“John!”
Sam falls to his knees on the floor next to me. I can tell by the look on his face that I’m a mess. There are puncture wounds on my side and my back, broken bones in my arm and deep gashes around my neck. Everything is sticky with my blood.
“I’m . . . I’m all right,” I tell him.
“Shit, no, you are definitely not,” he replies. “Can you heal?”
“I am healing,” I say.
Sam looks down at me. “No. You’re bleeding.”
“It’s . . . it’s going to happen slow.”
Now that I’m separated from Phiri Dun-Ra, I feel my Legacies gradually returning. With some effort, I lift up my arm and examine the puncture wound underneath it. The black oil is slowly seeping out of me, pushed out by my Legacy as it struggles to knit my body together. Once all that’s cleared from my system, I hope my powers will be fully charged. It’ll just be a matter of me having the strength left to use them.
Sam rips off a piece of his T-shirt and clamps it to my neck.
“This cut isn’t closing even a little,” he says.
“It won’t,” I tell him. I weakly hold up the noose. “They used that Voron noose on me. Like what Pittacus used on Setrákus Ra.”
“Oh man, you’re going to have a scar,” Sam mumbles, shaking his head.
There’s movement on the ceiling. I spot the Shadow Mog just in time. He falls feetfirst out of the darkness, a blaster pointed at us. Back to finish us off.
I shove Sam off me and roll onto my back. The blast burns into the wall between us. Sam reacts swiftly, getting his blaster oriented to return fire. The Mog drops straight down, into another patch of shadows on the floor, and disappears through them.
“Keep your head on a swivel,” I warn as I sit up, clutching the noose.
The Shadow Mog walks out of one of the darkened cells behind me. I don’t turn around in time, but Sam uses his telekinesis to knock the Mog’s blaster aside. His latest shot sizzles into the floor next to me. With a frustrated grunt, our enemy again dives towards some darkness.
I fling the noose towards him.
It isn’t my brightest idea. Without my telekinesis, there’s no way I can make that throw. Luckily, Sam catches on quickly and uses his own telekinesis to guide my impromptu lasso. We get the noose around the Shadow Mog’s head before he disappears, and I yank back on it with what little strength I have left.
I’m hoping to take his head clean off, but no such luck. The Shadow Mog stops midteleport, waist deep in shadow, and clutches the noose. It’s a tug-of-war, and he’s winning. The Voron rope, slick with blood, starts to slide through my hands.
“Behind you!” Sam yells.
I manage to flick a glance over my shoulder. The Shadow Mog’s legs are ten yards down the hall, emerging from another pocket of shadows. He’s just going to keep teleporting through the darkness until he wears us down. The Voron rope slips a little farther out of my hands.
“Lights on!” Sam shouts.
All at once, the lights in the hallway come back on brighter than ever. No more shadows.
The Mog lets out a gasp. His torso flops to the ground in front of us, and his legs drop behind us. He’s been cut in a perfectly straight line through the waist. I yank the noose through his neck with little resistance—he’s already beginning to disintegrate.
“Nicely done,” I tell Sam as he kneels down next to me.
“Guy was really pissing me off,” Sam grumbles, once again fussing over the cut on my neck. “This is going to need stitches, man.”
I put my hand over his as he applies pressure. “Sam, where’s your dad . . . ?”
“He’s fine! I mean, he was the last time I saw him. There was no way out, so he and the other scientists hid down in the old library. The Chimærae were keeping them safe. He’s got my homemade cloaking devices. I ran off to, uh, to let out our secret-weapon psychopath there before Dad could stop me.” Sam takes a breath and looks around. “Where’s Mark?”
I compress my lips and shake my head. Sam looks away from me.
“Goddamn them,” he says quietly. “Goddamn them for all this shit.”
We both go silent at the sound of gunfire from an adjoining hallway. The shooting is cut off by an animalistic roar, desperate screams soon following. That’s got be the huge, deformed Augment that I saw upstairs, the Piken-Mog. It’s close.
Sam looks at me. “Can you fight?”
I grimace and manage to create a weak ball of fire with my Lumen. As soon as I do, my healing Legacy stops working, and my torso is pure agony. I extinguish the flame and focus on healing, shaking my head at Sam.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Then we better move,” he replies. “Unless you want to try that lasso trick again.”
“No thanks,” I say. “This one doesn’t teleport. He knocks down walls.”
Sam gets his arms under me and gently helps me to my feet. I fling my good arm over his shoulders, the other clutched against my stomach, and we shuffle quickly down the hall. Sam’s got one arm around my waist, and the other points a blaster straight ahead. Behind us, the heavy footsteps and grunting of the Piken-Mog echo, slowly becoming more distant.
“You know what I thought the first day I met you in school?” Sam asks me, his voice low, breathing heavily.
I raise an eyebrow at the question. “Uh, no. What?”
“I thought, here’s a guy who’s going to make me carry him halfway across New York City and then later through a top secret underground military base while he bleeds all over the place. I hope we can be best friends.”
I actually laugh at that, even though it hurts my punctured ribs. “You’ve gotten really good at it,” I say.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam replies with a grim smile.
We edge around a corner, and a gunshot rings out. I feel the bullet whiz right past my cheek.
“Hold your fire!” yells Agent Walker. “Goddamn it, they’re ours!”
Agent Walker stands with an assault rifle at the ready, her face smeared with ash, a nasty-looking blaster burn on one of her legs. In front of her, one of them still aiming a pistol in our direction, are the twins, Caleb and Christian. It was the dead-eyed one, Christian, who took a shot at us. Caleb punches him in the arm to get him to finally lower his gun.
“Sorry,” Caleb says, nodding towards Sam’s blaster. “We saw the blaster coming around the corner and . . .”
“Don’t sweat it,” Sam says. “I’ve been getting shot at for a long time.”
“Good God, if you’re here, how are we losing?”
That comment, directed at me, comes from General Lawson. He’s sandwiched between Walker and the twins, like they’re his bodyguards. The whole unflappable-grandfather act is out the window. Lawson looks like crap. His uniform is torn and bloodstained, he’s got an open gash over his eyebrow and he looks about ten years older than I remember.
“They got the drop on me,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m out of the fight for now.”
“They got the drop on all of us,” Walker says with a glare in Lawson’s direction. She walks over to my side and helps Sam support my weight. “You . . . you’re going to heal, right?”
“Mostly,” I reply. The punctures are only now beginning to close up, oily black residue leaking out of them.
“Is there anywhere safe?” Sam asks.
“We tried to break through their ranks at the garage,” Lawson says, his expression darkening. “Took heavy losses while they kept bringing in reinforcements. They’ve got a teleporter.”
“Not anymore,” Sam says.
“Did you know about that?” Lawson asks, looking at me. “That they have Legacies?”
“Those aren’t Legacies. They’re sick copies. Augmentations,” I say. “But no, they’re a new thing.”
“They stole that from you,” Lawson says, putting two and two together. “That’s what you were talking about at the meeting the other day.”
“We should keep mov
ing,” Walker puts in.
Lawson shakes his head, still looking at me. “I was not fully informed just how fubared we are.”
“We were doubling back towards the elevators,” Walker says, taking over. “We hoped there would be less resistance.”
“Might be,” I say. “Five just took out a squadron that came down with me. Not sure how many more, but . . .”
We all hear it at the same time. Heavy footfalls bounding down a hallway. Too close.
“There’s a big one,” I tell them. “It’s hunting. It’s—”
“Tearing people apart,” Lawson says. “We saw the bodies.”
Sam glances at Christian. “It probably heard your shot.”
“We need to go,” Walker says. “Now.”
We push on, hustling through one hallway, then zagging down another. The Piken-Mog has our scent, though. I can hear it behind us, getting closer, wailing excitedly.
I realize that I’m the one slowing us down. I glance over my shoulder and see its mammoth shadow moving down the hallway we just left.
“Go,” I tell the others. “Get to the elevator. I’ll hold it off.”
I have no idea how I’m going to do that, but they don’t need to know that.
“John, don’t be stupid,” Sam says. He drags me along, and I’m powerless to stop him.
“You’re a brave kid,” Lawson grumbles. “But you’re our biggest asset. If we get out of this, we’re going to need you.”
The Piken-Mog comes into view about fifty yards down the hall. It roars, excited to finally have us in its sights. The thing, barely more than an animal, beats its thick fists against the scarred flesh of its bulging pectorals.
Lawson turns to Caleb and Christian. “You’re up.”
The twins nod in unison. Christian immediately turns around and starts walking right towards the Piken-Mog.
“Stop!” I yell at him, then turn on Lawson. “Are you crazy? You can’t just send him to die!”
At first, the Piken-Mog seems confused by this development, some remnant of its trueborn brain registering that this solitary human must be insane. But then, with a line of drool dangling from his under bite, the Piken-Mog charges, bearing down on Christian.
“It’s okay,” Caleb interrupts. “Watch.”
Of course I watch. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to, even as we back down the hallway. Christian unloads his gun into the Piken-Mog, but the bullets are either absorbed or deflected by its thick hide.
Lawson grimaces. “Was hoping bullets might do it.”
“That’s your plan?” Sam shouts, wide-eyed.
The gorilla-sized Mog reaches Christian in seconds and claps his hand over the kid’s head. He hoists him up like that and smashes him first against the wall, then against the floor. Christian doesn’t make a sound. He even keeps on shooting.
And then, after a particularly sickening slam against the floor, Christian evaporates in a burst of blue energy. The Piken-Mog looks stunned.
“What the—?” Sam exclaims.
Next to me, Caleb begins to glow. His whole body begins to vibrate, blurring, splitting apart.
A second later, there are two more of him. Two brand-new twin versions of Caleb. They blink their eyes, getting their bearings, then look at the original. Caleb nods towards the Piken-Mog, and they sprint into a hopeless battle.
He never had a twin brother. It’s a Legacy. He can duplicate himself.
“Two at a time,” Lawson says. “Getting better, son.”
“Thanks,” Caleb replies as we retreat. He looks a little wobbly. Behind us, I hear the Piken-Mog thrashing these newest twins. A glance over my shoulder reveals that they’re playing it smarter than Christian did, using hit-and-run to distract the brute. They won’t last long, but they should at least slow him down.
“I have questions for you,” I say to Caleb.
“I figured you would,” he says, not meeting my eyes.
“But all of them can wait, except one,” I continue. “How many duplicates can you create?”
“Not enough,” he replies, swallowing hard. “It’s hard. I’m . . . I’m only learning.”
“That beast is shrugging off bullets like they’re mosquitoes,” Sam adds. “We need to lose this thing until one of us, uh, until one of us with every Legacy can take him down.”
I glance down at myself, looking at my wounds. Closer now. I can feel my power slowly returning. I also feel light-headed on account of all the blood lost.
Our group takes a few sharp turns through the twisty subterranean hallways. I think we’ve doubled back at this point. We pass bodies, places where battles took place, but no one is alive. There’s a good chance we’re the only ones left.
Soon, we hear the thumping footsteps again. The snarling, the knuckle dragging.
“Bastard doesn’t give up,” Lawson says.
I try to fire up my Lumen as a test, but again my body clenches in agony. Every ounce of me needs to be dedicated to healing right now.
We turn another corner and—
“Shit!”
A line of vatborn Mogs with their blasters pointed in our direction block the entire hallway. Walker, still under one of my arms, shoves me hard to the side and brings up her rifle. As I fall towards the floor, knocking into Sam as I do, the agent sprays down the entire line of Mogs. Chunks of them ricochet through the hallway.
The Mogs are frozen in stone.
“What the hell?” Walker says.
“You really saved our lives there,” Sam says.
“Shut up, Goode.”
I look around. “Daniela was here, if—”
A roar from behind us. The Piken-Mog again barrels into view.
“Through here!” Caleb yells, already helping Lawson squeeze between two stone Mogadorians. “These should at least slow him down.”
I’m not so sure about that. The Piken-Mog is charging hard, its shoulders lowered. It’ll plow right through us and those stone Mogs. It’s now or never. Damn the pain. I start to build up a fireball in my hands, even though doing so makes my whole body clench up.
“Get down!” someone shouts.
I duck my head just as a silver beam of energy streaks from behind the Mog statues and hits the Piken-Mog. It spreads across his massive frame, slowly wrapping him in a stone covering. He’s frozen about ten yards from us, fists raised in the air, mouth open in a bloodthirsty cry.
Done using her stone-gaze, Daniela rubs her temples like she’s got a splitting headache. Seeing me and Sam, she cocks her hip and raises an eyebrow.
“Is this, like, my official role with you people? Monster stoner and saver-of-asses? Because . . .” Daniela trails off as she sees the kind of shape I’m in. “Goddamn, man.”
“Yeah, thanks for the help,” I say, squeezing her shoulder as I climb through her wall of statues. Daniela is scuffed up like everyone but overall in pretty good shape. There are stone Mogs everywhere in this hallway. She’s been wearing out her Legacy.
“Oy, you made it,” says Nigel. He and Ran are huddled in between some Mog statues, using them as a hiding spot. The British kid is pale, the wounds he suffered against Phiri Dun-Ra still bleeding heavily.
I nod, feeling guilty, like I let them down. Too much death here. Too much destruction.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Patience Creek has gone quiet. Without anything chasing or shooting at us, our ragtag group makes the elevator without a problem. It still works, although we have to spend some time clearing out a couple of bodies. There are a lot of those. And not enough survivors.
We head to the lowermost level first and find Malcolm, along with a few scientists, Agent Noto and the five Chimærae. All the animals made it through the fighting with nothing worse than some singed fur and, in Bandit’s case, a mangled tail. Everyone, humans and Chimærae alike, look downright exhausted.
After that, we start to search the other floors. We don’t encounter anything but death until w
e reach the uppermost level, the one where Lawson previously kept his control center. There, we’re drawn to the sound of televisions tuned to what sound like a dozen terrified newscasts.
Five stands in Lawson’s office, his back to the door, watching the news on the wall of screens. He extends his blade when he hears us coming but quickly sheathes it once he realizes that we aren’t Mogs.
“She got away,” Five says simply, sounding frustrated. “They had a staging area a few miles south of here in the forest. Took off when they realized the tide was turning. I know how they operate. They’ll be back soon with reinforcements.”
Sam and I enter the room cautiously while Five speaks, the rest of our group waiting outside. Five wears a set of fatigues that he either found lying around Patience Creek or stripped off a dead soldier. I guess the latter is more likely considering the blood splatters on the camouflage.
“You going to try locking me up again?” Five asks, looking at me over his shoulder.
“No,” I reply.
“Good.”
Sam and I come to stand alongside Five, the three of us staring at the monitors. The Mogadorian bombardment has begun. We’re looking at footage from at least ten different cities, all of them being slowly erased by warship fire. My eyes bounce from catastrophe to catastrophe, eventually settling on the Arc de Triomphe as it crumbles down the middle, its two pillars breaking apart against each other.
“This planet is toast,” Five says.
Sam ignores him and looks at me. “What now, John?”
“We throw everything we have at them,” I say immediately, glancing in Five’s direction. “Everything. And we either end this war, or we die trying.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO MOURN OUR DEAD. OUR friends, and the ones we barely got a chance to know. We don’t have time to grapple with how many lives were lost, our responsibility for that.
It’s probably for the best.
By the time we land Lexa’s ship outside of Patience Creek, the massacre is over. We’re just in time to help the survivors escape. We don’t want to be here when the Mogs send in reinforcements. There are other battlefields that need our attention.