The Search for Sam (9 page)

Malcolm senses my confusion. “I woke up in the lab. Mogadorians were at the doors,
trying to break in. That doctor was on the floor. And you … you were convulsing. And
then, just as the Mogadorians came through the door, there was …”

He trails off, laughing with amazement. “There was an earthquake.”

As soon as I regain my strength, we begin to make our way on foot through forests,
pastures, and farmland, traveling mostly at night to escape detection. We’re headed
west, trying to put as much space between us and what remains of Ashwood Estates as
we can.

Outside of Ashwood, with only the sky to measure time, days and nights pass without
comment. I lose track of the hour, the day of the week, how long we’ve been on the
road.
Ten days? Twelve days?
I cease to measure time in numbers, counting instead the shifting landscapes, the
changing scenery.

Malcolm eventually explains that the earthquake seriously damaged the underground
facilities. He says it was a miracle he was able to get us both out through the collapsing
structure without being apprehended. He says it was as if the entire structure was
collapsing around us, but never
on
us—almost like it was creating an escape for us with every step he took. He figures
the Mogs have their hands full rebuilding, that there’s a good chance they haven’t
yet realized we even survived the devastation.

But he thinks we need to keep moving to be safe.

I agree.

We’ve camped out for the day in an unused shed at the edge of a tobacco farm. My limbs
are tired from our constant trekking, but my cuts and scrapes are starting to heal.

Malcolm sees me mopping down the worst of my remaining cuts. “It’s a miracle you weren’t
hurt worse.” He shakes his head in wonderment. “It’s a miracle we weren’t both killed.
And it’s an even bigger miracle the earthquake happened in the first place. If not,
there would’ve been no escape.”

Now’s as good a time as any to tell him.

“It was no miracle.”

He stops what he’s doing, looks at me curiously.

I haven’t used One’s Legacy on my own since the day I used it to destroy the Mogadorian
lab. But I know the ability is still inside me. I can feel it there, nestled, pulsing,
waiting for me to pick it up. To play.

I close my eyes and concentrate. The ground beneath us heaves and ripples, the walls
of the shed quake. A few rusted tools, hung by hooks, clatter off the wall to the
ground.

It’s nothing major, barely a tremor: I only wanted to test myself, and to show Malcolm
my gift.

Malcolm’s stunned, eyes bulging. “That was amazing.”

“It’s a Legacy. A gift from the Loric.”

Malcolm looks at me with one of his befuddled expressions.

“Do you know about the Loric?” I ask. I still don’t really know what Malcolm remembers,
how much is left of his brain.

“I know a little,” he says. “My memory, it has … patches.” He sighs heavily, clearly
frustrated. “I’ve been working on it. Trying to remember everything. But mostly I
remember the darkness.”

“The darkness?” I ask, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize what
he means. The darkness of the containment pod. All those years in an induced coma,
hooked up to machines, having his brain dredged for information. I shudder.

“When I try to summon a memory, it’s like I have to go back into the darkness to find
it. I have to go back through years of nothing to remember any one thing.” He laughs,
with a note of bitterness I’ve never heard in his voice before. “But there
are
a few things I remember that I don’t have to fight to recall. Important things.”

Malcolm goes quiet, lost in thought. Before I can press him to explain, he changes
the subject.

“You said you were given a Loric’s power.” He leans forward. “So you’re not a Loric?”

I grin. “You thought I was Loric?”

He nods. “Yeah. That or a high-priority human captive like me.”

“No,” I say, a bit nervously. “I’m not human. And I’m not Loric.” I’ve been dreading
telling him the truth. How will he react if he knows I belong to the same breed that
held him in captivity and tortured him for years? But I knew I’d have to come clean
eventually. I figure now’s as good a time as any.

“I’m a Mogadorian.”

That befuddled look again. “If I’d known that,” he says, “I probably would’ve left
you in the lab.”

Uh-oh
.

But then he begins to laugh..

Before I know it, I’m laughing too, and starting to tell him my story.

Malcolm and I develop a routine, sleeping by day and walking by night. We graze farmland
and forests and roadside Dumpsters for sustenance. We cross hills, streams, and highways.
We spend weeks—months?—like this. I begin to lose track of time.

When we’re in remote fields, far from roads and houses, we train. Malcolm has no experience
with Legacies, but then neither do I. Brute force with my newfound power is no problem:
I was able to nearly decimate Ashwood Estates—quite literally—in my sleep. But my
precision and control need work. So we focus on that.

In today’s training session Malcolm takes a position on the other side of a field.
I stand, getting ready to wield my power. When we’re both ready, we signal each other
with our arms. Training time.

I stare across the field at Malcolm, mentally mapping the distance between us. Malcolm
has set pebbles on top of the fence posts running the distance between us; for every
pebble I knock off its post, he will deduct a few points. It’s easy to send out my
seismic force in an indiscriminate wave, knocking everything in its path, but he wants
me to hit the area right beneath him, and
only
that area. He says this practice will increase my precision.

I focus hard on where he is, until everything else disappears. Then I unleash my power.

There are days when I can’t even reach Malcolm, when the farthest I can send my power
is ten yards in front of me. There are other days when distance comes too easy, and
I wildly overshoot, felling trees fifty yards past Malcolm’s position. Sometimes I
hit him with pinpoint accuracy, and the ground trembles delicately below him. When
this happens he calls out, telling me to sustain that gentle force. But sometimes
the intensity of my seismic power slips outside of my control, and the ground will
erupt beneath him, sending him ten feet in the air.

He’s always patient, gracious, and kind about my misfires. Which only makes me happier
when I manage a perfect score at this game we’ve created, rumbling the earth immediately
beneath his feet without sending him flying. It takes extraordinary control, and so
much mental effort I usually wind up with a minor migraine, but it’s worth it to see
his proud face.

My parents disowned me. I don’t think my father
ever
loved me. I was never going to have the kind of unconditional love from a parent
I saw on television or read about in human literature.

During the three years I spent in One’s mind, I saw her close relationship with Hilde,
and I was jealous. They fought all the time, but on some deep level they trusted and
loved each other. Hilde trained and cultivated One’s talents, encouraged her when
she succeeded. Ever since I witnessed that, I’ve craved something like it. A mentor.
And now I have one.

One promised me I wouldn’t be alone. She was right.

Our route through the country becomes a zigzagging path, designed to escape Mogadorian
detection. It’s so roundabout that I never even consider we’re heading somewhere specific,
that Malcolm has a destination in mind.

I enjoy the aimlessness. I feel safer off the grid, like I did back at the aid camp.
But I know that eventually we’re going to need a plan, some way to reconnect with
the scattered Garde. I may cringe at bloodshed, and I may fear that they will reject
me for being a Mogadorian, but I can’t help being excited by the prospect of meeting
my new allies.

After a long night’s trek, we camp out in a small grove at the edge of the woods in
rural Ohio. Malcolm devotes so much time and energy to training me that I’ve been
repaying the favor, usually as we’re settling down for a day’s sleep.

I train
him
. I ask him questions about his past, trying to jog his memory. I know his patchy
memory is frustrating, but he will never recover his memories unless he works at it.
So I grill him, pressing him for details.

“What happened before the darkness?” I ask tonight.

He’s clearing some brush on the ground, making a smooth surface to sleep on. “I hate
this.”

“I know,” I say. We’re both exhausted and mental training is the last thing either
of us wants to do right now.

But I keep going. “What happened before the darkness?”

“I’m tired,” he says, stretching out on the dirt. “And I can’t really remember.”

“Come on. One thing,” I say. “Just tell me one thing you remember from before the
Mogs took you.”

He’s quiet.

“Malcolm. You already told me there’s one important thing you remember from before,
one thing you didn’t even have to try to remember.” I figure I can at least get that
out of him. “Just tell me that.”

He turns to me, suddenly serious. “My son. I remember my son.”

Whoa. I had no idea he had a son.

“The details of how I made contact with the Loric, how I was captured by the Mogs
… those things are starting to come back to me, though they’re still fuzzy. But I
remember
everything
about my life back in Paradise.” He smiles. “I remember everything about Sam.”

“Don’t you want to see him?” I ask.

“Of course I do. That’s why I’ve been leading us back towards my old hometown.” He
looks at me, clearly concerned about how I will react.

I’m stunned. “That’s where he is?”

“Well, I can’t be sure he’s still there, but it’s my only guess. It’s only a day or
two days’ trek from here.”

I’m confused. I thought we were just running from the Mogadorians, but this whole
time Malcolm’s been leading us to his home. “But our path, it’s been so random.”

“I’m still trying to keep the Mogadorians off our tail. That we continue to evade
detection is even more important, the closer we get to Sam.” He sits up, giving me
a solemn look. “You don’t have to come into town with me. It could be dangerous. For
all I know the Mogadorians are waiting for me there.”

Malcolm looks at me, waiting to see how I’ll react. Under his gaze, I feel it: that
familiar twinge of fear in my gut. My typical reluctance to enter the fray.

But there’s something different about me now. I have One’s Legacy—my Legacy. I don’t
feel as powerless as I used to.

If anything, I feel a strange itch to see what I can do with my new ability. Months
ago, One tried to rouse me back to the Loric cause and I balked. It took her creating
an epically complex psychological trick to get me to leave the aid camp.

But I don’t need much persuading from Malcolm.

“Let’s go,” I say.

Paradise, Ohio, is a classic small town. A harmonious blend of farmland and suburbia,
a far cry from the tacky faux-luxe of Ashwood’s McMansions. Walking with Malcolm along
the road leading through the town, sticking to the other side of the tree line to
stay out of view, I take a deep breath.

Yeah. I like it here.

Just as Paradise’s main drag comes into view down the road, Malcolm starts leading
us away, deeper into the woods. We walk for a mile through the trees. We pass houses
out here in the woods—some prosperous-looking farmhouses, some busted-down-looking
shacks. We avoid all of them, beelining through the woods to avoid being seen by anyone.

“What’s he like?” I ask. As we’ve been traveling, I’ve told Malcolm almost everything
there is to know about me—about how the son of a respected Mogadorian leader came
to be the traitor that I am now. But there’s so much about Malcolm that’s still a
mystery to me. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t like to think about it
himself.

Still walking and staring straight ahead, Malcolm smiles sadly. “I don’t know,” he
says.

“You mean you can’t remember?”

“No, not that. My memories of Sam haven’t faded at all. It’s just—” He stops. “I can’t
say what he’s like now, not when I haven’t seen him in all this time. I’ve missed
everything. He was just a kid when I got taken. He was smart, and he was kind. A great
kid.” He laughs. “He was Sam.”

“What happens when we find him?” I ask.

Malcolm’s expression darkens.

“I just need to see him. To know he’s okay. You and I, we’re marked for death by the
Mogadorians. I know I can’t exactly be a father to him under those conditions, but
I need to see him at least once. After that …” he says, his voice trailing off.

I finish his thought. “After that we go back on the run.”

Malcolm nods. “It won’t be safe for us to stick around.”

I feel a strange twinge of relief at that thought.

“We’re close,” he says, quickening his stride.