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

Excerpt from The Fall of Five

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CHAPTER ONE

MY EYES FLY OPEN, BUT I DON’T SEE ANYTHING. Just darkness. My lungs feel weak and heavy, like they’re coated in a thick layer of grime, and when I cough, a cloud of dust swirls around me, making me cough more until I’m about to hack up a lung. My head is throbbing, foggy and immobile. My arms are pinned to my sides.

Where am I?

As the dust settles, my coughing finally subsides and I begin to remember.

New Mexico. Dulce. Wait—did all that really happen?

I want to believe it was all just a dream. But by now I know enough to realize that there’s no such thing as just a dream anyway. And this was no dream. I was the one who brought this place down. Without even knowing how I did it, I took the power that One had given me and brought a whole government base crashing down to its foundations.

Next time I pull a stunt like that, I’ll wait till I’m not in the place before I tear it apart. It made sense at the time. I guess I have some things to learn about having a Legacy.

Now everything around me is silent. I’ll take that as a good sign. It means that nobody’s trying to kill me anymore. Which means that they’re either just as buried as I am, or they’re dead. For now, I’m alone. One is dead. Malcolm and Sam are gone—they probably think I’m dead too. As for my family, they’d prefer it if I was dead.

No one would even know if I gave up here, right now, and there’s part of me that wants to. I’ve fought so hard. Isn’t it enough that I came this far?

It would be so easy just to stop struggling here, to stay buried. To stay forgotten.

If One were still here, she would toss her hair impatiently and tell me to snap out of it, to get over myself. She’d tell me that I’m not even halfway finished with the job she left me with and that there are bigger things to worry about than myself. She’d remind me that it’s not just my life that hangs in the balance.

But One isn’t here anymore, and so it’s up to me to tell myself those things.

I’m alive. That in itself is amazing. I’d triggered the explosives in the armory with the full knowledge that it might be the last thing I did. I’d done it so Malcolm Goode, the man who’d started to feel like some kind of dad to me, could escape with his real son, Sam. I figured that if they got away, at least I would have died doing one good thing.

But I didn’t die. For now, at least. And I figure that if I’m still alive despite everything, there has to be a reason for it. There’s still something I need to do.

So I try to slow my racing heart, breathe steadily, and assess the situation. I’m buried, yes. But there’s air here, and I can move my head, my shoulders, even my arms a little. Good. My breathing stirs up more dust and that shows me which way is up, and also that there’s a little light seeping in from somewhere. And if there’s any light at all, it means I can’t be too far from the surface.

There’s no room for me to move my arms, but I struggle anyway, trying to push against the shattered stone and concrete I’m trapped under. It doesn’t do any good, of course. I’m not a vatborn with genetically enhanced strength or even a natural powerhouse like my adoptive brother, Ivan. I’m tall but slight and built like a regular human, with only moderately more physical ability. I’m not even sure if the most highly trained of the vatborn would be able to dig his way out of here; there’s no way I have any shot at all.

But then One’s face enters my mind again—her wry, affectionate eye roll, the way she would look at me like, Really? That’s all you’ve got? And something occurs to me. It’s not all I’ve got. Not anymore. I may not have strength, but I do have power.

I focus on the rocks around me, knowing that, with my Legacy—the Legacy that One gave me—I can shake all this debris clear. I close my eyes and focus on it, picturing the rubble shaking and splitting, moving away from me until I’m free.

Nothing happens. It doesn’t budge. Move, dammit, I think, and then I realize that I’ve actually said the words aloud without meaning to. Either way, the rocks don’t pay any attention.

Suddenly I’m angry. First I’m angry at myself: for being so stupid, for being so weak, for not having mastered the gift that One gave me. For getting myself to this place at all.

But it isn’t my fault. I was only trying to do what was right. It’s not myself I should be angry at—it’s my people, the Mogadorians who got me here. The Mogadorians, who worship brute force and believe that war is a way of life.

Soon I can feel my rage coursing through my body. Nothing in my life has ever been fair. I never had a shot at all. I think about Ivan, who was a best friend to me. We grew up together, and then he betrayed me. He tried to kill me—more than once.

I think about my father, who didn’t think twice about letting the Mogadorian scientists experiment on me with machines that had been completely untested and came close to frying my brain. It was nothing to him to risk sacrificing me for the cause.

And what cause was that? The cause of creating more destruction, of killing more people and gaining more power for himself. But power over what? When we’d conquered Lorien, we’d left it a lifeless, destroyed husk of a planet. There was nothing left on Lorien to rule. Was that what we were going to do to Earth too?

For people like my father, that’s not the point. The point is war. The point is winning. To him, I was just another potential weapon to be used and discarded. That’s all anyone’s ever been worth to him.

The more I think about it, the more I feel my mind racing with rage. I hate him. I hate Ivan. I hate Setrákus Ra and the Good Book for teaching them all that this is the right way to live. I hate them all.

My fingers and toes start to tingle. I feel the rocks around me start to tremble. I’m doing it. My Legacy is working. You can let your anger destroy you, or you can use it for something. I close my eyes again, clench my fists and scream as loud as I can, letting all my fury out in one big burst. And with a massive whoosh, the dirt and stone and rubble begin to crumble. My body is shaking all over, and the ground is shaking too. Before long, it’s all slid away, and I’m free again. It’s as if a giant shovel has scooped me out.

But someone else isn’t as lucky. Not ten feet away from me, a Mogadorian soldier is wedged beneath what looks like part of a shattered steel doorframe.

He groans and stirs now that the weight’s been lifted.

He’s as alive as I am. Awesome.

CHAPTER TWO

I PULL MYSELF TO MY FEET, STAGGERING A bit. My whole body aches like I’ve just been squeezed in a giant vise, but I don’t think anything’s broken. I’m covered in dirt and dust and sweat and, yes, some blood, but not a lot of that either. Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid any serious injury. I don’t know how, and I don’t really care.

The other Mogadorian isn’t so lucky. As I stand, he lets out a low groan, but he doesn’t look up at me or move. He’s so beaten up that he barely seems to realize he’s not buried anymore. I don’t even think he realizes I’m here.

He must have gotten hit pretty hard, because this guy doesn’t look like the type who would be easy to take out. He’s as big as Ivan and built like a pro linebacker, with a thick neck and bulging muscles, but I can tell even from here that he’s not vatborn—his facial features are too clean lined and too even to be one of the genetically altered warriors who make up the majority of the Mogadorians’ army.

This one is a trueborn, like me. Like my father. From the tattoo on his skull I can tell that he’s an officer, not a grunt. It figures. The vatborn are bred to be cannon fodder, while the trueborn give the orders. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember seeing him while I was holding back the troops. Unlike Ivan, who charged after me and got himself killed as a result, this guy must’ve been leading from the rear.

I actually feel a stab of disgust at the thought. A good commander leads by example, not by cowering behind his men. Not that it did him much good. Anyway, none of it matters much. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with him.

First things first: I check him over for any weapons. He grunts a little as I pat him down, and his eyes flutter for a moment, but he doesn’t resist my search. Not that I find anything useful on him—if he had a blaster it’s long gone, and he doesn’t seem to have a knife on him either. I don’t find so much as a breath mint in his pockets. Which, from the foul stench of the air emitting from his mouth in wheezing bursts, would probably do him more good than a weapon right about now.

The one thing that I can’t help but notice is the blood. This guy’s practically covered in it. It’s seeping out from under the dust and dirt that coat his pale skin, and staining through the torn-up clothes he still has on. I don’t see any one big injury, but he’s a mess for sure.

When I’m satisfied that he’s not going to jump to his feet and take me down the moment I turn my back on him, I look around the area I’m standing in and try to get my bearings. The bulk of Dulce Base was built underground to keep it away from prying eyes, but I guess my little stunt changed all that. I’m standing in a giant crater at least a hundred feet across at the top, and there’s a clear blue sky above. The only problem is, I’m at least twenty feet down from where rock ends and sky begins.

The wreckage is everywhere—rocks and cement and toppled columns, busted computers and equipment with their exposed electrical wires sparking dangerously. When I smell the familiar stench of gasoline, I realize that I’m basically standing in the middle of a huge powder keg. This place could go up in flames at any second. It’s sort of a miracle there haven’t been any more explosions yet.

I have to get out of here quick. Luckily, despite the fact that we’re so far down, there’s so much debris piled high in every direction that I figure it won’t be too hard to climb my way to the surface.

I figure out which direction will be the easiest to negotiate, and start to head that way—and then stop. I look behind me, at the guy lying there on the ground—the Mogadorian who still hasn’t stirred beyond a groan.

I could leave him here to die alone. I have myself to worry about, and besides, one more dead Mogadorian is a good thing. But something stops me.

It’s not that I’m just being nice. It’s way too late to start having moral qualms now. After all, I’ve killed more than my share of Mogs since all this started.

For a moment I wonder if my dad ever would have guessed that I had it in me. I wonder if it would give him even a tiny bit of pride if he knew.

Of course, my dad’s pride is the last thing I’m looking for now. That’s not why I decide to turn back, though. Instead, it’s because I know that a single, unarmed Mogadorian officer can do me more good alive than he can dead. For one thing, if he was stationed here he’ll know his way around the surrounding area and any nearby towns. Deep in the middle of the desert, without even a compass to guide me, that stuff matters if I want to get out alive.

So I head back to the guy, grab him under the arms and start hauling him along.

This guy’s really heavy, and it’s all I can do to drag him over the craggy piles of junk and rocks as we make our way across the vast expanse of the base’s ruins towards the edge of the crater. The sun is higher in the sky now and we’re completely exposed to it. I feel a bead of sweat forming at my brow and making its way down my face and then, before I know it, I’m completely drenched. I try to clear a path as I move, kicking aside dusty monitors and crushed aluminum piping and whatever else is blocking the way.

Not that it does much good. Within minutes, my arms feel like noodles, my legs hurt and my back is killing me. We’re not even halfway to where we need to be. This isn’t going to work. Finally, when I drop the Mogadorian to the ground to catch my breath, he stirs.

“Hey,” I say. “Can you hear me?”

“Uhhhrm,” he replies. Well, it’s not that helpful, but it’s better than nothing, I figure.

“Hey, listen,” I try again. “We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?”

He peers up at me, his heavy brow furrowed, and I can guess why. He’s trying to figure out who I am and what I’m doing here. I’m covered in grime, so he probably can’t tell that I don’t have the skull tattoo that denotes Mogadorian rank, and he looks up at me in confusion.

I don’t have time for him to be confused, or time for him to come to his senses—assuming he ever will. We have to get out of here now. I have no idea whether there are any others still alive elsewhere on the base, or if reinforcements are on the way. Plus, I’m half expecting the whole place to go up flames at any second. That’s if I don’t die of thirst before it happened.

I try a different tack. I speak to him in our native Mogadorian tongue, the language that’s mostly only ever used now for ceremonial purposes. I quote the Good Book. “Strength is sacred,” I say. It’s one of the most important tenets in Mogadorian society. His eyes come into focus.

“On your feet, soldier!” I snap. I’m only half surprised when it does the trick and he slowly levers himself up onto one knee and raises himself to his feet. Typical Mogadorian—there’s nothing my people respond to more enthusiastically than empty authority. He’s swaying a bit as he comes to a standing position. His left arm is hanging funny, and he’s pale, sweat popping out across his forehead and along his upper lip, but he’s up. For now.

“Let’s go,” I tell him, pointing towards the opening high above. “March.” Without a word, he lumbers past me.

I follow him, realizing that I’m not in much better shape than he is. As we scramble over the heaps of rubble, I find myself thinking of Sam and Malcolm. I hope they made it out of here okay. My cell phone got crushed when I brought down the base, so I can’t call Malcolm to find out what happened, arrange somewhere to meet up or even ask for help. All I can do is have some hope.

It feels like hours before we finally come to the edge of the blown-out base, though the sun is still high in the sky so it can’t have been that long. So far none of my fears has come to pass: there have been no explosions or fires and no sign of Mogadorians coming back to dig through the wreckage.

The pit is deeper than it appeared earlier, and I look up and see exactly how far we have to climb to get out of here. Luckily there’s enough junk piled up around the edge that we’ll be able to find a path to the top, but it won’t be easy.

Is anything ever easy?

I’m soaked in sweat, though, and practically panting for air as we pull ourselves up the side of the cliff, using toppled girders and jutting pieces of cement and whatever we can find to use as handholds. My new best friend is pushing through the pain, his black eyes glassy and unfocused, but he’s doing it. I’m embarrassed to see that even in this state he’s still at least as strong as I am.

I’m guessing he took a blow to the head from the explosion. The good news is, it’s made him nice and docile—when I tell him to do something, he does it. The bad news is, he has no idea what he’s doing. I need him alive, so I’ve got to keep a close eye on him every second in case he does something stupid.

“What’s your name?” I ask him once I’ve got my breath back. Might as well know who I’m dealing with.

“Rexicus Saturnus,” he answers after a minute. The name sounds vaguely familiar. He doesn’t look that much older than me, and I wonder if I’d ever seen him when I lived at home with my parents and sister. Ashwood is the largest Mogadorian community on Earth, after all, so there’s a good chance he grew up there too. Even if he was a bit older than me, I’d have seen him around occasionally, or heard his name. I study his face, though, and find that I don’t recognize him it all. “They call me Rex.”

I just nod. There’s nothing to say right now. We just have to keep climbing. So we climb.

And then, after who knows how much time, we emerge from the pit and stumble over the edge into a vast desert. I didn’t think it would be possible, but the sun on my brow feels even hotter than before.

I only take a few seconds to rest and catch my breath before I dust myself off and scan the horizon, looking for something—anything—other than dirt and rocks, and after a minute, my eyes settle on what looks like a small building. I don’t know what we’ll find—there could still be Mogadorians inside, for all I know—but I decide I don’t have much choice, especially if it means finding water and some respite from the heat.

“All right then, Rex,” I say, pointing to the building in the distance. “Let’s get moving. That way.”

He just nods and starts walking. I follow him, wondering again if I’m doing the right thing. It would be so easy to kill him. For now he’s weak, his reflexes dulled, his mind fuzzy. It would take nothing for me to sneak up behind him and get rid of him once and for all. This could be my only chance. Once he’s recovered, he’d be able to overpower me easily. Then he might not think twice before killing me.

But he’s a Mogadorian officer. I have no idea what information he has or how valuable he is to my people. All I know is that if he knows anything that can help Malcolm and the Loric people, it’s worth it to keep him alive even if it means risking my own neck. It’s what One would want.

CHAPTER THREE

MY FEET FEEL LIKE THEY’RE MADE OF LEAD; it’s a supreme effort to lift each one and set it back down. My head is throbbing, my tongue feels swollen and my nose is so dry it hurts to breathe in through it, but my throat is coated with sand and swallowing makes me want to retch. My skin is tight and crinkly, and I itch everywhere—when I glance at my arm I realize it’s bright red, the harsh sunlight already burning me. Every movement sends little jolts of pain washing across my every joint, over every inch of exposed flesh. I can’t see straight—the desert stretches out ahead of me, and the building we’re heading towards doesn’t seem to be getting closer. In fact, part of me is starting to wonder if it’s even real. When I stare at it for too long it begins to waver, like it’s just a mirage that will always remain a few thousand paces in the distance.

I’m not sure, though. I’m not sure of anything anymore. I’ve never felt more alone in my life. In the past, even when things were at their worst, I always had One urging me along, reminding me of what was right. Then One was gone, but at least I had Malcolm. Now he’s gone, too, and I only have myself. I just wish myself was someone I had more faith in.

Of course, I’m not actually alone. Rex is here too. But Rex is not my friend. If he knew who—or what—I was, he’d probably kill me on the spot. Killing the traitor Mogadorian who turned on his father and brought down the Dulce Base would earn him at least one promotion in rank.

At the moment, though, Rex is useless. His stride’s become more erratic, his head is down like he can just bull through the entire New Mexico desert and he keeps muttering to himself. I don’t know what he’s saying, but I get the impression he’s talking to somebody else. Somebody who obviously isn’t here right now.

So it’s just me, the desert and a hallucinating Mog soldier.

And then the building we’re heading towards begins to transform from just a thick smudge in the distance where sand meets sky into a real shape that I can recognize. It’s getting bigger, closer. We’re almost there. And it dawns on me exactly what it is—with everything that’s happened I’d practically forgotten.

Miles out from the main base, along the perimeter, there was a watchtower. Was. When Malcolm and I first got here, it had been the first thing we spotted, along with a generator right behind it that was powering the base’s electric fence. I decided to bring it toppling down, sending it crashing into the generator, in order to sneak in and rescue Sam.

I thought I’d destroyed the tower completely, but now as we approach it, I begin to see that the actual guard station at the top survived, a metal-and-concrete room that’s now lying on its side a hundred feet from the ruined generator. It’s not much, barely bigger than a bathroom, really, but we can hole up there for a while. We’re almost there when I hear the most wonderful sound in the world. I try not to run—at this point if I fall down I doubt I’d be able to get back up again—but I hurry towards the noise. And there, jutting up within the tower’s twisted, bare foundation, is a jagged, broken pipe.

Bubbling up from it is water.

I drop to my knees right next to the fallen tower where the spouting water has formed a little pool around the pipe. I would jump in if I could; I’d let it soak in through every pore.

Since I can’t do that, I scoop up as much water as I can into my cupped palms and splash it on my face. Then I take another scoop, raise it to my lips, and drink. The water is warm and metallic but tastes like life itself.

I feel immediately better. I’m filled with a burst of energy spreading through my body, from my chest all the way to my toes and fingertips. I take another greedy sip. I can think clearly again.

Then I remember Rex. He’s on his knees beside me, staring at the pool with bloodshot eyes, but he’s not drinking. It’s like he doesn’t remember how. I reach down and splash some water on his face. His eyes widen. He licks his lips, and then he’s hunched over the pool, scooping handful after handful up to his mouth, lapping at it furiously.

I pull away and just sit back on my haunches, taking it all in. We’ve got water now, and shelter. Maybe there are even some rations in there, if we’re lucky. We might just survive this yet.

Or will we? As I’ve started to feel like things are going to be okay, I hear a low, threatening rumble. A growl.

I turn my head, startled by the noise, and come face-to-face with a huge, powerfully built beast. It’s a wolf—the largest I’ve ever seen. His golden eyes are narrowed menacingly; his tail is twitching and his ears are pricked for a fight. He bares his fangs.

CHAPTER FOUR

“EASY THERE, BIG GUY,” I SAY CAREFULLY, clambering up as gracefully as I can manage, hoping not to spook the animal any more than I already have. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

He digs his paws into the ground and hunches forward. If he decides to pounce, we’re done for, but if I can call up One’s Legacy again, I might be able to shake things up enough to knock the wolf off his feet, giving me time to run for the protection of the guard station. It’s not the best plan ever, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

The water’s refreshed me a bit, but my head’s still throbbing. I’m swaying on my feet and my skin’s burning. Not the ideal circumstances to try to use the Legacy I don’t have a complete handle on yet.

But I concentrate as hard as I can and clench my hand into a fist. I raise it slowly and point it at the ground. There’s a soft rumble, and the earth below us stirs like a table that’s been bumped by accident. It’s something, but it’s not going to help much.

I’m surprised at how the wolf reacts: he gives a small yelp and backs away a step, eyeing me now with curiosity rather than anger. He tilts his head to one side like he’s trying to figure me out, and then slowly begins padding toward me. This time, he doesn’t growl. He almost looks friendly. Whatever I was expecting when I tried to nail him with my Legacy, this wasn’t it.

“Uh, hey there,” I say, trying to modulate my voice so that it’s soft and nonthreatening, holding out my upturned palms. No sudden movements.

He’s right in front of me now, studying me, sniffing me. A low whine is coming from his throat. I didn’t have a dog or any pets growing up—my father, the great general, didn’t see any value in pets that couldn’t do something useful—so I have no idea how to read this animal and no idea whether or not I should be running right now.

When he licks the palm of my left hand, though, I’m pretty sure it’s not the prelude to an attack.

“Good boy.” I reach out and, ever so slowly, pet him on the head. His fur is thick and soft, and he gazes at me steadily. I have no idea why, but he suddenly seems to trust me.

I turn to see what Rex thinks of all this, and discover that he hasn’t been watching any of it: he’s passed out. For a second I worry that he’s dead, but then I see that he’s breathing, but barely. His injuries—in addition to the exertion and dehydration—must have caught up with him.

I need to get him out of the open desert. The sun’s starting to sink toward the horizon. I’ve heard it gets cold in the desert at night. The temperature’s already starting to drop. If nothing else, it would be nice to have four walls protecting us from the elements.

“You gonna stick around?” I ask the wolf as I lift Rex up by his armpits and begin to drag him toward the guard station. I feel stupid talking to an animal, but it’s not like I have any better options for conversation. He looks me up and down and then begins to follow me, silently loping along.

Luckily it only takes us a few minutes to reach the structure. All the windows have shattered from when it collapsed, but there are wooden shutters that look intact. After a couple of hard shoves, the door swings open.

The place is on its side, but it looks mostly intact. The inside’s got a few desks, some chairs, clothes lockers, filing cabinets, a smashed computer, and a busted-up minifridge. Yeah, this should do nicely.

I step inside, dragging Rex with me, and the wolf follows behind us. I’m not sure why, but I feel strangely reassured to have him with us.

Unfortunately the place is pretty tiny. After I drop Rex’s body to the ground, there’s barely space to turn around without tripping over the wolf. I’m thinking maybe there isn’t room for all of us in here.

He studies me for a second, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. He lets out a bark.

And then he starts to change. First the edges of his body lose focus, and then his fur begins to glow, somehow smoothing itself out into a glossy shell around his body almost like armor. He turns from white to green.

I take a shaky step back. I wonder if this is what happens when you spend a whole day wandering around a desert dragging a guy almost twice your size. I open my mouth to speak and then realize I have no idea what to say.

He’s not done yet either: now his skin is rough and scaly, and then his whole body begins to ripple like water in a pond just after you’ve tossed a rock into it. He’s shrinking.

It’s all happening so fast that I barely have time to wonder what’s going on. But then it’s over. Sitting at my feet, blinking up with huge, glittering eyes, is a lizard.

“Holy shit,” I mutter. They’re suddenly the only words I can remember.

It’s not like my life has been boring. I was raised in a secret community of alien conquerors, had my mind grafted onto the mind of a dead girl, recently developed superpowers.

But none of those things has been weirder than watching a wolf transform into a lizard right before my eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.”

It’s the first time Rex has spoken to me directly. We’ve been here a few days now. I decided to stick it out to let both of us recover, although I’m barely sleeping because I worry that every little noise I hear could be the Mogs—or the U.S. military—coming to see if anyone survived the explosion. Oddly enough, I haven’t seen a hint of anyone—Mog or human. They must assume that everyone is dead and there’s no urgent need to sift through the debris.

We’ve got shelter and water, and although we went through the meager rations in the guard tower pretty quickly, I’ve managed to find small stores of food scattered around the ruins of the Dulce Base: military rations and crackers and chips and dried fruit. We’re not exactly living large, but it could be worse.

I was able to patch myself up pretty quickly using the first aid kit mounted to the wall of our hideout, and with rest and hydration, Rex is getting better too. His color’s improved each day, along with his breathing, although his arm still looks like it might be broken.

For the past few days, he’s been drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes sleeping fitfully, other times passed out cold. Yesterday he spent most of the day awake, but he just sat in the corner, staring at the ceiling, totally silent. It was hard to tell if he couldn’t speak or if he just didn’t want to.

But now he’s decided to talk, and the thing he says is the one thing I’ve been dreading. He recognizes me.

I just shrug, trying to act like I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Yeah?” I ask, noncommittal.

“You’re Adamus Sutekh,” he continues. “Son of General Andrakkus Sutekh.” Now there’s no mistaking the contempt in his voice, or the way his lip curls in disgust. “You’re a traitor.”

I freeze. He knows everything. I stare at him, trying to figure out what he’s going to do next. I can still take him out if I have to—I won’t have that chance once he’s back to full health.

I shake the idea off one more time. I might be making a huge mistake, but I still think he’s too valuable to kill. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.

“I saved your life,” I say evenly. Rex snorts.

“You betrayed our people. You blew up the research lab at Ashwood.” That’s not strictly true—I shattered the lab, yes, with the Legacy that One gave me—but I let it pass as he raises his voice. “And I’m willing to bet that you’re responsible for all this too. Aren’t you?”

I turn away. I can’t even look at him. Even though I know I was doing the right thing—the thing I had to do—there’s still a part of me that feels ashamed.

Now he’s almost yelling, although he’s still too weak and hoarse to summon the strength to really scream. “You’re pathetic. I don’t know how a weakling like you managed to do it alone, but you’re the one who blew up the base. You killed everyone. Your own people.”

What I don’t tell him is that I wasn’t on my own. From the pieces of the puzzle that I’ve managed to put together—the chaos and noise during the attack, the extent of the wreckage afterwards—I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one attacking the base when it collapsed. If he wants to think I did all of this myself, that’s fine, but I know that the Garde must have been there too.

I just shrug. “I was looking for somebody,” I tell him. “You guys were holding him here. I took him back.”

Rex is still glaring at me. “You killed all those soldiers to save one person?” he asks. “That human we were holding, the boy? Why?”

My new friend saves me the trouble of answering. He’s been out and about all day, scouting as usual, and now he swoops in through the open doorway of our shelter and settles on my shoulder. He’s taken on the shape of a hawk today and his talons grip tight through the T-shirt I scavenged from a locker.

Rex recoils when he sees the bird. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s Dust,” I say, happy for the change in conversation. Rex just narrows his eyes at me. I can see the wheels turning in his head. I can’t figure out what he’s thinking, but whatever it is, it’s nothing good.

I reach up and stroke Dust’s head, and he ruffles his feathers contentedly. He and I have already become buddies. The name “Dust” seemed appropriate out here in the middle of the desert, and he seems perfectly happy to be called anything at all. I don’t know what he is or why he’s out here, but I’m starting to have a feeling we’ve both been lonely for a pretty long time.

Rex, on the other hand, doesn’t seem at all pleased to have company. He eyes me and Dust for a moment longer and then, out of nowhere, springs to his feet. Before I know what’s happening, he’s got me pinned up against the wall, his fingers wrapped around my neck. Dust flutters from my shoulder and alights on the table across the room. He lets out an earsplitting squawk, but Rex ignores it.

“I don’t know what you’re up to, traitor,” he snarls at me. “And I don’t know what that thing is. But your days are numbered. Look at how weak you are. Even injured, I could kill you right now.”

“Then do it,” I say. I’m bluffing, of course. “Kill me,” I tell him.

Then there’s a roar from behind him and Rex spins around to come face-to-face with Dust. Only now he’s not a hawk. Or a lizard. Or a wolf. He’s shifted into a huge lion, so big the shack can hardly contain him. Having successfully gotten Rex’s attention with the growl, he now opens his huge jaws and licks his chops as if to say, Go ahead, try me.

Rex jumps back, startled, but he isn’t as surprised as I thought he would be. He pivots his head towards me with a nasty frown. “I knew it,” he said. “Only a turncoat like you would keep a Chimæra for a pet.”

I look at him blankly. “Chimæra.” It rings a bell, but I have no idea what it means.

Rex snorts. “You don’t even know what he is, do you? That’s what it is. It’s a Loric beast, a shape-changer. High Command thought they were just legends, but when we invaded Lorien it turned out they were real. Nasty things, and vicious.”

Of course. “Chimæra.” Now I remember the word. They’re mentioned in the Good Book—something about evil little pests, I think—but the days I used to spend poring over Setrákus Ra’s sacred book of directives feels so long ago that I can barely remember any of it.

Then I remember something else. I’ve seen these creatures before—in One’s memories of escaping Lorien. But I thought they were all dead now, that they’d been exterminated by my people along with the rest of her planet.

The thought that I’m wrong makes me smile. The Garde still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

And Rex isn’t as tough as he wants me to think. I’d been shocked he’d had the strength to attack me at all, but it must have taken all he had out of him, because now he sinks back to the floor. Dust is still watching him warily, ready to pounce if necessary, but I wave him off and just like that, he’s back to his bird form.

I should be getting used to it, but I’m not. It amazes me every time he transforms, and now that I know what he really is, it gives me a glimmer of hope too.

“What’s he doing here, though?” I ask, more to myself than to Rex.

A smirk flashes across his face. He knows something.

Then I get it. “You were holding him prisoner, weren’t you? Like Sam. Like Malcolm.”

Rex looks up at me with fire in his eyes. “You just don’t get it, do you?” he says. “We’re at war. It’s not a contest to see who can be the nicest. Prisoners get taken. People die. My friends have died. They should have been your friends too. If you hadn’t decided to betray them.”

I almost let his words sting me, but then I push them aside. “You’re wrong,” I say. “I do get it. Prisoners get taken. Come to think of it, it looks like I’ve taken a prisoner myself: you.”

CHAPTER SIX

I’M MORE WORRIED THAN I LET ON.

A few days after my confrontation with Rex, he’s healthier than ever. I’ve got Dust for protection—I know by now he won’t let anything happen to me—but if it weren’t for him, Rex would be able to overpower me easily. I’m starting to realize how lucky I’ve been so far, and what a mistake it could have been for me to keep Rex alive.

It’s not just that. I’m getting antsier than ever about the Mogadorians showing up again and finding us. I’ve frisked Rex at least ten times by now, looking for communications devices and weapons, but I’m still worried he could have some way of getting in touch with them, of bringing them back for us.

We need to get out of here. We need a plan. Every day I go out scavenging the base for food, and every day I’m coming back with less and less of it. It’s time to move on. But to where? I have no clue.

I wish I had a way of getting in touch with Malcolm. Assuming he made it out of here alive, he’d know what to do. But all the equipment in the base is damaged beyond repair, and I haven’t been able to dig up so much as a cell phone. Until I’m back in civilization, I’m on my own.

I try to think about what One would say if she were here. I’m so used to having her kicking around in my head that if I try hard, I can summon her image as if we still shared a mind. When I close my eyes and picture her face, I see us back in California, standing on the beach. She’s barefoot in the surf, her arms crossed against her chest, her hair pinkish in the sunset and curling in the breeze.

Rex is better. His bruises have faded and the cuts and abrasions crisscrossing his body seem to be knitting back together. The big gash on his side that was squirting all that blood when I first found him will take time to heal properly, but it’s really only a surface wound. As for his arm, it wasn’t broken after all, just a dislocated shoulder that he managed to pop back into place with a casual grimace when he put his mind to it.

His mood, though, is as bad as mine. Maybe worse. He spends most of his time sitting in the corner with a dark look on his face, sometimes muttering under his breath to himself and other times scowling silently for hours on end.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was depressed. But that’s impossible—real Mogadorians don’t get depressed. They get even.

Strangely, the only thing that seems to snap Rex out of it is Dust. They’ve reached a tentative truce with each other, and despite his attempts to appear unimpressed, Rex seems just as fascinated by the Chimæra’s transformations as I am. One day when Dust is in a playful mood and flitting from one shape to another—from rabbit to parrot to chimpanzee to Labrador—I even see Rex watching him with something approaching a smile.

It gives me an idea. “How much do you know about him?” I ask, nodding toward the Chimæra. I’m not really expecting anything, so I’m taken aback when Rex actually answers me.

“Not a lot,” he says. “I don’t know where they found him, or how long he was at Dulce. I just know that we’ve been running experiments on them.”

Experiments. I give an involuntary shudder at the word, imagining Dust in some underground lab while a Mogadorian scientist tortures him in the name of Setrákus Ra. I know all too well what that’s like. I was one of those lab rats myself once.

I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t help thinking about it. And something clicks in my mind. Something about what Rex said that strikes me as odd. I just can’t quite place what it is.

“‘Them’?” I ask.

“Huh?” Rex says quizzically. He tries to play off the mistake, but the guilty flicker in his eyes lets me know I’m on to something.

“You said they’ve been doing experiments on them. As in, more than one. Are there more Chimæra out there? Somewhere on Earth?”

His eyes shift to the ceiling. He shrugs.

“I thought all the Chimæra were killed on Lorien,” I muse, circling the question carefully, trying not to remind him that he’s supposed to be giving me the silent treatment.

He remembers. He doesn’t take my bait.

The next day, though, when I find him in his usual spot in the corner again, his chin resting on his fist, I give it one more try.

“There’s more of them out there, aren’t there?” I ask. “Dust isn’t the last Chimæra.”

Rex glares at me. His eyes are dead and distant, black holes. Dust is a cat now, snoozing under the table.

“Listen,” I say. He doesn’t even look at me. “Dust would kill you if I wanted him to. You know that, right? You’re still weak, and even if you weren’t, he’s more powerful than both of us put together.”

“So have him kill me,” Rex says dully, still not meeting my gaze. It almost sounds like he means it.

I can’t hide my surprise. “I can’t believe a trueborn would say that,” I say. The shock in my voice is genuine.

Rex’s head snaps up and he looks me right in the eye, his brow furrowed in some combination of anger and shame. It was the right thing for me to say.

I push it further. “To stop fighting—that would make you even more of a weakling than I am.”

“I’ll never stop fighting,” he snaps. “I’ll see the Loric dead if it’s the last thing I do. But killing you, Adamus Sutekh—that’s going to be the first thing I take care of.”

“Fine,” I say. “Kill me.”

He knows he can’t. Not yet, at least. Because I have Dust.

“I know my days are numbered anyway,” I tell Rex. “You’ll kill me eventually, or my father will, or some vatborn who doesn’t even know my name. But right now, I’m the one with the power. You try to leave and that cute little guy napping under the table will turn into a ten-ton gorilla and peel you like a banana.”

Rex rolls his eyes, angrily hocks a giant wad of saliva onto the cement floor and goes back to staring at the ceiling. He knows I’m right.

I push on, knowing that I’m making progress. “I need you too, Rex. There’s a reason you’re alive. It’s because I can use you. You have information. And information is what I want.”

“I don’t know anything,” he spits out.

“Tell me what I want to know,” I say, “and we’ll get out of here. There will be plenty of time for you to kill me once we’ve made it out of this wasteland. I won’t even stop you.”

I can see him considering it. I hold my breath. If this doesn’t work, I really will kill him, I decide. When I can see he’s at his most vulnerable, I lean on him with one last question. “‘They.’ You said ‘they.’ Where are the rest of the Chimæra?”

“I haven’t seen them,” he mutters. “But there are a bunch of them. At least ten. Maybe more. They came on a separate ship from the Garde—at least, that’s what I overheard some of the other officers saying.”

Suddenly it all feels incredibly important. “You said they were experimenting on them,” I say, trying to keep the sense of urgency from creeping into my voice. “What kind of experiments?”

I guess Rex doesn’t see the point in clamming up now that he’s said this much already, because this time he answers my question without hesitation. He sounds almost proud as he explains it. “They’re trying to figure out how Chimæras’ transformations work. Setrákus Ra thinks that if we can isolate the gene that gives them their abilities, we can duplicate the process with the vatborn.”

The way he says “we” chills me. I’d forgotten what it was like to live among them, to believe that your own self-worth is bound up in the messed-up glory of a warlord who chased nine teenagers across a solar system just to make sure they were all good and dead.

“Where are they?” I ask. “Tell me where they are, and we’ll go there together.”

He looks shocked at my intensity, but he takes a deep breath. “They’re not here. Dust got separated from the rest of them somehow and they were keeping him here until someone could take him back to the main facility.”

“Tell me where, Rex.”

Only now does it seem to dawn on him exactly how much he’s said and what the consequences of that could be. Revealing the secret goes against all of his training, against everything in the Good Book. His voice wavers a little, but he tells me anyway. “New York,” he says. “A place called Plum Island.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“NICE CITY,” REX REMARKS, HIS TONE HEAVY with sarcasm as we set eyes on the town. “This was all totally worth it.”

It’s been a long day for all of us. After trying and failing to find a working vehicle anywhere on the grounds of the base, we’d had no other choice but to cajole Dust into carrying us. On his back. As a donkey.

He’d brayed and stomped his feet as first Rex and then I had climbed on top of him, but he’d done it, and after hours of trudging we were finally here. As civilization goes, the town we finally stumbled upon is a step up from the ruins of Dulce Base, but only barely. It’s dusty and run-down, and half the storefronts on Main Street are boarded up. The other half are just weird, junk shops and drugstores that look like they haven’t changed their window displays in about thirty years.

Still, there are paved roads, cars and working streetlights.

Not to mention hot food. When we make it to the center of town I can’t help stopping outside Celia’s Café and peering in the window to stare at people sitting in booths, looking happy as they chow down on hamburgers and pancakes and eggs and bacon. I can practically feel my mouth watering. After living on whatever canned and boxed and wrapped food we could scrounge up from the guard station’s lockers and the base’s remains, the thought of a real, proper meal is enough to make me drool.

Rex reaches for the door of the restaurant but I grab him by the shoulder. “Later.”

He makes a sour face, but drops the door handle. He knows as well as I do that we don’t have any money to pay for a meal. Food can wait. The first thing we need is cash. I’m still standing on the sidewalk, wondering how feasible it would be to rob a bank, when a stout, middle-aged couple exits the diner and brushes past me. They continue on down the street, and I watch as a skinny young guy carrying a tattered gray backpack bumps into the husband—and swipes his wallet.

It happens so fast that I almost can’t believe what I saw. For a second I consider running after the pickpocket, taking the wallet away from him and returning it to the couple.

But Rex has a different idea.

“We need money, right?” he asks, his eyes following the pickpocket, who’s now strolling down the street, the very picture of nonchalance. “Follow him, but not too close. We don’t want him seeing us.”

I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I nod, and together we start after the pickpocket. Whatever he has in mind, I hope it works.

The criminal works hard, I’ll give him that. From what I can see he swipes three more wallets and two purses over the course of the next hour, stuffing everything into his bag without pausing for a second. Somehow he never doubles back, never walks the same street twice.

At one point I spot a cop car, but the thief spots it too, and lays low until he’s well out of sight. This guy’s obviously a pro.

After the cops are gone and the guy’s just swiped his second purse, Rex nudges me. “Get ready.” He crosses the street, picks up the pace to get a block ahead of our prey and then cuts back over and starts heading towards me.

There’s an alley up ahead, and Rex times it perfectly—he’s just passing the pickpocket on the outside when they both reach the alley, and with a quick shove he sends the smaller guy tumbling sideways—right into the alley and temporarily out of sight. Or at least as close as we can manage. I hurry to catch up.

The thief doesn’t waste any time complaining, or asking what we want, or anything like that. Instead he bolts for the alley’s far side as I follow them both into the narrow brick corridor that dead-ends against a brick wall with one lonely dumpster. I can already see his plan—he’s going to spring up its side, launching himself partway up the wall, and then grab the top and lever himself over. Leaving us in the dust. Frustrated, I pick up my pace, as does Rex, but it’s obvious we’re not going to catch up to the pickpocket before he hits that dumpster.

I stop short—we don’t have much time and I can think of only one other way to stop this guy in his tracks. I channel my angry emotions, raise my hand and focus on the ground below that dumpster.

“Come on!” I mutter, gritting my teeth. And just as the thief makes that first jump, I feel a small tremor in the ground. The dumpster comes flying towards us. It slams into the pickpocket, hurling him against the alley’s side wall. He hits it hard enough that we hear the air escape his lungs as he collapses in a heap on the ground.

“What was that?” Rex says as he runs back.

“Looked to me like he was planning to go up and over,” I reply as I crouch down next to him. He’s still breathing, which is good—there’s a big difference between killing Mogs who are attacking you and killing some idiot who steals people’s wallets for a living. The impact just knocked him out. I glance over at the dumpster. “Guess he didn’t realize the dumpster was on wheels.” I rifle through his backpack, finding all of his stolen goods and passing them back to Rex one by one. “Grab the cash, leave the rest.” A minute later we’ve dropped the empty bags back in the guy’s lap and are on our way. We’ve now got about thirteen hundred dollars between us. Not too shabby.

“First things first,” I tell Rex as we exit the alley. “Supplies, a decent meal and then we’ll figure out how to get to Plum Island from here.”

Rex nods. “Supplies, food, transportation, check.”

It’s a little weird to find ourselves suddenly working together so easily—I could almost forget that we’re supposed to be enemies. And while I’m glad that Rex isn’t attacking me or trying to get in touch with Mog base command, I remind myself not to get too comfortable. It’s nice to finally have someone to talk to, but I can’t let myself think he’s my friend.

Still, it won’t hurt to get some food together, right?

We turn back towards the center of town, but as we’re looping around I’m distracted for a second by what looks like the shadow of a figure running past us. I jump a little, and Rex gives me a funny look.

I must just be tired and hungry. When I scan up and down the sidewalk, there’s no one at all in sight.

All the way back to the restaurant, though, I can’t quite shake the fear that we’re being followed. And I don’t mean by Dust, who’s currently circling overhead as a hawk.

In a booth at the diner, even the taste of French fries and a milk shake doesn’t help me shake the feeling that I’m being watched. And that can only mean one thing. Mogadorians.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TWO HOURS LATER, WE’RE SITTING ON HAY BALES in the back of a pickup truck, the wind whistling through our hair. We both ate well—and I got a doggie bag for Dust—and even picked up some new clothes, then rented a room at a motel to shower and change. I managed to snag a burner cell phone too when Rex wasn’t looking, but Malcolm didn’t answer his phone and I didn’t want to leave a message—just in case someone else gets their hands on his phone. I hope he and Sam are okay, but it’s impossible to know. Just another thing to worry about.

Get yourself together, I tell myself. You’ve come this far. Just put one foot in front of the other. This is important.

And what I’m doing is important. I’m sure it is. I’ve already seen how powerful Dust is just on his own. Finding the rest of the Chimæra and reuniting them with the Garde might turn the tide in their favor. It could easily mean the difference between victory and defeat, not just for the Loric but for all of Earth.

However, if my people crack the genetic code allowing them to breed an endless supply of new vatborn soldiers with the Chimæra’s shape-shifting abilities, the fight is as good as over.

One’s death will have been for nothing. My betrayal will have been for nothing too.

So even though I’m tired, lonely and feel like I’m starting to go a little bit crazy, I know that I have to get to Plum Island. I have to free the Chimæra. If I can do it without getting myself killed in the process, that will be a bonus.

Before I can do any of that, though, I have to get out of New Mexico.

It turns out that’s easier said than done. There’s a train. Unfortunately it only makes three stops—one here, one in Colorado and a final stop in Wyoming. None of that was going to bring us anywhere near New York.

The bus isn’t an option either. The nearest Greyhound station turns out to be in Colorado as well, a town named Alamosa, about forty or fifty miles from here. That’s one hell of a walk.

Rex suggested stealing a car, but besides the fact that it’s something I have no idea how to do, it feels too risky. You can’t save the world if you’re in jail for carjacking. I briefly consider trying to rent a car, but without any credit cards or ID, I doubt we’d get very far with that plan.

That leaves hitchhiking. Rex and I have the pallid, whiter-than-white skin of Mogadorians, and Rex has his military tattoo on his skull, none of which makes us particularly appealing passengers. But we both pull the hoods of our new sweatshirts up and hope to hide our more recognizable alien features.

I’m not sure how well it works, but we also have a secret weapon: Dust has had the good sense to turn himself into the world’s most appealing golden retriever. The kind of dog people slow down just to look at.

Before long, it works. The third vehicle to pass us is a slightly battered pickup truck. It pulls right up ahead of us on the shoulder of the road. The middle-aged driver who rolls down the window has “rancher” written all over him, from the weathered skin to the callused hands to the worn flannel shirt and blue jeans. “Give you fellas a lift?” he asks.

“That’d be great, thanks,” I answer, stepping up to the passenger side. “We’re trying to get to Alamosa.”

“Easy enough,” he assures me. “Don’t think I can fit all three of you up here with me, but you’re welcome to hop in back.”

I glance down at the passenger seat, which is covered with a bunch of packed grocery bags. “Back sounds good, thanks,” I assure him. I gesture for Rex to climb in, and Dust hops over the side after him. I jump in last, and then we’re off.

We’re in Alamosa an hour later. “Where’re you going in town?” he calls back through his open window as we pull up to a stoplight. “Anywhere in particular?”

“The bus station,” I shout back, and he nods. Ten minutes later he brakes in front of a small redbrick building with a big Greyhound sign out front.

“Thanks again,” I tell him as we all clamber out. “Can I give you some money for gas?”

He waves that off. “I was heading this way anyway,” he assures me. “You boys get home safe now!” I wave back as he drives off.

He didn’t have to take us here or turn down our money. He could have taken one look at us and figured us for hoodlums. But this isn’t Mogador. Here, it’s not considered weak to help someone else.

This driver is exactly the kind of person One and the other Garde are fighting to protect. The kind of person my race wants to enslave or slaughter.

I can’t—I won’t—let that happen. So I buy two tickets to Kansas City.

Dust is safely tucked away in my pocket, in lizard form, and we all settle in for the trip.

As our bus speeds off down the highway, Rex closes his eyes. I look over at him and wonder what he’s thinking. Part of me wants to believe that spending time with me and Dust has changed him. That maybe he’s struggling with himself the way I once did, questioning the tenets of the Good Book that have been drilled into his head since he learned to walk.

I wonder too if he wants to know why no one’s out looking for him. If he’s angry to learn exactly how disposable he is to the Mogadorians. I know how it feels.

Eventually I drift off to sleep. As I do, One appears to me again. I know it’s not really her. Sometimes a dream is just a dream. But she speaks to me in her own voice for the first time in ages. “You’re different from him,” she reminds me. “You can’t trust him. Hate is in his blood. It always will be.”

“It’s in my blood too,” I say.

“Was in your blood. Until you met me.”

When I wake up, I wonder if she’s right. I honestly don’t know the answer. Maybe I never will.

Almost exactly a day later, we pull into Kansas City. Union Station is a big, imposing stone building, easily a city block in every direction, and I gaze up at it as we step out of our bus.

“You think we can catch a train straight to New York from here?” Rex asks as we walk across the polished marble floor. I feel strange to be back in a crowd after the loneliness of the last few weeks. The place is packed, with lots of people coming and going, including plenty of college kids. The hectic nature of it all makes me a little antsy, but I know it’s a good thing. We can blend right in.

“I don’t know,” I admit. There’s a row of ticketing machines off to one side of the actual service counters, and I step up to one of those. When I punch in New York as our destination, I get an unpleasant surprise.

“No, there’s nothing that goes straight there,” I reply finally, staring at the screen as if that’ll make it change its mind. “We can get from here to Chicago, though, and then from Chicago to New York.” I study the information a bit more. “It’ll take thirty-three hours in all,” I report, “and cost us about three hundred per ticket.” That’s more money than I’d like to spend—it will leave barely any cash in our pockets—and I don’t want to spare the time either, but I don’t see much we can do about it.

The way Rex sighs, I’m pretty sure he agrees. “Fine,” he says finally. “Just do it.”

As I’m about to hit PURCHASE TICKETS I see a strange reflection in the screen. Someone is walking by and glancing my way—I know because there’s a faint flicker of pale skin with a dark band across it—sunglasses. The rest of the reflection is dark too—dark coat, dark hat. Almost exactly like Mog scouts wear. Panic flashes through me and I whip around, but I can’t find the figure or anyone like him in the crowd.

I get an idea. I change our destination to St. Louis—that’s only thirty bucks apiece instead of three hundred—and buy the tickets. I take the tickets but leave the receipt behind, and turn away fast. “Come on.”

Rex sticks with me without a word as we hurry down the hall to our platform. I keep moving to the end, then quickly push through the door marked EXIT—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“What’re we doing?” he asks as we step outside. Just as I’d hoped, we’re in the rail yard itself. There’re trains everywhere, and a few people loading luggage or refueling or just walking around checking on things. None of them pays us any attention, and I don’t look their way more than a second either. The best plan, I figure, is to move fast and look like I know what I’m doing.

Maybe I’ll even convince myself.

There’s still Rex to deal with though. “We’re not getting on our train, are we?” he asks, putting a hand on my arm and pulling me to a stop. “What’s up?”

Well, the moment of truth. I square my shoulders. “I think I saw a scout,” I tell him, watching him closely. And then I wait. And tense, gathering my strength. If he tries to grab me, I think I can use my Legacy to knock him down long enough for me to lose him in the yard, but I’d rather not do that unless I really have to. And I still have Dust in my pocket.

After a few seconds that feel like forever, he nods. “So what now?”

“Now we hitch a ride instead.” I gesture toward the freight trains on the other side of the yard.

Surprisingly, Rex grins. “All right, then!” And he breaks into a jog. I guess it makes sense he’d get into the idea of something as physical—and as dangerous—as train hopping. Ivan probably would have loved it too.

“How’re we gonna know which train to hop?” Rex asks over his shoulder as he slows by the first group of cars. “Are they labeled or something?”

I glance at the cars, hoping they have address labels or big destination signs like buses, but each one just has a number, plus stuff like the manufacturer and model. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m making this up as I go along.” Rex snorts. But then I spot a guy walking around in a rail-yard uniform, carrying a clipboard. “I bet he’d know.”

“Yeah?” Rex scoffs as we both slide between two cars so the guy won’t see us. “What, you gonna go ask him?”

The man’s past us now—and as I watch he heads to a little shack in the center of the yard and enters it. But not before hanging the clipboard on a hook outside. “Not me, maybe,” I answer, grinning. “Dust?”

I pull him out of my pocket and hold him in my palm. He twitches his tail as if to tell me he’s ready for action. We’ve developed such a rapport that it sometimes feels like he knows what I want before I know it myself.

“We need that clipboard.” In a flash, he’s a hawk again, arrowing across the yard. He swoops down, snags the clipboard between his talons and then soars up into the sky. The few people who see him gasp and stare, but lose him in the sun—which is why nobody notices when he drops down to my shoulder a minute later. He changes back into a lizard as he lands, and the clipboard falls free, right onto the ground for me to scoop it up. “Nice one,” I say.

I scan the list. “Here,” I say after a second, stabbing a finger at one line. “There’s a train heading to Philly in a few minutes. Track twelve.” All the tracks are numbered, and twelve is only a few rows away. “Let’s go.”

Rex nods and we take off, but then he pauses, stoops down—and comes back up with a thick, blackened metal spike. “To jam the door open,” he explains. “Sliding doors, probably won’t open from the inside.” That makes sense. Of course, it also means that now he has a blunt object that he can use as a weapon.

He doesn’t try anything, though. We get to track twelve just as the train starts to rumble into motion. I quickly spot a boxcar and start moving toward it, but Rex is on board before I’m even to the train: he jogs over, hauls himself onto the ladder affixed to the side and yanks the door right open. Then he swings in and, kneeling down, slams the spike under the door’s bottom edge to keep it from closing.

It bothers me a little to see exactly what a miraculous recovery he’s made. When we left the base, he could barely move his arm and now he’s swinging around like a champion athlete. As if it’s nothing. Instinctively I pat my pocket, reassured by Dust’s very presence.

“Come on!” Rex calls. “Let’s go!”

I pick up the pace. Unfortunately, so does the train. I manage to get a hand on the ladder, but I can’t jump up without stopping first.

My feet are scraping the ground now, the train accelerating beyond what I can manage, and I’m forced to pull my legs up and grip the ladder for dear life. If I fall now I’ll probably get pulled under the wheels. My hands are starting to lose their grip, my feet are drifting down again and the ground is now whistling past below me. If I don’t do something, and fast, I’m not going to go any farther because I’ll be nothing but a smear across a few miles of Missouri track.

Rex solves that problem. He reaches down and grabs me around the chest just below my arm, then he just lets himself fall back, pulling me with him into the boxcar. We both land on the worn wooden floor with a thud and lay there a second, winded.

Then he starts to laugh.

“Woo!” he shouts, still laying there, the biggest grin I’ve seen yet plastered all over his face. “We just jumped onto a moving train!”

I smile too. Rex just saved my life. Now we’re even. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

We have to hide once, in Columbus, Ohio, when the train stops and rail-yard cops check all the cars for stowaways like us, but it’s easy to hear them coming. We just duck out of the boxcar as soon as the train lurches to a halt, taking the spike with us, and then circle around, hopping back on once they’ve gone.

It would almost be fun if I wasn’t so preoccupied with what’s going to happen once we get to New York. I still have no idea how we’re going to make it to Plum Island at all, much less how I’m going to get inside, get past whatever security measures the Mogs have and free the Chimæra.

It’s overwhelming, but I’m starting to doubt myself less now. When I look back and think of how much I’ve managed to accomplish since I left Ashwood, I’m amazed. I could actually pull this off.

However, I still haven’t managed to get in touch with Malcolm, and that is worrying me. Why wouldn’t he be answering his phone? Unless he never got to the Garde at all.

I can’t let myself think about what that would mean.

Rex and I are silent for most of the trip, but somewhere halfway through the journey, as I’m watching the countryside fly by, I surprise myself with the sound of my own voice.

“Why destroy it all? What’s the point?”

Rex doesn’t hesitate before he rattles off one of the most important tenets from the Good Book. “Conquer, consume, cauterize.” He shrugs. “It’s what we do.”

It’s a phrase I’ve heard so many times that I’ll be able to repeat it by heart for the rest of my life. It’s the perfect summation of the Mog objective—travel to a new world, conquer it completely, drain all of its resources, then leave it a burnt-out husk and move on to the next one. It used to make sense to me.

“But why?” I ask. “Don’t you ever question it?”

“Because it’s the way of the universe. It’s the way progress happens. The Piken eats the Kraul. He doesn’t feel guilty about it. He just does it.”

“Because he has to,” I argue. “Survival is one thing. This is different.”

Rex’s face hardens into a stubborn frown. “Look at what happened on Lorien. They had so much power. Their Legacies alone should have allowed them to fight us off easily. But they’d gotten soft. Even with all that power, they were weak. Their world was stagnating. It was disgusting.”

“They were happy. What’s disgusting about that?”

He fixes me with a glare so hard that I can practically feel it. “I almost forgot who you are,” he says coldly. It’s the voice of the old Rex. “I forgot what you are. And what you’ve done. I won’t forget again.”

Then I know that, whatever came over Rex on the course of this trip, it was only temporary. He’s not going to change. It’s in his blood. And when we get to Plum Island, he won’t need me anymore. He’ll be back with his true people; he’ll have no reason not to turn on me.

I look away. I’m alone again. I don’t even know where Dust is—he turned himself into a mouse a few hours ago and has been exploring the train on his own ever since.

Ten hours after Rex pulled me on board, we arrive in Philly in silence. We haven’t said a word since our argument.

Dust appears from behind a crate and slides into my pocket as Rex is jumping out into the rail yard. I’m about to follow behind him when I see that he’s left the railroad spike behind. I guess he thinks I’m so weak that he doesn’t need it. I shove it in my pocket and leap out into the chilly Philadelphia night.

We’ve still barely spoken more than a few words to each other as we’re boarding the bus to Manhattan. Then, in theory, it’s just a quick hop over to Plum Island.

After that . . . I don’t know. I’ve been weighing my choices. I wonder if Rex has too. As we were buying our bus tickets, I thought about ditching him altogether. Losing him in the crowd and trying to make it to Plum Island on my own. I came pretty close to doing it, and I would have if I thought it would help. It would be pointless, though. He knows where I’m going and what I want. On top of that, I have a feeling I’ll need his help getting inside.

Then again, it’s entirely possible he’s already alerted the Mogadorians that he’s on his way with his trophy—me—in tow.

“Last stop before we hit the Lincoln Tunnel,” the bus driver announces, pulling into a rest area. “Twenty-minute break. I suggest you stretch your legs and use the facilities, people. Traffic in the tunnel can get pretty crazy.”

I signal that I’m going to pee, and together Rex and I climb out of our seats and follow most of the other passengers off the bus. The ride’s been uneventful so far, which suits me just fine. We should be in Manhattan in about an hour, maybe less.

“I’m gonna grab some more snacks,” Rex tells me sullenly as we’re walking across the parking lot. I just nod. He nods back and heads off towards the cluster of vending machines.

In the bathroom, I lock the stall door behind me and try Malcolm one more time, praying that this time he’ll answer.

Still nothing.

As soon as I allow myself to consider the worst, my mind feels like a big ball of yarn that’s coming quickly unraveled. I can’t stop the what-ifs: What if they got caught fleeing Dulce? Or worse, what if the explosion took them out along with all the Mogs there? What if I killed my only friend, and his son we went there to save?

What if he never found the Garde? He’s the only one who can lead me to them. If he’s not with the Garde, that means I have no hope of finding them myself. Ever.

No, I tell myself. Malcolm’s smart, and he’s cautious. He’s probably being careful about how he communicates. If he is with the Garde, he won’t want to risk having his cell phone traced and their location discovered. Anyway, it’s not like he’s not expecting to hear from me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m dead.

It all makes perfect sense. It just doesn’t make me feel any better.

I’m stepping back out of the bathroom a few minutes later when it happens: I find my way blocked by two men. They’re dressed identically in black trench coats, black hats and black sunglasses. They’re both pale beneath those outfits—a little too pale. As soon as I lay eyes on them, they both smile at me, their wide mouths spreading open to reveal toothy, shark-like grins.

I turn around instantly and try to shove my way back into the bathroom. Maybe there’s a window I can escape through or something.

I never get that far. They have me by the arms. Rex is nowhere to be seen.

The Mogadorians have found me.

CHAPTER NINE

“TOOK A WHILE TO CATCH UP WITH YOU, ADAMUS,” the one on the right says. “You almost managed to slip past us.”

“Almost,” the one on the left echoes. He pulls his hands out of his pockets. No surprise, he’s holding a dagger in one and a blaster in the other. Standard Mog scout weaponry.

Lucky for me, what I’m carrying is nonstandard. And after my initial shock, I’m more resigned than frightened. I’ve been looking over my shoulder for Mogs this whole time, and in a way it’s almost a relief that they’re finally here. Still, there’s something I need to know. “How’d you find me?”

They just laugh at that. Unlike me and Rex and the rest of the trueborn, most scouts are vatborn and have the triangular, fang-like teeth to prove it. Their smiles really do look like a shark’s.

They don’t need to tell me the answer. I already know: it was Rex. It had to have been. While I was in the bathroom trying to call Malcolm, he was calling in the big guns. He was betraying me. And I hate him for that.

I’m not scared. I’m not sad. I’m certainly not relieved anymore. I’m just angry.

The vatborn’s laughter stops when the ground beneath them ripples upwards like it’s water, tossing them off their feet.

The one on the left loses his grip on his blaster, and I dive for it, scoop it up and shoot him point-blank. Poof. I’m already sighting on the second one by the time he crumbles to ash. If Rex thinks I’m not a worthy opponent just because I’m not as big as him, or because I don’t believe that Setrákus Ra’s stupid fortune-cookie rules are words to live by, he needs to think again.

I have to get out of here. There are too many people in too small a space, and if there’s going to be a big battle here there’s no telling how many innocent people could be hurt.

Before anyone can stop me I make a beeline for the rear exit and slam right through it without stopping. A hundred heads turn to stare at me, but I don’t care.

Outside, I find myself in a wide-open parking lot, empty except for a few untended sixteen-wheelers. I’m looking frantically for cover when I hear the distinctive, high-pitched whine of a Mog hand cannon powering up to fire from somewhere behind me. I hurl myself to the side, hitting the ground hard just as the energy blast sizzles past me. The pavement is smoking, a circular hole in the exact spot where I was just standing.

Glancing up from the ground, I see a quartet of Mog soldiers tromping toward me, rifles and hand cannons aimed in my direction.

Too bad for them. Now they’ve pissed me off.

I feel my face clenching up in fury, and my body trembles as I send a quake through the ground. The two Mogs nearest to me go toppling like bowling pins. In the confusion, I dive behind one of the trucks, buying myself some time while my remaining pursuers split up to look for me.

When I don’t hear anything for a minute or so, I peek out quickly from behind the cab and see another soldier coming toward me. He’s alone—too easy. He’s a goner before he even knows I’ve zapped him with my stolen blaster.

Five down, one left—not counting Rex.

Of course, that’s assuming that there aren’t more I don’t know about yet.

I should be so lucky. I hear more footsteps approaching—and getting louder. They’re coming fast.

I suppose it was too much to hope the High Command had only sent two scouts and four soldiers after me. But when I poke my head over the cab again and see dozens of Mogs pouring through the parking lot from every possible direction, blasters and cannons at the ready, I have to say it seems like overkill. I guess I should be flattered, not just that they think I’m worth the trouble, but that whoever sent them here considers me such a formidable adversary.

Ducking down, I peer below the truck and spot a Mog marching toward me, shooting at my shelter to keep me pinned down while he advances. Too bad he wasn’t watching the tires. I shoot him in the leg and, when he drops, put another blast in his head, finishing him off. Then I pull myself to my feet and scan the area. “Dust!” I scream. Where the hell is he?

For that matter, where’s Rex? Not that I really want to know.

More soldiers round the corner of the building, and my stomach clenches. They’re spreading out in front of me, so I won’t be able to take them all down at once. I crouch behind the truck again, but I know I won’t be able to hold out like this much longer.

How is this at all worth it?

I’ve never hated my own race more than I do right now. Mostly, though, I hate Rex. Not because he betrayed me. No. I hate him because, before he could betray me, he made me trust him.

At least my anger’s good for something. I focus in on it and stomp a foot on the ground. This tremor is the strongest one yet. I can feel it flowing out through my body like a giant ocean wave originating in my rib cage.

Some of the soldiers topple. Others wobble but stay standing. One or two drop their weapons.

I grit my teeth. Using my Legacy is exhausting me and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep it up. But I have to. I stomp again.

A few more go down, but now the rest are shooting at me.

I’m trying to figure out what to do next when I hear a ferocious roar. Glancing over my vehicular shield I see a large, tawny shape leap from the trees and grab one soldier by the shoulder, yanking him to the ground. Dust roars and lunges again, his massive jaw snapping shut like a trap around his quarry’s neck. The soldier’s scream dies mid-shriek, his body convulsing as it turns to ash.

But the lion has already moved on. He’s ripping through the soldiers easily, their fire barely slowing him down. Dust claws and bites, not stopping to consider any individual enemy for more than a split second before moving on.

The Mogs still left standing are confused—they didn’t plan for this, and now they’re not sure whether they’re supposed to be shooting me or Dust, or whether it’s time to retreat altogether.

I take advantage of the confusion. Two soldiers are backed up almost to me, and I shoot them both before they remember that I’m still a threat too. Dust’s finished off another soldier, and several more have taken shelter around the side of the main structure—collapsing something is one trick I got pretty good at with Malcolm, and though it causes spikes of pain to shoot through my forehead I shake the roof loose and drop it on those soldiers, easily crushing them. That leaves only two, and they move away from Dust and me both, shooting at him to keep him back and edging away toward the trees where they must have a ship waiting.

If they reach it I’m toast.

I’m using my Legacy far beyond anything I’ve ever tried in the past, and every time I cause a new quake I’m more and more exhausted. My vision’s starting to go dark around the edges, but I know I don’t have any choice except to fight through it. I concentrate and send a tremor under a nice thick tree, the same way I did to the guard station back at Dulce Base. It topples with a loud groan and crushes one of the soldiers beneath its trunk. The last Mog simply turns and runs, but Dust is on him in an instant in a blur of teeth and claws. A few seconds later he’s trotting back toward me, his mouth coated in ash. He doesn’t seem fazed by this. That makes one of us.

“Thanks,” I manage to mumble weakly when he reaches me. Then everything goes black.

When I wake up, I’m in the passenger seat of a car flying along the highway. My head’s still pounding and my vision’s still blurry. The New York City skyline is barely recognizable over the dashboard as an abstract haze of lights. I have no idea how I got here or where I’m headed. The events of the past few hours bounce around in my skull like a million Ping-Pong balls. Everything’s jumbled and hard to make sense of.

Groaning, I look over to the driver’s seat. Behind the wheel is Rex. Even in my messed-up state, I fumble with the door handle. I’ll jump out right here, I think. I’d rather be instant roadkill than spend another second letting him think I trust him.

“Hey!” he says when he sees me fumbling to escape. Before I can get the door open, he reaches to the console on the dashboard and locks all the doors. I’m trapped.

“Calm down,” he says. “I don’t know what you did in that parking lot, but whatever it was it took a lot out of you.”

I don’t want to hear it. “Where the hell were you?” I demand. “What the hell happened back there?”

Rex barely glances up from the road. “Same thing that happened to you,” he says calmly, as if I’d just asked him to remind me of tomorrow’s weather forecast. “The Mogs got to me too. They must think I’m on your side now. I fought them off, but by the time I got rid of them and made it to you, this guy was already on it.” He points to a lump on the dashboard, which I only then realize is Dust, in his lizard form. “When I found you, you were passed out on the pavement, and Dust’s just sitting there, practically on top of you, watching over you like he’s your mom or something. He barely even let me come near you. Anyway, what’s done is done. We got away. What do you think of the car? I stole it.”

If he expects me to believe any of that story, he’s an idiot. I want to tell him so, but with my head still swimming I only manage to spit out one short sentence. “Screw you, Rex,” I say just as everything fades to black again.

CHAPTER TEN

I COME TO IN ANOTHER PARKING LOT, FINALLY feeling myself again. Sort of, at least.

Based on the light streaming into the car, it must be morning. Rex has the windows rolled down and the air smells vaguely of the ocean.

“Finally,” he says when he sees me stirring. “I was beginning to think you were gone for good.”

I sit up. I look at him. I can’t believe how stupid I feel. I knew exactly what he was up to all along and I let him get away with it anyway.

“You betrayed me,” I say.

He just laughs. “I knew you were going to say that. Kind of funny, right? You’re a traitor to your entire race, and you’re mad at me?”

I get ready to hit him with every bit of tectonic force I have left at my disposal, but as soon as I so much as think about it I start to feel faint again.

“You seriously expect me to believe you weren’t the one who called in the Mogadorian mafia? You go mysteriously missing just as they show up and then you somehow don’t reappear until I’ve fought them all off?”

“I told you,” he said. “They attacked me too.”

“Sure. Right.” I know he’s full of shit, but I honestly don’t know what to do about it. What I don’t understand is why he’s toying with me like this. If he wanted to kill me, he could have killed me by now. He could have called in more Mogs.

Instead, I’m still alive, still uncaptured, sitting unscathed in the passenger seat of a carjacked sedan with Dust on my lap, whining at me.

I look out the window and I see where we are. Sort of, at least. We’re somewhere on the water. A foghorn blares and I squint out the window to see a ferry crawling across the water and into view.

“You wanted to go to Plum Island, right?” Rex says, seeing the confused look on my face. “How else are we going to get there except by boat?”

I still don’t believe he didn’t give the Mogs our location. But then that doesn’t explain why he came to get me, why he helped me escape. He could have just left me at the rest stop, left me to get caught by the Mogs, by the cops, whoever. I need some air. I need to get out of this car. Rex doesn’t try to stop me when I open the car door. Dust jumps out onto the pavement and I’m right behind him.

Rex finds me on a bench half an hour later. I don’t know what else to do, so I’m just sitting. I’ve tried calling Malcolm. No answer. I tried picturing One in my head. It would have helped just to imagine her face. But it wouldn’t come to me. Even golden retriever Dust has given up trying to make me feel better. He’s just lying at my feet.

“I didn’t tell them,” Rex says. He’s standing a few paces away but doesn’t try to come any closer. “The scouts have been following you all along. They missed you a few times and then I think you gave them the drop when you decided to hop the train. But they were going to catch up eventually.”

“Where were you, then?” I ask. “Don’t try to tell me they attacked you too.”

“The truth?”

“Yeah,” I say. “For once. The truth.”

Rex pauses. “I was hiding,” he finally says. “They might have already seen me with you, but I didn’t want them to see me fighting to save you—to think that I’m a traitor. So I hid.”

I examine his face for signs that he’s lying. I honestly have no idea. I don’t know why it matters. But it does.

“So you were just going to let them kill me?”

He looks at the sky. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I was. If it came to that.”

“But now you’re helping me?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

Rex shuffles his feet nervously. “I don’t know,” he says. “I still believe in the Mogadorian cause. I still believe in Setrákus Ra’s principles. When it comes time to fight, I’ll be there with the rest of my brothers—if I’m still allowed to be. War is in my blood. But I’m helping you anyway. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I can’t explain it even to myself. But it’s the truth.”

I don’t answer him. I don’t know how.

“So do you want to go to Plum Island and rescue the Chimæra or not?” he finally asks.

The ferry doesn’t go to Plum Island. There’s no reason it should—normal Americans need the highest level of clearance even to set foot on the island. That rules out getting there openly.

But in a seaside community like this, most people own a boat, at least a little one. Rex and I spend the afternoon peering into unattended garages until we find ourselves hauling a small rowboat towards the harbor. We stash it behind some trees in the neighboring park until the sun’s going down and we see the last ferry pull in. Then we wait another half hour just to be sure no one will spot us and drag it to the end of the dock. From there it’s easy enough to flip it over and lay it into the water, climb in and start rowing.

While I’d spent my morning passed out, Rex had been coming up with a plan to get us inside the facility. Sitting across from me in our rowboat, he explains it to me. It’s so simple that it sounds absurd.

“I’ll tell them you’re my prisoner,” he says. “That I tracked you from New Mexico until I captured you and brought you here. They’re looking for you, right? They send that many scouts to get you, they think you’re important. It might even go all the way up the chain to Setrákus Ra. If I bring you in, there’s no chance they’ll turn you away.”

“They could just shoot me on sight,” I say.

Rex scrunches his face and shakes his head. In the distance, I see lights. We’re getting closer. “Nah,” he says. “First, they’ll want to know how you took down Dulce. Hell, I want to know that myself.” A quick grin surfaces. “Then they’ll shoot you.”

“Gee, thanks.” I glance over to where Dust is gliding along beside us in hawk form, tilting to one side from time to time so a wingtip knifes through the water. “We don’t know anything about who they’ve got there, how they’re set up, what they’ve heard, what—”

Rex stops me. “Will you relax? Trust me, I know how our military works. I’ve got this covered.”

If I had to make a list of all the people I trusted, it would be a really short list, and Rex wouldn’t be on it. Even if I did trust him, I still wouldn’t like the plan. What if they know Rex has been working with me all this time? What if they kill us before we even get the chance to explain ourselves? It all relies too much on faith—and after yesterday, faith is something I’m pretty much all out of.

But before I can argue, Dust lands on the edge of the boat. He’s flapping his wings furiously, and then he shifts into cat form. Just as quickly, he changes again, this time into a wolf. He’s too big for the boat and nearly tips over, but now he’s shifting so quickly that I start to lose track of what he’s even supposed to be. And he’s making a noise that’s so loud I have to put my fingers in my ears, halfway between a howl and a trumpet blast, deep and quivery. I’ve never heard anything like it.

“Dust,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

I put my hand out to rub him in the hope that it will calm him down. His body feels like liquid, but it does the trick—he’s starting to get control of himself again. As he settles into lizard form, he finally quiets down. He’s still agitated though. He’s darting around the floor of the boat, cocking his head frantically in every direction, sniffing the air. It looks like he’s hearing something that Rex and I can’t—almost like there’s something calling to him.

It’s very weird, but I don’t know what to do about it. The island’s close enough now that I think I can just see where that harbor opens up. Rex pulls the oars in. “You ready to do this?” he asks. I’m not ready at all, but I nod. At least Dust has settled down enough to climb into the pocket of my hoodie. I can still feel him twitching nervously in there, but it seems like he’s getting back to normal.

Rex doesn’t pay any attention to how uneasy this is making me. He just digs through his pockets until he pulls out the plastic ties that he bought from a local hardware store while we’d been waiting for the ferries to clear out for the day.

“Give me your wrists,” he says. Every bit of my common sense is telling me not to do it. Letting myself be tied up and marched into a Mogadorian stronghold by a Mog I barely trust—doesn’t sound like the most brilliant scheme, does it?

Certain I’m walking into some kind of incredibly elaborate trap, I offer up my hands anyway. I’ve come this far. What else can I do but take the risk?

Within seconds Rex has me expertly bound. It’s almost like we’re back to the way we started at Dulce: one guard and one prisoner, this time with our roles reversed.

Hopefully it’s just for show.

We’re a few meters from the shore when a blinding searchlight engulfs us in its dazzling beam and a booming voice calls out. “Stop! Identify yourself!”

Rex straightens. “Rexicus Saturnus, from Dulce,” he shouts back. “And a prisoner!” He grabs my hands and raises them so those watching can see the restraints.

The pause has me sweating despite the chill coming off the waves, but finally the voice replies, “Come ahead.” They don’t offer to pick us up, but instead stay back and let Rex row us the rest of the way in. Typical Mogs.

“Shouldn’t there be regular soldiers here?” I whisper. “Instead of Mogadorians?”

“Used to be that way,” Rex says. “But we’re getting more and more power in the American government lately. Pretty soon the White House’ll be run by Mogadorians too.”

It’s a scary thought—and one that would have made me incredibly excited just a few short years ago.

At the sound of the Mogadorians shouting at us, Dust has crawled from my pocket. And before I have time to even say good-bye, he’s turned into a hummingbird and is gone into the night sky.

I know it’s for the best. If I’m going to be thrown into a cell, I don’t want him trapped in there with me. Nonetheless, I feel incredibly vulnerable without him.

The feeling only intensifies when I see the squad of soldiers waiting for us on the dock, weapons drawn. They wait until our little rowboat bumps up against the logs and then reach down and haul us up.

“Who’s this?” the Mog officer in charge demands, staring into my eyes and grabbing me roughly by the arm.

“A low-life traitor,” Rex replies. “Adamus Sutekh, son of General Andrakkus Sutekh.” He punches me in the stomach, hard enough to double me over and leave me gasping for breath.

The captain’s frowning at us. He’s trueborn, of course, but the underlings flanking him are all vatborn, big and pale and typically creepy. “Why bring him here?” the captain asks after a second. “And what exactly happened at Dulce? We lost all communication with it—sent some scouts in but they reported the whole place destroyed.”

“He happened,” Rex replies, gesturing towards me. The captain’s frown deepens, and Rex hurries to explain. “I was stationed at Dulce Base. This traitor showed up with a human ally and attacked. They blew up the base. I was only stunned—I woke up in time to see him slip away, so I followed him all the way from Dulce to here. Once I was sure this was his next target, I captured him and brought him in for questioning.”

The captain nods. I can’t believe he’s buying this load of horseshit, but he is. “Good job,” he says. “We’ll notify the general and find out if he wants to question his son personally. In the meantime, Rexicus, you’ll need to be debriefed.”

He gestures at two of the soldiers. “Throw the traitor in a cell for now, but don’t get too carried away—the general will want to handle his punishment personally.”

Then he leads Rex away while the guards grab me and march me toward a long, low building a few hundred feet from the harbor. Damn. It’s not even in the main building. This is going to make things very difficult. When they throw me into my cell, I’m still trying to decide whether Rex sold me out or if everything’s going exactly according to plan.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG IT’S BEEN. HOURS? Days? But no one has come by since those guards threw me in here. I guess they’re taking their commander’s orders to leave me alone until my father comes to retrieve me to heart. I’m cursing myself for thinking Rex was actually on my side, for letting him get the better of me. I thought I could trust him.

Then I hear the click of the lock on my cell door. It’s too dark to make out who’s standing there, but I easily recognize Rex’s voice. “Sorry I took so long,” he says.

Then something hits me in the face and chest—something lightweight, flexible, a little scratchy. “Put those on!”

It’s pants and a jacket, all standard military issue, and I hurriedly do as I’m told. “Where have you been?” I demand as I change.

“I had to be sure they didn’t suspect anything,” Rex replies, holding the cell door wide-open and beckoning me to follow. “And I had to find out where they were holding the Chimæra. Here.” He hands me a military cap, and I pull that on as well. Smart thinking—I’m clearly a Mog but my long hair definitely isn’t a soldier’s cut. Plus the cap helps hide my face, in case anyone might recognize me.

“So? Where are they?” I ask as he leads me out of the building. I’m surprised there aren’t any guards at all, until I see a small pile of ash in one corner and another behind a desk near the entryway.

I’m a little surprised Rex was willing to kill to get me out of here. Surprised, but grateful.

“They’re keeping them in the Disease Center,” he replies, easing open the brig’s front door and glancing out before nodding and motioning me through. “But not the main annex—that’s mostly marines and human scientists. There’s a second building off to the side, staffed entirely by our people. They’re in there.”

That makes sense. Even though the High Command clearly has some kind of deal with the U.S. government, they wouldn’t want to let any of the humans close to anything that could be used against us. And the Chimæra would definitely qualify. “How do we get there?”

He grins as we step around the side of the jail and stop at a military jeep that’s sitting there, already idling. Rex doesn’t hit the lights until we’re clear of the last building and our view of the harbor is swallowed up among the trees.

It only takes a couple minutes to curve up and around to the Disease Center—the advantages of an island that’s only a few miles in any direction. The main building is enormous and looks like a research lab crossed with a school, but sure enough there’s a smaller, warehouse-like building off to one side. We head over that way. There are Mog soldiers standing guard outside, but they salute Rex and step aside to let us pass. Interesting.

“This is our main base on the island,” he explains once we’re through the doors and walking along a wide, rough, cement-floored hall. “Where they’re keeping the Chimæra will require security clearance, but out here we’re good.” Which is obviously true, but I can’t help wondering how we’re going to get back out past those same guards without setting off alarms. Especially with however many Chimæra there are in tow.

“We lucked out too,” Rex is saying. We head up one flight of stairs, then another. “They were being held in the basement, but two days ago I hear they all went nuts. They trashed the place completely. So they were moved up here until stronger cells could be built.”

Two days ago? I bet that’s about the same time that Dust started freaking out on the boat. It’s all got to be connected.

Speaking of which . . . “Have you seen Dust? Do you know where he is?”

“He’s out there,” Rex answers without glancing back. “He found me when I was grabbing the jeep. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll find you when the time’s right.”

I nod slowly. I wish Dust was with me right now, but I know Rex is right. Dust hasn’t let me down yet.

We stop on the fourth floor and exit the stairwell. The ceilings up here are twelve feet tall at least, and enormous windows cover most of the walls, though they’re barred. Despite the concrete floors and thick stone outer walls and corrugated metal inner walls, the space still has a light, airy feel.

And doors. Lots and lots of doors.

“They’re up here somewhere,” Rex assures me, opening the first door at hand and peering in. He shakes his head and slides it shut again. I open another door, but it leads to a small office. Empty, fortunately. “Nope.” The next one is a supply closet, also not much help. The door after that, however, opens onto a large room that looks like an operating theater—there are instruments arrayed on trays positioned around a large exam table. It’s also empty, which I consider a very good thing. I really wouldn’t want to walk in on a surgery, especially not one performed by my people. They’re a lot more interested in carving up than in putting back together.

“Over here!” Rex calls, and I see he’s one door down from me but on the other side of the hall. I cross quickly and peer inside with him. It’s like a big kennel, with wire cages lined up against the far wall. Could this be it?

“Shut the door,” I whisper, stepping through to study the cages and their inhabitants. The first cage looks empty, save for some sort of goo smeared across the floor. But when I step a little closer, the goo suddenly rears up, flowing into a shape like a raccoon or maybe a weasel, narrow and wiry with dark, matted fur, a sharply pointed face and beady little eyes.

And then it screams.

I’ve never heard anything like it. And I hope I never will again. It’s high and shrill and makes my entire body feel like a glass that’s about to shatter. I stumble back a pace, off balance, then another, until the screeching stops. The goo settles, dropping back to the cage floor. Rex and I stare at each other. What the hell was that?

Whatever it was, there’s nothing I can do to help it, not if it’s going to scream bloody murder and completely paralyze me every time I get close.

The next cage is empty, though judging from the soiled newspapers on the bottom, it hasn’t been that way for long.

The third cage contains a bird. About the size of a parrot, it has blue feathers ranging from a deep purple so dark they look almost black to a pale blue-white like winter itself. The bird has no wings, though—where those appendages should be are two stumps, stitched and bandaged. It caws at me, a single long, chirp-like wail, and the sound brings tears to my eyes. I look over at Rex but he looks just as horrified. Either he’s a better actor than I realized or he had no idea what we’d find.

“Are these . . . Chimæra?” he asks, his voice hushed and rough.

“I don’t know. They might be.” I shake my head. “I don’t think either of those two are going anywhere, though—even if we opened their cages, how would we get them to follow us? Especially without risking whatever others we find?” I hate to abandon any of them, but I think we have to leave this pair here. I glance in the other cages quickly but they’re all empty. I see a second door against the sidewall, and I hurry over to that, pull it open, and rush through, almost slamming into a pair of Mogs that are standing in front of another row of cages. One of them is short and wiry and wearing a lab coat—definitely a scientist. The other one’s big and burly, though, and in military gear. They both look up as I barrel in, and the soldier’s hand automatically goes for the blaster at his side. Great.

“What—who—?” the scientist starts, but I shut him up by slamming into him as hard as I can. He flies backwards into the soldier who stumbles a step, his hands going up automatically to catch his companion. They both turn to ash a second later, and I glance back to see Rex in the doorway, blaster in hand.

He did that. Just like he killed the Mogs who were guarding my cell.

“Why . . . ,” I start.

“I promised you I’d help you and I’m helping you,” he says. “Let’s just leave it at that.” Then he looks past me. “Jackpot,” he whispers.

I follow his gaze to see what he’s talking about. At least four of the cages here are occupied—no, five. And all of them . . . well, the first one has a small dog, the second a little pig, the third a cat, the fourth a raccoon, and the fifth a brightly colored bird. Then I blink, and now they’re an owl, a goat, a rat, a beaver, and a monkey. Then they shift again, and again, a lot like Dust did the other night, only this is constant, cycling from shape to shape to shape fast enough to make them dizzying to watch.

“Is that normal?” Rex asks. He sounds just as surprised as I am. The continual shape-shifting is unsettling, to say the least.

“I don’t know,” I admit. Then I notice a clipboard on the ground by my feet. The scientist must have dropped it. Picking it up, I see a list of subjects, with notes next to each one. Notes like “100cc injected, change rate increased tenfold” and “lobotomy performed, cohesion shattered.” Bile rises in my throat, and I have to gulp a few times before I can answer. “No. They’ve been experimenting on them already.”

At this point, I have no idea how useful these surviving creatures will be. I’d hoped to find a bunch more like Dust, and instead I have five out-of-control shape-changing animals. Still, there’s no question they’re Chimæra, and I don’t waste any more time wondering. Instead I step over to their cages and yank them open one by one.

“It’s okay,” I assure them, loud enough for all of them to hear me at once but low enough that I hope my voice won’t carry beyond these walls. “We’re here to help.” I have no idea if they understand me, but I figure it can’t hurt.

For a minute none of them move, and I can’t blame them. I don’t know how long they’ve been here, or what’s been done to them, but they don’t have any reason to trust a Mog—or, for all I know, humans. The one that’s now—for the moment—back to being a monkey is the first one to edge over to its open door, poke its head through and then chitter at the others, shifting back and forth between forms as they pour out of their prison. A second later they’re all loose, crawling and swinging and pacing and fluttering every which way.

“Right,” I tell Rex. “Time to go.”

Almost on cue, a siren starts blaring. Flashing lights accompany it out in the hall. Then a voice erupts from speakers in the ceiling.

“Attention, a prisoner has escaped the brig. Adamus Sutekh was last seen wearing blue jeans and a black shirt. He is five-ten, slight of build, with long hair. He is unarmed but a known traitor. If found, detain if possible—shoot if necessary. The same for any accomplices.”

“Yeah,” Rex agrees, shaking his head. “Definitely time to go.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

WE RACE OUT OF THE ROOM, INTO THE HALL AND down the stairwell with the Chimæra following behind us. Rex clamps a hand on my arm and hauls me back just before I start bounding down the stairs. “Not that way!” he calls after me. “They’ll start checking the building at the bottom and work their way up. But there’s an elevator in the back that you can only access from up here. If you can fight your way to it, you can get out that way.”

I nod and let him wheel me around and half drag me up the stairs to the fifth floor. Judging by the door we’ve come to, which is painted bright red and is made from some kind of heavy, extra-reinforced steel, we’ve reached the part of the building that they really really want to keep people out of. With a grunt, Rex yanks it open and we step inside.

The ceilings are just as high up here, but there aren’t any inner walls. Instead it’s just one big room, crowded with computer stations around the edges and a massive topographical map of the East Coast in the center of the room. This is obviously the command center.

“Quick, hide!” I whisper, and duck behind a computer station. Rex does the same. I worry what the Chimæra will do, but they all stick with me, and even though they’re still changing shape constantly they all shift to smaller creatures—mice and lizards and dragonflies.

Peeking out I see a few Mogs here, typing in front of monitors or marking things on transparent touch screens suspended in midair. Others are gathered in small clusters, discussing something in low tones. Nobody’s noticed us yet, and they aren’t mobilizing to hunt for an escaped prisoner either. I guess their work is more important. Our luck can’t last though.

And—next problem. Other than the stairs we just ran up, I don’t see any other way out. This may not have been Rex’s best plan.

A siren begins to blare again, and I cringe, figuring this is it. They’ve spotted me, and they’re calling guards to surround and overpower us. Even if I bring the whole building down the way I did Dulce Base, I might still be trapped. And we’re currently five floors up—if the building goes, that’s a long way down.

But this siren is different, more of a whoop than a shriek. And when someone starts speaking over it, what he says is not what I expected.

“Attention, all units,” the announcer states, his words slightly rushed but clear. “Assemble at once. Garde located. Full-scale assault about to begin. Repeat, all units assemble at once. Full-scale assault about to begin.”

They’ve found the Garde? Full-scale assault? I look at Rex, whose own eyes are darting everywhere. He looks worried—but excited too, with that same gleam he had when we jumped onto the train. He zeroes in on something, and I follow his gaze to a Mog officer leaning over a console. His screen is showing something—I realize all of them have the same image up now—and I rise to a crouch and edge closer to get a better look. It’s a street map, but it doesn’t look familiar—there’s a lake instead of an ocean. It’s not New York. The others in the room are rushing about, either speaking quickly into walkie-talkies or racing towards the stairs, but this guy’s still at his desk. What if he turns and sees me? I’ve apparently just moved down on the priority list, but I’m sure if he realizes who I am he’ll still grab me. I have to chance it, though. If that’s where the Garde have been hiding, Malcolm may be there as well.

I take a few more steps, and now I can make out more details, including place names. Shedd Aquarium, Water Tower Place, North Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan—it’s Chicago. They’re in Chicago. And the building that’s dead center on the screen is the John Hancock Center. That must be where the Garde are.

Just as I realize that, the Mog sitting there turns. And sees me.

“Hey—” he starts, half rising from his chair. He looks confused, like he knows I’m not supposed to be there but hasn’t totally figured out that I’m the escaped prisoner. Then he notices something at my shoulder, and his eyes go wide. Out of the corner of my eye I see a butterfly there—and a second later it’s a hummingbird, then a bumblebee. Crap. He’s just realized who I am.

I’m only a few steps away from him at this point. I close the distance fast, and slam my fist into his jaw as hard as I can. His eyes glaze over and he slumps back into his chair. A quick scan of the room tells me no one else noticed.

I guess all those years of sparring with Ivan were worth something after all.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Rex warns, moving up beside me and grabbing my arm again. “Now, while everyone’s rushing to deploy.”

I nod, then stop. “I’ve got to get out of here?”

He looks down, then away. “Look,” he starts. “You saved my life. I owe you. And I didn’t betray you—I haven’t and I won’t. But—” He shrugs. “I’m not like you. I already told you that. I was just keeping my promise. I get that you probably have reasons for what you did, and maybe they make sense to you. But not to me. This is where I belong. It’s who I am.”

It’s obvious that there’s no changing his mind. And he’s not like me. As far as I know, no other Mog is. He believes everything we were taught about being the superior race and having the right to rule, to control, to destroy. Maybe he’s come to appreciate things a little more from our time together, but at his core he’s still a loyal soldier. And sooner or later I believe he’d betray me—our beliefs are just too different.

So I just nod, and hold out my hand. He clasps it, claps me on the back and gives me a quick grin. “Tell Dust I said good-bye,” he says, already turning towards the stairs. Then he’s gone. If he’s lucky, no one will realize he helped me. I actually hope that’s the case.

I’m left alone in the command center, me and a handful of messed-up Chimæra—and a bunch of Mog officers who are just starting to notice the fugitive and his strange menagerie in their midst.

“It’s the traitor!” one of them shouts, breaking that frozen moment of recognition. “Get him!”

He rushes towards me, along with a few of the others. That’s when a huge white owl comes crashing through the window.

It’s Dust. Shattered glass is flying everywhere, and before it can even hit the ground he’s already shifting. By the time he lands, he’s blocking the way between me and the Mogadorians. He’s a wolf again, just like the first time I saw him.

This time, though, he lets out a guttural, almost primordial howl. The first of the guards doesn’t even have time to disintegrate before he’s been torn to shreds. At that, the rest of them do something I’ve never seen a Mogadorian do before. They run.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, I’M SPEEDING ALONG the highway in a stolen car packed with Chimæra, heading toward Chicago. The creatures have finally stabilized their shapes and have mostly managed to settle down.

It’s still the weirdest road trip I’ve ever taken. Not to mention the smelliest.

But I’m making good time. I’m almost to the Illinois border when, after the fifth try, Malcolm’s phone finally picks up.

“Malcolm!” I shout immediately, juggling the phone to my other hand as the light changes and I ease through the intersection. “Where have you been?!”

But the voice that answers isn’t his. “This is Sam.” There’s a pause. “Adam, is that you?”

“Sam?” It takes me a second—we didn’t exactly get introduced, and I’m a little stressed right now. Then I remember. “Sam! Where’s your father?”

“He’s—”

“Never mind! It doesn’t matter!” I switch the phone to my other hand so I can drive properly. “Listen to me, Sam. You’re in Chicago, right? The John Hancock Center?”

I can hear him suck in his breath. “How—how did you know that?”

“They know, Sam!” I don’t mean to shout, but I know I am. “They know and they’re coming for you!”

An oncoming car honks at me as I swerve into its lane, and I’m forced to drop the phone onto the seat beside me and concentrate on driving. I warned them. That’s all I can do right now. I can only hope they listen, and that they’re prepared. They’ve just got to hold out for a little while. I glance behind me to the backseat. Dust has taken the form of a cat again, and is curled up around his recovered kin. He looks up and meets my gaze, his golden eyes to my black ones, and growls slightly, but I know that warning isn’t meant for me. It’s for the ones who did this to the other Chimæra.

Just hang on, Malcolm, I pray as I press down on the gas and the car leaps forwards, racing into the night. I’m coming. And I’ve got the cavalry with me.

I hope One, wherever she is now, knows what I’ve done. What I’m doing. I’d like to think she does, that there’s still a part of her out there somewhere.

No. One’s gone. I finally accept the truth: if she lives on in any way at all it’s not because she’s a ghost or a lingering psychic imprint. All that’s left of her is what I’ve held on to in my memories. The things she told me; the way she taught me to live.

She’s not coming back. I don’t need her to. I know she’s proud of me because I’m proud of myself.

Because I remember her.

EXCERPT FROM THE FALL OF FIVE

DON’T MISS BOOK FOUR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING I AM NUMBER FOUR SERIES

CHAPTER ONE

TONIGHT’S ESCAPE FANTASY STARS SIX. A HORDE of Mogadorians stands between her and my cell—which isn’t technically realistic. The Mogs don’t usually devote any manpower whatsoever to keeping watch on me, but this is a dream, so whatever. The Mog warriors unsheathe their daggers and charge forward, howling. In response, Six tosses her hair and turns invisible. I watch from between the bars of my cell as she slices through the Mogs, blinking in and out of visibility, turning their own weapons against them. She twists her way through an ever-increasing cloud of ash, the Mogs soon completely decimated.

“That was pretty awesome,” I tell her, when she reaches the door of my cell. She smiles nonchalantly.

“Ready to go?” she asks.

And that’s when I wake up. Or when I snap out of the daydream. Sometimes it’s tough to tell whether I’m asleep or awake; every moment tends to take on a drowsy sameness when you’ve been kept in isolation for weeks. At least, I think it’s been weeks. Hard to keep track of time since there are no windows in my cell. The only thing I’m really certain of is that my imaginings of escape aren’t real. Sometimes it’s like tonight and Six has come to rescue me, other times it’s John, and other times I’ve developed Legacies of my own and I fly out of my cell, pummeling Mogadorians as I go.

It’s all fantasy. Just a way for my anxious mind to pass the time.

The sweat-soaked mattress with broken springs that dig into my back? That’s real. The cramps in my legs and my backache? Those are real, too.

I reach for the bucket of water on the floor next to me. A guard brings the bucket once a day along with a cheese sandwich. It’s not exactly room service, even though, as far as I can tell, I’m the only prisoner being held in this cell block—it’s just rows and rows of empty cells connected by steel gangways, and me alone.

The guard always sets the bucket down right next to my cell’s stainless-steel toilet, and I always drag the bucket over next to my bed, the closest thing I get to exercise. I eat the sandwich right away, of course. I don’t remember what it feels like not to be starving.

Processed cheese on stale bread, a toilet without a seat, and total isolation. That’s been my life.

When I first got here, I tried to keep track of how often the guard came so that I could keep count of the days, but sometimes I think they forget about me. Or ignore me on purpose. My greatest fear is that they’ll just leave me in here to waste away, that I’ll just pass out from dehydration, not even realizing that I’m living my last moment. I’d much rather die free, fighting the Mogadorians.

Or, better yet, not die at all.

I take a deep swig of the warm, rust-flavored water. It’s disgusting, but I’m able to work some moisture back into my mouth. I stretch my arms above my head, my joints popping in protest. A jolt of pain comes from my wrists, my stretch pulling at the still-fresh scar tissue there. And that’s when my mind starts wandering again—this time not into fantasy, but memory.

I think about West Virginia every day. I relive it.

I remember darting through those tunnels, clutching that red stone Nine had loaned me, shining its alien light on dozens of cell doors. In each one I hoped to find my father, and each time I was disappointed.

Then the Mogs came, cutting me off from John and Nine. I remember the fear that came from being separated from the others—maybe they could fight off that many Mogs and Piken with their Legacies. Unfortunately, all I had was a stolen Mog blaster.

I did the best I could, shooting any Mog that got too close, all the while trying to find a way back to John and Nine.

I could hear John shouting my name above all the fighting. He was close, if only we weren’t separated by a horde of alien beasts.

A monster’s tail lashed across my legs. My feet went out from under me. I lost my grip on Nine’s stone and went tumbling to the ground. I hit face first, opening up a gash above my eyebrow. Blood immediately started trickling into my eyes. Half blinded, I crawled for cover.

Of course, considering the lucky streak I’d been on since arriving in West Virginia, it wasn’t that surprising that I ended up right at the feet of a Mogadorian warrior. He aimed his blaster at me, could’ve killed me right then, but reconsidered before pulling the trigger. Instead of gunning me down, he clipped me on the temple with the butt of the gun.

Everything went black.

I woke up suspended from the ceiling by thick chains. Still in the cave, yet somehow I could tell they’d taken me deeper, to a more secure area. My stomach sank when I realized the cave was still standing at all, that I was being held prisoner—what did that mean about John and Nine? Had they gotten out?

I didn’t have much strength in my limbs, but I tried pulling against the chains anyway. There was no give. I felt desperate and claustrophobic. I was about to cry out when a huge Mogadorian strode into the room. The biggest one I’d ever seen, with an ugly purple scar on his neck and a strange-looking golden cane clutched in one of his massive hands. He was absolutely hideous, like a nightmare, but I couldn’t look away. Somehow, his empty black eyes held my gaze.

“Hello, Samuel,” he said as he stalked towards me. “Do you know who I am?”

I shook my head, my mouth suddenly beyond dry.

“I am Setrákus Ra. Supreme commander of the Mogadorian Empire, engineer of the Great Expansion, beloved leader.” He bared his teeth in what I realized was supposed to be a smile. “Et cetera.”

The ringmaster of a planetary genocide and the mastermind behind an upcoming invasion of Earth had just addressed me by name. I tried to think of what John would do in a situation like this—he’d never flinch in the face of his greatest enemy. I, on the other hand, started to shake, the chains that bound my wrists clanking together.

I could tell Setrákus appreciated my fear. “This can be painless, Samuel. You’ve chosen the wrong side, but I am nothing if not forgiving. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll set you free.”

“Never,” I stammered, shaking even harder as I anticipated what would come next.

I heard a hissing noise from above and looked up to see viscous black goo dribbling down the chain. It was acrid and chemical, like burning plastic. I could swear the sludge was leaving rust marks on the chain as it dribbled down towards me, and soon it was coating my wrists. I was screaming. The pain was excruciating and the goo had a stickiness to it that made it even worse, as if my wrists were covered in scalding tree sap.

I was about to pass out from the pain when Setrákus touched his staff to my neck, lifting my chin with it. An icy numbness flowed through my body and the pain on my wrists was momentarily eased. It was a twisted kind of relief; a deathly numbness radiated from Setrákus’s staff, like my limbs had been drained of blood.

“Just answer my questions,” snarled Setrákus, “and this can be over.”

His first questions were about John and Nine—where they would go, what they would do next. I felt relieved knowing that they’d escaped, and even more relieved that I hadn’t a clue where they’d be hiding. I had been the one holding on to Six’s instructions, which had meant John and Nine would need to figure out a new plan, one that I couldn’t possibly give away while being tortured. The paper was now missing, so it seemed like a safe bet that the Mogs had searched me while I was unconscious and confiscated the address. Hopefully Six would approach with caution.

“Wherever they end up, it won’t be long until they’re back here kicking your ass,” I told Setrákus. And that was my one badass, heroic moment, because the Mogadorian leader snorted and immediately pulled his staff away from me. The pain in my wrists returned—it was as if the Mogadorian goop was eating right down to my bones.

I was panting and crying the next time Setrákus touched his staff to me, giving me a reprieve. The fight, what little there’d been to begin with, had completely gone out of me.

“What about Spain?” he asked. “What can you tell me about that?”

“Six . . . ,” I mumbled, and regretted it. I needed to keep my mouth shut.

The questions kept coming. After Spain it was India, and then questions about the locations of Loralite stones, which I’d never even heard of. Eventually, he asked me about “the tenth,” something that Setrákus seemed particularly invested in. I remembered Henri writing about a tenth in his letter to John and how that last Garde didn’t make it off Lorien. When I told Setrákus that—information I hoped wouldn’t somehow hurt the remaining Garde—he was infuriated.

“You’re lying to me, Samuel. I know she’s here. Tell me where.”

“I don’t know,” I kept repeating, my voice shaking more and more. With every answer, or lack thereof, Setrákus pulled back his staff and let me feel the searing pain again.

Eventually, Setrákus gave up and just stared at me, disgusted. I was delirious at this point. As if with a mind of its own, the dark ooze slowly crawled back up the chain, disappearing into the dark recess it’d come from.

“You’re useless, Samuel,” he’d said, dismissively. “It appears the Loric only value you as a sacrificial lamb, a diversion to be left behind when they’re in need of a hasty escape.”

Setrákus swept out of the room and later, after I’d hung there for a while slipping in and out of consciousness, some of his soldiers came to retrieve me. They dumped me in a dark cell where I was sure they’d leave me to die.

Days later the Mogadorians dragged me out of my cell and handed me over to a pair of guys with buzz cuts and dark suits, and guns holstered beneath their coats. Humans. They looked like FBI or CIA or something. I don’t know why any human would want to work with the Mogs. It makes my blood boil just to think about it, these agents selling out humanity. Even so, the agents were gentler than the Mogadorians, one of them even mumbling an apology as he clasped a pair of manacles over my burned wrists. Then, they pulled a hood over my head, and that was the last I saw of them.

I was driven nonstop for at least two days, chained in the back of a van. After that, I was shoved into another cell—this cell, my new home—an entire block in some big base where I was the only prisoner.

I shudder when I think about Setrákus Ra, something I can’t help but do every time I catch a glimpse of the lingering blisters and scars on my wrists. I’ve tried to put that horrifying encounter out of my head, telling myself that what he’d said wasn’t true. I know John didn’t use me to cover his escape, and I know that I’m not useless. I can help John and the other Garde, just like my father was doing before he disappeared. I know I have some part to play, even if it isn’t clear exactly what that’s going to be.

When I get out of here—if I ever get out of here—my new goal in life is to prove Setrákus Ra wrong.

I’m so frustrated that I pound the mattress in front of me. As soon as I do, a layer of dust shakes loose from the ceiling, and a faint rumbling passes through the floor. It’s almost as if my punch sent a shockwave through the entire cell.

I look down at my hand in awe. Maybe those daydreams about developing my own Legacies weren’t so farfetched. I try to remember back to John’s backyard in Paradise, when Henri would lecture him about focusing his power. I squint hard and ball my fist up tight.

Even though it feels nuts and a little embarrassing, I punch the mattress again, just to see what happens.

Nothing. Just a soreness in my arms from not using those muscles in days. I’m not developing Legacies. That’s impossible for a human being and I know that. I’m just getting desperate. And maybe a little crazy.

“Okay, Sam,” I say to myself, my voice hoarse. “Keep it together.”

As soon as I lie back down, resigned to another endless stretch alone with my thoughts, a second jolt ripples through the floor. This one is much bigger than the first; I can feel it in my very bones. More plaster drifts down from the ceiling. It coats my face and gets in my mouth, bitter and chalky tasting. Moments later, I hear the muffled drumbeat of gunfire.

This isn’t a dream at all. I can distantly hear the sounds of a fight from somewhere deep within the base. The floor shakes again—another explosion. As long as I’ve been here, they’ve never done any kind of training or drills. Hell, I never hear anything except the echoing footsteps of the guard bringing me my food. And now this sudden action? What could be happening?

For the first time in—days? weeks?—I allow myself to hope. It’s the Garde. It has to be. They’ve come to rescue me.

“This is it, Sam,” I tell myself, willing myself to move.

I stand up and move shakily to the door of my cell. My legs feel like jelly. I haven’t had much reason to use them since they brought me here. Even crossing the short distance of my cell to the door is enough to make my head swim. I press my forehead to the cool metal of the bars, waiting for the dizziness to pass. I can feel reverberations of the fight below passing through the metal, growing stronger and more intense.

“John!” I shout, my voice hoarse. “Six! Anyone! I’m here! I’m in here!”

Part of me thinks it’s silly to cry out, as if the Garde could hear my cries over the massive battle it sounds like they’re fighting. It’s that same part of me that’s wanted to give up, to just curl up in my cell and wait out my ultimate fate. It’s the same part of me that thinks the Garde would be stupid to try to rescue me.

It’s the part of me that believed Setrákus Ra. I can’t give in to that feeling of despair. I have to prove him wrong.

I need to make some noise.

“John!” I scream again. “I’m in here, John!”

Weak as I feel, I pound my fists against the steel bars as hard as I can. The sound echoes throughout the empty block, but there’s no way the Garde could hear it above the muffled gunfire coming through the walls. It’s hard to tell over the increasing sounds of battle, but I think I hear footsteps rattling across the steel gangway that connects the cells. Too bad I can’t see anything beyond the few feet in front of my cell. If there is someone in here with me, I’ve got to get their attention and just hope it isn’t a Mog guard.

I grab my water bucket and dump out what’s left of my day’s supply. My plan—the best one I’ve got—is to bang it against the bars of my cell.

When I turn back around, there’s a guy standing outside my door.

CHAPTER TWO

HE’S TALL AND GAUNT, MAYBE A FEW YEARS older than me, with a shock of black hair that hangs in front of his face. It looks like he’s just been in a fight, dirt and sweat smudged across his pale face. I stare at him, wide-eyed—it’s been so long since I’ve seen another person. He looks almost equally surprised to see me.

There’s something off about him. Something not quite right.

The slightly too pale skin. The darkness around the edges of his eyes. He’s one of them.

I back up farther into my cell, hiding the empty water bucket behind my back. If he comes in here, I’m going to clock him with all the strength I have left.

“Who are you?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

“We’re here to help,” the guy replies. He sounds uncomfortable, like he doesn’t know what to say.

Before I can ask who he means by “we,” a man shoves him aside. There are deep lines on his face, which is covered by a scruffy growth of beard. My mouth hangs open in disbelief and I take another step back into my cell, startled again, but this time for a different reason. I don’t know why I expected him to look like the pictures hanging in our family room, but it’s just the way I always imagined this moment. Years have passed, yet underneath the deep crevices I still recognize this man, especially when he smiles at me.

“Dad?”

“I’m here, Sam. I’m back.”

My face hurts and it takes me a moment to realize why. I’m smiling. Grinning, in fact. It’s the first time I’ve used those muscles in weeks.

We hug through the bars, the metal pressed uncomfortably into my ribs, but I don’t care. He’s here. He’s really here. I’d fantasized about the Garde coming to rescue me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think my father would be the one saving me from this place. I guess I always thought that I’d be the one rescuing him.

“I—I’ve been looking for you,” I tell him. I wipe my forearm across my eyes; that strange Mogadorian is still hovering nearby and I don’t want him to see me cry.

My dad squeezes me through the bars. “You’ve grown up so much,” he says, a note of sadness in his voice.

“Guys,” the Mog interrupts, “we have company.”

I can hear them coming. Soldiers pouring into the cell block from below, their boots rattling the gangway as they run up the metal stairs towards us. Finally, I’ve found my dad, he’s right here in front of me, and it’s all about to be ripped away.

The Mogadorian pulls my dad away from my cell door. He turns to me, his voice commanding.

“Stand in the center of your cell and cover your head.”

My instinct is not to trust him. He’s one of them. Except why would one of the Mogadorians bring my father here? Why would he try to help us? There’s no time to think about that now, not with other Mogadorians—ones I can guarantee aren’t here to help—closing in.

I do as he ordered.

The Mogadorian reaches his hands through the bars of my cell, focusing on the wall behind me. Maybe it’s because I was just thinking about them, but for some reason, I’m reminded of those early days when we tested John’s Legacies in the backyard. It’s something about the way this Mogadorian focuses—the determination in his eyes undermined by shaking hands, like he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing.

I feel something pass through the floor beneath me, like a ripple of energy. Then, with a piercing crack, the wall behind me crumbles. A piece of the ceiling shakes loose, smashing my toilet. The floor shifts and moves beneath my feet, and I’m thrown to the ground. It’s like the entire block of cells has been hit by a tiny earthquake. Everything is tilted. My stomach turns over, and it’s not entirely due to the shaky floor. It’s fear. Somehow, that Mogadorian just knocked down a wall with his mind. It was almost as if he was using a Legacy.

But that’s impossible, right?

Outside my cell, my dad and the Mogadorian have been knocked backwards against the gangway’s railing. The door of my cell is cockeyed now, the metal warped and bent. There’s enough space for them to squeeze through.

As the Mogadorian pushes my dad towards the door of my cell, he points to the opening in the wall behind me.

“Go!” he shouts. “Run!”

I hesitate for a moment, glancing at my dad. He’s already squeezing through the bars. I reassure myself that he’ll be right behind me.

I cough as some of the dust from the destroyed wall enters my lungs. Through the opening in the wall I can see the inner workings of the base; pipes and ventilation shafts, clumps of wiring and insulation.

Wrapping my legs around one of the larger pipes, I start shimmying down. Pins and needles shoot through my weakened legs and for a moment I’m worried that I’ll lose my grip and slip. But then the adrenaline kicks in and my grip tightens. Escape is so close, I have to push myself.

I see my dad’s shadow in the opening above me. He’s hesitating.

“What’re you doing?!” my dad shouts at the Mog. “Adam?”

I hear the Mogadorian—Adam—reply, his voice resolute. “Go with your son. Now.”

My dad starts climbing down after me, but I’ve stopped. I’m thinking about what it was like to be left behind in one of these places. Mogadorian or not, this Adam guy just broke me out of jail and reunited me with my father. He shouldn’t have to face down those soldiers alone.

I call up to my dad. “We’re just going to leave him?”

“Adam knows what he’s doing,” my dad answers, but his voice sounds unsure. “Keep moving, Sam!”

Another vibration strikes, nearly shaking me loose from the pipe. I look up to check on my dad, just as another shock wave jostles loose the gun he’s been carrying in the back of his pants. I’m clinging too tightly to the pipe to catch it and the weapon goes plummeting into the darkness below.

“Damn it,” he grunts.

The Mogs must have closed in on Adam and he’s fighting back. Shortly after the shock wave comes a metallic rending sound, a sound that can only be the gangway coming apart—I can picture it tearing loose from outside the cells, the whole structure crumbling with it. A couple loose bricks tumble down from above, and Dad and I both duck until it’s safe again.

At least Adam’s giving them a fight back there. But we need to move fast before he brings the place down on top of us.

I keep shimmying down. The space inside the walls is tight, a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, with screws and loose wires ripping at my clothes.

“Sam, up here. Help me with this.”

My dad stopped in front of a ventilation shaft that I hadn’t noticed. I slip a little when I climb back up, but he reaches down to steady me. Together, we hook our fingers through the metal grate and yank it loose.

“This should lead us outside.”

No sooner are we army-crawling through the shaft than a massive explosion rocks us. We stop moving as the metal duct creaks and whines, both of us braced for the whole thing to collapse, but it holds.

We can hear screaming and sirens through the walls of the base. The fighting that I heard before has only intensified.

“Sounds like a war out there,” my dad says, crawling forward again.

“Did you bring the Garde?” I ask him, hopefully.

“No, Sam, it was just Adam and me.”

“Pretty amazing timing, Dad. You and the Garde all manage to show up at the exact same time?”

“I think this family was due for some good luck,” my dad replies. “Let’s just be thankful for the distraction and get the hell out of here.”

“It’s them fighting out there. I know it. They’re the only ones bold enough to attack a Mogadorian base.” I pause, forgetting about the danger for a moment, a giddy smile exploding onto my face as I realize my father just broke into a Mog base. “Dad,” I say, “I’m so glad to see you and everything, but you have so much explaining to do.”

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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.

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THE LORIEN LEGACIES BY PITTACUS LORE

NOVELS

I AM NUMBER FOUR

THE POWER OF SIX

THE RISE OF NINE

THE FALL OF FIVE

NOVELLAS

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #1: SIX’S LEGACY

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #2: NINE’S LEGACY

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #3: THE FALLEN LEGACIES

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #4: THE SEARCH FOR SAM

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #5: THE LAST DAYS OF LORIEN

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES #6: THE FORGOTTEN ONES

NOVELLA COLLECTIONS

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES: THE LEGACIES

(CONTAINS NOVELLAS #1–#3)

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES: SECRET HISTORIES

(CONTAINS NOVELLAS #4–#6)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2013 by Pittacus Lore

I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES: THE FORGOTTEN ONES. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

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FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780062218797

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Table of 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

Excerpt from The Fall of Five

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