“So far so good,” she says.
“Most beautiful storm I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.
Lexa is already in the cockpit of her ship, with Marina riding shotgun. Adam sits in the back, a Mogadorian blaster across his lap. He avoids making eye contact with me. I notice a rustling in the front of his shirt and realize he’s got Dust with him, the Chimæra shrunk down to a gray mouse until it’s time to join the fight. Nine piles in across from Adam, and Bernie Kosar bounds in after him. Five follows after Nine but pauses in front of me and Six, his one eye lingering on the light show outside.
“You know, they’re going to shoot us to pieces the minute we fly out of here,” he says.
“Not if we give them something else to shoot at,” I say.
Six and I usher Five onto the ship, follow behind him and close the door after us.
“Good to go?” I call out to Lexa.
“Say the word,” she replies.
Sam and Rex, now in charge of maneuvering our warship, have us positioned so that the docking bay doors are right above the horde of Mogs gathered below. They crowd the area in front of the mountain’s entrance, shooting up through the force field that prevents us from returning fire. They haven’t breached our warship’s defenses yet, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. I guess we made them mad when we took down their flagship.
“All right, everyone with telekinesis, grab hold of those Skimmers,” I say, indicating the dozens of Mog ships that we stripped for parts earlier. “Let’s dump them. Lexa—”
“Use the ships as cover,” she finishes my thought. “I got it, John. The drop won’t take more than ten seconds.”
Nine cracks his knuckles. “We’re ready.”
As a group, we exert our telekinesis to shove the dormant Skimmers out the docking bay doors. To the Mogs down below, it must look like they’re being dive-bombed by dozens of their own ships. Lexa eases our ship out with the others. If it wasn’t night, if it wasn’t chaos, maybe the Mogs would be able to pick our vessel out from the others. Instead, they shoot at everything; the darkness comes alive with streaking arcs of blaster fire.
It’s oddly silent on board the ship.
For a moment, we’re in free fall. All of us hold on to seatbacks or safety harnesses. We absorb a few hits from the blaster volley but nothing that knocks us off course or does any real damage.
The first of the Skimmers begin to hit the mountain’s force field and explode above the Mogs. Nothing gets through, of course. That doesn’t stop some of the stupider ones for scattering or ducking for cover. Little fireballs pockmark the force field, and it’s through that heat that we pass.
“Here we go,” Lexa says.
At the last possible moment, she brings us out of free fall with a flourish, levels us off and drops us to ground level. She lands our ship right on top of a few dozen Mogs, crushing them into the ground. Now that we’re the only ship that’s gotten through the force field, they’re focusing their fire on us. Nine kicks open the exit ramp, welcoming it.
“LET’S GO!” he bellows as the whistle and hiss of blaster fire fills the air.
Five leaps towards Six and Adam, scoops one up in each meaty arm, and flies them out the exit. They go invisible before they’re outside the confines of the ship. Five’s a skilled flier; I have to trust that he’ll carry them unharmed over this mass of Mogs and get them in the entrance.
That leaves me, Nine, Marina and BK to lead the assault.
None of us says anything as we stride into the chaos, right towards hundreds of Mogs ready to kill us. We don’t need to discuss strategy. We’ve done this before.
As soon as we’re clear of the ramp, Lexa gets her ship out of harm’s way. She doesn’t fly straight up, though. Instead, she takes off with a corkscrew, cleaving through the first wave of Mogadorians. I’m grateful for that.
Blaster fire burns the air around us. With the chaos created by Lexa’s departure, the explosions overhead and the fact that they’re all crammed together in front of the cavern entrance, the Mogs are just as likely to hit each other as they are to hit us. Even so, Nine and Marina don’t waste any time telekinetically ripping their guns away from them. Soon, it’s raining hardware as they bring the blasters down on the Mogs’ heads.
I unleash my stone-vision, painting it across the nearest row of Mogs. As soon as I’ve done that, Marina jackhammers those Mogadorian statues with a barrage of icicles. Their bodies break apart into shards that Nine catches with his telekinesis and sets to spinning around us. It’s like we’re surrounded by a meteor shower of broken Mogadorian body parts. All the debris serves to act as cover, deflecting most of the Mog blaster shots.
There are a few piken scattered in the crowd of Mogs. The big beasts are fired up from all the mayhem and end up trampling through the vatborn to charge us. Hideous as always with their muscular bodies that look like someone crossbred an ox and a gorilla, then added fangs, claws and spiky gray skin, I briefly remember how one of these things used to terrify me. Back in Paradise, just one piken rampaging around our school almost killed our whole group.
Now, I stand my ground.
The piken closest to me gets met with a jet of fire from both of my extended palms. It screams and cooks, its thick body engulfed in flame. I pick it up with my telekinesis and sling it back into the crowd, hoping to crush some Mogs before the thing fully disintegrates.
Bernie Kosar latches on to a second piken. My old friend has taken on one of his favorite battle shapes: powerful wings, a lion’s body, an eagle’s head—essentially a griffin. With a flap of his wings, he gets over the piken, then smashes his beak through its spine.
Another piken bears down on Marina. Nine flashes in between them and punches clear through the piken’s snout. He grabs the underside of the beast’s jaw and lifts, snapping its head apart before tossing it aside. Nine’s arm is all carved up from shoving into the piken’s mouth, but Marina quickly heals him.
I sling fireballs into the Mogs. Whenever the blaster fire gets too heavy, I create some new cover with my stone-vision. We press forward, gaining ground. The Mogs are beginning to backpedal towards the cavern entrance.
That doesn’t last long. Five appears behind them, his body completely steel, holding a blaster in one hand and brandishing his blade in the other. He lights up a bunch of Mogs from behind before taking to the air. With methodical glee, Five repeatedly cannonballs into the crowd, crushing Mogs beneath his heavy metal frame, standing up, stabbing any around him then taking flight again to repeat the process.
John, a calm voice in my mind, a reprieve from the madness around me. It’s Ella. Six says the shields are down.
I look around. We’ve halved the number of Mogs out here, but there’s still a lot of fighting to be done. I’ve got blaster burns on my arms and chest that I quickly heal. Nine and Marina are constantly needing to heal between assaults too. Five’s the only one who looks like he’d be happy mopping up vatborn for the rest of the night. Time to finish this up.
Marina, I reach out telepathically. Give me an igloo.
Marina reacts immediately. She creates a dome of ice over her and Nine, thick and sturdy. As soon as it’s created, I hit the structure with my stone-vision, turning it from ice to solid granite. Then I run forward, joining them underneath it. BK charges in, too. Five sees what we’re doing and snorts. Instead of diving in with us, he simply flies clear of the battle. Mogs run towards us, but Marina and I quickly seal the entrance.
“Sweet bunker,” Nine comments in the dark.
Open fire, I tell Ella.
The four of us huddle underneath the stone igloo as our warship bombards the Mogs surrounding it. The ground shakes, and the air gets hot enough that Marina has to start generating a field of cold to keep us from boiling. Cracks form in our makeshift structure, and chunks rain down on our hair; but I quickly seal them up with my stone-vision.
It only takes about thirty seconds.
When the shooting stops, Nine slams thro
ugh the stone cover with his telekinesis. Outside, the ground is completely scorched. Thick dust hangs in the air, and twisted chunks of melted blasters litter the ground.
The entrance to the mountain base is clear.
Five floats down from above. “There weren’t many left inside,” he says with a crazed smile. “They panicked when you brought down the Anubis and rushed out here to honor their Beloved Leader.”
“Did you see him?” I ask. “Any sign of Setrákus Ra?”
He shakes his head. “Probably cowering down in the vats.”
We take a moment to catch our breath, then move forward into the cavernous complex. The place is just like I remember it. The gray stone walls are polished smooth, accented every twenty feet or so by a power conduit or a halogen lamp. The air is cool in here, the ventilation system on full blast. On our left, there’s a staircase carved out of the rock that leads up to where we think the control rooms are. On our right, a tunnel slants downward, deeper into the mountain, down to the vats.
He’s waiting for us there. I know it.
A handful of vatborn come charging out from the tunnel. Stragglers who missed the real fight. I dispatch them with a fireball, almost like an afterthought.
There’s no sign of Six and Adam yet.
“What are we waiting for?” Five grumbles. He and Nine press ahead, towards the down-sloping tunnel, like they’re in a competition to get there first. Marina and BK stay on either side of me.
Six says to give her a minute, Ella’s voice enters my mind.
Is there a problem? I think back at her. I’m about to cast about with my own telepathy for Six, find out what is delaying her, when a pained shout draws my attention up ahead.
“That was Nine,” Marina says, alarmed.
We run forward and down, BK on our heels, into the narrowing tunnel. Nine and Five, so eager for more combat and looking to show each other up, got way too far ahead of us. As we run, the air gets humid and stifling, laden with a smell like rotten meat covered with gasoline.
After a quick sprint through the bottleneck, Marina and I emerge in the mountain base’s cavernous central chamber. Here, a rocky ledge spirals downward along the walls, passing dozens of tunnels, crisscrossed here and there by arched stone bridges. Two huge columns run from the floor to the ceiling overhead. Last time, I remember how busy with Mogadorians this place was, how the structure reminded me of a beehive and the Mogs drones. Now, the place is all but empty.
The ledge terminates a half mile down at a vast lake of the black Mogadorian sludge. I remember that being green the last time I was here and reeking of chemicals, but that was before Setrákus Ra arrived on Earth and really put his experiments to work. There are machines down there now, jutting up from the lake of ooze like oil derricks. Even from this height, I can see the occasional blue spark of Loric energy bubble up from that goo and then, just as quickly, dissolve.
“There!” Marina shouts, grabbing my arm.
Nine stands on the ledge just underneath ours, clutching his face. I grab Marina and fly us over to him.
“Thing came out of nowhere,” he growls. The side of his face is burned and cracked, like it was splashed with chemicals, patches of hair on that side of his head now bleached white. Quickly, Marina presses her hand against Nine’s cheek and begins to heal him.
“Where—?”
I don’t need to finish my question. I see them, swooping through the air below our current perch. Five flies in a loop, dodging away from a Mogadorian trueborn, definitely an Augment, one that can fly also. It reminds me of a ghost, its form raggedy, wisps of shadows trailing out from its lower body.
I jump off the ledge and fly down to help Five. BK follows me, back in his griffin form. I quickly glance over my shoulder and see Nine, healed, sprinting down, too, using his antigravity Legacy to stick to the walls. Marina clings to him in a piggyback position.
As I get closer, I get a better look at this latest Augment. His entire lower body is missing. From the waist down, he’s nothing but semisolid shadows. These shadow limbs wave back and forth like fishtails and propel him through the air. Worse yet, his jaw and a good part of his upper chest are missing. It looks like he’s stuck in a perpetual scream, an acidic green spray frothing from his mouth. That’s what burned Nine, and it’s what is currently tormenting Five, the spray melting through even his metal-encased skin.
The Augment doesn’t see me coming. He’s about to take another pass at Five when I hit him full speed with both feet between the shoulder blades. I pin him like that and ride him two hundred feet down, onto the ledge, where he smashes with a sickeningly wet sound and stops moving.
Five lands next to me and, with no fanfare, shoves his blade through the back of the already-dead Augment’s head. Making sure, I guess. He looks up at me, and, for the first time, I see something like horror in Five’s eye.
“Did you see that thing?” he asks me.
“I saw it.”
“Why . . . ?” He shakes his head. “He promised the Mogs, he promised me, new Legacies. Who would want something like that?”
I shake my head and approach Five, touching the eroded sections of his arms and shoulders so I can heal them. He flinches away for a moment, then calms down and lets it happen.
“He’s a madman, Five,” I say. “You were taken in by a madman.”
“He has to die.”
“Finally, we agree on something,” Nine says, jumping down from the ledge above ours. Marina climbs off his back and studies the dead Augment.
“This is an abomination,” she says. “He has twisted the work of Lorien into something . . . something . . .” Marina covers her mouth with the back of her hand and walks away. Her path takes her across the entrance to the nearest tunnel, where she immediately freezes. “Oh . . . oh my God.”
We all rush to her side.
It’s the smell that hits me first. The rotten odor, the stench of decay, made all the more inescapable by the oppressive heat down here, close as we now are to the vat of black ooze.
Bodies are piled high in this tunnel. Some of them have the dark hair and pale skin of Mogadorians. Those are half-disintegrated, warped, their limbs turned into fragile, dusty husks. Others are unmistakably human. They look like they’ve been drained, their flesh gray and puckered, dried black veins visible beneath their skin. It looks like he’s sucked the vitality right out of them. A closer look reveals that, despite their shriveled appearances, the human bodies are exclusively teenagers.
I remember Lawson telling me about how the Russians were turning over suspected Garde to the Mogadorians, and it dawns on me. These are ours. The human Garde from the countries that surrendered and the other ones his people tracked down. He pulled the Loric spark right out of them.
Staring at this, unconsciously, I’ve drawn my Voron dagger. It glows with a dull red energy now. Seeing it in my hand, Nine takes a step back.
“Careful with that thing, Johnny,” he says weakly. His eyes are actually filled with tears from the sight of the bodies. Marina covers her face. Five simply stares.
I’ve charged the dagger with Dreynen without even realizing it. When I talked to Ella, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use my Ximic to copy this power because of how unnatural it feels. But no, I’ve never wanted to cut someone off from Lorien so badly as I do Setrákus Ra.
I spin away from this latest atrocity, stand at the edge of the ledge and scream.
“SETRÁKUS RA!”
There’s a rumble overhead. Rock dust drifts down from the ceiling. It feels like the earth itself moved. I’m not sure if that was caused by my yelling or something else.
And I don’t care. Because I see movement down below. In the center of the lake of Mogadorian ooze.
Setrákus Ra emerges from the oily muck, rising up from the depths. The worms of ooze don’t drip off him, rather they slither under his skin like they’re seeking shelter. He wears the red-and-black Mogadorian armor that I’ve seen before, ornate and showy
, with a flowing black cape attached to his studded shoulders. His bulbous, pale head is coated with thick bristles of dark hair. That’s new. Similarly, his features aren’t so sunken anymore, not so old. Even the purple scar around his neck has begun to fade. He’s younger, healthier than I’ve ever seen him. He floats with his hands spread out at his sides like some twisted savior.
He cranes his neck to look up at us and smiles. “Welcome,” he says. Noticing the tunnel we’re standing in front of, he lowers his eyes and frowns, mockingly demure. “Please, do not be offended by the sight of my failures. They were not fit to carry my gifts. Like you all, they were not ready for prog—”
No more goddamn words.
I pitch a fireball at him. I don’t expect it to hit; it’s just meant to cover my approach. I fly forward, reckless, as fast as I can. Behind me, I can feel the others moving forward too. This is it.
Kill or be killed.
Setrákus Ra raises his hand, and a plume of ooze shaped like a shield extends from his palm. My fireball is absorbed. Doesn’t matter.
With him distracted, I fling my dagger at him. I use my telekinesis to boost its speed.
The blade buries itself in his shoulder, punching right through his armor. A wound that he won’t be able to heal thanks to the Voron and no more Legacies thanks to my Dreynen.
Except, it seems too easy. Almost like he wanted me to hit him.
“Very good, John,” Setrákus Ra says smugly. “You’ve mastered Dreynen.”
Nothing happens. He still floats. He still smiles.
“You’ve cut me off from that piece of Lorien still living within me. I won’t be able to take your Legacies,” Setrákus Ra continues conversationally. “It won’t matter.”
Setrákus Ra pulls the dagger out of his shoulder and whips it back at me. I fly aside and, behind me, Nine catches the weapon with his telekinesis.
“I am beyond that now. Beyond Legacies. Your powers derive from a primitive being with no rhyme or reason. My Augmentations are of my own choosing, limited not by an outside Entity, but only by my own genius. Which, I might add, is staggering.”