Chapter 31
BY THE LOOK ON SAM’S FACE I CAN TELL HE’S just about lost all faith in
getting out of here alive. My own shoulders sag as I stare into the massive
white eyes of the beast that’s rising to its feet in front of us. It takes its time,
stretching its muscular neck, veins as thick as Roman columns protruding
on both sides. The dark skin on its face is dry and cracked like the stone
jutting above its head. With its long arms, it has the look of an alien gorilla.
By the time the giant has pushed itself into a full standing
position, fifty feet tall, the handle of my dagger has melted
itself around my right hand.
“Flank it!” I yell. Sam runs left and I dart right.
Its first move is towards Sam, who immediately turns and
runs along the circular edge of the moat. The beast lumbers
after him, and that’s when I sprint towards it and slide my
dagger right and left, cutting small chunks from its calves. It
rears its head and smashes its nose against the ceiling,
and then swings a hand down at me, one of its fingers
connecting with my back leg. I’m sent spinning into the wall,
where I land on my left shoulder, dislocating it.
“John!” Sam yells.
The giant swings for me again, but I’m able to jump out of
the path of its fist; the giant may be powerful, but it’s slow.
Still, the cave we’re in is not large enough to run very far so,
slow or not, it still has the advantage.
I don’t see Sam anywhere as I stagger from boulder to
boulder. The giant has a hard time following me; and once I
figure I have enough time, I slowly raise my left arm above
my head and rotate my hand so my palm is on the back of
my head. The pain shoots from my neck to my heels; and
before I give in to it, I keep reaching and feel my dislocated
shoulder pop back into place. A sense of relief comes over
me, but it’s short-lived as I look up to see the giant’s palm
right above my head.
I raise my dagger and its blade punctures the beast’s
palm, but it’s not enough to stop it from wrapping its fingers
around me. It picks me up, and the strength of its squeeze
causes the dagger to fall to the ground. I hear its diamond
blade clang; and as I’m turned upside down, I search for it
so I can use my telekinesis to retrieve it.
“Sam! Where are you?”
I’m disoriented as the beast turns me right side up again,
and it holds me a few feet above its nose. Then I see Sam
emerge from a fissure in the wall. He runs and picks up my
blade, and a second later the giant squeals in shock and
pain. It squeezes me hard, and I push back against its
fingers as much as I can. As it stumbles backwards, I’m
able to free my shoulders, arms, and hands. I turn on the
lights of my palms and shine my Lumen directly into its
eyes. It’s instantly blinded and backs into a wall, and that’s
when I’m able to pull the rest of my body free and jump.
Sam tosses me my dagger and I charge at the beast,
plunging the blade into the skin between every toe. The
giant howls. It bends over, and when it does I shine my
Lumen again into its eyes. It loses its balance, and I make a
boulder behind it dislodge and slam into its lower back. The
beast pitches forward, its long arms straight out to break its
fall. Its massive hands land in the moat of steaming green
liquid—and the sound of its searing flesh comes a second
later. I watch as the beast crashes into the base of the
electrical force field and the thick stone pedestals holding
the Chests. The crash disrupts the force field and sends the
pedestals flying across the room, breaking against the
stone. The beast lies unmoving.
“Tell me you planned that,” Sam says, following me
towards the Chests.
“I wish I could,” I say.
I open my Chest to find everything inside, including the
coffee can of Henri’s ashes and the volatile crystal that’s
wrapped in the towel. “Looks good,” I say. Sam picks up
the other Chest.
“What happens when we go through that door?” Sam
says, nodding to the small wooden door we came in
through.
We killed the beast and we have the Chests, but we can’t
turn ourselves invisible and just stroll by a hundred Mogs. I
open my Chest and handle different crystals and objects,
but again I have no idea what most of them do, and the
ones I do know how to use can’t exactly get me through a
mountain of aliens. Looking around the room, I’m losing
hope. But it’s after studying the giant’s melting skin and
disintegrating bones that I get an idea.
With my dagger back in my jeans pocket, I slowly
approach the moat of bubbling green liquid. I take a deep
breath and carefully dip a finger in it. Just as I’d hoped, it’s
scalding hot but merely tickles my skin like fire. It’s like
green lava.
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“When I say open the door, I want you to open it and get
out of the way immediately.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
Visions of Henri running the Loric crystal over me as I lie
on the coffee table, my hands in open flames, run through
my mind, and I dunk my hand into the moat and pick up a
dripping scoop of the green lava. I close my eyes and
concentrate, and when I open them the liquid is hovering
over my hand in a perfect flaming ball.
“This, I guess,” I say.
“Wicked.”
Sam runs over to the wooden door, and I nod to show
him I’m ready.
He rips the door open and dives to his right. A cluster of
heavily armed Mogs are running our way; but when they
catch sight of the fiery green ball coming their way, they try
to turn around. As the ball is about to splash on the chest of
the first Mog, I use my mind to spread it out like a fiery
blanket. Several Mogs are hit, and after a moment of
burning torture, they turn to ash.
I wing ball after ball of green lava at more Mogs,
knocking them down. Sam collects a pile of their guns, and
once there’s a lull in the advancement, I grab two more balls
of green liquid and run out the door. Sam follows me with a
long black gun under each arm.
The number of Mogs running down the dark tunnel is
staggering; and with the flashing lights and piercing sirens,
it’s a sensory overload. Sam pulls both triggers and mows
down row after row of Mogs, but they keep coming. When
he’s out of bullets, Sam grabs two more guns.
“I could use some help here!” Sam yells, mowing down
another line of Mogs.
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” The mucus-covered walls of
the tunnel don’t appear to lend themselves to spreading a
decent fire, and I don’t have enough of the green lava in my
hands to do enough damage. To my left are the silver gas
tanks and silos with their heavy pipes, spouts and
aluminum ducts. Next to the tallest of the silos I eye the
control panel with electrical wires pouring out. I can hear the
screams and roars of the beasts in the barred chambers
farther down the hall, and wonder how hungry they are.
I toss a flaming ball at the control panel and it
disintegrates in a storm of sparks. The bars of the
chambers lining the walls begin to rise, and that’s when I
toss the other green ball at the base of the gas tanks and
silos.
I grab hold of Sam and sprint with him back into the
giant’s chamber. As the explosion erupts, I whip Sam
against the stone section between the wooden door and
the rising steel gate, and allow the advancing wave of
flames to sweep over me. My ears are flooded with the
crackle and hum of fire.
Dozens of krauls burst from their open chamber and
attack a series of unsuspecting Mogs from behind; several
pikens stomp into the tunnel with roars and swinging arms;
the reptilian mutant with horns charges towards the back of
the tunnel, plowing over Mogs and krauls under the legs of
the pikens; the gargoylelike winged creatures buzz at the
ceiling, swooping down to take a bite out of anything they
can; and the monster with transparent skin sinks its rows of
teeth into the calf of a piken. That all happens in a matter of
seconds, then they’re overtaken by a sea of fire.
After a few minutes, once the fire escapes up the spiral
cavern at the end of the tunnel to continue to wreak havoc
throughout the mountain, the long corridor in front of me is
littered with ash piles and black monster bones. I extinguish
the fire surrounding me and brush my hands off onto my
thighs.
Sam is singed, but otherwise okay.
“Brilliant, dude,” he says.
“Let’s just try to get the hell out of here, and then we can
celebrate.”
I stick my Chest under my arm and Sam picks up the
other. We race through the fire’s destruction; the stench of
death is choking. The charred ladder at the end of the
tunnel appears stable, and with only one free hand apiece,
we climb with difficulty. Our feet hit the burned and
blackened spiral ledge, and we sprint around and around
until we reach the cave’s center.
The inferno I unleashed did much more damage than I
thought it would, and we see piles upon piles of ash; but we
also see hundreds of Mogs crawling out of different
corridors and tunnels on their hands and knees, burned or
still on fire, barking in pain, unable to pick up their guns,
unable to do anything as we jump over them. There are
other soldiers racing above us on ledges, some with
weapons in their arms, others with the wounded.
I’m confused which way the exit is; and as I lead us
through a series of tunnels with my pendant swinging
around my neck, Sam and I each pick up a discarded gun.
We run with them chest high, firing at anything that gets in
our way. Even though we don’t know where we’re going, we
don’t stop moving until we come to the cells with human
prisoners. That’s when I know for certain we’ve gone the
wrong way. I pull Sam in the other direction, but he plants
his feet and stops me. I can see the concern and hope on
his face. The cells have their steel doors stuck a foot above
the floor and the bubbling blue force fields have
disappeared.
“They’re open, John!” he yells, tossing his Chest at my
feet. I drop my gun and pick up the other Chest, and Sam
finally says what I knew he was thinking: “What if my dad’s
here?”
I look into Sam’s eyes, and I know we have to check. He
runs along the left side of the corridor, yelling into each cell
for his dad. I’m investigating the cells on the right when a
boy my age with long black hair sticks his head under a
door. When he sees me, he puts a hand cautiously into the
corridor.
“The force field is really gone?” he shouts.
“I think so!” I yell.
Sam hoists his gun over his shoulder and ducks his head
under the boy’s cell door. “Do you know a man named
Malcolm Goode? Forty years old, brown hair? Is he here?
Have you seen him?”
“Shut up and stand back, kid,” I hear the boy say. There’s
a grittiness to his voice, something that makes me uneasy,
and I immediately pull Sam to the side. The boy grips the
bottom of the door and rips it from the wall, tossing it into
the corridor like a Frisbee. The ceiling cracks and boulders
fall, and I use telekinesis to shield Sam and me from being
crushed. Before I can say a word, the boy emerges
clapping the dust off his hands. He’s taller than I am,
shirtless and muscular.
Sam steps forward, and to my surprise he aims his gun
at the boy’s head. “Just tell me! Do you know my dad?
Malcolm Goode? Please!”
The boy looks past Sam and his weapon, focusing on the
Chests under my arms. That’s when I notice the three scars
on his leg. They’re just like mine. He’s one of us.
I drop the other Chest to the ground in shock. “What
number are you? I’m Four.”
He squints at me and then offers his hand. “I’m Nine.
Good job staying alive, Number Four.”
He reaches for the Chest I’ve dropped. Sam lowers his
gun, retreating down the corridor, stopping every few
seconds to look inside a cell. Nine places his hand on the
Chest’s lock and it instantly shakes and snaps open. A
yellow glow lights up his face when he opens the lid.
“Hell, yeah.” He laughs, placing a hand inside. Nine pulls
out a tiny red rock and shows it to me. “You have one of
these?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I’m embarrassed by how little I
understand the items in my own Chest.
Nine places the rock between his knuckles and aims his
fist at the nearest wall. A white cone of light appears, and
instantly we can see through the wall and into an empty jail
cell.
Sam runs in our direction. “Wait! You have X-ray vision?”
“What number is the nerd?” Nine asks me, digging
around in his Chest again.
“That’s Sam. He’s not Loric, but he’s our ally. He’s
looking for his dad.”
He tosses Sam the red rock. “This will make shit go
faster, Sammy. Just aim and squeeze.”
“He’s human, dude,” I say. “He can’t use this stuff.”
Nine places his thumb on Sam’s forehead. Sam’s hair
blows upward and I can smell electricity in the air.
Sam stumbles backwards. “Whoa.”
Nine ducks his hands back into his Chest. “You’ve got
about ten minutes. Get to it.”
I’m amazed that Nine has the ability to transfer powers to
humans. Sam runs down the corridor, inspecting cells with
a flick of the wrist. When he gets to the large metal door at
the end, he aims the rock at it, exposing more than a dozen
armed Mogs on the other side, and one is twisting together
exposed wires in an open keypad.
“Sam!” I yell picking up my gun. “Get back!”
Whoosh. The door rises and the Mogs rush forward.
Sam sprints away, firing over his shoulder.
“You have any other Legacies yet?” I ask Nine over the
sound of my gun.
He winks, and then he’s gone, running along the cracked
ceiling at super speed. The Mogs don’t notice Nine until
he’s dropped behind them, and by then it’s too late. He’s a
tornado, ripping through them with a ferocity I didn’t know
Loric possessed; even Six would be impressed. Sam and I
stop firing, letting Nine dismember each Mog with his bare
hands.
When he’s finished, Nine runs back along the left wall of
the corridor before circling to the ceiling and then to the
right wall, a cloud of ash trailing him.
“Antigravity,” Sam says. “Now that’s a cool Legacy.”
Nine skids to a stop in front of his Chest and kicks it shut.
“I can also hear pretty well. For miles.”
“Okay, let’s go,” I say, scooping up my Chest. Nine easily
places his on his huge shoulder and grabs a gun from the
floor.
“What about those other cells?” he asks Sam, pointing
down the corridor. A hundred or more cell doors line the
walls past where the Mogs had entered.
“We have to go,” I say, knowing we’re already pushing
our luck. It’s only a matter of seconds before we’ll be
surrounded. But there’s no persuading Sam.
He runs under the large door, still holding the red rock.
Another dozen Mogs suddenly emerge from a hidden
tunnel entrance between us. Sam braces himself against
the wall and fires. I see a few of the Mogs burst into ash, but
then my view is blocked by a swarm of drooling krauls.
Focusing my thoughts on a boulder, I whip it at the krauls,
smashing all but a few. Nine catches a kraul by its back
legs, and slams the beast against the wall. He crushes
another two, and when he’s done he turns to me, laughing.
I’m about to ask him what’s so funny when he launches a
boulder right at me. I barely jump out of the way, and a
moment later my back is covered with black ash.
“They’re everywhere!” He laughs.
“We have to get to Sam!” I try to run past Nine when an
enormous piken hand snatches us both.
“Sam!” I yell. “Sam!”
Sam doesn’t hear us over the sound of his gun. The
piken pulls us in the other direction, and, in what feels like
slow motion, I lose sight of my best friend. Before I can yell
again, the piken throws us down the opposite tunnel. I hit
the wall and land on one Chest and the other lands on top
of me. The wind is knocked out of me; and when I look up, I
see Nine spitting blood out. He’s grinning.
“Are you crazy?” I ask. “You’re enjoying this?”
“I’ve been locked up for over a year. This is the best day
of my life!”
Two pikens duck into the tunnel, blocking our direct path
back to Sam. Nine wipes the blood from his chin and
opens his Chest. He pulls out a short silver pipe, and it
expands violently at both ends until it’s over six feet long
and glowing red. He runs toward the pikens with the pipe
over his head. I stand to join him but feel a jolt of pain in my
ribs. I dig inside my Chest for my healing stone, but by the
time I find it Nine has killed both pikens. Running back
along the ceiling, he twirls the pipe at his side, and when
he’s twenty feet away he yells for me to move. The glowing
red pipe sails over my head like a javelin, impaling a piken
in the stomach.
“Don’t mention it,” Nine says before I can utter a word.
More pikens squeeze into the far end of the tunnel, and
when I turn around to run, a flock of transparent birds with
razor-sharp teeth is flying towards us. Nine grabs a strand
of green stones from his Chest and flings it towards the
flock. It hovers in the air and, like a black hole, sucks the
birds into it.
He closes his eyes and the stones zip towards the
pikens, spinning and unleashing the flock of birds into their
faces. Nine points at me and yells, “Boulder them!”
I follow his lead, rocketing boulder after boulder at the
mayhem. The pikens and the birds collapse under our
barrage.
Several more pikens push their way into the tunnel,
roaring. I grab Nine’s arm to keep him from charging.
“They’re just going to keep coming,” I say. “We have to
find Sam and get out of here. Number Six is meeting us.”
He nods and we run. At the next opening we veer left,
unsure if we’re making progress or getting even more lost.
More and more enemies appear behind us with every new
turn. Nine trashes every tunnel we pass through, bringing
down ceilings and collapsing walls with telekinesis and
perfectly thrown boulders.
We come to a long, low-arching bridge of solid rock,
similar to the one Sam and I shuffled along earlier, and
below is a steaming pool of green lava. Charging across
the other side of the narrow bridge is a thick line of Mogs,
and behind us several pikens are racing down the tunnel,
straight towards us.
“Where do we go?” I shout as we step onto the bridge.
Nine says, “We go under.”
Nine grabs my hand as we reach the peak of the bridge,
and my world literally flips upside down until we’re running
along the underside of the arch. Without warning Nine lets
go of me, but my shoes still firmly grip the belly of the bridge
somehow. I reach over my head and scoop up a pile of the
green lava, and by the time we’re standing on the other
side of the room, I have a perfect green ball of fire in my
hand. I wing it at the Mogs on the bridge and visualize it
spreading over them. I can hear the sizzling of their flesh
when we duck into another cave.
I’m out of breath when we reach a steep decline. I’m
judging the grade of the drop when I’m hit with a blast from
behind. I topple forward and fall at an amazing speed, and
when the ground finally levels out, my recently dislocated
shoulder hits it first.
I roll onto my stomach in unimaginable pain. The blast hit
me square in the back, and my muscles are stuck in an
uncontrollable spasm. I can hardly breathe, let alone search
my Chest for my healing stone. The only thing I can do is
stare at the slivers of moonlight that appear and disappear
at the end of the tunnel. The tarp. It’s flapping in the forest
wind. I’m back to where I started.
I hear the sound of rocks crumbling behind me. I’m in
more pain than I thought imaginable, and all I can think
about is leaving the mountain. “Straight ahead. It’s the exit.
We can regroup out there,” I manage.
If we can make it outside, then I can heal myself, hide our
Chests in the forest. And maybe BK can come back in with
us now that we’ve destroyed the gas tanks. The four Mogs
who guarded the entrance are gone, and Nine jumps out
through the tarp and into the forest. I follow. The stench from
the dead animal carcasses hits us fast, and we both gag as
Nine jogs into a line of trees. I collapse against a trunk. I
need five minutes, I think. Then we’re going back in for
Sam. Guns and hands blazing.
Nine digs around his Chest and I close my eyes. Tears
roll down my face. I’m startled by something rough touching
my left hand. I open my eyes to see it’s Bernie Kosar in his
beagle form, licking my fingers.
“I don’t deserve that,” I tell him. “I’m a coward. I’m cursed.”
He notices my injuries and tears, and then sniffs Nine’s
face before expanding into a horse.
“Whoa!” Nine jumps back. “What the hell are you?”
“Chimaera,” I whisper. “He’s a good guy. He’s Loric.”
Nine quickly pets BK’s muzzle and then presses a
healing stone to my back. As it works through my system, I
notice a menacing storm brewing over the mountain.
The sky suddenly rages with lightning and booming
thunder, and I’m so grateful Six has returned that I stand,
ignoring the remaining pain in my back. The clouds shift
and stretch in a way I’ve never seen before, though, and the
sky feels suddenly evil. This isn’t Six. She’s not back to
help.
I watch the funnel cloud that I’ve only seen in my worst
visions form.
Bernie Kosar rears backward as a perfectly spherical
spaceship, milky white like a pearl, sweeps down through
the tornado’s eye. The ship lands right in front of the
mountain’s entrance, sending tremors through the ground.
In the same way as I had seen in my visions, a door
appears from out of nowhere on the ship’s side, simply
melting away. The Mogadorian leader from my visions, he’s
here.
Nine gasps. “Setrakus Ra. He’s here. This is it.”
I’m silent, frozen in fear. “So that’s his name,” I finally
whisper.
“That was his name. For every day they tried to torture me
and my Cepan, I’m going to stab him with this.” The red
pipe glows in Nine’s hand. Its ends expand with rotating
blades. “I’m going to kill him. And you’re going to help me.”
Setrakus Ra walks towards the cave’s entrance but
stops before going in, one massive silhouette, stark and
spectral. Through the raging wind and torrential rain, he
turns, lifting his gaze in our general direction. Even from as
far away as I am, the faint glow of the three pendants is
unmistakable around his thick neck.
Nine and I charge out of the trees with Bernie Kosar
galloping behind, but it’s too late. Setrakus Ra has
disappeared into the cave and the same bubbling blue
force field that covered the prison cell doors appears over
the entrance.
“No!” Nine yells. He slides to a stop and stabs the ground
with his pipe.
With my dagger in my hand, I keep going. I hear Nine
scream for me to stop, but all I can think about is killing
Setrakus Ra, saving Sam and his dad and ending this war,
right here, right now. When I hit the blue force field,
everything goes black.
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