Still standing just off the shore, the Mogasaur swings its head around and looks directly at us.
“Shit,” Nine says, stepping back. “Is it coming this way?”
“Now!” Walker screams into the phone, backing up as well. “It’s a goddamn giant!”
“I think it can sense us,” I say. “I think—I think Setrákus Ra left this here to hunt us.”
“Okay,” Daniela replies. “I gotta go.”
As if in answer, the Mogasaur lets out a deafening roar in our direction, spraying mist from the river and its rotten-fish breath all over us. Then, it lifts one of its front arms out of the river muck and brings it crashing down on the dock. Wooden beams explode in splinters and the concrete walkway caves in, two of the ferry boats pushed underwater like toys.
It’s coming this way.
I lob a fireball at the Mogasaur. Quickly, I realize it’s too small to do any damage. The fireball sizzles and leaves a scorch mark in the monster’s hide, but it doesn’t even notice.
“Run!” I shout. “Fan out! Use the statue as cover!”
Nine, Daniela, Walker and Murray all run back towards the grass and the statue. But Sam stays rooted in place, even as the Mogasaur takes another booming step towards us.
“Sam! Come on!” I shout, grabbing him by the arm.
“John? Do you feel that?”
I stare at Sam. Both of his eyes are changed—filled up with crackling energy. They look almost like two out-of-tune TVs, except the light Sam’s eyes gives off is bright azure.
“Sam? What the he—?”
Before I can finish my question, Sam spasms once and collapses. I manage to catch him and try to drag him backwards. Daniela and Nine see this happen and stop in their tracks.
“Johnny, what’s wrong with him?” Nine shouts.
“Grab him and run!” Daniela adds.
Boom. Another explosion behind us. The Mogasaur has gotten all its limbs out of the water, practically crushing the entire dock beneath it. The submarine is stuck like a thorn in the palm of its front hand, and the beast is temporarily distracted trying to shake it loose. I don’t know what’s wrong with Sam, but I don’t think the gargantuan brute behind us is the cause. His affliction is something else entirely.
“He passed out!” I yell to Nine. “He—”
I’m cut off as both Daniela and Nine go all herky-jerky, their eyes filling with the same blue light. They slump to the ground at the same time, collapsing on top of each other.
“No!”
And then it happens to me.
A tentacle of vivid blue light rises up from the ground in front of me. For some reason, I’m not afraid. It’s almost like I recognize this weird energy formation. I can sense that it runs deep into the earth, and I can also sense that if Agent Walker or the Mogasaur or someone without Legacies was to look where I’m staring right now, they’d see nothing but empty space. This is just for me.
It’s my connection. My connection to Lorien.
Faster than my eye can follow, the finger of light attaches to my forehead. Right now, I’m sure my eyes are spilling electric energy just like the others did before they passed out.
I feel it happening. I’m leaving my body.
I recognize this sensation. It’s exactly like when Ella pulled me into her vision.
“Ella?” I say, although I’m pretty sure this word doesn’t actually come out of my mouth. I’m pretty sure that my body’s currently prone on the docks, not all that far from the biggest monster I’ve ever seen in my life.
Hi, John, Ella replies inside my head. When she does, I can hear her saying other words as well, like she’s holding down hundreds of conversations at once.
I don’t think to ask how this is possible. Ella’s supposed to be thousands of miles away with Setrákus Ra or, hopefully, in the process of getting rescued by Six. She’s not this powerful. Her powers don’t work like this. I don’t think of any of that. I’m more focused on my physical body, not to mention Nine, Sam and Daniela. Whatever Ella’s doing to us, she couldn’t have picked a worse possible time.
“What the hell is happening? You’re going to get us killed!”
Any second, I expect to hear the crunch of my bones as the Mogasaur steps on me. It doesn’t come. Instead, shapes begin to form in front of my eyes—blurry, indistinct forms, like a movie projector that’s out of focus.
Don’t worry, Ella says, and again there’s that echo of other voices. This will only take a second.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
HOW LONG AM I KNOCKED OUT FOR? IT CAN’T be more than a couple of minutes before I’m awakened by icy pinpricks along the side of my face. It’s Marina, pouring her healing Legacy into me. My head’s in her lap. I get a strange pulling sensation at my hairline as the tissue there regrows, the gash I took from falling bricks quickly healed up.
Marina’s got her non-healing hand clasped over my mouth, I guess in case I woke up screaming. I widen my eyes at her to show her that I’m with it and she takes her hand away. Her face is covered with chalky brown dust from the exploded temple. There are tear streaks running through the grime on Marina’s face.
“He destroyed it, Six,” she whispers raggedly. “He destroyed the whole thing.” I sit up and assess our situation. We’re still at the edge of the jungle, hidden behind the fallen tree trunk and now a whole bunch of dislodged chunks of limestone. There are gaps in the canopy above our heads from where the pieces of the Sanctuary came crashing down. Luckily, no one else appears injured, or else Marina already took care of them.
Marina stays next to me as I crawl forward to approach the others. Mark and Adam lie on their stomachs, side by side, just to the right of the fallen log. They’ve got their blasters pointed out and are using a block of stone for cover. I notice bloodstains on Mark’s shirt and remember that he took a piece of shrapnel to the chest right before I got knocked out.
I touch his shoulder. “You okay?”
He shoots a grateful look in Marina’s direction. “I’m good. Really don’t want to make a habit of that, though. You?”
“Same.”
Sarah is right up against the fallen log, peeking out from behind it. Phiri Dun-Ra is shoved in next to her. She wasn’t crushed by any of the debris that landed in our area, which just seems unfair. The Mogadorian is still unconscious or, more likely, playing possum. I make sure to check her bonds quickly before sliding in next to Sarah. She gives me a look—tight-lipped, squinty-eyed. It reminds me a lot of John’s brave face, actually. The one where he’s scared shitless but wants to keep fighting anyway.
“What’re we going to do, Six?” Sarah asks.
“Stay within arm’s length in case we need to go invisible,” I say, not just to Sarah but to everyone. “We’ve still got a plan.”
Mark snorts at that and his hands shake a little on his blaster’s grip. He’s got the detonator for our explosives in the dirt next to him.
“There’s no Sanctuary to protect,” Marina says forlornly.
“We can still take the Anubis,” I reply. “And there’s still Ella.”
“Man, I can’t see shit from back here,” Mark adds.
I turn invisible so that I can poke my head out from behind the log without running any risk of being seen. I get a way better view of the landscape than what Mark and Adam can see from their spots behind cover. The dust from the Anubis attack is still settling in the clearing; between that and the sunset, the entire area is cast in a gritty golden haze. Three thick plumes of black smoke curl into the air—booby-trapped Skimmers that had their bombs explode when the Anubis discharged its fury. However, even though some of them are flipped over or knocked into distant areas, I still see a bunch of the Skimmers that we set to blow.
So we might still be able to salvage one of our traps to fight off the Mogadorians. But the pit we spent so much effort digging is gone. Or, more accurately, it has gotten a whole lot bigger.
The land where the Sanctuary sat for cent
uries is now a smoking crater. It’s about sixty feet deep with stubborn chunks of the temple’s bricks still rooted in the ground and small fires from the Anubis’s cannon blast only now guttering out in the heat-baked dirt. That force field was in place precisely so something like this wouldn’t happen. We made it into the Sanctuary and this is the result. Total destruction.
Unless . . .
Still invisible, I climb up onto the log so I can get a better angle on the crater. Sarah flinches at the noise I make and brings her blaster up in my direction.
“Relax, it’s just me,” I whisper quickly. “I’m trying to get a look at something.”
“What do you see?” Marina asks.
I see a mellow blue glow that emanates from the very center of the crater. I see the stone lip of the well where we dropped our Inheritances, the place where the Entity emerged from.
I hop down from the tree trunk and turn visible again. I want Marina to see the hope in my face because it’s very real.
“The well is still there,” I tell her. “He didn’t or maybe couldn’t blow it up. The Entity is fine.”
“Really?” Marina replies, wiping her hands across her face.
“Seriously,” I say. “We’ve still got an extraterrestrial god to protect.”
“Thing should be protecting us,” grumbles Mark.
“What if he wasn’t trying to blow it up, though?” Sarah wonders. “What if the whole point is to, like, get at it? What if he had to clear the temple away?”
“Shit,” I reply, because that theory makes a lot of sense.
“They’re coming down,” Adam hisses in warning.
The Anubis slowly moves closer to the ground. Even with the temple destroyed, the massive warship is still too big to land in the clearing. All the same, the warship hovers so that it’s centered right over the crater. Gears clank as two wide metal gangways extend from the sides of the Anubis, a couple of sliding doors opening at their tops. From there, ranks of Mogadorians begin exiting the ship. They look to be the usual breed of vatborn warriors, all of them dressed in black body armor and toting blasters. The Mogs exit the ship with speedy efficiency and begin securing the area. We’re outnumbered at least ten to one and it won’t be long until they either discover our position or find the bombs we’ve attached to the Skimmers.
“We have to attack now!” I whisper harshly to the others. I reach over and pull Adam close. “We’ll go invisible and flank them. You guys detonate the bombs and get them distracted. Marina, are any of the guns we set up still in position?”
Marina narrows her eyes in concentration, then nods once. “Some. I’ll make it work.”
Mark sets aside his blaster and picks up the detonator, arming our explosives. Three-quarters of the bulbs don’t light up at all, indicating that we lost those bombs in the Anubis attack.
“Ready,” Mark says.
“Remember, if it goes bad, run for Lexa’s ship,” I remind them.
Adam, peeking out from behind the log, snaps his fingers at us. “There,” he says grimly. “There they both are.”
Setrákus Ra steps into view at the top of the ramp. He’s as intimidating as I remember—nearly eight feet tall, pale, that thick purple scar on his neck visible even at this distance. He’s clad in some kind of garish Mogadorian armor made of the same obsidian alloy as his minions’, except his juts up into clusters of spikes along the shoulders and attaches to a fur-trimmed leather cape that runs all the way to the ground. He looks every bit the vain intergalactic warlord and he seems to relish it.
He holds hands with Ella, her small fingers clasped gently by his armored ones. Marina gasps when she sees her. I’m not sure I would even recognize Ella if she hadn’t been screaming in my head just a few minutes ago. She looks smaller and thinner and paler, like the life has been sucked out of her. No, that’s not quite right. She doesn’t necessarily look sickly or diseased, I realize.
She looks Mogadorian.
Ella’s eyes are empty and her head hangs so that her chin is pressed against her chest. She doesn’t look even remotely aware of her surroundings. Her movements are robotic and dazed. She follows Setrákus Ra onto the ramp with total compliance. The Mogs sweeping the area stop what they’re doing to watch their ruler and his heir descend from the Anubis, all of them doing this lame fist-on-chest salute.
Setrákus Ra stops about halfway down the ramp. His eyes sweep across the jungle, searching for us.
“I know you’re out there!” Setrákus Ra bellows, his voice carrying through the hushed jungled. “I’m glad! I want you to see what happens next!” Setrákus Ra shouts over his shoulder, into the Anubis. “Lower it!”
In response to his command, a trapdoor opens on the warship’s underbelly. Slowly, a large piece of machinery telescopes out from the Anubis. It’s like a length of pipe with support struts and scaffolding built around it. The pipe’s sides are covered with complicated circuits and gauges. There’s more than just Mogadorian tech to Setrákus Ra’s steadily lowering device, though. Engraved into the metal sides between all the electronics are strange glyphs that remind me of the symbols scarred into our ankles. Also, and I can’t be one hundred percent sure about this, but it looks like those engravings are done in Loralite. Whatever this device is, it looks to be as much a Loric-Mogadorian hybrid as Setrákus Ra.
“I don’t like the look of that,” I say quietly.
“Nope,” Sarah replies.
“We should blow it up,” Mark suggests.
“Whatever he intends to use that for, we can’t let it happen,” Marina agrees.
“All right. So we destroy his toy, rescue Ella and then either take the Anubis or hightail it back to Lexa,” I say.
“You make it sound so easy,” Adam replies.
Even though he can’t see us, Setrákus Ra is still on his rant. “For centuries I’ve worked to harness the power of Lorien, to utilize it in ways more efficient than nature intended. Now, finally . . .”
Blah, blah, blah. Quickly, I gauge the distance between Ella and the nearest wired-to-explode Skimmer. Pretty far. I don’t think she’ll be in the blast radius. As Setrákus Ra drones on, I glance at the others.
“I’ve heard enough. What about the rest of you?”
Everyone nods. They’re ready.
“Get low,” I say, remembering how Mark got struck by shrapnel just a few minutes ago.
Everyone takes cover. This is it.
“Hit it,” I say to Mark.
Fingers flying across the controller, Mark flips the detonation switches.
True, some of the Skimmers we wired to explode became disconnected from their fuses when the Anubis bombed the Sanctuary. And true, others already exploded during that impact. So we don’t get the widespread destruction that we would’ve if our neatly arranged Skimmer-bombs had all detonated at once as planned.
But it’s still pretty freaking effective.
The Mogs are too busy respectfully listening to Setrákus Ra’s latest pompous douchebag speech to see it coming. Five Skimmers scattered around the crater explode in blossoms of white-hot fire. I can feel the heat from here and have to shield my eyes. At least thirty Mogs are dusted immediately, their bodies completely engulfed in the flames. More perish when the Skimmers’ parts go flying in every direction. I watch one warrior get lopped in half vertically by a cartwheeling windshield and another crushed beneath a flaming seating column.
The best part is the panic. The Mogs don’t know what just hit them and so they start firing towards the exploded ships, not certain where the real threat is actually hiding. At least a few go down as a result of friendly fire. And then Marina and I use our telekinesis to fire off some of the blasters we hid in the jungle, confusing them even more.
A twisted wheel strut smashes down on the ramp right in front of Setrákus Ra and Ella. Maybe it was a little reckless of us to blow those ships—I think Setrákus Ra had to deflect that wheel with his telekinesis to keep it from hitting him and Ella. However, it’s good
to know that he doesn’t want to see Ella hurt any more than we do.
I grin. Setrákus Ra actually looks surprised by our counterattack. His speech ruined, the Mog leader hurriedly walks the rest of the way down the ramp, dragging Ella along with him.
“Find them!” he screams as he starts down the rocky incline of the crater, heading for the Loric well. “Kill them!”
“Let’s do this!” I yell, not loud enough to give away our position thanks to the crackling fires coming from the husks of the Skimmers, but loud enough to fire up my allies. It’s do-or-die time.
I grab Adam’s hand and we go invisible. I take the lead, bringing us in a wide arc around the Mogs that will eventually get us close to the crater and Setrákus Ra’s device. Marina keeps up the distracting blaster fire, using guns hidden in different locations to keep the Mogs guessing. I memorized the locations where we hid our extra blasters, so I’m able to avoid the cross fire.
At least, I’m able to avoid it for about the first twenty yards. Then, dumb luck strikes. One of the Mogs, his back on fire from the Skimmer explosions, stumbles towards us, firing wildly. I dive out of the way and so does Adam.
But we dive in separate directions.
Just like that, Adam pops back into the visible world.
“Shit,” he says, bringing his own blaster up and gunning down the nearest Mog.
“There!” shouts one of the other warriors.
So much for doing this guerrilla-style.
Seeing Adam in danger, Bernie Kosar is the first one to launch into battle. One second he’s a toucan, innocently flying towards the nearest group of Mogadorians, and a blink of an eye later he’s in the shape of a muscular lion, slashing and snapping his way through our enemies. A lot of the Mogs are still scrambling from the explosions and haven’t even seen Adam yet, so Bernie Kosar easily gets the drop on them. He’s faster and more ferocious than the last time I saw him fight, angrier maybe, and I remember that he nearly died back in Chicago. Whenever the Mogs do manage to draw a bead on him, Bernie Kosar shape-shifts into a smaller form—a bug or a bird—making himself an impossible target. Then, when he’s in a better position to kill, Bernie Kosar turns back into his predator form. The transitions are so smooth, it’s almost beautiful.