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.

A.N. Sorry all it's been a rough couple of months but fear not, short of death or completion of this story I will not quit. I only ask that you bear with me as I try to balance this story with my day-to-day life. Since starting this story I have become inspired by those authors that can put out chapters multiple times a week or a month, I doubt that I will reach that point but I wish to do better than I am now.

Chapter 14-

Luckily, Sam lives on the outskirts of Paradise with large yards separating each neighbor. It only takes a few minutes for us to find a spot to park on the street. His home is a small, modest house with white aluminum siding and black shingles, a thin chimney on its right side, a tall wooden fence enclosing the backyard. Avice materializes and sets down next to the pickup.

"That it?" She asks.

"That's it," I say. "Six turn invisible again and do some reconnaissance. You said there are more coming right? So let us know once you find anything."

She nods to me before turning herself invisible. Sam informs Henri and me that there are some motion-sensor lights on the house on the right. We ask him to watch the truck and be ready to floor it if need be before leaving. Bernie Kosar flies away, perching himself on the highest point of the roof. We hop over the fence and survey the backyard and its trees, high grass, a big tree stump, a rusty swing set, and an antique wheelbarrow on its side. There's a back door on the left side of the house and two dark windows on the right.

"There it is," Henri whispers, pointing.

What I first thought was a tree stump peeking out of the middle of the yard is actually, upon closer inspection, a wide stone cylinder. Squinting, I see a triangular object sticking up off its top.

Henri and I carefully walk through the high grass towards the well and then kneel in front of it. Numbers border the circumference of the sundial—one through twelve on the left side and another one through twelve on the right, zero at the top—and the numbers are surrounded by a series of lines. I'm about to grip the middle triangle and twist randomly when I hear Henri gasp.

"What?" I whisper, raising my eyes to the dark back windows.

"In the middle. Look. The symbols."

I study the sundial again, and my breath is caught in my throat. They're faint and easy to overlook, but in the middle of the circle are nine shallow Loric symbols. I recognize the numbers from the lessons Henri gave me when I was younger, learning about Lorien and its culture.

"What's Sam's birthday?" Henri asks.

"January fourth, nineteen ninety-five."

The triangle clicks like a lock as he turns it right to the Loric number one. Henri then turns it left to number four. My number. Then he rotates the triangle to one, nine, back around to nine again, and five. Nothing happens for a few seconds, and then the sundial begins to hiss and smoke. Henri and I step back and watch as the stone lid of the well flips back and opens with a loud echoing crack. When the smoke clears, I see a ladder inside.

One of the dark windows of the house turns yellow. Bernie Kosar lets out two long hoos from the roof. Before we can get spotted I illuminate my palms and see we're twenty feet from a cement floor. "Let's be quick with this, we don't know how much longer we have before the reinforcements catch up with us," Henri whispers.

I nod as I descend first. We reach the floor and find ourselves in a short hallway that curves to the left. The air is musty. I shine my palms back and forth as we walk through the curve; and when the hallway straightens again, we see there's a room ahead with a cluttered desk and hundreds of papers pinned to the wall. I'm about to run inside, but that's when my lights catch a long white object in the doorway.

"Is that . . ." Henri trails off. I'm stuck in my tracks. It's an enormous bone. Henri nudges me forward and I pull the dagger from my back pocket.

"Together?" I offer.

"Let's do it."

With a running start, I jump over the bone and immediately light up the room with my hands. A yell escapes my mouth as I take in the skeleton sitting against the wall. Henri right behind me when I jumped in comes running alongside me jumping over the piece of bone, and when he sees it, he freezes up before a contemplative look appears on his face almost like he is trying to figure out who the skeleton used to be.

The skeleton is over eight feet tall, with giant feet and hands. Thick blond hair falls from the top of its skull and reaches past its wide shoulder blades. Around its neck hangs a blue pendant similar to mine.

"Who could that be Henri?" I say.

"I am not certain, but it could be one of the elders."

I step forward and examine the pendant. The blue Loralite stone is slightly larger than mine, but everything else is the same. I stare at it and feel an overwhelming connection to whoever this was. I reach over his head and retrieve the pendant, slipping it over my head I figure that I can give it to Avice when we ascend.

We move to the desk. I don't know where to start. A heavy layer of dust covers stacks of papers and writing utensils. The writing on the papers pinned to the wall above the desk is in every language but English. I recognize some Loric numbers, as well as some writing but my attention is elsewhere.

A white electronic tablet sits on a dilapidated wooden chair, and I pick it up and press my fingers over its black screen. Nothing happens.

Henri looks over some of the papers on the walls grabbing a few before he opens the top drawer of a desk to find more papers. He spends the next minute or so sorting through it all.

Just before I can ask Henri to take a look at the tablet, Avice appears coming through the tunnel leading to the exit.

"They are here we have to go," Avice tells us.

"How long do we have?" Henri asks.

"A minute maybe two, they are very close and heading our way."

"Go make sure that Sam is fine and our getaway ride is ready. Henri and I will grab what we can then meet you on the surface."

She nods her head before disappearing again. Henri whirls around and tears a dozen papers from the wall and grabs the stack of papers he had been looking over in a bag we found down here. I stuff the white tablet in the back of my waistband.

We scramble up the ladder and peek out the sliver of space between the well and the sundial. We make it back to the truck with no issue, getting settled back in the truck Henri gets us on our way. Avice takes her place in the bed of the pickup as she said it would be easier for her to react to any threats that may appear from there.

We didn't come across any further issues getting out of town, it seemed that they found the mess at the high school and were in the process of tracking us down when we got out. For whatever reason, they didn't think it necessary to create a roadblock or have someone watching the exits to the town, but thankfully for us they didn't so, we got out of there safe and sound.

XXXXXXXX

"I was thirteen when they caught up to us," Avice says from the bed of the pickup and I assume that she is using her weather manipulation as I can hear her just fine from inside the truck as we travel down the highway heading towards Ansted. Henri had asked her to tell us about how she knew about the Mog base and about her past. "We were in West Texas after fleeing Mexico because of a stupid mistake. We had both been completely entranced by some stupid internet post that Two had written, though we didn't know it was by Two at the time, and we responded. We were lonely in Mexico, living in some dusty town in the middle of nowhere, and we just had to know if it really was a member of the Garde."

I nod, knowing what she's talking about. Henri had also seen the blog post while we were in Colorado. 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.

"'Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there?'" I ask.

"That's the one."

"So you guys are the ones who responded," I say.

Henri had taken screenshots of the post so I could see it. He had tried furiously to hack the computer to delete it before the damage could be done, but he hadn't been quick enough. Two was killed. Somebody else deleted the post right after. We'd assumed it was the Mogadorians.

"Yes, we were about to play a board game when Katerina's website monitor went off. I managed to convince her to send a reply simply reading 'We are here'; and not a minute later the scar appeared," Avice says, shaking her head. "It was so stupid of Two to post that, knowing she was next. I still can't understand why she'd risk it."

"Do you guys know where she was?" Sam asks.

I look at Avice. "Do you? We thought it was England," Henri nods as I say this staying quiet as he drives along towards West Virginia.

"No idea. All we knew was that if they'd gotten to her that quickly, it wouldn't take long for them to get to us."

"But, how do you even know she posted it?" Sam asks.

Avice glances at him. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know; you guys can't even say for sure where she was, so how do you know it was her?"

"Who else would it be?"

"Well, I mean, I watch the way you and John are so cautious. I can't imagine either of you doing something so stupid like that if you knew you were next. Especially with everything you know about the Mogadorians. I don't think you would have posted something to begin with."

"This is definitely a possibility and something that I have thought about for some time now," Henri says adding his own thoughts into the conversation for the first time since leaving Sam's house.

"So maybe they had already captured Two and were trying to draw some of you guys out before they killed her, which could explain why she was killed seconds after you responded. It could have been a bluff. Or maybe she knew what they were doing, and she killed herself to warn you guys away or something. Who knows. Those are just some guesses, right?"

"Unfortunately it is something we won't likely ever get the answer to and besides it is best we get back to Avice's story so we know what we will be going up against," Henri says.

But they are good guesses. Ones I hadn't thought about.

"The Mogadorians," she begins softly, swallowing as Sam and I turn our attention to her. "They caught up to us the day after we responded to Two's post, in a desolate town in West Texas. Katarina had driven fifteen straight hours from Mexico, and it was getting late and we were both exhausted because neither of us had slept. We stopped at a motel off the highway. It was in a tiny town that looked like something out of an old Western movie, full of cowboys and ranchers. There were even hitching posts outside some of the buildings so that the people could tie up their horses. It was very weird, but we had just come from a dusty town in Mexico, so we didn't think twice about stopping. We went to get something to eat at a diner. About halfway through our meal, a man entered and took a seat. He was wearing a white shirt and tie, but it was a Western tie and his clothes looked outdated. We ignored him, even though I noticed the others in the diner staring at him, the same way they were staring at us. At one point he turned and gazed our way, but since everyone else had done the same, I didn't piece it together. I was only thirteen then, and it was hard to think of anything at that point other than sleep and food. So we finished eating and went back to our room. Katarina jumped into the shower; and when she stepped out, wrapped in a robe, there was a knock at the door. We looked at each other. She asked who it was, and the man answered that he was the motel manager and had brought fresh towels and ice; and without thinking twice, I walked to the door and opened it."

"Oh no," Sam says.

Avice nods. "It was the man from the diner with the Western tie. He walked straight into the room and shut the door. I was wearing my pendant in plain view. He knew immediately who I was, and Katarina and I knew immediately who he was. In one fluid motion he pulled a knife from the waistband of his trousers and swung for my head. He was fast, and I had no time to react. I had no Legacies yet, no defenses. I was dead. Yet as the knife dug into my skull, it was his skull that split open. I didn't feel a thing. I learned later they had no idea how the charm worked, that he couldn't kill me until numbers one through five were dead. He dropped to the ground and burst into ash."

"Wicked," Sam says.

"Wait," I interrupt. "From what I've seen, Mogadorians are pretty recognizable. Their skin is so white it looks bleached. And their teeth and eyes . . ." I trail off. "How could you not have known it in the diner? Why'd you let him into the room?"

"I'm pretty sure only the scouts and soldiers look like that. They're the Mogadorians' version of the military. That's what Katarina said, anyway. The rest of them look as much like normal humans as we do. The one who came into the diner looked like an accountant, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, black slacks, and a white short-sleeved dress shirt and that tie. He even had a really dorky mustache. I remember him being tan. We had no idea they had followed us."

"That's reassuring," I say sarcastically.

"After seeing the Mogadorian crumble to ash in front of us Katarina threw the Chest to me and grabbed our suitcase, and we sprinted out of the motel room, Katarina still in her robe. The truck was unlocked, and we jumped inside. Another Mog came charging out from behind the motel. Kat was so flustered that she couldn't find the keys. She locked the doors, though, and the windows were rolled up. But the guy wasted no time at all and punched straight through the passenger-side glass and grabbed me by the shirt. Katarina screamed, and some men nearby jumped into action. The Mogadorian had no choice but to let go of me to face the men.

"'The keys are in the motel room!' Katarina yelled.

She looked at me with these big, huge, desperate eyes. She was panicking. We both were. I jumped out of the truck and sprinted back to our room for the keys. Those men in Texas, they were the only reason we got away then; they saved our lives. When I came out of the motel room with the keys, one of the Texans was aiming a gun at the Mogadorian. We have no idea what happened after that because Katarina sped away and we didn't look back. We hid the Chest a few weeks later, right before they caught up to us for good."

"Don't they already have the Chests from the first three?" Sam asks.

"I'm sure they do, but what use are they? The second we die the Chest unlocks itself, and everything inside becomes useless," she says, and I nod, knowing that much.

"Not only are the objects worthless," Henri chimes in, "but they completely disintegrate the same way the Mogadorians do when they're killed. It is very unfortunate that we have already lost so much of the remaining relics of Lorien."

A somber mood is left in the wake of Henri's words. Petting Hadley's head having reverted back to his German Shepard form he lays across both Sam's and my lap. It is then that I remember the sticky note I found when Henri and I went to Athens, Ohio.

"Henri and I recently came across an alien conspiracy group and they had this source who apparently caught a Mogadorian and tortured it for information, and he supposedly knew that Number Seven was being trailed in Spain and that Number Nine was somewhere in South America."

Avice thinks about it a moment. "I know for a fact that Number Seven is a girl; I remember that much from the ride in the ship. I don't remember whether Nine was a boy or girl though, that at least gives us their last known locations in the case that we find out any more news maybe that will help us find them."

"I have already started a tracking program that will pick up any new information in those two areas, the program will alert me whenever Garde-like traits are observed or reported so at the very least if they are caught doing something abnormal we will know," Henri responds.

"We didn't make it much further after that," Avice says. She tells us about her and Katarina being captured while they were in upstate New York, just a month after narrowly escaping the Mogadorians in West Texas. This second time around, after botching the first attempt, the Mogadorians had planned well; and when they stormed the room, they totaled more than thirty in number. Avice and Katarina had been able to take a few down, but they were quickly bound, gagged, and drugged. When Avice woke up—having no idea how much time had passed—she was alone in a cell in a hollowed-out mountain. She didn't discover she was in West Virginia until some time later. Avice learned the Mogadorians had been trailing them the entire time, observing, hoping the two might lead them to the others, because, in Avice's words,

"Why kill one when the others might be near?" I nearly chuckled audibly when she says this. As they had nearly done just that back in Paradise.

"They had bugged our car when we were eating in the diner in Texas, and it never once occurred to either of us to check," she says, and then gives herself over to a long silence.

Aside from an iron door containing a sliding hatch in its center for food to be delivered through, her tiny cell was made entirely of rock, measuring eight feet on each side. She had no bed or toilet, and the cell was pitch-black. The first two days passed in total darkness and silence, without food or water (though she never felt hungry or thirsty, which, she said she later learned, was due to the charm's effect), and she had started to believe she'd been forgotten. But her luck hadn't been that good, and on the third day they came for her.

"When they opened the door I was huddled in the far corner. They threw a bucket of cold water on me, picked me up, blindfolded me, and pulled me away."

After being dragged down a tunnel, they'd let her walk on her own while surrounded by ten or so Mogs. She could see nothing, but heard plenty—screams and cries from other prisoners there for who knows what reasons (when he heard this, Sam perked up and seemed about to interrupt and ask questions, but said nothing), the roars of beasts locked away in their own cells, and metallic clanking. And then she had been thrust in a room, had her wrists chained to a wall, and been gagged. They'd ripped off her blindfold, and when her eyes finally adjusted, she saw Katarina on the opposite wall, also chained and gagged and looking far worse than Avice felt.

"And then he finally entered, a Mogadorian who looked no different from someone you're likely to pass on the street. He was small, had hairy arms and a thick mustache. Almost all of them had mustaches, as though they had learned to blend in by watching movies from the early eighties. He wore a white shirt, and the top button was undone; and for some reason my eyes focused on the thick tuft of black hair poking out. I looked into his dark eyes, and he smiled at me in a way that told me he was looking forward to doing what he was about to do, and I started to cry. I slid down the wall until I dangled from the shackles around my wrists, watching through my tears as he pulled razor blades, knives, pliers, and a drill from the desk they had in the center of the room."

When the Mogadorian had finished removing over twenty instruments, he'd gone to Avice and stood inches from her face so that she could smell his sour breath.

"Do you see all of these?" he'd asked. She didn't respond. "I intend to use each and every one of them on you and your Cêpan, unless you truthfully answer every question I ask. If you don't, I assure you that both of you will wish you were dead."

He picked one up—a thin razor blade with a rubbercoated handle—and caressed the side of Avice's face with it.

"I've been hunting you kids for a very long time," he'd said. "We've killed two of you, and now we have one right here, whatever number you are. As you might imagine, I hope you are Number Three."

Avice had made no response, pushing herself against the wall as though she might disappear into it. The Mogadorian grinned, the flat end of the razor still touching her face. Then he twisted it so the blade pressed against her cheek, and while looking deep into her eyes, he jerked the razor down and made a long, thin gash along her face. Or rather he tried too, but it had been his own face that was slit open. Blood instantly poured down his cheek and he screamed in pain and anger, kicking the desk over, sending all of his tools flying, and he stormed from the room. Avice and Katarina had been dragged back to their cells, kept in darkness another two days before finding themselves again gagged and chained to the walls of the room. Sitting on the desk with his cheek bandaged sat the same Mog, looking far less certain of himself than he had before.

He'd jumped from the desk and removed Avice's gag, grabbed the same razor he had tried cutting her with, and held it up in front of her face, twisting it so that the light glimmered along the blade. "I don't know what number you are. . . ." For a second she'd thought he would try to cut her again, but he turned and crossed the room to Katarina instead. He stood at her side while looking at Avice, and then he touched the blade to Katarina's arm. "But you're going to tell me right now."

"No!" Avice had screamed. And then very slowly the Mogadorian made an incision down Katarina's arm just to be certain he could. His grin widened, and beside the original cut he made another, this one deeper than the first. Katarina groaned in pain while the blood ran down her arm.

"I can do this all day. Do you understand me? You're going to tell me everything I want to know, starting with what number are you."

Avice had closed her eyes. When she reopened them he was at the desk, turning over a dagger that changed colors with movement. He'd held it up, wanting her to see the blade twist and glow as it came to life. She could feel its hunger, its desperation for blood.

"Now . . . your number. Four? Seven? Are you lucky enough to be Number Nine?"

Katarina had shaken her head in an attempt to keep Avice quiet, and Avice knew that no amount of torture would ever cause her Cêpan to talk. But she also knew she preferred death to seeing Katarina maimed and mutilated.

The Mogadorian had gone to Katarina, lifted the dagger so the tip was just over her heart. It jerked in his hand, as though the heart was a magnet pulling it forward. He looked into Avice's eyes.

"I have all the time in the galaxies for this," he'd said without emotion. "While you are in here with me, we are out there with the rest of you. Don't think anything has stopped us from moving forward because we have you. We know more than you think. But we want to know everything. If you don't want to see her sliced into little pieces, then you better start talking, and fast. And every single word that comes out better be true. I will know if you're lying."

Avice had told him everything she remembered about leaving Lorien and the trip here, the Chests, where they'd been hiding. She talked so fast that most of it came out jumbled. Avice told him she was Number Eight—not wanting to tell him the whole truth—and there was something about the desperation in her voice that caused him to believe it.

"You really are weak, aren't you? Your relatives on Lorien, as easy as they fell, at least they were fighters. At least they had some bravery and dignity. But you," he'd said, and shook his head as if disappointed. "You have nothing, Number Eight."

And then he'd jammed the knife forward, through Katarina's heart. All Avice could do was scream. Their eyes had met for a single second before Katarina drifted away, her mouth still gagged, slowly sliding down the wall until the chain had run out of slack and she hung limply by her wrists as the light drained from her eyes.

"They were going to kill her anyway," Avice says softly. "Telling them what I did, at least I spared her from horrible torture, as if there's any comfort in that."

Avice goes quiet and when I look over I can see that she has wrapped her arms around her knees and stares blankly up at the night sky.

"I am sorry that you had to witness that, I couldn't imagine having to do the same," I offer, as I look over towards Henri who still has his gaze affixed on the road ahead of us. Reaching out of the sliding glass window I place my hand on her shoulder giving it a light squeeze, trying to convey how sorry I was and that I don't blame her for what happened at Paradise High.

To my surprise, Avice takes my hand in a vice grip and brings it closer to her face with both hands crying into it.

She eventually lightens up her grip and releases with her one hand to wipe her cheeks, the other still holding my own. "When Katarina was dead, they tried everything, and I mean everything, they could to kill me—electrocution, drowning, explosives. They injected me with cyanide, which did nothing—I didn't even feel the needle going into my arm. They threw me in a chamber filled with poisonous gas, and it was like the air inside was the freshest I'd ever breathed. The Mogadorian who pushed the button on the other side of the door, though, he was dead within seconds." Avice takes another swipe at her cheek with the back of her hand. "It's funny, you know, that I killed more Mogadorians when I was captured than I did at the school in Ohio. They finally threw me in another cell, and I think they'd planned on keeping me there until they killed Three through Seven."

"I love that you told them you were Number Eight," Sam says.

"I feel bad that I did it now. It's like I tarnished Katarina's legacy, or the real Number Eight's."

"No way, Avice," Sam says.

"How long were you in there?" I ask.

"One hundred and eighty-five days. I think."

My mouth drops open. Over half a year locked away, completely and utterly alone, waiting to be killed. "I'm so sorry, Avice."

"I was just waiting and praying for my Legacies to finally develop so I could get the hell out of there. And then one day, the first one finally did. It was after breakfast. I looked down and my left hand just wasn't there. Of course, I freaked out, but then I realized I could still feel my hand. I tried to pick up my spoon, and sure enough, I could. And that's when I understood what was happening—and invisibility was the thing I needed in order to escape."

How it started for Avice wasn't all that different from how it had started for me, when my hand began to glow in the middle of my first class at Paradise High.

Two days later Avice had been able to make herself completely invisible, and when dinner rolled around that day, and the slot on the door was slid open and her meal pushed through, the Mogadorian guard saw an empty cell. He'd looked wildly around and then hit an alarm that sent a piercing wail through the cave. The iron door had been flung open and four Mogs charged in. While they stood there, dumbfounded as to how she'd escaped, she slid by and rushed out the door and down the tunnel, seeing the cave for the very first time.

It had been a massive labyrinthine network of long, interconnected tunnels that were dark and drafty. There were cameras everywhere. She'd passed thick glass windows revealing chambers that looked like scientific labs, clean and brightly lit. The Mogadorians inside had worn white plastic suits and goggles, but she'd raced by so swiftly she couldn't tell what they were doing. A sprawling room housed a thousand or so computer screens with a Mogadorian sitting in front of each, and Avice assumed they were looking for signs of us. Just like Henri, I thought. One tunnel was lined with heavy steel doors she had been sure held other prisoners. But she sped on, knowing her Legacy was far from developed and terrified she wouldn't stay invisible for very long. The siren had continued to wail. And then she reached the heart of the mountain, a great, cavernous hall a half-mile wide and so dark and murky she could hardly see to its other side.

The air had been stifling and Avice was already sweating. The walls and ceiling were lined with huge wooden trellises to keep the cave from collapsing, and narrow ledges chiseled into the rock face connected the tunnels dotting the dark walls. Above her, several long arches had been carved from the mountain itself to bridge the great divide from one side to the other.

She had pressed herself against a rocky crag, her eyes darting back and forth for a way out. The number of passageways had been endless. She'd stood there overwhelmed, her eyes sweeping across the hollow darkness, seeing nothing at all that looked promising. But then she did—far across the ravine, a pale pinprick of natural light at the end of a wider tunnel. Just before she climbed the wooden trellis to reach the stone bridge that led to it, something else caught her eye: the Mogadorian who had killed Katarina. She couldn't let him get away. She followed him.

He entered the room where he had killed Katarina.

"I went straight to his desk and took the sharpest razor I saw, then grabbed him from behind and slit his throat. And as I watched the blood gush and spread across the floor, followed by him bursting into ash, I found myself wishing that it would have been possible to kill him a little more slowly. Or to kill him again."

"What did you do when you finally got out?" I ask.

"I hiked up the opposite mountain, and when I got up there I stared down at the cave for an hour, trying to remember every little detail I could. Once I was satisfied with that, I took note of everything I passed on the five-mile run to the nearest road, and from there I jumped on the back of a slow pickup truck. When it stopped a few miles down the road to get gas, I stole his map, a notepad, and a couple of pens from the cab. Oh, and a bag of potato chips."

"Niiiiice. What kind of chips?" Sam asks.

"Dude," I say.

"What?"

"They were barbecue, Sam. I drew a map and a diagram of everything I remembered, like a chart that would lead whoever read it straight to its entrance. I kind of panicked and hid the diagram not far from the town but kept the map, then I stole a car and drove straight to Arkansas; but of course by then my Chest had long since been taken."

"I'm so sorry, Avice."

"Me, too," she says. "But they can't open it without me anyway. Maybe I'll get it back someday."

XXXXXXXX

The rest of the trip to Ansted, West Virginia was spent telling each other of our individual legacies and our time spent on Earth. Henri spoke of the early years before I had fully understood all that was happening and where we had stayed until this point, going from small town to small town every few months to a year. I spoke of all the harsh and grueling training that Henri had put me through throughout the years, and how it had been decided that I wouldn't go to school and instead train to become stronger, learning many forms of basic martial arts and practicing my Legacies once they had shown themselves.

Avice had gone on to tell us of her time before Mexico and after the events at the Mogadorian cave, where she had gone on to train herself all day then spend most of the night surfing the internet in the hope of finding any kind of sign of the Garde's presence, before finally finding me.

Finally after another hour or so we see a sign pointing the way to Ansted, six miles ahead. We fall silent. Henri makes the turn and navigates a precarious two-lane road that twists up the mountain until we pass the town's border. We drive through it and turn left at the only stoplight in town.

"Hawks Nest, right?" Henri calls out to Avice.

"Yep, a mile or two down the road," Avice says.

The map is exactly where she said it would be, hidden at Hawks Nest State Park, overlooking the New River. Exactly forty-seven steps down the Gysp Trail, Avice, and I reach a tree with E6 deeply carved into its side. From there, we leave the trail, taking thirty steps past the tree to the right. That's followed by a hard left turn, and then, a tenth of a mile away, we see a tree that towers over the others. In the small gap at the base of its twisted trunk, safely tucked away in a black plastic box, is the map that leads to the cave. We make our way back to the truck and the others and drive another fifteen miles, ultimately pulling down a muddy, deserted road. It's the closest any road can get us, five miles due north of the cave.

I flip my dagger over in my hand and then stuff it into my back pocket, with my bracelet still affixed to my left forearm. We step out and I lock eyes with Henri as we all stretch our legs and get our bearings.

"So how do we plan on doing this?" I say, as during our near four-hour drive it was never brought up how exactly we would be breaking into a heavily fortified Mogadorian base.

"Well I can use my invisibility to scope out the inside to try and find your chest and maybe even mine in the process," Avice says.

"But what if they have increased security inside since your escape and you get stuck inside?" Henri says from the driver's side of the car.

"Then I will go with her," I say. "That way I can cover her in the case anything happens and if we need to I can quickly get us to safety."

"I don't like this Loic, I have nearly lost you once today already besides Avice can't you just turn us all invisible and we go together?" Henri says to me before turning to Avice.

"Unfortunately, no I cannot. I haven't had a lot of experience using it on other people and I can only turn the things I'm touching with my hands invisible."

"Since you want to use Loric names, I am going in Brandon. I have the strength and abilities that are needed for escaping tough situations, Avice will need assistance in there." I call out to Henri for using my real name, my Loric name.

"Then let me go with you two then at least!" Sam calls out to us drawing the attention to himself. "My dad could be in there! Besides Avice, you just said so yourself that you can turn whatever you're touching with your hands invisible so I could go with you and John er... I mean Loic."

"No Sam, you're still injured from the fight same with Hadley. You both need to stay here, and with Henri watching over you two everything should be fine. Avice and I will go and scout the cave out, we will search for your father and if he is in there and if we can get him out we will."

That seems to at least somewhat curb some of that anxiousness and worry over this situation although that does nothing to get rid of Henri's frown.

"I don't like this Loic, not at all, something horrible could happen to you two and I won't even be there to help or even know if something does happen, but I will agree that you two going in together would allow for more ground to be covered and a little safer than Avice just going in herself," Henri sighs as he wipes his hand across his forehead before coming closer to me pulling me into a hug. "Don't be reckless and get out as soon as you can, prioritize your own lives over the chest. We will be right here waiting for you, but if something goes wrong and you can't find us for whatever reason then head to the new house we were going to in Lincoln, Kansas do you remember it?" Henri says.

"Yeah I remember, and it won't come to that you'll see. Avice and I will be in and out before you know it," I say as I return the hug.

"Then let's get moving the sun will be rising soon hopefully before we get there so we can find the mouth of the cave easier," Avice says from behind me hand outstretched in my direction.

Hugging Henri one more time I then pat Sam on the shoulder as I reach Avice taking her hand in my own.

"See you guys soon and take care," I smile and wave before Avice turns us invisible and we start running in the direction of the cave.

A.N. Sorry again everyone, I have had this chapter halfway done months ago but with so many things going on I didn't end up having a lot of time to actually sit down and keep writing this story and unless I can dedicate a decent amount of time to it I can just never seem to make much progress. I have gone over this chapter a handful of times to double-check mistakes but please feel free to review or PM me my mistakes so I can fix them, and please feel free to offer up some ideas for how you think this may go or would like to see it go. I am always looking for new and interesting ideas to add to the story. I hope you are all doing well and I hope that you are enjoying my story so far!