The Guard, Page 8

“Resistance,” I say bitterly. “Resistance is what happens after you lose a war, Sam.”

  “You know what I meant,” he replies. I can tell by the way his voice shakes that it’s a strain for Sam to stay optimistic after everything we’ve seen today. He’s trying, though. “A lot of those people knew who you were. They said there was some video of you on the news. And everything that happened at the UN—you basically unmasked Setrákus Ra in front of an international audience. Everyone knows you’ve been fighting against the Mogadorians. That you tried to stop this.”

  “Then they know that I failed.”

  The door to the first-floor apartment is ajar. I shove it the rest of the way open and Sam closes and locks it behind us. I try the nearest light switch, surprised to find that the electricity is still on here. Power seems to be spotty throughout the city. I guess this neighborhood hasn’t been badly hit yet. I turn the lights off just as quickly—in our current condition, we don’t want to attract the attention of any Mogadorian patrols that might be in the area. As I stumble towards a nearby futon, Sam moves around the room closing curtains.

  The apartment is a small one-room studio. There’s a cramped kitchen cordoned off from the main living space by a granite counter, a single closet and a tiny bathroom. Whoever lives here definitely left in a hurry; there are clothes spilled across the floor from a hasty packing job, an overturned bowl of cereal on the counter and a cracked picture frame near the door that looks like it was crushed underfoot. In the picture, a couple in their twenties pose in front of a tropical beach, a small monkey perched on the guy’s shoulder.

  These people had a normal life. Even if they made it out of Manhattan and to safety, that’s over now. Earth will never be the same. I used to imagine a peaceful life like this for Sarah and me once the Mogs were defeated. Not a tiny apartment in New York City, but something simple and calm. There’s an explosion in the distance, the Mogs destroying something uptown. I realize now how naïve those life-after-war dreams were. Nothing will ever be normal after this.

  Sarah. I hope she’s okay. It was her face that I called to mind during the roughest parts of our block-by-block battle through Manhattan. Keep fighting and you’ll get to see her again, that’s what I kept telling myself. I wish I could talk to her. I need to talk to her. Not just Sarah, but Six too—I need to get in touch with the others, to find out what Sarah learned from Mark James and his mysterious contact, and to see what Six, Marina and Adam did in Mexico. That has to have something to do with why Sam suddenly developed a Legacy. What if he’s not the only one? I need to know what’s happening outside of New York City, but my satellite phone was destroyed when I fell into the East River and the regular cell phone networks are down. For now, it’s just me and Sam. Surviving.

  In the kitchen, Sam opens the fridge. He pauses and glances over to me.

  “Is it wrong if we take some of this person’s food?” he asks me.

  “I’m sure they won’t care,” I reply.

  I close my eyes for what feels like a second but must be longer, opening them only when a piece of bread bumps against my nose. With one hand extended theatrically like a comic book character, Sam telekinetically floats a peanut butter sandwich, a plastic container of applesauce and a spoon in front of my face. Even feeling down and out as I am, I can’t help but smile at the effort.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you with the sandwich,” Sam says as I pluck the food out of the air. “I’m still getting used to this. Obviously.”

  “No worries. It’s easy to shove and pull with telekinesis. Precision’s the hardest part to learn.”

  “No kidding,” he says.

  “You’re doing amazing for someone that’s had telekinesis for all of four hours, man.”

  Sam sits down on the futon next to me with his own sandwich. “It helps if I imagine that I have, like, ghost hands. Does that make sense?”

  I think back to how I trained my own telekinesis with Henri. It seems like so long ago.

  “I used to visualize whatever I focused on moving, and then will it to happen,” I tell Sam. “We started small. Henri used to toss me baseballs in the backyard and I’d practice catching them with my mind.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think playing catch is really an option for me right now,” Sam says. “I’m finding other ways to practice.”

  Sam floats his sandwich up from his lap. He initially brings it too high for him to bite, but gets it at mouth level after a second more of concentration.

  “Not bad,” I say.

  “It’s easier when I’m not thinking about it.”

  “Like when we’re fighting for our lives, for instance?”

  “Yeah,” Sam says, shaking his head in wonder. “Are we going to talk about how this happened to me, John? Or why it happened? Or . . . I don’t know. What it means?”

  “Garde develop Legacies in their teens,” I say, shrugging. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”

  “Dude, have you forgotten that I’m not Loric?”

  “Neither is Adam, but he’s got Legacies,” I reply.

  “Yeah, his gross dad hooked him up to a dead Garde and . . .”

  I hold up a hand to stop Sam. “All I’m saying is that it’s not so cut-and-dry. I don’t think Legacies work the way my people always assumed.” I pause for a moment to think. “What’s happened to you has to have something to do with what Six and the others did at the Sanctuary.”

  “Six did this . . . ,” Sam says.

  “They went down there to find Lorien on Earth; I think they did it. And then, maybe Lorien chose you.”

  Without even realizing it, I’ve already devoured the sandwich and applesauce. My stomach growls. I feel a little better, my strength starting to come back to me.

  “Well, that’s an honor,” Sam says, looking down at his hands and thinking it over. Or, more likely, thinking about Six. “A terrifying honor.”

  “You did good out there. I couldn’t have saved all those people without you,” I reply, patting Sam on the back. “The truth is, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I don’t know how or why you suddenly developed a Legacy. I’m just glad you have it. I’m glad there’s a little hope mixed into the death and destruction.”

  Sam stands up, pointlessly brushing some crumbs off his dirt-caked jeans. “Yeah, that’s me, the great hope for humanity, currently dying for another sandwich. You want one?”

  “I can get it,” I tell Sam, but when I lean forward to get off the futon, I’m immediately woozy and have to sink back down.

  “Take it easy,” Sam says, playing it off like he didn’t notice what a mess I am. “I got the sandwiches covered.”

  “We’ll just hang here for a few more minutes,” I say groggily. “Then we’ll go track down Nine.”

  I close my eyes, listening to Sam clatter around in the kitchen, trying to spread peanut butter with a telekinetically held knife. In the background, always in the background now, I can hear the steady thunder of fighting somewhere else in Manhattan. Sam’s right—we’re the resistance. We should be out there resisting. If I can just rest for a few more minutes . . .

  I don’t open my eyes until Sam shakes me by the shoulder. Immediately, I can tell that I’ve dozed off. The light in the room is changed, the streetlights coming on outside, a warm yellow glow under the curtains. A plate stacked with sandwiches waits on the couch next to me. I’m tempted to dive right in and chow down. It’s like all my urges are animal now—sleep, eat, fight.

  “How long was I out for?” I ask Sam, sitting up, feeling a little better physically but also feeling guilty for sleeping when there are people dying all over New York.

  “About an hour,” Sam replies. “I was going to let you rest, but . . .”

  In explanation, Sam gestures behind him, towards the small flat-screen television attached to the room’s far wall. The local news is actually broadcasting. Sam’s got the volume muted and the picture occasionally gives way to bursts of static, but there it is—New York Ci
ty burning. Grainy footage shows the looming hulk of the Anubis crawling across the skyline, its side-mounted cannons bombarding the uppermost floors of a skyscraper until there’s nothing left but dust.

  “I didn’t even think to check if it was working until a few minutes ago,” Sam says. “I figured the Mogs would’ve knocked out the TV stations for, you know, war reasons.”

  I haven’t forgotten what Setrákus Ra said to me as I dangled from his ship over the East River. He wants me to watch Earth fall. Thinking even further back, to that vision of Washington, D.C., which I shared with Ella, I remember that city looking pretty busted up, but it wasn’t completely razed. And there were survivors left over to serve Setrákus Ra. I think I’m beginning to understand.

  “It’s not an accident,” I say to Sam, thinking out loud. “He must want the humans to be able to see the destruction he’s bringing down. It’s not like on Lorien where his fleet just wiped everyone out. That’s why he tried putting on that big show at the UN, it’s why he tried all that shadowy MogPro shit to bring Earth under his control peacefully. He’s planning to live here afterwards. And if they’re not going to worship him like the Mogs do, he at least wants his human subjects to fear him.”

  “Well, the fear thing is definitely working,” Sam replies.

  On-screen, the news has switched to a live shot of an anchor at her desk. The building that houses this channel has probably taken some damage from the fighting because it looks like they’re barely keeping themselves on the air. Only half the lights are on in the studio and the camera is cockeyed, the picture not as sharp as it should be. The anchor is trying to keep up a professional face, but her hair is caked with dust and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. She speaks directly into the camera for a few seconds, introducing the next piece of footage.

  The anchor disappears, replaced by shaky video shot with a cellular phone. In the middle of a major intersection, a blurry figure spins round and round, like an Olympic discus thrower warming up. Except this guy’s not holding a discus. With inhuman strength he’s whipping around another person by the ankle. After a dozen spins, the guy lets go of the curled-up body, flinging it through the front window of a nearby movie theater. The video stays centered on the thrower as, shoulders heaving, he yells out what’s probably a curse.

  It’s Nine.

  “Sam! Turn it up!”

  As Sam gropes for the remote, whoever’s filmed Nine dives behind a car for cover. It’s disorienting as hell, but the cameraman manages to keep recording by sticking one hand above the car’s trunk. A group of Mogadorian warriors have appeared in the intersection, blasting away at Nine. I watch as he dances nimbly aside, then uses his telekinesis to fling a car in their direction.

  “. . . again, this is footage taken in Union Square just moments ago,” the shaky-voiced anchor is saying as Sam turns up the volume. “We know this apparently superpowered, um, possibly alien teenager was at the UN scene with the other young man identified as John Smith. We see him here engaged in combat with the Mogadorians, doing things not humanly possible . . .”

  “They know my name,” I say, quietly.

  “Look,” Sam says, hitting my arm.

  The camera has panned back to the movie theater, where a burly form slowly rises from the shattered window. I don’t get a good look at him, but I immediately know exactly who Nine was throwing around. He flies up from the movie theater window, slashes through the few Mogs still in the intersection and then careens violently into Nine.

  “Five,” Sam says.

  The camera loses track of Five and Nine as they plow through the grass of a small nearby park, churning up huge chunks of dirt as they go.

  “They’re killing each other,” I say. “We have to get over there.”

  “A second extraterrestrial teenager is fighting the first, at least when they’re not fighting off the invaders,” the anchor says, sounding baffled. “We . . . we don’t know why. We don’t have many answers at all at this point, I’m afraid. Just . . . stay safe, New York. Evacuation efforts are ongoing if you have a safe route to the Brooklyn Bridge. If you’re near the fighting, keep inside and—”

  I take the remote from Sam and turn off the TV. He watches me as I stand up, checking to make sure I’m all right. My muscles howl in protest and I’m dizzy for a second, but I can push through. I have to push through. Never has the expression “fight like there’s no tomorrow” had more meaning. If I’m going to make this right—if we’re going to save Earth from Setrákus Ra and the Mogadorians, then the first steps are finding Nine and surviving New York.

  “She said Union Square,” I say. “That’s where we go.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE WORLD HASN’T CHANGED. AT LEAST, NOT that I can tell.

  The jungle air is humid and sticky, a welcome change from the cold dampness of the Sanctuary’s subterranean depths. I have to shield my eyes as we emerge into the late afternoon sun, ducking one by one through a narrow stone archway that’s appeared in the Mayan temple’s base.

  “They couldn’t have let us come in that way?” I grumble, cracking my back and glancing over to the hundreds of fractured limestone steps we climbed earlier. Once we were at the top of Calakmul, our pendants activated some kind of Loric doorway that teleported us to the hidden Sanctuary beneath the centuries-old human-built structure. We found ourselves in an otherworldly room obviously created by the Elders on one of their visits to Earth. I guess secrecy was a higher priority than ease of access. Anyway, the way out wasn’t such a hike and didn’t involve any disorienting teleportation—just a dizzying hundred yards of dusty spiral staircase and a simple door that, of course, wasn’t there when we first entered.

  Adam exits the Sanctuary behind me, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “What now?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him, looking up at the darkening sky. “I was sorta counting on the Sanctuary to answer that.”

  “I . . . I’m still not sure what we saw in there. Or what we accomplished,” Adam says hesitantly. He pushes some loose strands of black hair out of his face as he watches me.

  “Me neither,” I tell him.

  Truth be told, I’m not even sure how long we were beneath the earth. You lose track of time when you’re deep in conversation with an otherworldly being made of pure Loric energy. We had scraped together as many pieces of our Inheritance as the Garde could spare—basically, anything that wasn’t a weapon. Once inside the Sanctuary, we dumped all those unexplained stones and trinkets into a hidden well connected to a dormant Loralite energy source. I guess that was enough to wake up the Entity, the living embodiment of Lorien itself. We chatted.

  Yeah. That happened.

  But the Entity basically spoke in riddles and, at the end of our talk, the thing went supernova, its energy flooding out of the Sanctuary and into the world. Like Adam, I’m not sure what it all meant.

  I’d expected to emerge from the Sanctuary and find . . . something. Maybe jagged bolts of Loric energy streaking through the skies, on their way to incinerate the nearest Mogadorian not named Adam? Maybe some more juice to my Legacies, putting me on a level where I’d be able to whip up a storm big enough to wipe out all our enemies? No such luck. As far as I know, the Mogadorian fleet is still closing in on Earth. John, Sam, Nine and the others could be rushing towards the front lines right now, and I’m not sure we’ve done anything to help them.

  Marina is last through the temple’s door. She hugs herself, her eyes wide and watery, blinking in the sunlight.

  I know she’s thinking about Eight.

  Before the energy source went rocketing into the world, it somehow managed to resurrect him, if only for a few fleeting minutes. Long enough for Marina to say good-bye. Even now, already starting to sweat in the oppressive jungle heat, I get chills thinking about Eight returned to us, awash in the Loralite glow, smiling again. It was the kind of intensely beautiful moment I’ve hardened myself to over the years—this is war, and people are going
to die. Friends are going to die. I’ve come to accept the pain, to take the ugliness for granted. So it can be a little stunning when something good actually happens.

  Comforting as it was to see Eight again, it was still saying good-bye. I can’t imagine what Marina’s going through. She loved him and now he’s gone. Again.

  Marina stops and glances back at the temple, almost like she might go back inside. Next to me, Adam clears his throat.

  “Is she going to be okay?” he asks me, his voice low.

  Marina shut down on me once before, back in Florida, after Five betrayed us. After he killed Eight. This isn’t the same—she isn’t radiating a constant field of cold, and she doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of strangling whoever comes close. When she turns back to us, her expression is almost serene. She’s remembering, storing that moment with Eight away and steeling herself for what’s to come. I’m not worried about her.

  I smile as Marina blinks her eyes and wipes a hand across her face.

  “I can hear you,” she replies to Adam. “I’m fine.”

  “Good,” Adam says, awkwardly looking away. “I just wanted to say, about what happened in there, uh, that I . . .”

  Adam trails off, both Marina and I looking at him expectantly. Being a Mog, I think he still finds it a little uncomfortable to get too personal with us. I know he was amazed by the Loric light show inside the Sanctuary, but I could also tell he felt like he didn’t belong, like he wasn’t worthy enough to be in the presence of the Entity.

  When Adam’s pause stretches on, I pat him on the back. “Let’s save the heart-to-heart for the ride, okay?”

  Adam seems relieved as we walk back towards our Skimmer, the ship parked alongside a dozen other Mog crafts on the nearby landing strip. The Mog encampment in front of the temple is exactly the way we left it—trashed. The Mogs that were trying to break into the Sanctuary had cleared jungle in a precise ring around the temple, getting as close to the temple as the Sanctuary’s powerful force field would allow.

  It isn’t until we cross from the vine-strewn overgrowth of the land directly in front of the temple to the scorched brown soil of the Mog camp that I realize the force field is gone. The deadly barrier that protected the Sanctuary for years is no more.