‘He would forgive you,’ she says softly, adding, ‘I forgive you.’
Nine puts his arm around Marina and pulls her into a hug that’s tight enough to make her squeak. He buries his face in her hair, hiding his tears. My mind is and has always been racing – wondering about John, Sam and the others, worrying about how we’re going to find our way back to them, if they’re even still alive and uncaptured – but seeing Marina and Nine like this, coming together, starting to heal, it gives me hope. We’re a strong people. We can get through anything.
‘We need to get moving,’ I say gently, reluctant to end this moment but knowing that I have to.
Nine finally releases Marina, and I carefully zip up Eight’s body bag. Nine reaches down and, with an equal amount of care, lifts Eight’s body into his arms.
Just as we turn towards the hangar doors, they rumble open.
The group of Mogadorians who were working on the scout ship. I forgot all about them. They stand in the doorway, caught in the middle of pushing their broken ship into the hangar. They look about as surprised to see us as we are to see them.
Before we can do anything, a mechanical grinding emanates from the ship. The front – or at least the side of the saucer aimed directly at us – opens up, a blaster turret clanking into view and whirring to life with an electric sizzle. There must be a Mog inside.
‘Get down!’ Nine shouts.
There’s no cover in this empty hangar except the metal table, and it’s way too late to go invisible. Marina flips over the table, Nine crouches with Eight’s body still in his arms, and I dive to the side, hoping that we’re fast enough as the turret opens fire.
13
‘Does the name Grahish Sharma mean anything to you?’ Sarah asks.
I think for a moment, trying to pluck the name out of my memory. ‘Sounds kind of familiar. Why?’
I’m standing in the yard outside Adam’s old house, Sarah’s voice arriving long-distance over the disposable cell phone. Beyond the empty basketball courts, the sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon. A large bird cuts across the orange sky and I wonder if it’s one of ours – we’ve set the Chimærae up as sentries all around the grounds of Ashwood Estates with orders to find us if any intruders should appear. So far, it’s been quiet. If I didn’t know better, it’d seem like I was hanging out in a peculiarly quiet suburb, one where everyone’s still at work.
‘He’s from India,’ Sarah explains. ‘He’s the commander of something called the Vishnu Nationalist Eight.’
The name clicks at the mention of Eight and I snap my fingers. ‘Oh, right. That’s the army guy who was protecting Eight in the Himalayas.’
‘Hmm,’ Sarah says. ‘So his story checks out.’
I pace across the lawn, picturing Sarah with her blond hair pulled up in a studious bun, pens and pencils stuck through it, poring over some documents in the new offices of They Walk Among Us. Never mind that those offices are located in an abandoned ranch fifty miles outside of Huntsville, Alabama. Never mind that Sarah was escorted there by her ex-boyfriend Mark, who’s actually turned out to be surprisingly capable at this cloak-and-dagger stuff. It’s the image of Sarah that I focus on.
‘What story is that?’
‘Well, it’s a lot of rumor and internet weirdness that we’re trying to cut through. But this Sharma guy is claiming to have shot down an alien spacecraft and captured its crew.’
‘Some of the Mogs who were after Eight, probably,’ I reply.
‘Right. Took them alive and everything. Even though it happened in India, it should still be national news, but it’s not. Someone’s keeping a lid on it. Mark’s trying to make contact with Sharma. He wants to run the story on They Walk Among Us, hopefully expose the Mogs to the general public.’
‘Huh,’ I say, rubbing the back of my neck and thinking out loud. ‘Might help rally some support if things get bad.’
‘How bad are things going to get, John?’
I swallow hard. Even though I used my healing Legacy shortly after battle, I can still feel the General’s fingers clenched around my throat.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, not sure why I’m hiding Adam’s theory on imminent invasion from Sarah. I guess maybe I’m still trying to protect her. I quickly change the subject. ‘How’s Mark doing, anyway?’
‘He’s doing fine,’ Sarah replies. ‘He’s changed a lot.’
‘How so?’
Sarah hesitates. ‘I … it’s hard to explain.’
I don’t dwell for very long on the present state of Mark James. It isn’t what I want to talk about. Really, after nearly dying this afternoon, all I want is to hear Sarah’s voice.
‘I miss you,’ I say.
‘I miss you, too,’ Sarah replies. ‘After a long day of fighting alien invaders and unraveling international conspiracies, I wish we could just snuggle up on that old couch in my basement and watch a movie.’
That makes me laugh, the feeling bittersweet as I picture the kind of normal life Sarah and I might be leading if we weren’t trying to save the world.
‘Soon,’ I tell her, trying to sound confident.
‘I hope so,’ she replies.
I sense movement behind me and turn around to find Sam standing on the ruined porch of Adam’s house. He motions for me to come inside.
‘Sarah, I’ve gotta go,’ I say, feeling reluctant to hang up the phone. We’ve been checking in with each other every eight hours like we planned, and I feel a sense of relief every time I hear her voice. Every time I disconnect, I start thinking about the next time … the time when she won’t call. ‘Be careful, okay? Things might be getting pretty heavy soon.’
‘Things aren’t already heavy?’ she asks. ‘You be careful, too. I love you.’
I say good-bye to Sarah and tilt my head at Sam. He looks almost excited, like he’s gotten some good news in the last five minutes.
‘What’s up?’
‘Come down,’ he says. ‘We figured something out.’
I climb on to what’s left of the porch after this afternoon’s skirmish and follow Sam through the half-sunken doorway into the living room. The interior of the house matches the exterior – the perfect idea of human suburbia – except the furniture looks like it was arranged exactly as seen on the pages of a catalogue. There’s absolutely no sense of it being lived in. I try to imagine what it was like for Adam growing up here, try to picture him bashing little Piken action figures together on the floor, and just can’t do it.
At the back of the living room is a massive metal door secured by a series of locks operated by a keypad covered in Mogadorian symbols. The door is the one thing that breaks the suburban illusion and it’s actually kind of surprising to me that the Mogs didn’t try hiding it behind a bookcase or something. I guess they never thought their enemies would make it this far. The door is already open, unlocked by Adam earlier, and it’s through there that Sam and I descend into the tunnels beneath Ashwood Estates.
We walk down a long metal staircase, the phony homeliness above immediately replaced by sterile stainless steel and buzzing halogen lights. The labyrinthine network of tunnels beneath Ashwood is much more in keeping with my idea of the Mogadorians – functional and cold. It’s not quite as sprawling down here as the hollowed-out mountain in West Virginia, but it definitely puts Dulce Base to shame. I wonder how long it took them to carve all this out, the Mogs tunneling into the Earth during those years I was on the run with Henri, expanding their reach without us even realizing it.
There’s a jagged and long crack in the wall that starts about halfway down the steps and runs ahead deeper into the tunnels. Sam reaches out to drag his hand along it, coating his fingers with concrete dust.
‘We’re sure this place isn’t going to collapse, right?’
‘Adam doesn’t think so,’ Sam replies, clapping his hands clean, the noise echoing. ‘It creeps me out down here, though. Seriously claustrophobic.’
‘Don’t worry. We won’t be staying l
ong.’
We pass other cracks as we navigate the twisting hallways, places where the foundation shifted, broken sections of concrete grinding against each other. The damage was caused the last time Adam was here, when he unleashed his earthquake Legacy to rescue Malcolm. There are some hallways where the ceilings have outright collapsed.
Down the hall, we pass by a large, well-lit room that looks like it might have been a laboratory at one point, lots of nozzles and levers and worktables, but no equipment. Everything must have gotten destroyed in Adam’s attack, and the Mog salvage team never got the chance to replace it. Next to the lab, we pass a row of oppressive eight-by-eight rooms with thick doors made from bulletproof glass. Cells. All of them currently unoccupied.
‘The archives are up here,’ Sam tells me. ‘Dad’s been in there nonstop. The Mogs recorded everything.’
We stop by a small room – almost like an office – with a huge bank of monitors. Malcolm sits behind the room’s single computer terminal, bleary-eyed from watching who knows how many hours of footage. On-screen, a Mogadorian scout speaks directly into the camera.
‘It has been three days since we leaked rumors of a Loric presence in Buenos Aires,’ the scout reports. ‘There has yet to be any sign of Garde, but surveillance continues –’
Malcolm pauses the video when he notices us, rubbing his eyes.
‘Find anything useful?’ I ask.
Malcolm shakes his head and pulls up a list of files on the computer. He brushes a finger down the touch screen, and the files begin an endless scroll. There are thousands of them, and all their titles are in Mogadorian.
‘From what I can gather, this is almost five years’ worth of Mogadorian intelligence,’ Malcolm explains. ‘I’d need an entire team to go through it all. Even with Adam translating these titles, which are basically just dates and times, it’s hard to figure out where to begin.’
‘Maybe we can hire some interns,’ Sam suggests, then tugs my arm. ‘Come on, we gotta see Adam.’
‘Do what you can,’ I tell Malcolm before Sam drags me away. ‘Even the smallest bit of information might help.’
A few more steps down the hall and we reach the room Adam described as the control center. The room is pretty much undamaged, so it’s where we set up shop. The walls are covered in monitors, security-camera footage from Ashwood streaming over some, but also video feeds from other places, including one hacked security camera outside the barricaded John Hancock Center. Beneath the monitors are a row of computers, not exactly user-friendly since all the keys are in Mogadorian.
I put my hands on my hips and survey this place, watching the camera feeds that not too long ago would’ve been trained on me. It feels strange to be on the other side. Like Sam, this place makes me uneasy.
‘Are we safe here?’ I ask. ‘All these cameras … there aren’t any pointed back at us?’
‘I’ve disabled them,’ Adam replies. He’s in a swivel chair at one of the computers, typing out a string of commands. He turns around to face me. ‘Using the General’s authorization, I’ve sent a code back to the Mogadorian command in West Virginia reporting that the salvage team uncovered a toxic chemical leak. It’ll take some time to clean up. They’ll assume the failed cameras have something to do with the salvage team’s work.’
‘How much time does that buy us?’
‘A couple of days? A week?’ Adam replies. ‘They’ll become suspicious when the General doesn’t check in, but we should slip through the cracks for a while.’
‘What do we look for in the meantime?’
‘Your friends,’ Adam replies. ‘In fact, I believe I’ve already found them.’
‘Yeah, Florida,’ I say. ‘We already knew that.’
‘No, he found them. Like, exactly,’ Sam replies, grinning at me. ‘That’s why I came to get you. Check this out.’
Sam points at one of the screens, this one displaying a map of the United States. The map is covered in triangles of various sizes. There’s a small triangle over our location along with a few similar-sized indicators scattered throughout the country. There are bigger triangles glowing on top of population centers. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston – all these cities are marked on the map. The biggest triangle of all is to the west of us, right around where the Mogs’ mountain base is hidden in West Virginia.
‘This is a, uh …’ Sam looks over at Adam. ‘What’d you call this thing?’
‘Tactical asset overview,’ Adam replies. ‘It shows where my people have ongoing operations.’
‘They’re massing in the major cities,’ I say, studying the map.
‘Yeah,’ Adam replies, grimly. ‘In preparation for the invasion.’
‘Let’s not focus on the i-word right now, okay?’ Sam says. ‘Look at this.’
Sam has plugged the tablet displaying the location of the other Garde into one of the computers. He hands it to me and my eyes immediately shoot to Florida. My heart skips a beat; there’s only one blinking dot on the map. It takes me a moment to realize that the four dots symbolizing each of the remaining Garde have actually gotten so close together that they perfectly overlap.
‘They’re almost on top of each other,’ I say. ‘All four of them.’
‘Yep,’ Sam replies, taking back the tablet. ‘And look at this.’
He holds the tablet up next to the map of Mogadorian activity. The four dots perfectly line up with one of the smaller orange triangles in Florida.
‘The Mogs have them,’ I say, gritting my teeth. ‘Adam, is that a base of some kind?’
‘A research station,’ he replies. ‘The records show there was some genetic experimentation being done there. It isn’t the kind of place we’d normally keep prisoners, especially not Garde.’
‘Why even take prisoners at this point?’ Sam asks. ‘I mean, I get Setrákus Ra has some weird thing for Ella. But the others …’
‘They aren’t prisoners,’ I say, hitting Sam on the arm in excitement as this dawns on me. ‘The others are up to something. They’re on the attack.’
‘I’m working on getting us a visual of the base,’ Adam says, his fingers racing across the keyboard.
‘How’re you going to do that?’ I ask.
I sit down in the swivel chair next to Adam and watch his hands flick across the Mogadorian keyboard. Whatever he’s doing seems almost like second nature.
‘I’ve locked down a scout ship so they won’t be able to operate it. That was the easy part. Accessing and isolating its onboard surveillance while still keeping the craft inoperable is proving trickier.’
‘You’re hacking into a ship?’ Sam asks, leaning over the back of Adam’s chair.
I watch the monitor directly in front of Adam crackle with static. ‘How does that help us?’
‘This control room is a nerve center, John,’ Adam explains, taking a moment away from typing to gesture around. ‘Information from all the other bases feeds to here. It is just a matter of accessing it.’
‘Accessing it how?’
‘Hunting the Loric for so many years has made my people paranoid to ever miss a potential lead. Every operation is recorded. There’s surveillance everywhere.’ Adam strikes a key with a triumphant flair. ‘Even aboard our own ships.’
The monitors above flicker briefly and then display grainy footage of a runway in the middle of a swamp.
‘If the Garde are nearby, we might be able to see them,’ Adam explains.
‘If they’re not invisible,’ I say, squinting at the monitor.
Beneath the camera, a handful of Mogadorians look frustrated as they yank engine parts from the scout ship’s hull. They clean these parts, reattach them and, when nothing happens, start taking apart something else.
‘What’re they doing?’ Sam asks.
‘Trying to fix what I’ve done,’ Adam replies excitedly, seeming pleased that he’s outsmarted his people. ‘They assume engine failure, not automated systems override. It will take them a while to catch on.’
br /> Another Mogadorian, this one wearing an impressive-looking uniform similar to the General’s, approaches them. He yells at the mechanics, then walks offscreen in a huff.
‘Does the camera move?’ I ask.
‘Of course.’
Adam hits a button and the camera begins to scan to the side, following the dressed-up Mogadorian. At first, there isn’t much to see except pavement and, in the distance, some swampland. However, after a short walk, the dressed-up Mogadorian disappears into an airplane hangar.
‘Do you think they’re in there?’ I ask.
‘This camera should be equipped with heat vision, if I can figure out how to access it,’ Adam replies, tentatively tapping a few of the keys in front of him.
Before Adam can figure it out, Five walks through the hangar doors. Even though I’d guessed he was a traitor from Ella’s vision, I’d been holding on to a foolish hope that it wasn’t true. Or, dark as it might seem, that Five was the one killed in battle. But there he is, in a rumpled Mogadorian uniform, and with a bandage covering his right eye.
I can hear Sam suck in a breath; he’s stunned. The only part of my visions that I hadn’t told anyone about was seeing Five, not wanting to smear his name if I was wrong.
‘He’s …’ Sam shakes his head. ‘That son of a bitch traitor. It must’ve been him who told the Mogs about Chicago.’
‘One of your own,’ Adam says quietly. ‘That is unexpected.’
I have to look away from Five’s image before my blood boils. ‘You didn’t know about this?’ I ask Adam through clenched teeth.
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I would’ve told you. Setrákus Ra himself must have been keeping him a secret.’
I force myself to look back at the screen. I keep calm, studying my new enemy. His slumped shoulders, his freshly shaved head, the dark look in his remaining eye. What could have brought one of our own to such a terrible place?
‘I knew there was something off about that jerk,’ Sam says, pacing now. ‘John, man, what are we going to do about him?’