Both of us fall silent, sitting next to each other on one of the infirmary’s stiff cots. Marina leans against me and holds my hand. Both of us stare down at the speckled-tile floor.
After a little while, Marina begins to speak softly. “After Eight was killed, I was so angry. It wasn’t just the way it happened. It wasn’t just that I was falling in love with him. It was . . . we’ve all lost people before, you know? But with Eight, he was—he was the first person I imagined a future with. Does that make sense? Growing up in the monastery, with Adelina avoiding my training, denying the war—it was like knowing a disaster was coming and taking no precautions. Like doom was always right around the corner, just a few more scars to go before they’d come for me. I prayed with the sisters, heard them talk about heaven like the humans believe, but I never dared imagine myself in that world. I never imagined an after . . . an after anything. Not until I met Eight. I could imagine what might happen next when I was with him. And the present, that got better, too. When Five killed him, all that got taken away. I felt . . . I still feel . . . cheated, I guess. Robbed.”
I nod along with Marina’s words. “I met Sarah right after the third scar, when I was next. Marked for death. It should’ve been the worst time of my life, but somehow, meeting her, she made it all better. My Cêpan, Henri, he thought I was nuts. I think he understood eventually, though. She gave me something to fight for. Kinda like what you said, it felt like there was finally something beyond just surviving for the sake of more surviving. And now . . .”
“And now,” Marina repeats, her voice sad and thoughtful. “Now what do we do?”
“Nothing left to do but finish this,” I say, feeling my muscles tighten at the words. Marina doesn’t loosen her grip on my hand.
“At the Sanctuary, before Setrákus Ra destroyed it, the Loric Entity let me speak with Eight,” Marina says. I give her a stunned look. I didn’t know something like that was even possible. She smiles sadly in response. “It was so brief, just a few seconds. But it was really him, John. It gave me faith that there could be something more. It isn’t all darkness and death.”
I turn away from her. I know she’s trying to give me hope. I’m just not ready for that yet. The only thing I want is revenge.
“Afterwards, I felt such a sense of peace. My anger was gone.” Marina chuckles harshly, as if remembering what happened a few minutes ago, how she nearly took Five’s remaining eye out. “Obviously, it didn’t last. I’ve tried—I’ve always tried—to live honorably, righteously, the way the Elders would want. In the face of everything that’s happened, I’ve tried to hold on to myself. Yet all it takes is seeing Five in the hallway to bring out the worst in me, to make the rage come back.”
“Maybe that’s not your worst self,” I tell Marina. “Maybe that’s just who we need to be right now.”
“And who will we be after, John?”
“After doesn’t matter anymore,” I tell her. “We’ve already lost so much. If we don’t win, if we don’t stop Setrákus Ra, then what was it all for?”
I realize that Marina’s hand has begun to emanate a painful cold. Instead of jerking my hand away, I let my Lumen turn on. I push heat back at her.
“Without Sarah, I don’t care about what happens to me,” I continue. “I just want to destroy them, destroy Setrákus Ra, once and for all. That’s all that matters anymore.”
Marina nods. She doesn’t judge me for these words. I think she understands. She knows what it’s like to want to throw yourself forwards, maintain momentum to keep from breaking down.
“I only hope there’s something left of the people we were, something left of us to rebuild, when it’s all over,” Marina says quietly.
“I hope so too,” I admit.
“Good,” she replies. “Now, let’s get started.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEXA KEEPS THE FLIGHT BACK FROM NIAGARA Falls low and cautious. We don’t want to ping on any Mogadorian radar if they’re sending more ships into the area. I stand beside her in the cockpit, the waterfall battleground receding behind us.
Adam’s voice comes in clear and excited over the comm.
“I’ve got a lot of chatter from the warship in Chicago. They’re missing some Skimmers they sent to Niagara Falls. And that other ship from Toronto is on its way there; you’re getting out just ahead of it,” Adam reports. “The trueborn in command is worried that his Skimmers haven’t checked in. I assume that’s you guys’ doing, right?”
I chuckle. “Not us. The newbies.”
“Oh, good for them,” Adam replies, his surprise audible.
“Crushing a crew of Mogs is like initiation,” I say casually. Lexa glances up at this, a tight frown on her face. I look away from her.
“Probably helped that the vatborn had orders to take them alive,” Adam adds.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I guess the commander wanted to make a gift of them to Setrákus Ra.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, he screwed up.”
“Anyway,” Adam continues, “this commander, now he’s requesting permission to divert from his position in Chicago, especially since the bombardment orders haven’t come in like promised. He wants to lock down the Loralite stone at Niagara Falls in case more Garde teleport through.”
I grimace. That’s exactly what Ella was worried about.
“They won’t find anything,” I tell Adam. “We took care of the stone.”
Back at Niagara Falls, while Sam and Daniela helped the four new Garde onto the ship, I walked over to where Ella was having a weird little commune with the outcropping of cobalt-blue rock. She had her arms wrapped around the smooth stone, her cheek pressed against its side. It throbbed with Loric energy, and for a moment I was worried that she might be about to teleport away. Or do something even weirder.
“Ella, you ready to go . . . ?” I asked softly, not wanting to disturb her.
She didn’t respond right away. The Loralite stone flickered brightly for a moment, suddenly transparent, veins of electric energy visible inside. Then, a moment later, the stone faded, the cobalt blue seeped away and it looked dull, like any number of rocks jutting out around the falls. Ella turned around, frowned and dusted off her hands.
“Ready,” she said to me.
I didn’t move. Instead, I pointed at the stone. “What did you just do?”
“I turned it off,” she replied. “Don’t want anybody teleporting here if the Mogadorians know about it.”
I looked from the stone to Ella. “You can do that? Control them?”
“Didn’t know until I tried,” Ella replied, her eyes literally aglow. “Since the Sanctuary, since I . . . fell into the energy, I’ve felt connected.”
“Connected to what? Lorien?”
“That, yes. And Earth. Everything. It’s fading, though. Whatever Legacy did to me, I don’t think the effects are going to last.” Ella started walking towards the ship. “Come on. I need to go have a very unpleasant conversation with John.”
I nodded like I understood what Ella was talking about. I decided it was in all our best interests just to let Ella do her thing. She’d been through a lot, seen more than I could imagine. Let her handle the mystical. I’d handle the dirty work.
“Six, you there?”
Adam’s impatient voice comes over the radio. I’d spaced out, thinking about Ella and her effect on the Loralite. From her seat behind the controls, Lexa peers up at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m here,” I reply. “What’s the response been from the Mogs? They going to move that warship?”
“They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. With Setrákus Ra out of commission, they’re all just yelling at each other. Some think Setrákus Ra would appreciate the commander’s decision to pursue Garde; others think he’s mad to question Beloved Leader’s orders to stay put. You really messed up their whole operation, Six.”
I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t feel a bit of pride at Adam’s words. Still,
a nagging voice in the back of my mind knows that it wasn’t good enough. Eventually, Setrákus Ra will rise, and this temporary advantage will be gone.
“Their entire chain of command is starting to unravel,” Adam continues, energized. “I mean, there’s no page in the Great Book that tells the Mogs what to do if their immortal Leader suddenly vanishes. John and I think we should seriously be exploiting this before Setrákus Ra wakes up and reasserts control.”
“You have ideas?”
“I think so.” Adam pauses. “They might be a little dangerous, though.”
“What isn’t dangerous?” I reply.
When Adam’s off the comm, Lexa catches my eye. I can tell that she’s got something to say, so I linger in the cockpit.
“Those kids we picked up . . . ,” she says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“They seem ready to you?”
“Were the nine of us ready when we boarded this ship?” I reply.
Lexa gives me a look. I stare back, and she eventually turns to the front window, letting the matter drop. I leave her side and open the door to the passenger area, lean against the frame and observe our new arrivals.
There’s Fleur, her blond hair pulled back and damp with sweat and river water. I get why Nine was panting like a cartoon dog when he saw her in the video. She’s beautiful. Except now there are blaster burns up and down her arms, on her shoulders, the side of her neck—charred skin, blisters, bubbles of flesh. She shivers as Daniela carefully presses a cold compress to her wounds.
“You’re gonna be just fine,” Daniela says to her. “John can heal these burns right up. Good as new.”
Fleur nods, though the motion seems pretty uncomfortable. She has to grit her teeth to respond to Daniela in accented English. “You’ve— This has happened to you before, yes?”
Daniela blows one of her braids out of her face. “Actually, I’ve been pretty good about not getting shot so far. Only been doing this whole defend-the-planet shit since the invasion started, though. So I got time.”
“Oh,” Fleur replies, seeming almost disappointed. “I thought you were one of them. Or at least had, ah, been doing this for a while.”
Daniela beams at that but shakes her head. It’s crazy to me that Daniela is being seen as a veteran Garde. She survived New York City; that’s no small accomplishment. Doesn’t mean she isn’t green. Us original Garde had years to train for a battle like this. These new kids don’t have that luxury. They’re getting thrown right into the mix.
Daniela notices me watching her. She leaves Fleur with the cold compress and walks over to join me in the door of the cockpit.
“All good?” I ask her.
“They’ll live,” she replies. “The bug kid, he won’t let me look at him.”
She’s talking about Bertrand. Through the open door, I can see him lying on his side in the medical bay. He looks like a freaking teddy bear. He’s got blaster burns, same as Fleur, but most of them are on his back and butt.
“Why not?” I ask Daniela.
“Either he doesn’t want me to see his ass, or he’s embarrassed that he ran from the Mogs,” she replies.
“He only ran after he used his bugs to clog the engines on one of those Skimmers and crash it,” I say. “He’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Shit, you know how many times I ran away or turned invisible to hide in my younger days? You can’t always fight.”
Daniela laughs. “Younger days,” she repeats. “You’re what . . . two years older than them? Yeah, you’re a real old lady, Six.”
“Feels that way,” I reply, flashing her a smile. Daniela’s right. These four, they’re only a year or two younger than me, at most. Yet they strike me as just kids. Hell, Ella seems older than this bunch. Although maybe I’m confusing hardness with age.
My gaze drifts to Nigel. He was the essence of confidence in that YouTube video, the clear leader of this ragtag group. He’s still trying to exude that now, his arms stretched across the backs of two seats, wanting to look supercasual about his first-ever ride in an alien spacecraft. The whole punk-rocker costume, now splattered with blood and mud, looks like a kid playing dress-up. As I watch, he reaches one of his slender hands inside his vest and pulls out a crushed pack of cigarettes. He manages to find a cigarette that’s mostly whole and sticks it between his lips. When it comes to lighting up, Nigel can’t manage it. His hands are shaking too bad.
“You can’t smoke that in here,” I tell him. That’s not really true. There aren’t any rules about smoking in this cursed ship, and if there were, I wouldn’t care about breaking them. I just want to give Nigel an excuse to stop struggling with his lighter.
Nigel puts away the cigarettes and flashes me a crooked grin. “Hoped you aliens would have a more enlightened perspective on lung cancer, what with your healing powers and all,” Nigel says, anxiously cracking his knuckles. “So, ah, we off to the next fight now or . . . ?”
“You can relax,” I tell him. “We’re going someplace safe. Hopefully, no more fighting today.”
They shouldn’t be fighting at all.
A voice in my head. In the last row of the passenger area, Ella peeks over the back of a seat. Her vivid electric eyes meet mine.
What do you mean? I ask telepathically, remembering Lexa’s comment about this group’s readiness.
They’re being brave, but there is so much fear, Ella says. We were born into war, Six. Even I had years to prepare myself for this possibility. They’ve had hours. We should be protecting them, not marching them into battle.
As if on cue, Fleur begins to cry quietly. Daniela goes to her and gently rubs her back.
What other choice do we have? I ask Ella. It’s now or never. Win or die.
When all was lost on Lorien, the Elders sent us here to fight another day, Ella responds. Setrákus Ra doesn’t want to destroy Earth; he wants to colonize it. If we fail to stop him, these new Garde could form the backbone of the resistance to come.
That’s a bleak outlook, I say.
When you can see the future, you start to plan for all eventualities.
Looking around the cabin, I have to admit that Ella might be right. Some of these kids would be liabilities if we brought them to the assault on Setrákus Ra’s base. We’d have to spend half our time making sure they didn’t get killed.
Well, Ella adds, reading my mind. There’s one exception.
We both look at Ran, sitting rigid in her seat with her hands on her knees, palms up, almost like she’s meditating. Of the four, she’s the only one who doesn’t look at all shaken. She was ready to blast us when we landed at the falls and probably would’ve if Nigel hadn’t stopped her. She’s got the look of a survivor.
Ran senses me watching her and looks in my direction. According to Nigel, she hardly speaks any English. She holds my gaze for a moment, nods once and then goes back to her staring contest with the wall.
What’s her deal? I ask Ella.
She’s already endured great loss and much pain, Ella replies cryptically. She’s a fighter. Ella pauses. I’m sorry, Six; I shouldn’t be prying through their minds, and I shouldn’t be telling you all this.
I cross my arms and think about these new four, about the human Garde popping up all over the world, knowing that Ella’s still listening in.
Did the Entity put any thought into which humans it granted Legacies? Was it dumb luck? Were they selected for their potential? Did the Entity put them in places where it knew we’d need them?
You could ask the same questions about us, she replies.
That’s not an answer.
Isn’t it?
I give Ella a dirty look, but her eyes are closed now. She’s out of my head.
Maybe it’s better not to know how much of our lives is luck and how much is destiny. Better just to keep plowing forwards. If we can keep them alive long enough, maybe these kids will one day get to ponder the same existential questions on their way to doing something heroic. Hopefully, I’m alive and retired to
an island by then.
An island with Sam. If there’s anyone on this planet who earned his Legacies, it’s him. No way is it just a coincidence. Everything he and his family have done to help the Garde, the Entity must have recognized that. He’s the one piece of this whole cosmic Legacy bullshit that makes sense to me.
I watch Sam from the cockpit doorway as he stares out the window, chewing on his lip, lost in thoughts of his own. I’ve seen that look before, just like I’ve seen the one that follows—his eyebrows shoot up, and he flinches like he just got splashed with cold water. That’s how Sam looks when he gets an idea.
He’s out of his seat quickly and headed in my direction, blushing a bit when he realizes that I’ve been watching him this whole time.
“Hey, can I check out something in the cockpit?” he asks.
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re not going to almost crash the ship again, are you?”
“Not planning on it, no.”
With a lingering glance at Ella, I walk with Sam into the cockpit and close the door behind us. Lexa looks up as we crowd in.
“You’ve still got one of those Mog cloaking devices hooked up in here, don’t you?” Sam asks.
Lexa nods and points to a spot underneath the dashboard, where a bunch of wires have been yanked out of the console and hooked up to a plain-looking black box. “Right there.”
Sam bends down to have a look, then picks up the box in his hands. He studies it.
“What’s he doing?” Lexa asks me. “Should I be worried?”
“Sam’s assured me he’s not going to crash us.”
“Oh good,” Lexa replies.
With Sam engrossed with the cloaking device, I sit down on the arm of Lexa’s chair.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I blew you off before,” I say. “I think you’re right. Some of those kids probably aren’t ready. They did good today, maybe got a little lucky, but other than Ran and Daniela . . .” I shake my head.
“You see what I mean,” Lexa says. “Granted, I’m no Cêpan, but they need training before they do anything.”