I have to stop reading. My head pounds, and with one brisk surge, I send the files flying across my room in a telekinetic wave. I throw open my Loric Chest that sits on the nightstand beside me. My favorite thing inside it—the only thing I’ve really learned to use—is a concealed blade inside a gauntlet. I use my powers to send it sailing through the air, popping out the knife hidden inside. It skewers the sheet of paper with the Cêpan’s interview on it and embeds itself in the stone wall of the room. I start to rummage through my Chest, which usually helps me focus and calm down, but it’s no good. I’m too wound up. Then I throw myself down onto the bed and crack my knuckles as anger boils up inside me. So that’s what Nine thought of us—of me. That I was worthless. That I’d be someone he could command one day. Well, the joke’s on you, Nine. Because now you’re the one hidden away, and I’m the person with all the power. I’m the one who’s going to control everyone else.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I continue my daily routine of studying, training and learning more about Mogadorian culture. Every time I see the picture of Nine in my study, I get frustrated and pissed off as I think about the files—of him and his Cêpan regarding the lower numbers as being weak. I try to channel this into my training, like when Ethan takes me into an unused room in order for us to do a little training on my Legacies. Ethan sets a box down on the metal table in the middle of the room while I use my telekinesis to straighten all the chairs and get them all pushed in and out of the way.
“Your ability to move things with your mind has really progressed both in terms of strength and finesse,” Ethan says. “The Mog leaders and I are all very impressed.”
“Thanks,” I say with a grin. “I have gotten pretty good at moving boulders around in the tunnels.”
“True.” He nods. “So today I want us to focus on your Externa. In particular, the quickness with which you can change forms and the length of time you can stay in them.”
This sounds easy enough. I’ve gotten good at taking on the properties of the things I touch. I reach into my pocket, where my fingers find the red rubber ball. My skin stretches, and my fingers take an elongated form, like the kind of fingers people who have never actually seen an alien would expect me to have.
“Let’s do it.”
Ethan starts to toss things at me left and right from the box he brought with him, hardly giving me time to change before my body has to reset and transform again. I hold a leather-bound book, and my skin grows tough. I catch a smooth white stone, and I’m a moving statue.
“Excellent,” Ethan says. “But can you do it while flying?”
Without answering, I float up in the air and continue to change as Ethan tosses more and more objects at me. We keep it up for a few minutes, and then suddenly I start to get tired—I’ve never overworked my Legacies like this before. But I don’t show any weakness. I think about Nine’s Cêpan and how he thought the higher numbers were better than me, and I power through the fatigue, gritting my teeth and imagining myself standing over Nine as he begs for mercy.
Ethan tosses me something small and shiny that I catch with my telekinesis and float over to my hand.
“Do the stone, not the band,” he says as it travels through the air. I don’t understand until I realize that I’ve got a diamond ring in my palm.
“No problem,” I say, touching the gem with the tip of my pinkie. My skin hardens and takes on a brilliant shine. The tips of my fingers are completely clear. I float over to the steel table and drag one of my fingernails along the top of it, engraving the numeral “5” into it.
“Now this could come in handy,” I say.
“Sure,” Ethan says. “If you want to be the target of every weapon on the battlefield. Your skin is too shiny. It would be impossible to be incognito. But keep this form for now. Let’s see how long you can hold it.”
I wave my arms around in front of me and watch the light bounce off them, sending reflections all around the room.
“I think I met some people down in Miami who would have me chopped up into pieces and sold off for millions if they could see me now.”
The harder I concentrate while I touch the stone, the clearer my body gets and the harder my skin becomes. But it takes work. And the more I focus, the more my head starts to pound, and I start to feel like I’m losing control of my body. When I first developed the Externa ability, I was terrified that I’d never be able to revert back to my normal form again. Suddenly, that same fear attacks me, and my heart rate and breathing go through the roof.
I must look like I’m afraid, because when Ethan says, “Five, calm down, buddy,” his voice is steady and low. He sounds like that only when he’s concerned.
So I take a few deep breaths, close my eyes and let the ring fall to the ground as my feet find the stone floor again. I tune out the world for a few seconds and just concentrate on my normal body and how much I want to be back in it. When I open my eyes again, my fingers are pink and soft. I’m back. But my head is still pounding.
“Ow,” I say, raising a hand to my right temple. “Headache?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll get you some aspirin,” Ethan says. “But, hey. That was great. This is where we’ll start focusing our training from now on.”
I think of Nine, and how Deltoch doesn’t think I look like much of a soldier.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “I can keep going.”
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Ethan must think I’m weak too.
“I’m not some kid, Ethan,” I say. “I’m a superpowered Loric and the guy who’s going to be the Mog officer in charge of this country. If I say I can keep going, I can.”
Ethan looks a little taken aback. Before he gets a chance to say anything, the door bursts open, and Commander Deltoch enters. A flash of annoyance crosses Ethan’s face as he turns to his superior.
“Commander,” he says with a little nod of a bow, “to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“You’re needed, Ethan,” the Mog says. “Report to Central Command.”
Ethan waves at me. “Come along, Five. You should go back to your room and get some rest.”
“The Loric stays. I have a surprise for him.”
There’s a moment when Ethan and Deltoch just stare in defiance at one another. Deltoch must win in the end, because Ethan shrugs, gives me a fleeting glance and then turns on his heel. Just like that he’s gone, and I’m left alone with the Mog commander. I don’t realize how accustomed I am to Ethan always being there until he’s gone.
I wonder if today is the day. If they’re taking me to try to kill Nine.
“Five,” Deltoch says through his sharp, dark teeth. “How is your training going?”
“It’s good,” I say, nodding fervently, which only makes my head hurt more. But I ignore that. “I can show you if you want.”
I blink, and in the course of doing so, the chairs all fly out from under the table, spin around the room and then go right back to where they began. Whatever Deltoch has in store for me, I know I need to impress him. To show him that I’m doing well and that I’m ready to take the next step.
Deltoch chuckles a little, but it doesn’t sound like he’s actually amused.
“A good trick,” he says. “I’m sure our enemies will cower in fear when they see our great army of chairs and tables laying siege to their cities.”
“I can move something else,” I say, feeling stupid. “Something bigger. Or a bunch of swords or something.”
“What I have in mind for you today is a little more interesting. A true treat. Come, follow me.”
We move in silence through the compound. I fly, he walks. We head towards the front entrance that leads out into a wooded area that’s fenced off from the rest of the world. I’m not forbidden to go outside by any means, but for caution’s sake I have to get approvals and a tracker and all kinds of boxes checked off if I want to spend the day in nature, so I hardly ever do. Besides, I’m much more of a be
ach person, and it’s cold up here in West Virginia. I’ve grown used to much warmer climates.
The entrance to the compound is camouflaged and well guarded. Soldiers salute us as we pass by, and then we’re just hiking through the woods, and I’m completely lost as to what we’re doing. I can’t even fly here, with all the low-hanging branches—I’d have to be above the tree line—and soon I get a little short-winded as we hike along, which I try to mask by breathing as quietly as possible.
“Where are we going?” I ask, clouds of white escaping my lips in the cold.
“I told you, it’s a surprise.”
I try to figure out why Deltoch would go through the trouble of arranging something for me. Is this some sort of ploy to get me to exercise more, or is he leading me out into the woods to teach me some new kind of Mogadorian fighting that requires the open air? Is he leading me to Nine? I slip a hand into my pocket and let my fingers close around the metal ball, just in case.
But I discover that it’s none of these things as soon as we come to a clearing. Standing in the winter sunlight is the last person I’d ever expect to see here.
Emma.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT TAKES ME A SECOND TO REALIZE THAT EMMA is actually there and not some sort of hologram or android or something. But it really is her. I can tell because holograms don’t leave footprints in the dirt as they shift their weight back and forth nervously on their feet, and androids don’t cry.
Emma looks terrified.
I can’t really blame her. She probably should be scared.
She’s grown up a bit in the year or so since I last saw her, when she was swinging a metal pipe at my head the night of the botched job—the night Ethan took me in. When we were running the beaches as small-time crooks, her black hair was always pulled back into a short ponytail, but it’s around her shoulders now, hanging messily halfway down her back. She’s wearing pink pajama bottoms and a white tank top, which leads me to assume that she was taken in the middle of the night. Someone thought to give her a trench coat like all the Mogs wear, which practically swallows her.
She must not have been expecting to see me, because when I step out of the trees and into view, she freezes, her face twisting in shock.
“C-Cody?” she stammers through shivering lips. I’m not sure if she’s shaking because of the cold or something else.
It’s been a long time since I went by that name, and it takes a second for my memory to catch up with what she’s saying and to realize that she means me.
“Hi, Emma,” I murmur.
I don’t know what to say or do, or even how to feel—why has this girl been plucked out of Florida and brought up to West Virginia? My first instinct is to go to her, but there’s a look in her eyes that stops me. I recognize it as a mixture of confusion and hatred. The same look she had in Miami when she called me a freak. Right before she tried to bash my brains in.
I turn to Deltoch, who is emerging from the trees now. When Emma sees him, she cowers a little and takes a few steps back. Obviously she’s had a bad experience with Mogs over the last day or so.
“Good. We did find the right girl,” he says. “You’d be surprised how difficult she was to track down. After that unfortunate night at the warehouse, she and most of her family practically disappeared.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Before you are able to begin your new life as a champion of the Mogadorian cause, you’ll have to put everything from your past behind you.”
I don’t say anything. Just turn to Emma and stare at her. She still looks scared, but her hands are clenched in fists at her sides. I know her well enough to guess that right now she’s trying to figure out how to escape from this situation. She’s a fighter. Hell, the last time I saw her she gave me a concussion.
“How do you even know about her?” I ask.
“Ethan’s reports on you have been incredibly thorough, even now,” Deltoch says. I must look surprised by this, because he lets out a snort of a laugh. “The two of you may have a close relationship, but the reason that Ethan found you in the first place is thanks to our Beloved Leader’s guidance and enthusiasm to recruit you. You would be incorrect if you thought for one moment that your future was given to you by Ethan and not the all-powerful Setrákus Ra. Ethan is your friend because he was ordered to be.”
I know Ethan works for the Mogs, but I guess I never really think of him as reporting back to them about me. At least not about nonessential stuff like who I hung out with back in Miami. But I’ve read the files the Mogs have on Nine, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Still, it somehow seems like a betrayal of trust, and I wish Ethan were here to tell me that it wasn’t true. I know he lied to me back when we first met, but that was for my benefit. I guess I’d assumed he wouldn’t still be reporting on me now that I’m at the base.
The thought pisses me off.
“At the end of the day,” Deltoch continues, “Ethan is only human. That’s his greatest weakness. The humans don’t have our discipline or sense of loyalty. It will do you well to remember that. The humans are here to serve us, but he is holding you back.”
“How?”
“He doesn’t think you’re ready to become an officer.”
My mouth drops open a little—Ethan doesn’t believe in me? That can’t be true.
“Why is she here?” I ask, turning back to Emma. I still don’t understand what’s going on.
“Please,” Emma says, “I just want to go back home. I don’t want to be here. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“For you to have closure and to focus completely on your future as an officer of Mogadore,” Deltoch says with a grin. “Ethan said this girl was the only other person in the world who you had any sort of friendly relationship with.”
“I guess so,” I say quietly. When he puts it like that, it makes me sound like a total loser.
“Well then, what happened?”
The memories course through my head. A bunch of thugs trapped me in a warehouse on a job for Ethan. The only way out had been using my telekinesis. I’d never used it on other people before, and it felt so good to slam them into shelves and walls after they’d been beating up on me. But Emma had seen—one of the guys had been her brother. And she’d turned on me in an instant.
“She called me a freak,” I say, staring at Emma in the forest clearing. “She asked me if I was possessed when she saw what I could do.”
“Please,” Emma says. She just keeps shaking her head, her eyes darting around to the edges of the tree line. She was standing there alone when we came out, but I’m guessing there are Mog soldiers in the woods around us, making sure she doesn’t escape.
“She scoffed at your abilities?” Deltoch asks. “Even though you’d been friends?”
“We’d been more than friends,” I say, taking a step towards her. “We were partners.”
“The humans will fear you when you are unveiled as their leader. You can use that fear and turn it into respect. Some will cower and hide or try to fight you, but the smart ones will bow at your feet. You can’t hesitate when it comes to taking action. You have to know when to show mercy and when to be ruthless.”
Ruthless? My palms start to sweat as I begin to imagine what Deltoch has brought me out here to do.
“Why did you bring her here?” I ask again.
“She was frightened by just a taste of your abilities. She fought you. Disrespected you. Why don’t you show her what true power is?”
I stare at Emma. She’s shaking, her eyes now fixed on me as her fingers tremble. The Emma I remember from the beach—before things went bad between us—was cool, confident and my partner in crime. I’d wanted her to think I was like her. But now I see her for what she really is. Just a scared girl who has no idea what’s happening in the world around her. A pitiful, naive ant. Human. Part of me has always been angry about the shitty things she said and did to me at the warehouse, but I don’t know that she deserves t
o be hurt because of that.
I don’t know that I can hurt her, as pathetic as she looks.
“She’s not worth it,” I say as I turn back to Deltoch and start towards him.
“Please!” Emma screams. She must be afraid of what will happen once the only familiar face here disappears. “Just let me go home. I don’t want anything to do with you monsters!”
Monsters.
Something in me snaps.
I whip around to her, holding my right arm outstretched. She lets out a short gasp as she rises off the ground. My telekinesis is wrapped around her body, squeezing her tightly. As I raise my hand, she goes farther up.
I rise too until I’m floating just a few yards in front of her. We have to be thirty feet in the air. Her eyes are wide as they stare into mine. She keeps making little gasping noises, even though I’m not squeezing her all that hard. I can barely hear her ragged breaths over the repetition of the word “monsters” in my head.
“If you want to call me a monster, I can be a monster,” I say.
“No.” She shakes her head.
“I could crush you with a single thought,” I whisper, and the look of horror on her face makes my blood race and my ears pound. That part of me that has festered with anger and wants revenge for the way she turned her back on me feels so satisfied that I can hardly breathe. It’s not just her; it’s all the times I’ve felt weak or lost or like the Loric had forgotten about me or forsaken me. All of it courses through me, fueling me.
I know Nine is supposed to be my symbolic first kill, but maybe Deltoch has taken me out here to see if I really have what it takes. Maybe I should squeeze her a little tighter with my Legacy. Or let her drop back to the hard ground below us.
But then another voice joins our little party and interrupts my thoughts.
“Five,” Ethan says. “Put her down.” He turns to Deltoch and speaks in an angry whisper that’s loud enough for me to hear. “No one told me about this. What the hell is going on out here?”
“I’m observing the future of the Mogadorian cause,” Deltoch replies.