I Am Number Four

The Lost Files

NINE’S LEGACY

THE LORIEN LEGACIES

Pittacus Lore

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Excerpt from I Am Number Four: See where it all began . . .

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Excerpt from The Power of Six: The Legacies continue to develop

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Excerpt from The Rise of Nine

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Excerpt from I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six’s Legacy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Excerpt from I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Fallen Legacies

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Back Ads

About the Author

Also by Pittacus Lore

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

There are rules for hiding in plain sight. The first rule, or at least the one that Sandor repeats most often, is “Don’t be stupid.”

I’m about to break that rule by taking off my pants.

Spring in Chicago is my favorite season. The winters are cold and windy, the summers hot and loud, the springs perfect. This morning is sunny, but there’s still a forbidding chill in the air, a reminder of winter. Ice-cold spray blows in off Lake Michigan, stinging my cheeks and dampening the pavement under my sneakers.

I jog all eighteen miles of the lakefront path every morning, taking breaks whenever I can, not because I need them, but to admire the choppy gray-blue water of Lake Michigan. Even when it’s cold, I always think about diving in, of swimming to the other side.

I fight the urge just like I fight the urge to keep pace with the neon spandex cyclists that zip past. I have to go slow. There are more than two million people in this city and I’m faster than all of them.

Still, I have to jog.

Sometimes, I make the run twice to really work up a sweat. That’s another one of Sandor’s rules for hiding in plain sight: always appear to be weaker than I actually am. Never push it.

It’s dumb to complain. We’ve been in Chicago for five years thanks to Sandor’s rules. Five years of peace and quiet. Five years since the Mogadorians last had a real bead on us.

Five years of steadily increasing boredom.

So when a sudden vibration stirs the iPod strapped to my upper arm, my stomach drops. The device isn’t supposed to react unless trouble is near.

I take just a moment to decide on what I do next. I know it’s a risk. I know it flies against everything I’ve been told to do. But I also know that risks are worth it; I know that sometimes you have to ignore your training. So I jog to the side of the runner’s path, pretending that I need to work out a cramp. When I’m finished stretching, I unsnap the tear-away track pants I’ve been rocking every jog since we moved to Chicago and stuff them into my pack. Underneath I’m wearing a pair of mesh shorts, red and white like the St. Louis Cardinals, enemy colors here in Chicago.

But Cards colors in Cubs territory are nothing to worry about compared to the three scars ringing my ankle. Baseball rivalries and bloody interplanetary vendettas just don’t compare.

My low socks and running shoes do little to hide the scars. Anyone nearby could see them, although I doubt my fellow runners are in the habit of checking out each other’s ankles. Only the particular runner I’m trying to attract today will really notice.

When I start jogging again, my heart is beating way harder than normal. Excitement. It’s been a while since I felt anything like this. I’m breaking Sandor’s rule and it’s exhilarating. I just hope he isn’t watching me through the city’s police cameras that he’s hacked into. That would be bad.

My iPod rumbles again. It’s not actually an iPod. It doesn’t play any music and the earbuds are just for show. It’s a gadget that Sandor put together in his lab.

It’s my Mogadorian detector. I call it my iMog.

The iMog has its limitations. It picks out Mogadorian genetic patterns in the immediate area, but only has a radius of a few blocks and is prone to interference. It’s fueled by Mogadorian genetic material, which has a habit of rapidly decaying; so it’s no surprise that the iMog can get a little hinky. As Sandor explains it, the device is something we received when we first arrived from Lorien, from a human Loric friend. Sandor has spent considerable time trying to modify it. It was his idea to encase it in an iPod shell as a way to avoid attention. There’s no track list or album art on my iMog’s screen—just a solitary white dot against a field of black. That’s me. I’m the white dot. The last time we tuned it up was after the most recent time we were attacked, scraping Mogadorian ash off our clothes so Sandor could synthesize it or stabilize it or some scientific stuff I only half paid attention to. Our rule is that if the iMog sounds off, we get moving. It’s been so long since it’s activated itself that I’d started to worry that the thing had gone dead.

And then, during my run a couple days ago, it went off. One solitary red dot trolling the lakefront. I hustled home that day, but I didn’t tell Sandor what had happened. At best, there’d be no more runs on the lakefront. At worst, we’d be packing up boxes. And I didn’t want either of those things to happen.

Maybe that’s when I first broke the “don’t be stupid” rule. When I started keeping things from my Cêpan.

The device is now vibrating and beeping because of the red dot that’s fallen into step a few yards behind me. Vibrating and beeping in tune with my accelerated heartbeat.

A Mogadorian.

I hazard a glance over my shoulder and have no trouble picking out which jogger is the Mog. He’s tall, with black hair shaved close to the scalp, and is wearing a thrift-store Bears sweatshirt and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He could pass for human if he wasn’t so pale, his face not showing any color even in this brisk air.

I pick up my pace but don’t bother trying to get away. Why make it easy on him? I want to see whether this Mog can keep up.

By the time I exit the lakefront and head for home, I realize I might have been a little cocky. He’s good—better than I expect him to be. But I’m better. Still, as I pick up speed, I feel my heart racing from exertion for the first time in as long as I can remember.

He’s gaining on me, and my breaths are getting shorter. I’m okay for now, but I won’t be able to keep this up forever. I double-check the iMog. Luckily my stalker hasn’t called in backup. It’s still just the one red dot. Just us.

Tuning out the noise of the city around us—yuppie couples headed to brunch, happy tourist families cracking jokes about the wind—I focus on the Mog, using my naturally enhanced hearing to listen to his breathing. He’s getting winded too; his breathing is ragged now. But his footsteps are still in sync with my own. I listen for anything that sounds like him going for a communicator, ready to break into a sprint if he sends out an alert.

He doesn’t. I can feel his eyes boring into my back. He thinks that I haven’t noticed him.

Smug, exhausted, and dumb. He’s just what I’d been hoping for.

The John Hancock Center rises above us. The sun blinks off the skyscraper’s thousand windows. One hundred stories and, at the top, my home.

The Mog hesitates as I breeze through the front door, then follows. He catches up to me as I cross the lobby. Even though I’d been expecting it, I stiffen when I feel the cold barrel of a small Mogadorian blaster pressed between my shoulder blades.

“Keep walking,” he hisses.

Although I know he can’t hurt me while I’m protected by the Loric charm, I play along. I let him think he’s in control.

I smile and wave at the security guards manning the front desk. With the Mog dogging my heels, we climb into the elevator.

Alone at last.

The Mog keeps his gun aimed at me as I hit the button for the 100th floor. I’m more nervous than I thought I’d be. I’ve never been alone with a Mog before. I remind myself that everything is going just as I planned it. As the elevator begins its ascent, I act as casual as I can.

“Did you have a nice run?”

The Mog grabs me around the throat and slams me against the wall of the elevator. I brace myself to have the wind knocked out of me. Instead, a warm sensation runs down my back and it’s the Mog who stumbles backward, gasping.

The Loric charm at work. I’m always surprised at how well it works.

“So you aren’t Number Four,” he says.

“You’re quick.”

“Which are you?”

“I could tell you.” I shrug. “I don’t see what it would matter. But I’ll let you guess.”

He eyes me, sizing me up, trying to intimidate me. I don’t know what the rest of the Garde are like, but I don’t scare that easy. I take off the iMog, laying it gently on the floor. If the Mog finds this unusual, he doesn’t let on. I wonder what the prize is for capturing a Garde. “I may not know your number, but I know you can look forward to a life of captivity while we kill the rest of your friends. Don’t worry,” he adds, “it won’t be long.”

“Good story,” I reply, glancing up at the elevator panel. We’re almost at the top.

I dreamed about this moment last night. Actually, that’s not quite right. I couldn’t sleep last night, too keyed up for what was to come. I fantasized about this moment.

I make sure to savor my words.

“Here’s the thing,” I tell him. “You’re not making it out of here alive.”

Chapter Two

Before the Mog can react, I punch a series of buttons on the elevator panel. It’s a sequence of buttons that no one in the tower would ever have reason to push, a sequence that Sandor programmed to initiate the security measures he installed into the elevator.

The elevator vibrates. The trap is activated.

My iMog floats off the floor and, with a metallic clang, sticks to the back wall of the elevator. Before the Mog can blink, he’s flung backward too, pulled by the blaster in his hand and whatever other metal objects he might be hiding in his pockets. With a crunch, his hand is pinned between his blaster and the wall. He cries out.

Did he really think we wouldn’t have protected our home?

The powerful magnet Sandor installed in the elevator is just one of the fail-safes my Cêpan secretly built into the John Hancock Center. I’ve never seen the magnet work as intended before, but I’ve definitely screwed around with it enough. I’ve spent hours with the elevator door wedged open, the magnet on, trying to bounce nickels from across the penthouse and get them to stick to the walls. Like I said, things have been kind of boring lately.

It was a good game until the tenants on the lower levels started complaining.

The Mog tries to wiggle his fingers—which are most certainly broken now—from underneath the blaster to no avail. He tries to kick at me, but I just laugh and hop away. That’s the best he can do?

“What is this?” he cries.

Before I can answer, the elevator doors hiss open and there is Sandor.

I’ve never understood my Cêpan’s affinity for expensive Italian suits. They can’t be comfortable. Yet here he is, not even noon on a Saturday morning, and he’s already dressed to the nines. His beard is freshly trimmed, clipped close. His hair is slicked back perfectly.

It’s like Sandor was expecting company. I wonder if he was watching my run on the lakefront, and my stomach drops at the thought.

I’m going to be in deep trouble.

Sandor is twisting a silencer into the barrel of a sleek 9mm. He glances at me, his expression inscrutable, then stares hard at the Mog.

“Are you alone?”

The Mog jerks against the magnet again.

“He’s alone,” I answer.

Sandor shoots me a look, and then pointedly repeats his question.

“You expect me to answer that?” snarls the Mog.

I can tell Sandor is pissed. But the Mog’s answer causes a glimmer of humor to flash in my Cêpan’s eyes. Sandor’s mouth twitches, like he’s fighting a laugh. I’ve sat through enough of my Cêpan’s beloved James Bond movie collection to know this Mog just provided a perfect one-liner opportunity.

“No,” Sandor says. “I expect you to die.”

Sandor raises the gun before looking at me again.

“You brought him here,” he says. “Your kill.”

I swallow hard. I planned this whole thing out. It’s been all I could think about since that red dot appeared on my iMog a couple days ago. Still, I’ve never killed one before. I don’t feel sympathy for the bastard. It’s not that at all. But this feels like a big deal. Taking a life, even if it is only a Mogadorian. Will it change me?

Whatever. I grab for Sandor’s gun, but he yanks it away.

“Not like that,” he says, and drops the gun.

I don’t let it hit the ground. My telekinesis developed last month and we’ve been practicing with it ever since.

I take a deep breath, focusing my mind, steeling myself. I levitate the gun until it is level with the Mog’s head. He sneers at me.

“You don’t have the ba—”

With my mind, I squeeze the trigger.

The gun releases a muffled thwip. The bullet strikes the Mog right between the eyes. Seconds later, he’s a pile of ash on the elevator floor.

Sandor plucks the gun out of the air. I can tell he’s studying me, but I can’t take my eyes off the remains of the Mogadorian.

“Clean that mess up,” says Sandor. “Then, we need to talk.”

Chapter Three

I clean up what remains of the Mog as quickly as I can, not wanting to deal with building security wondering what’s keeping the elevator. I scoop some of the ash into a plastic sandwich bag for Sandor. He might want it for one of his experiments.

For some reason, my hands won’t stop shaking.

I figure it’s because I’m rushing, that the shaking will stop once I’m done cleaning the elevator, but it doesn’t. It only gets worse. I stagger out of the elevator into the living room of our penthouse, and collapse onto a white suede couch.

Yes, I killed the Mog. Yes, it was even easier than I thought it would be. But it didn’t feel how I thought it would. Something could have gone wrong.

I can’t shake the feeling of that Mog’s fingers on my throat. Even though he couldn’t hurt me, the sensation lingers. As the adrenaline drains away, all I can think about is what a stupid idea it was to engage the Mog. I’d wanted some action. I tried to be suave like the spies in those Bond movies. I think I put up a good front, not that the Mog will ever be able to tell anyone how badass I acted.

My head swims as I gaze up at the gold chandelier that presides over the living room. I put this whole place at risk. Everything we’ve amassed in our years of safety, our home. Most importantly, Sandor himself. I don’t feel like celebrating; I feel like puking.

Even now, Sandor could be packing our bags. We could be headed back on the road.

Before Chicago, all we did was travel. It was always hotels and motels. Sandor never wanted to put down roots. He’s not much of a housekeeper—doesn’t cook or clean—our needs were fulfilled by grouchy maids and room service. We spent a couple months at the Ritz-Carlton in Aspen. I learned to ski. Sandor spent his time charming snow bunnies next to the fire. We spent some time in South America, eating the best steaks in the world. Our cover story was always the same as it is here in Chicago: Sandor is a day trader who hit a hot streak and now lives comfortably, and I’m his latchkey nephew.

I liked Aspen. It was good to be outdoors without having to worry about a crush of people and which ones might be hostile aliens.

After Aspen it was a roach motel on the outskirts of Denver. I learned to judge how safe Sandor thought we were by the luxuriousness of our accommodations. Although we could afford to live anywhere, thanks to the precious gems the nine Cêpans had left Lorien with, nice hotels meant Sandor thought we were safe enough to live it up a little; flea-bitten rattraps meant it was more important to lie low. If I’m being honest, I liked that place too. That was where Sandor tinkered with the vibrating bed, making it powerful enough to almost toss me to the ceiling.

We moved whenever the hotel staff got to know us too well. As soon as we became a fixture, it was time to move on.

That never helped. The Mogs always caught up with us.

The last stop before Chicago was at a trucker motel in Vancouver. I still don’t know how we got away that time. It was bad. Five Mogs took us by surprise there. Sandor had built weapons to keep us safe—flash bombs to blind the Mogs, a remote-control helicopter with a very real gun attached—and still we were almost overwhelmed. Sandor got slashed by one of their daggers during the fight and barely had the strength to drive us south to White Rock. There, I sat by his bedside for a week while he slipped in and out of consciousness, his fever bad enough that I thought he might have set the sheets on fire if they weren’t so soaked with his sweat.

When he came to, Sandor decided there’d be no more running.

“We’re going to try something different,” he told me. “We’ve got the money. Might as well use it.”

I didn’t know what he meant.

“We’re going to hide in plain sight.”

And we used the money. The two-floor penthouse Sandor purchased in the John Hancock Center is like something out of that reality TV show where the celebrities show off their glamorous houses.

As if installing a fish tank over their king-sized bed is going to help them when the Mogadorian invasion comes. Nothing wrong with fish tanks and hot tubs, but none of that stuff’s any good without weapons.

I know Sandor loves it in Chicago—and so do I. But sometimes I miss those days on the road. Sometimes it seems like we should be doing more than just training. The half-dozen flat- screen televisions, the personal chef, the fully equipped gym; all this has only made me feel soft.

Now, though, watching the sun glint off the angles of the chandelier, I realize how badly I don’t want to leave this place. I rushed things. Yes, I want to take my place with the other Garde. I want to kill every Mog I can find. But for as restless as I’ve felt lately, I should probably try to enjoy my home for as long as I still have one. Eventually, my life will be nothing but fighting. Am I ready for that?

I take a deep breath and pick myself up. The panic I felt before is gone, replaced by a sense of dread.

I head down the hall to Sandor’s workshop to face the music.

Chapter Four

When I walk into his workshop, Sandor is glued to an array of flat-screen monitors behind his desk. Various camera feeds from around the city are on display, archived footage from this morning frozen in time. I’m not surprised to see that I’m on every screen, the Mog from the lakefront visible behind me. With a few quick keystrokes, Sandor deletes the video files, erasing my exploits from Chicago’s memory banks. When he’s finished with his hacking, there will be no evidence left of what I did this morning.

Sandor swivels around to face me. “I get why you did it, dude. I really do.”

My Cêpan peers at me, an array of frayed circuit boards and dismembered computer parts spread out on the desk between us. Stacks of unfinished or abandoned projects leave only a narrow path of floor between door and desk; half-finished automatons, tricked-out weapons plucked from our arsenal, gutted car engines, and dozens of things I can’t even identify. Sandor loves his toys, which is probably why he’s developed such an affinity for Batman. Sometimes he even calls me his “young ward,” quoting Bruce Wayne. I could never get into comics—too unrealistic—but I get that when he says it it’s some kind of joke.

There’s no joking now. This is Sandor trying to be serious. I can tell by the way he drags his hand over his beard, searching for words. He hates that beard, but it hides the scar that the Mogs gave him in Vancouver.

“Just because I understand doesn’t mean what you did wasn’t stupid and reckless,” he continues.

“Does this mean we have to move?” I ask, wanting to cut to the chase.

By the look on his face, I can tell Sandor didn’t even consider this. He’s spooked, but moving never crossed his mind.

“And leave all this?” he gestures to the piles of in-progress gadgets. “No. We’ve worked too hard to set this place up to abandon it at the first sign of trouble. And the Mog was alone. I don’t think our cover’s blown quite yet. But you need to promise me you won’t bring home any more guests.”

“I promise,” I say, flashing a Boy Scout sign I picked up from some television show. Sandor smirks.

“It did get me to thinking,” he says, standing up. “Maybe you’re ready to take your training to the next level.”

I stifle a groan. Sometimes it feels like all I do is train, probably because all I do is train. Before my telekinesis developed, it was endless days of strength training and cardio, broken up by what Sandor calls “practical academics.” No history or literature, just more skills that I could potentially use in the field. How many kids know how to set a broken bone or which household chemicals will create an improvised explosion?

Whatever complaint I might have made goes unvoiced when Sandor brushes aside a pile of junk to reveal my Loric Chest. He rarely opens it and I’ve only seen him use a few of its items. I’ve been waiting for the day to learn everything that it contains and how to use them. Maybe I should’ve lured a Mog to our hideout sooner.

“Are you serious?” I ask, still half expecting to be punished.

He nods. “Your Legacies are developing. It’s time.”

Together, we open the lock on the Chest. I jostle in next to Sandor, trying to reach my hands inside. So many new toys to play with—I see some kind of spiky green ball and an oblong crystal that gives off a faint glow—but Sandor elbows me aside.

“When you’re ready,” he cautions, indicating the shiny mysteries waiting inside my Chest.

Sandor hands me a plain-looking silver pipe, probably the most boring item in the whole Chest, then snaps the Chest closed before I can see anything else.

“Pretty soon your other Legacies will have developed. That means the rest of the Garde—the surviving ones, anyway—will be developing theirs too.”

I push aside the memory of the panic attack I had after killing the Mog. But Sandor is looking at me with a steely glint in his eyes. He’s not playing around.

“This might be fun now, but it won’t be a game forever. It will be war. It is war. If you want me to treat you like an adult, you need to understand that.”

“I understand,” I say. And I do. I think.

I turn the pipe over in my hands. “What does this do?”

Before I can answer, the pipe extends into a full-length staff. Sandor takes a step back as I accidentally knock a hollowed-out computer onto the floor.

“You hit things with it,” says Sandor, glancing worriedly at his fragile gadgets. “Preferably Mogs.”

I twirl the staff over my head. Somehow it feels natural, like an extension of myself.

“Awesome.”

“Also, I think it’s time you started going to school.”

My jaw drops. In all those years traveling, Sandor never bothered to enroll me in school. Once we were settled in Chicago, I broached the subject, but Sandor didn’t want to distract me from my training. There was a time when I would have killed to go to school, to be normal. Now, the idea of mixing with human kids my own age, of trying to pass as one of them, is nearly as daunting as taking down a Mog.

Sandor slaps me on the shoulder, pleased with himself. Then he hits a button on the underside of his desk.

A bookshelf littered with dusty electronics manuals makes a sudden hydraulic hiss and slides into the ceiling. A secret room, one even I was unaware of.

“Step into the Lecture Hall, my young ward,” intones my Cêpan.

Chapter Five

What Sandor calls the Lecture Hall isn’t like the classrooms that I’ve seen on TV. There are no desks, no places to sit at all, really, with the exception of a cockpit-looking chair built into one wall. Sandor calls it the Lectern, and he climbs into the seat behind a control panel of blinking buttons and gauges. The room is about the size of our expansive living room, all white, every surface tiled with what looks to be retractable panels.

My footsteps echo as I walk to the center of the room. “How long have you been working on this?”

“Since we moved in,” he replies, flicking a series of levers on the Lectern. I can feel the room hum to life beneath my feet.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You weren’t ready before,” says Sandor. “But you proved to me today that you’re ready now. It’s time to begin the last phase of your training.”

I’d lured the Mog to our penthouse because I wanted to show Sandor that I was ready for more action. I’d wanted to show him that I could act independently, that I could be his partner. No more of his “young ward” crap.

But this is just more of the same. I thought I was ready to graduate. Instead, Sandor has decided to stick me in summer school.

Just a few minutes ago I was worried I’d made a bad decision of life-altering magnitude. Now, listening to Sandor patronize me, I’m reminded why I stayed up all night planning that Mog’s demise. For all his big serious pep talk, Sandor just doesn’t get me. I regretted the possibility that I’d put this place in danger to prove my readiness, but the more I watch Sandor play around with his gadgets and levers, the less sorry I feel about what I did.

“Shall we begin?” he asks.

I nod, not really paying attention. I’m tired of play-fighting. I got a taste of the real thing this morning and it might not have gone exactly as I expected, but it was still better than this. Hell, real school with soft human kids would be more exciting.

I’m part of the Garde. I have a destiny, a life to start leading. How many stupid training sessions will I have to endure before Sandor lets me start living it?

A panel on the front of the Lectern opens, discharging a trio of steel ball bearings at fastball speed. I easily deflect them with my telekinesis. This trick is played out. Sandor’s been shooting objects at me pretty much nonstop since my telekinesis developed.

Before the first trio can hit the ground, though, two more panels open in the walls on either side of me, both firing more projectiles. Caught in a crossfire, I use my telekinesis to ground the ones to my left, instinctively swinging my pipe-staff in a tight arc to bat away the others.

“Good!” shouts Sandor. “Use all your weapons.”

I shrug. “Is that it?”

Sandor sends another volley of projectiles my way. This time I don’t even bother with my telekinesis. I use the pipe-staff to deflect two of them, quickly spinning away from the others.

“How does the staff feel?”

I twirl my new weapon effortlessly from hand to hand. It feels natural, like a part of myself I didn’t know was missing before today.

“I like it.”

“On Lorien, they held competitions with those things. They called them Jousts. In his younger days, your father was a champion.”

It’s rare for Sandor to mention life before the Mogadorian invasion, but before I can grill him further, a section of the wall juts out at me like a battering ram. It’s too heavy to stop with my telekinesis, so I throw my weight into it and roll across it.

I land on my feet, supporting myself with my staff, and am greeted by a floating drone that looks like something Sandor made by attaching a helicopter propeller to a blender. Before I can properly size up the drone, it bobs in close and zaps me with an electrical shock that sends me tumbling back over the battering ram.

The shock isn’t enough to really hurt me, but it sends pins and needles through my limbs. Sandor laughs, delighted that one of his creations scored a hit.

His laughter just makes me angry.

I hop back to my feet, only to immediately duck another volley of projectiles. Meanwhile, the drone has bobbed out of staff range. I focus on it with my telekinesis.

From behind, a heavy punching bag on a chain detaches from the ceiling, slamming into me with the weight of a grown man. The wind is knocked out of me and I crash to the ground.

My face hits the floor in the fall. Instead of seeing stars, I see droplets of blood from my split lip pooling on the polished white floor. I wipe my face and scramble to one knee.

Sandor looks at me from behind his control panel, an eyebrow raised mockingly.

“Had enough?”

Still seeing red, I snarl and make a lunge for the drone. It’s not fast enough. I impale it with my staff in a shower of sparks.

I shake the broken drone off the end of my staff and stare at Sandor.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

Chapter Six

The workout in the Lecture Hall lasts two hours. Two hours of flying ball bearings, electrified drones made of scrap heap parts and whatever else Sandor thinks to throw at me. At some point, my mind shuts off and I just react. I’m pouring sweat, my muscles ache, but it’s a welcome relief not to think for a while.

When it’s over, Sandor pats me on the back. I hit the showers and stand under the hot water until my fingertips are wrinkled.

It’s dark when I emerge from my bathroom. I can smell Chinese takeout in the kitchen, but I’m not ready to join Sandor yet. He’ll want to talk about the training session, about what I could be doing differently and better. He won’t mention this morning’s Mog killing. Just like anytime we argue, it’ll get ignored until we cool down and forget about it. I don’t want to start the routine yet, so I stay hidden in my room.

The lights in my bedroom turn on automatically, motion sensors detecting my presence.

If I had any friends, I’m sure they’d be sick with envy of my room. I have a king-sized bed that faces a 52-inch flat-screen television, and the TV is hooked up to all three of the major video game systems. There’s an awesome stereo, with speakers mounted into the walls. My laptop sits on my desk next to the Beretta that Sandor lets me keep in here for emergencies.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I’m wrapped in a towel, and can see the bruises and scrapes on my torso and arms, all courtesy of today’s training. It’s not a pretty sight.

I turn off the lights and walk over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. I press my forehead to the cool glass and look down at the city of Chicago. From this height, you can actually see the wind as it whips by the blinking lights on building rooftops. There’s nonstop movement below—cars plodding along, blobs of ant-sized humans darting between them.

I did something reckless today because I thought it would prove something. Instead, it’s just sucked me in deeper to the same routine. Sandor thought he was rewarding me with that Lecture Hall session, but really it was just more monotony.

I turn my gaze away from the masses of people below, out toward the dark sheet of Lake Michigan. If one of my Legacies turns out to be flying, I’m just going to take off, go someplace where there are no Mogadorians, no Cêpans telling me what to do, no anything except me and sky.

But I can’t fly, at least not yet. I get dressed and join Sandor for dinner.

Chapter Seven

A few nights later, I dream of Lorien.

I feel energy course through me, almost like working out in the Lecture Hall, but different. It’s a giddy feeling, like a never-ending sugar rush. In the dream I’m a kid. Younger than I can even remember being.

And man, am I running.

I’m booking it through the woods, my legs pumping for all they’re worth. Two creatures that look like wolves but which have massive falcon wings jutting out of their backs are nipping at my heels. Chimæra. My Chimæra

It has rained recently and the ground squishes under my bare feet. I break into a recessed clearing that’s slick with bright white mud. The closest chimera clips my heel and I go tumbling onto my stomach, rolling through the mud, covering my clothes and face.

The chimera stands over me, pinning me as I pant and catch my breath. He leans down and sloppily licks my cheek.

I laugh harder than I can remember laughing in a long time. The other chimera cocks his head back and howls.

I roll between the chimera’s legs and hop to my feet. I lunge at him with a guttural war cry that strains my lungs. I wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face in his fur, and try to swing my leg over his back.

The other chimera gently bites the seat of my pants and pulls me back into the mud.

I dig my fingers into the wet dirt, then lob two misshapen balls of slime at the chimera, the stuff splattering across their snouts. They howl.

Springing to my feet, I run back the way we came. The chimera race behind me as I weave through the trees. I might not remember Lorien, but the young body I’m in knows it well. I’m just along for the ride as my young self tromps through stalks of knee-high grass, bare feet knowing just when to hop over errant tree roots to avoid tripping.

A campfire appears in front of me. Sitting by it, a burly man with a bushy black beard cooks our dinner over the fire, his sleeves rolled up past his thick forearms. Somehow, I know his face. My grandfather.

Next to him is a fresh-faced man I don’t immediately recognize. He’s dressed way too nicely for the outdoors.

It’s Sandor. I guess I never realized how young he was when we were on Lorien.

My grandfather sees me coming, grinning, and has the good sense to get out of the way. Sandor isn’t paying attention; he’s got his eyes glued to some kind of mobile communicator. Probably messaging a girl back in the capital about watching the fireworks later. Some things don’t change.

I tackle him around the knees, dragging him down into the dirt, my mud becoming his mud. He cries out, the comm flying from his grip. I sit on his chest, my arms folded.

“Conquered,” I declare.

“Not yet, pal,” Sandor replies, his eyes lighting up. He grabs me under the armpits and lifts me up, spinning.

In the distance, from the direction of the city, there comes a low rumbling.

With that, my grandfather accidentally drops our dinner into the fire.

I wake up feeling happy and sad at the same time.

Chapter Eight

It’s been a week since my last visit to the Lakefront and there hasn’t been so much as a peep from the iMog.

I get up at dawn to find Sandor already sitting at the kitchen counter, holding a cup of coffee. That’s unusual. My Cêpan normally prefers to sleep until mid-morning, sometimes not even waking up until I’ve returned from my run. He’s always been a night owl, and it’s only gotten worse since we moved to Chicago. I know that sometimes he slips out at night and comes home smelling like perfume and booze. I don’t ask him about these trips just like he doesn’t ask about my runs. I guess we just both need some private time—although he apparently has been keeping an eye on my private time, if the video footage he had on screen the other day is any indication.

I study his face. The bags under his eyes, the growth of beard hiding his scar; I try to find some resemblance to the young man I saw in my dream, but that person is gone. I never thought about the fact that Sandor had a life before he came here. I don’t remember Lorien—at least I thought I didn’t—but I know Sandor remembers it. He must miss it.

I wonder if he still sees a giddy, mud-covered menace when he looks at me. Probably not.

Sandor notices that I’m wearing my running clothes. We agreed to keep a low profile for a while, but I can’t stand another day trapped in here with just the Lecture Hall, video games, and overwatched spy movies to pass the time.

“Going for your run?” he asks.

I grunt a yes, acting casual as I slug back some orange juice from the container.

“I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

I turn to face him. “What are you talking about?”

“Need I remind you that last week you brought home a Mog from the lakefront? Maybe it’s time to change things up.”

I slam the refrigerator door harder than I mean to, rattling our vast assortment of condiments and takeout containers.

“I’m not staying cooped up in here all day,” I state.

“You think I’m not tired of looking at that sour mug of yours twenty-four/seven?” asks Sandor, arching an eyebrow. “Think again.”

He reaches onto the counter and hands me a laminated card.

“I got you this.”

The card is a membership for something called the Windy City Wall. There’s an unsmiling picture of me in the bottom corner of the card next to my most recent alias—Stanley Worthington.

“I thought it might be good for you to get out and meet some people that aren’t Mogadorian scouts. Lately you seem sort of . . .” he trails off, rubbing his beard, not sure how to proceed.

“Thanks,” I reply, and jog out the door before he can finish his thought, eager to escape. Neither of us have ever been much for sappy heart-to-hearts. I’d prefer to keep it that way.

The Windy City Wall is a sprawling rec center about twenty minutes from the John Hancock Center. I probably passed it a hundred times before today, but I’d never once considered going inside. These kinds of places were reserved for humans. And besides, I had plenty of training equipment back home.

After all these years, why had Sandor chosen now to sign me up for something like this? Now I wish that I’d let him finish his thought and tell me what I “seem” like lately.

There’s a smiley tour guide at the front desk who shows me around the center. There are basketball courts, a pool, and a gym that I’m surprised to find is as well-equipped as ours. Besides all that normal YMCA-type stuff, there are also a variety of obstacles courses, with cargo nets and old rubber tires meant to simulate various natural obstructions.

And then, of course, there is the Wall. It’s no wonder the rec center takes its name from it, because it’s absolutely huge, dominating an entire side of the building and rising up some forty feet from floor to ceiling. The rock is fake, and obviously there’s no blue sky in this warehouse-like building, but there’s still something majestic about the Wall. When my tour guide is done rambling, I head straight for it, and take my place in one of the lines, behind a bunch of kids that look just a little older than me.

Above us, a boy that I take for about seventeen is stuck in the middle of the wall, casting around desperately for a handhold. He can’t find one, and after a few seconds of flailing he drops off, his descent slowed by a safety line and cushioned by a pillowy mat.

“Is this your first time?”

I glance over my shoulder. A tall blond-haired boy about my age is smirking at me. I nod.

“Yeah.”

“This is the advanced end. You probably want to start with easy.”

“No, I don’t.”

The blond kid exchanges a look with a shorter kid next to him. The short kid doesn’t look as strong as his buddy, but he’s compact, which should make him a better climber.

“You need a vest,” says the short kid.

I laugh. The idea of me falling off this wall after the training I’ve had is ridiculous. I smile at the short kid, assuming that he’s joking even though both he and his friend are wearing vests.

“I don’t need one of those.”

“Tough guy!” jokes the blond one.

“No, seriously, it’s the rules,” says the other. “Even if you were Sir Edmund Hillary you’d need to wear a vest.”

I stare blankly at the kid. I have no idea who he’s talking about.

“He was the first person to climb Everest,” the short one explains.

“Oh,” I mumble. “The mountain.”

Both boys snicker. “Yeah, the mountain.”

The short kid nudges the tall one. “Why don’t you go get the new kid a vest?”

The tall kid gives me a weird look, then jogs off to an equipment rack. I realize this is one of the longest conversations with human kids I’ve ever had. I wonder how I’m doing.

“I’m Mike,” says the short kid, shaking my hand. “My friend is also Mike.”

“Is everyone in this city named Mike?”

“That’s funny,” says Short Mike, but he doesn’t laugh. “What’s your name?”

“Stanley.” I don’t hesitate, producing my alias easily, as if it’s my real name—just like Sandor’s drilled me to do.

Tall Mike returns and hands me a vest. I pull it over my head and they show me how to adjust the straps.

“So Stanley,” continues Short Mike, practically interrogating me. “Where do you go to school?”

“I’m homeschooled.”

“That explains your sparkling personality,” deadpans Short Mike.

I think he just insulted me.

Before I can respond, I notice her. She’s in the next line over. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, straight black hair, and eyes to match. She’s athletic looking, not like some of the flimsy girls I’ve seen jogging along the lakefront. She’s beautiful and she’s staring at me. How long has she been watching me? Has she been listening to my entire conversation with the Mikes?

When she sees that she has my attention, the girl quickly looks away, her cheeks reddening. I can’t help it; I can’t look away. Eventually she glances back my way and nervously flashes me a tentative smile. I can only blink in response.

Tall Mike waves his hand in front of my face.

“What?” I snap.

“It’s your turn, bro.”

I turn and see the climbing instructor sarcastically tapping his watch. I step forward and he buckles the safety cords to my vest. I’m barely listening as he explains where the best handholds are, my mind too busy trying to figure out why that girl was staring at me. Instinctively, I try to straighten my mess of hair. I don’t know what to think about that girl; on TV, there’s always music that plays when a guy makes eye contact with a pretty girl. I’d kill for some soundtrack now.

I wonder if she likes guys from other planets who can climb walls really fast.

Guess I’ll find out.

The instructor blows a whistle and I leap onto the wall. The start of my ascent is clumsy. I should’ve listened when the instructor explained the handholds. Even so, I quickly find a rhythm and begin swinging my body up the wall.

Is the girl watching? I have the unbearable urge to check.

I glance down. She is. She’s standing right next to the two Mikes, both of them nattering at her. She ignores them, watching me. No. More than watching me. She’s studying me like I’m the most interesting book in the world.

My palms are suddenly slick with sweat.

That’s not good.

I realize too late that I’ve worked myself into the same trouble spot as the first climber I watched. I’m about halfway up the wall, but there is no handhold close enough to reach above me, and backtracking is out of the question.

There’s only one handhold I can see. It’d be out of the reach of a human. With my strength, though, I can probably make it. I’ll have to jump for it.

I hunker down on my footholds, putting as much weight as I can on my knees and hips, before springing upward.

I grab the handhold and my sweaty fingertips scrabble across it.

Then, it is gone. I’m falling. I can’t believe this, I’m falling. Defeated by a human wall and some sweaty palms.

The mat cushions my fall. It isn’t my body that’s hurting, it’s my ego. I lay on the mat, not wanting to get up and face the eyes of the rec center.

Her eyes.

Tall Mike peers down at me.

“Guess you did need the vest,” he says with a smirk.

Short Mike helps me off the mat, telling me it was a good first try. I’m barely listening. My eyes sweep the room, looking for the girl.

She’s gone.

Chapter Nine

I keep my head down when leaving the Windy City Wall. I’ve spent pretty much my entire life in anonymity, but even when I’ve been on the run from killer aliens, I’ve never wanted to avoid attention as much as I do now. I know it’s ridiculous—kids must fall off that wall all the time—yet I’m sure that everyone in the gym is secretly laughing at me.

I take the long way back to the John Hancock building and then walk past it. I keep replaying my fall in my head. I imagine seeing myself from that girl’s perspective; flailing, sweaty, legs kicking uselessly at air. I pass the entire day in a daze, beating myself up, and the sun is setting when I finally decide to go home.

Sandor is in the living room when I return home, lounging in a leather recliner with some boring-looking book about advanced engineering in his lap.

“Perfect timing,” he says when I enter, waving his empty martini glass at me.

He doesn’t notice my slumped shoulders as I cross to the room’s fully equipped bar. I pluck Sandor’s empty glass from his hand using my telekinesis. Then I levitate bottles of gin and vermouth, mixing them through ice. The most difficult part is using my telekinesis to get the olives on the little plastic sword.

I can mix a cocktail with my mind, but I can’t climb a damn wall.

When I’m finished, I walk Sandor’s martini over to him and flop down on an adjacent couch. He tastes the drink, smacking his lips.

“Pretty good,” he says. “So, how was it?”

“Fine,” I grunt.

“Just fine? You were there all day.”

I hesitate before telling him more, but I need to confide in someone, and Sandor has way more experience with the humans—with girls—than I do.

“I fell off the wall.”

Sandor chuckles, not looking up from his book. “You? Really?”

“I wasn’t paying attention. I mean, I guess I got distracted.”

“You’ll get it next time.” He shrugs.

“There won’t be a next time.”

I’m silent, one arm draped across my face. Sandor must realize I’m holding back details because he finally closes his book and leans forward.

“What happened?” His voice lowers. “Did the iMog detect something?”

“No.” I pause. “There was a girl.”

“Ohh,” he says, drawing it out. Even with my face covered I can tell he’s grinning. He rubs his hands together. “Was she pretty?”

“She was beautiful,” I say, looking away. “I fell because she—I don’t know. She was, like, watching me. . . .”

“Checking you out. Giving you the eye.”

“Shut up.”

“So a beautiful young thing saw you fall and now you’re embarrassed.”

I have no comeback. When he says it like that, it sounds so juvenile, like something from one of those TV shows where humans in too much makeup mope around and make longing faces at each other. But he’s exactly right.

Sandor gives my shoulder a squeeze.

“’Tis but a minor setback, my young ward,” Sandor opines. “I can tell you one thing for certain. You’re not going to impress your lady by moping around here.”

“Who says I want to impress her?”

He laughs. “Come on. Who doesn’t want to impress beautiful women? Right now, in her mind, you’re just a guy that bit off more than he could chew. If you don’t go back, though, you become that wimp she saw fall off the wall one time. Do you want that?”

I don’t even have to think about my answer.

“I’ll go back tomorrow.”

Chapter Ten

I’m up early again the next morning, back in the Lecture Hall, dodging projectiles and batting drones out of the air with my pipe-staff even though my mind is at the Windy City Wall. Sandor doesn’t take it easy on me, despite knowing that I want to be conserving my energy for a second chance at impressing that girl.

“Keep your head in the game!” he shouts at me after a mechanized tentacle trips me up.

After training, I shower thoroughly, even though I’m just getting ready for another workout. I want to look good. I even run a comb through my tangled thatch of hair. Sandor’s been ragging on me to cut it forever, telling me that I look like a girl, and recommending all kinds of hair products that would give me “maximum hold.” I’ve never paid any attention to his unsolicited style tips.

Only looking at myself in the steamy bathroom mirror, I wish I’d listened to him. I look like a caveman. But it’s too late to do anything about my hair now. Besides, I figure showing up with a fresh haircut glistening with pomade—whatever that is—would look pretty desperate.

“Good luck,” says Sandor knowingly as I head to the elevator.

There are butterflies having a heavy artillery firefight in my stomach as I jog over to the rec center. I breeze in the door and immediately beeline for the equipment rack, grabbing a safety vest as I confidently stride toward the advanced end of the wall. I casually scan the room, looking for the girl.

She’s not there. In fact, the place is nearly empty.

Ugh. It’s a school day. I always forget the humans keep much different schedules than I do.

There are a few college-aged kids working out on the wall, getting envious looks from flabby older guys who are probably here on their lunch break. I join them. Might as well get a few practice runs in.

I spend an hour mastering the wall. This time I listen to the instructor, paying special attention to where the best handholds are. By the time the hour is up, I’ve successfully scaled the wall a half-dozen times. According to the instructor, if I shaved a few seconds off my time I’d have a shot at breaking the local record. I don’t tell him that I haven’t been going all out, that with my Loric strength and speed I could easily smash it.

I’m saving that performance for when the girl shows up.

There’s still about an hour left before school gets out. It’d probably look pretty weird if I was already here when the other kids arrive and I decide I want to make an entrance. I imagine confidently strutting into line, ignoring taunts from the Mikes, then flying up the wall in record-setting time. While the Mikes are busy picking their jaws up off the floor, I’ll stride over to the girl, her adoring smile inviting me to talk to her. And then . . .

Well, I haven’t totally planned out the talking part yet.

I buy a bottle of water from a vending machine and head outside. There’s a small park across the street from the rec center, where I make myself at home on a bench—the perfect spot for a stakeout. I’m comfortable in the cool air and have a good view of the Windy City Wall entrance. I’ll hide out until kids get out of school and then it’ll be time for my redemption.

The thought of a stakeout causes me to make a check of my iMog. An evil red dot appearing nearby is exactly what I don’t need right now. Luckily, the coast is clear.

I spend the next hour trying to think of a good opening line. All the guys in the movies and on TV have them when they approach a girl. I should’ve asked Sandor for one before I left. He probably has whole books filled with pick-up lines.

By the time I see the two Mikes enter the Windy City Wall, I still haven’t come up with anything good. I’m stuck on climbing puns, but they all come off pretty gross, like I want to climb on her.

“Is this seat taken?” A girl’s voice interrupts the conversation I’m having in my head. Distractedly, I wave at the empty space of bench next to me.

The next wall I’d like to climb is the one around your heart. How’s that? Really, really cheesy.

“Hi,” the girl says, sitting down next to me.

And that’s when I realize it isn’t just any girl sitting inches away from me on the bench, it’s the girl. Her cheeks are rosy in the late spring air, her black hair gently blown in the breeze. She’s smiling at me. She’s so beautiful, I suddenly feel like I could throw up. This wasn’t the plan.

“I’m Maddy,” she says, extending her hand.

I just look at her, my mind completely blank.

So much for first lines.

Maddy squints at me. “Sorry, I didn’t meant to interrupt your, um, quiet muttering.”

Was I muttering? I must look like a crazy person. I try to recover.

“No, you’re not interrupting. I was just thinking.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at me expectantly. I realize her hand is still hanging out there between us waiting for me, so I grasp it, squeezing her hand a little too eagerly.

“I’m Stanley.”

“Nice to meet you, Stanley.”

I swallow hard. This meeting is already way off track. She wasn’t supposed to see me again until I’d beaten the wall and restored my pride.

I make a halfhearted gesture toward the rec center, desperately trying to recreate the scenario I’d been envisioning. “I was about to go climb. Do you want to come watch?”

“Watch?” she asks, arching an eyebrow. “Maybe we could race. If you’re up for it,” she adds, teasing me.

I flashed back to my humiliation of the day before, suddenly lost for words. Luckily, she bails me out.

“Anyway,” she says, “I actually can’t stay; I’m on my way home. I just saw you sitting over here by yourself and thought I’d say hey.”

“Oh,” I say, lamely. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she repeats.

And then comes an awkward silence, almost like Maddy’s nervous too. Her gaze bounces away from me and her mouth screws up, as if she’s trying to figure out what to say. I wonder if she plans conversations out in her head too.

When she speaks again, her words are a torrent of nervous energy.

“I saw you yesterday and you were by yourself then too and that’s totally cool, if you like working out alone, but I’m new here and it’s been sort of hard to meet people, so I figured maybe we could, like, team up and fight solitude together.”

I blink at her. I can’t believe my luck.

“Sorry,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not usually this much of a spaz.”

“You’re not a spaz,” I reply.

“Okay, good. I’ve got you fooled.” She laughs nervously. “Okay. Shut up, Maddy. Here.” She reaches into her bag and hands me a piece of paper with her name and number scribbled on it.

“If I didn’t just totally freak you out, you should call me,” she says, hopping off the bench before my idiot brain can even form a reply.

Chapter Eleven

Wind whips around us as we stand on the roof of the John Hancock building, sending the drone that’s floating above me and Sandor listing momentarily downward. We’re trying out his newest creation, a hollowed-out toaster with steel glider wings protruding where the bread slots should be. I brush my gloved fingers across the drone controls, correcting its course against the wind. Its tiny motor hums sharply in response. We always take Sandor’s new creations for test runs, knowing they might one day be our only allies against a horde of Mogadorians. In the meantime, I’ll most likely end up staring down this latest buzzing contraption in the Lecture Hall.

“So,” says Sandor, “how long has it been since you got her number?”

I keep my eyes on the drone.

“Five days,” I reply.

“The humans have a rule about calling girls,” muses Sandor. “Something like waiting three days unless you want to look desperate.”

I grunt.

“You’re in the clear as far as that goes,” he concludes. “What are you waiting for?”

“What’s the point?” I ask, trying not to sound as sullen as I feel. I don’t think I pull it off.

Ever since our meeting in the park, I’ve done little but train and think about Maddy. We only spoke for a couple of minutes, but I could tell that she’s lonely like me. She’s new in Chicago and, even though I’ve been here for five years, for all the socializing I’ve done I might as well be new too. Admittedly, I’ve fantasized about having a social life that’s more than playing robots with my Cêpan, but I never dreamed that a beautiful girl would come along, much less actually be interested in me.

Now that it’s actually happening, what can I even do about it? Maddy doesn’t have any scars on her ankle. She hasn’t been conscripted into an intergalactic war. She’ll make friends in the city eventually, go off to college, live a normal life. Me? I’ve got to make a race of warmongering monsters accountable for the genocide of my people. It’s nice to think about escaping all that, to daydream about having a girlfriend and going on dates. Except one day the daydream ends and I go to war. How does getting to know a human fit into that—let alone having a girlfriend?

It doesn’t.

Sensing that my mind is elsewhere, Sandor eases the controls out of my hands and brings the drone back to the roof. His puts his hand on my back and we walk over to the edge of the roof and peer down at the city below us.

“You can never escape who you are,” he begins.

“I know that,” I say, wanting to cut short whatever kind of exasperating pep talk he has in mind. I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.

“Listen,” he continues. “Just because you’ve got a destiny doesn’t mean you don’t also have a life to live.”

“That’s not what it feels like.”

He sighs. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake with you, keeping you so isolated. If that’s the case, I’m sorry. I guess I forgot what it’s like to be young.”

Sandor rubs his beard, searching for words.

“I’ve had some, uh, friends since we’ve been on Earth.”

“Friends.” I snort. “Is that what those girls are?”

“Whatever,” Sandor says with a nervous cough before elbowing me. “The humans can be a welcome distraction, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t need a distraction,” I say sarcastically and kick the drone. “I have video games. And toy robots.”

“That’s not the point,” Sandor continues. “Distraction, that’s the wrong word. They can be a reminder too. A reminder that what we’re doing, why we’re here and fighting, that it’s worth something. We can have lives, Nine. When we win this war—and we will win—you can be Stanley, for real. Or someone else, even. You can be whoever you want.”

My eyes sweep across the city. Out there, somewhere, are the Mogadorians. Even if the one from the lakefront was the only one in Chicago, there are others. Hunting me.

“You can’t escape what you are, but you also should know what you could be. Why you’re fighting.”

Also out there, probably doing homework in her parents’ apartment, is Maddy. I’d much rather think about her than the Mogs.

“Call her,” Sandor says. “Be Stanley, even if it’s only for a little while.”

I glance over at him. I can see how hard he’s trying to reach me. I want to believe that he’s right.

“Thanks, Sandor.”

He pats me hard on the back. “Just don’t screw it up.”

Later, I sit on my bed with the door closed, holding the phone. This time I don’t bother rehearsing—not after how badly that went for me last time. I just take a few deep breaths and dial Maddy’s number.

She answers on the first ring.

“Hi,” I say, trying out the words. “It’s Stanley.”

There’s a sigh of relief on the other end. Maybe she’s been thinking about this moment too, hoping I would call.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to call,” she says. I can almost hear the smile in her voice and I instantly feel better.

Chapter Twelve

Maddy picks the planetarium for what Sandor has annoyingly started to call our “first date.”

I try to downplay it to him, explaining to him that Maddy and I are just hanging out, but he can tell how excited I am and that only encourages his teasing. The couple days before the date are filled with equal parts training and unsolicited girl advice.

“Tell her how pretty she looks.”

I stop a heavy bag from careening into me with my telekinesis.

“Ask her questions about herself.”

I duck under a swarm of projectiles.

“Make sure you look interested in what she’s saying, even if you’re not.”

I pivot around a drone, hitting it with a backhand swipe of my pipe-staff.

“Are you listening to me?”

I wipe sweat from my face and glare at Sandor. “Not really.”

“Good.” He claps his hands, powering down the Lecture Hall. “Then you’re ready.”

Maddy’s waiting for me outside the planetarium. Her smile is small and nervous as I approach. She’s wearing a light sweater and jeans, which makes me glad I didn’t take Sandor’s advice to dress up like we were going to the opera or something, opting instead for my usual hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

“I hope you don’t think this is nerdy,” she says as we buy tickets.

“No, not at all.”

Nerdy isn’t the word I’d choose. Ironic, maybe? I can’t explain to her how quaint I find the humans’ understanding of the known cosmos. I wonder if other aliens in hiding have had first dates at the planetarium. I doubt it.

“My dad used to take me to the planetarium all the time when I was a kid. I got pretty into it.”

As we take our seats in the domed auditorium and wait for the show to start, she tells me more about her family. Her father is some kind of renowned astronomer, her mother a professor of philosophy. They moved to Chicago so her mother could take a position at the university, but they still travel frequently, since her dad’s in high demand on the space-nerd lecture circuit. Maddy sounds sad when she talks about them, like they’re never around. Our situations are so different, yet somehow I feel like I know exactly where she’s coming from.

“I miss them,” she says, then waves her hands apologetically. “I mean, they’re not gone forever, but it’s like I hardly see them since we moved here.”

“Isn’t that weird? Being on your own?”

She shrugs. “It can be cool. No one to yell at me for staying up late on a school night.” She shoots me a playful glance. “Or to wonder why I’m bringing strange boys to the planetarium.”

I laugh, but I also wonder if she really thinks I’m strange. I hope not. I think I’m doing a pretty good job being regular Stanley.

“Ugh, I’m going on and on. I just unloaded all that on you and I don’t know anything about you.”

I’m disappointed that she’s done talking. Contrary to what Sandor thought, I didn’t have to feign interest. But now comes the part where I have to lie to her.

“What do you want to know?”

Maddy thinks this over. Around us, other people are taking seats. I notice that our shoulders are touching, sharing an armrest.

“Let’s start with where you go to school?”

I flash an embarrassed smile. “I’m homeschooled.”

She gives me a look that makes me think I might as well have told her I’m an alien from the planet Lorien. I remember the weird looks that the Mikes gave me at the rec center, like I was some kind of creepy shut-in. I could’ve come up with a cover story, I guess, but it feels better to tell her the truth.

“Huh,” she says, her eyebrow arched jokingly, “and here you seemed so normal.”

“It’s really not that weird,” I tell her. “My uncle, he, uh, keeps things interesting. Actually, maybe it is sort of weird, come to think of it. My uncle’s not exactly what you’d call normal.”

“So you live with him?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are your parents?”

I should have a convincing lie ready for that question. Sandor and I used to drill backstory when we were on the road, but it’s been a long time. Sandor would tell people that I was his nephew, and that he was taking me on a trip to show me the world, or so that my parents could have a second honeymoon, or that my parents would be joining us eventually. Sometimes he got closer to the truth, telling sympathetic diner waitresses that he was raising me after both my parents had died in an accident. That usually resulted in a bigger than normal slice of dessert. I want the Stanley that Maddy gets to know to be as close to the real me as possible.

“They died when I was young,” I tell her. “I never really knew them.”

“Oh,” she replies, clearly not sure what to say next.

Thankfully, the lights dim before the conversation gets any more depressing. We recline into our seats as the Milky Way comes alive above us.

A tinny recording begins describing the origin of the cosmos and running down the roster of planets in relation to Earth. I’m not listening. Lounging in the near darkness with Maddy is pretty much all my brain is capable of processing. I want to remember these details. Her hair smells like vanilla, or coconut, or some other girly thing. Whatever it is, it’s great. I concentrate on the space on the arm rest where our shoulders meet, imagining that her every shift in position is some coded message for me.

I glance over at her. Maddy notices and gives me a quick smile, her face bathed in whites and pale blues of the light presentation overhead. I’d spend the rest of this boring lecture staring at her if that wouldn’t make think I was a freak. Instead, I tune out the planetarium soundtrack and listen to her. Her breathing is slow and steady, but using my enhanced hearing I can tell her heart is pounding.

Or wait. Maybe that’s my heart.

I close my eyes and spend the rest of the show like that. Afterward, the planetarium stays dimmed, the stars still on display. The rest of the people begin filing out while we stay in our seats. Eventually it’s just the two of us and the stars.

Maddy leans close to me and begins to whisper, even though we’re alone. She tells me about constellations that weren’t covered in the recording, guiding my eyes from Orion’s Belt to Aquarius. She laughs softly and corrects me when I mistake the tail of Pisces for one of Pegasus’s legs. I already know everything that she’s telling me, but it’s all so much more interesting with her narrating.

At some point, without even realizing I’m doing it, I take her hand.

It’s only for a moment. Her hand is warm and a little damp from sweat. She quickly slips away and stands up.

“I’m sorry,” I start, realizing I overdid it, “I mean—I didn’t mean . . .”

“It’s okay,” she says, shaking her head, looking flustered but not mad or weirded out. “Come on. You can walk me home.”

Chapter Thirteen

Sandor isn’t in the penthouse when I get home, which gives me a couple hours of alone time to endlessly replay in my head what I’ve started thinking of as the hand-holding incident. I don’t think I even put this much thought into suckering in that Mog. Did I misread Maddy’s interest? When Sandor comes home with a soggy bag of takeout, he doesn’t even ask me about my date. Instead, he wants to talk about his day prowling the city.

“I drove all over the city with this thing,” he says, holding up his heavy-duty version of my iMog. “Nothing. Not a single blip. If that Mog had any friends looking for him, they’ve moved on. I think we’re in the clear.”

“That’s great,” I reply distractedly.

“To hiding in plain sight,” he toasts, raising a freshly mixed drink.

Over burgers, Sandor finally gets around to asking about Maddy. I tell him everything, not leaving out a single detail, even trying to recreate Maddy’s body language for him. For the first time since we’ve been in Chicago, I feel like I could really use my Cêpan’s guidance.

“Huh,” he says when I finish.

“‘Huh.’ That’s it?”

He shrugs. “Women are mysterious creatures.” As he says this, he gives me a strange look, half smirking and half apprehensive, like I’m some kind of weird animal he’s afraid will bite him.

“What?” I ask.

“I just can’t remember the last time you talked this much. It’s nice.”

I wave him away. “You’re no help.”

Just then, my back pocket vibrates.

Immediately, my heart is in my throat. My iMog is signaling a warning. I practically tear the device out of my pocket, staring down at the screen.

But it’s blank. Just a solitary white dot in the center.

My cell phone, I realize. It was my cell phone. I carry my phone mostly out of habit; it hardly ever vibrates, unless Sandor wants me to pick him up a bagel on the way home from my run.

The screen blinks with a new text message.

“It’s her,” I announce, almost too nervous to open the message.

“What’s it say?”

“Had fun today,” I read. “For the next date, you’re picking the place.”

Sandor whoops and mimes a high five from across the table. So, she thought it was a date too. And if she had fun that means I didn’t screw up too badly with the hand holding. I don’t have long to savor these facts as a fresh wave of anxiety washes over me.

She wants me to plan a date.

“What’s wrong?” Sandor asks, reading distress in my expression.

“I have no idea where to take a girl on a date.”

Sandor cuts short a laugh. We sit in silence, both of us pondering.

“I could take her back to the Windy City Wall,” I suggest. “I could definitely kill that wall now.”

Sandor makes a face.

“You want to spend a date climbing rocks instead of talking to her?”

He has a point.

“You know,” Sandor muses, “if you really want to impress her, I have an idea.”

Chapter Fourteen

I make plans with Maddy for the following weekend, which makes the weekdays in between a slog through endless anticipation. I’m filled with nervous energy, but not the kind that I can channel into my training sessions with Sandor. The drones score more hits on me than they should, my mind occupied with cycling through wardrobe choices and practicing imaginary conversations. I can tell Sandor is annoyed as he powers down the Lecture Hall.

“Do you think the Mogadorians will care that you’ve got a girl on your mind?” he snaps.

I offer my best contrite headshake, knowing he’s right.

Later, Sandor summons me to his workshop. He’s got his feet up on his desk, crumpling a stack of old blueprints. He has a distant look in his eyes and for a second I think I’m interrupting some pleasant daydream. He looks me over with a wistful smile.

“You know, I wasn’t much older than you are now when I was assigned to be your Cêpan,” he says. “That’s young for a Cêpan to be assigned to a Garde. I was good, though. I’d helped the engineers—much older, more experienced—with some tech projects. I think they wanted to get me in the field as soon as possible.”

I’d been expecting a lecture from Sandor. That’s something I’m used to. Annoyed Sandor was a familiar entity. Nostalgic Sandor, on the other hand, I’ve got no idea how to deal with. It’s so rare for him to talk about Lorien, I’m afraid to interrupt.

“I liked to think I was ready,” he continues. “It was a big honor, that’s for sure. Even if you were an unruly little piece of work.” He winks at me and I can’t help but smile.

“Bonding with a Garde, that’s a full-time responsibility. As ready as I wanted to be, I had other things on my mind too. I had a girlfriend. Things were getting kind of serious, you know? I was trying hard to balance it all.”

“What happened?” I ask, before realizing what a stupid question that is.

A shadow crosses Sandor’s face, although he’s quick to hide it. “You know what happened.”

Sandor sits up and tears a piece of paper out of a legal pad. He hands it to me, the lines filled with his precise writing. A shopping list.

“Since you’re no good to me in the Lecture Hall, you might as well go run some errands,” he says, stern Sandor resurfacing.

I take the list and head for the door, but Sandor stops me.

“I never figured out that balance,” he says. “Maybe you can. Until you do, just remember what your real responsibilities are. All right, man?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve run errands for Sandor. It isn’t groceries he sends me out into the world for; that’d be too easy. I’m after spare parts. It’s not like we couldn’t just order whatever high-tech items Sandor needs for his drones off the internet, but I think he enjoys the challenge of taking broken-down Earth junk and making it work again. He’s tried to get me more involved in his salvage projects, but it’s never really worked. I’m way more interested in smashing his inventions than putting them together.

I spend the afternoon dutifully patrolling downtown’s pawn shops and thrift stores. I find a few things on Sandor’s list—an ancient compact disc player and an automatic vegetable slicer with curving blades that I dread to see flying at me in the Lecture Hall. I also pick up some stuff I know he’s always on the prowl for, a fried circuit board here, an orphaned length of cable there.

It isn’t until the last thrift store on my route that I get the tingly feeling that someone is watching me.

Instinctively I make a discreet check of my iMog. There’s no sign of danger nearby. As I slip the device back into my pocket, I notice her. Standing two aisles over, next to a rack of vintage T-shirts, is Maddy.

At first, I think it must be my eyes playing tricks on me. She’s been on my mind so much that I’m starting to hallucinate. Then Maddy holds up her hand in a shy wave and I practically bound over to her.

“Hey,” I exclaim, trying not to sound too excited and probably failing. “What’re you doing here?”

“Hey,” she replies, glancing around like she’s as surprised to be in a musty thrift store as I am to find her here. “I’m, uh, stalking you.”

I grin like an idiot. “Seriously?”

“No!” She rolls her eyes. “My dad, he’s really into antique telescopes and stuff like that. I’m just looking around.”

“Oh,” I say, playing crestfallen. “I was actually hoping you were stalking me.”

Maddy glances at the bags I’m holding from other stores, each of them bulging with weird shapes. “What’s all that?”

“Science project stuff,” I say, thinking quickly.

“For homeschool?”

I shrug. “My uncle is weird.”

Together we wander the aisles of the thrift store. Maddy pulls a maroon leisure suit off a rack and holds it up to me.

“Maybe you should wear this on our date this weekend,” she says, cocking her head, trying to imagine me in the suit.

Sandor would probably burn this suit if I dared desecrate the penthouse with its presence.

“Would you even come outside if I showed up in this?”

“Probably not. Here, hold it up,” she orders, and I take the suit with my free hand.

Before I realize what she’s doing, Maddy’s held up her phone and snapped my picture. She laughs, looking at what I’m sure is my startled expression above the most hideous suit in history.

“Perfect,” she says. “Hello, new wallpaper.”

“Now I definitely have to buy it. You’ve talked me into it.”

When I jokingly check the price tag, a moth flutters out from the sleeve. I drop the suit, grossed out, and Maddy laughs again. We dart out of the store, the old man behind the cash register glaring at us.

“I hope I don’t have fleas,” I say once we’re out on the sidewalk.

“Actually, I think I see one,” she says. She leans close, inspecting, and then gives me a quick peck on the cheek.

She leans back and laughs again, this time at what must be the dumbfounded expression on my face.

“See ya Friday, Stanley,” she says playfully, adding, “Take a bath.”

Chapter Fifteen

It’s the big night.

Sandor and I stand in the subbasement garage of the John Hancock building. Arrayed before us, each neatly tucked beneath a tarp, is Sandor’s collection of getaway vehicles.

Really, I’ve never thought we needed more than one car. Sandor, however, has taken to collecting the things since we’ve been in Chicago, outfitting each with his various improvements. I guess Cêpans need hobbies too. He’s lucky that being a Cêpan comes with unlimited funds; I’d hate to imagine him driving a beat-up old clunker.

Sandor pulls the tarp away from a sleek, dark red convertible. He runs a hand lovingly across the hood. Then he gives me a deathly serious look.

“Please don’t make me regret this.”

I grin at him, eager to get behind the wheel.

“That smile doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

Still, he opens the driver side door for me and I hop in. Sandor leans in the window as I adjust the seat and mirrors.

“How fast are you going to go?” he asks.

“Five miles under the speed limit at all times,” I recite. We’ve had this conversation all week, ever since Sandor suggested I take one of the cars. “Always signal; no racing to catch yellows; keep the top up. I get it.”

“You better,” replies Sandor, his tone more parental than ever. He looks a bit anxious about the way I’m excitedly drumming my hands on the wheel, but he steps back.

“Have a good time,” he says.

I carefully pull out of the parking garage. Sandor, watching me and nervously rubbing his beard, disappears in my rearview mirror.

When I’m a few blocks away from the John Hancock building, I hit the button to roll the top down. What Sandor doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

I pick Maddy up at the park across the street from the rec center. The convertible handles like a dream and I cruise over to her place following all of Sandor’s rules. Except for the top, of course. The cool night air swirls around me and I feel energized.

This is as free as I’ve ever felt.

Maddy is sitting on the bench when I pull up, and does a double take when she sees me behind the wheel. I wave her over.

“Want to go for a ride?” I ask.

“Oh, wow, is this yours?”

“My uncle’s,” I tell her, shrugging nonchalantly. “He’s cool with it.”

Maddy glances up and down the street, a bit apprehensive.

“You’re a good driver? I can trust you?”

Okay, I don’t technically have a license. But I do have an extremely convincing fake that Sandor forged in his workroom. I’ve also got plenty of experience behind the wheel. Back when we were nomads, Sandor had me practice driving as soon as my feet could reach the pedals, mostly to relieve him when he got tired.

“Of course,” I reply.

We engage in a mini staring contest, her jokingly sizing up my trustworthiness, me trying my hardest to look innocent. I can’t help the devilish smile that creeps across my face.

“Aha!” she says, pointing. “The look of a speed demon.”

Before I can defend myself, Maddy vaults over the passenger door and flops down in the seat beside me. She flashes me a lopsided grin.

“I’ve always wanted to do that.”

I can’t take my eyes off her. Right then, Maddy looks more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. I watch as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail, not wanting to get it tangled in the wind. I’m immediately swept into a vision of just driving forever, out of Chicago; it doesn’t matter where as long as Maddy’s next to me. Still, something nags at me, a sensation that I can’t quite place, adding a dark edge to what is an otherwise perfect moment.

I ignore the feeling.

“Ready?” I ask her.

“Ready,” she answers.

I don’t take my eyes off her as I pull away from the curb with a flourish.

Immediately, I rear-end a conversion van that’s double-parked a few feet away. That definitely wasn’t there a few minutes ago.

“Oof,” groans Maddy as we’re both jerked forward.

“Are you all right?” I ask, my hands shaking uncontrollably on the wheel. I’m simultaneously terrified that I’ve hurt her and mortified that I’ve made such an unbelievable asshole of myself.

“I—I think so,” she stammers.

In front of us, the doors of the conversion van swing open and three men jump out. They’re all dressed in dark clothes, matching fedoras pulled low over pale faces.

I realize that in my back pocket, my iMog is vibrating like crazy.

Chapter Sixteen

I don’t need the incessant vibrating from my pocket to tell me that the three men standing in front of my car are Mogs. I know my enemy.

“They probably want your insurance info,” says Maddy as she begins rifling through the glove box.

For a second I try to convince myself that this could just be a coincidence, that they don’t know exactly who—or what—I am. But they’re not looking at the damage to their van. I’ve crumpled their back bumper pretty good and shattered one of their taillights, but they don’t seem to care.

All three of them stare at me. Slowly, one of them begins to reach under his coat.

There’s no way this is random. Wishful thinking. My date is ruined before it’s even started.

“Hell with it,” I growl, and throw the car into reverse.

The Mogs immediately fan out, trying to cut off my escape. As if I won’t run them over. I rev the engine and peel out, forcing one of the Mogs to dive out of the way. As I shoot by, I see the others already scrambling into the van.

“What are you doing?!” screams Maddy.

“I think one of them had a gun,” I shout back, weaving around a slow-moving sedan.

“Are you nuts? Stanley, slow down!”

I do the opposite. Flooring it, I blow through a red light. The convertible’s tires screech as I jerk the wheel hard left, nearly fishtailing us through a turn. Maddy is thrown against her seat belt and I wince as she cries out in pain.

In the rearview, I see the Mog van cut off by traffic. I realize that I’ve been holding my breath and let an exhale hiss through my teeth.

“Let me out,” says Maddy. “Let me out of this car right now.”

I start to slow down, trying to blend into the rest of the traffic. That’s not going to be easy considering my flashy car. I hope Sandor’s out there somewhere watching this all go down on his network of hacked cameras, that he’s sending a drone to bail me out as we speak.

The iMog in my pocket vibrates with renewed vigor.

“Hold on,” I say, punching the gas just as the Mog’s van comes barreling out of a side street, nearly clipping the convertible’s bumper.

The van is riding hard on our tail, trying to grind us off the road. Other cars let loose whining honks as we speed down the middle of the road. Maddy looks over her shoulder, staring in horror at the van bearing down on us and its stone-faced driver.

“They’re right behind us.” Her voice is almost a whisper. Her hand is clutching my arm, nails digging right through my shirt. “Why is this happening?”

I don’t respond; there’s no lie I can think of that could possibly explain it.

With sweaty fingers, I flick open a hidden panel on the steering wheel. Sandor planned for this sort of thing.

“Sit back,” I warn. Maddy looks at me, her frightened expression apparently not reserved just for the Mogs.

I hit the button for nitrous oxide.

The convertible’s engine roars and then bucks and for a moment I’m worried the car can’t handle Sandor’s modification. Then, with a gut punch of pressure, it screams forward.

We’re going way over the speed limit. I’m too afraid to check the speedometer, keeping my eyes pinned to the road as I weave through traffic. Maddy is glued to her seat, terrified. Seeing us coming, other cars try to move out of the way. Red traffic lights fly by. I hear a siren and, briefly, blue lights flash across my rearview, but any cops are outdistanced before they can even make out my license plate. We’re a blur.

I keep driving until my iMog stops vibrating, and then I swing the car into a secluded alley and kill the lights.

My body hums with adrenaline. I can’t believe what I just did, evading a pack of Mogs in a high-speed chase like something out of a movie. I’m an action hero. A mixture of euphoria and relief hits me.

And I don’t really know where the next part comes from. Maybe it’s pure adrenaline or maybe I’m just going totally crazy. But before I even realize I’m doing it, I lean into Maddy and start to kiss her.

I guess it wasn’t the right thing to do.

“You bastard!” Maddy cries, pushing me away. She throws open her door, knocking over some nearby trash cans. In the dim light of the alley I can see that her beautiful face is streaked with tears.

Stunned from her reaction, I don’t say anything as she runs out of the alley.

Alone in Sandor’s banged-up convertible, I’m left to ponder the adventure-filled life of a Loric hero.

Chapter Seventeen

I abandon the convertible in the alley and head back to the John Hancock building on foot. I stick to side streets and back alleys as much as possible. My iMog never vibrates. Wherever those Mogs came from, they’re gone now.

I call Sandor and tell him what happened. I catch him as he was on his way to try and find me—just as I suspected, he was monitoring me the whole time and freaking out.

It’s past midnight when I make it back home. Sandor is waiting for me outside the building.

“What the hell?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “They just appeared.”

“A high-speed chase through the middle of Chicago? What were you thinking?”

“It was the only way.”

Sandor groans, dismissing that with a wave of his hand.

“You’re acting like a child.”

“You said there weren’t any Mogs in the city,” I protest.

“So stupid,” he says. “I was so stupid to let you take that car. To even let you out of my sight. All because of some girl.”

“She’s fine, by the way,” I snap.

“Who cares?” Sandor hisses, getting right in my face. “She doesn’t matter. You matter. Do you understand what you’ve put at stake? The years of progress you’ve undone in one night, all for some stupid crush?”

I take a step away from him. “Don’t talk about her that way.” He’s being such a hypocrite. He was the one who wanted me to go after Maddy in the first place.

Sandor rubs his hands over his face, exasperated.

“Where did you leave the car?”

I give him the rough address of the alley.

“It needs to be destroyed,” he says, “our presence here minimized. I’ll handle that. You—you go upstairs and pack a bag.”

“What? Why?”

“We’re leaving in the morning.”

I was close. So close to having a life that was more than just Sandor, more than just training.

I pace around the penthouse, letting my gaze drift aimlessly across all the luxuries we’ve amassed over the last five years. Five years living here in peace and comfort—all ruined because I was bored. When I killed that Mog in the elevator, I thought things would change. I thought that I would assume my destiny and begin the war against the Mogadorians. I thought that would make me happy.

Instead, it’s only made things worse.

What felt best about killing that Mog wasn’t that some small justice was done. It was that I had chosen how and when to do it. It was my choice.

And yet now my options are fewer than ever. Sandor wants us back on the road, just when I was starting to figure things out. It doesn’t seem right that he should get to call all the shots.

Shouldn’t I get some say in our next move?

I can’t bring myself to pack a bag. I’m still clinging to some hope that Sandor will change his mind.

I try to call Maddy, but her phone goes right to voice mail. Not that I would know what to say if she did answer. What kind of lie could I tell her? I spend the better part of an hour trying to compose an apology for nearly getting her killed, for scaring her, and for not even realizing that I was doing it.

In the end, I settle on texting a simple “I’m sorry.”

There’s going to be no sleep for me tonight.

I pass through Sandor’s workshop and into the Lecture Hall. There are automated training modules programmed into the room’s interface. I select one at random and stride into the center of the room, holding my pipe-staff.

When the first ball bearing fires out of the Lectern’s turret I don’t deflect it with my telekinesis or bat it away with my pipe-staff. I let it hit me right in the chest. I suck in my breath as dull pain courses through my sternum.

Gritting my teeth, I clasp my hands behind my back and lean forward. The next ball bearing strikes me a few inches to the left of the first, bruising my ribs.

When the third ball bearing is fired, my instincts take over. I push it aside with my telekinesis and pivot to the side, anticipating the next shot. I spin my pipe-staff over my head as the program really gears up, heavy bags swinging at me from behind, a mechanical tentacle grasping at me from the floor.

My mind turns off. I fight.

I’m not sure how long I keep going like that, dodging and swinging, acting instead of thinking. Eventually I’m dripping with sweat, my shirt completely soaked through. It’s then that the Lecture Hall’s patterns change; the attacks become less predictable, more coordinated than the auto-program could pull off.

I realize that Sandor has returned and climbed into the Lectern’s seat, his fingers dancing across the control panel.

Our eyes meet as I leap over a metal-plated battering ram. His look is one of sadness and disappointment.

“You didn’t pack,” he says.

I square my shoulders and glare at him in defiance. Go ahead, I want to tell him, throw everything you can at me. I can take it.

I’m going to prove to Sandor that I’m not his young ward anymore.

“I suppose one last training session before we leave won’t hurt,” Sandor says.

A glimmering tennis ball–sized object floats up from the floor, emitting a disorienting strobe light. It makes the next round of projectiles harder to see, but I manage to catch them in the air, using my mind to hold them inches from my bruised chest.

“That hasn’t been decided yet,” I say evenly as I launch one of the projectiles at the flashing ball, exploding it. It clatters to the floor, blinking out.

“What hasn’t been decided?” he asks.

“That we’re leaving.”

“No?”

A pair of heavy bags careen toward me, quickly followed by another volley of ball bearings. I swing the pipe-staff as hard as I can at one of them, my muscles screaming in protest. The pipe-staff shreds through the bag, sending sand spilling onto the floor.

One of the ball bearings strikes me in the hip, but I catch the others and hurl them back the way they came. The turrets in the wall hiss and pop when the ball bearings reenter their barrels the wrong way. There’s a short puff of smoke and then they hang dormant.

“I get a vote,” I tell him. “And I vote we stay.”

“That’s impossible,” Sandor replies. “You don’t understand what’s at stake. You’re not thinking clearly.”

Three drones deploy from the floor. I’ve never fought that many at once before. One is the propeller-powered toaster that just days ago we were trying out on the roof. The others I haven’t seen before. They’re the size of soccer balls, metal plated, with scopes attached to the front.

The toaster bobs in front of me, distracting me as the other two flank me. When they’re in position, the soccer balls emit two bursts of electricity, jolting me.

I retreat toward the back of the room, the drones zapping at me. My ears are ringing from the last shock. The drones close in, pursuing me. I’m running out of room.

Before I realize what I’m doing, I run up the wall. My aim was to flip off the wall, to land behind the drones, but something is different. I don’t feel gravity pulling at me. I plant my feet.

I’m standing on the wall. Except for a sudden feeling of vertigo, it feels no different than standing on the ground.

My Legacy. I’ve developed one of my Legacies.

Staring at me, Sandor is too stunned to adjust the course of the drones. The toaster crashes into the wall. From above, I swing my pipe-staff down on the two floating soccer balls, destroying them both.

Sandor lets out a cry of triumph.

“Do you see?” he shouts. “Do you see what you’re capable of? My young ward gets an upgrade!”

“Upgrade?” I growl.

I run up the rest of the wall and onto the ceiling. The room turns upside down. I sprint across the ceiling that’s now the floor to me, gathering up a head of steam. When I’m right above Sandor and the Lectern I jump, twist in midair, and bring my pipe-staff shearing down on the Lectern.

The control panel explodes in a waterfall of sparks. Sandor dives aside, grunting as he lands hard on his shoulder. My pipe-staff has carved deep into the front of the Lectern, practically cutting it in two. It lets out a series of ear-splitting mechanical squawks, and then the Lecture Hall goes dark.

“I’m not one of your gadgets,” I shout into the darkness. “You don’t get to just control me.”

Starbursts of light flash across my vision as my eyes try to adjust to the darkness. I can’t quite see Sandor, but I can hear him shakily climb to his feet.

“I don’t—I don’t think that,” Sandor says. I’m thankful I can’t see his face, the hurt plain enough in his voice. “Everything I’ve ever done, all these years—” He stops, searching for words.

As I come back down to earth, the memories of the night come back to me. I realize what I’ve done.

“Nine. . . .” I feel Sandor’s hand on my shoulder. “I—”

I don’t want to hear this. I shrug his hand roughly away and run.

Chapter Eighteen

The sun is beginning to rise. The air is still cool, chilling my skin under my sweat-dampened T-shirt. I fled the John Hancock building with nothing but the clothes on my back—the same clothes I wore on my ruined date the night before—and my cell phone and iMog tucked into my back pockets.

A part of me knows that I’ll need to go back to Sandor eventually. But right now, I’m ignoring that part as hard as I can.

I want to know how long I can last out here on my own. The day is just beginning. I can do anything I choose with it.

I feel like Spider-Man, using my newest legacy to stand on the outside of an anonymous Chicago skyscraper, fifty stories up. Beneath my feet, inside the windows, the office building’s automatic lights are coming on. I gaze down at the streets below, the city just starting to wake up.

Thanks to my antigravity Legacy, I’m seeing Chicago from angles I never imagined.

I sprint across the skyscraper’s windows, then jump across the narrow gap between buildings. On the next building I jog upward, bounding over a stone gargoyle until I’m balancing right on the roof ledge. I walk across the ledge, my arms spread out like a tightrope walker, even though there’s no chance of me losing my balance. Hundreds of feet above the ground and it’s as if I’m on the sidewalk.

This would have come in handy that first day at the Windy Wall.

Across the street, I catch sight of an executive type settling in behind his desk with his morning coffee. That’s my signal to rein it in. I don’t need Sandor around to tell me it’d be a bad idea to be seen strolling around on the sides of buildings.

I hop onto the roof. For a while I just sit and watch the sun coming up. I’ve got no place to be. It’s peaceful. When the sun hangs in full view above me, the noise of the city below increasing to rush hour decibels, I decide to check my cell phone.

Three voice mails and four text messages. All of them from Sandor.

I delete them.

Suddenly I’m very tired. I didn’t sleep at all last night. It’s a nice day and there’s a sense of calm on this rooftop. My eyelids start to feel heavy.

I curl up in a shady spot near the edge of the precipice. The roof is hard but my body is too exhausted to do much complaining.

For some reason, my mind drifts to the dream I had of Lorien. I think about the way I flung myself at Sandor, getting us both all muddy, and the way he lifted me into the air afterward, grinning. That was a nice memory. I hope I dream it again.

I don’t dream at all. It’s a deep sleep, and when I finally wake up the sun has almost set. I slept away the entire day. My body aches, both from the exertion of the night before and from passing out on a slab of hard rooftop.

Groaning and stretching, I sit up. I decide to check my cell phone again, even though I know what’s waiting for me.

More voice mails and texts from Sandor, the texts increasingly panicked as he begs me to let him know where I am, that I’m all right. My stomach turns over with guilt. I’ll let him know eventually, I decide. I just need more time.

And then I see it. A single text from the only other number programmed into my phone.

Maddy.

“Maybe we can try again if you promise no cars.”

I leap to my feet, punching the air in celebration. After everything I put her through last night, even after the whole thing with the kiss, and she still wants to see me again. That has to mean something, right? With one simple text Maddy has reassured me that the connection I felt between us is real.

Even knowing that it can never be simple and easy between us, that eventually this brief freedom I have will be gone and I’ll be swept back up in my destiny—even knowing all that, I still have to see her. I know I can set things right between us. And maybe I can have just one perfect, normal moment.

I bound across the rooftops as the sun sets, a shadow above the heads of tired commuters. I chart a course across walls and windows and power lines, heading for Maddy’s house.

I’m cautious during my approach. The Mogs were following me last night, so they’re obviously onto me. I need to make sure they’re not still lurking around. They could be anywhere. I prowl the surrounding blocks, sticking to the rooftops, one eye always on my iMog.

There’s no sign of any danger.

From across the street I scope out Maddy’s house. I feel sort of like a stalker. The sight of parents would be almost as bad as the sight of Mogs. Showing up unannounced might not go over too well with Maddy’s folks. I don’t want to have to throw pebbles at her window.

I climb up the building opposite Maddy’s, careful to stay hidden, and watch her windows. She told me that her parents travel a lot. It looks like I’ve lucked out and that’s the case tonight. The only movement I see in the apartment is Maddy, lounging on a couch with her laptop.

It feels gross to spy on her longer than necessary, so I walk back down to the street and approach her building the normal way.

A few seconds after I buzz her, Maddy’s voice pipes uncertainly out of the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I say into the mic. “It’s Stanley.”

There’s a lengthy pause, long enough for me to consider that this was a stupid idea. She could be peering down at me right now, hoping that I’ll slink off into the night and leave her alone. Or, worse yet, she could be calling the cops.

I’m relieved when the door finally buzzes, letting me in.

Maddy’s apartment is on the third floor. I bound up the stairs. She’s waiting for me in the hallway, dressed in baggy pajama pants, a tank top, and an unbuttoned cardigan sweater.

“Are you okay?” Maddy asks as soon as she sees me.

I realize how I must look. I’m wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday and in the time since then I’ve endured my most intense Lecture Hall workout ever and slept on a rooftop. Belatedly, I run a hand through my hair and try to brush some wrinkles out of my T-shirt.

“I’ve had a really bad twenty-four hours,” I tell her honestly.

“I think I know what you mean.” She gives me a nervous little smile. “So . . .”

“I’m sorry to just show up,” I explain, in a rush to defuse the awkwardness. “I just—I’m not sure when I’ll be able to see you again and I wanted to apologize in person.”

“Thank you for coming,” Maddy says, a note of relief in her voice. And then she’s hugging me, her face pressed into my chest.

I let myself enjoy that moment, trying to commit to memory how her body feels pressed against me, wrapped in my arms.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she whispers, “but you kind of smell.”

Just as I thought, Maddy’s parents are out of town. She invites me in, joking that breaking their rule about having boys over while they’re away is nothing after flagrantly violating their stance against high-speed car chases. I laugh, but I also notice the bruise peeking out from under Maddy’s sweater where the seat belt dug into her shoulder and I feel guilty all over again.

Maddy insists that I take a shower. She gives me a pair of her Dad’s sweatpants and a faded NASA T-shirt and sends me into the bathroom to get cleaned up.

I linger in the shower. The water is hot and feels good on my sore muscles. For a while I let myself imagine that I’m just another teenager grabbing a shower after sneaking over to his girlfriend’s house while her parents are out of town. Not that Maddy is my girlfriend, but she could be.

It’s strange to be in a house like this. Obviously it doesn’t match the John Hancock penthouse in opulence, but it makes up for that in coziness. Unlike where Sandor and I have been staying, Maddy’s house actually feels lived in. The furniture is broken in. There are pictures of Maddy and her parents everywhere. Knickknacks and trinkets clutter bookshelves, mementos from trips taken as a family. There is an entire history here. I’m envious.

Maddy is waiting for me in her bedroom when I get out of the shower. I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever been in a normal kid’s bedroom. There are pictures of Maddy and her friends, school trophies, posters of movie stars on the walls. It’s so different from my utilitarian room, filled with just video game systems and dirty laundry.

She pats the bed and I sit down next to her. I can tell she’s been trying to work out what I’m doing here, why I arrived in such a state.

“Tell me the truth,” she begins. “Did you run away from home?”

“Kind of,” I reply, a little embarrassed. I lay back on the bed, draping an arm over my face. Maddy lies down next to me, trying to look at me.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I do. But how much can I tell her?

“I got in a fight with my uncle.”

“Because of the car?”

“Yeah. Well, not really. That was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s been building up for a while.”

Maddy makes an encouraging noise, and I realize that she’s holding my hand.

Then it all comes pouring out of me.

“I feel like my uncle has my entire life mapped out. Like every decision that affects me I just have no control over. And then when I do try to act on my own, something horrible happens. Like last night.”

I think about the bruises on Maddy’s shoulder. As if sensing my guilt, she gives my hand an encouraging squeeze.

“I want to get away from everything. From my entire life. But I feel like any decision I make, I’ll just end up regretting.”

I lift my arm from my face and squint at her in the darkness.

“Does that make any sense at all?”

I think I see tears in Maddy’s eyes. She nods her head.

“Yes,” she says quietly.

We lie on her bed, holding hands. Eventually, just like it did in the Lecture Hall, my mind shuts off. I don’t want anything more than this. I have to figure things out with Sandor tomorrow, but for tonight, this is perfect. Normal.

We fall asleep.

Chapter Nineteen

At some point, I feel Maddy get out of bed and leave the room.

I linger in that space between being asleep and awake, vaguely aware that it is morning. Maddy’s bed is insanely comfortable and I don’t want to get up. In my dreamy state, I let myself wonder how many days Maddy’s parents will be out of town. Maybe I can stretch this vacation from responsibility out a little further.

There is a shuffling next to the bed. Probably Maddy returning.

A set of fingers touch my arm. They are strangely cold.

My eyes snap open. Two thin, pale men stand over me, both of them with their jet-black hair shorn close to their skulls.

The Mogadorians have found me.

Almost more frightening than the pair of ugly faces glaring down at me is the empty spot in the bed next to me.

Maddy. What have they done to her?

A surge of fear breaks over me. These Mogs might be able to capture me, but they can’t actually hurt me. Not when I’m protected by the Loric charm. Maddy, on the other hand—they could do whatever they want to her. For a moment, I hope this is some really intense nightmare. When they make a grab for my arms and legs, working in tandem to pin me down, I know it’s real. I squirm away from the one grabbing my ankles and kick him in the chest with as much strength as my still-groggy body can muster. The Mog goes crashing backward into Maddy’s desk, knocking through her things. Her purse goes tumbling to the floor, spilling its contents next to a newly broken swimming trophy. When the Mog tries to regain his feet, he ends up shoving Maddy’s laptop to the floor as well.

I’ve made a mess of her room. I’ve made a mess of her life.

The other one’s gotten hold of my wrists and is pinning me to the bed. He grunts as I thrash against his grip, his face close enough that I can smell his sour breath. His face is close enough, in fact, that I can head-butt him.

The blow caves in the Mog’s nose. His grip on my wrists loosens and I’m able to wriggle free. I bring my legs up, doing a backward somersault. My feet hit the wall and just like that my perspective shifts, the anti-gravity Legacy kicking in. I’m eye level with one of them even though our bodies are perpendicular, and I punch him in the face.

Both Mogs are taken aback that I’m suddenly running across the ceiling. Good. That should buy me a second or two. I need to find Maddy and get us out of here. I wonder if she keeps an emergency bag hidden somewhere, but then I realize that keeping a bag of road supplies handy isn’t at all a human thing to do. I think about grabbing her purse, but when I see the contents spilled out of it onto the floor, dozens of plastic IDs with her photo smiling up at me—why does she have so many IDs, anyway? I wonder—I know there’s no time. Sandor will just have to make her a new identity on the fly.

I kick open her bedroom door from the ceiling, leaping over the uppermost part of the doorframe as I go. There’s another Mog waiting outside, but he didn’t expect me to come from above. The ones behind me shout a warning at their friend. Too late.

With a roar, I grab the surprised Mog under the chin with both my hands. Then I jump from the ceiling, simultaneously pulling back on his head. The physics are impossible. I can hear bones popping inside the scout as I spike his head into the ground, his forehead touching the floor a few inches from his heels.

The Mog disintegrates into a cloud of ash. The pictures of Maddy’s family that line the hallway are covered in dust. I feel guilty once again. Maddy’s home felt so perfect when I arrived last night, and now, by bringing the fight here, I’ve roped her and her perfect family into an intergalactic war. Great.

I run back up the wall, onto the ceiling, and sprint toward Maddy’s living room, screaming her name. The two Mogs from the bedroom chase after me, one clutching his broken face.

There are three more of them in the living room. Two of them flank the couch where Maddy sits with her head in her hands. I can’t tell if she’s hurt or crying or both.

“Maddy!” I shout. “We have to run!” She flinches at the sound of my voice, but otherwise remains still.

The third Mogadorian stands in front of the apartment’s door. He smiles when he sees me. It’s a sickening expression; his teeth are gray and rotting, pointing in all the wrong directions. This one is larger than the others. He must be the leader. A wicked-looking sword dangles from his hip, but he makes no move to reach for it. He seems content to just block our only exit.

He doesn’t realize that there’s always another exit when you can walk on walls.

I stoop down and, with a shout, tear the ceiling fan at my feet from its moorings. I wish I had my pipe-staff, but this will have to do.

With the exception of their leader, the Mogadorians have all converged on me. I jump off the ceiling with the fan in hand, bringing it down on top of the closest Mog’s head. The wooden fan blade snaps in half as it splits his skull. His body immediately decomposes into ash, mixing with fan fragments on Maddy’s carpet.

Two down, four to go.

I spin in a circle, swinging the remains of the fan around as I do. My assailants are all forced back a step as I gather momentum. I let the fan loose and it goes flying between two Mogs. They smirk, thinking I’ve missed them, but they were never my intended target. Behind them, the living room window shatters, glass and pieces of wood spraying into the street below.

There’s our exit.

One of the Mogs manages to wrap his arms around me from behind. Another—the one whose nose I broke—forgets the rules and hauls off to punch me. A warm sensation spreads across my face as a fresh bruise spreads across his, staggering him. I elbow the other Mog in the gut, breaking free.

“Maddy!” I shout, making a bull rush toward her. One of the Mogadorians tries to cut me off. I drop my shoulder low, like I would to duck under a heavy bag in the Lecture Hall, and drive into his knees. The Mog flips over me and goes smashing through a coffee table.

At the door, I hear the leader quietly chuckle. I’m not sure what’s funny about his squad getting their asses handed to them. At least he’s a good sport.

I grab Maddy by the shoulders and pull her to her feet. Her hands fall to her sides and I can see that her face is ashen. Her eyes are red-rimmed and distant, totally checked out. I don’t even want to imagine what the Mogs did to shut her down like this. She’s deadweight in my arms.

“Come on!” I shout, shaking her by the shoulders.

And then something strange happens. I feel energy welling up in my core and rushing out through my limbs, fingertips tingling. Maddy must feel something too—a rush, a burst of energy—because her eyes snap into focus.

“What—what are you doing?” she says in a shaky voice.

I don’t know how I know, or even exactly how I did it, but I’m certain that a new Legacy has just presented itself based on the feeling coursing through me. “Just trust me for now,” I say. “Go with it, okay?”

Taking Maddy by the hand, I run toward the nearest wall. The Mog with the broken nose tries to cut us off, but I knock an end table into his legs, upending him. When we reach the wall, I feel that rush again, and know instinctively that I’ve extended my antigravity Legacy to Maddy. That must be what I felt just a second ago—I now have the ability to share my powers with someone else, but I have no idea how long it will last. I kick out, still holding her hand, and feel the axis of the room shift as I run up the wall. At first it feels like Maddy’s just going to let me drag her but then she follows, defying gravity a few steps behind me. I smile to myself as she lets out a gasp, not quite believing what she’s doing.

“Almost there,” I shout over my shoulder.

I lead us toward the window. Escape is only a few feet away. I realize that we aren’t being chased anymore. Are they letting us go?

Suddenly Maddy plants her feet. I jerk to a stop, still holding her hand. I turn to face her, expecting one of the Mogs to have grabbed her.

But she’s just standing her.

“Maddy?” The sight of her, eyes downcast, face ghostly pale, doesn’t make any sense to me. Something tells me I should run, but I can’t bring myself to let go of her hand. I look down and see a taser in a white-knuckled grip in her free hand. Where did she get that?

“I’m sorry,” she says. And then she tases me. The electric current surges through us both. We fall off the ceiling, both of us spasming, bouncing hard off the floor.

The Mogs descend on us.

Chapter Twenty

I come to in the back of a van. I’m seated on a bench, my hands bound behind me, my ankles similarly secured. I can tell that we’re traveling fast. My spine bounces uncomfortably against the van’s steel wall.

Maddy is seated across from me. The look of shell shock has returned to her face. She keeps her eyes pinned to the van’s floor. They haven’t even bothered to tie her up. It’s starting to dawn on me why that is, but I put it out of my head. I’m not ready to think about it now.

Next to Maddy is the huge Mogadorian from the apartment. He studies a small object, turning it over in his thick hands.

It’s my iMog.

The Mog notices that I’m awake and watching him. His lips peel back and I’m forced to endure his sickening smile up close.

“Cute toy,” he says, holding up my iMog. The screen is littered with red dots. “Too bad it didn’t do you any good this time.”

He crushes the device between his hands, dropping it mangled to the van floor.

He watches with amusement as I strain against my bonds. There’s no give at all in the metal shackles securing my wrists and ankles. I take a closer look around the back of the van; the benches on either side are bolted to the floor, a chain-link mesh separating us from the driver, nothing else of note.

There’s no escape.

I consider throwing myself at him. Maybe I can get close enough to bite him. However, I’m not just shackled, I’m also chained to the bench. They’ve taken every precaution.

“You’re stuck with me,” says the Mog, sensing my resignation.

I grit my teeth and stare at him. He smiles back.

“Tell me. Where is your Cêpan?”

“Rio de Janeiro,” I reply, picking the first place that comes to mind.

He scoffs. “How stupid do you think we are?”

“Pretty freaking stupid.”

“Hmm. We found you, didn’t we? One of my scouts goes missing. His last reported location is the Chicago lakefront, tailing a boy matching your description. For my scout to simply disappear, I figure you brought him someplace. So, you must have a safe house in the area.” He kicks the broken pieces of my iMog. “You must have a way to get the drop on him.”

I try to keep my expression neutral, but inside I’m screaming. This is my fault.

“Where is your Cêpan?” repeats the Mog. “Where is your safe house?”

“You don’t know?” I ask. “Tough luck, dude. I guess you’re on your own.”

He sighs. “So much bravado. I wonder if that will hold true once we’ve killed our way to whatever number you are.”

My mind races. I try to figure out how much the Mogs could know. They had my description, knew that I liked the lakefront, and guessed that we had some way to see them coming. What else could they know? How much did I tell Maddy about my life?

Maddy. I look over at her. It had to be her. She was helping them. But why would she do that? And how long has it been going on? Did they get to her after the car chase? Coerce her somehow? Could she be one of them? I dismiss the last possibility—my iMog would have alerted me.

I remember the mess my fight with the Mogadorians made in Maddy’s room, the contents of her purse all over the floor. So many ID cards. Way more than normal. I didn’t think anything of it in the heat of battle. Those IDs, just like the one I have for Windy City Wall, but different. I realize they were membership IDs for rec centers all over Chicago.

My stomach turns over as I think back to the way Maddy looked at me on that first day. So interested at first, yet nervous when I noticed her, and then disappearing before I could talk to her.

“You were looking for me,” I say, dumbfounded.

The Mogadorian lounges back, lazily draping an arm around Maddy’s shoulders. She shudders and attempts to shrink away, but he holds her close.

Her just happening to show up at the thrift store. Taking my picture. The way the Mogs appeared in that van on the night of our date. How mad she was at the end of the car chase. None of it was coincidence. As much as I don’t want it to, suddenly Maddy’s interest in me begins to make sense.

“You Lorien act so high and mighty, yet you’re just like the humans. All it takes is a pretty face to cloud your judgment.”

He pinches Maddy’s cheek. I make a futile lunge forward, only succeeding in rattling my chains and hurting my wrists. The Mog chortles.

“So chivalrous,” he sneers. “Are you so dense that you don’t realize what’s happened? She betrayed you, boy. The girl works for us. We’ve had her for some time, although we didn’t know what to do with her. Humans. So useless, you know? But when we asked her to find you, she did a bang-up job. Didn’t you, sweetheart?” He gives Maddy a mockingly affectionate squeeze.

I know all this is true, as true as the electric shock she pumped into my body just a few hours ago, but I don’t want to believe it. There has to be an explanation.

I ignore the Mog, trying to catch Maddy’s eye.

“Why?” I ask her.

Her mouth tightens, almost as if she has to stop herself from answering. He responds for her.

“Her father the so-called astronomer saw something he shouldn’t have,” he says. “These primitives and their telescopes, sometimes they get lucky. We were forced to detain him and her mother.”

I can see the pain in Maddy’s face as the Mog gleefully finishes his explanation.

“She traded you for them.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The Mog spends the next couple of hours trying to wheedle information out of me, alternating between taunting me and trying to frighten me. I adopt a strict policy of silence and eventually he gives up. But I know it’s not over. We ride on in silence.

I stare at Maddy. She never once looks up at me.

If what the Mog told me is true—and it must be, or otherwise Maddy would have defended herself—then she’s been playing me since I first saw her. The connection I felt between us was just a sham, something I let myself believe because of how desperate and lonely I was. I was so stupid to believe that a girl like Maddy would be interested in me.

And yet the more I study Maddy’s face, the more I’m able to convince myself that maybe it wasn’t all just some Mog trick. She looks terrified, like she’s stuck in a nightmare that refuses to end. But it isn’t just terror that keeps her from looking at me. That’s guilt.

She wouldn’t feel guilty if there had never been anything at all between us. Would she?

Sandor was right. I’ve been acting like a child.

I know the responsible thing to do is to remain silent, to keep up my air of detachment until a way to escape presents itself. But I need to know the truth.

“Did you ever like me?” I ask Maddy.

Maddy cringes when I speak. The Mog claps his hands, delighted, but I ignore him. Slowly, Maddy raises her head to look at me.

“I’m s-sorry,” she stammers. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know you better.”

“How romantic,” quips the Mog, and then he grabs Maddy roughly by the shoulders, shoving a black hood over her head.

“You’re next, loverboy,” says the Mog, yanking a hood over my head as well.

I never have a chance to ask Maddy what she meant.

Sitting in the dark, I try to put myself in Maddy’s position. What would I do if the Mogs had taken Sandor hostage and forced me to work for them?

I’d kill them all, of course. But, that really wasn’t an option for Maddy.

I don’t blame Maddy, I realize. How could she have done anything different? She had no idea what was really at stake.

I can still fix this. I can escape, and I’ll bring Maddy with me. It doesn’t matter what she did. I know she’s not the real enemy here.

The van stops and the Mogs pull me and Maddy out. We stumble along in darkness, at first over rough terrain that I take for the woods, and then over metal grates that cause our footsteps to echo loudly. Wherever the Mogs have taken us, it sounds cavernous and busy, activity reverberating around us.

For a while I keep track of Maddy’s footsteps as she staggers behind me, but at some point the Mogs yank her in a different direction. They prod me onward, forcing me to shuffle awkwardly with my shackled ankles across narrow catwalks and down endless hallways.

Finally, we stop. The large Mog from the van yanks the hood off my head, ripping out a few strands of my hair in the process. We’re in a dark room with no furniture or distinguishing features to speak of, only a single large window cut out of one wall. Some other Mogs have gathered there, most of them leering at me, others excitedly peering out the window.

“I thought you’d like to see this,” says the Mog, dragging me by the elbow over to the window.

The room is some kind of observatory. Outside the window, below us, I see Maddy walking through a large, empty room. Seeing her alone down there, my stomach begins to churn.

A door at the opposite end of the room hisses open and a middle-aged man and woman step slowly into view. They both look thin and dirty. The man is particularly haggard, one sleeve of his yellowed dress shirt actually ripped off and tied around his forehead in a crude bandage. The woman has to partially support him as the pair walk toward Maddy.

“We promised we’d reunite her with her parents when she brought us to you,” muses the Mog. “A job well done, I’d say.”

Maddy races across the room, nearly bowling over her parents when she reaches them. They hug and I can see even from this distance that they are all crying. I press my forehead to the glass, wishing I could be down there with them.

“However,” says the Mog, “we never said we’d let them leave.”

I hear the beast before I see it, a ferocious roar rattling the walls around us. The Mogs on either side of me shift in excitement as the creature lumbers into view. Sandor told me about the piken and the role they played in the destruction of Lorien, but I’ve never seen one in person. The piken is as big as a truck with a body that would resemble an ox if not for the two extra legs and row of twisted spikes that curve down its spine. Its head is snakelike and narrow, its slavering mouth filled with crooked fangs.

Maddy’s father sees the piken first. He tries to put himself between his family and the beast, but he’s too weak. He collapses onto one knee before the piken has even begun to circle.

Maddy is looking up at the observatory window. I’m not sure if she can see me. She waves her arms and screams. It’s hard to hear exactly what she’s saying through the thick glass, but I think it’s “You promised!” over and over.

And then, as the piken lunges forward, her words change. This time, I have no problem reading her lips.

“Stanley!” Maddy screams. “Help us!”

I throw up.

My mouth tastes like bile. I sink down to my knees, humiliated, turning my head away from the gruesome scene below.

The Mogs laugh and cheer. This is like sport to them.

The big one pats my shoulder companionably.

“If it’s any consolation,” he says, “pretty soon that will be you down there.”

Chapter Twenty-two

My life becomes push-ups and silence.

The Mogs have stuck me in a small cell and seem to have forgotten me. There’s no night and day here and, as best as I can tell, they only feed me when they feel like it. Keeping track of the time becomes impossible. So I do push-ups. On the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling—wherever I can in my tiny prison.

I think about Sandor. I have faith that he’s still out there looking for me. One day he’ll find me. We will break out of here and I will kill every Mog that dares stand in my way.

I thought I was in good shape before, but I’m getting bigger and stronger. I can tell by the way the Mogs who bring my food keep a careful distance that I intimidate them.

I’m glad. Let them think about what’s coming when I get out of here. I hope they dream about it like I do.

Sometimes the large Mog who captured me, or one of the other important-looking ones, stops by my cell to ask me some vague question. Where have I hidden my transmission device? What do I know about Spain?

I never answer. I haven’t spoken since my first day here. I grunt and growl, and show them my teeth. Let them think that I’ve gone crazy, that captivity has turned me into some kind of animal. Maybe it has.

When I sleep, the nightmares come. They feel as real as the vision I had of Lorien, but offer none of the comfort. In them, an enormous Mogadorian covered in heinous tattoos and scars points a golden weapon shaped like a giant hammer in my direction. On the flat part is painted a black eye that pulses when aimed at me, creating a sensation like having my guts scooped out.

Somehow, I know who this giant monster is. Setrakus Ra. My enemy.

Sleeping is bad, but sometimes being awake is even worse. These are days where I feel like I can’t breathe. It feels as if the entire cavernous prison is sitting on top of me. The need to escape becomes primal then, and I throw myself against the glowing blue force field that keeps me in my cell, letting it buffet me across the tiny space until I’m too exhausted to do it again.

The nausea sets in then. I learn to fight through it. Each time I hit the force field, it hurts a little less.

I try not to think about Maddy.

One day the Mogs take me out of my cell. If I had to guess, I’d say that it has been months since I came here.

They lead me to a different cell, where they place me behind another blue force field. The large Mog from the van is in the room, seated on what I immediately recognize as a Loric Chest.

My Loric Chest.

“We found him in Ohio,” says the Mog matter-of-factly. “Snooping around the office of a little newsletter we’ve been keeping under surveillance. Looking for you.” He presses a button and a panel in the back of the cell raises.

My heart stops when I see what’s behind it.

It’s Sandor. My Cêpan hangs upside down from the ceiling. He’s been badly beaten—both of his eyes are blackened, his lips swollen, his torso marred by grisly slashes. Perhaps worst of all, they have torn out chunks of his usually perfectly maintained hair and left his finely tailored suit in tatters.

He is not at all the man I remember. They’ve destroyed him. My eyes fill with tears, but I fight them back.

Sandor sucks in a breath when he sees me. I wonder how different I must look to him after these months of captivity. It’s hard to say with his face so swollen and covered in bruises, but Sandor looks almost happy.

I’m ashamed of myself—both because it’s my fault we’ve been captured, and because I’m so powerless.

“My young ward,” he whispers.

The Mog turns to me. He’s holding a wicked-looking dagger.

“Your little vow of silence routine has been fun,” the Mog says to me. “But it ends today.”

He walks over to Sandor and lightly drags the dagger down his sternum.

“I don’t think you know anything,” muses my captor. “Nothing that we don’t know already, at least.” He shrugs. “But I’m going to torture your Cêpan anyway. Until you ask me to stop.”

He wants to break me. I say nothing. I remember Sandor’s lectures on what to do if the unthinkable should happen and I’m captured. Don’t give them anything, he told me. Even the slightest bit of information could hurt the other Garde who are still in hiding. Don’t let them make you weak.

I hope it’s not too late to make Sandor proud.

I stare into Sandor’s eyes. He stares back until the Mog begins making his cuts; precise, surgical slices that must hurt like hell but aren’t deep enough to kill. My Cêpan clenches his eyes shut, screaming into his gag.

When the Mog is finished, Sandor has passed out from the pain and a pool of blood has collected on the cell floor beneath him.

I keep my silence.

The next day, it starts over.

I keep my body rigid and my mouth shut. When Sandor can manage to focus on me, I think that I see pride in his eyes.

This continues for days. After every session, the Mogs return me to my cell, where I shake uncontrollably until the routine starts over again.

When they take Sandor’s fingers off, I have to turn away.

At the next session, the Mog hums tunelessly while he cuts away at Sandor. My Cêpan flits in and out of consciousness. I wait for him to make eye contact with me before I finally speak.

“I’m sorry for everything,” I croak, my voice like gravel after months of disuse.

The Mog spins to face me, stunned. “What did you say?”

Barely able to move, Sandor can manage only a subtle shake of his head, as if to absolve me of all the mistakes that led us here. I don’t find any peace in forgiveness, but maybe Sandor does in the forgiving.

Sandor closes his eyes.

And something in me snaps. Mustering every bit of strength I have, I hurl myself against the force field, ignoring the pain. There’s a buzz and a crackle and then the sound of a small explosion and I find myself sprawled on the floor of the room, looking up at the Mogadorians, whose monstrous faces betray their shock at what I’ve managed to do. I’ve disabled the force field. I’m through.

I know I only have a second to act before the element of surprise wears off. I push through overwhelming dizziness and nausea and try to use my telekinesis to wrest the dagger from the Mog’s hand, but nothing happens. The field must have somehow zapped my Legacies. For now, I’ll have to rely on the part of me that’s human. Normal.

The Mogs lunge for me, but I’m ready for them. I kick the first one in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and sending him flying, and yank the other one’s ankles, pulling his legs out from under him. His head makes a loud crack against the floor and I jump to my feet. They’re both knocked out, but not for long.

I grab the dagger from the floor where the Mogadorian from the van dropped it, and I’m contemplating which one to kill first when I hear a grunt from behind me. It’s Sandor.

“No,” he mutters. I spin around to face him. His eyes are open again, and it seems like he’s using every bit of energy he has to speak.

“Not them,” he says. “It won’t do any good. There will just be more.”

“Then what?” I ask. My voice catches in my throat. This isn’t fair. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be. “What should I do?”

“You know what you have to do,” he says.

“I can’t. I won’t.”

“You’ve always known I would die for you. That I would die for Lorien.”

I almost argue with him, but there’s not time. The Mogs behind me are beginning to come to. I know he’s right. And I know what I must do.

I take the dagger and plunge it deep into Sandor’s heart.

My Cêpan is dead.

I barely know what’s happening as they pull me off him and drag me back to my cell. They’re yelling at me—screaming really, madder than I’ve ever seen them—but it’s like they’re speaking another language. I have no idea what they’re saying, and I don’t care.

It was mercy, what I did. The last bit of mercy left in me. There will be none left when I get my chance again.

Chapter Twenty-three

The Mogs leave me to rot in my cell; the only contact comes in the form of the occasional tray of slop under my door. I try to bust through the force field again and again, but it doesn’t work this time. They must have increased its strength. They’re afraid of me.

I don’t blame them. Sometimes I’m a little afraid of me too.

I cling to the memories of Sandor and Maddy, reliving their last moments. I feel the rage bubble up inside me and my mind shuts off. When I return to myself, I’m sweating, my knuckles bloodied, chips of stone hacked out of the walls of my cell. I’ve forgiven Maddy but I haven’t forgiven myself.

There is nothing else to do but wait, remember, and get stronger.

And then one day it happens.

I can tell something is going wrong. There’s a rumbling from below that causes dust to fall from the ceiling. I can hear large groups of Mogs running by my door, voices raised in panic. Wrong for the Mogs could mean right for me.

I feel a rush of energy like I haven’t felt since the first time Sandor let me loose in the Lecture Hall. I can’t keep my fists from clenching and unclenching.

I walk as close to the door as I can without triggering the bubbling force field. I feel like those bulls at the rodeos right before they’re let free from their pens.

When the force field flickers and disappears, I almost can’t believe it. The sickly blue light has been a fixture of my world for so long that it takes my mind a moment to adjust to its absence.

There is a voice on the other side of my door. It’s not a Mogadorian voice; it’s a teenage one. I don’t know what he’s asking and I don’t care.

“Shut up and stand back, kid.”

I tear the door loose and throw it into the hall. I’m stronger than I remember being. Part of the ceiling collapses with its impact and I can see the larger of the two boys in the hall focus, using his own telekinesis to shield himself and his friend from the rubble.

A Garde. It’s about time.

A dorky-looking runt is pointing a gun at me. His hands are shaking badly. The Garde gets a good look at me and drops the two Chests that he’s carrying. One of them is mine.

“What number are you?” he asks. “I’m Four.”

I study him. For some reason, I expected the other Garde to be bigger. Four has to be about my age, yet he seems so much younger. Younger and softer.

I shake his hand. “I’m Nine. Good job staying alive, Number Four.”

Four and the other boy, a human named Sam, explain to me what they’re doing here while I rummage through my Chest. I’m not really listening until they get to Sam’s story—his father missing, possibly taken by Mogs. I wish I could save him. I wish I could save everyone. But I can’t. And who was there to save Maddy? Who was there to save Sandor?

I fish a stone out of my Chest that I remember Sandor using when he was deconstructing a particularly complicated machine. It let him see through parts, into their inner workings. It should allow Sam to see through walls, maybe find his father. All he needs is a little juice.

I press my thumb to Sam’s forehead, sharing my power with him. “You’ve got about ten minutes. Get to it.” He takes off down the hall.

And that’s when the Mogs finally come.

They stream down the corridor. I pluck my pipe-staff out of the Chest and rush to meet them. I spring up the wall, along the ceiling, moving faster than I can remember moving before. They don’t even see me coming until I’ve dropped among them, impaling two of them on the end of the staff.

I’ve waited so long for this.

I feel giddy as I tear my way through the Mogs—caving in a skull here, crushing a sternum there. I whirl through their ranks, spinning my pipe-staff as I go. Was the Mog that captured me and tortured Sandor in that first group? It doesn’t matter; they all die the same. I’ll get him now or I’ll get him later.

I don’t realize that I’m laughing until the bitter taste of Mogadorian ash fills my mouth.

I savor it.

The skirmish is over too soon. I’m sprinting along the wall back to Four and Sam in seconds, trailing a cloud of ash. I want more.

“We have to go,” says Four.

I don’t want to go. I want to tear this place apart. Yet something tells me that I should listen to this boy, that we should stick together. It’s what Sandor would want.

We have to fight our way out. My mind shuts off as the fighting grows more intense. At some point I realize that Four and I have become separated from Sam. I feel bad for the kid—another piece of human collateral damage.

My sympathy is quickly drowned out by the urge to tear this entire place down.

I drive my pipe-staff into the neck of a piken. I’m straddling its neck as it collapses, its blood spraying me, blending with my coat of Mogadorian ash. I can taste it mixing with the coppery tang of my own blood.

I’m grinning. Four stares at me aghast, like I’m only a little better than the monsters we’re killing.

“Are you crazy?” he asks. “You’re enjoying this?”

“I’ve been locked up for over a year,” I tell him. “This is the best day of my life!”

It’s true. I haven’t felt this good in forever. Still, I try to downplay just how much I’m loving this. I don’t want to freak Four out.

For all his judgment, Four doesn’t hesitate to take my hand when we need to use my antigravity Legacy to escape. It’s a long and brutal fight. When we finally catch a glimpse of daylight, I feel disappointed. I wish they’d never stop coming. I glance at Four. He’s pretty beaten up, but he’s killed his fair share of Mogs and piken on the way out, even if he lacks my enthusiasm.

Perhaps we’ll make a warrior out of him yet.

We escape from the Mogadorian base and I greedily suck in my first breath of free air in more than a year. Immediately, I gag. The smell of dead animals is overwhelming.

Four and I jog for the tree line. He barely makes it there, collapsing against a tree almost immediately. He’s in rough shape physically and, if the tears are any indication, equally bad shape mentally. He’s beating himself up over leaving Sam behind.

I know a thing or two about guilt, but I don’t know what the hell to say to this kid. Buck up, champ, we’ll kill them next time? Everything I think of seems hollow, so I keep my mouth shut.

He’ll learn to shut off his emotions eventually. Emotions will get you killed. They’ll get someone else killed too.

As I press a healing stone to Four’s back, the sky overhead begins to writhe with an ominous- looking storm. At first Four thinks it’s Number Six coming to help us.

It’s not. It’s Setrakus Ra.

Despite seeing him in nightly visions, I’m not prepared for his true size. He is bigger than any Mogadorian I’ve ever seen, utterly repulsive even from this distance. The sight of the three Lorien pendants glowing around his thick neck causes me to clench my fists, fingernails digging into my palms.

Suddenly I understand exactly what Sandor was training me for. This is the battle I was meant to fight. Killing Setrakus Ra is the destiny I’ve been chasing.

Together with Four, I charge.

Chapter Twenty-four

“Is he okay?” I ask.

He needs rest, the Chimæra’s kind voice says inside my mind. Talking to animals, that’s new. It’s been a day of surprises. So much has happened, I don’t even have time to consider my newly discovered Legacy. I’ll figure it out later, when things have settled down.

If they ever settle down.

Four stretches across the backseat of his SUV, nearly doubled over. His Chimæra, named for some weak human athlete, lies next to him, gently licking his face. I’m reminded of my dream, of playing with my own Chimæra on Lorien, but I push that memory back down with all the other things I want to forget.

The war has begun. I have only one purpose.

The coward Setrakus Ra fled into the Mogadorian base before we could get to him. With Four getting wrecked by the force field and no way back into the base, I decided to make a strategic retreat.

Ra’s day will come. When I told Four that I’d stab him once for every day his people had Sandor tortured, I meant it.

I start the engine. It’s the first time I’ve driven since that fateful night with Maddy. I think about the way she clutched my arm as we screamed through red lights, then discard that memory as well.

“So what’s our next move?” I ask Four.

“Head north,” he says. “I think north would be good.”

“You got it, boss.”

I already knew where we were heading, but it’s easier not to have to convince Four.

It will be good to see Chicago again. I’m pretty sure the Mogadorians never found our safe house—they would have bragged about it if they had, used it to demoralize me even more. It should still be there, on the top floor of the John Hancock Center, a safe place for me to plan our next move.

A place filled with painful memories I’ll have to ignore.

I drive north, my foot heavy on the gas. It’s ironic. At last I have my freedom. But at a price. Now my destiny is mine to choose.

And I’ve already chosen.

Today will go down as a dark day in the Mogadorian history books. It is the day that they allowed me to get loose. In whatever dismal corner of the universe the Mogadorians that manage to escape me gather, this day will be discussed in hushed tones as when the annihilation of their race became a certainty.

I’m going to kill them all.

See where it all began . . .

PROLOGUE

The door starts shaking. It’s a flimsy thing made of bamboo shoots held together with tattered lengths of twine. The shake is subtle and stops almost immediately. They lift their heads to listen, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fifty-year-old man, who everyone thinks is his father but who was born near a different jungle on a different planet hundreds of light-years away. They are lying shirtless on opposite sides of the hut, a mosquito net over each cot. They hear a distant crash, like the sound of an animal breaking the branch of a tree, but in this case, it sounds like the entire tree has been broken.

“What was that?” the boy asks.

“Shh,” the man replies.

They hear the chirp of insects, nothing more. The man brings his legs over the side of the cot when the shake starts again. A longer, firmer shake, and another crash, this time closer. The man gets to his feet and walks slowly to the door. Silence. The man takes a deep breath as he inches his hand to the latch. The boy sits up.

“No,” the man whispers, and in that instant the blade of a sword, long and gleaming, made of a shining white metal that is not found on Earth, comes through the door and sinks deeply into the man’s chest. It protrudes six inches out through his back, and is quickly pulled free. The man grunts. The boy gasps. The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: “Run.” He falls lifeless to the floor.

The boy leaps from the cot, bursts through the rear wall. He doesn’t bother with the door or a window; he literally runs through the wall, which breaks apart as if it’s paper, though it’s made of strong, hard African mahogany. He tears into the Congo night, leaps over trees, sprints at a speed somewhere around sixty miles per hour. His sight and hearing are beyond human. He dodges trees, rips through snarled vines, leaps small streams with a single step. Heavy footsteps are close behind him, getting closer every second. His pursuers also have gifts. And they have something with them. Something he has only heard hints of, something he never believed he would see on Earth.

The crashing nears. The boy hears a low, intense roar. He knows whatever is behind him is picking up speed. He sees a break in the jungle up ahead. When he reaches it, he sees a huge ravine, three hundred feet across and three hundred feet down, with a river at the bottom. The river’s bank is covered with huge boulders. Boulders that would break him apart if he fell on them. His only chance is to get across the ravine. He’ll have a short running start, and one chance. One chance to save his own life. Even for him, or for any of the others on Earth like him, it’s a near impossible leap. Going back, or going down, or trying to fight them means certain death. He has one shot.

There’s a deafening roar behind him. They’re twenty, thirty feet away. He takes five steps back and runs—and just before the ledge, he takes off and starts flying across the ravine. He’s in the air three or four seconds. He screams, his arms outstretched in front of him, waiting for either safety or the end. He hits the ground and tumbles forward, stopping at the base of a mammoth tree. He smiles. He can’t believe he made it, that he’s going to survive. Not wanting them to see him, and knowing he needs to get farther away from them, he stands. He’ll have to keep running.

He turns towards the jungle. As he does, a huge hand wraps itself around his throat. He is lifted off the ground. He struggles, kicks, tries to pull away, but knows it’s futile, that it’s over. He should have expected that they’d be on both sides, that once they found him, there would be no escape. The Mogadorian lifts him so that he can see the boy’s chest, see the amulet that is hanging around his neck, the amulet that only he and his kind can wear. He tears it off and puts it somewhere inside the long black cloak he is wearing, and when his hand emerges it is holding the gleaming white metal sword. The boy looks into the Mogadorian’s deep, wide, emotionless black eyes, and he speaks.

“The Legacies live. They will find each other, and when they’re ready, they’re going to destroy you.”

The Mogadarian laughs, a nasty, mocking laugh. It raises the sword, the only weapon in the universe that can break the charm that until today protected the boy, and still protects the others. The blade ignites in a silver flame as it points to the sky, as if it’s coming alive, sensing its mission and grimacing in anticipation. And as it falls, an arc of light speeding through the blackness of the jungle, the boy still believes that some part of him will survive, and some part of him will make it home. He closes his eyes just before the sword strikes. And then it is over.

CHAPTER ONE

In the beginning there were nine of us. We left when we were young, almost too young to remember.

Almost.

I am told the ground shook, that the skies were full of light and explosions. We were in that two-week period of the year when both moons hang on opposite sides of the horizon. It was a time of celebration, and the explosions were at first mistaken for fireworks. They were not. It was warm, a soft wind blew in from off the water. I am always told the weather: it was warm. There was a soft wind. I’ve never understood why that matters.

What I remember most vividly is the way my grandmother looked that day. She was frantic, and sad. There were tears in her eyes. My grandfather stood just over her shoulder. I remember the way his glasses gathered the light from the sky. There were hugs. There were words said by each of them. I don’t remember what they were. Nothing haunts me more.

It took a year to get here. I was five when we arrived. We were to assimilate ourselves into the culture before returning to Lorien when it could again sustain life. The nine of us had to scatter, and go our own ways. For how long, nobody knew. We still don’t. None of them know where I am, and I don’t know where they are, or what they look like now. That is how we protect ourselves because of the charm that was placed upon us when we left, a charm guaranteeing that we can only be killed in the order of our numbers, so long as we stay apart. If we come together, then the charm is broken.

When one of us is found and killed, a circular scar wraps around the right ankle of those still alive. And residing on our left ankle, formed when the Loric charm was first cast, is a small scar identical to the amulet each of us wears. The circular scars are another part of the charm. A warning system so that we know where we stand with each other, and so that we know when they’ll be coming for us next. The first scar came when I was nine years old. It woke me from my sleep, burning itself into my flesh. We were living in Arizona, in a small border town near Mexico. I woke screaming in the middle of the night, in agony, terrified as the scar seared itself into my flesh. It was the first sign that the Mogadorians had finally found us on Earth, and the first sign that we were in danger. Until the scar showed up, I had almost convinced myself that my memories were wrong, that what Henri told me was wrong. I wanted to be a normal kid living a normal life, but I knew then, beyond any doubt or discussion, that I wasn’t. We moved to Minnesota the next day.

The second scar came when I was twelve. I was in school, in Colorado, participating in a spelling bee. As soon as the pain started I knew what was happening, what had happened to Number Two. The pain was excruciating, but bearable this time. I would have stayed on the stage, but the heat lit my sock on fire. The teacher who was conducting the bee sprayed me with a fire extinguisher and rushed me to the hospital. The doctor in the ER found the first scar and called the police. When Henri showed, they threatened to arrest him for child abuse. But because he hadn’t been anywhere near me when the second scar came, they had to let him go. We got in the car and drove away, this time to Maine. We left everything we had except for the Loric Chest that Henri brought along on every move. All twenty-one of them to date.

The third scar appeared an hour ago. I was sitting on a pontoon boat. The boat belonged to the parents of the most popular kid at my school, and unbeknownst to them, he was having a party on it. I had never been invited to any of the parties at my school before. I had always, because I knew we might leave at any minute, kept to myself. But it had been quiet for two years. Henri hadn’t seen anything in the news that might lead the Mogadorians to one of us, or might alert us to them. So I made a couple friends. And one of them introduced me to the kid who was having the party. Everyone met at a dock. There were three coolers, some music, girls I had admired from afar but never spoken to, even though I wanted to. We pulled out from the dock and went half a mile into the Gulf of Mexico. I was sitting on the edge of the pontoon with my feet in the water, talking to a cute, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl named Tara, when I felt it coming. The water around my leg started boiling, and my lower leg started glowing where the scar was imbedding itself. The third of the Lorien symbols, the third warning. Tara started screaming and people started crowding around me. I knew there was no way to explain it. And I knew we would have to leave immediately.

The stakes were higher now. They had found Number Three, wherever he or she was, and Number Three was dead. So I calmed Tara down and kissed her on the cheek and told her it was nice to meet her and that I hoped she had a long, beautiful life. I dove off the side of the boat and started swimming, underwater the entire time, except for one breath about halfway there, as fast as I could until I reached the shore. I ran along the side of the highway, just inside of the tree line, moving at speeds as fast as any of the cars. When I got home, Henri was at the bank of scanners and monitors that he used to research news around the world, and police activity in our area. He knew without me saying a word, though he did lift my soaking pants to see the scars.

In the beginning we were a group of nine.

Three are gone, dead.

There are six of us left.

They are hunting us, and they won’t stop until they’ve killed us all.

I am Number Four.

I know that I am next.

CHAPTER TWO

I stand in the middle of the drive and stare up at the house. It is light pink, almost like cake frosting, sitting ten feet above the ground on wooden stilts. A palm tree sways in the front. In the back of the house a pier extends twenty yards into the Gulf of Mexico. If the house were a mile to the south, the pier would be in the Atlantic Ocean.

Henri walks out of the house carrying the last of the boxes, some of which were never unpacked from our last move. He locks the door, then leaves the keys in the mail slot beside it. It is two o’clock in the morning. He is wearing khaki shorts and a black polo. He is very tan, with an unshaven face that seems downcast. He is also sad to be leaving. He tosses the final boxes into the back of the truck with the rest of our things.

“That’s it,” he says.

I nod. We stand and stare up at the house and listen to the wind come through the palm fronds. I am holding a bag of celery in my hand.

“I’ll miss this place,” I say. “Even more than the others.”

“Me too.”

“Time for the burn?”

“Yes. You want to do it, or you want me to?”

“I’ll do it.”

Henri pulls out his wallet and drops it on the ground. I pull out mine and do the same. He walks to our truck and comes back with passports, birth certificates, social security cards, checkbooks, credit cards and bank cards, and drops them on the ground. All of the documents and materials related to our identities here, all of them forged and manufactured. I grab from the truck a small gas can we keep for emergencies. I pour the gas over the small pile. My current name is Daniel Jones. My story is that I grew up in California and moved here because of my dad’s job as a computer programmer. Daniel Jones is about to disappear. I light a match and drop it, and the pile ignites. Another one of my lives, gone. As we always do, Henri and I stand and watch the fire. Bye, Daniel, I think, it was nice knowing you. When the fire burns down, Henri looks over at me.

“We gotta go.”

“I know.”

“These islands were never safe. They’re too hard to leave quickly, too hard to escape from. It was foolish of us to come here.”

I nod. He is right, and I know it. But I’m still reluctant to leave. We came here because I wanted to, and for the first time, Henri let me choose where we were going. We’ve been here nine months, and it’s the longest we have stayed in any one place since leaving Lorien. I’ll miss the sun and the warmth. I’ll miss the gecko that watched from the wall each morning as I ate breakfast. Though there are literally millions of geckos in south Florida, I swear this one follows me to school and seems to be everywhere I am. I’ll miss the thunderstorms that seem to come from out of nowhere, the way everything is still and quiet in the early-morning hours before the terns arrive. I’ll miss the dolphins that sometimes feed when the sun sets. I’ll even miss the smell of sulfur from the rotting seaweed at the base of the shore, the way that it fills the house and penetrates our dreams while we sleep.

“Get rid of the celery and I’ll wait in the truck,” Henri says. “Then it’s time.”

I enter a thicket of trees off to the right of the truck. There are three Key deer already waiting. I dump the bag of celery out at their feet and crouch down and pet each of them in turn. They allow me to, having long gotten over their skittishness. One of them raises his head and looks at me. Dark, blank eyes staring back. It almost feels as though he passes something to me. A shudder runs up my spine. He drops his head and continues eating.

“Good luck, little friends,” I say, and walk to the truck and climb into the passenger seat.

We watch the house grow smaller in the side mirrors until Henri pulls onto the main road and the house disappears. It’s a Saturday. I wonder what’s happening at the party without me. What they’re saying about the way that I left and what they’ll say on Monday when I’m not at school. I wish I could have said good-bye. I’ll never see anyone I knew here ever again. I’ll never speak to any of them. And they’ll never know what I am or why I left. After a few months, or maybe a few weeks, none of them will probably ever think of me again.

Before we get on the highway, Henri pulls over to gas up the truck. As he works the pump, I start looking through an atlas he keeps on the middle of the seat. We’ve had the atlas since we arrived on this planet. It has lines drawn to and from every place we’ve ever lived. At this point, there are lines crisscrossing all of the United States. We know we should get rid of it, but it’s really the only piece of our life together that we have. Normal people have photos and videos and journals; we have the atlas. Picking it up and looking through it, I can see Henri has drawn a new line from Florida to Ohio. When I think of Ohio, I think of cows and corn and nice people. I know the license plate says THE HEART OF IT ALL. What “All” is, I don’t know, but I guess I’ll find out.

Henri gets back into the truck. He has bought a couple of sodas and a bag of chips. He pulls away and starts heading toward U.S. 1, which will take us north. He reaches for the atlas.

“Do you think there are people in Ohio?” I joke.

He chuckles. “I would imagine there are a few. And we might even get lucky and find cars and TV there, too.”

I nod. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I think.

“What do you think of the name ‘John Smith’?” I ask.

“Is that what you’ve settled on?”

“I think so,” I say. I’ve never been a John before, or a Smith.

“It doesn’t get any more common than that. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Smith.”

I smile. “Yeah, I think I like ‘John Smith.’”

“I’ll create your forms when we stop.”

A mile later we are off the island and cruising across the bridge. The waters pass below us. They are calm and the moonlight is shimmering on the small waves, creating dapples of white in the crests. On the right is the ocean, on the left is the gulf; it is, in essence, the same water, but with two different names. I have the urge to cry, but I don’t. It’s not that I’m necessarily sad to leave Florida, but I’m tired of running. I’m tired of dreaming up a new name every six months. Tired of new houses, new schools. I wonder if it’ll ever be possible for us to stop.

Excerpt from The Power of Six: The Legacies continue to develop

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Marina, as of the sea, but I wasn’t called that until much later. In the beginning I was known merely as Seven, one of the nine surviving Garde from the planet Lorien, the fate of which was, and still is, left in our hands. Those of us who aren’t lost. Those of us still alive.

I was six when we landed. When the ship jolted to a halt on Earth, even at my young age I sensed how much was at stake for us—nine Cêpan, nine Garde—and that our only chance waited for us here. We had entered the planet’s atmosphere in the midst of a storm of our own creation, and as our feet found Earth for the very first time, I remember the wisps of steam that rolled off the ship and the goose bumps that covered my arms. I hadn’t felt the wind in a year, and it was freezing outside. Somebody was there waiting for us. I don’t know who he was, only that he handed each Cêpan two sets of clothes and a large envelope. I still don’t know what was in it.

As a group we huddled together, knowing we might never see one another again. Words were spoken, hugs were given, and then we split up, as we knew we must, walking in pairs in nine different directions. I kept peering over my shoulder as the others receded in the distance until, very slowly, one by one, they all disappeared. And then it was just Adelina and me, alone. I realize now just how scared Adelina must have been.

I remember boarding a ship headed to some unknown destination. I remember two or three different trains after that. Adelina and I kept to ourselves, huddled against each other in obscure corners, away from whoever might be around. We hiked from town to town, over mountains and across fields, knocking on doors that were quickly slammed in our faces. We were hungry, tired, and scared. I remember sitting on a sidewalk begging for change. I remember crying instead of sleeping. I’m certain that Adelina gave away some of our precious gems from Lorien for nothing more than warm meals, so great was our need. Perhaps she gave them all away. And then we found this place in Spain.

A stern-looking woman I would come to know as Sister Lucia answered the heavy oak door. She squinted at Adelina, taking in her desperation, the way her shoulders drooped.

“Do you believe in the word of God?” the woman asked in Spanish, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes in scrutiny.

“The word of God is my vow,” Adelina replied with a solemn nod. I don’t know how she knew this response—perhaps she learned it when we stayed in a church basement weeks before—but it was the right one. Sister Lucia opened the door.

We’ve been here ever since, eleven years in this stone convent with its musty rooms, drafty hallways, and hard floors like slabs of ice. Aside from the few visitors, the internet is my only source to the world outside our small town; and I search it constantly, looking for some indication that the others are out there, that they’re searching, maybe fighting. Some sign that I’m not alone, because at this point I can’t say that Adelina still believes, that she’s still with me. Her attitude changed somewhere over the mountains. Maybe it was with the slam of one of the doors that shut a starving woman and her child out in the cold for another night. Whatever it was, Adelina seems to have lost the urgency of staying on the move, and her faith in the resurgence of Lorien seems to have been replaced by the faith shared by the convent’s Sisters. I remember a distinct shift in Adelina’s eyes, her sudden speeches on the need for guidance and structure if we were to survive.

My faith in Lorien remains intact. In India, a year and a half ago, four different people witnessed a boy move objects with his mind. While the significance behind the event was small at first, the boy’s abrupt disappearance shortly thereafter created much buzz in the region, and a hunt for him began. As far as I know, he hasn’t been found.

A few months ago there was news of a girl in Argentina who, in the wake of an earthquake, lifted a five-ton slab of concrete to save a man trapped beneath it; and when news of this heroic act spread, she disappeared. Like the boy in India, she’s still missing.

And then there’s the father-son duo making all the news now in America, in Ohio, who the police are hunting after the two allegedly demolished an entire school by themselves, killing five people in the process. They left no trace behind other than mysterious heaps of ash.

“It looks like a battle took place here. I don’t know how else to explain it,” the head investigator was quoted as saying. “But make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this, and we will find Henri Smith and his son, John.”

Perhaps John Smith, if that’s his real name, is merely a boy with a grudge who was pushed too far. But I don’t think that’s the case. My heart races whenever his picture appears on my screen. I’m gripped with a profound desperation that I can’t quite explain. I can feel it in my bones that he’s one of us. And I know, somehow, that I must find him.

CHAPTER TWO

I perch my arms on the cold windowsill and watch the snowflakes fall from the dark sky and settle on the side of the mountain, which is dotted with pine, cork oak, and beech trees, with patches of craggy rock mixed throughout. The snow hasn’t let up all day, and they say it will continue through the night. I can barely see beyond the edge of town to the north—the world lost in a white haze. During the day, when the sky is clear, it’s possible to see the watery blue smudge of the Bay of Biscay. But not in this weather, and I can’t help but wonder what might lurk in all that white beyond my line of sight.

I look behind me. In the high-ceilinged, drafty room, there are two computers. To use one we must add our name to a list and wait our turn. At night there’s a ten-minute time limit if somebody is waiting, twenty minutes if there isn’t. The two girls using them now have been on for a half hour each, and my patience is thin. I haven’t checked the news since this morning when I snuck in before breakfast. At that time nothing new about John Smith had been reported, but I’m almost shaking in anticipation over what might have sprung up since then. Some new discovery has been uncovered each day since the story first broke.

Santa Teresa is a convent that doubles as an orphanage for girls. I’m now the oldest out of thirty-seven, a distinction I’ve held for six months, after the last girl who turned eighteen left. At eighteen we must all make the choice to strike out on our own or to forge a life within the Church. The birthday Adelina and I created for me when we arrived is less than five months away, and that’s when I’ll turn eighteen, too. Of all who’ve reached eighteen, not a single girl has stayed. I can’t blame them. Like the others, I have every intention of leaving this prison behind, whether or not Adelina comes with me. And it’s hard to imagine she will.

The convent itself was built entirely of stone in 1510 and is much too large for the small number of us who live here. Most of the rooms stand empty; and those that aren’t are imbued with a damp, earthy feel, and our voices echo to the ceiling and back. The convent rests atop the highest hill overlooking the village that shares the same name, nestled deep within the Picos de Europa Mountains of northern Spain. The village, like the convent, is made of rock, with many structures built straight into the mountainside. Walking down the town’s main road, Calle Principal, it’s impossible not to be inundated by the disrepair. It’s as though this place was forgotten by time, and the passing centuries have turned most everything to shades of mossy green and brown, while the pervasive smell of mildew hangs in the air.

It’s been five years since I started begging Adelina to leave, to keep moving like we were instructed to. “I’m going to be getting my Legacies soon, and I don’t want to discover them here, with all of these girls and nuns around,” I’d said. She had refused, quoting La Biblia Reina Valera that we must stand still for salvation. I’ve begged every year since, and every year she looks at me with blank eyes and talks me down with a different religious quote. But I know my salvation does not lie here.

Past the church gates and down the gently sloping hill, I can see the faint dimness of the town lights. In the midst of this blizzard, they look like floating halos. Though I can’t hear the music from either of the two cantinas, I’m sure both of them are packed. Aside from those, there is a restaurant, a café, a market, a bodega, and various vendors that line Calle Principal most mornings and afternoons. Towards the bottom of the hill, on the southern edge of town, is the brick school we all attend.

My head snaps around when the bell dings: prayers are five minutes away, followed directly by bed. Panic sweeps through me. I have to know if anything new has been reported. Perhaps John’s been caught. Perhaps the police have found something else at the demolished school, something originally overlooked. Even if there’s nothing new at all, I have to know. I’ll never get to sleep otherwise.

I fix a hard stare on Gabriela García—Gabby for short—who sits at one of the computers. Gabby’s sixteen and very pretty, with long dark hair and brown eyes; and she always dresses slutty when she’s outside the convent, wearing tight shirts that show off her pierced navel. Every morning she dresses in loose, baggy clothes, but the second we’re out of sight of the Sisters she removes them, revealing a tight, skimpy outfit underneath. Then she spends the rest of the walk to school applying makeup and redoing her hair. It’s the same with her four friends, three of whom also live here. And when the day ends, they wipe their faces clean during the walk back and re-dress in their original clothes.

“What?” Gabby asks in a snotty voice, glaring at me. “I’m writing an email.”

“I’ve been waiting longer than ten minutes,” I say. “And you’re not writing an email. You’re looking at guys with their shirts off.”

“So what? Are you gonna tell on me, tattletale?” she asks mockingly.

The girl beside her, whose name is Hilda but who most kids in school call La Gorda—“the fat one”—(behind her back, never to her face) laughs.

They’re an inseparable pair, Gabby and La Gorda. I bite my tongue and turn back to the window, folding my arms across my chest. I’m seething inside, partly because I need to get on the computer and partly because I never know how to respond when Gabby mocks me. There are four minutes left. My impatience segues to full-on desperation. There could be news right now—breaking news!—but I have no way of knowing because these selfish jerks won’t give up one of the computers.

Three minutes left. I’m nearly shaking with anger. And then an idea pops into my head, and a grin plays across my lips. It’s risky, but worth it if it works.

I pivot just enough to see Gabby’s chair in my peripheral vision. I take a deep breath and, focusing all my energy on her chair, use my telekinesis to jerk it to the left. Then I quickly thrust it right so hard it nearly topples over. Gabby jumps up and yelps. I look at her in mock surprise.

“What?” La Gorda asks.

“I don’t know; it felt like somebody just kicked my chair or something. Did you feel anything?”

“No,” La Gorda says; and as soon as the word is uttered, I move her chair a few centimeters backwards, then jerk it to the right, all the while remaining at my spot by the window. Both of the girls scream this time. I thrust Gabby’s chair, then La Gorda’s again; and without giving their computer screens a second glance, they flee the room, screaming as they go.

“Yes!” I say, rushing to the computer Gabby was using and quickly typing the web address of the news site I’ve deemed most reliable. Then I wait impatiently for the page to load. The old computers, combined with the slow internet here, are the bane of my existence.

The browser goes white and, line by line, the page forms. When a quarter of it has loaded, the final bell rings. One minute until prayers. I’m inclined to ignore the bell, even at the risk of being punished. At this point I don’t really care. “Five more months,” I whisper to myself.

Half of the page is now up, revealing the top of John Smith’s face, his upturned eyes, which are dark and confident, though within them there’s a sense of discomfort that seems almost out of place. I lean on the edge of my seat, waiting, the excitement bubbling up inside me, causing my hands to tremble.

“Come on,” I say to the screen, trying in vain to hurry it. “Come on come on come on.”

“Marina!” a voice barks from the open doorway. I jerk around and see Sister Dora, a portly woman who’s the head cook in the kitchen, staring daggers at me. This is nothing new. She stares daggers at everyone who walks through the lunch line holding a tray, as though our needing sustenance is a personal affront. She presses her lips together in a perfect straight line, then narrows her eyes. “Come! Now! And I mean right now!”

I sigh, knowing I have no choice but to go. I clear the browser’s history and close it, then follow Sister Dora down the dark hallway. There was something new on that screen; I just know it. Why else would John’s face have taken up the entire page? A week and a half is long enough for any news to turn stale, so for him to command so much of the screen means there’s some significant new piece of information.

We walk to Santa Teresa’s nave, which is huge. Towering pillars lead to a high, vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows line the walls. Wooden pews run the length of the open room and can seat nearly three hundred people. Sister Dora and I are the last to enter. I sit alone in one of the center pews. Sister Lucia, who opened the door to Adelina and me when we first arrived and who still runs the convent, stands at the pulpit, closes her eyes, lowers her head and presses her hands together in front of her. Everyone else does the same.

“Padre divino,” the prayer begins in somber unison. “Que nos bendiga y nos proteja en su amor . . .”

I tune it out and look at the back of the heads before me, all of which are bowed in concentration. Or just bowed. My eyes find Adelina, sitting in the very first row six pews in front of me and slightly to the right. She is on her knees, deeply meditative, her brown hair pulled into a tight braid that falls to the middle of her back. She doesn’t look up once, doesn’t try to find me at the back of the room like she used to during our first few years here, a covert smile on each of our faces as our eyes met, acknowledging our shared secret. We still share that secret, but somewhere along the way Adelina has stopped acknowledging it. Somewhere along the way the plan to bide our time until we felt strong enough and safe enough to leave has been replaced with Adelina’s desire to simply stay—or her fear to leave.

Before the news of John Smith, which I’d told Adelina about when it broke, it had been months since we last talked about our mission. In September I had shown her my third scar, the third warning that said another Garde has died and that she and I are one step closer to being hunted and killed by the Mogadorians, and she had acted like it didn’t exist. Like it didn’t mean what we both know it means. Upon hearing the news about John, she merely rolled her eyes and told me to stop believing in fairy tales.

“En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Amén,” they say, and everyone in the room makes the sign of the cross in unison with this last sentence, myself included to keep up appearances: forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder.

I had been asleep, dreaming of running down a mountain with my arms out at my sides as if I was about to take flight, when I had been awoken by the pain and glow of the third scar wrapping itself around my lower leg. The light had woken several girls in the room, but thankfully not the attending Sister. The girls thought I had a flashlight and a magazine under the covers and that I was breaking the rules of curfew. On the bed next to mine, Elena, a quiet sixteen-year-old with jet-black hair she often sticks in her mouth when speaking, had thrown a pillow at me. My flesh had begun to bubble, and the pain had been so intense I had to bite on the edge of my blanket to remain quiet. I couldn’t help but cry, because somewhere Number Three had lost his or her life. There were six of us left now.

Tonight I file out of the nave with the rest of the girls and head to our sleeping quarters filled with creaky twin beds evenly spaced apart, but in my mind I’m hatching a plan. To compensate for the hard beds and the concrete chill of every room, the linens are soft and the blankets heavy, the only real luxury we’re afforded. My bed is in the back corner, farthest from the door, which is the most sought after spot; it’s the quietest, and it took me a long time to get it, moving one bed closer as each girl left.

The lights are shut off once everyone is settled in. I lie on my back and stare at the faint, jagged outline of the high ceiling. An occasional whisper breaks the silence, followed immediately by the attending Sister shushing whoever it came from. I keep my eyes open, waiting impatiently for everyone to fall asleep. After a half hour the whispers fade, replaced by the soft sounds of sleep, but I don’t dare risk it yet. Too soon. Another fifteen minutes and still no sounds. Then I can’t stand it any longer.

I hold my breath and inch my legs over the edge of the bed, listening to the rhythm of Elena’s breathing beside me. My feet find the icy floor, and turn cold instantly. I stand slowly to keep the bed from creaking and then tiptoe across the room and towards the door, taking my time, being careful not to bump any beds. I reach the open doorway and rush out into the hall and down to the computer room. I pull out the chair and push the computer’s power button.

I fidget waiting for the computer to boot up and keep peering towards the hallway to see if anyone has followed. I’m finally able to type in the web address and the screen goes white, then two pictures take shape in the center of the page, surrounded by text with a top headline in bold black letters too blurry to read. Two images now—I wonder what changed since I tried to check earlier. And then, at last, they come into focus:

International Terrorists?

John Smith, with his square jaw, shaggy dark blond hair, and blue eyes, fills the left side of the screen, while his father—or more likely Cêpan—Henri takes up the right. What’s there isn’t a photo but a black-and-white artist’s sketch done in pencil. I skim the details I already know—demolished school, five deaths, abrupt disappearance—and then come to the breaking news only now being reported:

In a bizarre twist, FBI investigators today uncovered what is believed to be the tools of a professional counterfeiter. Several machines typically used for the creation of documents were found in the Paradise, Ohio, home rented by Henri and John Smith in a hatch beneath the floorboards of the master bedroom, leading investigators to consider possible links to terrorism. Creating local uproar within the Paradise community, Henri and John Smith are now considered a threat to national security, fugitives; and investigators are asking for any and all information that might lead to their whereabouts.

I scroll back to John’s image, and when my gaze meets his, my hands begin to shake. His eyes—even in this sketch there’s something familiar about them. How could I know them if not from the yearlong journey that brought us here? Nobody can convince me now that he isn’t one of the six remaining Garde, still alive in this foreign world.

I lean back and blow my bangs out of my eyes, wishing I could go in search of John myself. Of course Henri and John Smith are able to elude police; they’ve kept hidden for eleven years now, just as Adelina and I have. But how can I possibly hope to be the one to find him when the whole world is looking? How can any of us hope to come together?

The eyes of the Mogadorians are everywhere. I have no idea how One or Three were found, but I believe they located Two because of a blog post he or she had written. I had found it, and then I’d sat there for fifteen minutes thinking how best to respond without giving myself away. Though the message itself had been obscure, it was very obvious to those of us looking: Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there? It had been posted by an account called Two. My fingers found the keyboard and I’d typed a quick response, and just before I hit the Post button, the page refreshed—somebody else had responded first.

We are here, it read.

My mouth had dropped open, and I’d stared in utter shock. Hope flooded through me from those two brief messages, but just as my fingers had typed a different reply, a bright glow appeared at my feet and the sizzling sound of burning flesh reached my ears, followed closely by a searing pain so great that I’d dropped to the floor and writhed in agony, screaming at the top of my lungs for Adelina, holding my hands over my ankle so no one else would see. When Adelina arrived and realized what was happening, I’d pointed at the screen, but it was blank; both posts had been deleted.

I look away from John Smith’s familiar eyes on the screen. Beside the computer sits a small flower that’s been forgotten. It’s wilted and tired, shrunken down to half its normal height, a brown, crispy tinge at the edge of its leaves. Several petals have dropped, now dry and crinkled on the desk around the pot. The flower isn’t dead yet, but it’s not far off. I lean forward and cup my hands around it, move my face near enough so that my lips brush against the edge of its leaves, and then I blow hot air over it. An icy feeling shoots down my spine and, in response, life bursts through the small flower. It springs upward and a verdant green floods the leaves and stalk and new petals bloom, colorless at first, then turning a brilliant purple. A mischievous grin sprouts on my face, and I can’t help but think of how the Sisters would react if they were to see such a thing. But I’ll never let them. It would be misinterpreted, and I don’t want to be cast out into the cold. I’m not ready for that. Soon, but not just yet.

I turn off the computer and hurry back to bed while thoughts of John Smith, somewhere out there, swim in my head.

Be safe and stay hidden, I think. We’ll find each other yet.

Excerpt from The Rise of Nine

CHAPTER ONE

6A. Seriously? I look at the boarding pass in my hand, its large type announcing my seat assignment, and wonder if Crayton chose this seat on purpose. It could be a coincidence, but the way things have gone recently, I am not a big believer in coincidences. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marina sat down behind me in row seven, and Ella made her way back to row ten. But, no, the two girls drop down beside me without saying a word, and join me in studying each person boarding the plane. Being hunted, you are constantly on guard. Who knows when the Mogadorians might appear.

Crayton will board last, after he’s watched to see who else gets on the plane, and only once he feels the flight is absolutely secure.

I raise the window shade and watch the ground crew hustle back and forth under the plane. The city of Barcelona is a faint outline in the distance.

Marina’s knee bounces furiously up and down next to mine. The battle against an army of Mogadorians yesterday at the lake, the death of her Cêpan, finding her Chest—and now, it’s the first time in almost ten years that she’s left the town where she spent her childhood. She’s nervous.

“Everything okay?” I ask. My newly blond hair falls into my face and startles me. I forgot I dyed it this morning. It’s just one of many changes in the last forty-eight hours.

“Everyone looks normal,” Marina whispers, keeping her eyes on the crowded aisle. “We’re safe, as far as I can tell.”

“Good, but that’s not what I meant.” I gently set my foot on hers and she stops bouncing her knee. She offers me a quick apologetic smile before returning to her close watch of each boarding passenger. A few seconds later, her knee starts bouncing again. I just shake my head.

I feel sorry for Marina. She was locked up in an isolated orphanage with a Cêpan who refused to train her. Her Cêpan had lost sight of why we are here on Earth in the first place. I’m doing my best to help her, to fill in the gaps. I can train her to learn how to control her strength and when to use her developing Legacies. But first I’m trying to show her that it’s okay to trust me.

The Mogadorians will pay for what they’ve done. For taking so many who we’ve loved, here on Earth and on Lorien. It’s my personal mission to destroy every last one of them, and I’ll be sure Marina gets her revenge too. Not only did she just lose her best friend, Héctor, back at the lake, but, like me, her Cêpan was killed right in front of her. We will both carry that with us forever.

“How is it down there, Six?” Ella asks, leaning over Marina.

I turn back towards the window. The men below the plane begin to clear away their equipment, conducting a few last-minute checks. “So far, so good.”

My seat is directly over the wing, which is comforting to me. On more than one occasion I’ve had to use my Legacies to help a pilot out of a jam. Once, over southern Mexico, I used my telekinesis to push the plane a dozen degrees to the right, only seconds before crashing into the side of a mountain. Last year I got 124 passengers safely through a vicious thunderstorm over Kansas by surrounding the plane with an impervious cloud of cool air. We shot through the storm like a bullet through a balloon.

When the ground crew moves on to the next plane, I follow Ella’s gaze towards the front of the aisle. We’re both impatient for Crayton to board. That will mean everything is okay, at least for now. Every seat is full but the one behind Ella. Where is he? I glance out at the wing again, scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary.

I lean down and shove my backpack under my seat. It’s practically empty, so it folds down easily. Crayton bought it for me at the airport. The three of us need to look like normal teenagers, he says, like high school students on a field trip. That’s why there’s a biology textbook on Ella’s lap.

“Six?” Marina asks. I hear her buckle and unbuckle her seat belt nervously.

“Yeah?” I respond.

“You’ve flown before, right?”

Marina is only a year older than I am. But with her solemn, thoughtful eyes and her new, sophisticated haircut that falls just below her shoulders, she can easily pass for an adult. Right now, however, she bites her nails and pulls her knees up to her chest like a scared child.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s not so bad. In fact, once you relax, it’s kind of awesome.”

Sitting there on the plane, my thoughts turn in the direction of my own Cêpan, Katarina. Not that I ever flew with her. But when I was nine years old, we had a close call in a Cleveland alley with a Mogadorian that left us both shaken and covered in a thick layer of ash. Katarina moved us to Southern California after that. Our crumbling, two-story bungalow was near the beach, practically in the shadow of Los Angeles International Airport. A hundred planes roared overhead every hour, always interrupting Katarina’s teaching as well as the little free time I had to spend with my only friend, a skinny girl next door named Ashley.

I lived under those airplanes for seven months. They were my alarm clock in the morning, screaming directly over my bed as the sun rose. At night they were ominous ghosts telling me to stay awake, to be prepared to rip off my sheets and jump in the car in a matter of seconds. Since Katarina didn’t let me stray far from the house, the airplanes were also the sound track of my afternoons.

On one of those afternoons, as the vibrations from an enormous plane overhead shook the lemonade in our plastic cups, Ashley said, “Me and my mom are going to visit my grandparents next month. I can’t wait! Have you ever been on a plane?” Ashley was always talking about all the places she went and things she did with her family. She knew Katarina and I stayed close to home and she liked to brag.

“Not really,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘Not really’? You’ve either been on a plane, or you haven’t. Just admit it. You haven’t.”

I remember feeling my face burn with embarrassment. Her challenge hit its mark. I finally said, “No, I’ve never been on an airplane.” I wanted to tell her I’ve been on something much bigger, something much more impressive than a little airplane. I wanted her to know I came to Earth on a ship from another planet called Lorien and the trip had covered more than one hundred million miles. I didn’t, though, because I knew I had to keep Lorien secret.

Ashley laughed at me. Without saying good-bye, she left to wait for her dad to come home from work.

“Why haven’t we ever been on a plane?” I asked Katarina that night as she peered out the blinds of my bedroom window.

“Six,” she said, turning to me before correcting herself. “I mean, Veronica. It’s too dangerous for us to travel by plane. We’d be trapped up there. You know what could happen if we were thousands of miles in the air and then found out Mogs had followed us on board?”

I knew exactly what could happen. I could picture the chaos, the other passengers screaming and ducking under their seats as a couple of huge alien soldiers barreled down the aisle with swords. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to do something so normal, so human, as to fly on a plane from one city to the next. I’d spent all my time on Earth unable to do the things other kids my age took for granted. We rarely even stayed in one place long enough for me to meet other kids, let alone make friends—Ashley was the first girl Katarina even allowed over to our house. Sometimes, like in California, I didn’t even attend school, if Katarina thought it was safer.

I knew why all this was necessary, of course. Usually, I didn’t let it bother me. But Katarina could tell that Ashley’s superior attitude had gotten under my skin. My silence the following days must have cut through her, because to my surprise she bought us two round-trip airline tickets to Denver. The destination didn’t matter—she knew I just wanted the experience.

I couldn’t wait to tell Ashley.

But on the day of the trip, standing outside the airport, Katarina hesitated. She seemed nervous. She ran her hand through her short black hair. She had dyed and cut it the night before, just before making herself a new ID. A family of five walked around us on the curb, dragging heavy luggage, and to my left a tearful mother said good-bye to her two young daughters. I wanted nothing more than to join in, to be a part of this everyday scene. Katarina watched everyone around us while I fidgeted impatiently by her side.

“No,” Katarina finally said. “We’re not going. I’m sorry, Veronica, but it’s not worth it.”

We drove home in silence, letting the screaming engines of the planes passing overhead speak for us. When we got out of the car on our street, I saw Ashley sitting on her front steps. She looked at me walking towards our house and mouthed the word liar. The humiliation was almost too much to bear.

But, really, I was a liar. It’s ironic. Lying was all I had done since I’d arrived on Earth. My name, where I was from, where my father was, why I couldn’t stay the night at another girl’s house—lying was all I knew and it was what kept me alive. But when Ashley called me a liar the one time I was telling someone the truth, I was unspeakably angry. I stormed up to my room, slammed the door, and punched the wall.

To my surprise, my fist went straight through.

Katarina slammed my door open, wielding a kitchen knife and ready to strike. She thought the noise she’d heard must be Mogs. When she saw what I had done to the wall, she realized that something had changed with me. She lowered the blade and smiled. “Today’s not the day you get on a plane, but it is the day you’re going to start your training.”

Seven years later, sitting on this plane with Marina and Ella, I hear Katarina’s voice in my head. “We’d be trapped up there.” But I’m ready for that possibility now, in ways that Katarina and I weren’t.

I’ve since flown dozens of times, and everything has gone fine. However, this is the first time I’ve done it without using my invisibility Legacy to sneak on board. I know I’m much stronger now. And I’m getting stronger by the day. If a couple of Mog soldiers charged at me from the front of the plane, they wouldn’t be dealing with a meek young girl. I know what I’m capable of; I am a soldier now, a warrior. I am someone to fear, not hunt.

Marina lets go of her knees and sits up straight, releasing a long breath. In a barely audible voice, she says, “I’m scared. I just want to get in the air.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say in a low voice.

She smiles, and I smile back at her. Marina proved herself to be a strong ally with amazing Legacies on the battlefield yesterday. She can breathe underwater, see in the dark and heal the sick and wounded. Like all Garde, she also has telekinesis. And because we’re so close in order—I’m Number Six and she’s Number Seven—our bond is special. When the charm still held and we had to be killed in order, the Mogadorians would have had to get through me before they could get to her. And they never would have gotten through me.

Ella sits silently on the other side of Marina. As we continue to wait for Crayton, she opens the biology book on her lap and stares at the pages. Our charade does not demand this level of concentration and I’m about to lean over and tell her, but then I see she isn’t reading at all. She is trying to turn the page with her mind, trying to use telekinesis, but nothing’s happening.

Ella is what Crayton calls an Aeternus, someone born with the ability to move back and forth between ages. But she’s still young and her Legacies have not yet developed. They will come in their own time, no matter how impatiently she wills them to develop now.

Ella came to Earth on another ship, one I didn’t know existed until John Smith, Number Four, told me he saw it in his visions. She was just a baby, which means she’s almost twelve now. Crayton says he is her unofficial Cêpan, since there wasn’t time for him to be officially appointed to her. He, like all of our Cêpans, has a duty to help Ella develop her Legacies. He told us that there was also a small herd of Chimæra on their ship, Loric animals capable of shifting forms and battling alongside us.

I’m happy she’s here. After Numbers One, Two, and Three died, only six of us remained. With Ella, we number seven. Lucky number seven, if you believe in luck. I don’t, though. I believe in strength.

Finally, Crayton squeezes down the aisle, carrying a black briefcase. He’s wearing eyeglasses and a brown suit that looks too big for him. Under his strong chin is a blue bow tie. He’s supposed to be our teacher.

“Hello, girls,” he says, stopping next to us.

“Hi, Mr. Collins,” Ella responds.

“It’s a full flight,” Marina says. That’s code for everyone on board looks okay. To tell him everything on the ground appears normal, I say, “I’m going to try to sleep.”

He nods and takes his seat directly behind Ella. Leaning forward between Marina and Ella, he says, “Use your time on the plane wisely, please. Study hard.”

That means, don’t let your guard down.

I didn’t know what to think of Crayton when we first met. He’s stern and quick tempered, but his heart seems to be in the right place and his knowledge of the world and current events is incredible. Official or not, he has taken his Cêpan role seriously. He says he would die for any one of us. He will do anything to defeat the Mogadorians; anything to exact our revenge. I believe him on all counts.

However, it’s with reluctance that I’m on this plane headed to India at all. I wanted to get back to the United States as soon as possible, to get back to John and Sam. But yesterday, standing on top of the dam overlooking the carnage at the lake, Crayton told us that Setrákus Ra, the powerful Mogadorian leader, would be on Earth soon, if he wasn’t here already. That Setrákus Ra’s arrival was a sign that the Mogadorians understood we were a threat, and we should expect them to step up their campaign to kill us. Setrákus Ra is more or less invincible. Only Pittacus Lore, the most powerful of all the Lorien Elders, would have been able to defeat him. We were horrified. What did that mean for the rest of us then, if he was invincible? When Marina asked this, asked how any of us could possibly stand a chance of defeating him, Crayton told us even more shocking news, knowledge that all the Cêpans had been entrusted with. One of the Garde—one of us—was supposed to hold the same powers as Pittacus. One of us was supposed to grow as strong as he had been, and would be able to beat Setrákus Ra. We just had to hope that that Garde wasn’t One, Two, or Three, that it was one of the ones still alive. If so, we had a chance. We just had to wait and see who it was, and hope that these powers showed themselves soon.

Crayton thinks he’s found him—the Garde who holds Pittacus’ powers.

“I’ve read about a boy who seems to have extraordinary powers in India,” he told us then. “He lives high up in the Himalayas. Some believe him to be the Hindu god Vishnu reincarnated; others believe the boy is an alien imposter with the power to physically alter his form.”

“Like me, Papa?” Ella had asked. Their father-daughter relationship took me by surprise. I couldn’t help but feel a touch of jealousy—jealousy that she still had her Cêpan, someone to turn to for guidance.

“He’s not changing ages, Ella. He’s changing into beasts and other beings. The more I read about him, the more I believe he is a member of the Garde, and the more I believe he may be the one to possess all of the Legacies, the one who can fight and kill Setrákus Ra. We need to find him as soon as possible.”

I don’t want to be on a wild goose chase for another member of the Garde right now. I know where John is, or where he is supposed to be. I can hear Katarina’s voice, urging me to follow my instincts, which are telling me we should connect with John first before anything else. It’s the least risky move. Certainly less risky than flying around the world based on Crayton’s hunch and rumors on the internet.

“It could be a trap,” I said. “What if those stories were planted for us to find so we would do exactly this?”

“I understand your concern, Six, but, trust me, I’m the master of planting stories on the internet. This is no plant. There are far too many sources pointing to this boy in India. He hasn’t been running. He hasn’t been hiding. He’s just being, and he appears to be very powerful. If he is one of you, then we must get to him before the Mogadorians do. We’ll go to America to meet up with Number Four as soon as this trip is over,” Crayton said.

Marina looked at me. She wanted to find John almost as much as I did—she’d been following the news of his exploits online and she’d had a similar feeling in her gut that he was one of us, a feeling I had confirmed for her. “Promise?” she asked Crayton. He nodded.

The captain’s voice breaks through my reverie. We’re about to take off. I want so badly to redirect the plane to point it towards West Virginia. Towards John and Sam. I hope they’re okay. Images of John being held in a prison cell keep entering my mind. I never should have told him about the Mog base in the mountain, but John wanted to get his Chest back and there was no way I could convince him to leave it behind.

The plane taxis down the runway and Marina grabs my wrist. “I really wish Héctor was here. He’d have something smart to say right now to make me feel better.”

“It’s okay,” Ella says, holding Marina’s other hand. “You have us.”

“And I’ll work on something smart to say,” I offer.

“Thanks,” Marina says, though it sounds like something between a hiccup and a gulp. I let her nails dig into my wrist. I give her a supportive smile, and a minute later we’re airborne.

CHAPTER TWO

I’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past two days, rolling back and forth in a hallucinating sickness. The effects from the blue force field outside the Mogadorians’ mountain have lingered far longer than Nine told me they would, both mentally and physically. Every few minutes, my muscles seize and sear with pain.

I try to distract myself from the agony by looking around the tiny bedroom of this decaying, abandoned house. Nine couldn’t have picked a more disgusting place for us to hide. I can’t trust my eyes. I watch the pattern on the yellow wallpaper come to life, the design marching like ants over patches of mold. The cracked ceiling appears to breathe, rising and falling at frightening speeds. There’s a large jagged hole in the wall that separates the bedroom and living room, as if someone tossed a sledgehammer through it. Smashed beer cans are strewn around the room, and the baseboards have been torn to shreds by animals. I’ve been hearing things rustling in the trees outside the house, but I’m too weak to be alarmed. Last night I woke to find a cockroach on my cheek. I barely had the energy to swat it off.

“Hey, Four?” I hear through the hole in the wall. “You awake or what? It’s time for lunch and your food’s getting cold.”

I heave myself to my feet. My head spins as I stumble through the doorway into what used to be the living room, and I collapse on the dingy gray carpet. I know Nine’s in here, but I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to find him. All I want is to lay my head in Sarah’s lap. Or in Six’s. Either one. I can’t think straight.

Something warm hits my shoulder. I roll over to see Nine sitting on the ceiling above me, his long black hair hanging down into the room. He’s gnawing on something and his hands are greasy.

“Where are we again?” I ask. The sunlight coming through the windows is too much and I close my eyes. I need more sleep. I need something, anything, to clear my head and regain my strength. My fingers fumble over my blue pendant, hoping to somehow gather energy through it, but it remains cold against my chest.

“The northern part of West Virginia,” Nine says between bites. “Ran out of gas, remember?”

“Barely,” I whisper. “Where’s Bernie Kosar?”

“Outside. That one is always on patrol. He is one cool animal. Tell me, Four, how did you of all the Garde end up with him?”

I crawl into the corner of the room and push my back up against a wall. “BK was with me on Lorien. His name was Hadley back then. I guess Henri thought it would be good to bring him along for the trip.”

Nine throws a tiny bone across the ceiling. “I had a couple of Chimæras as a kid too. Don’t remember their names, but I can still see them running around our house tearing stuff up. They died in the war, protecting my family.” Nine is silent for a moment, clenching his jaw. This is the first time I’ve seen him act anything other than tough. It’s nice to see, even if it’s short lived. “At least, that’s what my Cêpan told me.”

I stare at my bare feet. “What was your Cêpan’s name?”

“Sandor,” he says, standing up on the ceiling. He’s wearing my shoes. “It’s weird. I literally can’t remember the last time I said his name out loud. Some days, I can barely picture his face.” Nine’s voice hardens, and he closes his eyes. “But that’s how it goes, I guess. Whatever. They’re the expendable ones.”

His last sentence sends shockwaves through me. “Henri was not expendable, and neither was Sandor! No Loric was ever expendable. And give me back my shoes!”

Nine kicks my shoes into the middle of the floor, then takes his time walking first along the ceiling and then down the back wall. “All right, all right. I know he wasn’t expendable, man. Sometimes it’s just easier to think of him that way, you know? Truth is, Sandor was an amazing Cêpan.” Nine reaches the floor and towers over me. I forgot how tall he is. Intimidating. He shoves a handful of what he’s been eating in my face. “You want some of this or not? Because I’m about to finish it off.”

The sight of it makes my stomach churn. “What is it?”

“Barbecued rabbit. Nature’s finest.”

I don’t dare open my mouth to respond, afraid that I might get sick. Instead, I stumble back towards the bedroom, ignoring the laughter that follows me. The bedroom door is so warped it’s nearly impossible to close, but I wedge it into the doorframe as tightly as I can. I lie down on the floor, using my sweatshirt as a pillow, and think about how I ended up here, ended up like this. Without Henri. Without Sam. Sam is my best friend, and I can’t believe we left him behind. As thoughtful and loyal and supportive as Sam is—traveling and fighting alongside me for the last several months—Nine is so very not. He’s reckless, arrogant, selfish and just flat-out rude. I picture Sam, back in the Mog cave, a gun rocking against his shoulder as a dozen Mogadorian soldiers swarmed him. I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t save him. I should have fought harder, run faster. I should have ignored Nine and gone back to Sam. He would have done that for me. The immense amount of guilt I feel paralyzes me, until I finally fall asleep.

It’s dark. I’m no longer in a house in the mountains with Nine. I no longer feel the painful effects of the blue force field. My head is finally clear, although I don’t know where I am, or how I got here. When I shout for help, I can’t hear my voice even though I feel my lips moving. I shuffle ahead, hands out in front of me. My palms suddenly start to glow with my Lumen. The light is dim at first but quickly grows into two powerful beams.

“John.” A hoarse whisper says my name.

I whip my hands around to see where I am, but the light reveals only empty darkness. I’m entering a vision. I angle my palms towards the ground so my Lumen will light my way, and start towards the voice. The hoarse whisper keeps repeating my name over and over. It sounds young and full of fear. Then comes another voice, gruff and staccato, barking orders.

The voices become clearer. It’s Sam, my lost friend, and Setrákus Ra, my worst enemy. I can tell I’m nearing the Mogadorian base. I can see the blue force field, the source of so much pain. For some reason, I know it won’t hurt me now, and I don’t hesitate to pass through it. When I do, it’s not my screams I hear, but Sam’s. His tortured voice fills my head as I enter the mountain and move through its mazelike tunnels. I see the charred remains of our recent battle, from when I tossed a ball of green lava at the gas tanks at the mountain’s bottom, sending a sea of fire raging upwards. I move through the main cavernous hall and its spiraling ledges. I step onto the arched stone bridge Sam and I so recently crossed under the cloak of invisibility. I keep going, passing through tributaries and corridors, all while being forced to listen to my best friend’s crippling howls.

I know where I’m going before I get there. The steady incline of the floor lands me in the wide room lined with prison cells.

There they are. Setrákus Ra is standing in the middle of the room. He is huge and truly revolting looking. And there’s Sam. He’s suspended inside a small spherical cage next to him. His own private torture bubble. Sam’s arms are stretched high above his head and his legs are splayed, held in place with chains. A series of pipes are dripping steaming liquid onto various parts of Sam’s body. Blood has pooled and dried under the cage.

I stop ten feet away from them. Setrákus Ra senses my presence and turns around, the three Loric pendants from other Garde children he has killed dangling from his massive neck. The scar circling his throat pulses with a dark energy.

“We missed each other,” Setrákus Ra growls.

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Sam’s blue eyes turn in my direction, but I can’t tell if he sees me.

More hot liquid drips from the pipes, hitting Sam in the wrists, chest, knees and feet. A thick stream flows onto his cheek and rolls down his neck. Seeing Sam tortured finally gives me a voice.

“Let him go!” I shout.

Setrákus Ra’s eyes harden. The pendants around his neck glow and mine responds, lighting up as well. The blue Loralite gem is hot against my skin, and then it suddenly bursts into flames, my Legacy taking over. I allow the fire to crawl along my shoulders.

“I’ll let him go,” he says, “if you come back to the mountain and fight me.”

I glance quickly over at Sam and see that he has lost his battle with the pain and has blacked out, chin resting on his chest.

Setrákus Ra points to Sam’s withered body and says, “You must decide. If you don’t come, I’ll kill him and then I’ll kill the rest of them. If you do, I’ll let them all live.”

I hear a voice yelling my name, telling me I have to move. Nine. I sit up with a gasp and my eyes snap open. I’m covered in a thin layer of sweat. I stare through the jagged hole of broken drywall and it takes me a few seconds to get my bearings.

“Dude! Get up!” Nine yells from the other side of the door. “There’s a ton of stuff we need to do!”

I get to my knees and fumble around my neck for my pendant. I squeeze it as hard as I can, trying to get Sam’s screams out of my head. The bedroom door swings open. Nine stands in the doorway, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Seriously, bro. Get your shit together. We need to get out of here.”

Want to know more about Number Six?

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-and-gloom 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 lava-hot 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.”

Excerpt from I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Fallen Legacies

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT THEY WOULD THINK if they knew we were here. Right under their noses.

I’m sitting with my best friend, Ivan, on the grassy, crowded National Mall, the stupid stone obelisk of the Washington Monument looming above us. I’ve put my homework aside for the moment, and as I watch the tourists studying their maps, the lawyers and officials scurrying obliviously down Independence Avenue to their next meeting, I’m almost amused. They’re so caught up with silly fears about UV rays and chemicals in their vegetables and meaningless “terrorist threat levels” and whatever else it is that these people worry about, that it never occurs to them that two kids working on their homework in the grass are the real threat. They have no idea that there’s nothing they can do to protect themselves. The true enemy is already here.

“Hey!” I sometimes want to shout, waving my arms. “I’m your future evil dictator! Tremble before me, jerks!”

Of course I can’t do that. Not yet. That time will come. In the meantime, they can all stare right through me as if I’m just another normal face in the crowd. The truth is I’m anything but normal, even if I do my best to look it. On Earth, assimilation protocol demands that I be known as Adam, son of Andrew and Susannah Sutton, citizen of Washington DC. But that’s not who I am at all.

I am Adamus Sutekh, son of the great general Andrakkus Sutekh.

I am a Mogadorian. I am who they should be afraid of.

Unfortunately, for now, being an alien conqueror isn’t as exciting as it should be. At the moment I’m still stuck doing my homework. My father has promised me that this won’t last forever; when the Mogadorians ascend to power on this crappy little planet, I will control the capital city of the United States. Trust me, after spending the last four years in this place, I’ve got a pretty good idea of some changes I’ll make. The first thing I’ll do is rename all the streets. None of this Independence, Constitution stuff—this weak, stupid patriotism. When I’m in charge, no one will even be able to remember what the Constitution is. When I’m in charge, my avenues will carry titles of appropriate menace.

“Blood of Warriors Boulevard,” I murmur to myself, trying to decide if it has a good ring to it. Hard to say. “Broken Sword Way …”

“Huh?” Ivan asks, glancing up from his spot on the grass next to me. He’s lying on his stomach, a pencil held across his index finger like a makeshift blaster. While I dream of the day I’ll be the ruler of all I survey, Ivan imagines himself as a sniper, picking off Loric enemies as they leave the Lincoln Memorial. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I reply.

Ivanick Shu-Ra, son of the great warrior Bolog Shu-Ra, shrugs his shoulders. Ivan has never been much for fantasies that don’t include some kind of bloody combat. His family claims a distant relation to our Beloved Leader, Setrákus Ra, and if Ivan’s size is any indication, I’m inclined to believe them. Ivan’s two years younger than me but is already bigger, broad shouldered and thick while I am lithe and agile. He already looks like a warrior and keeps his coarse black hair cropped close, eager for the day when he’ll be able to shave it off entirely and take on the ceremonial Mogadorian tattoos.

I still remember the night of the First Great Expansion, when my people conquered Lorien. I was eight years old that night, too old to be crying, but I cried anyway when I was told I’d be staying in orbit above Lorien with the women and children. My tears only lasted a few seconds until the General slapped some sense into me. Ivan watched my tantrum, dumbly sucking his thumb, maybe too young to realize what was happening. We watched the battle from our ship’s observatory with my mother and infant sister. We clapped as flames spread across the planet below us. After the fight was won and the Loric people were destroyed, the General returned to our ship covered in blood. Despite the triumph, his face was serious. Before saying anything to my mother or me, he knelt before Ivan and explained that his father had died in service to our race. A glorious death, befitting a true Mogadorian hero. He rubbed his thumb across Ivan’s forehead, leaving a trail of blood. A blessing.

As an afterthought, the General did the same to me.

After that, Ivan, whose mother had died during childbirth, came to live with us and was raised as my brother. My parents are considered lucky to have three trueborn children.

I’m not always sure that my father feels lucky to have me, though. Whenever my test scores or physical evaluations are less than satisfactory, the General jokes that he might have to transfer my inheritance to Ivan.

I’m mostly sure he’s joking.

My gaze drifts towards a family of sightseers as they cross the lawn, each of them taking in the world through digital cameras. The father pauses to snap a series of photos of the Monument, and I briefly reconsider my plans to demolish it. Instead, perhaps I could make it taller; maybe install a penthouse for myself in the uppermost floor. Ivan could have the room below mine.

The daughter of the tourist family is probably about thirteen, like me, and she’s cute in a shy way, with a mouth full of braces. I catch her looking at me and find myself unconsciously shifting into a more presentable position, sitting up straighter, tilting my chin down to hide the severe angle of my too-large nose. When the girl smiles at me, I look away. Why should I care what some human thinks of me?

We must always remember why we are here.

“Does it ever amaze you how easily they accept us as their own?” I ask Ivan.

“Never underestimate human stupidity,” he says, reaching over to tap the blank page of homework sitting next to me. “Are you going to finish this shit or what?”

The homework lying next to me isn’t mine—it’s Ivan’s. He’s waiting for me to do it for him. Written assignments have always given him problems, whereas the right answers come easily to me.

I glance down at the assignment. Ivan is supposed to write a short essay on a quote from the Great Book—the book of Mogadorian wisdom and ethics that all of our people must learn and live by—interpreting what Setrákus Ra’s writing means to him personally.

“‘We do not begrudge the beast for hunting,’” I read aloud, although like most of my people I know the passage by heart. “‘It is in the beast’s nature to hunt, just as it is in the Mogadorian’s nature to expand. Those that would resist the expansion of the Mogadorian Empire, therefore, stand in opposition to nature itself.’”

I look over at Ivan. He’s taken aim on the family I was watching before, making high-pitched laser beam noises through gritted teeth. The girl with the braces frowns at him and turns away.

“What does that mean to you?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he grunts. “That our race is the most badass, and everyone else should deal with it. Right?”

I shrug my shoulders, sighing. “Close enough.”

I pick up my pen and start to scribble something down, but am interrupted by the chime of my cell phone. I figure it’s a text message from my mother, asking me to pick up something from the store on my way home. She’s really taken to cooking over the last couple years, and, I’ll admit it, the food here on Earth blows away what we used to get on Mogadore. What they consider “processed” here would be treasured on my home planet, where food—among other things—is grown in subterranean vats.

The text isn’t from Mom, though. The message is from the General.

“Shit,” I say, dropping my pen as if the General had just caught me helping Ivan cheat.

My father never sends text messages. The act is beneath him. If the General wants something, we’re supposed to anticipate what it is before he even has to ask. Something really important must have happened.

“What is it?” asks Ivan.

The message reads simply: HOME NOW.

“We have to go.”

CHAPTER TWO

IVAN AND I TAKE THE METRO OUT OF DC, PICK up our bikes at the train station and pedal into the suburbs as fast as we can. When we finally zip through the gated entrance of Ashwood Estates, I’ve fallen at least thirty yards behind him. I blame my sweat-dampened T-shirt on the unseasonable warmth and my feeling of nausea on the ominous text message from my father.

Ashwood Estates is identical to many of the wealthy gated communities outside of Washington—or at least it looks identical. But instead of being owned by politicians and their families, the mansions and immaculately maintained lawns behind the front gates are owned by my people, the Mogadorians, Earth’s soon-to-be conquerors. And the homes themselves are only a tiny part of the real Ashwood Estates. Underneath the houses is a huge maze of tunnels that connect the many Mogadorian facilities that are the true purpose of this place.

I’ve only been granted access to small parts of our underground headquarters. I have no idea how far they extend or how deep below the Earth they reach. But I know that this sprawling underground network houses many laboratories, weapons stores, training facilities and probably more secrets that I can’t yet begin to guess at. It’s also down there that the vat-born live.

If it wasn’t for our Beloved Leader, Setrákus Ra, the Mogadorian race would have never survived long enough to begin the Great Expansion. Over the last hundred years, for reasons that are still mostly unknown, it has become more and more difficult for Mogadorians to bear children. By the time Kelly was born, natural Mogadorian births were so rare that our ancient, proud species was in grave danger of dying out entirely. When children were able to be conceived, Mogadorian women, like Ivan’s mother, often died during childbirth. Because of this, Setrákus Ra and a team of scientists had been working to artificially breed a new generation of Mogadorians. Rather than being birthed in the usual way, our vat-born Mogadorian brothers and sisters are grown in giant chemical vats, from which they eventually emerge, fully grown and ready for battle. These vat-born not only ensure the continued existence of Mogadorian life but, with their heightened strength, speed and stamina, are also the backbone of our army.

Besides their increased physical prowess, the vat-born are different from trueborn Mogadorians like me in other ways too. They’ve been engineered to be physically suited for war, but to be soldiers rather than officers. In his wisdom, Setrákus Ra has created them to be more single-minded than trueborn Mogadorians—almost machine-like in their adherence to the tasks they’re assigned—and as natural warriors, what they have in the way of rational thought often gives way to rage and bloodlust. But the most important difference between the vat-born and the trueborn, at least here on Earth, is the fact that they look different from the rest of us. While the trueborn are able to pass amid humans, the vat-born are not. Their skin is ghostly pale from subterranean living, and their teeth are small and sharp for close combat rather than eating. This is why, until we are able to reveal ourselves, they are only rarely allowed to show their faces in daylight.

So when I see the vat-born openly celebrating on the lawns of Ashwood Estates alongside their trueborn betters, I know something huge is happening.

Ivan knows it too, and gives me a befuddled look as he skids to a stop in our cul-de-sac. I pull up beside him, catching my breath. All of the families of Ashwood Estates are in front of their homes, mingling with each other, raising toasts from freshly opened bottles of champagne. The vat-born, with their jarringly pale skin hidden beneath trench coats and hats, look both excited and disoriented to be out in the open. The air of jubilation is unusual in Mogadorian culture. Normally my people are not given to open displays of joy, especially with the General in the vicinity.

“What the hell is going on?” Ivan asks, as usual looking to me for answers. This time I just shrug back at him.

My mother is sitting on our front steps, watching with a small smile as Kelly dances wildly across the front yard. My sister, spinning maniacally, doesn’t even notice when Ivan and I arrive.

My mother looks relieved to see us approach. Though I don’t know what the celebration is for, I do know why she wouldn’t have joined the other revelers out on the lawns and street. Being the wife of the General makes it difficult for her to make friends, even with other trueborns. Their fear of my father extends to my mother.

“Boys,” she says as Ivan and I roll our bikes up the front walk. “He’s been looking for you. You know he doesn’t like to wait.”

“Why does he need to see us?” I ask.

Before my mother can answer, the General appears in the doorway behind her. My father is a large man, standing close to seven feet tall, muscular, with a regal posture that demands respect. His face is all sharp angles, a feature I’ve unfortunately inherited from him. Since coming to Earth, he’s grown his black hair out to hide the tattoos on his scalp, and he keeps it neatly slicked back, like some of the politicians I’ve seen striding across the National Mall.

“Adamus,” he says in a tone that brooks no questioning. “Come with me. You too, Ivanick.”

“Yes, sir,” Ivan and I reply in unison, exchanging a nervous glance with each other before stepping into the house. When my father uses that tone of voice, it means something serious is happening. As I pass, my mother gives my hand a gentle squeeze.

“Have fun in Malaysia!” shouts Kelly at our backs, having finally noticed us. “Kill that Garde as hard as you can!”

About the Author

Pittacus Lore is Lorien’s ruling Elder. He has been on Earth preparing for the war that will decide Earth’s fate. His whereabouts are unknown. To learn more, visit www.iamnumberfourfans.com

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I Am Number Four

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Copyright

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Copyright © 2012 by Pittacus Lore.

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