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.
A.N. Sorry all, I got sick and kinda lost some inspiration for a bit. I have still done a couple of chapters and I plan on getting them out to you guys soon. And a special thanks to Eliza Regendorf for being my first review, Six will be introduced soon!
Chapter Ten-
The day has grown dark. The warm night carries a soft wind and the sky is scattered with intermittent flashes of light, clouds turning to brilliant colors of blue and red and green. Fireworks at first. Fireworks that segue to something else, louder, more menacing, the oohs and aahs turning to shrieks and screams. A chaos erupts. People running, children crying. Me, standing in the middle of it all, watching without the benefit of being able to do anything to help. The soldiers and the beasts pour onto the scene from all directions as I have seen before, the continuous fall of bombs so loud that it hurts the ears, the reverberations felt in the pit of my stomach. So deafening it makes my teeth ache. Then the Loric charge back with such intensity, with such courage, that it makes me proud to be among them, to be one of them.
Then I am gone, sweeping through the air at a rate that causes the world beneath to pass in a blur so that I can't focus on any one thing. When I stop I am standing on the tarmac of an airfield. A silver airship is fifteen feet away and forty or so people stand at the ramp leading up to its entrance. Two people have already entered, standing in the doorway with their eyes on the sky, a very young girl and a woman Henri's age. And then I see myself, four years old, crying, shoulders slumped. A much younger version of Henri just behind me. He, too, is watching the sky. On bended knee in front of me is my grandmother, gripping me by the shoulders. My grandfather stands behind her, his face set hard, distracted, the lenses of his glasses gathering the light from the sky.
"Come back to us, you hear? Come back to us," my grandmother says, finishing speaking.
I wish I could have heard the words that came before them. Up until now, I have never remembered anything that was spoken to me that night. But now I have something. My four-year-old self doesn't respond. My four-year-old self is too scared. He doesn't understand what is happening, why there is urgency and fear in the eyes of everyone around him. My grandmother pulls me to her and then she lets go. She stands and turns her back to keep me from seeing her cry. My four-year-old self knows that she is crying, but he doesn't know why. Next is my grandfather, who is covered in sweat, grime, and blood. He has clearly been fighting, and his face is twisted as though he is straining, ready to fight more, ready to go and do all he can in the struggle to survive. He drops to a knee as my grandmother did before him. For the first time, I look around. Twisted heaps of metal, chunks of concrete, large holes in the ground where the bombs have fallen. Scattered fires, shattered glass, dirt, splintered trees. And in the middle of it all a single airship, unharmed, the one that we are boarding.
"We gotta go!" somebody yells out. A man, dark hair and eyes. I don't know who he is. Henri looks at him and nods. The children walk up the ramp. My grandfather fixes me with a hard stare. He opens his mouth to speak. But before the words come I am again swept away, hurled up through the air, the world below again passing in a blur. I try to make it out, but I am moving too fast. The only discernible sights are the bombs, continually falling, large displays of fire of all colors that sweep through the night sky, and the perpetual explosions that follow.
Then I stop again.
I am inside of a large, open building that I have never seen before. It is silent. The ceiling is domed. The floor is one great slab of concrete the size of a football field. There are no windows, but the sounds of the bombs still penetrate, echoing off the walls around me. Standing in the very middle of the building, tall and proud, alone, is a white rocket that extends all the way to the apex of the ceiling.
Then a door slams open in the far corner. My head snaps around to it. Two men enter, frantic, talking quickly and loudly. All at once, a herd of Chimæra rushes in behind the men. Fifteen, give or take, continually changing shape. Some flying, some running, on two legs, then on four. Bringing up the rear, a third man follows and the door is shut. The first man reaches the spacecraft, opens a sort of hatch on the ship's bottom, and begins ushering the Chimæra in.
"Go! Go! Up and in, up and in," he yells.
The Chimæra go, all of them changing their shapes in order to do so. Then the last one enters and one of the men pulls himself in. The other two begin throwing bags and boxes up to him. It takes them a good ten minutes to get everything on board. Then all three scatter around the rocket, preparing it. The men are sweating, moving frantically until everything is ready. Just before the three of them climb inside the rocket, someone runs up with a bundle that looks like a swaddled child, though I can't see well enough to tell. They take whatever it is and go inside. Then the door snaps shut behind them and is sealed. Minutes pass. The bombs must be just outside the walls now. And then from nowhere an explosion occurs inside the building and I see the beginnings of fire shoot from the bottom of the rocket, a fire that quickly grows, a fire that consumes everything inside the building. A fire that consumes even me.
My eyes snap open. I am back home, in Ohio, lying in bed. The room is dark, but I can sense that I am not alone. A figure moves, a shadow thrown across the bed. I tense myself to it, ready to snap my lights on, ready to hurl it against the wall.
"You were talking," Henri says. "In your sleep just now, you were talking."
I turn on my lights. He is standing beside the bed, wearing pajama pants and a white T-shirt. His hair is tousled; his eyes are red with sleep.
"What was I saying?"
"You said 'Up and in, up and in.' What was happening?"
"I was just on Lorien."
"In a dream?"
"I don't think so. I was there, just like before."
"What did you see?"
I scoot up the bed so my back rests against the wall.
"The Chimæra," I say.
"What Chimæra?"
"In the spaceship, I saw take off. The old one, at the museum. In the rocket that left after ours. I watched Chimæra being loaded into it. Not many. Fifteen, maybe. With three other Loric. I don't think they were Garde. And something else. A bundle. It looked like a baby, but I couldn't tell."
"Why don't you think they were Garde?"
"They loaded the rocket with supplies, fifty or so boxes, and duffel bags. They didn't use telekinesis."
"Into the rocket inside the museum?"
"I think it was the museum. I was inside a large, domed building with nothing inside of it but a rocket. I can only assume it was the museum."
Henri nods. "If they worked at the museum then they would have been Cêpan."
"Whatever happened to Hadley?" I ask, remembering back to the vision I had a few weeks ago, the vision of playing in the yard of my elders' home when I was lifted in the air by the man wearing a silver and blue suit.
Henri smiles. "You remember Hadley?"
I nod. "I've seen him the way that I've seen everything else."
"He came with us on our trip to earth."
"What do you mean he came with us?"
"Hadley was on the ship and has been with us every single day that we've been on this planet."
"What? What do you mean, I think I would have seen a shapeshifting animal with us."
"Hadley come on out," Henri says looking behind him.
And there is BK watching us from the door frame.
"Bernie Kosar here has been watching over you your entire life, and he happened to be with us that day on Lorien so we brought him along with us. He was a gecko back in Florida, and so many other animals before that." Henri says while looking me dead on. "I didn't want to keep it from you but I had at the time thought it best that he stay in the shadows watching over you."
I am stunned and I do nothing other than look at Hadley while this all sinks in.
'Is that true BK? Are you really Hadley?" I say to him with my animal telepathy legacy Anima.
'Yes John, I have always been with you watching over you and giving you comfort when you needed it.'
I don't know what to say after this huge revelation on top of the vision I just had. I need to organize my thoughts, after a minute or so I redirect the conversation back to the visions.
"So what do you think the visions mean? Why were they loading Chimæra into a rocket? What was a baby doing with them, or was it even a baby? Where did they go? What purpose could they possibly have had?"
Henri thinks about it a moment. He shifts the weight of his body to his right leg.
"Probably the same purpose we had. Think about it, John. How else could animals repopulate Lorien? They too would have to go to some sort of sanctuary. Everything was wiped out. Not just the people, but also the animals, and all plant life. Maybe the bundle was just another animal. A fragile one, or maybe a young one."
"Well, where would they go? What other sanctuary exists besides Earth?"
"I think they went to one of the space stations. A rocket with Loric fuel would have been able to make it that far. Maybe they thought the invasion would be short-lived, and they thought they could wait it out. I mean, they would have been able to live on the space station for as long as their supplies lasted."
"There are space stations close to Lorien?"
"Yes, two of them. Well, there were two of them. I know for sure the larger of the two was destroyed at the same time as the invasion. We lost contact with it less than two minutes after the first bomb fell."
"Why didn't you mention that before, when I first told you about the rocket?"
"I had assumed that it was empty, that it went up in the air as a decoy. And I think that if one space station was destroyed, then the other was as well. Their trip, unfortunately, was probably done in vain, whatever their goal was."
"But what if they came back when their supplies ran out? Do you think they could survive on Lorien?" I ask in desperation.
I already know the answer, already know what Henri will say, but I ask anyway in order to hold on to some sort of hope that we aren't alone in all this. That maybe, somewhere far away, there are others like us, waiting, monitoring the planet so that they, too, might one day return and we won't be alone when we go back.
"No. There is no water there now. Nothing but a barren wasteland. And nothing can survive without water."
I sigh and scoot back down into the bed. I drop my head onto the pillow. What's the point in arguing? Henri is right and I know it. I saw it for myself. Lorien is nothing more than wasteland, a dump. The planet still lives but on the surface there is nothing. No water. No plants. No life. Nothing but dirt and rocks and the rubble of the civilization that once existed.
"Did you see anything else?" Henri asks.
"I saw us on the day we left. All of us at the airship right before we took off."
"It was a sad day."
I nod. Henri crosses his arms and gazes out the window, lost in thought. I take a deep breath. "Where was your family during it all?" I ask.
My lights have been off for a good two or three minutes, but I can see the whites of Henri's eyes staring back at me.
"Not with me, not on that day," he says.
We are both silent for a time and then Henri shifts his weight.
"Well, I better get back to bed," he says, bringing an end to the conversation. "Get some sleep."
After he leaves I lie there thinking of the animals, of the rocket, of Henri's family, and how I'm sure he never got the chance to say good-bye to them. I know I won't be able to go back to sleep. I never can when the images visit me when I feel Henri's sadness. It must be a thought constantly on his mind, as it would be for anyone who left under the same circumstances, leaving the only home you've ever known, all the while knowing you will never see the people you love again.
I grab my cell phone and text Sarah. I always text her when I can't sleep, or she texts me if it's the other way around. Then we'll talk for as long as it takes to become tired. She calls me twenty seconds after I hit the send button.
"Hey, you," I answer.
"You can't sleep?"
"No."
"What's the matter?" she asks. She yawns on the other end of the line.
"Was just missing you is all. Been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for like an hour now."
"You're silly. You saw me like six hours ago."
"I wish you were still here," I say. She moans. I can hear her smile through the darkness. I roll to my side and hold the phone between my ear and the pillow.
"Well, I wish I was still there, too."
We talk for twenty minutes. The last half of the call is both of us just lying there listening to the other breathe. I feel better after having talked to Sarah, but I find it even harder to fall back asleep.
XXXXXXXX
For once, since we arrived in Ohio, things seem to slow for a time. School ends quietly and for winter break we have eleven days off. Sam and his mother spend most of it visiting his aunt in Illinois. Sarah stays home. We spend Christmas together. We kiss when the ball drops at midnight on New Year's Eve. Despite the snow and the cold, or maybe even in retaliation against it, we go for long walks through the woods behind my house, holding hands, kissing, breathing in the chilly air beneath the low gray skies of winter. We spend more and more time together. Not a day passes during that whole break that we don't see each other at least once.
We walk hand in hand beneath an umbrella of white from the snow piled atop the tree branches overhead. She has her camera with her and occasionally stops to take pictures. Most of the snow on the ground lies undisturbed aside from the tracks we have made on the walk out. We follow them back now, Bernie Kosar I mean Hadley in the lead, darting in and out of the brambles, chasing rabbits into small groves and thickets of a thorny bush, chasing squirrels up trees. It's still hard to believe that BK is actually Hadley from back on Lorien. Sarah wears a pair of black earmuffs. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose are red with the cold, making her eyes look bluer. I stare at her.
"What?" she asks, smiling.
"Just admiring the view."
She rolls her eyes at me. For the most part, the woods are dense aside from sporadic clearings we continually stumble upon. I'm not sure how far in any one direction the woods extend, but in all of our walks, we have yet to reach their end.
"I bet it's beautiful here in the summer," Sarah says. "We can probably picnic in the clearings."
An ache forms in my chest. Summer is still five months away and if Henri and I are here in May, we will have made it seven months in Ohio. That is very nearly one the longest we have ever stayed in one place.
"Yeah," I agree.
Sarah looks at me. "What?"
I look at her questioningly. "What do you mean, 'what?'"
"That wasn't very convincing," she says.
A murder of crows fly by overhead, squawking noisily.
"I just wish it was summer now."
"Me too. I can't believe we have to go back to school tomorrow."
"Ugh, don't remind me."
We enter another clearing, larger than the others, an almost perfect circle a hundred feet in diameter. Sarah lets go of my hand, runs into the middle of it, and drops into the snow, laughing. She rolls to her back and begins making a snow angel. I drop beside her and do the same. The tips of our fingers just barely touch while we make the wings. We get up.
"It's like we're holding wings," she says.
"Is that possible?" I ask.
"I mean, how would we fly if we're holding wings?"
"Of course it's possible. Angels can do anything."
Then she turns and nuzzles into me. Her cold face against my neck makes me squirm away from her.
"Ahh! Your face is like ice."
She laughs. "Come warm me up."
I take her in my arms and kiss her beneath the open sky, the trees surrounding us. There are no sounds save the birds and the occasional pack of snow falling from the nearby branches. Two cold faces pressed tightly together. Bernie Kosar comes trotting up, out of breath, tongue dangling, tail wagging. He barks and sits in the snow staring at us, his head cocked to the side.
"Bernie Kosar! Were you off chasing rabbits?" Sarah asks.
He barks twice and runs over and jumps up on her. He barks again and pushes off and then looks up expectantly. She grabs a stick from the ground, shakes the snow off it, and then hurls it into the trees. He races after it and disappears from sight. He emerges from the trees ten seconds later, but instead of returning to the clearing where he had exited it, he comes from the opposite side. Sarah and I both spin around to watch him.
"How'd he do that?" she asks.
"He's a very special dog," I say.
"Did you hear that, Bernie Kosar? He just called you special!"
'That's rude John,' BK calls out to my mind.
I laugh as he walks up and drops the stick at her feet. We walk towards home, holding hands, the day nearing dusk. Bernie Kosar trots beside us the whole way out, his head on a swivel as though ushering us along, keeping us safe from what may or may not lurk in the outer dark beyond our line of sight.
XXXXXXXX
Five newspapers are stacked on the kitchen table, Henri at his computer, the overhead light on.
"Anything?" I ask out of habit, nothing more.
There hasn't been a promising story in months, which is a good thing, but I can't help but always hope for something every time I ask.
"Actually, yes, I think so."
I perk up, then walk around the table and look over Henri's shoulder at the computer screen.
"What is it?"
"There was an earthquake in Argentina yesterday evening. A sixteen-year-old girl pulled an elderly man free from a pile of rubble in a tiny town near the coast."
"Number Nine?"
"Well, I certainly think she's one of us. Whether she's Number Nine or not remains to be seen."
"Why? There's nothing really extraordinary about pulling a man from rubble."
"Look," Henri says, and then scrolls to the top of the article. There is a picture of a large slab of concrete at least a foot thick, eight feet long and wide. "This is what she lifted to save him. It must weigh five tons. And look at this," he says, and scrolls back to the bottom of the page. He highlights the very last sentence. It reads: "Sofia García could not be found for comment."
I read the sentence three times. "She couldn't be found," I say.
"Exactly. She didn't decline to comment; she simply couldn't be found."
"It was a tiny town you said right that's probably how they got her name so quickly?"
"It's a small town yes, less than a third the size of Paradise. Most everyone would know her name there."
"She left, didn't she?"
Henri nods. "I think so. Probably before the paper was even published. That's the downfall of small towns; it's impossible to remain unnoticed."
I sigh. "Hard for the Mogadorians to go unnoticed too."
"Precisely."
"Sucks for her," I say, and stand up. "It's hard to find a place to stay at for very long."
I return to my bedroom. I pack my bag with a fresh change of clothes and the books I'll need for the day. Back to school. I'm not looking forward to it, though it'll be nice to see Sam again, whom I haven't seen in nearly two weeks.
"Okay," I say. "I'm off."
"Have a good day. Be safe out there."
"See you this afternoon."
Bernie Kosar rushes out of the house ahead of me. He's a ball of energy this morning. I think he's come to look forward to our morning runs, and the fact that we haven't done one in a week and a half has him chomping at the bit to get back to it. He keeps up with me for most of the run. Once we make it I give him a good pet and scratch behind his ears.
"All right, boy, go home," I say.
He turns and starts trotting back to the house. I take my time in the shower. By the time I finish, other students are beginning to arrive. I walk the hall, stop by my locker, then go to Sam's. I slap him on the back. It startles him, then he flashes a big toothy grin when he sees that it's me.
"I thought I was going to have to whip somebody's ass there for a minute," he says.
"Just me, my friend. How was Illinois?"
"Ugh," he says, and rolls his eyes. "My aunt made me drink tea and watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie nearly every day."
I laugh. "That sounds awful."
"It was, trust me," he says and reaches into his bag.
"This was waiting in the mail when we got back."
He hands me the latest issue of They Walk Among Us. I begin flipping through it.
"There is nothing on the Mogadorians," he says.
I had told him that Henri was honestly interested in the Mogadorian alien rumor.
"Bummer," I say.
Over Sam's shoulder, I see that Sarah is coming our way. Mark James stops her in the middle of the hallway and hands her a few sheets of orange paper. Then she continues on her way.
"Hi, gorgeous," I say when she reaches us.
She stands on her toes to kiss me. Her lips taste like strawberry lip balm.
"Hi, Sam. How are you?"
"Good. How're you?" he asks.
Being in Sarah's presence used to make him uncomfortable but he seems to have made some progress with his confidence over the last couple of months. Now he seems to look her in the eyes and smile, speaking with some measure of confidence.
"Good," she says. "I'm supposed to give you both one of these."
She hands us each one of the orange sheets Mark just gave her. It's a party invitation for this upcoming Saturday night at his house.
"I'm invited?" Sam asks.
Sarah nods. "All three of us are."
"Do you want to go?" I ask.
"Maybe we could give it a shot."
I nod. "You interested, Sam?"
He looks past Sarah and me. I turn to see what he is looking at, or rather who. At a locker across the hall is Emily, the girl who was on the hayride with us, and who Sam has been pining for ever since. When she walks past she sees that Sam is watching her and she smiles politely.
"Emily?" I say to Sam.
"Emily what?" Sam asks, looking back at me.
I look at Sarah. "I think Sam likes Emily Knapp."
"I do not," he says.
"I could ask her to come to the party with us," Sarah says.
"Do you think she would go?" Sam asks.
Sarah looks at me. "Well, maybe I shouldn't invite her since Sam doesn't like her."
Sam smiles. "Okay, fine. I just, I don't know."
"She kept asking why you never called after the hayride. She kind of likes you."
"That is true," I say. "I've heard her say it."
"Why didn't you tell me?" says Sam.
"You never asked."
Sam looks down at the flyer.
"So it's this Saturday?"
"Yes."
He looks up at me. "I say we go."
I shrug. "I'm in."
XXXXXXXX
Henri is waiting for me when the final bell rings. As always, Bernie Kosar is in the passenger seat, and when he sees me, his tail begins wagging a hundred miles an hour. I jump into the truck. Henri puts it into gear and drives away.
"There was a follow-up article on the girl in Argentina," Henri says.
"And?"
"Just a short article saying that she has disappeared. The mayor of the town is offering a modest reward for information on her whereabouts. It sounds like they believe she's been kidnapped."
"Are you worried about the Mogadorians having gotten to her first?"
"If she's Nine, like the note we found indicated, and the Mogadorians were tracking her, it's a good thing that she vanished. And if she's been captured, the Mogadorians can't kill her—they can't even hurt her. That gives us hope. The good thing, aside from the news itself, is that I imagine every Mogadorian on Earth has poured into Argentina."
"Speaking of which, Sam had the latest issue of They Walk Among Us today."
"Was there anything in it?"
"Nope."
"I didn't think there would be. Your levitation trick and beat down must have affected them rather profoundly."
When we arrive home I change clothes and meet Henri in the backyard for our day of training. Working while consumed with fire has become like second nature. I can hold my breath longer, close to four minutes. I have become more adept at molding the fire around me, although my Aevitas has hit a roadblock in progress and I can still use it for a small amount of time, long enough at least to be of some use.
Little by little, the look of worry I saw on Henri's face during the first days back from Athens has melted away. He nods more. He smiles more. On the days it goes really well he gets a crazed look in his eyes and he raises his arms in the air and yells "Yes!" as loudly as he can.
My final/combat legacy has yet to come, though I have already received six others them being my Animal Telepathy, Telekinesis, Super Strength, Lumen, my Dream Precognition that Henri is sure will continue to develop and eventually show me the path to victory in our future struggles and finally, my newest legacy Aevitas which Henri says will take a lot of focus and further training to master. And the major one, whatever it will be shouldn't take much longer to appear. The anticipation of it keeps me up most nights. I want to fight. I hunger for a Mogadorian to saunter into the backyard so that I may finally seek revenge.
XXXXXXXX
It's an easy day. Mostly just me lifting things after Henri sets them on fire and manipulating them while they are suspended in the air. The last twenty minutes pass with Henri throwing objects at me—sometimes I just allow them to fall to the ground after stopping them, other times deflecting them in a way that emulates a boomerang so that they twist in the air and go blazing back towards Henri. At one point a meat tenderizer flies back so fast that Henri dives face-first into the snow to keep from being hit by it. I laugh. Henri does not. Bernie Kosar lies on the ground the whole time watching us, seeming to offer his own encouragement. After we are done I shower, do my homework, and sit at the kitchen table for dinner.
"So there is a party this Saturday that I'm going to go to."
He looks up at me, stops chewing. "Whose party?"
"Mark James's."
Henri looks surprised.
"All that's over," I say before he can object.
"Well, you know best, I suppose. Just remember what's at stake."
