THUNDER ROLLS, FOLLOWED BY BRILLIANT STREAKS of lightning, and in their glare I see the clouds expand and drop. Rain falls in heavy sheets, and the armored Mogadorian looks down at me. He presses the cannon against my blue pendant and says something I can’t understand. My wound in my stomach has almost healed, and I hear Ella yell my name over the thunder.
If I’m going to die, then I need to release Ella first. One of us needs to live to tell the others. I cautiously lift my hands and envision the trunk separating, when a bolt of lightning cracks in the distance. Less than a second later, the bolt strikes the Mogadorian standing over me, and he turns to ash and is swept away in the wind.
I climb to my feet and see that I’ve opened the beech tree’s trunk halfway. I continue to separate the tree as I run towards it. “Ella? Are you okay?”
She spills out of the trunk and falls into my arms. “I couldn’t see you,” she says, squeezing me. “I thought I lost you.”
“Not yet,” I say, grabbing my Chest. “Come on.”
We turn to run, and see Crayton and Héctor coming towards us. Héctor’s been hurt, and his arm is over Crayton’s shoulders for support. The wind and rain are raging. Behind them, the first wave of Mogadorians and krauls are charging up the shore after them. When I see this, I break away a large limb from a dead tree and hurl it hard at the closest pack of krauls. It knocks down several, but they’re back up again in no time. A Mogadorian soldier throws a grenade that I intercept midair with my mind and send right back into his stomach. It explodes, throwing several Mogadorians and krauls to the ground in soggy bits of ash. I send tree after tree, rock after rock, knocking many to the ground, killing more.
“Help me!” Crayton yells.
I rush to take Héctor from him. He has a bite wound in his stomach and a bullet hole in his arm, and both are bleeding badly.
“Come on, everyone!” Crayton yells, pulling bullets from his coat pocket and quickly sliding them into his gun’s empty clip. “We have to get to the dam!”
I open my mouth to respond, but an enormous lightning bolt snaps over us. It spreads across the sky like the veins of the gods, leaving the distinct taste of metal in the air. A deafening clap of thunder reverberates off the mountains. The wind and rain cease, and the clouds rotate around and around in a massive maelstrom, until a dark, glowing eye forms, staring at us from high over the mountaintops. The Mogadorians are just as mesmerized as we are. The wind kicks up again, and the dark clouds and the thunder and lightning come with it, slow at first, but quickly gaining speed, heading our way. A perfect storm, beautiful at its cataclysmic heart, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. All any of us can do is watch the thick clouds rolling towards us with a deep growl.
“What’s happening?” I scream over the gale force winds.
“I don’t know!” Crayton replies. “We’re going to need to find some cover!”
But he doesn’t move, and neither does anyone else. Héctor seems to have forgotten all about the pain of his wounds as he watches, too.
“Go!” Crayton finally yells, and then he spins around and fires on the Mogadorians to cover us as we run over a slight hill and then down into a valley. I see the dam on my right, which connects two lower mountains. It’s too far away to realistically believe we’ll reach it. Héctor’s face has turned white and he’s fading fast, and I start looking for a place to rest so I can heal him. Crayton’s gun falls silent. I look behind me fearing the worst, but he’s merely out of ammo. He chucks the gun over his shoulder and catches up to us.
“We’re not going to make it to the dam!” He yells. “Run to the lake!”
The rain starts up again as the four of us change direction. Bullets zip into our grassy footprints and ricochet off boulders. The clouds shift over us with a roar. A second later it’s as if we’ve gone under a bridge: the rain just stops. I look over my shoulder and see that just a few paces back, the rain still falls heavy and hard. The wind picks up significantly, and suddenly the Mogadorians behind us are stuck in the worst rainstorm I’ve ever seen. They completely disappear in a blur.
Our shoes slip over the sand on the shore, and Ella and Crayton dive into the water headfirst.
“I can’t do it, Marina,” Héctor says, stopping before his feet reach the water.
I drop my Chest and grab his arm and say, “I can fix you, Héctor. You can make it.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t know how to swim.”
“I’m Marina of the sea, Héctor. Remember?” I allow the iciness to spread from my fingertips to the bullet hole in his arm. I watch it turn from black and gray and red to a tan patch of wrinkled skin. I quickly concentrate on the bite wound on his stomach beneath his shirt, and Héctor suddenly stands up straight with energy. I look into his eyes. “As the Queen of the sea, I will swim with you.”
“But you have that,” Héctor says, pointing at the Chest.
“You’ll have to hold it then,” I say, dropping it into his arms.
We jog into the water until our feet no longer touch the lake floor, and then I wrap my right arm around Héctor’s chest and paddle with my left. Héctor hugs the Chest to his stomach, and he floats on his back, his head just above water. Ella and Crayton tread water in the middle of the lake, and I pull Héctor towards them.
The clouds overhead dissipate, shrinking into a hundred wispy lines of gray in the sky. The advancing Mogadorians are no longer a blur in a rainstorm, and the moment they can see they charge at the lake with dozens of krauls yipping in front of them.
A tiny black speck falls from above as the last cloud disappears, and the closer the speck gets, the more it appears to be a human.
Wearing a large blue pendant around her neck, she lands on the shore, rippling the sand. It’s a strikingly beautiful girl with raven-colored hair; and the second I see her I know she’s the one I’ve been dreaming of, the one I painted on the cave’s wall.
“She’s one of us!” I shout.
The girl looks around, we make eye contact, and then she vanishes a moment later. I’m shocked, crushed, believing I must have imagined her.
“Where’d she go?” Ella asks.
The moment I realize Ella saw her, too, that I hadn’t imagined her, I watch as the two nearest krauls are somehow yanked backwards in the air. They’re hovering, yipping and snarling at something behind them, and then they slam into each other until they fall limp. One kraul goes sailing into the legs of two soldiers, and the other is swung in the air, connecting with other krauls and soldiers.
“Invisibility. She has the Legacy of invisibility.” Crayton breathes.
She’s invisible? I’m amazed and jealous at the same time, but most of all I’m grateful. Every kraul that touches the water is yanked backwards by an unseen hand and slammed into the hard sand or a Mogadorian soldier. A dropped cannon rises from the grass and starts firing in all directions. Kraul after kraul is destroyed. Dozens of Mogadorians burst into clouds of ash.
Cannon blasts come from the other side of the lake, and I spin to see twenty or more Mogadorians wading in up to their waists. Rays of light hit the water all around us, creating enough steam that I can barely see Héctor in front of me.
“Ella?” I shout.
“Over here!” she yells from my left.
“Take Héctor.”
She wraps her arm around Héctor’s chest. “Why?”
“Because I’m not going to stay out here while that girl fights all by herself. This is my war, too.”
Before anyone can stop me, I sink below the surface and the water instantly tickles my lungs. I swim deeper until the green-blue color of the lake becomes gray. I see the hulking body of Olivia below me; she’s lying lifeless on the lake floor, clouds of blood billowing from the hundreds of bite wounds on her back.
I head towards the opposite shore and after a minute I can see the legs of the Mogadorians. I swim next to the one farthest on the left. I plant my feet in the muddy bottom and launch myself out of the water. The Mogadorian doesn’t have enough time to react as I toss him towards the middle of the lake with my mind. I float his cannon into my hands, shoot him, and never let go of the trigger. The Mogadorians along the lake burst into ash, and when I’ve killed them all, I aim towards the hundreds near the vehicles.
There’s movement in the water behind me and I’m too slow; a kraul jumps and sinks its teeth into my side. The pain is immediate and horrible, as if someone was holding a hot branding iron to my ribs. The beast whips me headfirst into the water and then against the sand of the shore. I catch my breath and scream as it arcs me back over and into the water again. I’m sure this is how I will die, but suddenly the kraul’s mouth widens and releases me. I fall onto my stomach on the shore and watch as the kraul’s mouth continues to widen until I hear bones snapping. The raven-haired girl materializes before my eyes, her hands on the beast’s quivering lips. She looks back at me before yanking the jaws completely vertical, killing the kraul.
“Are you okay?” the girl asks me.
I lift up my shirt and place a hand on my wound. “I will be in a second.”
She ducks a blast from a cannon. “Good. What number are you?”
“Seven.”
“I’m Six,” she says before vanishing.
The iciness spreads from my fingers over my body, but I know I won’t be able to heal myself completely before the oncoming wave of Mogadorian soldiers reaches me. I roll into the lake and stay underwater. My wound is almost healed when I rise above the surface.
Number Six is on top of one of the armored Humvees with a glowing sword. She’s fighting several soldiers at once: hacking off body parts, blocking cannon fire with her blade, using telekinesis to aim a floating cannon high above her so it blasts through dozens of Mogadorians on the formation’s edge. She then hurls her sword into a crowd, impaling three soldiers at once. Number Six grabs the large gun mounted on top of the vehicle and mows down dozens of Mogadorians in seconds.
There are only twenty or thirty soldiers left. Maybe four krauls. Number Six holds one hand over her head while the gun in the other shoots and destroys the Humvees along the shore. Dark clouds form over the mountains and bolts of lightning crack and split the ground near her. The Mogadorians show fear for the first time, and I watch a few drop their weapons and run towards the woods.
“Out of the water!” I yell, fearful of the lightning. Ella drags Héctor to the edge of the lake and Crayton follows.
I reach the shore near Number Six and pick up two cannons. I struggle to keep my footing as I press both triggers, turning more soldiers to ash, destroying two of the krauls. An injured soldier hiding behind a wrecked Humvee tosses a grenade at Number Six’s back, but I’m able to shoot it in the air. The explosion rotates Number Six and the mounted gun, and a moment later the injured soldier is nothing but ash.
I can’t keep my eyes off of Number Six. Her strength is mesmerizing. The blue pendant bounces around as the gun in her one hand cuts down more and more soldiers. She rotates to her left and blows a kraul into bits, and then she rotates to her right and takes out several more Mogadorians with a bolt of lightning.
The valley is bright and smoky. It’s damp and charred. I look around me and can’t believe that victory will be ours in just a matter of seconds. Crayton races over and I toss him one of my guns, and instantly he’s killing soldiers retreating into the woods. Héctor runs with my Chest, and soon he and Ella stand behind me. I nod towards Number Six and smile at my friends, thinking that the worst is over; but that’s when Ella raises her eyes over my head and her face turns white.
“Pikens!” Ella yells.
Four of the horned monsters run down the mountainside at full speed. Directly below them, Number Six is preoccupied with the few remaining soldiers and the kraul. I uproot as many silver firs as I can and send them like rockets. Four hit the lead one and it falls backwards into the path of the other three, and it’s crushed and killed in the stampede.
“Number Six!” I shout. She hears me, and I point to the pikens rumbling down into the valley. She spins with the gun and blows the knees off the monster on the left. It tumbles down faster than the other two can run, and Number Six jumps from the Humvee a moment before the dead piken flattens it with an echoing crunch.
Crayton and I shoot our cannons at the other two, but they’re too fast, splitting up when they reach the valley floor. The clouds roar when Number Six stands, and an enormous bolt of lightning crashes into one of the pikens, cutting off its arm. It bellows and falls to its knees, but quickly regains its balance and charges ahead with blood spurting from its side. The other piken dodges Crayton’s fire and rushes in from the other direction. We all run towards Number Six, but Héctor is too slow with my Chest in his arms. The piken closes in, and before I can help, the one-armed monster reaches down and snatches Héctor and my Chest in its fist.
“No!” I scream. “Héctor!”
I’m in such shock that when the piken throws a lifeless Héctor and my Chest into the lake, I don’t use my telekinesis to stop either from sinking.
Number Six has killed the other piken. She turns towards us now and holds both hands up to the sky. A lightning bolt severs the monster’s head from its body.
For the first time all day, there is silence. I lean into Number Six, look at Ella and Crayton and the fire and destruction behind them, and I know that these quiet moments are about to become rare in my life.
“Your Chest, Marina,” Crayton says. “You have to go get it.”
I turn to Number Six and hug her. “Thank you. Thank you, Number Six.”
“I’m sure we’ll get a chance to do it again sometime.” She wraps her arms around my shoulders. “And just call me Six.”
“I’m Marina. This is Crayton and Ella. She’s Number Ten.”
Ella steps forward and shrinks to her seven-year-old body. She extends her small hand towards Six, who has her mouth open, speechless.
Crayton starts to explain Ella and the second ship to Six as I walk into the lake. I feel its coolness for the first time. I swim to the middle and dive, descending until the water is devoid of any light and my feet touch the muddy floor. I circle the bottom until I see my Chest. I rock it back and forth to dislodge it from the mud’s suction. Swimming with one arm, I start to ascend. When the water turns blue, I see Héctor’s body and wrap my other arm around his waist.
Ella and Crayton stand with Six on the shore. I drop the Chest and slap my wet hands on Héctor’s shin, arm, neck, all around his crushed back, hoping and praying the icy feeling will arrive in my fingers.
“He’s dead,” Crayton says, pulling on my shoulders.
I don’t give up. Hating myself for not trying the same thing on Adelina, I touch Héctor’s face. I run my hand through his gray hair. I even levitate him a few centimeters off the sand and try it all over again, but it’s true. He’s gone.