Nine POV

What I saw on the TV back there wasn't the John I knew. That wasn't the John Smith I broke out of the West Virginia base. That wasn't the John Smith I trained hundreds of hours with. That wasn't the John Smith that took down Setrakus Ra. I plan on bringing that John Smith back.

I storm off to my room. I throw open the closet door and start shoving my way through. I find it under a pile of dirty clothes and pick it up in a hurry. I activate my staff and I instantly feel filled with power.

I hear a voice at the door to my room, "Where do you think you're going?"

I turn and see Lexa standing there arms crossed.

"I'm going to rescue John or die trying," I snort as if this should be obvious.

"Nine, that's crazy," Lexa says exasperated. "We don't know how to stop this thing. For all we know it's incurable."

"That thing took one of my closest friends," I snap at her. "I'm not going to wait around at the Academy teaching Garde in training to fight Mogs when I won't even fight the Mogs myself. Now move so I can get to John and end this."

"Think about it Nine," Lexa's look softens. "If you go after John, he's going to attack you. Either he'll seriously hurt you, or the other way around. I'm not going to risk anymore lives than we need to, especially if one of those lives is a Garde."

"So what the hell am I supposed to do?" I yell.

"Gather the rest of the Garde," Lexa smiles. "Six, Marina, Ella, Sam, maybe even Adam if he hasn't been affected too."

I hadn't thought of the others. Maybe Lexa is right. I could use the pendant from John to hop around to catch up with the others if they hadn't already met up yet.

I nod at Lexa.

"I'll tell the rest of the Garde and we'll decide what to do from there."

Luke POV

The four of us are gathered in Kyle's room since his was the only one out of the group that wasn't destroyed from my outburst.

"How are we supposed to get off campus?" Kyle asks.

"I mean I could try to transform into some bird or something and carry you three, but I doubt I would be able to get us all off the ground," Rachel suggests.

"Maybe we could try to buy plane tickets and just sneak off campus tonight?" I say.

"Impossible," Alexis snorts. "The campus lines are heavily garded by the United States army and infrared sensors keep even invisible Garde from escaping."

"I'm not even going to question how you know that," Kyle laughs. "But if you have any other great ideas we'd love to hear them."

Alexis takes a deep breath and shakes her head.

"I really shouldn't even be telling you guys this exists, but near the edge of campus there's an underground hangar."

Kyle's eyes widen in excitement, a devious smile spreading across his face.

"In the hangar, I know Lexi has her ship parked," Alexis continues. "Kyle if you can sneak into her office invisible, the keys should be on her desk."

"Consider it done," Kyle nods.

"The hangar is still on campus boundaries, so the infrared sensors won't be anything to worry about," Alexis says as our plan starts to come together. "Kyle if you can manage to keep both Luke and I invisible, we can work our way towards the hangar later this night. Rachael you can turn either into a bird or mouse, preferably small, you ride along inside my pocket."

"When we get to the ship how exactly are we going to fly the thing out of here?" I ask. "None of us really know how to drive a space ship."

"The ship should have an auto-pilot function," Alexis says. "All we have to do is enter the coordinates."

"And where exactly is it we're headed?" Rachael asks.

"Isn't it obvious?" I say. "We're going to the Mog prison to stop whatever it is that's controlling John Smith."

Nine POV

I decide to start with Six and Sam. Last I heard from them they were on some stupid date trip across Europe. Knowing exactly where in Europe was going to be tricky, but I after a couple of stops in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels, I found them in Amsterdam.

"Long time no see," I smile.

"Nine!" Six shouts and runs to give me a hug. "What are you doing here?"

"Don't you have some high tech, Garde school you're supposed to be running?" Sam says obviously a little annoyed I interrupted their trip.

"Relax Goode, I'm here because I'm getting the group back together," I say.

Six gives me a questioning look. "Can't this reunion wait? We just took down Setrakus Ra not too long ago and I could use a little off time."

"You think I came here to plan some stupid get together? It's nothing at all like that. Something happened to John and I think it's about to lead up to something bigger."

Sam's face instantly is filled with worry.

"What the hell happened? We're talking about the same John Smith right? The one that can heal himself?"

I tell Six and Sam about my talk with John in the Himalayas and how he would check out the prison. I told them about the news cast and how the black sludge hit John somehow taking over his mind turning him against us.

"Have you already gathered the others?" Six asks.

I shake my head.

"You were the first two I found. I figured we could find Marina and Ella quicker with your help."

"Well finding Marina and Ella shouldn't be too hard," Six smiles. "John told me they've been hanging around the Himalayas ever since he fixed up the place."

"And what about Adam? We could use his help," Sam adds.

I thought about bring back Adam too, but I came to the conclusion of it being too risky to track him down.

"Think about it Sam," I say, "If they were able to control John's mind, they definitely would've gotten to Adam first. Even if he did manage to escape, we have no idea of knowing where he is and we don't have the time to go looking for him."

Sam sighs knowing I'm right but also wanting to believe I'm wrong.

"Speaking of which," Six steps in, "we're already wasting daylight. Let's go ahead and end this thing."

Sam and her grab hands and she pulls out the pendant. I slip mine around my neck and she does the same. I shut my eyes and once again am filled with the feeling of free falling. In that split second of teleporting to the Himalayas, a flash of bright cobalt blue filled my eyes.

Luke POV

Kyle managed to get the key to the ship without raising any alarm. The tricky part was going to be sneaking out of the dorms to the ship.

Every night, an older Garde member was assigned to watch the floors to make sure no interuders came in and no Garde left. Usually, this wouldn't be a problem according to Kyle. He said everyone usually fell asleep on the job or just didn't care enough to watch in the first place. Of course the one night we plan on leaving the dorms, Nigel is assigned to watch duty. Nigel takes his job as if he were the secret service for the President. He covers every possible exit and patrols the halls making sure no one is acting up.

I suggested we just knock him out, but Alexis disagreed and told Kyle to turn invisible and take us out one by one.

Once, we made it past asshole Nigel, we got into formation. Rachael turned into a cockroach and climbed into Kyle's front pocket.

"Stop!" Kyle had laughed, "You're tickling me!"

Once we managed to sush Kyle and get him under control, he grabbed Alexis and I's hands and we vanished from sight.

Being invisible was tricky, especially in the dark. We had to move as one or else one of us would break the chain and instantly appear from thin air. I constantly was tripping over roots and rocks as I couldn't see my feet, but luckily Kyle steadied me each time.

After about twenty minutes, we reached the hangar. At first we all thought Alexis had gotten us lost since we couldn't see what she insisted was there, but at the base of a tree slightly thicker than the rest, I noticed a hollowed out portion just big enough for someone to climb down through.

Quickly, we all descended the hidden entrance and entered the hangar. The hangar wasn't too impressive. It was just large enough to squeeze one ship in and it was quite barren.

The ship on the other hand was beautiful. It's sleek, silver body looked like it was something straight out of a sci-fi film.

"Hell yeah," I heard Kyle whisper.

We all climbed on board ready to start our journey. Alexis started up the ship and entered in the coordinates. The door to the hangar opened up off the cliff of the island, over open seas. We shot out of the hangar at insane speeds and rose into the air. We all cheered as our plan had worked out perfectly.

"John Smith," I yell, "here we come!"

All of a sudden, a flashing red light fills the cabin of the ship. A siren starts roaring in our ears.

"What's happening?" Rachael cries out.

"I don't know!" Alexis yells frantically tapping on buttons and flipping switches.

We all gather around the main control screen as a flashing warning appears.

Autopilot Disengaged. Manual Override to Remote Operations.

"Uhm Alexis?" Kyle's voice trembles. "What exactly does that mean?|

Alexis has stopped her panic of button pushing and level flipping and is now standing completely still.

"It means someone knows we left and hacked into the ship," she breathes. "They're in control and taking us straight to them. There's nothing we can do about it."

Hope this chapter was an improvement from the last. I tried to pick up on the action since there hasn't really been too much but I don't want to rush the story. Leave a review if you want to suggest anything or just let me know how I'm doing! Thanks for reading!