‘Hold up,’ Nine whispers in my ear. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
Exposed as we are, I’m not sure it’s a great time for one of Nine’s crazy ideas. But, a moment after he stops us, the cow-beast in the cage groans again and lumbers awkwardly to its feet. It staggers to the side and pushes all its weight against one side of the cage, causing the Mogs pushing it to yell for assistance as the whole thing threatens to topple. Then, the monster mule-kicks one of its huge cloven hooves at the bars, nearly smashing the face of a Mog.
‘I asked it to give us a distraction,’ Nine whispers, more Mogs closing in on the cage to try sedating their experiment. ‘Poor thing was happy to help.’
Nine’s animal telepathy works like a charm. As if it’s at last discovered a purpose in life, the cow thrashes about, bulling towards the sides of its cage, even catching one Mog in the shoulder with its horn. The chaos creates an opening for us to slip through the mass in front of the greenhouse and make our way towards the hangar.
We all stop at the sound of a Mog blaster being fired. Turning around, I see the officer holstering his blaster, a smoking hole in the side of the cow’s head. It slumps in the cage, unmoving. He yells some orders, and the Mogadorians begin loading the corpse on to the warship.
As I tense up, Nine whispers to me, ‘Better this way. It was in a ton of pain.’
With some distance between us and the highest concentration of Mogs, I feel comfortable enough to whisper back. ‘What were they doing to it?’
Nine pauses before answering. ‘I couldn’t, like, have a heart-to-heart with the thing. But I think they were trying to figure out how they could make it more efficient. They’re, uh, experimenting with the ecology.’
‘Demented,’ Marina mutters.
We pick up some speed as we move towards the hangar. On our right, at the edge of the runway, are a trio of the smaller, saucer-shaped Mogadorian ships. A maintenance crew of five Mogadorians huddles around one of them, pulling circuit boards out of the ship’s underbelly and generally looking befuddled. I guess Mogadorians can have technical difficulties, too. Other than those guys, the coast is clear.
The huge, sheet-metal doors of the hangar, wide enough for a small plane to pass in and out, are only open a few feet, just enough to let a person pass through. There are lights on inside the hangar, but all I can see through the gap is empty space.
Marina slows down as we reach the doors and then stops fully to peek inside. While she’s doing that, I look over my shoulder. Nothing’s changed – the Mogs are still loading materials on to the warship, completely unaware that we just snuck through their ranks.
‘Anything?’ Nine whispers, and I can sense him craning his neck, trying to see through the crack in the hangar doors. Before I can answer, I hear Marina’s breath catch in her throat. My hand stings, shot through with cold, like I’m suddenly clutching a block of ice.
‘Shit, Marina!’ I hiss, but she’s not listening. Instead, she’s lunging through the doors. Considering my hand is numb, it takes all my willpower to keep hold of her. I tug Nine along behind me and his shoulder strikes the steel door, his grunt covered by the echoing metallic rattling.
The hangar is almost completely empty, the Mogadorians having already cleared all their gear out. Large floodlights shine down from the rafters, illuminating the metal table and chair in the center of the room. They’re the only things left in the hangar, and the lights from above cast long shadows across the concrete floor.
Eight’s body is on the table.
He is wrapped in a black body bag, unzipped to the waist. He’s shirtless, the quarter-sized wound where Five stabbed him through the heart plainly visible on his chest. His brown skin is ashen, but Eight still looks very much like himself, like at any moment he’ll teleport off the table and play some annoying joke on me. There are black electrodes with short, fragile-looking antennae attached to Eight’s temples and a few more running down his sternum. The electrodes generate some kind of field that’s barely visible to the eye, like a low and steady current of electricity is passing over Eight’s body. I think it’s something the Mogs attached to Eight to keep his body intact for their experiments. In addition to the electrodes, someone has cleaned the blood off him and, surprisingly, they’ve left his Loric pendant around his neck, the jewel shimmering dully against his chest. It kills me to see him like this, but Eight looks almost peaceful.
Of course, Eight isn’t the reason Marina shoved through the hangar doors, or the reason that she’s currently giving my hand a wicked case of frostbite.
Seated next to Eight, head in his hands, is Five.
Five sits crouched forward, almost like he wishes he could fold in on himself. There’s a thick pad of gauze over the eye Marina stabbed back in the swamp, a very faint pink stain beginning to soak through. His good eye is red-rimmed; it looks as if he’s been crying or hasn’t been sleeping – or both. Five’s head is freshly shaven since we last saw him, and I wonder how far off he is from getting a set of his own Mogadorian tattoos. He’s dressed in Mogadorian formal attire similar to the officer directing traffic at the warship. However, his uniform is severely wrinkled, the buttons around the neck undone, everything looking a little too tight.
There’s no way the one-eyed traitor didn’t hear us enter. Thanks to Marina, we made a ton of noise coming through the door, and the emptiness of the hangar amplifies everything to the point where I’m suddenly extremely conscious of my breathing. Even worse, I can hear a low growl coming from Marina, like she’s fighting back an intense scream, ready to throw herself at Five. Behind me, I can sense Nine basically holding his breath.
Five’s good eye flicks briefly in our direction. He definitely heard us, but he can’t see us. Maybe there’s hope he’ll just write it off as noise from the Mogs outside. I want another go at the renegade Garde, too – one where he doesn’t sucker punch me into unconsciousness before the fight even starts – but we have to pick our battles. Facing off against Five in an enclosed space with a Mogadorian warship at our back is definitely not the battle we want. We’ll need to figure out another way to recover Eight’s body.
I pull at Marina’s arm, the icy pinpricks in my hand now replaced by full-on numbness, trying to communicate to her just how terrible an idea charging in would be. She tugs against me for a moment, but then I start to feel her calm down, which I can tell because my hand starts to warm up.
But as Marina slowly and quietly releases a deep breath, I see it mist in front of her, the air around her too cold. A cloud of breath from an invisible girl, floating in the bright lights of the hangar.
Five sees it, his eye narrowing. He stands up from his chair and looks right at the spot where we’re standing.
‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ he says.
12
I clench Marina’s and Nine’s hands, hoping that will be enough to keep them from saying anything back to Five and totally giving away our position. I’m not ready to lose our one advantage – invisibility – just yet. Thankfully, they both manage to control themselves, Five’s words hanging out there unanswered.
‘I know you won’t believe me,’ Five continues. ‘But no one was supposed to get killed.’
Five’s beseeching gaze is still aimed right at us, so slowly, quietly, I begin leading the others to the side. We move just inches at a time, careful of each other, not making any noise. Gradually, we slip out from under Five’s gaze, flanking him. Now, he’s staring at truly empty space, stupidly waiting for a response.
With a grunt, Five turns away. It’s like he was never talking to us at all. Instead, he starts speaking directly to Eight’s body.
‘You shouldn’t have done what you did, diving in front of Nine,’ Five lectures, his voice almost wistful. ‘It was heroic, I guess. I kinda admire you for it. But it wasn’t worth it. The Mogadorians are going to win anyway, you know? A levelheaded guy like you would’ve learned his place. You could’ve helped with the rebuilding and unification. Nine, though … he’
s too brain-dead to know when he’s beat. He’s no good to anyone.’
I feel muscles tense in Nine’s arm, but for now he resists the urge to throw himself at Five. That’s good – he’s learning. Or maybe, like me, he’s stunned this is happening at all, Five just rambling away like this, pretending we’re not here.
Five puts his hand gently on Eight’s shoulder. The sleeve of his uniform rides up and I notice the leather sheath strapped to his arm, the one that holds the needle-shaped spring-loaded dagger that he used to kill our friend.
‘He told me –’ Five’s voice breaks a little as he continues addressing Eight. ‘He told me I’d have a chance to talk you guys into joining. No one would have to get hurt if you just accepted Mogadorian Progress. He kept his word before, I mean, I’m living proof, right? When the charm broke, he could’ve killed me, but he didn’t.’
Five must be talking about Setrákus Ra, about a deal he struck with the Mogadorian leader. He walks around the table, turning his back on us. Marina takes a step towards him, but I don’t let her go any farther. I don’t know why Five is talking so much, but he has to know we’re here. I’m not sure if this is a trap, if he’s baiting us, or what is going on. But I want to listen.
‘I didn’t expect you to be so brainwashed,’ Five says, standing over Eight, his hunched back presenting a perfect target. ‘Thinking about everything in black and white, heroes and villains.’
Five reaches down and lifts Eight’s pendant, squeezing the jewel in his fist. His Legacy – Externa, he called it, where his skin takes on the quality of whatever he touches – kicks in, Five’s skin briefly flashing the shimmering cobalt of Loralite. After a moment, he lets the pendant go with a sigh, and his flesh returns to normal.
‘But then, maybe I’m the brainwashed one, right? Isn’t that what you guys said to me?’ Five lets loose a low laugh, then reaches up to carefully adjust the gauze over his destroyed eye. ‘They fill your head with all this shit – the Elders, the Great Book. All these rules about who we’re supposed to be. But I don’t care about any of it. I’m just trying to survive.’
I feel Nine’s hand sweating in mine; he must be struggling to hold himself back from attacking. Marina, meanwhile, isn’t radiating the furious cold she was moments ago, probably because the scene unfolding before us is so misguided and pathetic. If Five’s speech – clearly for our benefit – has revealed anything, it’s that he’s pretty much lost his mind.
Five brushes a speck of something gently from Eight’s forehead, then shakes his head.
‘Anyway, the point is, I’m sorry, Eight,’ Five says, that know-it-all tone still in his voice but mixed with an undercurrent of sincerity. ‘I know it doesn’t mean anything. I’ll be a coward, a traitor, a murderer for the rest of my life. That won’t change. But I want you to know that I wish things could’ve turned out differently.’
Behind us, someone clears his throat. All of us were so wrapped up in Five’s unhinged monologue – Five included – that we didn’t notice the Mogadorian officer enter. He eyes Five warily, his posture stiff and formal. Looking at him, standing there like a soldier ready to deliver a report, it occurs to me that this Mogadorian might actually take orders from Five. If that’s the case, he seems way disgusted by it.
‘We are finished loading the ship,’ the officer says.
The Mog waits for Five to acknowledge him, but Five stays silent for a long, awkward moment. He stays hunched over Eight’s body, breathing slowly. I tense up and wonder if his strange game is over and if now he’s thinking about sounding the alarm.
The Mogadorian officer does a bad job of hiding how much Five’s silence perturbs him. ‘One of the hunting parties hasn’t reported back,’ he continues. ‘And the mechanics are having difficulties getting one of the scout vessels to work.’
Five sighs. ‘That’s fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll leave them behind.’
‘Yes, those were my orders,’ the officer replies, not so subtly asserting his power. ‘Are you ready to leave?’
Five turns to the officer, a malicious twinkle in his remaining eye. ‘Yeah. Let’s get out of here.’
Five walks towards the hangar doors, his movements mockingly sluggish. We stand to the side, watching all this transpire, staying quiet. The officer arches an eyebrow, not stepping out of Five’s way.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ the officer asks Five when the two are nearly face-to-face.
Five scratches his head. ‘Huh?’
‘The body,’ the officer says, annoyed. ‘Your instructions are to bring the Loric’s body. And the pendant.’
‘Oh, that,’ Five replies, and glances back at the metal table where Eight rests. ‘The body’s gone, Captain. The Garde must have slipped in here and taken it. Only explanation.’
The Mogadorian captain doesn’t know what to say. He makes a show of craning his neck, looking past Five to where Eight is still very much on the table. Then, he studies Five’s face, his eyes narrowed impatiently.
‘Is this some kind of game, Loric?’ the captain hisses. ‘Or are you blind in both eyes now? The Garde is right there.’
Five ignores the insult and shakes his head at the Captain, clicking his tongue.
‘Happened on your watch, too,’ Five says. ‘You let them steal a war asset from right under your nose. That’s basically treason, my man. You know what the punishment for that is.’
The Mogadorian opens his mouth for another disbelieving protest. He’s cut off by a scrape of metal, Five’s blade popping out from beneath his sleeve. Without hesitation, he drives the point into the underside of the officer’s jaw and straight up into his brain. Before he starts to disintegrate, there’s a look of total surprise on the Mog’s face.
Five doesn’t move as the Mog turns to ash. He disintegrates slower than the many other dying Mogs I’ve seen, and when it’s finished there are jagged bones poking out of his crumpled uniform. Five pushes his blade back into the mechanism on his forearm and kicks the officer’s remains away from the doors. Then, he carefully brushes himself off and straightens his coat.
From where we’re standing, Five is in profile, and the eye that’s visible is the one covered by the gauze bandage. Because of that, it’s not easy to get a read on his expression.
‘Good luck,’ Five says, then steps through the hangar doors, easing them closed behind him.
No one says anything or even moves for about a minute, all of us a little worried that a squadron of Mogs will be storming in here at any second. Finally, Nine shakes off my grip, popping back into the visible world.
‘Okay. What the holy hell was that about?’ he exclaims. ‘Is that kid trying to buddy up now or is he just totally loony tunes?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I reply. ‘We’ve got Eight, that’s what’s important. We can deal with Five another time.’
‘He’s alone and lost,’ Marina says softly, letting go of my hand as well. She notices me rubbing some warmth back into it, the chilled feeling still lingering, and frowns. ‘Sorry, Six. He brought it out of me.’
I wave it off, not wanting to get into Marina’s Legacy control at the moment. I tiptoe to the hangar doors and edge them open just a crack. I’m just in time to see Five disappearing up the ramp and on to the warship, the last one aboard. Once he’s inside, the ramp curls back into the warship’s underbelly and the huge ship begins to rise up, its engines purring with a softness that seems almost impossible for a vessel that size. Once it reaches a certain height, the warship starts to flicker and I begin having trouble distinguishing its outline from the purple clouds. Hulking, virtually silent, and equipped with some kind of cloaking device – how are we supposed to fight something like that?
‘You sound like you feel sorry for him,’ Nine says to Marina.
‘I don’t,’ she snaps at Nine, but I can hear some doubt creeping into Marina’s voice, that tough exterior she’s been putting on showing some faults. ‘I … did you see his eye?’
‘I saw a hole in
his head covered by a Band-Aid,’ Nine replies. ‘Dude has that and more coming to him.’
‘Do you think Eight would want that?’ I ask, honestly wondering. ‘He died trying to keep us from killing each other.’
The warship risen out of sight, I turn around to face the others. Nine chews his lip and stares at the floor, considering what I just said. Marina has taken a seat in Five’s former chair at Eight’s side. She tentatively touches the electrodes and waves her fingers through the energy field. When nothing happens, Marina gently brushes her fingers through his curly hair. Her eyes shine with fresh tears, but she holds them back.
‘I knew I’d find you,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry I ever left you.’
I walk over to join Marina at the table, gazing down at Eight. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like he has the faintest smile on his lips.
‘I wish I’d known you better,’ I say to Eight, reaching out to place my hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘I wish our lives had been different.’
Nine hesitates but eventually joins us at the table, standing next to Marina. At first, he avoids looking directly at Eight’s body, his lips pursed, the muscles in his neck twitching like he’s trying to lift something heavy. He’s ashamed, I realize. It seems to take a great effort on his part, but after a moment Nine manages to look at Eight. Immediately, he reaches out to zip up the body bag a little more, enough so that Eight’s wound is hidden from view.
‘Oh man,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m sorry for …’ Nine shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. ‘I mean, thank you for saving my life. Five was right, uh, you probably shouldn’t have. If I’d just shut my mouth you’d probably still be … shit, I’m sorry, Eight. I’m so sorry.’
Nine takes a shuddering breath, obviously holding back tears. Marina puts her hand softly on his back and leans against him.