United as One (18 page)

And about fifty Mogadorians, hard at work at various tasks, including the small crew of the Skimmer we followed in here. They get out of their ship and begin refueling.

Slowly, I set us down on the deck. Adam's sneakers squeak when they touch the metal floor, and he nearly loses his balance.

None of the Mogs notice.

Six, do you have Adam?
I ask telepathically.

I feel Six's arm tense on my shoulders as I speak in her mind. She shifts position, presumably so she can get a better grip on the Mogadorian, which isn't exactly easy since none of us can see each other.

Got him
, she thinks back after a moment.

I let go of both of them, now maintaining only my own invisibility.

I'm going to clear the room.

Do you need he—?
Six thinks back, but I close off the telepathy before any more thoughts get through.

I don't need help.

Carefully, I roll up the sleeve of my shirt. There was something I didn't want the others to see me using, afraid of the bad feelings it might bring up. In truth, I'm kind of glad I don't have to see it myself, still invisible
as I am. It might make me wonder what I've become.

Shink
.

I deploy Five's forearm blade. We took it off him in New York, and I claimed it from Nine's things this morning. It's the perfect lethal tool for a job like this. Needle sharp and quiet.

I float across the hangar so that I don't make any noise. There's a panel on one side of the room with an intercom and some video screens. Communications. There are two Mogs sitting there as I approach, watching live feeds sent in from the Skimmers patrolling the falls.

I drive Five's blade into the base of their skulls, one after the other, so quick that neither of them even notices the other's been dusted.

I turn around. None of the Mogadorian mechanics or pilots have noticed.

I won't let any of them get by me. I won't let any of them call for help.

Methodically, I start to work my way through the hangar. I pick off the stragglers first, the ones who are isolated. I can float right up to them, right in front of their hideous faces, and the blade goes in easy. None of them even get a scream out. At a certain point, maybe after the tenth or the twentieth, my mind goes on autopilot. It starts to feel like I'm not even the one doing this. It's just happening in front of me.

I'm a ghost. A vengeful ghost.

It's quick the way I kill. Merciful. A better death than these bastards gave the people of New York or any of the millions of others they've murdered.

Sarah.

After a few minutes, one of the Mogs shouts out a warning. It was bound to happen eventually with all the dust floating through the air, with their numbers being thinned by half. They start to search around frantically. One of them screams something in Mogadorian and falls to his knees, looking hysterical. A couple of others follow suit. I'm not sure what to make of that. Most of them make a run for the racks of blasters or for the unmanned communications array.

Blaster fire sizzles through the air from the direction of the comm panel. Blaster fire from blasters that I can't even see. Looks like Six and Adam helped themselves, then doubled back to make sure the Mogs were cut off. Smart.

Guess I did need a little help.

It doesn't take long for the hangar to be cleared. Unprepared and fighting against invisible opponents where they thought they'd be safe, the Mogs don't have a chance.

When the last Mog is just a grainy film on the windshield of one of the Skimmers, I turn visible. Six and Adam quickly follow suit, both of them now holding
blasters. Adam stares at me, eyes wide, maybe a little overwhelmed by the slaughter.

“Shit, John,” Six says, raising an eyebrow at my choice of weaponry. “That was pretty intense.” Six jogs over to the double doors that separate the hangar from the rest of the ship and checks to see if there are reinforcements waiting. We cut off the Mogs before they could raise an alarm, but someone passing by could've heard the blasters. She flashes me a thumbs-up. “All good.” I catch Adam's eye and point to the spot where the Mog fell onto his knees. “The one who panicked. What was he saying?”

Adam swallows hard. “He said that Setrákus Ra has truly abandoned them. That their lives are ending now that Beloved Leader is dead.”

“So some of them actually believed that,” Six says.

“Oh yeah,” Adam replies. “Especially once John started going all wrath-of-god.”

“They haven't seen anything yet,” I reply.

I open the pocket on my vest and finally let Bernie Kosar and Dust loose. They transform into their beagle and wolf forms and seem glad to be out of captivity. Dust starts to sniff around the floor, eventually making his way to the exit with Six. BK sits down next to me and licks my fingertips. If a dog could look concerned, he does. I ignore him.

“Okay, how long before they notice we just took out
their whole grease monkey division?” Six asks, walking closer now that Dust is watching the doors.

Adam shrugs. “Depends when the next patrol's supposed to go out.”

“Don't worry,” I say, striding towards the double doors. “You focus on getting those cloaking devices detached. I'll see to the rest of the ship.”

“Be careful,” Six says.

And then I'm through the doors, BK and Dust on my heels. The short hallway outside the hangar is empty, so I take a moment to crouch down and speak to the Chimærae.

Watch my back
, I tell them.
I can do this as long as none of them get behind me, take me by surprise. And we don't want any of them getting through to Adam and Six.

As I speak, both Chimærae transform into more imposing creatures. They're both still doglike, but they're thickly muscled and razor clawed, with durable, leathery skin and wicked fangs. The only way I can tell them apart is from the streak of gray fur that runs down Dust's spine.

“Good look, boys,” I say, and stand up and start deeper into the warship.

There's an airlock on the next door that requires some strength to turn. Through that, the hallway opens up, red lit and austere, with doors branching off on either
side of me. There's a pair of Mogadorians walking right towards me, the two of them studying a digital map of Niagara Falls.

I fly forward, stab the first one through the eye and grab the other one around the throat.

“Which way is the bridge?” I ask him.

He points straight ahead. I snap his neck.

I don't want any of these bastards getting behind me, so I take each room one by one. I'll save the bridge for last.

The first area I step into looks like a barracks. The walls are honeycombed, with narrow pill-shaped beds. The vatborn basically sleep right on top of each other. There are hundreds of Mogs here now, at rest, many of them hooked into intravenous lines of that black ooze Setrákus Ra loves so much, augmenting themselves while they doze. I suppose they sleep in shifts, resting up for the next assault.

Today, their alarm clock is a fireball.

I hold out both my hands and let as much fire rush out from my fingertips as I can manage. I let loose until my clothes actually begin to smoke. Soon, there's a wall of fire crackling out from me, roaring into the room. I smell burned plastic and a rotten roasting smell that I know is that black ooze boiling.

The fire begins to spread beyond my control. It occurs to me that I don't want to do any irreparable
damage to the ship. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, the sensation in my hands changes. I go from pouring fire into the room to spraying the charred space with crystals of ice and frost.

One of Marina's Legacies. Hadn't even realized I picked that one up. It works so similarly to my Lumen, it's just like throwing a car into reverse.

What Mogs managed to escape their bunks and avoid getting torched are soon picked off by a volley of icicles.

Rampaging through the barracks gets their attention. As I exit, a small squad of warriors rushes down the hall towards me. BK and Dust dispatch them quickly, pouncing out from adjacent rooms just as the Mogs draw near.

The Mogs aren't prepared for this, I realize. They're not prepared at all.

Now they know how it feels.

I turn invisible before stepping through the next set of doors. Immediately, I'm greeted by a robotic voice alternating between English and Mogadorian. “Surrender or die,” says the voice. “Put down your weapons.” “Beloved Leader.”

It's a language course, I realize. The Mogs are drilling their English skills. And that's not all. . . .

Deeper into this room, I spot a firing range. People-shaped targets scream and run against an ever-changing
backdrop of famous Earth cities: New York, Paris, London. There's a digital readout for the shooter's score, which currently sits at zero on account of the program being abandoned.

The Mogs training here—they heard me coming. They've quit their tasks and formed two groups on either side of the doorway, blasters at the ready. If I had walked in here, they'd have lit me up.

Too bad. I'm a different kind of target.

I quietly step into the middle of the room and turn visible. The Mogs yell—surprised—and open fire. Quickly, I turn invisible again and fly up, over their blaster fire. They end up shredding each other in the crossfire.

The survivors I finish off while floating over them. Stabbing down with Five's blade, blasting them with fire and ice at close range, turning others to stone with a glance.

A few of them try to book it out of the room. BK and Dust wait outside, greeting them with claws and gnashing teeth.

At some point while I'm clearing out the training room, a shrieking alarm begins to go off. It echoes through the entire ship and is accompanied by a rhythmic flashing of the dull red lighting that runs across the walls and ceilings.

No more element of surprise. Now they know I'm coming.

When I start making my way towards the bridge, the passageway is conspicuously empty of enemies. Prowling a few steps behind me, both BK and Dust let out growls of warning. The Mogs have almost surely fallen back into a defensive position, a choke point, where they can throw all their firepower at me.

Well, let's see what they've got.

Two high double doors stand in front of me. Beyond them is the bridge. The alarm continues to blare; the lights continue to flash.

When I get within twenty feet of them, the doors open with a hydraulic whoosh.

Through the doors is a wide staircase that leads up. Above the staircase, I can just barely glimpse the domed windows of the bridge's navigation area, the blue sky of Canada visible. The ship is controlled from here. Surely, the trueborn commander is up there somewhere.

On the stairs, between me and my goal, are about two hundred Mogadorians. The first row on their stomachs, the next row on one knee, the next row standing, the row behind them on the first step, and on and on, filling the entire staircase. Each of them holds a blaster pointed in my direction.

Once upon a time, this would have terrified me.

“Come on!” I scream at them.

The hallway crackles with energy as hundreds of blasters are fired off at once.

“YOU THINK HE'S ALL RIGHT?” ADAM ASKS.

I take my eyes off the door leading out of the hangar for a moment to shoot Adam a look. He doesn't notice on account of his face being buried in a tangle of wires and cords. He's lying on his back beneath the ripped-open dashboard of a Skimmer. His hands work quickly to disconnect the cloaking device.

“John's still alive, if that's what you mean,” I reply. So far, a new scar hasn't burned its way across my ankle.

Adam sits up. I stand nearby, hunkered low, the cockpit of this latest Skimmer popped open. I'm carrying a Mog blaster and have my aim leveled on the door, just in case any Mogs should manage to get by John and interrupt what we're doing. So far, it's been quiet.

“That's not what I mean, and you know it,” Adam replies.

“You mean psychologically,” I say.

“Yeah.”

We climb out of this Skimmer and move on to the next one. I place the detached cloaking device inside a toolbox that we emptied out, stacked next to the others that we've filled.

“I think he's doing about as well as any of us,” I say. “I mean, what do you expect?”

“I don't know,” Adam admits. “But he scares me a little bit.”

I don't respond to that. I'd be lying if I said the changes that have been taking place in John lately weren't a little frightening. He's still the same guy I've known, relied on, loved—just, with an edge. With power. And a hunger for revenge.

Maybe that's exactly what we need right now.

An alarm begins to whine, and the lights in the docking bay flash off and on. Adam snaps free another cloaking device before looking up at me with raised eyebrows.

“I take it that's a bad sign,” I say.

Adam shrugs. “It's the high alert. For intruders or attacks.”

“So they know we're here.”

“They were always going to find out eventually, right? If John's going at the same rate he did down here, that alarm's about twenty minutes too late to do any good.”

We move on to the next Skimmer, my grip now a little tighter on the blaster handle. Before we climb aboard,
something catches my attention. A buzzing from the docking bay's communications array. I touch Adam on the shoulder.

“What is that?”

He cocks his head to listen but can't hear over the alarm. We jog over to the control panel in time to hear a brusque voice barking in Mogadorian. Adam immediately looks towards the wide-open entrance of the docking bay, the one we came through, blue sky and crisp air out there.

“The Skimmers on patrol detected the alarm; they're asking for confirmation.”

As Adam says this, a couple of the small scout ships come into view, gliding towards the landing zone.

“Great,” I say. “Get ready for a fight.”

“Not necessarily,” Adam replies. His fingers hover, poised over a red button on the control panel.

The two ships zoom closer. I put my hand on the back of Adam's neck, ready to make us invisible at a moment's notice. But just as the Skimmers are about to reach the docking bay, Adam hits the button. Two heavy blast doors snap closed like steel jaws right in front of the Skimmers, sealing off the landing zone. The Skimmers never have a chance to change course. There's a jolt as both ships slam into the side of the much larger warship. Adam and I rock back and forth from the force. I can hear the ships explode on impact, and a thin tongue of fire manages to slip in between the thick blast doors.

“That should keep them out for a while,” Adam says. He throws a few more switches on the control panel to lock the blast doors in place.

“Nicely done,” I say. “Now we only have to worry about the couple thousand Mogs we're trapped in here with.”

As if on cue, the ship-side door to the docking bay swings open. I immediately turn my blaster in that direction, finger half depressing the trigger.

“Easy, it's just me,” John says.

John strides into the room, BK and Dust right on his heels looking monstrous. The two Chimærae stand guard at the door, teeth bared, ready in case any Mogs followed John through the ship. John's breathing pretty heavily, and he's literally smoking. His shirt has caught on fire in places, and there are blaster burns on his shoulders, arms, chest and legs. He doesn't even seem to notice. Adam and I exchange a look.

“John, are you—?” I shake my head, feeling like it's moronic to ask if he's okay. “You're hurt.”

John pauses in front of the rack of Mogadorian weaponry. He looks down at himself, like he hadn't even noticed.

“Oh yeah,” he says. He starts running his hands over the wounds he can see on his arms, using his healing Legacy to mend them, then pauses. He squints for a moment, and the injuries across his body all simultaneously begin to close.

“Whoa, that's new,” I say.

“Yeah,” John replies, looking a little surprised himself.
There's a distance in his eyes, like he's still coming down from the adrenaline of the battle. “Everything seems . . . easier since I began really using my Ximic.”

Adam creeps over to the door to check the hallway. He makes a point of scratching behind Dust's ears when he does, which makes a sandpaper noise thanks to Dust's bestial form. Dust's massive tail thumps on the metal floor.

“Easier,” Adam repeats, noting John's condition. “Did you . . . did you already kill them all?”

John crouches down in front of the weapons rack. He shoves aside blasters and battery packs, searching for something.

“No. There are a lot of them,” he says simply. “I'm regrouping. So are they. They won't survive another round.”

“What're you looking for?” I ask.

“Grenades or anything explosive,” he says. “Something I can throw at them.”

“There's some fuel cans there,” I point out.

John looks over at the tanks used to refill the Skimmers. He hoists one with his telekinesis. “That's perfect. I think.” He glances at Adam. “The ship can sustain one of these exploding, right?”

Adam purses his lips. “Probably. I wouldn't want to fly it into outer space afterwards, but it should handle Earth's atmosphere fine.”

“Great,” John replies. He looks over at the box filled with cloaking devices. “You guys doing good?”

“Almost finished,” I say.

Just then Dust lets out a low growl, and Adam ducks out of the doorway. BK arches his back and gets low, ready to pounce. From where I'm standing, I can hear the airlock door just outside the docking bay open.

“Got some coming in,” Adam whispers.

“They think I'm hurt,” John says, and rolls his eyes. “Figured they'd send a few to get the drop on me.”

John strides right into the doorway and, a second later when it opens, unleashes a beam of rippling silver energy from his eyes. I run to his side in time to see a dozen or so Mogs with blasters, all of them now turned to stone, crowding the hallway outside the door. John raises his hand, and the air gets cold. A barrage of railroad-spike-sized icicles fly from his palm, disintegrating the stone Mogadorians.

“You learned that one too, huh?”

“Some Legacies are clicking into place easier than others.”

With the Mogs dispatched, John turns to me. It's like he just swatted a fly.

“I'm about to take the bridge,” he says. “I could use your help.”

Moments later, we're following John through the segmented halls of the warship. It looks like a war zone in
here. I have to cover my mouth and nose with the crook of my arm on account of how much Mogadorian ash is in the air, not to mention the acrid black smoke that pours from one section where it looks like an inferno erupted.

“You did all this?” I ask.

John nods. He brought one of the fuel tanks with him, carrying it along with his telekinesis.

“What do you need that for?” I ask, nodding to the tank. “Seems like your Lumen was working pretty well.”

He flexes his hands in answer. I notice that his skin is bright pink, like he just soaked his hands in hot water. Apparently, that didn't heal with the rest of his wounds.

“Might have overdone it with the fire,” John says thoughtfully. “Fried some nerve endings or something.”

“So I guess you still have some limits.”

“Apparently.” John frowns at the thought. “Anyway, there's a bunch of them barricaded in front of the bridge. It's a bottleneck. I went toe-to-toe with them for as long as I could. Decided I needed to get creative.”

“Kill smarter, not harder,” I say dryly.

It's just a short walk through more debris and carnage to the hallway that leads to the bridge. John stops us short with a raised hand, not letting us go around the corner.

“Figure they're shooting anything that moves at this point,” John says.

“Logical strategy,” Adam replies.

John turns his gaze towards the fuel tank, and the air
in the passageway gets cold. Slowly, a shell of ice begins to form around the metallic keg until the canister isn't even visible anymore. When the frozen wrecking ball is complete, John forms sharp icicles across its surface. Some of these crack and break off, and John has to redo the work.

“I haven't exactly mastered this,” he says while Adam and I look on.

“You're doing fine,” I reply. “Shit. Better than fine.”

After a few minutes' work, John has a spiked boulder of ice with a fuel core.

“You're going to chuck that at them,” I observe.

John nods. “You want to help me out? Could use the extra telekinetic force.” When I nod, John turns towards Adam and the Chimærae. “This probably won't get them all, but it should shake them up. When you hear the explosion, come in hot.”

“You got it,” Adam responds, arming a blaster he picked up in the docking bay.

John takes my hand, then floats the ice-covered fuel tank in front of us so we can both rest a hand on it. We turn invisible, disappearing the tank along with us, and edge around the corner. My hand starts to get numb, but the temperature doesn't seem to bother John.

There are blaster burns all over the walls from John's earlier skirmish with this entrenched bunch of Mogs. At the end of the hallway, over a hundred vatborn are crowded up and down a short staircase shoulder to shoulder. The air in
between us and them is hazy with particles. Their blasters are leveled, ready to fire, but all they see is empty hallway.

That changes when John and I send the ice ball speeding towards them. It turns visible as soon as it leaves our touch and must look like a boulder appearing from thin air. We shoved it into the Mogs, crushing the first of them. Then we swipe it from side to side, impaling a bunch more on the spikes.

The Mogs recover from the surprise quickly and begin firing at our icy weapon. They blow off the spikes and begin chipping away at it. Some of them start to look confident.

But then one of them shoots into the center and detonates the fuel tank.

The resulting explosion knocks me off my feet. John falls to the side, banging his shoulder against the wall, but keeps his balance. My ears ring. The hallway is filled with choking black smoke, at least until I conjure up some wind to blow that bad air towards the Mogadorian bridge. As Adam helps me to my feet, I see BK and Dust charge down the hall, pouncing on the few stragglers that survived the explosion.

“That worked better than expected,” Adam says.

“Ow. No shit,” I reply.

From the bridge, we can hear shouts in Mogadorian. These aren't battle cries. These are screams of desperation, and they're being responded to by a cold female
voice that I'd recognize anywhere.

Phiri Dun-Ra. Someone, probably the ship's captain, has Phiri Dun-Ra on the communicator.

“What're they saying?” John asks Adam as we gather ourselves and march towards the bridge.

Adam strains to listen. Small fires, piles of ash and chunks of rapidly melting ice litter the staircase. We ascend cautiously.

“The commander, he's reporting that his ship is under attack. He's begging for reinforcements. He wants to speak with Beloved Leader,” Adam translates.

“Are reinforcements coming?” John asks.

Adam shakes his head. “She's blaming the commander. Telling him he shouldn't have left his posting in Chicago. Says this is punishment for his lack of faith, that he's not worthy of command.”

I snort. “Give us a little credit, Phiri. Come on.”

We stride onto the bridge like we own this warship because, frankly, we do. There's a domed-glass ceiling that sweeps down to the floor, so we can see a wide vista of Niagara Falls. There are a dozen little stations with attached chairs, each of these occupied by a Mogadorian tasked with flying the warship rather than fighting. The commander, dressed in a severe black-and-red uniform that's covered in more ornaments than anyone else, stands in front of a holographic display that's currently broadcasting an image of Phiri Dun-Ra's ugly face. She actually
sees us enter the room before any of the other Mogs and, without another word to the commander, cuts off her signal.

“Guess she didn't want to chat,” I say.

Most of the Mogs immediately leap away from their stations and bring blasters to bear on us. I rip the guns out of their hands with my telekinesis, and John impales each of them with a javelin of ice. These are trueborn Mogs, not the endless vatborn, and so they don't disintegrate quite so quickly as the others. In fact, some of them only melt away partially, leaving behind half-formed corpses.

The commander, wild-eyed, in a gesture that he must know is futile, draws a sword like the one Adam's father used to carry around and screams at us.

“You'll never take my ship—!”

Before he can even finish his sentence, a burst of Mogadorian blaster fire takes the commander's head off. We all spin towards a young Mog holding a blaster, his face a mixture of relief and resignation. John raises his hand to dispatch this last-surviving trueborn with an icicle.