Chapter 8
WE HOP A FREIGHT TRAIN IN TENNESSEE, AND once we are settled Six
tells us about her and Katarina being captured while they were in upstate
New York, just a month after narrowly escaping the Mogadorians in West
Texas. This second time around, after botching the first attempt, the
Mogadorians had planned well; and when they stormed the room, they
totaled more than thirty in number. Six and Katarina had been able to take
a few down, but they were quickly bound, gagged, and drugged. When Six
woke up—having no idea how much time had passed—she was alone in
a cell in a hollowed-out mountain. She didn’t discover she was in West
Virginia until some time later. Six learned the Mogadorians had been
trailing them the entire time, observing, hoping the two might lead them to
the others, because, in Six’s words, “Why kill one when the others might be
near?” I shift uneasily when she says this. Maybe she is still being
followed and they are waiting for the perfect time to kill us.
“They had bugged our car when we were eating in the
diner in Texas, and it never once occurred to either of us to
check,” she says, and then gives herself over to a long
silence.
Aside from an iron door containing a sliding hatch in its
center for food to be delivered through, her tiny cell was
made entirely of rock, measuring eight feet on each side.
She had no bed or toilet, and the cell was pitch-black. The
first two days passed in total darkness and silence, without
food or water (though she never felt hungry or thirsty, which,
she said she later learned, was due to the charm’s effect),
and she had started to believe she’d been forgotten. But
her luck hadn’t been that good, and on the third day they
came for her.
“When they opened the door I was huddled in the far
corner. They threw a bucket of cold water on me, picked
me up, blindfolded me, and pulled me away.”
After being dragged down a tunnel, they’d let her walk on
her own while surrounded by ten or so Mogs. She could
see nothing, but heard plenty—screams and cries from
other prisoners there for who knows what reasons (when he
heard this, Sam perked up and seemed about to interrupt
and ask questions, but said nothing), the roars of beasts
locked away in their own cells, and metallic clanking. And
then she had been thrust in a room, had her wrists chained
to a wall, and been gagged. They’d ripped off her blindfold,
and when her eyes finally adjusted, she saw Katarina on the
opposite wall, also chained and gagged and looking far
worse than Six felt.
“And then he finally entered, a Mogadorian who looked
no different from someone you’re likely to pass on the
street. He was small, had hairy arms and a thick mustache.
Almost all of them had mustaches, as though they had
learned to blend in by watching movies from the early
eighties. He wore a white shirt, and the top button was
undone; and for some reason my eyes focused on the thick
tuft of black hair poking out. I looked into his dark eyes, and
he smiled at me in a way that told me he was looking
forward to doing what he was about to do, and I started to
cry. I slid down the wall until I dangled from the shackles
around my wrists, watching through my tears as he pulled
razor blades, knives, pliers, and a drill from the desk they
had in the center of the room.”
When the Mogadorian had finished removing over twenty
instruments, he’d gone to Six and stood inches from her
face so that she could smell his sour breath.
“Do you see all of these?” he’d asked. She didn’t
respond. “I intend to use each and every one of them on you
and your Cepan, unless you truthfully answer every question
I ask. If you don’t, I assure you that both of you will wish you
were dead.”
He picked one up—a thin razor blade with a
rubbercoated handle—and caressed the side of Six’s face
with it.
“I’ve been hunting you kids for a very long time,” he’d
said. “We’ve killed two of you, and now we have one right
here, whatever number you are. As you might imagine, I
hope you are Number Three.”
Six had made no response, pushing herself against the
wall as though she might disappear into it. The Mogadorian
grinned, the flat end of the razor still touching her face. Then
he twisted it so the blade pressed against her cheek, and
while looking deep into her eyes, he jerked the razor down
and made a long, thin gash along her face. Or rather he
tried too, but it had been his own face that was slit open.
Blood instantly poured down his cheek and he screamed in
pain and anger, kicking the desk over, sending all of his
tools flying, and he stormed from the room. Six and
Katarina had been dragged back to their cells, kept in
darkness another two days before finding themselves
again gagged and chained to the walls of the room. Sitting
on the desk with his cheek bandaged sat the same Mog,
looking far less certain of himself than he had before.
He’d jumped from the desk and removed Six’s gag,
grabbed the same razor he had tried cutting her with, and
held it up in front of her face, twisting it so that the light
glimmered along the blade. “I don’t know what number you
are… .” For a second she’d thought he would try to cut her
again, but he turned and crossed the room to Katarina
instead. He stood at her side while looking at Six, and then
he touched the blade to Katarina’s arm. “But you’re going
to tell me right now.”
“No!” Six had screamed. And then very slowly the
Mogadorian made an incision down Katarina’s arm just to
be certain he could. His grin widened, and beside the
original cut he made another, this one deeper than the first.
Katarina groaned in pain while the blood ran down her arm.
“I can do this all day. Do you understand me? You’re
going to tell me everything I want to know, starting with what
number are you.”
Six had closed her eyes. When she reopened them he
was at the desk, turning over a dagger that changed colors
with movement. He’d held it up, wanting Six to see the
blade twist and glow as it came to life. Six could feel its
hunger, its desperation for blood.
“Now … your number. Four? Seven? Are you lucky
enough to be Number Nine?”
Katarina had shaken her head in an attempt to keep Six
quiet, and Six knew that no amount of torture would ever
cause her Cepan to talk. But she also knew she preferred
death to seeing Katarina maimed and mutilated.
The Mogadorian had gone to Katarina, lifted the dagger
so the tip was just over her heart. It jerked in his hand, as
though the heart was a magnet pulling it forward. He looked
into Six’s eyes.
“I have all the time in the galaxies for this,” he’d said
without emotion. “While you are in here with me, we are out
there with the rest of you. Don’t think anything has stopped
us from moving forward because we have you. We know
more than you think. But we want to know everything. If you
don’t want to see her sliced into little pieces, then you better
start talking, and fast. And every single word that comes out
better be true. I will know if you’re lying.”
Six had told him everything she remembered about
leaving Lorien and the trip here, the Chests, where they’d
been hiding. She talked so fast that most of it came out
jumbled. Six told him she was Number Eight—not wanting
to tell him the whole truth—and there was something about
the desperation in her voice that caused him to believe it.
“You really are weak, aren’t you? Your relatives on
Lorien, as easy as they fell, at least they were fighters. At
least they had some bravery and dignity. But you,” he’d
said, and shook his head as if disappointed. “You have
nothing, Number Eight.”
And then he’d jammed the knife forward, through
Katarina’s heart. All Six could do was scream. Their eyes
had met for a single second before Katarina drifted away,
her mouth still gagged, slowly sliding down the wall until the
chain had run out of slack and she hung limply by her wrists
as the light drained from her eyes.
“They were going to kill her anyway,” Six says softly.
“Telling them what I did, at least I spared her from horrible
torture, as if there’s any comfort in that.”
Six wraps her arms around her knees and stares at
some abstract point out the window of the train.
“Of course there’s comfort in that,” I offer, wishing I were
brave enough to stand and wrap my arms around her.
To my surprise, Sam is that brave. He stands, and
makes his way over to her. He doesn’t say a word when he
sits down next to her, instead opening his arms. Six buries
her face in Sam’s shoulder and cries.
She eventually pulls back and wipes her cheeks. “When
Katarina was dead, they tried everything, and I mean
everything, they could to kill me—electrocution, drowning,
explosives. They injected me with cyanide, which did
nothing—I didn’t even feel the needle going into my arm.
They threw me in a chamber filled with poisonous gas, and
it was like the air inside was the freshest I’d ever breathed.
The Mogadorian who pushed the button on the other side of
the door, though, he was dead within seconds.” Six takes
another swipe at her cheek with the back of her hand. “It’s
funny, you know, that I think I killed more Mogadorians when
I was captured than I did at the school in Ohio. They finally
threw me in another cell, and I think they’d planned on
keeping me there until they killed Three through Seven.”
“I love that you told them you were Number Eight,” Sam
says.
“I feel bad that I did it now. It’s like I tarnished Katarina’s
legacy, or the real Number Eight’s.”
Sam places his hands on both her shoulders. “No way,
Six.”
“How long were you in there?” I ask.
“One hundred and eighty-five days. I think.”
My mouth drops open. Over half a year locked away,
completely and utterly alone, waiting to be killed. “I’m so
sorry, Six.”
“I was just waiting and praying for my Legacies to finally
develop so I could get the hell out of there. And then one
day, the first one finally did. It was after breakfast. I looked
down and my left hand just wasn’t there. Of course, I
freaked out, but then I realized I could still feel my hand. I
tried to pick up my spoon, and sure enough, I could. And
that’s when I understood what was happening—and
invisibility was the thing I needed in order to escape.”
How it started for Six wasn’t all that different from how it
had started for me, when my hand began to glow in the
middle of my first class at Paradise High.
Two days later Six had been able to make herself
completely invisible, and when dinner rolled around that
day, and the slot on the door was slid open and her meal
pushed through, the Mogadorian guard saw an empty cell.
He’d looked wildly around and then hit an alarm that sent a
piercing wail through the cave. The iron door had been
flung open and four Mogs charged in. While they stood
there, dumbfounded as to how she’d escaped, she slid by
and rushed out the door and down the tunnel, seeing the
cave for the very first time.
It had been a massive labyrinthine network of long,
interconnected tunnels that were dark and drafty. There
were cameras everywhere. She’d passed thick glass
windows revealing chambers that looked like scientific
labs, clean and brightly lit. The Mogadorians inside had
worn white plastic suits and goggles, but she’d raced by so
swiftly she couldn’t tell what they were doing. A sprawling
room housed a thousand or so computer screens with a
Mogadorian sitting in front of each, and Six assumed they
were looking for signs of us. Just like Henri, I thought. One
tunnel was lined with heavy steel doors she had been sure
held other prisoners. But she sped on, knowing her Legacy
was far from developed and terrified she wouldn’t stay
invisible for very long. The siren had continued to wail. And
then she reached the heart of the mountain, a great,
cavernous hall a half mile wide and so dark and murky she
could hardly see to its other side.
The air had been stifling and Six was already sweating.
The walls and ceiling were lined with huge wooden trellises
to keep the cave from collapsing, and narrow ledges
chiseled into the rock face connected the tunnels dotting
the dark walls. Above her, several long arches had been
carved from the mountain itself to bridge the great divide
from one side to the other.
She had pressed herself against a rocky crag, her eyes
darting back and forth for a way out. The number of
passageways had been endless. She’d stood there
overwhelmed, her eyes sweeping across the hollow
darkness, seeing nothing at all that looked promising. But
then she did—far across the ravine, a pale pinprick of
natural light at the end of a wider tunnel. Just before she
climbed the wooden trellis to reach the stone bridge that
led to it, something else caught her eye: the Mogadorian
who had killed Katarina. She couldn’t let him get away. She
followed him.
He entered the room where he had killed Katarina.
“I went straight to his desk and took the sharpest razor I
saw, then grabbed him from behind and slit his throat. And
as I watched the blood gush and spread across the floor,
followed by him bursting into ash, I found myself wishing
that it would have been possible to kill him a little more
slowly. Or to kill him again.”
“What did you do when you finally got out?” I ask.
“I hiked up the opposite mountain, and when I got up
there I stared down at the cave for an hour, trying to
remember every little detail I could. Once I was satisfied
with that, I took note of everything I passed on the five-mile
run to the nearest road, and from there I jumped on the
back of a slow pickup truck. When it stopped a few miles
down the road to get gas, I stole his map, a notepad, and a
couple of pens from the cab. Oh, and a bag of potato
chips.”
“Niiiiice. What kind of chips?” Sam asks.
“Dude,” I say.
“What?”
“They were barbecue, Sam. I marked the cave’s location
on the map I showed you guys back at the motel, and in the
notepad I drew a diagram of everything I remembered, like
a chart that would lead whoever read it straight to its
entrance. I kind of panicked and hid the diagram not far
from the town but kept the map, then I stole a car and drove
straight to Arkansas; but of course by then my Chest had
long since been taken.”
“I’m so sorry, Six.”
“Me, too,” she says. “But they can’t open it without me
anyway. Maybe I’ll get it back someday.”
“At least we still have mine,” I reply.
“You should open it soon,” she says, and I know she’s
right. I should have opened it already. Whatever’s in that
Chest, whatever secrets it holds, Henri had wanted me to
know them. The secrets. The Chest. He had said as much
in his final breaths. I feel stupid for having put it off this long;
but whatever’s in the Chest, I have a feeling it’s going to set
the four of us on a long, uphill journey.
“I will,” I say. “Let’s just get off this train and find a safe
place first.”
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