Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files (100 page)

It doesn’t matter. The simple fact is: I’ve been captured. I know this. Now what am I going to do about it?

I figure the Mogs must have moved me to one of their bases. Except this room isn’t like the horrific and tiny cells that Nine and Six described from when they were captured. No, this must be the Mogadorians’ twisted idea of hospitality. They’re trying to take care of me.

Setrákus Ra wants me treated more like a guest than a prisoner. Because, one day, he wants me ruling next to him. Why, I still don’t understand, but right now it’s the only thing keeping me alive.

Oh no. If I’m here, what happened to the others in Chicago?

My hands start to shake and tears sting my eyes. I have to get out of here. And I have to do it alone.

I push down the fear. I push down the lingering visions of a decimated Washington. I push down the worries about my friends. I push it all down. I need to be a blank slate, like I was when we first fought Setrákus Ra in the New Mexico, like I was during my training sessions with the others. It’s easiest for me to be brave when I just don’t think about it. If I act on instinct, I can do this.

Run,
I imagine Crayton saying.
Run until they’re too tired to chase you.

I need something to fight them with. I look around the room for anything I can use as a weapon. Next to the bed is a metallic nightstand, the only other furniture in the room. The Mogs left a glass of water there for me, which I’m not dumb enough to drink even though I’m insanely thirsty. Next to the glass, there’s a dictionarysized book with an oily, snaky-skin cover. The ink on the cover looks singed, the words indented and rough around the edges, as if it were printed with acid for ink.

The title reads
The Great Book of Mogadorian Progress,
surprisingly in English. Under it is a series of angular boxes and hash marks that I assume is Mogadorian.

I pick up the book and open it. Each page is divided in half, English on one side and Mogadorian on the other. I wonder if I’m supposed to read this thing.

I slam the book closed. The important thing is that it’s heavy and I can swing it. I won’t be turning any Mogadorian guards into ash clouds, but it’s better than nothing.

I climb down from the bed and walk over to what I think is the door. It’s a rectangular panel cut into the plated wall, but there aren’t any knobs or buttons.

As I tiptoe closer, wondering how I’m going to open this thing, there’s a mechanical whirring noise from inside the wall. It must be on a motion sensor like the lights, because the door hisses upward as soon as I’m close, disappearing into the ceiling.

I don’t stop to wonder why I’m not locked down. Clutching the Mogadorian book, I step into a hallway that’s just as cold and metallic as my room.

“Ah,” says a woman’s voice. “You’re awake.”

Instead of guards, a Mogadorian woman perches on a stool outside my room, obviously waiting for me. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a female Mog before, and definitely not one like her. Middle-aged, with wrinkles forming in the pale skin around her eyes, the Mog looks surprisingly unthreatening in a high-necked floor-length dress, like something one of the sisters would wear back at Santa Teresa. Her head is shaved except for two long, black braids at the back of her skull, the rest of her scalp covered by an elaborate tattoo. Instead of being nasty and vicious, like the Mogs I’ve fought before, this one is almost elegant.

I stop short in front of her, not sure what to do.

The Mog glances at the book in my hands and smiles.

“And ready to begin your studies, I see,” she says, standing up. She’s tall, slender and vaguely spiderlike. Standing before me, she dips into an elaborate bow. “Mistress Ella, I shall be your instructor while—”

As soon as her head comes low enough, I smack her across the face with the book as hard as I can.

She doesn’t see it coming, which I guess is strange because all the Mogs I’ve encountered have been ready to fight. This one lets out a short grunt and then hits the floor with a fluttering of fabric from her fancy dress.

I don’t stop to see if I’ve knocked her out or if she’s pulling a blaster from some hidden compartment in that dress. I run, choosing a direction at random and hurtling down the hallway as fast as I can. The metal floor stings my bare feet and my muscles begin to ache, but I ignore all that. I have to get out of here.

Too bad these secret Mogadorian bases never have any exit signs.

I turn one corner and then another, sprinting through hallways that are pretty much identical. I keep expecting sirens to start blaring now that I’ve escaped, but they never do. There aren’t any heavy Mogadorian footfalls chasing after me, either.

Just when I’m starting to get winded and thinking about slowing down, a doorway opens on my right and two Mogadorians step forward. They’re more like the ones I’m used to—burly, dressed in their black combat gear, beady eyes glaring at me. I dart around them, even though neither of them makes any attempt to grab me. In fact, I think I hear one of them laughing.

What is going on here?

I can feel the two Mog soldiers watching me run, so I duck down the first hallway that I can. I’m not sure if I’ve been going in circles or what. There isn’t any sunlight or outside noises at all, nothing to indicate that I might be getting closer to an exit. It doesn’t seem like the Mogs even care what I do, like they know I’ve got no chance to get out of here.

I slow down to catch my breath, cautiously inching down this latest sterile hallway. I’m still clutching the book—my only weapon—and my hand is starting to cramp. I shake it loose and press on.

Up ahead, a wide archway opens with a hydraulic hiss; it’s different than the other doors, wider, and there are strangely blinking lights on the other side.

Not blinking lights. Stars.

As I walk under the archway, the metal-plated ceiling gives way to a glass bubble, the room wide open, almost like a planetarium. Except real. There are various consoles and computers protruding from the floor—maybe this is some kind of control room—but I ignore them, drawn instead to the dizzying view through the expansive window.

Darkness. Stars.

Earth.

Now I understand why the Mogadorians weren’t chasing me. They know there’s nowhere for me to go.

I’m in space.

I get right up to the glass, pressing my hands against it. I can feel the emptiness outside, the endless, ice-cold, airless space between me and that floating blue orb in the distance.

“Glorious, isn’t it?”

His booming voice is like a bucket of cold water dumped on me. I spin around and press my back to the glass, feeling like the void behind me might be preferable to facing him.

Setrákus Ra stands behind one of the control panels, watching me, a hint of a smile on his face. The first thing I notice is that he’s not nearly as huge as he was when we fought him at Dulce Base. Still, Setrákus Ra is tall and imposing, his broad physique clad in a stern black uniform, studded and decorated with an assortment of jagged Mogadorian medals. Three Loric pendants, the ones he took from the dead Garde, hang from around his neck, glowing a subdued cobalt.

“I see you’ve already taken up my book,” he says, gesturing to my dictionary-sized club. I didn’t realize I was clutching it to my chest. “Although not necessarily in the way I’d hoped. Fortunately, your Proctor wasn’t badly injured. . . .”

Suddenly, in my hands, the book begins to glow red, just like the piece of debris I picked up back at Dulce Base. I don’t know exactly how I’m doing it, or even what I’m doing.

“Ah,” Setrákus Ra says, watching with a raised eyebrow. “Very good.”

“Go to hell!” I scream, and fling the glowing book at him.

Before it’s even halfway to him, Setrákus Ra raises one huge hand and the book stops in midair. I watch as the glow I’d infused it with slowly fades.

“Now, now,” he chides me. “Enough of that.”

“What do you want from me?” I shout, frustrated tears filling my eyes.

“You already know that,” he replies. “I showed you what’s to come. Just as I once showed Pittacus Lore.”

Setrákus Ra hits a few buttons on the control panel in front of him, and the ship begins to move. Gradually, the Earth, seeming both impossibly far and also like it’s so close I could reach out and grab it, drifts across my view. We aren’t moving toward it; we’re turning in place.

“You are aboard the Anubis,” Setrákus Ra intones, a note of pride in his gravelly voice. “The flagship of the Mogadorian fleet.”

When the ship completes its turn, I gasp. I reach out and press my hand against the glass for support, knees suddenly weak.

Outside, in orbit around the Earth, is the Mogadorian fleet. Hundreds of ships—most of them long and silver, about the size of small airplanes, just like the ones the Garde have described fighting before. But among them are at least twenty enormous warships that dwarf the rest—looming and menacing, mounted cannons jutting off their angular frames, aimed right at the unsuspecting planet below.

“No,” I whisper. “This can’t be happening.”

Setrákus Ra walks toward me, and I’m too shocked by the hopeless sight before me to even move. Gently, he drapes his hand on my shoulder. I can feel the coldness of his pale fingers through my gown.

“The time has come,” he says, gazing at the fleet with me. “The Great Expansion has come to Earth, at last. We will celebrate Mogadorian progress together, granddaughter.”