“We have to go,” says Four.
I don’t want to go. I want to tear this place apart. Yet something tells me that I should listen to this boy, that we should stick together. It’s what Sandor would want.
We have to fight our way out. My mind shuts off as the fighting grows more intense. At some point I realize that Four and I have become separated from Sam. I feel bad for the kid—another piece of human collateral damage.
My sympathy is quickly drowned out by the urge to tear this entire place down.
I drive my pipe-staff into the neck of a piken. I’m straddling its neck as it collapses, its blood spraying me, blending with my coat of Mogadorian ash. I can taste it mixing with the coppery tang of my own blood.
I’m grinning. Four stares at me aghast, like I’m only a little better than the monsters we’re killing.
“Are you crazy?” he asks. “You’re enjoying this?”
“I’ve been locked up for over a year,” I tell him. “This is the best day of my life!”
It’s true. I haven’t felt this good in forever. Still, I try to downplay just how much I’m loving this. I don’t want to freak Four out.
For all his judgment, Four doesn’t hesitate to take my hand when we need to use my antigravity Legacy to escape. It’s a long and brutal fight. When we finally catch a glimpse of daylight, I feel disappointed. I wish they’d never stop coming. I glance at Four. He’s pretty beaten up, but he’s killed his fair share of Mogs and piken on the way out, even if he lacks my enthusiasm.
Perhaps we’ll make a warrior out of him yet.
We escape from the Mogadorian base and I greedily suck in my first breath of free air in more than a year. Immediately, I gag. The smell of dead animals is overwhelming.
Four and I jog for the tree line. He barely makes it there, collapsing against a tree almost immediately. He’s in rough shape physically and, if the tears are any indication, equally bad shape mentally. He’s beating himself up over leaving Sam behind.
I know a thing or two about guilt, but I don’t know what the hell to say to this kid. Buck up, champ, we’ll kill them next time? Everything I think of seems hollow, so I keep my mouth shut.
He’ll learn to shut off his emotions eventually. Emotions will get you killed. They’ll get someone else killed too.
As I press a healing stone to Four’s back, the sky overhead begins to writhe with an ominous- looking storm. At first Four thinks it’s Number Six coming to help us.
It’s not. It’s Setrakus Ra.
Despite seeing him in nightly visions, I’m not prepared for his true size. He is bigger than any Mogadorian I’ve ever seen, utterly repulsive even from this distance. The sight of the three Lorien pendants glowing around his thick neck causes me to clench my fists, fingernails digging into my palms.
Suddenly I understand exactly what Sandor was training me for. This is the battle I was meant to fight. Killing Setrakus Ra is the destiny I’ve been chasing.
Together with Four, I charge.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Is he okay?” I ask.
He needs rest, the Chimæra’s kind voice says inside my mind. Talking to animals, that’s new. It’s been a day of surprises. So much has happened, I don’t even have time to consider my newly discovered Legacy. I’ll figure it out later, when things have settled down.
If they ever settle down.
Four stretches across the backseat of his SUV, nearly doubled over. His Chimæra, named for some weak human athlete, lies next to him, gently licking his face. I’m reminded of my dream, of playing with my own Chimæra on Lorien, but I push that memory back down with all the other things I want to forget.
The war has begun. I have only one purpose.
The coward Setrakus Ra fled into the Mogadorian base before we could get to him. With Four getting wrecked by the force field and no way back into the base, I decided to make a strategic retreat.
Ra’s day will come. When I told Four that I’d stab him once for every day his people had Sandor tortured, I meant it.
I start the engine. It’s the first time I’ve driven since that fateful night with Maddy. I think about the way she clutched my arm as we screamed through red lights, then discard that memory as well.
“So what’s our next move?” I ask Four.
“Head north,” he says. “I think north would be good.”
“You got it, boss.”
I already knew where we were heading, but it’s easier not to have to convince Four.
It will be good to see Chicago again. I’m pretty sure the Mogadorians never found our safe house—they would have bragged about it if they had, used it to demoralize me even more. It should still be there, on the top floor of the John Hancock Center, a safe place for me to plan our next move.
A place filled with painful memories I’ll have to ignore.
I drive north, my foot heavy on the gas. It’s ironic. At last I have my freedom. But at a price. Now my destiny is mine to choose.
And I’ve already chosen.
Today will go down as a dark day in the Mogadorian history books. It is the day that they allowed me to get loose. In whatever dismal corner of the universe the Mogadorians that manage to escape me gather, this day will be discussed in hushed tones as when the annihilation of their race became a certainty.
I’m going to kill them all.
