Summary: Henri decides that Four needs to be trained and taught much sooner than in the original story, he teaches Four all about their history as a species its culture, and language. With no time for school, Four dedicates his time to his training, wanting to be the strongest Guarde and best defender for his people.
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN NOR CLAIM OWNERSHIP OVER THE I AM NUMBER FOUR SERIES, THE LORIEN LEGACIES SERIES OR ANY WORKS MADE BY PITTACUS LORE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PLEASE SUPPORT THIS RELEASE THIS IS FOR ALL WORKS AND POTENTIAL STORIES.
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE NINE OF US. We left when we were young, almost too young to remember.
Almost.
I am told the ground shook, that the skies were full of light and explosions. We were in that two-week period of the year when both moons hang on opposite sides of the horizon. It was a time of celebration, and the explosions were at first mistaken for fireworks. They were not. It was warm, a soft wind blew in from off the water. I am always told the weather: it was warm. There was a soft wind. I've never understood why that matters.
What I remember most vividly is the way my grandmother looked that day. She was frantic and sad. There were tears in her eyes. My grandfather stood just over her shoulder. I remember the way his glasses gathered the light from the sky. There were hugs. There were words said by each of them. I don't remember what they were. Nothing haunts me more.
It took a year to get here. I was five when we arrived. We were to assimilate ourselves into the culture before returning to Lorien when it could again sustain life. The nine of us had to scatter and go our own ways. For how long, nobody knew. We still don't. None of them know where I am, and I don't know where they are, or what they look like now. That is how we protect ourselves because of the charm that was placed upon us when we left, a charm guaranteeing that we can only be killed in the order of our numbers, so long as we stay apart. If we come together, then the charm is broken.
When one of us is found and killed, a circular scar wraps around the right ankle of those still alive. And residing on our left ankle, formed when the Loric charm was first cast, is a small scar identical to the amulet each of us wears. The circular scars are another part of the charm. A warning system so that we know where we stand with each other, and so that we know when they'll be coming for us next. The first scar came when I was nine years old. It woke me from my sleep, burning itself into my flesh. We were living in Arizona, in a small border town near Mexico. I woke screaming in the middle of the night, in agony, terrified as the scar seared itself into my flesh. It was the first sign that the Mogadorians had finally found us on Earth, and the first sign that we were in danger. I wanted to be a normal kid living a normal life, but I knew then, beyond any doubt or discussion, that I wasn't. From that point on Henri decided that we couldn't just run anymore. We had to get stronger and to plan our defense and eventual attack on the Mogadorians. It started with tactic training for the first couple of years and learning about the Lorain culture. We decided that I could learn more staying home and training rather than going to school for 8 hours a day. We moved to Minnesota the next day.
The second scar came when I was twelve. I was in our backyard running through some katas that Henri was teaching me when the pain started thankfully we choose to live excluded from most people so my sudden shock and shout in pain didn't alert anyone but Henri, we still decided that it was best to move on this time to Maine. We left with most of our things we had especially the Loric Chest that Henri brought along on every move. All twenty-one of them to date. It was through dedicated training that my telekinesis came that same year.
The third scar appeared an hour ago. I was sitting on a pontoon boat. The boat belonged to the parents of the most popular kid at the local high school, and unbeknownst to them, he was having a party on it. I had never been invited to any parties before but I happened to run into some of the local kids in the area. I had always, because I knew we might leave at any minute, kept to myself. But it had been quiet for four years. I was 16 now and Henri hadn't seen anything in the news that might lead the Mogadorians to one of us or might alert us to them. We moved once more and stayed for two years with no signs so I made a couple of friends. And one of them introduced me to the kid who was having the party. Everyone met at a dock. There were three coolers, some music, girls I had admired from afar but never decided to try and pursue because I never knew when we would leave. We pulled out from the dock and went half a mile into the Gulf of Mexico. I was sitting on the edge of the pontoon with my feet in the water, talking to a cute, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl named Tara, when I felt it coming. The water around my leg started boiling, and my lower leg started glowing where the scar was embedding itself. The third of the Lorien symbols, the third warning. Tara started screaming and people started crowding around me. I knew there was no way to explain it. And I knew we would have to leave immediately.
The stakes were higher now. They had found Number Three, wherever he or she was, and Number Three was dead. So I calmed Tara down and kissed her on the cheek and told her it was nice to meet her and that I hoped she had a long beautiful life. I dove off the side of the boat and started swimming, underwater the entire time, except for one breath about halfway there, as fast as I could until I reached the shore. I ran along the side of the highway, just inside of the tree line, moving at speeds much faster than any of the cars. When I got home, Henri was at the bank of scanners and monitors that he used to research news around the world, and police activity in our area. He knew without me saying a word, though he did lift my soaking pants to see the scars. I told him what had happened and that we should keep an eye up for videos surfacing of what just happened. In the beginning we were a group of nine. Three are gone, dead. There are six of us left. They are hunting us, and they won't stop until they've killed us all. I am Number Four. I know that I am next. And I am ready.
We stare up at our house that we have lived in for the past two years, I'll miss it.
Henri comes out carrying the last of our personal items we had. He is wearing khaki shorts and a black polo. He is very tan, with an unshaven face that seems downcast. He is also sad to be leaving. He tosses the final boxes into the back of the truck with the rest of our things.
"That's it," he says.
I nod. We stand and stare up at the house and listen to the wind come through the palm fronds. I am holding a bag of celery in my hand.
"I'll miss this place," I say. "Even more than the others."
"Me too."
"Time for the burn?"
"Yes. You want to do it, or you want me to?"
"I'll do it." Henri pulls out his wallet and drops it on the ground. I pull out mine and do the same. He walks to our truck and comes back with passports, birth certificates, social security cards, checkbooks, credit cards, and bank cards, and drops them on the ground. All of the documents and materials related to our identities here, all of them forged and manufactured. I grab from the truck a small gas can we keep for emergencies. I pour the gas over the small pile. My current name is Daniel Jones. My story is that I grew up in California and moved here because of my dad's job as a computer programmer. Daniel Jones is about to disappear. I light a match and drop it, and the pile ignites. Another one of my lives, gone. As we always do, Henri and I stand and watch the fire. Bye, Daniel, I think, it was nice knowing you. When the fire burns down, Henri looks over at me.
"We gotta go."
"I know."
"These islands were never safe. They're too hard to leave quickly, too hard to escape from. It was foolish of us to come here."
I nod. He is right, and I know it. But I'm still reluctant to leave. We came here because I wanted to, and for the first time, Henri let me choose where we were going. We've been here two years, and it's the longest we have stayed in any one place since leaving Lorien. I'll miss the sun and the warmth. I'll miss the gecko that watched from the wall each morning as I ate breakfast. Though there are literally millions of geckos in south Florida, I swear this one follows me and seems to be everywhere I am. I'll miss the thunderstorms that seem to come from out of nowhere, the way everything is still and quiet in the early morning hours before the terns arrive. I'll miss the dolphins that sometimes feed when the sunsets. I'll even miss the smell of sulfur from the rotting seaweed at the base of the shore, the way that it fills the house and penetrates our dreams while we sleep.
"Get rid of the celery and I'll wait in the truck," Henri says. "Then it's time."
I enter a thicket of trees off to the right of the truck. There are three Key deer already waiting. I dump the bag of celery out at their feet and crouch down and pet each of them in turn. They allow me to, having long gotten over their skittishness. One of them raises his head and looks at me. Dark, blank eyes staring back.
"Are you leaving?"
A shudder runs up my spine as I hear him in my mind.
"Yes this is goodbye buddy," I say and pet his head.
He drops his head and continues eating.
"Good luck, little friends," I say, and walk to the truck and climb into the passenger seat.
We watch the house grow smaller in the side mirrors until Henri pulls onto the main road and the house disappears. It's a Saturday. I wonder what's happening at the party without me. What they're saying about the way that I left I wish I could have said good-bye. I'll never see anyone I knew here ever again. I'll never speak to any of them. And they'll never know what I am or why I left. After a few months, or maybe a few weeks, none of them will probably ever think of me again.
Before we get on the highway, Henri pulls over to gas up the truck. As he works the pump, I start looking through an atlas he keeps in the middle of the seat. We've had the atlas since we arrived on this planet. It has lines drawn to and from every place we've ever lived. At this point, there are lines crisscrossing all of the United States. We know we should get rid of it, but it's really the only piece of our life together that we have. Normal people have photos and videos and journals; we have the atlas. Picking it up and looking through it, I can see Henri has drawn a new line from Florida to Ohio. Henri gets back into the truck. He has bought a couple of sodas and a bag of chips. He pulls away and starts heading toward U.S. 1, which will take us north. He reaches for the atlas. Henri had decided he wanted to look into a guy named Malcolm Goode that had gone missing. Apparently, he was the guy that met us and gave us our first home when we arrived on earth. So we needed to move to a small town called Paradise, Ohio
"Do you think there are people in Ohio?" I joke.
He chuckles. "I would imagine there are a few. And we might even get lucky and find cars and TV there, too."
I nod. Maybe it won't be as bad as I think.
"What do you think of the name 'John Smith'?" I ask.
"Is that what you've settled on?"
"I think so," I say. I've never been a John before or a Smith.
"Not too uncommon, I think you will be able to blend in. I would say it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Smith."
I smile. "Yeah, I think I like 'John Smith.'"
"I'll create your forms when we stop."
A mile later we are off the island and cruising across the bridge. The waters pass below us. They are calm and the moonlight is shimmering on the small waves, creating dapples of white in the crests. On the right is the ocean, on the left is the gulf; it is, in essence, the same water, but with two different names. It's not that I'm necessarily sad to leave Florida, but I'm tired of running. I wonder if it'll ever be possible for us to stop.
We've stopped to get some food and gas, Henri has already started on our paperwork for our new identities that we will print off when we arrive.
"You're sure about John Smith?" Henri asks
"Yes."
"Alright you were born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama." I laugh "How did you come up with that?"
He smiles and points to two very hot women not far away from us wearing shorts that say WE DO IT BETTER IN TUSCALOOSA.
I think to myself 'I wonder what it is they do better there.'
"And John remember we need to be safe, don't forget that you are next and that we need to be hyper-vigilant."
"I will Henri don't worry, they will be in for a surprise when we finally meet," I say with a bit of a crooked smile on my face.
Henri drives the entire time. Between breaks and the creation of the new documents, it takes about thirty hours. I spend most of the time napping or meditating. Mostly I am just doing some mental exercises, and fighting mogs in to release some tension and to go over all the martial art forms I have learned. I'm tired of sitting in the truck. The clock on the dash reads 7:58. I yawn, wipe my eyes.
"How much farther?"
"We're almost there," Henri says.
It is dark out, but there is a pale glow to the west. We pass by farms with horses and cattle, then barren fields, and beyond those, it's trees as far as the eye can see. This is exactly what Henri wanted, a quiet place to go unnoticed.
A few minutes later we see scattered lights that announce the town. We pass a sign that reads:
WELCOME TO PARADISE, OHIO POPULATION 5,243
"Wow," I say. "This place is even smaller than where we stayed in Montana."
Henri is smiling. "Who do you think it's paradise for?"
"Cows, maybe? Scarecrows?"
We pass by an old gas station, a car wash, a cemetery. Then the houses begin, clapboard houses spaced thirty or so feet apart. Halloween decorations hang in the windows of most of them. A sidewalk cuts through small yards leading to the front doors. A traffic circle sits in the center of town, and the middle of it is a statue of a man on horseback holding a sword. Henri stops. We both look at it and laugh, though we're laughing because we hope no one else with swords ever shows up here. He continues around the circle and once we're through it, the dashboard GPS tells us to make a turn. We begin heading west, out of town.
We drive for four miles before turning left onto a gravel road, then pass open cut fields that are probably full of corn in the summer, then through a dense forest for about a mile. And then we find it, tucked away in overgrown vegetation, a rusted silver mailbox with black lettering painted on the side of it that reads 17 OLD MILL RD.
"The closest house is two miles away," he says, turning in. Weeds grow throughout the gravel drive, which is littered with potholes filled with tawny water. He comes to a stop and turns the truck off.
"Whose car is that?" I ask, nodding to the black SUV Henri has just parked behind.
"I'm assuming the real-estate agent's."
The house stands silhouetted by trees. In the dark, there is an eerie look to it, like whoever last lived in it was scared away, or was driven away, or ran away. I get out of the truck. The engine ticks and I can feel the heat coming off of it. I grab my bag from the bed and stand there holding it.
"What do you think?" Henri asks.
The house is one story. Wooden clapboard. Most of the white paint has been chipped away. One of the front windows is broken. The roof is covered with black shingles that look warped and brittle. Three wooden stairs lead to a small porch covered with rickety chairs. The yard itself is long and shaggy. It's been a very long time since the grass was last mowed.
"It looks like Paradise," I say.
We walk up together. As we do, a well-dressed blond woman around Henri's age comes out of the doorway. She's wearing a business suit and is holding a clipboard and folder; a BlackBerry is clipped to the waist of her skirt. She smiles.
"Mr. Smith?"
"Yes," says Henri.
"I'm Annie Hart, the agent from Paradise Realty. We spoke on the phone. I tried calling you earlier but your phone seemed to be turned off."
"Yes, of course. The battery unfortunately died on the way here."
"Ah, I just hate when that happens," she says, and walks towards us and shakes Henri's hand. She asks me my name and I tell her, though I am tempted, as I always am, to just say "Four." As Henri signs the lease she asks me how old I am and tells me she has a daughter at the local high school about my age. She's very warm, friendly, and clearly loves to chat. Henri hands the lease back and the three of us walk into the house.
Inside most of the furniture is covered with white sheets. Those that aren't covered are coated with a thick layer of dust and dead insects. The screens in the windows look brittle to the touch, and the walls are covered with cheap plywood paneling. There are two bedrooms, a modest-sized kitchen with lime green linoleum, one bathroom. The living room is large and rectangular, situated at the front of the house. There's a fireplace in the far corner. I walk through and toss my bag on the bed of the smaller room. There is a huge faded poster of a football player wearing a bright orange uniform. He's in the middle of throwing a pass, and it looks like he's about to get crushed by a massive man in a black and gold uniform. It says BERNIE KOSAR, QUARTERBACK, CLEVELAND BROWNS.
"Come say good-bye to Mrs. Hart," Henri yells from the living room.
Mrs. Hart is standing at the door with Henri. She tells me I should look for her daughter at school, that maybe we could be friends. I smile and say yes, that would be nice. After she leaves we immediately start unpacking the truck. Depending on how quickly we leave a place, we either travel very lightly—meaning the clothes on our back, Henri's laptop and the intricately carved Loric Chest that goes everywhere with us—or we bring a few things—usually Henri's extra computers and equipment, which he uses to set up a security perimeter and search the web for news and events that might be related to us. This time we have the Chest, the two high-powered computers, four TV monitors, and eight cameras. We also have most of our clothes, though not many of the clothes we wore in Florida are appropriate for life in Ohio. Henri carries the Chest to his room, and we lug all of the equipment into the basement, where he'll set it up so no visitors will see it. Once everything is inside, he starts placing the cameras and turning on the monitors.
"Let's go over the plan," Henri says as he turns towards me once we bring everything in.
We started on our plan to find Malcolm. Henri thought the best plan would be to find his son Sam Goode and befriend him learning everything he knew about his father's disappearance. While Henri set up our security and got my papers for the next day settled I did some late night training and meditations to prepare myself for what I would have to deal with for the foreseeable future, High Schoolers
Another new identity and another new town. I've lost track of how many there have been over the years. Fifteen? Twenty? Always a small town, training, and practice, always the same routine. Sometimes I question our strategy of sticking to the small towns because it's hard, almost impossible, to go unnoticed. But I know Henri's rationale: it is impossible for them to go unnoticed as well.
I woke up early that morning at about 5 am to get a light workout before jogging to school, it was 3 miles away. Henri made sure I had plenty of rations and supplies. Five days' worth of dried fruit and nuts. Spare socks and thermal underwear. Rain jacket. A handheld GPS. Then we went over the plan again before I left for the day.
I managed to get to school with an hour or so to spare before the start of the school day. They're divided into their cliques, the jocks, and the cheerleaders, the band kids carrying instruments, the brains in their glasses with their textbooks and BlackBerries, the stoners off to one side, oblivious to everyone else. One kid, gangly with thick glasses, stands alone. He's wearing a black NASA T-shirt and jeans, and can't weigh more than a hundred pounds. He has a handheld telescope and is scanning the sky, which is mostly obscured by clouds. I notice a girl taking pictures, moving easily from one group to the next. She's shockingly beautiful with straight blond hair past her shoulders, ivory skin, high cheekbones, and soft blue eyes. Everyone seems to know her and says hello to her, and no one objects to her taking their picture.
She sees me, smiles, and waves. The girl walks towards me, smiling. I've never seen a girl so good-looking, not even in my last group of friends or those women we saw at that gas stop. Smiling and walking over she lowers her camera and sticks a hand out giving off a million wat smile while doing so.
"Hi, you must be the new kid right John?" The girl says while still holding her hand out to me.
"Yeah sorry... John Smith first day and all that. How'd you know?" I smile at her and shake her hand.
"I'm Sarah Hart. My mother is your real estate agent. She told me you'd probably be starting school today, and I should look out for you. You're the only new kid to show up today."
I laugh "Yeah, I met your mom. She was really nice."
"Ow wow, your hand is really warm do you maybe have a fever?" Sarrah said as she put her hand on my forehead to check my temperature.
'Her hand felt really good, it was so small and soft,' I had internalized while she checked me for a fever.
"No I think I'm fine I usually run pretty warm" I responded while she took her hand off my forehead. "I should probably head inside and get checked in though before classes start," I say
"Oh yeah, here let me show you around and help you get sorted," Sarah says as she grabs my hand pulling me inside.
A.N. Sorry I am going through and trying to fix some issues that I hadn't caught early on.
