I.
The first words I ever heard from my Cepan Tam were how they took the wrong nine.
I didn't understand then the meaning of those words only that coming from the man who had me hoisted up to his chest I was meant to take them as they were - grave predictions of our future.
I was four years old then. Two moons hung from the sky in perfect parallel with each other the evening of our eggress.
This detail I fixate on because honestly it is the only thing about the story - the story, the one Tam's always failed to finish even though he has tried to tell me the whole story a thousand times in a thousand different fragments - that I can actually remember.
For all I know my Cepan could be lying to me about the fate of all Loric-kind. All it takes however to convince me otherwise are the thought of those moons. I wonder if unlike our planet those two are still hanging around.
It took approximately 312 days to arrive on Earth. What I remember most distinctly about our voyage - aside from empty space and the long, boring days marked only in passing with the fastidious note-takings of our Cepans - were the birthdays.
Solemn affairs, every single one of them.
I remember crying for my mom and dad and having only Tam to console me when I couldn't find them in the forty step confines of our ship.
We'd been soaring through the cosmos for more than 200 days and never in that time did it occur to me that of course my parents were dead - they already were pretty much the moment our rocket left for space.
I had never felt so alone then, realizing that.
On carrying on with the tradition of doing things wrong, we landed more than 400 miles away from where we were meant. For starters we were supposed to be on solid ground.
We landed on water instead.
The impact wasn't anything like I'd been accustomed to in my short life. Short bursts of fire, tremors from turbulent flight, devastating explosions brought about by ionized weaponry - that was what I had for comparison.
Water landing at nearly forty times the speed of sound made it feel like the entire world was coming apart at the hinges. Metal didn't shake so much as it basically disintegrated around us; I couldn't even hear myself scream over the multifaceted blaring of the warning systems as the ship wracked from the combined agony of its faulty descent and arrival.
I passed out at some point.
When I next came to I was on a small raft. I'd been woken by the smell of ice and salt, the unsteady to and fro of the waves bearing us aloft.
Tam was with me, as well as another Cepan and Garde pair. The woman held the girl in her arms, barely three years old. Both looked older by sheer dint of the travesties we'd been forced to go through in the past few hours. Guess I must have looked that way too in her eyes.
That, basically, was how we got here.
Then from four people on a small, inflated dinghy more than a hundred miles off the coast of England we were picked up by a small fishing boat in passing. One of the crew members was a Greeter; only reason why the boat strayed so far from its original course that it found us.
I don't know how the others got away.
Tam told me the other Cepan-Garde pairs had their own rafts, other pairs at hand that could provide them with what little companionship they could give before the inevitable parting of ways. The boat me, Tam, and the other Cepan-Garde pair boarded never picked up on other castaways.
My Cepan assures me all of them found a way off the ocean. Can't do anything there but believe him.
Also, something I forgot to mention-
A charm protects us.
On the night we left, nine of us each accepted a pendant from one of the Elders. On it contained a power- a protection of sorts - ensuring that all of us would stay safe for as long we weren't attacked in turn. The pendants we held then were transparent crystal, but as they made contact with our flesh something in them reached out; whether bonding with us or binding themselves to us I couldn't tell. With the connection also came the burning, the scarring.
Our place on the list was not randomly determined. The Elder who made the charm could see glimpses of the future, and from those visions she decided on the order that would best give us a chance at fighting back and surviving as a whole.
The logic was sound, if not a little unforgiving.
Not that it mattered in my case.
As the hot crystal cooled, I could see the dark upturned crescent and the black dots to the bottom-left of the panel that now mirrored the raised, red flesh on the inside of my left ankle. The meaning was clear, the numeric significance unmistakable; I was Number Five.
The scars didn't come for years, long enough that I could dismiss all that I could remember as delusions, perhaps brought about by some kind fever dream. When they finally came, they did so with no warning and no reprieve.
I was eleven when the first scar burned itself into existence on my right ankle. Tam and I were on the way home. Our house was a ramshackle hut bordering the property of a well-off couple where Tam served as the local groundskeeper. As it was snowing (it always did snow back in Anchorage), the heat that came with the coming of my scar turned the calf-deep snow into steam. In seconds my coat and vest were soaked in wet warmth which instantly turned cold enough to be painful up against my skin.
Tam saw the flash in the mid-day darkness. I remember the look of horror he had on his face when he pulled up my charred and dripping pant leg to reveal the scar in the shape of Number One's pendant: A lone dot in the middle of a circle just above where the bone protruded.
The very next day saw us at sea.
The next scar came when I was fourteen. We'd been living in Forks for the better part of three years. Tam didn't insist on the constant moving, said that vagrancy in and of itself would set off just as many bells as it would defuse them. Still, three years was a long time to be holed up somewhere, and yet there were only ever a few things I could remember about the time we'd spent there. Homeschooling, the constant, heavy mist; tall cliffs, rocky shores, and dark beaches.
The scar came while we were training. I had made the mistake of assuming that the sudden flames coming off of me were manifestations of a newly formed legacy. There was an odd disparity there for a moment as I whooped and cried, heedless of the fleeting pain, thrilled that I now had powers after going so long with only the promise that I'd develop them later in life. But then I looked up, saw the grief in Tam's eyes and knew that I was wrong.
No legacies here, I thought, just the death of another Garde child.
The third scar appeared yesterday in my sleep, jolting me out of my nightmares to one that was currently playing out before my eyes. I had barely opened my mouth to call out to Tam before he was there in the room with a fire extinguisher in hand. The spray put out the fire quickly enough - all but the heat-glow of my scar and the smoke that had yet to dissipate remained as distractions in the room.
We were never going to escape it, our fates. I had always known that we would have to fight in the future - if not for our sakes then at least for the people who called this planet home, this planet where our alien race had taken to hiding so shamefully in.
But I was scared at the prospect of fighting.
Only a year had gone by since Two's passing and now Three was already dead. With whoever they were gone, the recent scar they'd left on my ankle now reached halfway up to my knee. And it was still warm; I could feel the heat of it emanating from a small, circular spot, kind of like a motorcycle's exhaust pipe.
I couldn't help but make unwanted comparisons.
Was Three's body still warm?
Should be - it'd only been seconds since the scar appeared.
Was his Cepan still out there fighting?
Did he or she know his charge was dead? Or did they die first, never knowing if the Garde child they raised managed to get out of things alive?
Did Three even get to have Legacies?
If so, did he get to fight back at all?
So many questions I could ask but all the answers are worthless.
Tam holds on to me as the shivers find their way into my system. I have never cried for my lost friends, but always I shiver in the aftermath of their deaths.
I remind myself it's not my time yet.
They still have to find Number Four before they get to me.
And I-
I am Number Five.
Time is running out for us all.