I should ask Sarah about the identity of the mysterious hacker she and Mark have been working with. I should find out the details of what she and Mark have been doing. I know I should. Except in that moment, all I can think about is how much I miss her.
“I know part of the reason you went to find Mark was because you didn’t want to be a distraction,” I say, trying to sound more reasonable than desperate. “Not being able to talk to you, to see you, to touch you—that might be a bigger distraction than anything. You’ve been helping so much, but . . .”
“I miss you too,” Sarah replies, and I can tell when she speaks that she’s trying to find her resolve, to be tough like she was when I dropped her off at the bus station in Baltimore. “We made the right decision, though. It’s better this way.”
“It was a stupid decision,” I reply.
“John . . .”
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” I continue. “We should’ve never separated. After everything that happened in New York, everything I had to see—”
My breath catches for a moment as I remember the fires, the destruction, the wounded and the dead. I realize that I’m shaking again, and definitely not from exhaustion. I feel like I might have hit my limit, like there’s only so much brutality my brain can endure. I try to focus on Sarah and on getting my words out, on making sense and not sounding too desperate.
“I need you with me, Sarah,” I manage to finish. “I feel like these are the last battles we’re ever going to fight. After New York, I—I’ve seen how quickly it can all be taken away. I don’t want us to be apart if something happens, if this is the end.”
Sarah gathers a deep breath. When she speaks next, her voice is firm.
“This is not the end, John.”
I realize how I must sound to her. Weak and scared, not at all like the alien hero she portrayed in that video. I’m embarrassed by how I’m acting. Alone for the first time since the attack in New York, without constant skirmishes to distract me, with things finally slowed down enough for me to think—the result is me breaking down while on the phone with my girlfriend. We’ve been in bad situations before, fought some brutal battles and seen friends die. But, until now, I’ve never felt hopeless.
When I’m silent for a few moments, Sarah continues, her voice gentle. “I can’t imagine what it was like to be in New York during . . . that. I can’t imagine what you’re going through—”
“It was my fault it happened,” I tell her quietly, glancing to the tent flap in case someone outside might overhear. “I could’ve killed Setrákus Ra at the UN. I had time to prepare for this invasion. And I failed.”
“Oh, John. You cannot possibly blame yourself for New York,” Sarah replies, her tone understanding but insistent. “You are not responsible for the murderous rampage of an alien psycho, okay? You were trying to stop him.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Yeah, and neither did anyone else. So either all of us are equally to blame, or maybe it’s the evil Mogadorian’s fault and we can leave it at that. Your guilt isn’t going to bring anyone back, John. But you can avenge them. You can stop Setrákus Ra from doing it again.”
I laugh bitterly. “That’s just it. I don’t know how to stop him. It’s too much.”
“We’ll find a way,” Sarah replies, and her certainty almost convinces me. “We’ll do this together. All of us.”
I rub my hands over my face, trying to get myself together. Sarah’s telling me exactly what I need to hear. As usual, I know she’s right, at least on a logical level. But that doesn’t loosen the knot of guilt tying up my guts, or make the future seem any less overwhelming.
“They look at me like a hero,” I say, scoffing. “I walk around this camp and the soldiers, the survivors, everyone looks at me like I’m some kind of superman. They don’t know—”
“I guess my video really worked,” Sarah quips, trying to lighten the mood. “They look at you that way because you are a hero, John.”
I shake my head. “They don’t know that I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know how to fight a battle on this scale. Nine’s missing, Ella’s taken and basically getting tortured, I don’t know what’s taking Six and the others so long to get back from the Sanctuary, but when they do we might have to go back anyway because that’s right where Setrákus Ra is headed. Meanwhile, there are twenty-five warships over twenty-five different cities. I don’t know how to deal with this, Sarah.”
“Well,” Sarah replies, her voice calm and collected, like I haven’t just dropped an insurmountable pile of problems at her feet. “It’s a good thing you’ve got friends. Now let’s take this one thing at a time. Let me tell you about GUARD.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
SARAH TELLS ME EVERYTHING ABOUT HER TIME with Mark, and I really can’t believe what she says about GUARD. After all these years, it’s incredible. I try to keep my voice down, though, to hide this amazing news from Agent Walker and her friends in the government, at least for the time being. After Sarah’s filled me in, I tell her everything that’s happened to me, and everything that we’re still facing. She doesn’t falter. She tells me that we can do this. She tells me we can win.
She makes me believe.
When I finally come out of Walker’s tent, I’m not shaking anymore. Unburdening myself to Sarah, hearing her voice, remembering what I’m fighting for—all this is enough to get me on my feet, moving, ready to charge back into battle. I still don’t have all the answers, but I’m no longer afraid to confront the questions.
Outside the tent, Sam is still on the phone. He’s pacing back and forth, gesturing emphatically with his free hand.
“Six, that’s crazy,” he insists. Obviously, Six is alive and well. And of course Sam is already trying to talk her out of something. “You haven’t seen the size of this thing. It tore through whole city blocks like they were made out of paper.”
Sam spots me, then widens his eyes like Six is saying something crazy in response.
“Here’s John,” Sam says sharply into the phone. “Maybe he can talk some sense into you.”
Sam holds out the phone to me.
“They’re okay?” I ask Sam, accepting the phone.
“Yeah. They released the spirit of Lorien on Earth, which is probably why I have Legacies, but now they’re stranded in Mexico, and Six is talking about fighting the Anubis when it shows up at the Sanctuary,” Sam says breathlessly. I stare at him, trying to wrap my mind around all that as I lift the phone to my ear.
“John? Sam?” There’s Six’s familiar voice, sounding annoyed. “Someone talk to me.”
“Hey, Six,” I say. “Good to hear your voice.”
“You, too,” she replies, her smile audible. “Want me to catch you up on the details? Or should we get to the part where you try talking me out of fighting Setrákus Ra and his warship?”
I can’t help grinning at her bluster. Between talking to Sarah and now Six, things no longer feel so massively overwhelming. We’re definitely up against it, but at least I’m not up against it alone.
“I want you to catch me up,” I tell Six. “But first, I really need to talk to Adam.”
“Oh,” Six replies, sounding surprised. “Sure. Hang on a second.”
Sam fixes me with a look, like I should’ve immediately told Six and the others to flee the Sanctuary. I’m not sure that’s the right move yet. We know Setrákus Ra is heading there, but he doesn’t know that we know. That gives us a rare advantage. Ella showed me the Sanctuary in her vision. She told me to warn Six and the others. Maybe it’s there that the final battle against Setrákus Ra will be fought. If that’s the case, at least it’ll be fought in the middle of nowhere. Civilians won’t be in danger.
Adam gets on the phone, sounding weary. “How can I help?”
“Your warships—I mean, the Mog warships, they’re protected by force fields. Tell me how to bring them down.”
Adam snorts. “You’re kidding, right?
”
“I need to give the government something,” I tell Adam. “Setrákus Ra has set a deadline for their surrender and if they don’t see a way to defeat his armada they aren’t going to help us.”
“John, those warships were designed before the invasion of Lorien,” Adam replies. “The shields are meant to sustain attacks from a planet full of Garde. There’s no weapon on Earth short of a nuclear bomb that could even potentially break through them and attempting such an attack over a major population center would be catastrophic.” Adam pauses, and I can hear dirt crunching. He’s moving towards something. “Although . . .”
“What? I’ll take anything you can give me, Adam.”
“Maybe brute force isn’t the answer. I’m staring at an airstrip of disabled Skimmers,” he says. “It occurs to me that there are a hundred or so assigned to each warship. They act as scouts and transport squads of ground troops. They come and go from the warships quite a bit, which makes lowering the warship’s force field each time impractical. So, the Skimmers are outfitted with an electromagnetic field generator that masks them from the warship’s shield, allowing them to pass through unharmed.”
I should’ve thought of that. Now that Adam’s jogged my memory, I realize that I saw this technology at work back at the West Virginia mountain base. When Setrákus Ra first arrived on Earth, his ship moved through the base’s force field like it wasn’t even there. When I tried to chase him down, the shield totally fried me.
“Would it be possible to strip that technology out of the Skimmers and put it into something else?” I ask Adam. “Like, for instance, a fighter jet?”
Adam considers this. “Possible, yes. But while it wouldn’t have to worry about the warship’s shields, it would still be targeted by the cannons.”
I remember what Ella showed me during our shared dream—the docking bay where she and Five tried to escape. Maybe we can use the Mogs’ own technology against them.
“We could get like ten people onto one of those Skimmers, right?” I ask next, considering a new plan of attack.
“Twelve, plus two pilots,” Adam answers quickly. “You’re considering a less obvious assault.”
“Yeah. If we could board one of those warships, how many people do you think we’d need to overtake it?”
There’s a bit of excitement in Adam’s voice now. “That would depend on how many of those people had Legacies. Have I mentioned, John, that when I was a child I dreamed about flying one of those warships?”
I smirk at that. “You might just get your chance, Adam. Thanks for the info. Can you put Six back on?”
Adam says good-bye and hands the phone back to Six.
“You think we should try boarding the Anubis?” Six asks me. “Sam was just encouraging me and the others to run as fast and as far from that thing as possible.”
“I’m not sure what we should do yet, but I want to know our options,” I reply. I look at Sam and can’t help frowning. He’s not going to like what I have to say next. “Stay put, Six. Help is on the way.”
A short time later, Sam and I walk along the pier, looking for Agent Walker. Wherever she went with those two army guys and their civilian, it’s taking longer than expected. Up ahead, there’s a large military presence on the concrete dock that juts into the East River. When we arrive, a small group of soldiers are hard at work pulling empty kayaks from the water and dumping them in a pile out of the way so that the military ships have a clear place to dock. This place wasn’t exactly designed for battleships. In the last twenty-four hours, it’s been turned into something of a staging area, with a bunch of navy destroyers floating ominously in the narrow waterway, their guns pointed at the smoking remains of downtown Manhattan.
“How’s Malcolm doing?” I ask Sam. He made a short call to his dad after we got off the phone with Six.
“Mostly relieved that we’re alive. And very excited about my new . . . thing,” Sam replies, glancing around to make sure no one’s listening. “He and the FBI agents Walker left behind got scooped up by the government during the evacuation of Washington. I guess he’s getting the VIP bunker treatment. They’ve got him in the same underground complex as the president.”
“Maybe he could put a good word in for us.”
“I told him,” Sam says. “Right now, he says they think he’s some crazy scientist that specializes in aliens with a lot of pets.”
“The Chimærae.”
“Dad thinks it’s best if they pass as normal animals for now. I know we’ve decided to trust Agent Walker’s little group of rebels, but there’s more than just her crew in Washington. Some of the scientists down there, well, Dad thinks they might be a little too curious about alien biology.”
I think about how Adam rescued the Chimærae from Mogadorian experimentation. Much as I want to trust that the U.S. government is better than that, I don’t. “That’s smart,” I reply. “Keep them from getting dissected or something until we need them. In the meantime, they can look after your dad.”
“Yeah . . .” Sam trails off. I can tell there’s something else he’d rather be talking about, mostly because he hasn’t let up since we got off the phone with Six. “John, I still can’t believe you told them to stay down there.”
I’m planning to call Six back once I figure out how much support I can drum up from Walker and the government. At least until then, they’re staying put at the Sanctuary. They’ve got some time until Setrákus Ra shows up. “You honestly think Six would’ve retreated if I told her to?” I reply. “I don’t like putting them in danger either, Sam, but . . .”
“John, come on. The Anubis almost killed us yesterday! We were like ants against that thing. Not even there. What chance do they have?”
“Ella told me Setrákus Ra wants what’s inside the Sanctuary, which I’m assuming is this Loric Entity Six told us about. We can’t just let him go there unopposed. Nothing good can come of him getting what he wants.”
“But how are they going to fight him off? What good is going to come of them staying down there?” Sam asks, raising his voice. “They can’t even hurt him. Not without—”
“I know what the situation is, Sam,” I snap, losing my cool. “We’re going to find a way to get down there and help them, all right? Ella showed me—she showed me the Sanctuary, she told me to warn Six and the others and she also told me that we can win. That she’s seen a way. It all starts there.”
I leave out the parts where Ella told me that there would be sacrifices and where she implied that I might be the one to kill her. That part of her prophecy I’m going to be working my ass off to change. I know Sam is only pressing me because he’s worried about the others and Six in particular. I’m worried about them, too. But I also trust Six to keep her head and make her own decisions.
Before Sam can put together a rebuttal, I spot Walker ahead of us and pick up my pace. The FBI agent is surrounded by a huddle of high-ranking military officials. I have to nudge my way through a crowd of soldiers to get close. I get some disgruntled looks at first, dressed as I am like a civilian who just survived a natural disaster. When they start to realize who I am, a path clears real quick. I’m not so surprised by this treatment anymore, and I try not to let it make me feel uncomfortable. One of the soldiers even salutes me, although his buddy standing beside him elbows him hard and rolls his eyes.
Walker sees me coming and breaks away from the military brass. I notice them noticing me, but it seems like Walker was right about the higher-ups wanting to avoid direct contact with us dangerous Loric rebels. They move away and gather again farther down the pier, many of the soldiers going along with them. Once there, they start pointing towards the East River and exchanging words. Something about the water’s definitely alarming them. I start to amp up my hearing to eavesdrop on what’s got them so spooked, but Walker is already right in front of me and talking.
“Good, you’re here. I was just coming back to get you,” Walker says. She’s holding the tablet computer belonging to
the civilian who showed up at her tent earlier, although that guy’s no longer anywhere to be seen. Walker must have commandeered his tablet and sent him on his way.
“I know the weakness of the warship shields. I know how we can beat them,” I tell Walker, cutting to the chase.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Damn, John. That was quick. That’s definitely something the army boys will be interested in.”
“Good.” I make a pointed glance at the officers gathered down the pier. “I need to get to Mexico, Walker. We’re talking in the next couple hours. There’s going to be a battle down there that I can’t miss. I need whatever support they’re willing to give me.”
“Is there an ‘or else’ you’re waiting to drop on me?” Walker asks, her expression darkening. “I’ll do what I can, but I already told you the military’s position. That comes direct from the commander in chief.”
“Yeah, well, tell them the parts they need to beat the shields? They’re sitting on a runway in Mexico. So they better scramble some damn jets and get me down there.”
Walker holds up her hand, letting me know she’s heard me. “All right, all right. I’ll do my best. But we’ve got other crap to deal with before we go jetting off to your special Loric safe zone or whatever the hell it is.”
“Whoa,” Sam says. He’s wandered closer to the railing and is staring into the water. “They’ve got a submarine out there.”
“Yeah,” Walker replies. “Before you go anywhere. John, I want you to take a look at this.”
She slides up next to me and clicks play on the tablet, starting a video. It’s shaky footage from earlier this morning, when the Anubis left Manhattan and glided over the Brooklyn Bridge. The camerawork is jittery and the audio is convoluted with screams and soldiers shouting orders to each other. Eventually, the sinister warship passes out of sight.