I clench my fists. Before I know it I’m on my feet, my chair knocked over, and I’m storming through the office, throwing every framed photo and vase the landlord decorated my rented room with.
There’s a knock at my door.
“Lexa?” Zophie asks.
I close the file. I want to delete it from my hard drive and my memory, but all I have time to do is pull up a Montreal news site Zophie sent me before she comes in.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“Yes,” I lie. “I was just . . .”
But I don’t have any words. I look at her. Everything she’s done since the first missiles hit has been in order to reunite with her brother. But he’s gone. The Mogs have killed him, as they killed our planet and our people. I look at Zophie, and I wonder how she will ever handle this news. I can never show her the video, I know that. But how do I even find the words to explain things to her? How do I deal with the fallout of the knowledge I can barely deal with myself?
Because Janus being captured means we have failed. I have failed. We couldn’t save him, which means we might lose the other Garde as well. Just like Zane slipped away.
“What is it?” Zophie asks. “Lexa, you’re scaring me a little.”
There had been only a small window of hope after they’d told me about Zane—when I was flying through the sky of Lorien, looking for him, for evidence that the officials had made some kind of mistake. But then they’d found him in the wreckage. He was dead. I couldn’t pretend he might come back. He was here one instant and then gone.
Zophie still has faith, though. And knowing that, I make a decision that I hope I can live with.
I let her continue to dream.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s nothing. I was just feeling a little claustrophobic and helpless.”
She smiles sadly, and it’s like a dagger in my chest. I can’t look at her.
“But I wanted to tell you that I think we should look into the Montreal case you sent me. It’s only a few hours’ drive from here. I may go up there tomorrow.”
She seems excited by this—the first time I’ve seen her light up since we talked to Eric.
“The fresh air might do us some good,” she says, and I try not to cringe at the word “us” because I know I can’t sit beside her in a car all day tomorrow knowing what I know.
“You look stressed,” she continues. “I’ll make us some tea.”
She leaves. I realize my fists are still balled up, my fingers aching. I stretch them as I turn back to my computer, clicking once more on the forum.
There’s another message from Anonymous. From a Mog.
Anonymous: He is not the only one we have. There are many more. Loric and Human. Comply with us, and you can save them. Turn yourself in, and they won’t suffer the same fate as this one.
I clench my teeth. The Mog could be lying. From the way Janus spoke, it sounded as though they hadn’t captured any of the passengers from his ship.
Even if this bastard is telling the truth, there’s no way the Mogadorians are ever releasing their captives. Not after what they did to Janus. Not after they slaughtered our people and razed our cities.
Every ounce of anger I ever had towards the Loric Elders or anything else from Lorien seems inconsequential compared to the rage brewing inside of me towards the Mogadorians now. And I finally realize that they are also to blame for Zane’s death. The Elders made the Garde train as solders, yes. But only because they knew a threat was on the horizon. That the prophecy was true.
If it wasn’t for the damned Mogs, we could have lived our lives in peace. There wouldn’t have been cause for such severe training.
Zane might have lived to see his fourteenth birthday.
I tap out one more message before deleting my profile and post, my fingers hammers on the keyboard:
I will destroy you.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I AVOID ZOPHIE FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT, trying once again to find out where the video came from. But the Mogs’ tracks have been covered too well. There’s nothing for me to latch on to. I’m good, but our enemy is apparently better. And so I do the only thing I can do: I watch the video of Janus over and over again, frame by frame, trying to find any hint of where the Mogs were filming. But it’s just some brick room. It could be anywhere.
I hardly sleep. When I do, it’s restless. I rise with the sun and map out my route to Montreal.
I have to get out of this cabin. I need time to think about how I’m going to break this news to Zophie. How do you form the words that you know will destroy someone? I have no idea. What I do know is that I can’t spend the day with her—can’t spend any time with her—because knowing what I know and seeing the glimmer of hope still alive within her is torture. I think about sending her to Montreal instead of me, but this is a good, hard lead. There very well could be Mogs still running around, and while I’m no soldier, I’m probably more of a fighter than she is. I can’t send her into harm’s way.
So I decide to go alone.
I try to sneak out, already formulating an excuse to give her later—“I wanted to let you sleep and surprise you if there was any news!”—but she walks out of her bedroom just as I’m heading for the door.
“Lex, what are you . . . ,” she starts. Her eyes are heavy with sleep.
“I just wanted to get an early start on the trip,” I say.
“I thought we’d go together. If there’s anything that could lead us to Janus or the other—”
“No.” I cut her off a bit too harshly. She seems taken aback. I sigh and try to think of a valid excuse. “I mean . . . I just need to do this on my own. I’m so glad we’re in this together, but . . . I’m much more used to being by myself. That’s how I lived on Lorien. I just need a little space.”
I’m painfully aware of what terrible reasoning this is, given that I’ve spent the better part of the last two years in a tiny ship with two other people and a baby. So I keep talking.
“It’ll only be a few hours. I’ll be back by dark, unless I uncover something.”
She’s quiet for a few seconds.
“I’ll make dinner then,” she eventually says. She hands me one of the prepaid phones I’ve bought for us. “Call me as soon as you get there. And if you find anything. Just stay in touch, okay? I’ll be here looking for more leads.”
“Great,” I say.
I start to leave, but she steps forward and hugs me.
“Thanks for checking this one out,” she says quietly. “We’re going to find him.”
I hope she doesn’t notice that I tense in her arms, or that I can’t look her in the eyes when she lets me go.
“Be careful,” she says.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” I call over my shoulder.
In the car, I toss a bag that contains my souped-up laptop and a few of Raylan’s weapons onto the passenger seat. Zophie waves to me from the porch, and then I’m on the road.
The drive is scenic. Peaceful, even. The leaves are turning brilliant shades of orange and red. I would enjoy it if I could just get Janus and Zophie out of my mind. Every time I think of her waiting at home, still believing that her brother is out there, I feel sick to my stomach. I start to wonder if I’ve made a bad decision—that knowing that something terrible has happened to Janus is better than not knowing where he is or if he’s even alive. Eventually she’ll have to find out, or it might drive her mad.
When I get back, I’ll tell her. Maybe not the exact truth, but I will tell her that Janus is gone. I just have to figure out how.
An hour or so after I cross the Canadian border, I pick up my phone to check in with Zophie, but it has no signal. It’s only then that I realize the burner is only set to work off US cell towers. I glance at my map—I’m only half an hour from Montreal. I decide to soldier on.
At a gas station outside of the city, I buy a calling card and sidle up to a pay phone. I call the cabin’s landline, but in response I get a fast, repetitive beeping—
the kind of noise I’ve only heard once before while chasing a potential lead on Janus, when I called a number that was disconnected. I try again and get the same sound.
When Zophie doesn’t pick up the other burner, I start to panic. I try two more times but get no answer. I tell myself she’s just gone to the store, or she’s accidentally left the phone off the hook—any number of excuses that could result in her not answering.
I call my burner’s number so I can check my voice mail remotely. There’s one message. Of course it’s from her, left an hour ago.
“Lexa!” she shouts. “Lexa, you have to come back now! As soon as you get this.” She’s so excited. “I stumbled onto this Listserv of people calling themselves ‘Greeters’ who say they were recruited by an Elder. I posted on it anonymously, and someone’s already contacted me. I know you said to be careful about this stuff, but I just couldn’t wait. And besides, I made him prove he was one of us. He knows about Loridas and the Garde. He was on the other ship. He’s one of the Cêpan.”
My heart jumps into my throat.
“I asked the person what the pilot’s name was. He said Janus. He knew all about my brother.”
There’s a pause in the message. I can hear Zophie sniffling, fighting back tears.
“Lexa,” she says. “He says Janus is with them. My brother is on his way here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
My heart collapses, and before I realize it, I’m back in the car with my laptop open in front of me, connected to a satellite uplink. It’s not too late. I can still contact her. If she’s on her computer, I can send her a message. . . .
I pull up the live surveillance feed of the cabin on my laptop and choke. There are dozens of Mogs on our lawn. They wrestle with the Chimærae, who claw at the intruders. But the animals are being overpowered—there are hideous, gnashing beasts alongside the Mogadorians, and they tear into the Chimærae with terrifying ferocity. A few of our animals are already being bagged and loaded into a truck. Some fall and don’t get back up.
And in the middle of it all is Zophie. I scream at her, dozens of things that she can’t hear. I tell her to run. I tell her to fight. I apologize. She struggles valiantly alongside the Chimærae, tearing out of the grip of one Mogadorian, only to be grabbed by another. She has some kind of tool in her hand that she swings at him. A hammer or wrench—it’s hard to tell. She must have been caught off guard, without a real weapon. I watch in horror as she finally escapes, running up the porch and towards the front door. Blasters fire, missing her, creating smoking holes in the wooden cabin wall.
She’s intercepted by one of the Mog beasts the size of our station wagon—all horns and teeth, running at her on four legs. It catches her in its jaws, but she’s not done fighting. She swings the tool in her hand down straight into the monster’s eye. It howls in pain, dropping her, and I see that I completely underestimated her fighting abilities.
But it’s not over.
The Mog beast lets out a roar and swings its head at Zophie. The creature’s horned snout impales her. She stumbles towards the front door, a dark spot appearing and then growing on her stomach where the creature struck her. And then she falls. A few of the Chimærae surround her, turning into fanged monsters in order to protect her. But they can’t help now.
Seconds pass. Her chest stops rising.
She joins her brother.
The Chimærae must know this, because they leave her side, trying to save themselves. It’s no use, though. They’re overpowered. Captured. The Mogs seem furious with their horned creature—the one that just murdered my friend—and begin to beat it. Flames start to lick the sides of the cabin, the multitude of blaster shots having caught something on fire.
Soon afterwards, the video feed cuts out.
I begin to shake. Slightly at first, and then violently. For the first time in as long as I can remember, tears start to stream down my face in hot, wet rivers. I can’t stop them. My nose begins to run, and when I open my mouth to breathe, a sound comes out that isn’t Loric—it’s animal.
I start the car, ready to speed down the highway, to fly back to our cabin.
But it would be pointless. Zophie is gone. The Chimærae will be gone too by the time I get there. The cabin is burning and is probably still being watched by the Mogs.
I can’t fight those Mogadorian bastards and win. Not hand-to-hand or face-to-face. Not that many of them.
The noise comes from my mouth again, raw and full of rage.
And then I’m driving, as fast as I can. Night falls and I continue, aimlessly, without any destination, until the car runs out of gas on the side of the road. Then I get out and run. No one is here to find me this time. No LDA squad tracking the ship I’d stolen and taking me back home. It’s just me. I run until I’m so exhausted that I feel like I can’t take another step.
And then I keep going.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE MOGADORIANS KILLED Zophie, a seemingly unrelated story is published in someone’s online journal. It’s a short account of an incident at Philadelphia International Airport. A man refused to let a piece of carry-on luggage go through the airport scanner. He and his companion, a young boy, were scheduled to fly to Africa. There’s a picture of the two of them, the man older and flustered, the boy four, maybe five years old and freckled. The man holds one side of a chest that’s covered in Loric symbols. A member of airport security holds on to the other. I don’t know who they are, but they are almost certainly one of the Garde and his Cêpan. I want to reach through the photo and shake the old man for being so foolish, but I unfortunately don’t have that Legacy. I only hope he will learn. That he will do better.
I destroy every line of the journal’s code and overload the host site’s servers for good measure. Then, over the course of lunch in a diner in South Carolina, I track down the writer and photographer’s email address and send her a message containing a computer virus under the guise of it being a note from a fan of her journal. By the time I finish dessert, she’s downloaded my worm, which rapidly eats up her hard drive. I pay my waitress and leave, continuing my aimless wandering.
Zane is dead. So is Zophie. And Janus.
I’m alone again, just as I was on Lorien.
Well, not technically, I suppose. Assuming the other Garde and Cêpan survived and that Ella and Crayton are still in hiding, there are twenty other Loric who I know of on Earth.
I consider flying back to Egypt, trying to track down Crayton and Ella. But they must be long gone by now. And even if I did find them, what if I unintentionally led the Mogs to them? What if somehow my presence ruined things?
I do better on my own, anyway. Sitting behind a computer screen. Gathering information. Piecing things together.
When I think of what happened to Zophie, I have to swallow down the urge to vomit. I blame myself. I should have been up-front with her about Janus as soon as I knew he was dead. I realize that now, but there’s nothing I can do. She’s gone.
My blood fills with rage and fire when I think of the Mogadorians. I’m still not sure why the Elders chose to send such a small number of our people to Earth, but I know that they must be important. Why else would the Mogs be here, going after them? Janus said they had scattered. I don’t know if that was the truth or one final lie he was able to keep from his captors, but going their separate ways would make the most sense. The photo of the duo headed to Africa seems to corroborate his claim.
And so, what Zophie and I were trying to do—to find them all—was really dangerous for everyone. For the remaining Loric. I realize that now. It would be much better for them to stay hidden. At least until the Garde are strong enough to fight.
I can still help, though, and by doing so hurt the Mogs. From afar. Because the closer I get to people, the more they tend to get hurt. And I can’t go through losing someone else. I just don’t think I have it in me.
What I can do is work behind the scenes. I can be a phantom. Anonymous. The ghost in the machi
ne. Just like I did with the blog—I can watch out for my people in the digital world. Cover up their tracks when I can. Help ensure that their mission, whatever it is, is completed. Find any information that might help them along the way. Train myself in this planet’s technologies until I can control them fully.
I can try to help protect my people.
Maybe I’m not a ghost. Maybe I’m something else. Something more like a guardian.
I can gather resources for them should the day come when they are ready to rise against the Mogs. There are many powerful and dangerous weapons on Earth. And some not of this world too. There’s still a Loric ship that can fly. Janus’s ship. Maybe the Mogs have it. Maybe it’s still hidden somewhere.
I wonder how hard it would be for me to find it.
Excerpt from The Revenge of Seven
DON’T MISS BOOK FIVE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING I AM NUMBER FOUR SERIES
CHAPTER ONE
THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER. WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, there’s nothing but darkness.
I’m in a bed, that much I can tell, and it’s not my own. The mattress is enormous, somehow contoured perfectly to my body, and for a moment I wonder if my friends moved me to one of the bigger beds in Nine’s penthouse. I stretch my legs and arms out as far as they’ll go and can’t find the edges. The sheet draped over me is more slippery than soft, almost like a piece of plastic, and it is radiating heat. Not just heat, I realize, but also a steady vibration that soothes my sore muscles.
I try to remember what happened to me, but all I can think of is my last vision. It felt like I was in that nightmare for days. I can still smell the burned-rubber stench of Washington, D.C. Smog clouds lingered over the city, a reminder of the battle fought there. Or the battle that will be fought there, if my vision actually comes true.
The visions. Are they part of a new Legacy? None of the others have Legacies that leave them traumatized in the morning. Are they prophecies? Threats sent by Setrákus Ra, like the dreams John and Eight used to have? Are they warnings?