone floor outside my cell, but I
catch my balance just in time. Flesh slapping
against stone: I surely would’ve been discovered.
against stone: I surely would’ve been discovered.
A horde of Mogs is racing down the hall towards
my cell from the left. No choice but to run right. I
take off, landing as delicately as I can. Quiet as a
cat.
It is a long hall. I struggle to maintain quiet, my
bare feet making only the faintest of noises as I run
and run and run. At first I am scared, but then I can
feel it: freedom, up ahead.
I go faster, landing on arched feet to mute the
noise. My heart leaps up into my chest as I exit the
hall and find myself in the center of the Mogadorian
complex, a massive cavern fed by many other
tunnels like the one I just came from. Closed-circuit
security cameras are everywhere. When I spot
them, my chest leaps with fear, but then I remember
I am invisible, to cameras as well as to Mogs.
For how long, I don’t know.
A siren is pulled. I should’ve expected that.
Flashing security lights go off as the cavern is filled
with the alarm’s shriek. The high walls of the cave
only amplify it.
I take off again, choosing a tunnel at random.
I pass other cells like mine, then steel doors that
probably hold more prisoners.
I wish I had time to help them. But all I can do is
run, and keep running, as long as my invisibility will
hold.
I dodge left off the tunnel, passing a large, glasswindowed
room to my right. It is illuminated by
bright fluorescents. Inside hundreds and hundreds
of computers in rows hum and sift data, no doubt
looking for signs of my fellow Garde. I keep running.
I pass another laboratory, also glass-windowed,
this one to my left. Mogadorians in white plastic
suits and goggles stand inside. Scientists? Bomb
chemists? I am past them before I have a chance to
see what they’re doing. I can only assume
something awful.
My brain is split by the siren, and I want to close
my ears. But I need my hands to keep my balance
as I run, to keep my footsteps dainty and soundless.
I have the strange thought that for all my bluntness,
my tomboyishness, my warrior’s training, I now find
myself calling on such a feminine skill—being
lightfooted, like a ballerina.
The tunnel feeds into another center, this one
even larger than the other. I had assumed that what
I saw earlier was the heart of the complex, but this
is truly it: a cavernous hall half a mile wide and so
dark and murky I can barely see across to the other
side.
I am covered in sweat, out of breath. It is hot in
here. The walls and ceiling are lined with huge
wooden trellises keeping the cave from collapsing
in on itself. Narrow ledges chiseled into the rock
face connect the tunnels dotting the dark walls.
Above me, several long arches have been carved
from the mountain itself to bridge the divide from
one side to the other.
I catch my breath and wipe my brow, to keep my
own sweat from blinding me.
There are so many tunnels, none of them
marked. My heart plummets. I realize I could run
and run through this complex for days without
finding the way out. I imagine myself like a rat in a
laboratory maze, scampering and weaving to no
avail.
Then I see it: a single pinprick of natural light, up
above. There must be a way out up there. It will be a
steep climb up these walls, but I can do it. As I grab
the trellis to hoist myself up, I hear it.
“She will be found.”
It’s him. Katarina’s executioner.
He is speaking to a few guard Mogs, on a
walkway above me. The guards tramp off. My eyes
pin to the executioner as he takes a detour back
into the complex.
I must choose. Between escape and vengeance.
The light above beckons me like water in a desert. I
wonder exactly how long it’s been since I last saw
sunlight.
But I turn around.
I choose vengeance.CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I follow him through the halls on tiptoe, careful to
maintain my invisibility—I’ve learned enough about
my Legacy by now to know that any surprise or
break in concentration can cause me to fade back
in.
I watch as he ducks into a cell. I sneak in behind
him as the door shuts.
Unaware he has company, he walks to the corner
of the room and begins to tidy up. I look down.
There is blood on the floor, his weapons are out. He
has tortured and killed others.
I have never killed a Mogadorian before. Not
counting the Mogadorians who died trying to kill
me, I have only in my entire life killed a rabbit, and a
piken. To my own shock, I realize I am thirsty for
murder.
I grab a razor from his desk and approach him.
The blade feels good in my hand. It feels right.
I know better than to give him a chance to beg, or
plead, to shake me from my resolve. I clutch him
from behind and slit his throat with one clean slice.
His mouth gurgles and spews blood across the
floor, against my hands. He falls to his knees and
then bursts into ash.
I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.
I open my mouth to speak. That’s for Katarina,
I’m about to say. But I don’t.
I don’t speak because I know it’s a lie.
That wasn’t for Katarina. That was for me.
I emerge from the complex an hour later, exhausted
and struggling to stay invisible as I climb out to the
mountaintop, as I run from the mountain to a hill
opposite. I have to stop to rest, to adapt to the
blinding midday sun.
My translucent skin bakes beneath the sun. I
stare at the mouth of the complex, already hard to
make out from this distance. I don’t trust my
memory, so I pause to memorize its shape, its
precise location.
I am sure Mogs have fanned out through the
complex, looking for me. And I’m sure they have
crawled out of the exit, and are even right now
searching through the trees along these hills.
Let them look.
They’ll never find me.
I run for a few miles through trees, until I come to a
road in a small mining town. I’m running barefoot,
so the road slaps hard against my feet, killing my
joints. I don’t care; I’ll get a pair of sneakers
eventually.
I find a truck idling at the town’s only stoplight. I
lightly hop into the back of the pickup, letting the
truck take me farther and farther away from the
Mogadorian complex. When the trucker stops for
gas a few hours later, I dash, still invisible, into the
cab, rifling through his stuff. I take a handful of
quarters, a pen, a couple scraps of paper, and an
uneaten bag of barbecue chips.
I run behind the gas station and sit in the shade. I
draw a map of the complex’s entrance on one side
of the paper, and a diagram of the tunnels inside as
best as I can remember. It will be a long time before
I put this to use, but I know my memory of their
hideaway is the most valuable thing I possess, and
it must be preserved.
Once I finish the diagram, I throw my head back.
It’s sunset, but I can still feel of the warmth of the sun
on my face. I open the bag of chips and eat them in
three messy bites. The salty-sweet chips taste
delicious, wonderful.
I am in a motel room, at long last. For a full day I
wandered, driven by the urge for shelter and rest.
There was no way I could afford a room, and in my
desperation I began to consider thievery. Pick a
few pockets, plunk down the cash I’d need. Using
my Legacy, stealing would be a piece of cake.
But then it occurred to me I wouldn’t need to
steal, not yet anyway. Instead I went into the lobby of
a small motel, went invisible, and snuck into the
hotel manager’s office. I lifted the key for room 21
off the hook. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get
the floating key past the crowded lobby and I
paused for a moment, frozen in the office. But soon
the key disappeared too, in my palm.
I’d never made an object disappear before, only
myself and my clothes. A hint of my Legacy’s other
uses.
I’ve been in the room for a couple hours. So I feel
less like I’m thieving, I sleep above the covers, in
the chill of the room’s AC.
I catch myself: I’ve been invisible the whole time
I’ve been in the room, clenched from the exertion of
sustaining it. It’s like holding your breath.
I get up and approach the mirror across the
room, letting it go. My body fills in in the mirror, and I
see my face for the first time in over seven months.
I gasp.
The girl who stares back at me is almost
unrecognizable. I’m hardly even a girl anymore.
I stare at myself for a long time, standing alone in
the room, unattended, unaccompanied, aching for
Katarina, aching for a worthy tribute to her.
But it’s right there. In the new hardness and
definition of my face, in the muscled curve of my
arm. I am a woman now, and I am a warrior. Her
love and the loss of her is etched forever in the firm
set of my jaw.
I am her tribute. Survival is my gift to her.
Satisfied, I return to the motel bed and sleep for
days.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Years have passed.
I live an unsettled life, hopping from town to town.
I avoid connections or ties, and focus on
developing my fighting abilities and developing my
Legacies. Invisibility was followed by telekinesis,
and in recent months I’ve discovered a new ability: I
can control and manipulate the weather.
I use that Legacy sparingly, as it’s an easy way to
attract unwanted attention. It manifested months
ago, in a small suburb outside Cleveland. I had
been following a lead on one of the Garde that
didn’t go anywhere and, discouraged, I was
ambling back towards my motel, sipping an iced
coffee. My leg burst into searing pain, and I
dropped my drink on the ground.
My third scar. Three was dead.
I fell to the ground in pain and in rage, and before
I knew what was happening the sky above me filled
with clouds. A full-on lightning storm followed.
I am in Athens, Georgia, now. It’s a cool little city,
one of the best I’ve passed through in the past
couple years. College students everywhere. I’ve got
a bit of a vagabond roughness to my appearance
that stands out in suburban areas, but surrounded
by college-age hippies and music nerds and
hipsters I don’t look quite so unusual. This makes
me feel safe.
All of my leads have gone dead, and I have yet to
discover one of my kind. But I know it is coming.
Time to assemble the Garde. If my Legacies are
developing at this rate, I am certain the same is true
of the others like me. There will be signs soon, I can
feel it.
I am patient, but excited: I am ready to fight.
I wander the street, sipping the dregs of an iced
coffee. It’s become my drink of choice. I have
resorted to pickpocketing to finance my appetites,
but it’s become so easy that I never have to outright
fleece anyone. I just take a few bucks here or there
to get by.
I am suddenly knocked by a gust of wind,
practically off my feet. For a second I think I’ve lost
control, that it’s my own power that caused it. But
the wind ends as soon as it began, and I realize it
did not come from me. But it has swung the door of
another café open.
I almost keep walking, but my eye is caught by an
open computer terminal at the back of the café. I
use internet cafés to keep tabs on the news,
looking for items that could turn into a lead on my
kind. Doing it makes me feel closer to Katarina. I
have become my own Cêpan.
I chuck my empty cup in the trash outside and
step into the air-conditioned chill of the place. I take
my seat, and begin scanning the news.
An item from Paradise, Ohio, catches me. A
teenager was seen leaping from a burning building.
New to town. Named John. The reporter mentioned
how hard it was to get solid information on him.
I stand up so quickly I send the chair flying out
from under me. I know in an instant he’s one of us,
though I don’t know how I know. Something in that
gust of wind. Something about the way butterflies
are now fluttering in my stomach, brushing my
insides with their wings.
Perhaps this recognition is a part of the charm,
something that lets us know that a hunch is more
than I hunch. I know.
I just know.
My heart races with excitement. He’s out there.
One of the Garde.
I run out of the café and onto the street. Left, right
. . . I’m not sure which way to turn, how to get to
Paradise as quickly as I can.
I take a deep breath.
It’s beginning, I think. It’s finally beginning.
I laugh at my own paralysis. I remember that the
bus station is a mile down the road. I make a habit
of memorizing all transport routes into and out of
any town I visit, and the bus route out of Athens
returns to my mind. The beginning of a plan to get
to Paradise starts to develop.
I turn and begin the walk to the station.
See where it all began . . .