I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Fallen Legacies (4 page)

CHAPTER 8

This is how my people find her. The General didn’t share these details with me, but I know them now:

Wade believes in taking a stand against capitalism. He does this by shoplifting at every opportunity he gets. He also talks, sometimes endlessly, about the amazing record collection he was forced to leave behind when he left his parents’ mansion.

This puts an idea in One’s head. She’s going to shoplift some records from a store by the beach for him. Part of her wants to impress Wade, another part of her just wants to experience the thrill that he’s talked about.

But One gets caught coasting out of the store with a backpack full of merchandise. The owner of the store is a take-no-prisoners type. He calls the cops.

“How was Wade even going to listen to those?” I ask. “Does his van have a record player?”

One laughs as we watch her former self being slapped into handcuffs. “I didn’t even think of that.”

Number One is taken to the police station. Her “grandmother” is contacted. The police are going to let her off with a warning, but a particularly overzealous detective notices the Loric charm on One’s ankle. He mistakes the charm for a brand and starts asking One about gang affiliation.

“Yeah,” sneers One, “I’m in a gang called the Space Invaders. We do surf-by shootings. No lifeguard can stop us.”

The detective doesn’t seem to think it’s a very funny joke.

He takes a picture of One. He takes a picture of the Loric charm. He uploads both images to a statewide database. As soon as the flash on the camera goes off, I know that this is how it happened.

My people have teams working around the clock patrolling the internet, even the internal government sites, for tips just like this. We have artificial intelligences set up that do nothing but scan image feeds for anything resembling the Loric charm.

After four years of searching, One is on our radar.

Hilde doesn’t lecture One when she picks her up from the police station. She doesn’t need words to express her disappointment. One knows what it means to have had her picture taken by the police.

For the first time, One’s rebellious streak gives way to fear. She packs a bag with shaking hands before Hilde even tells her to. I’m reminded of the way my hands shook after I saw her killed. It wasn’t until then that the war we’re fighting began to feel real. One must be feeling the same way now.

This time they travel light. Hilde thinks they need to get out of America. They rush to the airport and board the first international flight they can. Their destination is Malaysia.

One notices the two pale men in trench coats at the airport, but she doesn’t realize what they are. I do. I recognize my own.

For all their precautions, all their training, all their knowledge of their enemies, what’s so clear to me is completely unrecognized by Hilde and One. A Mogadorian scout team is on to them. I know the protocol in a situation like this. When my people have a lead on a Loric, vat-born scouts are dispatched to every conceivable place of departure. We cover them all: airports, train and bus stations, rental car huts. Their objective isn’t to engage. Their job is just to keep an eye on Number One.

“You need to lose them,” I find myself muttering. “You need to lose the scouts before you flee.”

“Oh, thanks for telling me, dude,” the One standing next to me says. She has a sad, rueful look on her face.

For some reason I’m positioning myself between the scouts and One. It makes no sense. I’m a ghost here; they see right through me. And besides, this has already happened. Nothing I can do can change it.

My stomach still drops when they board the flight to Malaysia. I can’t see the scouts anymore; they’ve disappeared into the crowd. I know what they’re doing, though. They’re radioing back to my father or some other superior, arranging to have a scout team waiting across the ocean when One’s flight touches down. My team.

I dread seeing what comes next.

CHAPTER 9

Hilde and One hide out in an abandoned stilt house on the Rajang River, their closest neighbors the endlessly screeching monkeys that populate the jungle. Hilde is planning a trip into Kuala Lumpur, where she’ll take some money out of their bank account, enough to finance their next move. It’s peaceful, without any of the distractions of America. When the river is clear, One practices her telekinesis on its bank.

By the time our team arrives—after an endless flight through who knows how many time zones—I’ve completely lost track of what day it is. All I know is that the sun is beginning to rise.

Hilde hears the first wave coming. Our soldiers don’t make any effort to hide their approach; they have the house surrounded. Hilde shakes Number One awake just as the warriors kick in the door.

The Cêpan moves fast for an old woman. It’s easy to see her as the great martial artist, trainer of young Garde, that she was on Lorien. She ducks effortlessly under a dagger strike, burying her fist in the throat of an off-balance warrior. Before the first Mogadorian even hits the ground, Hilde has wrapped her arms around the head of a second, snapping his neck. I catch myself cheering her on, then stop myself.

The next Mogadorian through the door dives for Hilde and places her in a headlock; but Hilde, in a movement so subtle I barely even see it, manages to turn his hold against him, flipping him onto his back even though he’s twice her size.

That’s when he whips his blaster from his holster, and—orders not to harm her suddenly forgotten in his humiliation—fires it right at her chest.

When Hilde hits the ground, One screams. The entire house wobbles, its stilts suddenly vibrating. Screaming out in grief and agony, One stomps the floor. A seismic wave erupts from her foot, tearing up the floorboards and sending the Mogadorians flying through the tightly woven sticks of the stilt house’s walls.

Her first Legacy has developed. Too late.

The little that’s left of the house is listing on its stilts. With the Mogadorians regrouping outside, One cradles Hilde in her arms. The wound is fatal. Hilde spits a bubble of blood when she tries to speak.

“It’s not too late for you,” Hilde manages to say. “You have to run.”

One is crying. She feels responsible; she feels helpless.

“I failed you,” sobs One.

“Not yet you haven’t,” replies Hilde. “Go. Now.”

I’m standing right next her, willing her to move, even though I know what’s waiting for her on the riverbank. The ghost-One, the dead girl who’s been my companion through all of these memories, has abandoned me now. She’s been gone since the airport.

One hesitates for an instant at Hilde’s order, and then, knowing it’s her only choice, flings herself through one of the windows just as the stilts buckle and the house finally collapses into the river. The Mogadorians meet her on the riverbank.

The house’s falling ceiling passes harmlessly through me. I watch as One produces another seismic burst, experimenting with her newfound power, and the wet ground of the riverbank opens up to swallow a pair of advancing Mogadorians.

I remember this. I peer down the riverbank, wondering if she could have seen me where I stood watching with Ivan and my father. No. I was too far away, her attention too focused on the battle around her.

I should be enjoying this, a chance to replay this great victory up close and personal. There’s nothing someone like Ivan wouldn’t give to be able to witness this again. It’s like a highlight reel of Mogadorian dominance. Yet I want to turn away. I was ashamed to admit it the first time, but not now. This battle—one unarmed teenager against two dozen highly trained Mogadorians—repulses me.

Of course, One isn’t completely defenseless. The ground around her continues to shake, leaving the Mogadorians stumbling and off balance. She picks up some sharp sections of the broken house with her telekinesis and lances them through the nearest Mogadorians. The hit warriors disintegrate into ash and are lost in the muddy river water.

I feel nothing for the dead soldiers. We are taught about acceptable losses. These strike teams are expendable.

One is pushing herself too hard. Her newly discovered Legacy is barely under control, her telekinesis sloppy from months of blowing off training. She is already close to exhaustion, and the Mogadorians just keep coming. Finally one of the largest vat-born warriors manages to evade her defensive attacks and grab her from behind, yanking both of her arms behind her back to restrain her. As he does it, One yelps in pain just before she manages to slip from his grasp.

It wasn’t a loud scream—probably more a cry of surprise than one of injury—but it’s enough for the Mogadorians to understand. They’ve hurt her.
She can be hurt.

And then things change. I know the Mogadorian training well enough to see the soldiers’ strategy shift instantly. They know it’s her. The First. Number One. She can be killed. And every single one of them wants to be the one to do it.

One’s in such a panic, fighting blindly, that she never even notices the Mogadorian warrior who manages to grab that particular glory. I don’t know the warrior’s name; he’s just another faceless trooper under my father’s command. He approaches her from behind, his glowing sword drawn. He takes his time, plotting his steps carefully across the vibrating ground.

When he’s close enough, the warrior lunges, burying his sword in One’s back, the blade emerging from her abdomen. From this moment on, he will be a hero to my people.

Maybe the only good thing about death is that you never have to relive it. You never have to remember the pain. Except, One does. Though she’d been gone since the airport, ghost-One is suddenly next to me again. She’s hunched and sobbing, her mind crying out to mine through the link we share. She can feel herself dying.

Her mind throbs with pain and fear. As it does, I feel the mental block she’d been maintaining crumble and fall, just like the walls of the stilt house. She’s lost control over her memories.

Now is my chance to return to the Loric airstrip, to see the identities of the other Garde.

As Number One’s body slips lifeless to the ground, everything begins to blur again, like it did when I first entered One’s memories. Only now, I’m in control. I cycle backward through her memories, knowing exactly what I want to see.

CHAPTER 10

I sit on the beach, waiting for One to emerge from the water. When she does, her wet suit dripping, surfboard slung under her arm, I stop the memory. Then I loop backward a bit further, watching her surf a wave and then return to the beach again.

This
is the memory I chose to return to. I replay the scene over and over, unsure how many times I watch her come out of the water, until eventually ghost-One appears beside me. She looks surprised to see me here but sits down on the beach next to me. For a while, we don’t say anything; we just stare out at the ocean, watching Number One surf through one of her last happy days. Part of me wishes I could grab a board and go out there with her, but that’s not the way this works. This moment will have to do.

“I’m sorry you died,” I blurt out, meaning it.

“Yeah,” answers One. “That sucked.”

I think back to the floating vision of the solar system. What will happen when my people commence their invasion on Earth? Will this beach look like the ones on Lorien must now?

“I don’t understand why any of this has to happen,” I say.

“Maybe you should ask your pops. He’s got all the answers, right?”

I nod my head slowly, even though the thought of bringing these feelings to the General makes me feel nauseous. One is watching me, a small smile forming at the edges of her mouth.

“I’m going to,” I say, feeling suddenly resolute. “I want to know why.”

“Good,” replies One, and she squeezes my hand, even though I can sense that part of her is still sort of repulsed by me.

A shiver goes down my spine, and without quite knowing why, I quickly pull my hand away.

“What happens now?” I ask One.

“Now,” she says, “you wake up.”

CHAPTER 11

I wake up in my bedroom.
My
bedroom, back at Ashwood Estates. I’m not in One’s life anymore.

It’s morning, and my eyes adjust slowly to the early light. It hurts to open them.

My entire body feels sore and weak. I can’t sit up, but I take a few deep breaths and focus on wiggling some feeling back into my toes.

I’m covered by two layers of blankets. One of my arms—pale, paler than usual—rests on top of the blankets, hooked up to a plastic tube that leads to a nutrient drip. Strange.

How long have I been out that they had to hook me up to an IV?

I hear a noise at my bedside and slowly, painfully turn my head. There’s a girl kneeling on the floor next to my bed, her back to me. She’s narrow and gawky in that almost-a-teenager sort of way. There’s something oddly familiar about her, and I struggle to place her from around the neighborhood. What’s she doing in my bedroom?

The girl has a Build-a-Piken set spread out on the floor before her. Resembling one of Earth’s toy chemistry sets, it’s one of the few “games” we Mogadorians are permitted. I’m too weak to speak, still working moisture back into my desert of a mouth, so I watch in silence as the girl drags a scalpel down the belly of a wriggling earthworm. Then she fills an eyedropper with a clear solution and dribbles it into the worm’s open wound.

The worm only writhes at first, but then its body begins to contort and change. Nubs of pliable flesh begin to protrude from the wound where the solution hit. The girl grabs a pair of tweezers and carefully stretches out the flesh, helping it to form into six spindly, spider-like legs. Haltingly, the tiny piken manages to get these legs under it, hefting the twisting remains of the worm’s body. It scuttles a few steps across the floor, then collapses.

The girl watches, her head cocked, as the piken-worm tries to regain its footing. It can’t, toppling onto what would be its back, legs kicking helplessly in the air. After a few moments of futile struggling, the piken’s legs stop moving and it disintegrates into ash. The girl wipes up the ash with a damp washcloth and produces a new worm from a nearby box.

Something about this makes me feel incredibly sad. Not for the worm but more for the girl. It’s disturbing to see how casually she alters and extinguishes the worm. It makes me uncomfortable to think how little my people value life. As soon as I have this thought, I get a strange, sick feeling in my stomach. It goes against everything written in the book; everything my people believe.

An image of One impaled on a Mogadorian blade springs to mind. I push it away.

I try to shift in the bed a little bit more, and it makes a noise. The girl turns her head sharply, her eyes widening when she sees me watching her.

“You’re awake!” she shouts, excited.

Kelly. The girl is my sister. But … she’s grown up. When she springs to her feet, it’s clear that she’s almost a foot taller than when I last saw her, which should’ve been just yesterday afternoon, although it feels much longer.
Was
much longer, apparently.

“How—” I cough, my throat aching. “How long?” I manage.

Kelly has already sprung to the doorway, shouting downstairs for our mother. She rushes back to me.

“Three years,” she says. “By Ra, you’ve been sleeping for three years!”