BY THE LOOK ON SAM’S FACE I CAN TELL HE’S just about lost all faith in getting out of here alive. My own shoulders sag as I stare into the massive white eyes of the beast that’s rising to its feet in front of us. It takes its time, stretching its muscular neck, veins as thick as Roman columns protruding on both sides. The dark skin on its face is dry and cracked like the stone jutting above its head. With its long arms, it has the look of an alien gorilla.
By the time the giant has pushed itself into a full standing position, fifty feet tall, the handle of my dagger has melted itself around my right hand.
“Flank it!” I yell. Sam runs left and I dart right.
Its first move is towards Sam, who immediately turns and runs along the circular edge of the moat. The beast lumbers after him, and that’s when I sprint towards it and slide my dagger right and left, cutting small chunks from its calves. It rears its head and smashes its nose against the ceiling, and then swings a hand down at me, one of its fingers connecting with my back leg. I’m sent spinning into the wall, where I land on my left shoulder, dislocating it.
“John!” Sam yells.
The giant swings for me again, but I’m able to jump out of the path of its fist; the giant may be powerful, but it’s slow. Still, the cave we’re in is not large enough to run very far so, slow or not, it still has the advantage.
I don’t see Sam anywhere as I stagger from boulder to boulder. The giant has a hard time following me; and once I figure I have enough time, I slowly raise my left arm above my head and rotate my hand so my palm is on the back of my head. The pain shoots from my neck to my heels; and before I give in to it, I keep reaching and feel my dislocated shoulder pop back into place. A sense of relief comes over me, but it’s short-lived as I look up to see the giant’s palm right above my head.
I raise my dagger and its blade punctures the beast’s palm, but it’s not enough to stop it from wrapping its fingers around me. It picks me up, and the strength of its squeeze causes the dagger to fall to the ground. I hear its diamond blade clang; and as I’m turned upside down, I search for it so I can use my telekinesis to retrieve it.
“Sam! Where are you?”
I’m disoriented as the beast turns me right side up again, and it holds me a few feet above its nose. Then I see Sam emerge from a fissure in the wall. He runs and picks up my blade, and a second later the giant squeals in shock and pain. It squeezes me hard, and I push back against its fingers as much as I can. As it stumbles backwards, I’m able to free my shoulders, arms, and hands. I turn on the lights of my palms and shine my Lumen directly into its eyes. It’s instantly blinded and backs into a wall, and that’s when I’m able to pull the rest of my body free and jump.
Sam tosses me my dagger and I charge at the beast, plunging the blade into the skin between every toe. The giant howls. It bends over, and when it does I shine my Lumen again into its eyes. It loses its balance, and I make a boulder behind it dislodge and slam into its lower back. The beast pitches forward, its long arms straight out to break its fall. Its massive hands land in the moat of steaming green liquid—and the sound of its searing flesh comes a second later. I watch as the beast crashes into the base of the electrical force field and the thick stone pedestals holding the Chests. The crash disrupts the force field and sends the pedestals flying across the room, breaking against the stone. The beast lies unmoving.
“Tell me you planned that,” Sam says, following me towards the Chests.
“I wish I could,” I say.
I open my Chest to find everything inside, including the coffee can of Henri’s ashes and the volatile crystal that’s wrapped in the towel. “Looks good,” I say. Sam picks up the other Chest.
“What happens when we go through that door?” Sam says, nodding to the small wooden door we came in through.
We killed the beast and we have the Chests, but we can’t turn ourselves invisible and just stroll by a hundred Mogs. I open my Chest and handle different crystals and objects, but again I have no idea what most of them do, and the ones I do know how to use can’t exactly get me through a mountain of aliens. Looking around the room, I’m losing hope. But it’s after studying the giant’s melting skin and disintegrating bones that I get an idea.
With my dagger back in my jeans pocket, I slowly approach the moat of bubbling green liquid. I take a deep breath and carefully dip a finger in it. Just as I’d hoped, it’s scalding hot but merely tickles my skin like fire. It’s like green lava.
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“When I say open the door, I want you to open it and get out of the way immediately.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
Visions of Henri running the Loric crystal over me as I lie on the coffee table, my hands in open flames, run through my mind, and I dunk my hand into the moat and pick up a dripping scoop of the green lava. I close my eyes and concentrate, and when I open them the liquid is hovering over my hand in a perfect flaming ball.
“This, I guess,” I say.
“Wicked.”
Sam runs over to the wooden door, and I nod to show him I’m ready.
He rips the door open and dives to his right. A cluster of heavily armed Mogs are running our way; but when they catch sight of the fiery green ball coming their way, they try to turn around. As the ball is about to splash on the chest of the first Mog, I use my mind to spread it out like a fiery blanket. Several Mogs are hit, and after a moment of burning torture, they turn to ash.
I wing ball after ball of green lava at more Mogs, knocking them down. Sam collects a pile of their guns, and once there’s a lull in the advancement, I grab two more balls of green liquid and run out the door. Sam follows me with a long black gun under each arm.
The number of Mogs running down the dark tunnel is staggering; and with the flashing lights and piercing sirens, it’s a sensory overload. Sam pulls both triggers and mows down row after row of Mogs, but they keep coming. When he’s out of bullets, Sam grabs two more guns.
“I could use some help here!” Sam yells, mowing down another line of Mogs.
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” The mucus-covered walls of the tunnel don’t appear to lend themselves to spreading a decent fire, and I don’t have enough of the green lava in my hands to do enough damage. To my left are the silver gas tanks and silos with their heavy pipes, spouts and aluminum ducts. Next to the tallest of the silos I eye the control panel with electrical wires pouring out. I can hear the screams and roars of the beasts in the barred chambers farther down the hall, and wonder how hungry they are.
I toss a flaming ball at the control panel and it disintegrates in a storm of sparks. The bars of the chambers lining the walls begin to rise, and that’s when I toss the other green ball at the base of the gas tanks and silos.
I grab hold of Sam and sprint with him back into the giant’s chamber. As the explosion erupts, I whip Sam against the stone section between the wooden door and the rising steel gate, and allow the advancing wave of flames to sweep over me. My ears are flooded with the crackle and hum of fire.
Dozens of krauls burst from their open chamber and attack a series of unsuspecting Mogs from behind; several pikens stomp into the tunnel with roars and swinging arms; the reptilian mutant with horns charges towards the back of the tunnel, plowing over Mogs and krauls under the legs of the pikens; the gargoylelike winged creatures buzz at the ceiling, swooping down to take a bite out of anything they can; and the monster with transparent skin sinks its rows of teeth into the calf of a piken. That all happens in a matter of seconds, then they’re overtaken by a sea of fire.
After a few minutes, once the fire escapes up the spiral cavern at the end of the tunnel to continue to wreak havoc throughout the mountain, the long corridor in front of me is littered with ash piles and black monster bones. I extinguish the fire surrounding me and brush my hands off onto my thighs.
Sam is singed, but otherwise okay.
“Brilliant, dude,” he says.
“Let’s just try to get the hell out of here, and then we can celebrate.”
I stick my Chest under my arm and Sam picks up the other. We race through the fire’s destruction; the stench of death is choking. The charred ladder at the end of the tunnel appears stable, and with only one free hand apiece, we climb with difficulty. Our feet hit the burned and blackened spiral ledge, and we sprint around and around until we reach the cave’s center.
The inferno I unleashed did much more damage than I thought it would, and we see piles upon piles of ash; but we also see hundreds of Mogs crawling out of different corridors and tunnels on their hands and knees, burned or still on fire, barking in pain, unable to pick up their guns, unable to do anything as we jump over them. There are other soldiers racing above us on ledges, some with weapons in their arms, others with the wounded.
I’m confused which way the exit is; and as I lead us through a series of tunnels with my pendant swinging around my neck, Sam and I each pick up a discarded gun. We run with them chest high, firing at anything that gets in our way. Even though we don’t know where we’re going, we don’t stop moving until we come to the cells with human prisoners. That’s when I know for certain we’ve gone the wrong way. I pull Sam in the other direction, but he plants his feet and stops me. I can see the concern and hope on his face. The cells have their steel doors stuck a foot above the floor and the bubbling blue force fields have disappeared.
“They’re open, John!” he yells, tossing his Chest at my feet. I drop my gun and pick up the other Chest, and Sam finally says what I knew he was thinking: “What if my dad’s here?”
I look into Sam’s eyes, and I know we have to check. He runs along the left side of the corridor, yelling into each cell for his dad. I’m investigating the cells on the right when a boy my age with long black hair sticks his head under a door. When he sees me, he puts a hand cautiously into the corridor.
“The force field is really gone?” he shouts.
“I think so!” I yell.
Sam hoists his gun over his shoulder and ducks his head under the boy’s cell door. “Do you know a man named Malcolm Goode? Forty years old, brown hair? Is he here? Have you seen him?”
“Shut up and stand back, kid,” I hear the boy say. There’s a grittiness to his voice, something that makes me uneasy, and I immediately pull Sam to the side. The boy grips the bottom of the door and rips it from the wall, tossing it into the corridor like a Frisbee. The ceiling cracks and boulders fall, and I use telekinesis to shield Sam and me from being crushed. Before I can say a word, the boy emerges clapping the dust off his hands. He’s taller than I am, shirtless and muscular.
Sam steps forward, and to my surprise he aims his gun at the boy’s head. “Just tell me! Do you know my dad? Malcolm Goode? Please!”
The boy looks past Sam and his weapon, focusing on the Chests under my arms. That’s when I notice the three scars on his leg. They’re just like mine. He’s one of us.
I drop the other Chest to the ground in shock. “What number are you? I’m Four.”
He squints at me and then offers his hand. “I’m Nine. Good job staying alive, Number Four.”
He reaches for the Chest I’ve dropped. Sam lowers his gun, retreating down the corridor, stopping every few seconds to look inside a cell. Nine places his hand on the Chest’s lock and it instantly shakes and snaps open. A yellow glow lights up his face when he opens the lid.
“Hell, yeah.” He laughs, placing a hand inside. Nine pulls out a tiny red rock and shows it to me. “You have one of these?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I’m embarrassed by how little I understand the items in my own Chest.
Nine places the rock between his knuckles and aims his fist at the nearest wall. A white cone of light appears, and instantly we can see through the wall and into an empty jail cell.
Sam runs in our direction. “Wait! You have X-ray vision?”
“What number is the nerd?” Nine asks me, digging around in his Chest again.
“That’s Sam. He’s not Loric, but he’s our ally. He’s looking for his dad.”
He tosses Sam the red rock. “This will make shit go faster, Sammy. Just aim and squeeze.”
“He’s human, dude,” I say. “He can’t use this stuff.”
Nine places his thumb on Sam’s forehead. Sam’s hair blows upward and I can smell electricity in the air.
Sam stumbles backwards. “Whoa.”
Nine ducks his hands back into his Chest. “You’ve got about ten minutes. Get to it.”
I’m amazed that Nine has the ability to transfer powers to humans. Sam runs down the corridor, inspecting cells with a flick of the wrist. When he gets to the large metal door at the end, he aims the rock at it, exposing more than a dozen armed Mogs on the other side, and one is twisting together exposed wires in an open keypad.
“Sam!” I yell picking up my gun. “Get back!”
Whoosh. The door rises and the Mogs rush forward. Sam sprints away, firing over his shoulder.
“You have any other Legacies yet?” I ask Nine over the sound of my gun.
He winks, and then he’s gone, running along the cracked ceiling at super speed. The Mogs don’t notice Nine until he’s dropped behind them, and by then it’s too late. He’s a tornado, ripping through them with a ferocity I didn’t know Loric possessed; even Six would be impressed. Sam and I stop firing, letting Nine dismember each Mog with his bare hands.
When he’s finished, Nine runs back along the left wall of the corridor before circling to the ceiling and then to the right wall, a cloud of ash trailing him.
“Antigravity,” Sam says. “Now that’s a cool Legacy.”
Nine skids to a stop in front of his Chest and kicks it shut. “I can also hear pretty well. For miles.”
“Okay, let’s go,” I say, scooping up my Chest. Nine easily places his on his huge shoulder and grabs a gun from the floor.
“What about those other cells?” he asks Sam, pointing down the corridor. A hundred or more cell doors line the walls past where the Mogs had entered.
“We have to go,” I say, knowing we’re already pushing our luck. It’s only a matter of seconds before we’ll be surrounded. But there’s no persuading Sam.
He runs under the large door, still holding the red rock. Another dozen Mogs suddenly emerge from a hidden tunnel entrance between us. Sam braces himself against the wall and fires. I see a few of the Mogs burst into ash, but then my view is blocked by a swarm of drooling krauls.
Focusing my thoughts on a boulder, I whip it at the krauls, smashing all but a few. Nine catches a kraul by its back legs, and slams the beast against the wall. He crushes another two, and when he’s done he turns to me, laughing. I’m about to ask him what’s so funny when he launches a boulder right at me. I barely jump out of the way, and a moment later my back is covered with black ash.
“They’re everywhere!” He laughs.
“We have to get to Sam!” I try to run past Nine when an enormous piken hand snatches us both.
“Sam!” I yell. “Sam!”
Sam doesn’t hear us over the sound of his gun. The piken pulls us in the other direction, and, in what feels like slow motion, I lose sight of my best friend. Before I can yell again, the piken throws us down the opposite tunnel. I hit the wall and land on one Chest and the other lands on top of me. The wind is knocked out of me; and when I look up, I see Nine spitting blood out. He’s grinning.
“Are you crazy?” I ask. “You’re enjoying this?”
“I’ve been locked up for over a year. This is the best day of my life!”
Two pikens duck into the tunnel, blocking our direct path back to Sam. Nine wipes the blood from his chin and opens his Chest. He pulls out a short silver pipe, and it expands violently at both ends until it’s over six feet long and glowing red. He runs toward the pikens with the pipe over his head. I stand to join him but feel a jolt of pain in my ribs. I dig inside my Chest for my healing stone, but by the time I find it Nine has killed both pikens. Running back along the ceiling, he twirls the pipe at his side, and when he’s twenty feet away he yells for me to move. The glowing red pipe sails over my head like a javelin, impaling a piken in the stomach.
“Don’t mention it,” Nine says before I can utter a word.
More pikens squeeze into the far end of the tunnel, and when I turn around to run, a flock of transparent birds with razor-sharp teeth is flying towards us. Nine grabs a strand of green stones from his Chest and flings it towards the flock. It hovers in the air and, like a black hole, sucks the birds into it.
He closes his eyes and the stones zip towards the pikens, spinning and unleashing the flock of birds into their faces. Nine points at me and yells, “Boulder them!”
I follow his lead, rocketing boulder after boulder at the mayhem. The pikens and the birds collapse under our barrage.
Several more pikens push their way into the tunnel, roaring. I grab Nine’s arm to keep him from charging.
“They’re just going to keep coming,” I say. “We have to find Sam and get out of here. Number Six is meeting us.”
He nods and we run. At the next opening we veer left, unsure if we’re making progress or getting even more lost. More and more enemies appear behind us with every new turn. Nine trashes every tunnel we pass through, bringing down ceilings and collapsing walls with telekinesis and perfectly thrown boulders.
We come to a long, low-arching bridge of solid rock, similar to the one Sam and I shuffled along earlier, and below is a steaming pool of green lava. Charging across the other side of the narrow bridge is a thick line of Mogs, and behind us several pikens are racing down the tunnel, straight towards us.
“Where do we go?” I shout as we step onto the bridge.
Nine says, “We go under.”
Nine grabs my hand as we reach the peak of the bridge, and my world literally flips upside down until we’re running along the underside of the arch. Without warning Nine lets go of me, but my shoes still firmly grip the belly of the bridge somehow. I reach over my head and scoop up a pile of the green lava, and by the time we’re standing on the other side of the room, I have a perfect green ball of fire in my hand. I wing it at the Mogs on the bridge and visualize it spreading over them. I can hear the sizzling of their flesh when we duck into another cave.
I’m out of breath when we reach a steep decline. I’m judging the grade of the drop when I’m hit with a blast from behind. I topple forward and fall at an amazing speed, and when the ground finally levels out, my recently dislocated shoulder hits it first.
I roll onto my stomach in unimaginable pain. The blast hit me square in the back, and my muscles are stuck in an uncontrollable spasm. I can hardly breathe, let alone search my Chest for my healing stone. The only thing I can do is stare at the slivers of moonlight that appear and disappear at the end of the tunnel. The tarp. It’s flapping in the forest wind. I’m back to where I started.
I hear the sound of rocks crumbling behind me. I’m in more pain than I thought imaginable, and all I can think about is leaving the mountain. “Straight ahead. It’s the exit. We can regroup out there,” I manage.
If we can make it outside, then I can heal myself, hide our Chests in the forest. And maybe BK can come back in with us now that we’ve destroyed the gas tanks. The four Mogs who guarded the entrance are gone, and Nine jumps out through the tarp and into the forest. I follow. The stench from the dead animal carcasses hits us fast, and we both gag as Nine jogs into a line of trees. I collapse against a trunk. I need five minutes, I think. Then we’re going back in for Sam. Guns and hands blazing.
Nine digs around his Chest and I close my eyes. Tears roll down my face. I’m startled by something rough touching my left hand. I open my eyes to see it’s Bernie Kosar in his beagle form, licking my fingers.
“I don’t deserve that,” I tell him. “I’m a coward. I’m cursed.”
He notices my injuries and tears, and then sniffs Nine’s face before expanding into a horse.
“Whoa!” Nine jumps back. “What the hell are you?”
“Chimæra,” I whisper. “He’s a good guy. He’s Loric.”
Nine quickly pets BK’s muzzle and then presses a healing stone to my back. As it works through my system, I notice a menacing storm brewing over the mountain.
The sky suddenly rages with lightning and booming thunder, and I’m so grateful Six has returned that I stand, ignoring the remaining pain in my back. The clouds shift and stretch in a way I’ve never seen before, though, and the sky feels suddenly evil. This isn’t Six. She’s not back to help.
I watch the funnel cloud that I’ve only seen in my worst visions form.
Bernie Kosar rears backward as a perfectly spherical spaceship, milky white like a pearl, sweeps down through the tornado’s eye. The ship lands right in front of the mountain’s entrance, sending tremors through the ground. In the same way as I had seen in my visions, a door appears from out of nowhere on the ship’s side, simply melting away. The Mogadorian leader from my visions, he’s here.
Nine gasps. “Setrákus Ra. He’s here. This is it.”
I’m silent, frozen in fear. “So that’s his name,” I finally whisper.
“That was his name. For every day they tried to torture me and my Cêpan, I’m going to stab him with this.” The red pipe glows in Nine’s hand. Its ends expand with rotating blades. “I’m going to kill him. And you’re going to help me.”
Setrákus Ra walks towards the cave’s entrance but stops before going in, one massive silhouette, stark and spectral. Through the raging wind and torrential rain, he turns, lifting his gaze in our general direction. Even from as far away as I am, the faint glow of the three pendants is unmistakable around his thick neck.
Nine and I charge out of the trees with Bernie Kosar galloping behind, but it’s too late. Setrákus Ra has disappeared into the cave and the same bubbling blue force field that covered the prison cell doors appears over the entrance.
“No!” Nine yells. He slides to a stop and stabs the ground with his pipe.
With my dagger in my hand, I keep going. I hear Nine scream for me to stop, but all I can think about is killing Setrákus Ra, saving Sam and his dad and ending this war, right here, right now. When I hit the blue force field, everything goes black.