The Power of Six - Chapter 7

Chapter 7


SILENCE FALLS IN THE TRUCK. SIX GLANCES IN the rearview mirror.
Flashing red and blue plays along her face.
“Not good,” Sam says.
“Shit,” Six says.
The bright lights and screaming siren rouse even Bernie
Kosar, who peers out the back window.
“What do we do?” Sam asks, his voice frightened and
desperate.
Six takes her foot off the accelerator and steers the truck
to the right side of the highway.
“It might mean nothing,” she says.
I shake my head. “Doubtful.”
“Wait. Why are we stopping?” Sam asks. “Don’t stop.
Step on it!”
“Let’s see what happens first. We’ll never make it if we
lead this cop on a high-speed chase. He’ll call for backup
and they’ll get a helicopter. Then we’ll never get away.”
Bernie Kosar begins growling. I tell him to chill out and he
stops, but he keeps vigil out the window. Gravel pings
against the truck as we slow along the shoulder. Cars
speed past in the left lanes. The cop car pulls to within ten
feet of our rear bumper, and its headlights fill the truck’s
interior. The cop flips them off, then aims a spotlight straight
through the rear window. The siren stops wailing but the
through the rear window. The siren stops wailing but the
lights still flash.
“What do you think?” I ask, watching from the side mirror.
The spotlight is blinding; but when a car passes, I can see
that the officer is holding the radio up in his right hand,
probably running our license plate, or calling for backup.
“Our best bet is to flee on foot,” Six says. “If that’s what it
comes to.”
“Turn off your vehicle and remove the key from the
ignition,” the cop barks through a speaker.
Six turns off the truck. She looks at me and removes the
key.
“If he radios us in, you have to assume that they’ll hear it,”
I say.
She nods, says nothing. From behind us the officer’s car
door creaks. His approaching boots click bleakly on the
asphalt.
“Do you think he’ll recognize us?” Sam asks.
“Shhh,” Six says.
When I look in the side mirror again, I realize the officer
isn’t walking towards the driver’s side, and has instead
veered right and is coming towards me. He taps my
window with his chrome flashlight. I hesitate for a moment,
then roll it down. He shines the light in my face, causing me
to squint. Then he moves the beam to Sam, then Six. He
forces his brows together, studying each of us closely while
he tries to determine why we look so familiar.
“Is there a problem, officer?” I ask.
“You kids from around here?”
“No, sir.”
“Ya care tellin’ me why y’alls drivin’ through Tennessee in
a Chevy S-10 with North Carolina plates belonging to a
Ford Ranger?”
He glares at me, waiting for an answer. My face feels
warm as I struggle to find one. I have nothing. The officer
bends down and again flashes the light on Six. Then at
Sam.
“Anyone wanna try me?” he asks.
He’s met with silence, which causes him to chuckle.
“Of course not,” he says. “Three kids from North Carolina
driving through Tennessee in a stolen truck on a Saturday
night. Ya kids are on a dope run, aren’t ya?”
I turn and stare into his face, which is ruddy and clean
shaven.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
“What do I wanna do? Ha! Ya kids are going to jail!”
I shake my head at him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
He leans forward with his elbows on the door.
“So where’s the dope?” he says, and then sweeps the
flashlight across the interior of the truck. He stops when the
light hits the Chest at my feet, then a smug smile spreads
along his lips. “Well, never mind, looks like I found it myself.”
He reaches to open the door. In one lightning-quick
motion I shoulder-open the door and knock the officer
backwards. He grunts and moves for his gun before he
even hits the ground. Using telekinesis, I rip it away,
bringing it to me as I step out. I open the chamber and
empty the bullets into my hand and snap the gun shut.
“What the …” The officer is dumbfounded.
“We’re not dealing dope,” I say.
Sam and Six are out of the truck now and standing
beside me.
“Put these in your pocket,” I say to Sam, handing him the
bullets. Then I hand him the gun.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Sam asks.
“I don’t know; put it in your bag with your dad’s gun.”
Off in the distance, two miles away, the whine of a
second siren reaches me. The officer stares intently at me,
his eyes wide in recognition.
“Aw hell, you the boys from the news, aren’t ya? Y’all are
those terrorists!” he says, and spits on the ground.
“Shut up,” Sam says. “We’re not terrorists.”
I turn around and grab Bernie Kosar, who’s still in the cab
because of his broken leg. As I’m lowering him to the
ground, an agonizing scream rips through the night. I jerk
around and see Sam convulsing, and it takes a second to
realize what’s happened. The officer has Tasered him. I
tear the Taser from him while I’m ten feet away. Sam falls to
the ground and shakes as though he’s having a seizure.
“What the hell is the matter with you!” I yell at the officer.
“We’re trying to save you; don’t you see that!”
Confusion crosses his face. I press the button of the
Taser as it hovers in the air. Blue currents snap across the
top of it. The cop scrambles away. I use telekinesis to drag
him through the pebbles and trash on the side of the road.
He kicks and tries in vain to get away.
“Please,” he begs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t, John,” Six says.
I refuse to listen to her. I’m blind to anything other than
retribution, and I don’t feel a shred of remorse as I slam the
Taser into the officer’s gut and hold it there for a full two
seconds.
“How do you like it, huh? Big, tough guy with a Taser?
Why can’t anyone see we’re not the bad guys!”
He shakes his head, his face locked in a horrified
grimace, sweat beads glistening on his forehead.
“We have to get out of here fast,” Six says as the red and
blue lights of the second police car appear on the horizon.
I lift Sam and pull him over my shoulder. Bernie Kosar is
able to run on his own on only three legs. I carry the Chest
under my left arm while Six carries everything else.
“This way,” she says, jumping over the guardrail and
entering a barren field leading to the dark hills a mile away.
I sprint as fast as I can with Sam and the Chest. Bernie
Kosar tires of hobbling and morphs into a bird and speeds
ahead of us. Not a minute later the second car arrives on
the scene, followed by a third. I can’t tell if the officers are
pursuing us on foot; but if they are, Six and I can easily
outrun them even as weighed down as we are.
“Put me down,” Sam finally says.
“Are you okay?” I put him down.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam is a little unsteady. Sweat beads
his forehead, and he wipes it away with the sleeve of his
jacket and takes a deep breath.
“Come on,” Six says. “They aren’t going to let us go that
easily. We have ten minutes, fifteen at the most, until we’re
hiding from a helicopter.”
We make for the hills, Six in the lead, then me, then Sam
struggling to keep up. He moves much faster than when we
ran the mile in gym class a few months ago. It feels like
years ago. None of us looks back; but as soon as we reach
the first incline, the howl of a bloodhound fills the air. One of
the officers has brought a police dog.
“Any ideas?” I ask Six.
“I was hoping we could hide our stuff and go invisible.
That would elude a copter, but the dog will still pick up our
scent.”
“Shit,” I say. I look around. There’s a hill to our right.
“Let’s get to the top and see what’s on the other side,” I
say.
Bernie Kosar zips ahead and disappears into the night
sky. Six leads, stumbling wildly up. I follow behind her; and
Sam, who is breathing heavily yet still moving swiftly, brings
up the rear.
We stop at the top. Faint outlines of more hills as far as I
can see, nothing more. Very softly I hear the trickle of
running water. I spin around. Eight sets of flashing lights line
the highway, sandwiching Sam’s father’s truck. In the
distance, coming from both directions, two more cop cars
are speeding towards the scene. Bernie Kosar lands
beside me and turns back into a beagle, tongue dangling.
The police bloodhound barks, closer than before. There’s
no doubt that it’s following our scent, which means that
officers on foot can’t be far behind.
“We have to get the dog off our trail,” Six says.
“Can you hear that?” I ask her.
“Hear what?”
“The sound of water. I think there’s some kind of stream
at the bottom of this. Maybe a river.”
“I hear it,” Sam chimes in.
An idea pops into my head. I unzip my jacket and remove
my shirt. I wipe it across my face, my chest, soaking up
every bit of sweat and scent I might have. I throw it at Sam.
“Do what I just did,” I say.
“No way, that’s disgusting.”
“Sam, the entire state of Tennessee is hot on our trail.
We don’t have much time.”
He sighs but obeys me. Six does too, unsure of what I
have planned but willing to go along with it. I put on a new
shirt and slip on my jacket. Six tosses me the soiled shirt
and I rub it over Bernie Kosar’s face and body.
“We’re going to need your help, buddy. You up for it?”
I can hardly see him in the dark, but the sound of his tail
thumping excitedly on the ground is unmistakable. Always
eager to assist, happy to be alive. I can sense within him
the odd thrill of being chased, and I can’t help but feel it
myself.
“What’s your plan?” Six asks.
“We have to hurry,” I say, taking the first steps downhill
towards the running water. Bernie Kosar again turns
himself into a bird and we race down, occasionally hearing
the bloodhound bark and howl. It’s closing the gap. If my
idea fails, I wonder if I might communicate with it and tell it
to stop following us.
Bernie Kosar waits for us at the bank of the wide river,
which has a still quality to its surface that tells me it’s much
deeper than it sounded from the top of the hill.
“We have to swim across,” I say. There’s no other choice.
“What? John, do you understand what happens to the
human body when it’s in freezing water? Cardiac arrest
from shock, for one. And if that doesn’t kill you, then the loss
of feeling in your arms and legs will make it impossible to
swim. We’ll freeze and drown,” Sam objects.
“It’s the only way to get the dog from following our scent.
At least we’ll have a chance this way.”
“This is suicide. Remember for a second that I’m not an
alien.”
I drop to a knee in front of Bernie Kosar. “You have to
take this shirt,” I say to him. “Drag it across the ground as
fast as you can, for two or three miles. We’ll cross the river
so the bloodhound loses our scent and follows this one
instead. Then we’ll run some more. You should have no
trouble catching up to us if you fly.”
Bernie Kosar transforms into a large bald eagle, takes
the shirt into his talons, and speeds off.
“No time to waste,” I say, gripping the Chest in my left
arm so I can swim with my right. Just as I’m about to jump
into the water Six grabs my bicep.
“Sam’s right; we’ll freeze, John,” she urges. She looks
afraid.
“They’re too close. We have no other choice,” I say. She
bites her lip, her eyes sweeping the river, and turns back to
me, giving my arm another squeeze.
“Yes we do,” she says. She lets go of my arm, and the
whites of her eyes glisten in the dark. She pushes me
behind her and takes a step towards the water, then tilts her
head in a gesture of concentration. The bloodhound barks,
closer than before.
She exhales slowly. At the same time she lifts her hands
out in front of her, and as they come up, the waters of the
river begin to part right there before us. With a loud rushing
sound, the water foams and churns as it recedes upward to
reveal a muddy path five feet wide that cuts across to the
other bank. The water hovers, looking like a wave ready to
crash. But instead it hangs suspended while icy mist coats
our faces.
“Go!” she orders, her face strained in concentration, her
eyes on the water.
Sam and I jump down from the bank. My feet sink and the
mud comes nearly to my knees, but it still beats swimming
in forty-degree temperatures in the dead of night. We tramp
through it, taking big steps and struggling to lift our feet
from the heavy mud. Once we’re across Six follows,
rotating her hands as she passes through the massive
waves ready to crash into each other, waves of her own
creation. She climbs up the bank and then lets it go. The
waves smash down with a deep hollow thud as though
someone has just done a cannonball into it. The water rises
and falls, and then looks no different than it did before.
“Amazing,” Sam says. “Just like Moses.”
“Come on, we have to get into the trees so the dog can’t
see us,” she says.
The plan works. After just a few minutes, the dog pauses
at the riverbank and sniffs wildly. He circles several times
and then rushes after Bernie Kosar. Sam, Six, and I take off
in the opposite direction, just inside the tree line but near
enough to still see the river, going as fast as Sam’s legs will
permit.
The sound of men’s voices yelling to one another
reaches us for the first few minutes until we outrun them.
Ten minutes after that we hear the first whir of a helicopter.
We stop and wait for it to appear. A minute later, a spotlight
shines high in the sky a few miles away in the direction
Bernie Kosar has flown. The light sweeps the hills, shining
one way, rushing the other.
“He should have been back already,” I say.
“He’s fine, John,” Sam says. “He’s BK, the most resilient
beast I know.”
“He has a broken leg.”
“But two healthy wings,” Six counters. “He’s fine. We
have to keep going. They’ll figure it out soon, if they haven’t
already. We have to stay ahead. The longer we wait, the
closer they’ll get.”
I nod. She’s right. We have to keep going.
After a half mile the river takes a sharp turn to the right,
back towards the highway, away from the hills. We stop and
huddle beneath the low branches of a tall tree.
“Now what?” Sam asks.
“No idea,” I say. We turn in the direction in which we had
just fled. The helicopter is closer now, its spotlight still
sweeping back and forth across the hills.
“We have to leave the river,” I say.
“Yes, we do,” Six says. “He’ll find us, John. I promise.”
We hear an eagle’s scream high in the treetops not far
off. It’s too dark to see where he is, and perhaps too dark
for him to see us. I don’t think twice about it, even if it will
give away our position—I aim my palms towards the sky
and turn my lights on, letting them shine as brightly as I can
for a full half second. We wait, listening with our breaths
held and heads craned. And then I hear a dog’s pant, and
Bernie Kosar, changed back into a beagle, comes
charging up from the riverbank. He’s out of breath but
excited, his tongue falling from his mouth and his tail
whipping in the air a thousand miles an hour. I bend down
and pet him.
“Good job, buddy!” I say, planting a kiss on the top of his
head.
And then it happens, a quick end to a celebration that
was only just beginning.
While I’m on bended knee, a second copter shoots up
over the hill behind us, instantly hitting us with its bright
spotlight.
I bolt to my feet, blinded at once by the glaring beam.
“Run!” Six says.
We do, sprinting up the nearest hill. The helicopter drops
down and hovers so the wind off its rotors beats against our
backs and causes the trees to bow. The forest floor is a
haze of debris, and I drape my arm across my mouth to
breathe, keeping my eyes squinted to alleviate the stinging
dirt. How long until the FBI is called?
“Stay where you are!” a male voice blares from the
copter. “You’re all under arrest.”
We hear shouts. The officers on foot can’t be more than
five hundred feet away.
Six stops running, which causes Sam and me to do the
same.
“We’re toast!” Sam yells.
“Okay, you bastards. We’ll do this the hard way,” Six says
under her breath. She drops the bags, and for a second I
think she plans to make Sam and me invisible. While I have
no problem with leaving the bags behind, what does she
expect me to do with the Chest? She can’t make all of us
invisible and that, too.
A brilliant stroke of lightning splits the night sky in two,
followed by the deep groan of rolling thunder.
“John!” she yells without looking away.
“Right here.”
“Take care of the cops. Keep them away from me.”
Now I understand. I shove the Chest into Sam’s arms,
who stands beside me, unsure of what to do. “Guard this
with your life,” I tell him. “And stay down!” I turn to Bernie
Kosar and communicate that he needs to stay with Sam in
case our plan falls apart.
I sprint down the hill as another bolt of lightning, chased
by a clap of thunder dark and menacing in tone, flashes
across the sky. Good luck, fellas, I think, knowing full well
the power of Six’s abilities. You’re going to need it.
I reach the bottom and hide behind an oak. The voices
draw near, moving swiftly towards both pillars of light. Rain
begins to fall, cold and heavy. I glance up through the thick
drops and see both helicopters struggling against the galeforce
winds, but somehow still keeping their beams steady.
That won’t last for long.
The first two officers blow past me, followed closely
behind by a third. I reach out with my mind when they’re
fifteen feet away, grab all three in midstride, and yank them
towards the thick oak. They surge backwards so fast I have
to leap out of the way to keep from being hit. Two of them
fall lifelessly to the ground, knocked unconscious by the
tree. The third lifts his head, confused, then reaches for his
gun. I tear it from its holster before his hand even touches it.
The metal feels cold against my palm, and I turn to the two
copters and hurl it like a bullet at the nearest. That’s when I
see the eyes, doleful and black in the middle of the storm.
Soon the old, withered face takes shape. The same face I
saw in Ohio when Six killed the beast that wrecked the
school.
“Don’t move a muscle!” I hear behind me. “Hands in the
air!”
I turn to the officer. Without his gun, he aims his Taser
straight at my chest.
“Which is it, hands in the air or don’t move a muscle? I
can’t do both.”
He cocks the Taser. “Don’t be a smartass, kid,” he says.
Lightning cracks, followed by a roar of thunder that
makes the officer jump in surprise. The officer looks
towards the sound, and his eyes open wide in alarm. The
face in the clouds, it’s awoken.
I rip the Taser from his hand, then punch him hard in the
chest. He sails thirty feet backwards and crashes into the
side of a tree. While my back is still turned, the crack of a
nightstick slams against my skull. I fall face-first in the mud
and sparkling fuzz fills my vision. I turn as quickly as I can,
lift my hand towards the cop who hit me, and get a firm grip
around him before he’s able to hit me again. He grunts, and
with all of my might I throw him as hard as I can straight up
in the air. He screams until he’s up so high I can no longer
hear him over the copter blades and rumbling thunder. I feel
the back of my head and look at my hand. It’s covered with
blood. I catch the officer when he’s within five feet of dying. I
let him hover a few seconds before tossing him against a
tree, knocking him unconscious.
A loud explosion tears through the night, and the whir of
the copters cuts off. The wind stops. The rain stops, too.
“John!” Six screams from the top of the hill; and
somehow in the pleading, desperate tone of her voice, I
know what she needs me to do.
The lights in my hands snap on, two glowing spotlights
every bit as bright as those just extinguished. Both
helicopters are wrecked and twisted, and smoke pours
from them as they free fall. I don’t know what the face has
done to them, but Six and I must save the people aboard.
As they torpedo down, the helicopter farthest from me
jerks upwards. Six is trying to stop it. I don’t think she’ll be
able to, and I know that I can’t. It’s too heavy. I close my
eyes. Remember the basement in Athens, the way you
captured everything inside the room to stop the speeding
bullet. And that’s what I do, feeling everything inside the
cockpit’s interior. The controls. The weapons. The chairs.
The three men sitting in them. I grab hold of the men, and
as the trees begin to snap under the weight of the falling
copter, I yank all three out. The copter crashes to the
ground.
Six’s copter hits the ground at the same time as mine.
The explosions reach out over the treetops, two red balls of
fire floating up from the twisted steel. I hold the three men in
the air a safe distance from the damage, and bring them
carefully to the ground. Then I race back up the hill to Six
and Sam.
“Holy crap!” Sam says, his eyes wide-open.
“Did you pull them free?” I ask Six.
She nods. “Just in time.”
“Me too,” I say.
I grab the Chest from Sam and thrust it into Six’s arms.
Sam picks up our bags.
“Why are you giving me this?” Six asks.
“Because we have to get the hell out of here!” I say. I grab
Sam and drape him across my shoulders. “Hold on!” I yell.
We sprint away, deeper into the hills away from the river,
Bernie Kosar in the lead as a hawk. Let the cops try to
keep up now, I think.
It’s hard running with Sam on my shoulders, but I still
keep a pace three times faster than what he could run on
his own. And a far faster pace than any of the officers. Their
yelling voices fade away, and after both helicopters just
crashed in a heaping mess, who’s to say they’re even
following?
After twenty minutes of a full-on sprint, we stop in a small
valley. Sweat runs down my face. I shrug Sam off and he
drops the bags. Bernie Kosar lands.
“Well, I imagine we’re going to be all over the news again
after that,” Sam says.
I nod. “Staying hidden is going to be a lot harder than I
thought.” I bend over at the waist, catching my breath with
my hands on my knees. I smile, which quickly changes to a
kind of incredulous half laugh over what just happened.
Six grins crookedly, adjusts the Chest in her arms, and
begins climbing the next hill.
“Come on, guys,” she says. “We’re far from out of the
woods just yet.”

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 6

Chapter 6


WHEN I FINALLY WALK OUTSIDE AFTER CHANGING into warmer
clothes and rolling my bed blanket under my arm, the sun is
shifted to the west and there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s half
past four, which gives me an hour and a half at best. I hate
the rushed quality of Sundays, the way the day creeps by
until the very moment we’re free, at which point time flies. I
look to the east, and the light reflected off the snow causes
me to squint. The cave is over two rocky hills. With as much
snow as there is on the ground now, I’m not even sure I’ll
see the opening today. But I pull on my hat, zip up my
jacket, tie the blanket around my neck like a cape, and
head east.
Two tall birch trees mark the trail’s start, and my feet turn
cold the second I enter the deep drifts. The blanket-cape
sweeps the snow behind me, erasing my footprints. I pass
a few recognizable fixtures that show the way—a rock
jutting out past the others, a tree that leans at a slightly
different angle. After about twenty minutes I pass the rock
formation identical to a camel’s back, which tells me I’m
almost there.
I have the faint sensation of being watched, possibly
followed. I turn and scan the mountainside. Silence. Snow,
nothing else. The blanket around my neck has done a great
job of hiding my tracks. A slow, prickly feeling crawls up the
back of my neck. I’ve seen the way rabbits blend into the
landscape, going unnoticed until you’re almost on top of
them, and I know that just because I can’t see somebody
doesn’t mean they can’t see me.
Five minutes later I finally spot the rounded shrub that
blocks the entrance. The cave’s mouth looks like an
oversized groundhog hole cutting into the mountain, and
that’s exactly what I had mistaken it for years ago. But when
I’d looked more closely I knew I was wrong. The cave was
deep and dark, and back then I could see next to nothing in
the little light that entered. There was an implicit desire to
discover the cave’s secrets, and I wonder if this is what
caused the Legacy to develop: my ability to see in the dark.
I can’t see in the dark as easily as I can in the day, but even
the deepest recesses of black glow as though lit by
candlelight.
On my knees, I knock away just enough snow to be able
to slip down and in. I drop the bag ahead of me, untie the
blanket from my neck and sweep it across the snow to hide
my footprints, then hang it on the other side of the opening
to keep out the wind. The entrance is narrow for the first
three meters, followed by a slightly wider passageway that
winds down a steep decline large enough to navigate while
standing; and after that the cave opens, revealing itself.
The ceiling is high and echoing, and its five walls
smoothly transition into one another, creating an almost
perfect polygon. A stream cuts through the back right
corner. I have no idea where the water comes from or
where it goes—springing up through one of the walls only to
disappear into the earth’s deeper depths—but the level
never changes, offering a reservoir of icy cold water
regardless of the time of day or season. With the constant
fresh source of water, this is the perfect place to hide. From
the Mogadorians, the Sisters, and the girls—even Adelina.
It’s also the perfect place to use and hone my Legacies.
I drop the bag beside the stream, remove the
nonperishables, and place them on the rock ledge, which
already holds several chocolate bars, small bags of
granola, oatmeal, cereal, powdered milk, a jar of peanut
butter, and various cans of fruits, vegetables, and soup.
Enough for weeks. Only when everything is put away do I
stand and allow myself to be greeted by the landscapes
and faces I’ve painted on the walls.
From the very first time a brush was put into my hand at
school, I fell in love with painting. Painting allows me to see
things as I want to and not necessarily as they are; it’s an
escape, a way to preserve thoughts and memories, a way
to create hopes and dreams.
I rinse the brushes, rubbing the stiffness from the bristles,
and then mix the paint with water and sediment from the
creek bed, creating earthy tones that match the gray of the
cave’s walls. Then I walk to where John Smith’s partially
completed face greets me with his uncertain grin.
I spend a lot of time on his dark blue eyes, trying to get
them just right. There’s a certain glint that’s hard to
replicate; and when I tire of trying, I start on a new painting,
that of the girl with the raven hair I had dreamed about.
Unlike John’s eyes, I have no trouble at all with hers, letting
the gray wall do its magic; and I think that if I were to wave a
lighted candle in front of it, the color would slightly change,
as I’m sure her eyes do depending on her mood and the
light around her. It’s just a feeling I get. The other faces I’ve
painted are Hector’s, Adelina’s, a few of the town’s vendors
I see every weekday. Because this cave is so deep and
dark, I believe my paintings are safe from anyone’s eyes
but mine. It’s still a risk, I know, but I just can’t help myself.
After a while I go up and push aside my blanket, poking
my head out of the cave. I see nothing but drifts of white and
the bottom of the sun kissing the horizon line—which tells
me it’s time to go. I haven’t painted nearly as much or as
long as I would have liked. Before cleaning the brushes I
walk to the wall opposite John and look at the big red
square I’ve painted there. Before it was a red square I’d
done something foolish, something I know would have
exposed me as a Garde, and painted a list.
I touch the square and think of the first three numbers that
are underneath, running my fingertips over the dried,
cracked paint, deeply saddened by what those lines meant.
If there is any consolation in their deaths, it’s that they can
now rest easy and no longer have to live in fear.
I turn from the square, from the hidden and destroyed list,
clean the brushes, and put everything away.
“I’ll see you guys next week,” I say to the faces.
Before leaving the cave I take in the landscape painted
on the wall beside the passageway leading in and out. It’s
the first painting I’d ever attempted here, sometime around
the age of twelve; and while I have touched it up a bit over
the years, mostly it has remained the same. It’s the view of
Lorien from my own bedroom window and I still remember
it perfectly. Rolling hills and grassy plains accentuated with
tall trees. A thick slice of blue river that cuts across the
terrain. Small bits of paint here and there that represent the
Chimaera drinking from its cool waters. And then, off in the
far distance at the very top, standing tall over the nine
archways representing the planet’s nine Elders, is the
statue of Pittacus Lore, so small it’s almost indistinct; but
there’s no mistaking it for what it really is, standing out
among the others: a beacon of hope.
I hurry from the cave and back to the convent, keeping an
eye open for anything out of place. The sun is just below the
horizon when I leave the path, which means I’m running late.
I push through the heavy oak doors to find the welcome
bells ringing; somebody new has arrived.
I join the others on their way to our sleeping quarters. We
have a welcoming tradition here, standing next to our beds
with our hands behind our backs, facing the new girl and
introducing ourselves one by one. I’d hated it when I had
first arrived; hated feeling on display when all I wanted to do
was hide.
In the doorway, standing beside Sister Lucia, is a small
girl with auburn hair, curious brown eyes, and petite
features not unlike a mouse. She stares at the stone floor,
shifting her weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other.
Her fingers fiddle with the waist of her gray wool dress,
which is patterned with pink flowers. There’s a small pink
clip in her hair, and she wears black shoes with silver
buckles. I feel sorry for her. Sister Lucia waits for us all to
smile, all thirty-seven of us, and then she speaks.
“This is Ella. She’s seven years old and will be staying
with us from here on out. I trust that you will all make her feel
welcome.”
A rumor is later whispered that her parents had been
killed in an automobile accident and she’s here because
she has no other relatives.
Ella flutters her eyes up as each person says their name,
but mostly she keeps her gaze on the floor. It’s obvious
she’s scared and sad, but I can tell she’s the kind of girl
people will fall for. She won’t be here for very long.
We all walk to the nave together so Sister Lucia can
explain to Ella its importance to the orphanage. Gabby
Garcia stands yawning in the back of the group, and I turn
to look at her. Just beyond Gabby, framed in one of the
clear panes of the stained glass window at the far wall, a
dark figure stands outside looking in. I can just make him
out in the oncoming nightfall, his black hair, heavy brows,
and thick mustache. His eyes are trained on me; there’s no
doubt about it. My heart skips a beat. I gasp and take a
step backwards. Everyone’s head snaps around.
“Marina, are you okay?” Sister Lucia asks.
“Nothing,” I say, then shake my head. “I mean, yes, I’m
fine. Sorry.”
My heart pounds and my hands shake. I clasp them
together so it’s not noticeable. Sister Lucia says something
else about welcoming Ella, but I’m too distracted to hear it. I
turn back to the window. The figure is gone. The group’s
dismissed.
I rush across the nave and look outside. I don’t see
anyone, but I do see a single set of boot prints in the snow. I
step away from the window. Perhaps it’s a potential foster
parent assessing the girls from afar, or perhaps it’s one of
the girl’s real parents sneaking a glance at the daughter he
can’t provide for. But for some reason I don’t feel safe. I
don’t like the way his eyes settled on me.
“Are you okay?” I hear behind me. I jump, then turn
around. It’s Adelina, standing with her hands clasped in
front of her waist. A rosary dangles from her fingers.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Worse than a ghost, I think, but I don’t say that. I’m scared
after this morning’s slap, and I pocket my hands.
“There was somebody at the window watching me,” I
whisper. “Just now.”
Her eyes squint.
“Look. Look at the prints,” I say, turning back and
motioning to the ground.
Adelina’s back is straight and rigid, and for a moment I
think she’s actually concerned; but then she softens and
steps forward. She takes in the prints.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she says.
“What do you mean it’s nothing? How can you say that?”
“I wouldn’t worry. It could have been anyone.”
“He was looking right at me.”
“Marina, wake up. With today’s new arrival there are
thirty-eight girls here. We do the best we can keeping you
girls safe, but that doesn’t mean the occasional boy from
town doesn’t wander up here to sneak a peek. We’ve even
caught some of them. And don’t think for a minute we don’t
know the way that some of the others dress, changing
clothes on the walk to school to look provocative. There are
six of you turning eighteen soon, and everyone in town
knows it. So, I wouldn’t worry about the man you saw. He
was probably nothing more than a boy from school.”
I’m sure this was no boy from school, but I don’t say so.
“Anyway, I wanted to apologize for this morning. It was
wrong of me to strike you.”
“It’s okay,” I say, and for a minute I think of bringing John
Smith up again, but I decide against it. It would create more
friction, which I want to avoid. I miss the way we used to be.
And it’s hard enough living here without having Adelina
angry at me.
Before she says anything further, Sister Dora hurries
over and whispers something into Adelina’s ear. Adelina
looks at me and nods and smiles.
“We’ll talk later,” she says.
They walk away, leaving me to myself. I look back down
at the boot prints, and a shiver runs up my back.
For the next hour I pace from room to room looking down
the hill at the dark town cast in shadow, but I don’t see the
looming figure again. Perhaps Adelina is right.
But no matter how hard I try convincing myself, I don’t
think she is.

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 5

Chapter 5


THE SNOW STOPS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE SCRAPING sound of
shovels against asphalt fills the night air. From the window I
can see the faint silhouettes of residents throwing snow to
less cumbersome places, readying themselves for the
morning walk for Sunday obligations. There’s a certain
tranquillity to the town at work on a quiet night, everyone
bound by the same cause, and I wish I was out there among
them. And then the bedtime bell tolls. In the room fourteen
girls find their beds within the minute, and the lights are shut
off. The second I close my eyes the dream begins. I stand in
a field of flowers on a warm summer day. To my right, in the
distance, the outline of a jagged mountain range stands
against the backdrop of the setting sun; to my left lies the
sea. A girl dressed in black, with raven hair and striking
gray eyes, appears out of nowhere. She wears a smile,
both fierce and confident. It’s just the two of us. Then a
great disturbance kicks up behind me, as though an
isolated earthquake has just begun, and the ground is split
open and torn apart. I don’t turn to see what’s actually
happening. The girl lifts her hand, beckoning me to take it,
her eyes locked on mine. I reach for it. My eyes open.
Light streams in through the windows. While it feels as
though minutes have passed, in reality the whole night has
gone by. I shake my head free of the dream. Sunday is the
day of rest, though ironically for us it’s the busiest day of the
week, starting with a long Mass.
Ostensibly the large Sunday crowd is because of
religious devotion within the community, but really it’s
because of El Festin, the grand dinner that follows Mass.
All of us who live here must work it. My place is in the
cafeteria line. It’s only after dinner that we’re finally free. If
I’m lucky we’ll finish by four, then we’re not due back until
the sun sets. This time of year it comes a little after six.
We rush to the showers, quickly bathe, brush our teeth
and our hair, then dress in our Sunday best, identical blackand-
white outfits that leave only our hands and heads
showing. When most of the other girls have fled the room,
Adelina walks in. She stands in front of me and fixes the
neck of my tunic. It makes me feel much younger than I
really am. I can hear the throng of people filing into the
nave. Adelina remains silent. So do I. I look at the gray
streaks in her auburn hair, which I hadn’t noticed before.
There are wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. She’s forty-two
but looks ten years older.
“I had a dream about a girl with raven hair and gray eyes
who reached her hand out to me,” I say, breaking the
silence. “She wanted me to take it.”
“Okay,” she says, unsure of why I’m telling her about a
dream.
“Do you think she could be one of us?”
She gives the collar a final tug. “I think you shouldn’t read
into your dreams so much.”
I want to argue with her, but I’m not sure what to say. So
instead I utter, “It felt real.”
“Some dreams do.”
“But you said a long time ago that on Lorien we could
sometimes communicate with each other over long
distances.”
“Yes, and right after that I would read you stories about a
wolf who could blow down houses and a goose who laid
golden eggs.”
“Those were fairy tales.”
“It’s all one big fairy tale, Marina.”
I grit my teeth. “How can you say that? We both know it’s
not a fairy tale. We both know where we came from and
why we’re here. I don’t know why you act as if you didn’t
come from Lorien and you don’t have a duty to teach me.”
She puts her hands behind her back and looks at the
ceiling. “Marina, since I’ve been here, since we’ve been
here, we’ve been fortunate to learn the truth about creation
and where we came from and what our real mission is on
Earth. And that’s all found in the Bible.”
“And the Bible isn’t a fairy tale?”
Her shoulders stiffen. She furrows her brows and flexes
her jaw.
“Lorien isn’t a fairy tale,” I say before she can respond,
and, using telekinesis, I lift a pillow from a nearby bed and
spin it in the air. Adelina does something she’s never done
before: she slaps me. Hard. I drop the pillow and press my
hand to my stinging cheek with my mouth wide-open.
“Don’t you dare let them see you do that!” she says
furiously.
“What I did right there, that’s not a fairy tale. I am not part
of a fairy tale. You are my Cepan, and you are not part of a
fairy tale.”
“Call it what you will,” she says.
“But haven’t you read the news? You know the boy in
Ohio is one of us; you have to! He could be our only
chance!”
“Our only chance at what?” she asks.
“A life.”
“And what do you call this?”
“Spending our days living the lies of an alien race is no
life,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Give it up, Marina,” she says, and
walks away. I have no choice but to follow.
Marina. The name sounds so normal now, so me. I don’t
think twice when Adelina hisses the name at me or when
one of the other girls in the orphanage yells it on the way out
the school doors, waving my forgotten math book. But it
hasn’t always been my name. Back when we were
aimlessly looking for a warm meal or a bed, back before
Spain and Santa Teresa, before Adelina was Adelina, I
had been Genevieve. Adelina was Odette. Those were our
French names.
“We should change our names with every new country,”
Adelina had whispered when she was Signy and we were
in Norway, where our ship landed after months at sea.
She’d chosen Signy because it had been written on the
woman’s shirt behind the counter.
“What should my name be?” I’d asked.
“Whatever you want it to be,” she’d said. We’d been at a
cafe in the middle of a bleak village, enjoying the heat from
the mug of hot chocolate we’d shared. Signy had stood and
retrieved the weekend’s newspaper from a nearby table.
On the front page was the most beautiful woman I had ever
seen. Blond hair, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes. Her
name was Birgitta. My name had become Birgitta.
Even when we were on a train and the countries zipped
past the window like trees, we’d always change our names,
if just for a few hours. Yes, it was to stay hidden from the
Mogadorians or anyone else who might be following us, but
it was also the one thing that raised our spirits among so
much disappointment. I’d thought it was so much fun, I wish
we’d traveled over Europe several times. In Poland I was
Minka and she chose Zali. She was Fatima in Denmark; I
was Yasmin. I had two names in Austria: Sophie and
Astrid. She fell in love with Emmalina.
“Why Emmalina?” I’d asked.
She laughed. “I don’t know exactly. I guess I love that it’s
almost two names in one. Either one is beautiful, but you
smash them together and you get something extraordinary.”
In fact, I wonder now if that was the last time I heard her
laugh. Or the last time we hugged or made proclamations
about our destinies. I believe it was the last time I sensed
she cared about being my Cepan or what happened to
Lorien—what happened to me.
We arrive at Mass just before it begins. The only
available seats are in the very last row, which is where I
prefer to sit anyhow. Adelina shuffles to the front where the
Sisters sit. Father Marco, the priest, begins with an
opening prayer in his always-somber voice, and most of his
words are muffled beyond recognition by the time they
reach me. I like it this way, sitting through Mass with
detached apathy. I try not to think about Adelina smacking
me, filling my mind instead with what I will do when El Festin
finally ends. None of the snow has melted, but I’m
determined to make it to the cave anyway. I have
something new to paint, and I want to finish the picture of
John Smith that I started last week.
Mass drags on forever, or at least it feels that way, with
rites, liturgies, communion, readings, prayers, rituals. When
we reach the final prayer I’m exhausted and don’t even
bother pretending to pray like I normally do, and instead sit
there with my head lifted and eyes open, scanning the
backs of the heads of those in attendance. Almost all of
them are familiar. One man sleeps upright in his pew, arms
crossed and chin touching his chest. I watch him until
something in his dream startles him awake with a grunt.
Several heads turn his way as he gathers his bearings. I
can’t help but smile; and as I look away, my eyes find Sister
Dora scowling at me. I drop my head, close my eyes, and
feign prayer, mouthing the words that Father Marco recites
up front, but I know I’ve been caught. It’s what Sister Dora
thrives on. She goes out of her way to catch us in the act of
doing something we shouldn’t.
Prayer concludes with the sign of the cross, finally
bringing an end to Mass. I’m up out of my seat before
anyone else, and I hurry from the nave to the kitchen. Sister
Dora may be the largest among all the Sisters, but she
shows surprising agility when it’s needed, and I don’t want
to give her the chance to catch me. If she doesn’t, I might
escape punishment. And I do, because when she enters
the cafeteria five minutes later as I’m peeling potatoes
beside a gangly fourteen-year-old named Paola and her
twelve-year-old sister, Lucia, she only glares at me.
“What’s up with her?” Paola asks.
“She caught me smiling during Mass.”
“Good thing you weren’t paddled,” Lucia says out of the
corner of her mouth.
I nod and go back to what I’m doing. As fleeting as they
are, it’s these small moments that bring us girls together,
the fact that we share a common enemy. When I was
younger, I thought commonalities like this, and of being
orphaned and living under this same tyrannical roof, would
unite us all as immediate and lifelong friends. But really it
only worked to further divide us, creating small factions
within our already small group—the pretty girls huddling
together (La Gorda excepted, but still a part of their crowd),
the smart girls, the athletic ones, the young ones—until I
was left all alone.
A half hour later when everything’s ready, we carry the
food from the kitchen to the serving line. The crowd of
waiting people clap. At the back of the line I see my favorite
person in all of Santa Teresa: Hector Ricardo. His clothes
are dirty and wrinkled, and his hair is tousled. He has
bloodshot eyes, an almost scarlet complexion to his face
and cheeks. Even from as far away as I am I notice he has
a slight shake in each hand, as he always does on Sundays
—the only day in the week he swears off drinking. He looks
especially rough today, though when he finally approaches,
he holds his tray out and fixes on his face the most
optimistic smile he can muster.
“And how are you, my dear Queen of the sea?” he asks.
I curtsy in return. “I’m doing well, Hector. And you?”
He shrugs, then says, “Life is but a fine wine, to be
sipped and savored.”
I laugh. Hector always has some old adage to share.
I first met Hector when I was thirteen. He had been sitting
outside the lone cafe on Calle Principal drinking a bottle of
wine by himself. It was midafternoon, and I had been on my
way home from school. Our eyes met as I passed.
“Marina, as of the sea,” he had said, and I’d found it odd
that he knew my name, though I shouldn’t have since I’d
seen him every week at the church pretty much since the
day I’d arrived. “Come keep a drunk man company a few
minutes.”
I did. I’m not sure why. Maybe because there’s something
entirely agreeable about Hector. He makes me feel
relaxed, and doesn’t pretend to be somebody he isn’t like
so many other people do. He exudes the attitude of “This is
who I am; take it or leave it.”
That first day we had sat and talked long enough for him
to finish one bottle of wine and order a second.
“You stick with Hector Ricardo,” he’d said when I had to
get back to the convent. “I’ll take care of you; it’s in my
name. The Latin root of Hector means ‘to defend and hold
fast.’ And Ricardo means ‘power and bravery,’” he’d said,
thumping his chest twice with his right fist. “Hector Ricardo
will take care of you!”
I could tell he meant it.
He’d gone on. “Marina. ‘Of the sea.’ That’s what your
name means; did you know that?”
I’d told him I did not. I’d wondered what Birgitta meant.
And Yasmin. What Emmalina was rooted in.
“That means you are Santa Teresa’s own Sea Queen,”
he’d said with a sideways grin.
I’d laughed at him. “I think you’ve been drinking too much,
Hector Ricardo.”
“Yes,” he’d replied. “I am the town drunk, dear Marina.
But don’t let that fool you. Hector Ricardo is a defender all
the same. And besides, show me a man without vice and I’ll
show you one without virtue!”
Years later, he’s one of the few people I can call a friend.
It takes twenty-five minutes for the few hundred people to
receive their due today; and after the last person leaves the
line, it’s our turn to eat, sitting away from the others. As a
group we eat as fast as we can, knowing that the quicker
we clean up and get everything put away, the sooner we’ll
be on our own.
Fifteen minutes later the five of us who work the line are
scraping pots and pans and wiping counters. At its best,
cleanup takes an hour, and that’s only if everyone leaves
the cafeteria after they’re done eating, which rarely
happens. As we’re cleaning, when I know the others aren’t
looking, I throw into a bag the nonperishable items I plan to
take to the cave today: dried fruits and berries, nuts, a can
of tuna fish, a can of beans. This has become another
weekly tradition of mine. For a long time I convinced myself
I was doing it so I could snack when painting the cave’s
walls. But the truth is I’m creating a stockpile of food in case
the worst arrives and I have to hide. And by the worst, I
mean them.

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 4

Chapter 4


“I WAS THIRTEEN WHEN THEY CAUGHT UP TO us,” Six says when we
cross into Tennessee, fifteen minutes after leaving the Trucksville Motel
behind. I’d asked her to tell us about how she and Katarina were captured.
“We were in West Texas after fleeing Mexico because of a stupid mistake.
We had both been completely entranced by some stupid internet post that
Two had written, though we didn’t know it was by Two at the time, and we
responded. We were lonely in Mexico, living in some dusty town in the
middle of nowhere, and we just had to know if it really was a member of
the Garde.”
I nod, knowing what she’s talking about. Henri had also
seen the blog post while we were in Colorado. I had been
in a school spelling bee, and the scar had come while I was
onstage. I’d been rushed to the hospital and the doctor saw
the first scar, and the fresh burn all the way to the bone of
the second. When Henri arrived, they’d accused him of
child abuse, which was the catalyst behind our fleeing the
state and assuming new identities, another new start.
“‘Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there?’” I ask.
“That’s the one.”
“So you guys are the ones who responded,” I say. Henri
had taken screen shots of the post so I could see it. He had
tried furiously to hack the computer to delete it before the
damage could be done, but he hadn’t been quick enough.
Two was killed. Somebody else deleted the post right after.
We’d assumed it was the Mogadorians.
“Katarina did, simply writing ‘We are here’; and not a
minute later the scar appeared,” Six says, shaking her
head. “It was so stupid of Two to post that, knowing she
was next. I still can’t understand why she’d risk it.”
“Do you guys know where she was?” Sam asks.
I look at Six. “Do you? Henri thought it was England, but
he couldn’t say for sure.”
“No idea. All we knew was that if they’d gotten to her that
quickly, it wouldn’t take long for them to get to us.”
“But, how do you even know she posted it?” Sam asks.
Six glances at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know; you guys can’t even say for sure where she
was, so how do you know it was her?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Well, I mean, I watch the way you and John are so
cautious. I can’t imagine either of you doing something so
stupid like that if you knew you were next. Especially with
everything you know about the Mogadorians. I don’t think
you would have posted something to begin with.”
“True, Sam.”
“So maybe they had already captured Two and were
trying to draw some of you guys out before they killed her,
which could explain why she was killed seconds after you
responded. It could have been a bluff. Or maybe she knew
what they were doing, and she killed herself to warn you
guys away or something. Who knows. Those are just some
guesses, right?”
“Right,” I say. But they are good guesses. Ones I hadn’t
thought about. Ones I wonder if Henri had.
We ride in silence thinking about it. Six drives the speed
limit and a few cars cruise past us. The highway itself is
lined with overhead lights that make the rolling hills beyond
look spooky.
“She could have been scared and desperate,” I say.
“That could have led her to do something stupid, like write a
careless post on the internet.”
Sam shrugs. “Just seems kind of unlikely to me.”
“But they could have already killed her Cepan, and she
could have become frantic. She must have been twelve,
maybe thirteen. Imagine being thirteen and on your own,” I
say before I realize I’m describing Six’s exact scenario.
She glances at me, then turns back to the road.
“We never once thought it was a trick,” she says. “Though
it kind of makes sense. Back then we were just scared.
And my ankle was on fire. Kind of hard to think straight
when it feels as though your foot is being sawed off.”
I nod my head gravely.
“But even after the initial fear, we still didn’t consider that
angle. We replied, which is what put them on our tail. It was
ridiculous for us to do. Maybe you’re right, Sam. I can only
hope we’ve grown a little wiser, those of us still left.”
Her last sentence hangs in the air. There are only six of
us left. Six of us against any number of them. And no way of
knowing how we might possibly find one another. We’re the
only hope. Strength in numbers. The power of six. The
thought makes my heart pump at twice its normal speed.
“What?” Six asks.
“There’re six of us left.”
“I know there are. So what?”
“Six of us, and maybe some of the others still have their
Cepans; maybe they don’t. But six to fight who knows how
many Mogadorians? A thousand? A hundred thousand? A
million?”
“Hey, don’t forget about me,” Sam says. “And Bernie
Kosar.”
I nod. “Sorry, Sam; you’re right. Eight of us.” And then all
of a sudden I remember something else. “Six, do you know
about the second ship that left Lorien?”
“A ship aside from ours?”
“Yeah, it left after ours. Or, at least, I think it did. Loaded
with Chimaera. Fifteen or so, and three Cepan, and maybe
a baby. I had visions of it when Henri and I were training,
though he was skeptical. But so far all my visions have
proven true.”
“I had no idea.”
“It took off in an old rocket that kind of looked like a
NASA shuttle. You know, powered by fuel that left a trail of
smoke behind it.”
“Then it wouldn’t have made it here,” Six says.
“Yeah, that’s what Henri said.”
“Chimaera?” Sam asks. “The same kind of animal as
Bernie Kosar?” I nod. He perks up. “Maybe that’s how
Bernie made it here? Could you imagine if they all made
it? After seeing what Bernie did during the fight?”
“It’d be amazing,” I agree. “But I’m pretty sure old Bernie
here was on our ship.”
here was on our ship.”
I run my hand down the length of Bernie Kosar’s back
and can feel matted scabs still covering most of his body.
Sam sighs, leans back in his seat with a look of relief on his
face, probably imagining an army of Chimaera coming to
our aid at the last minute to defeat the Mogadorians. Six
looks into the rearview mirror, and the headlights from the
car behind us illuminate a band of light across her face.
She looks back to the road wearing the same introspective
gaze that Henri always did when driving.
“The Mogadorians,” she begins softly, swallowing as
Sam and I turn our attention to her. “They caught up to us
the day after we responded to Two’s post, in a desolate
town in West Texas. Katarina had driven fifteen straight
hours from Mexico, and it was getting late and we were
both exhausted because neither of us had slept. We
stopped at a motel off the highway, not all that different from
the one we just left. It was in a tiny town that looked like
something out of an old Western movie, full of cowboys and
ranchers. There were even hitching posts outside some of
the buildings so that the people could tie up their horses. It
was very weird, but we had just come from a dusty town in
Mexico, so we didn’t think twice about stopping.”
She pauses as a car cruises past us. She follows it with
her eyes and checks the speedometer before turning back
to the road.
“We went to get something to eat at a diner. About
halfway through our meal, a man entered and took a seat.
He was wearing a white shirt and tie, but it was a Western
tie and his clothes looked outdated. We ignored him, even
though I noticed the others in the diner staring at him, the
same way they were staring at us. At one point he turned
and gazed our way, but since everyone else had done the
same, I didn’t piece it together. I was only thirteen then, and
it was hard to think of anything at that point other than sleep
and food. So we finished eating and went back to our
room. Katarina jumped into the shower; and when she
stepped out, wrapped in a robe, there was a knock at the
door. We looked at each other. She asked who it was, and
the man answered that he was the motel manager and had
brought fresh towels and ice; and without thinking twice, I
walked to the door and opened it.”
“Oh no,” Sam says.
Six nods. “It was the man from the diner with the Western
tie. He walked straight into the room and shut the door. I
was wearing my pendant in plain view. He knew
immediately who I was, and Katarina and I knew
immediately who he was. In one fluid motion he pulled a
knife from the waistband of his trousers and swung for my
head. He was fast, and I had no time to react. I had no
Legacies yet, no defenses. I was dead. But then the
weirdest thing happened. As the knife dug into my skull, it
was his skull that split open. I didn’t feel a thing. I learned
later they had no idea how the charm worked, that he
couldn’t kill me until numbers one through five were dead.
He dropped to the ground and burst into ash.”
“Wicked,” Sam says.
“Wait,” I interrupt. “From what I’ve seen, Mogadorians are
pretty recognizable. Their skin is so white it looks bleached.
pretty recognizable. Their skin is so white it looks bleached.
And their teeth and eyes …” I trail off. “How could you not
have known it in the diner? Why’d you let him into the
room?”
“I’m pretty sure only the scouts and soldiers look like that.
They’re the Mogadorians’ version of the military. That’s
what Katarina said, anyway. The rest of them look as much
like normal humans as we do. The one who came into the
diner looked like an accountant, wearing wire-rimmed
glasses, black slacks, and a white short-sleeved dress shirt
and that tie. He even had a really dorky mustache. I
remember him being tan. We had no idea they had
followed us.”
“That’s reassuring,” I say sarcastically. I replay the image
of the knife plunging into Six’s skull and killing the
Mogadorian instead. If one of them tried the same thing
with a knife on me, right now, I would be killed. I push the
thought away and ask, “Do you think they’re still in
Paradise?”
She says nothing for a minute, and when she finally
speaks, I wish she had stayed silent instead. “I think they
might be.”
“So Sarah’s in danger?”
“Everyone’s in danger, John. Every person we know in
Paradise, every person we don’t know in Paradise.”
All of Paradise is probably under surveillance, and I know
it’s not safe to go within fifty miles of it. Or to call. Or even to
send a letter, or they’d learn the pull Sarah has on me, the
connection we have.
“Anyway,” Sam says, wanting to get back to the story.
“Anyway,” Sam says, wanting to get back to the story.
“The Mogadorian accountant falls to the floor and dies.
Then what?”
“Katarina threw the Chest to me and grabbed our
suitcase, and we sprinted out of the motel room, Katarina
still in her robe. The truck was unlocked, and we jumped
inside. Another Mog came charging out from behind the
motel. Kat was so flustered that she couldn’t find the keys.
She locked the doors, though, and the windows were rolled
up. But the guy wasted no time at all and punched straight
through the passenger-side glass and grabbed me by the
shirt. Katarina screamed, and some men nearby jumped
into action.
“Others poured out of the diner to see what was
happening. The Mogadorian had no choice but to let go of
me to face the men.
“‘The keys are in the motel room!’ Katarina yelled. She
looked at me with these big, huge, desperate eyes. She
was panicking. We both were. I jumped out of the truck and
sprinted back to our room for the keys. Those men in
Texas, they were the only reason we got away then; they
saved our lives. When I came out of the motel room with the
keys, one of the Texans was aiming a gun at the
Mogadorian.
“We have no idea what happened after that because
Katarina sped away and we didn’t look back. We hid the
Chest a few weeks later, right before they caught up to us
for good.”
“Don’t they already have the Chests from the first three?”
Sam asks.
Sam asks.
“I’m sure they do, but what use are they? The second we
die the Chest unlocks itself, and everything inside becomes
useless,” she says, and I nod, knowing that much from past
conversations with Henri.
“Not only are the objects worthless,” I say, “but they
completely disintegrate the same way the Mogadorians do
when they’re killed.”
“Wicked,” Sam says.
And then I remember the sticky note I found when saving
Henri in Athens, Ohio.
“Those guys Henri visited who ran the They Walk
Among Us magazine?”
“Yeah?”
“They had this source who apparently caught a
Mogadorian and tortured it for information, and he
supposedly knew that Number Seven was being trailed in
Spain and that Number Nine was somewhere in South
America.”
Six thinks about it a moment. She bites her lip and
glances in the rearview mirror. “I know for a fact that
Number Seven is a girl; I remember that much from the ride
in the ship.” The second this leaves her mouth, a siren
blares behind us.

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 3

Chapter 3


A LOW WHISPER FINDS ME. THE VOICE IS COLD. I can’t seem to move
but I listen intently.
I’m not asleep anymore, but I’m not awake either. I’m
paralyzed, and as the whispers increase, my eyes are
whisked away through the impenetrable darkness of my
motel room. The electricity I feel as the vision breaks above
my bed reminds me of when my first Legacy, Lumen, lit up
my palms in Paradise, Ohio. Back when Henri was still
here, still alive. But Henri’s gone now. He’s not coming
back. Even in this state I can’t escape that reality.
I completely enter the vision above me, blazing through
its darkness with my hands turned on, but the glow is
swallowed by the shadows. And then I snap to a halt.
Everything falls silent. I lift my hands in front of me but touch
nothing, my feet off the ground, floating in a great void.
More whispering in a language I don’t recognize, but
somehow still understand. The words burst forth anxiously.
The darkness fades, and the world I’m in turns a shade of
gray on its way to a white so bright I have to squint to see. A
mist drifts in front of me and filters away, revealing a large
open room with candles lining the walls.
“I—I don’t know what went wrong,” a voice says, clearly
shaken.
The room is long and wide, the size of a football field.
The room is long and wide, the size of a football field.
The acrid smell of sulfur burns my nostrils, makes my eyes
water. The air is hot and stuffy. And then I see them at the
far end of the room: two figures shrouded in shadows, one
much bigger than the other, and menacing even from a
distance.
“They got away. Somehow they got away. I don’t know
how… .”
I move forward. I feel the sort of calm that sometimes
comes in dreams when you’re aware you’re asleep and
that nothing can really hurt you. Step by step, nearing the
growing shadows.
“All of them, all of them killed. Along with three piken and
two krauls,” the smaller of the two says, standing with
fidgeting hands beside the larger man.
“We had them. We were about to—,” comes the voice,
but the other cuts him off. He scans the air to see what he’s
already sensed. I stop, stand motionless, and hold my
breath. And then he finds me. A shudder runs up my spine.
“John,” somebody says, the voice a distant echo.
The larger figure comes towards me. He towers over me,
twenty feet tall, muscular, a chiseled jaw. His hair isn’t long
like the others’, but cut short instead. His skin is tan. Our
eyes stay locked as he slowly approaches. Thirty feet away,
then twenty. He stops ten feet short. My pendant grows
heavy and the chain cuts into my neck. Around his throat,
like a collar, I notice a grotesque, purplish scar.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he says, his voice level and
calm. He lifts his right arm and pulls a sword from the
sheath on his back. It comes alive at once, keeping its
sheath on his back. It comes alive at once, keeping its
shape while the metal turns nearly liquid. The wound in my
shoulder, from the soldier’s dagger during the battle in
Ohio, screams with pain as though I’m being stabbed all
over again. I fall to my knees.
“It’s been a very long time,” he says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a
language I’ve never spoken before.
I want to leave immediately, wherever this place is. I try to
rise, but it’s as if I’m suddenly stuck to the ground.
“Don’t you?” he asks.
“John,” I hear again from somewhere on the periphery.
The Mogadorian doesn’t seem to notice, and there’s
something about his gaze that holds my own. I can’t look
away.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say. My voice sounds
watery. Everything dims until it’s just the two of us and
nothing else.
“I can make you disappear if that’s what you want,” he
says, slashing a figure eight with the sword, leaving a stark
white streak hanging in the air where the blade passes
through. And then he charges, his sword held high and
cracking with power. He swings, and it comes down like a
bullet, aimed for my throat, and I know that there’s nothing I
can do to stop the blow from decapitating me.
“John!” the voice screams again.
My eyes whip open. Two hands grip me hard by the
shoulders. I’m covered in sweat and out of breath. I focus
first on Sam standing over me, then on Six, with her stark
hazel eyes that sometimes look blue and sometimes green,
hazel eyes that sometimes look blue and sometimes green,
kneeling beside me, appearing tired and worn as though I
just woke her, which I probably did.
“What was that all about?” Sam asks.
I shake my head, letting the vision dissipate, and I take in
my surroundings. The room is dark with the curtains drawn,
and I’m lying in the same bed I’ve spent the last week and a
half in, healing from the battle wounds. Six has been
recovering beside me, and neither she nor I have left this
place since we arrived, relying on Sam to head out for food
and supplies. A shabby motel room with two full beds off
the main street in Trucksville, North Carolina. To rent the
room, Sam had used one of the seventeen driver’s licenses
Henri created for me before he was killed, and luckily the
old man at the front desk was too busy watching TV to
study the photograph. Situated on the northwestern edge of
the state, the motel is a fifteen-minute drive from both
Virginia and Tennessee, a location chosen mainly because
we had traveled as far as we could go given the extent of
our injuries. But our wounds have slowly healed, and our
strength is finally returning.
“You were talking in a foreign language I’ve never heard
before,” Sam says. “I think you made it up, dude.”
“No, he was talking in Mogadorian,” Six corrects him.
“And even a little Loric.”
“Really?” I ask. “That’s totally weird.”
Six walks to the window and pulls back the right side of
the curtains. “What were you dreaming about?”
I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. I was dreaming, but
I wasn’t dreaming, you know. Having visions, I guess, and
they were about them. We were about to have a battle; but I
was, I don’t know, too weak or confused or something.” I
look up at Sam, who is frowning and looking at the TV.
“What?”
“Bad news.” He sighs, shaking his head.
“What?” I sit up, wipe the sleep from my eyes.
Sam nods to the front of the room, and I turn to the glow
of the television. My face takes up the entire left half of the
screen, while an artist’s rendering of Henri’s is on the right.
The drawing looks nothing like him: his face seems sharp
and haggard to the point of emaciation, giving him the
appearance of being twenty years older than he really is. Or
was.
“As if being called a threat to national security or a
terrorist wasn’t bad enough,” Sam says. “They’re now
offering a reward.”
“For me?” I ask.
“For you and Henri. A hundred thousand dollars for any
information leading to your and Henri’s capture, and two
hundred and fifty thousand if somebody brings either of you
in on their own,” Sam says.
“I’ve been on the run all of my life,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“What difference does it make?”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t and they’re offering a reward for me,
too,” Sam says. “A measly twenty-five grand, if you can
believe that. And I don’t know how good of a fugitive I am.
I’ve never done this before.”
I gingerly scoot up the bed, still a little stiff. Sam sits on
the other bed and places his head in his palms.
the other bed and places his head in his palms.
“You’re with us, though, Sam. We have your back,” I say.
“I’m not worried,” he says into his chest.
I chew on the insides of my cheeks, thinking about how
I’m going to keep him safe, and me and Six alive, without
Henri. I turn to face Sam, who is stressed enough to be
picking a hole in his black NASA T-shirt. “Listen, Sam. I
wish Henri was here. I can’t even tell you how much I wish
he was here, for so many reasons. Not only did he keep me
safe when we were running from one state to the next, but
he also had all this knowledge about Lorien and my family,
and he had this amazing calming way about him that’s kept
us out of trouble for so long. I don’t know if I’m ever going to
be able to do what he did to keep us safe. I bet if he were
alive today, he wouldn’t have let you come with us. There’s
just no way he would have put you in this kind of danger.
But, listen, you’re here and that’s that, and I promise that I
won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I want to be here,” Sam says. “This is the coolest thing
that’s ever happened to me.” There is a pause, and then he
looks me in the eyes. “Plus you’re my best friend, and I’ve
never had a best friend.”
“Neither have I,” I say.
“Just hug already,” Six says. Sam and I laugh.
My face is still on the screen. The photo on the TV is the
one Sarah took on my very first day of school, the day I’d
met her; and I have an awkward, uncomfortable look on my
face. The right side of the screen is now filled with smaller
photos of the five people we’re being accused of killing:
three teachers, the men’s basketball coach, the school
three teachers, the men’s basketball coach, the school
janitor. And then the screen changes yet again to images of
the wrecked school—and it really is wrecked; the entire
right side of the building is nothing more than a heap of
rubble. Next come various interviews with Paradise
residents, the last being Sam’s mom. When she comes on
screen she’s crying, and looking straight into the camera
she desperately pleads with the “kidnappers” to “please
please please return my baby safely to me.” When Sam
sees this interview, I can tell something inside of him shifts.
Scenes from the past week’s funerals and candlelight
vigils come next. Sarah’s face flashes on the screen, and
she’s holding a candle as tears stream down her cheeks. A
lump forms in my throat. I’d give anything to hear her voice.
It kills me to imagine what she must be dealing with. The
video of us escaping Mark’s burning house—which is what
started all of this—has blown up on the internet, and while I
was blamed for starting that blaze as well, Mark stepped in
and swore up and down that I had no part in it, even though
using me as a scapegoat would have let him off the hook
completely.
When we had left Ohio, the damage to the school had
first been attributed to an out-of-season tornado; but then
rescue crews filtered through the rubble, and in no time all
five bodies had been found lying equal distances from each
other—without a single mark on them—in a room
untouched by the battle. Autopsies reported that they had
died of natural causes, with no trace of drugs or trauma.
Who knows how it really happened. When one of the
reporters had heard the story of me jumping through the
principal’s window and running away from the school, and
then when Henri and I couldn’t be found, he’d run a story
blaming us for everything; and the rest had been quick to
follow. With the recent discovery of Henri’s forgery tools,
along with a few of the fake documents he had left at the
house, the public outrage has grown.
“We’re going to have to be very careful now,” Six says,
sitting against the wall.
“More careful than staying inside a crummy motel room
with the curtains drawn?” I ask.
Six goes back to the window and pulls aside one of the
curtains to peer out. A sliver of sunlight cuts across the
floor. “The sun will set in three hours. Let’s leave as soon as
it’s dark.”
“Thank God,” Sam says. “There’s a meteor shower
tonight we can see if we drive south. Plus if I have to spend
one more minute inside this crappy room, I’m going to go
nuts.”
“Sam, you’ve been nuts since the first time I met you,” I
kid. He throws a pillow at me, which I deflect without lifting a
hand. I twist the pillow over and over in the air with my
telekenisis and then send it like a rocket at the television,
shutting it off.
I know Six is right that we should keep moving, but I’m
frustrated. It seems like there’s no end in sight, no place
where we’ll be safe. At the foot of the bed, keeping my feet
warm, is Bernie Kosar, who’s hardly left my side since
Ohio. He opens his eyes and yawns and stretches. He
peers up at me, and through my telepathy communicates
that he’s also feeling better. Most of the small scabs that
covered his body are gone, and the larger ones are healing
nicely. He’s still wearing the makeshift splint on his broken
front leg, and he’ll limp for a few more weeks; but he almost
looks like his old self. He offers a subtle wag and paws at
my leg. I reach down and pull him up to my lap and scratch
his tummy.
“How about you, buddy? You ready to get out of this
dump?”
Bernie Kosar thumps his tail against the bed.
“So where to, guys?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Six says. “Preferably somewhere warm to
ride out the winter. I’m pretty sick of this snow. Though I’m
even more sick of not knowing where the others are.”
“For now it’s just us three. Four plus Six plus Sam.”
“I love algebra,” Sam says. “Sam equals x. Variable x.”
“Such a nerd, dude,” I say.
Six enters the bathroom and then exits a second later
with a handful of toiletries. “If there’s any consolation in what
happened, at least the other Garde know John not only
survived his first battle, but that he won it. Maybe they’ll find
a bit of hope in it. Our biggest priority now is finding the
others. And training together in the meantime.”
“We will,” I say, then look at Sam. “It’s not too late to go
back and put things straight, Sam. You can make up any
story about us you want. Tell them we kidnapped you and
held you against your will, and that you escaped the first
chance you got. You’ll be considered a hero. Girls will be all
over you.”
Sam bites his lower lip and shakes his head. “I don’t
want to be a hero. And girls are already all over me.”
Six and I roll our eyes, but I also see Six blush. Or maybe
I imagine it.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’m not leaving.”
I shrug. “I guess that’s settled. Sam equals x in this
equation.”
Sam watches Six walk to her small duffel bag beside the
TV, and his attraction to her is painted all over his face.
She’s wearing black cotton shorts and a white tank top with
her hair pulled back. A few strands fall loose around her
face. A purple scar is prominent on the front of her left thigh,
and the stitch marks around it are a tender pink, still
scabbed over. Stitches she not only sewed herself, but also
removed. When Six looks up, Sam shyly diverts his gaze.
Clearly there’s another reason Sam wants to stick around.
Six bends down and reaches into her bag, removing a
folded map. She opens it on the foot of the bed.
“Right here,” she says, pointing to Trucksville, “is where
we are. And here,” she continues, moving her finger from
North Carolina to a tiny red star made in ink close to the
center of West Virginia, “is where the Mogadorians’ cave
is, the one I know of, anyhow.”
I look where she’s pointing. Even on the map it’s obvious
the location is very isolated; there doesn’t appear to be any
sort of main road within five miles, nor any town within ten.
“How do you even know where the cave is?”
“That’s a long story,” she says. “Probably one better left
for the road.”
Her finger takes up a new route on the map, heading
southwest from West Virginia, traversing Tennessee, and
coming to rest on a point in Arkansas near the Mississippi
River.
“What’s there?” I ask.
She puffs her cheeks and releases a deep breath,
undoubtedly remembering something that happened. Her
face takes on a special look when deep in concentration.
“This is where my Chest was,” she says. “And some of
the stuff Katarina brought from Lorien. This is where we hid
it.”
“What do you mean, where it was?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s not there anymore?”
“No. They were tracking us, and we couldn’t risk them
getting it. It was no longer safe with us, so we stowed it and
Katarina’s artifacts in Arkansas and fled as fast as we
could, thinking we could stay ahead of them …” She trails
off.
“They caught up to you, didn’t they?” I ask, knowing her
Cepan Katarina died three years ago.
She sighs. “That’s another story better left for the road.”
It takes minutes to throw my clothes into my duffel bag, and
as I’m doing it I realize the last time this bag was packed,
Sarah had done it. Only a week and a half has passed, but
it feels like a year and a half. I wonder if she’s been
interrogated by police, or singled out at school. Where is
she even going to school since the high school was
destroyed? I’m certain she can hold her own, but still, it
can’t be easy on her, especially since she has no idea
where I am, or even if I’m okay. I wish I could contact her
without putting us both in danger.
Sam turns the TV back on the old-fashioned way—with
the remote—and he watches the news while Six goes
invisible to check on the truck. We assume Sam’s mom
noticed it missing, which surely means the police are
keeping an eye out for it. Earlier in the week Sam stole the
front license plate off another truck. It might help us until we
get to where we’re going.
I finish packing and set my bag beside the door. Sam
smiles when his picture pops up on the television screen,
again on the same news cycle, and I know he’s enjoying his
small bit of celebrity even at the risk of being considered a
fugitive. Then they show my picture again, which means
they also show Henri’s. It rips me apart to see him, even
though the sketch looks nothing like him. Now isn’t the time
for guilt or misery, but I miss him so much. It’s my fault he’s
dead.
Fifteen minutes later Six walks in carrying a white plastic
bag.
She holds up the bag and shakes it at us. “I bought you
guys something.”
“Yeah, what is it?” I ask.
She reaches in and pulls out a pair of hair clippers. “I
think it’s time for a haircut for you and Sam.”
“Oh come on, my head’s too small. It’s going to make me
look like a turtle,” Sam objects. I laugh and try to picture him
without his shaggy hair. He has a long, skinny neck, and I
think he might be right.
“You’ll be incognito,” Six replies.
“Well, I don’t want to be incognito. I’m Variable x.”
“Stop being a wuss,” Six says.
He scowls. I try to be upbeat. “Yeah, Sam,” I say, peeling
off my shirt. Six follows me into the bathroom, ripping the
packaging away from the clippers as I bend over the tub.
Her fingers are a little cold, and goose bumps sprinkle
down my spine. I wish it was Sarah who was holding my
shoulder steady and giving me a makeover. Sam watches
from the doorway, sighing loudly, making his displeasure
known.
Six finishes, and I wipe away the loose hair with a towel,
then stand and look in the mirror. My head is whiter than the
rest of my face, but only because it’s never seen the sun. I
think that a few days in the Florida Keys, where Henri and I
lived before coming to Ohio, would fix the problem in no
time.
“See, John looks tough and rugged like that. I’m going to
look like a turd,” Sam groans.
“I am tough and rugged, Sam,” I reply.
He rolls his eyes while Six cleans the clippers. “Down,”
she says.
Sam obeys, dropping to his knees and bending over the
tub. When she’s done, Sam stands and flashes me a
pleading look.
“How bad is it?”
“You look good, buddy,” I say. “You look like a fugitive.”
Sam rubs his head a few times and finally looks in the
mirror. He cringes. “I look like an alien!” he exclaims in
mock disgust, then glances at me over his shoulder. “No
offense,” he adds lamely.
Six collects all the hair from the tub and drops it in the
toilet, careful to flush every strand. She coils the cord of the
clippers into a neat, tight loop, then slips it back into its
bag.
“No time like the present,” she says.
We strap our bags across her shoulders and she grabs
them both with her hands, then makes herself invisible,
causing the bags to disappear as well. She rushes out the
door to take them to the truck without being seen. While
she’s gone I reach up into the far right corner of the closet,
toss aside a few towels, and grab the Loric Chest.
“You ever going to open that thing or what?” Sam asks.
He’s been excited to see what’s inside ever since I told him
about it.
“Yeah, I will,” I say. “As soon as I feel safe.”
The motel door opens, then closes. Six reappears and
glances at the Chest.
“I won’t be able to make you and Sam disappear and
that. Only what I hold in my hands. I’ll run it back to the truck
first.”
“No, that’s okay. Take Sam with you, and I’ll follow
behind.”
“That’s stupid, John. How are you going to follow
behind?”
behind?”
I pull on my hat and jacket, then zip it and pull the hood
over my head so that only my face shows.
“I’ll be fine. I have advanced hearing, like you,” I say.
She eyes me skeptically and shakes her head. I grab
Bernie Kosar’s leash and clip it to his collar.
“Only until we get to the truck,” I tell him, since he hates
walking on a leash. On second thought, I lean down to carry
him since his leg is still healing, but he tells me he’d rather
walk himself.
“Ready when you are,” I say.
“All right, let’s do this,” Six says.
Sam offers his hand to her a little too enthusiastically. I
stifle a laugh.
“What?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I’ll follow you as best I can, but
don’t get too far ahead.”
“Just cough if you can’t follow and we’ll stop. The truck is
only a few minutes’ walk from here, behind the abandoned
barn,” Six says. “Can’t miss it.”
As the door flings open, Sam and Six disappear.
“That’s our cue, BK. Just the two of us now.”
He follows me out, trotting happily with his tongue
dangling. Aside from quick bathroom trips to the small plot
of grass beside the motel, Bernie Kosar’s been cooped up
like the rest of us.
The night air is cool and fresh, carrying a scent of pine,
and the wind on my face brings me instantly back to life. As
I walk I close my eyes and try to sense Six by combing the
air with my mind, reaching out and feeling the landscape
with telekinesis, the same way I was able to stop the
speeding bullet in Athens by grabbing everything in the air. I
feel them, a few feet ahead of me and slightly to the right. I
give Six a nudge and she startles, her breath catching in
her throat. Three seconds later she shoulders into me,
nearly causing me to fall. I laugh. And so does she.
“What are you guys doing?” Sam asks. He’s annoyed
with our little game. “We’re supposed to be quiet,
remember?”
We make it to the truck, which is parked behind a
dilapidated old barn that looks as though it’s ready to
collapse. Six releases Sam’s hand and he climbs into the
middle of the cab. Six jumps behind the wheel, and I slide in
next to Sam with BK at my feet.
“Holy crap, dude, what happened to your hair?” I goad
Sam.
“Shut up.”
Six starts the truck and I smile as she steers us onto the
road, flicking on the headlights when the wheels touch the
asphalt.
“What?” Sam asks.
“I was just thinking that, out of the four of us, three are
aliens, two are fugitives with terrorist ties, and not a single
one of us has a valid driver’s license. Something tells me
things might get interesting.”
Even Six can’t help but smile at this.

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 2

Chapter 2


I PERCH MY ARMS ON THE COLD WINDOWSILL AND watch the
snowflakes fall from the dark sky and settle on the side of
the mountain, which is dotted with pine, cork oak, and
beech trees, with patches of craggy rock mixed throughout.
The snow hasn’t let up all day, and they say it will continue
through the night. I can barely see beyond the edge of town
to the north—the world lost in a white haze. During the day,
when the sky is clear, it’s possible to see the watery blue
smudge of the Bay of Biscay. But not in this weather, and I
can’t help but wonder what might lurk in all that white
beyond my line of sight.
I look behind me. In the high-ceilinged, drafty room, there
are two computers. To use one we must add our name to a
list and wait our turn. At night there’s a ten-minute time limit
if somebody is waiting, twenty minutes if there isn’t. The two
girls using them now have been on for a half hour each, and
my patience is thin. I haven’t checked the news since this
morning when I snuck in before breakfast. At that time
nothing new about John Smith had been reported, but I’m
almost shaking in anticipation over what might have sprung
up since then. Some new discovery has been uncovered
each day since the story first broke.
Santa Teresa is a convent that doubles as an orphanage
for girls. I’m now the oldest out of thirty-seven, a distinction
I’ve held for six months, after the last girl who turned
eighteen left. At eighteen we must all make the choice to
strike out on our own or to forge a life within the Church.
The birthday Adelina and I created for me when we arrived
is less than five months away, and that’s when I’ll turn
eighteen, too. Of all who’ve reached eighteen, not a single
girl has stayed. I can’t blame them. Like the others, I have
every intention of leaving this prison behind, whether or not
Adelina comes with me. And it’s hard to imagine she will.
The convent itself was built entirely of stone in 1510 and
is much too large for the small number of us who live here.
Most of the rooms stand empty; and those that aren’t are
imbued with a damp, earthy feel, and our voices echo to the
ceiling and back. The convent rests atop the highest hill
overlooking the village that shares the same name, nestled
deep within the Picos de Europa Mountains of northern
Spain. The village, like the convent, is made of rock, with
many structures built straight into the mountainside.
Walking down the town’s main road, Calle Principal, it’s
impossible not to be inundated by the disrepair. It’s as
though this place was forgotten by time, and the passing
centuries have turned most everything to shades of mossy
green and brown, while the pervasive smell of mildew
hangs in the air.
It’s been five years since I started begging Adelina to
leave, to keep moving like we were instructed to. “I’m going
to be getting my Legacies soon, and I don’t want to
discover them here, with all of these girls and nuns around,”
I’d said. She had refused, quoting La Biblia Reina Valera
that we must stand still for salvation. I’ve begged every year
since, and every year she looks at me with blank eyes and
talks me down with a different religious quote. But I know
my salvation does not lie here.
Past the church gates and down the gently sloping hill, I
can see the faint dimness of the town lights. In the midst of
this blizzard, they look like floating halos. Though I can’t
hear the music from either of the two cantinas, I’m sure both
of them are packed. Aside from those, there is a
restaurant, a cafe, a market, a bodega, and various
vendors that line Calle Principal most mornings and
afternoons. Towards the bottom of the hill, on the southern
edge of town, is the brick school we all attend.
My head snaps around when the bell dings: prayers are
five minutes away, followed directly by bed. Panic sweeps
through me. I have to know if anything new has been
reported. Perhaps John’s been caught. Perhaps the police
have found something else at the demolished school,
something originally overlooked. Even if there’s nothing
new at all, I have to know. I’ll never get to sleep otherwise.
I fix a hard stare on Gabriela Garcia—Gabby for short—
who sits at one of the computers. Gabby’s sixteen and very
pretty, with long dark hair and brown eyes; and she always
dresses slutty when she’s outside the convent, wearing tight
shirts that show off her pierced navel. Every morning she
dresses in loose, baggy clothes, but the second we’re out
of sight of the Sisters she removes them, revealing a tight,
skimpy outfit underneath. Then she spends the rest of the
walk to school applying makeup and redoing her hair. It’s
the same with her four friends, three of whom also live here.
And when the day ends, they wipe their faces clean during
the walk back and re-dress in their original clothes.
“What?” Gabby asks in a snotty voice, glaring at me. “I’m
writing an email.”
“I’ve been waiting longer than ten minutes,” I say. “And
you’re not writing an email. You’re looking at guys with their
shirts off.”
“So what? Are you gonna tell on me, tattletale?” she asks
mockingly.
The girl beside her, whose name is Hilda but who most
kids in school call La Gorda—”the fat one”—(behind her
back, never to her face) laughs.
They’re an inseparable pair, Gabby and La Gorda. I bite
my tongue and turn back to the window, folding my arms
across my chest. I’m seething inside, partly because I need
to get on the computer and partly because I never know
how to respond when Gabby mocks me. There are four
minutes left. My impatience segues to full-on desperation.
There could be news right now—breaking news!—but I
have no way of knowing because these selfish jerks won’t
give up one of the computers.
Three minutes left. I’m nearly shaking with anger. And
then an idea pops into my head, and a grin plays across my
lips. It’s risky, but worth it if it works.
I pivot just enough to see Gabby’s chair in my peripheral
vision. I take a deep breath and, focusing all my energy on
her chair, use my telekinesis to jerk it to the left. Then I
quickly thrust it right so hard it nearly topples over. Gabby
jumps up and yelps. I look at her in mock surprise.
“What?” La Gorda asks.
“I don’t know; it felt like somebody just kicked my chair or
something. Did you feel anything?”
“No,” La Gorda says; and as soon as the word is uttered,
I move her chair a few centimeters backwards, then jerk it
to the right, all the while remaining at my spot by the
window. Both of the girls scream this time. I thrust Gabby’s
chair, then La Gorda’s again; and without giving their
computer screens a second glance, they flee the room,
screaming as they go.
“Yes!” I say, rushing to the computer Gabby was using
and quickly typing the web address of the news site I’ve
deemed most reliable. Then I wait impatiently for the page
to load. The old computers, combined with the slow internet
here, are the bane of my existence.
The browser goes white and, line by line, the page forms.
When a quarter of it has loaded, the final bell rings. One
minute until prayers. I’m inclined to ignore the bell, even at
the risk of being punished. At this point I don’t really care.
“Five more months,” I whisper to myself.
Half of the page is now up, revealing the top of John
Smith’s face, his upturned eyes, which are dark and
confident, though within them there’s a sense of discomfort
that seems almost out of place. I lean on the edge of my
seat, waiting, the excitement bubbling up inside me,
causing my hands to tremble.
“Come on,” I say to the screen, trying in vain to hurry it.
“Come on come on come on.”
“Marina!” a voice barks from the open doorway. I jerk
around and see Sister Dora, a portly woman who’s the
head cook in the kitchen, staring daggers at me. This is
nothing new. She stares daggers at everyone who walks
through the lunch line holding a tray, as though our needing
sustenance is a personal affront. She presses her lips
together in a perfect straight line, then narrows her eyes.
“Come! Now! And I mean right now!”
I sigh, knowing I have no choice but to go. I clear the
browser’s history and close it, then follow Sister Dora down
the dark hallway. There was something new on that screen;
I just know it. Why else would John’s face have taken up the
entire page? A week and a half is long enough for any
news to turn stale, so for him to command so much of the
screen means there’s some significant new piece of
information.
We walk to Santa Teresa’s nave, which is huge.
Towering pillars lead to a high, vaulted ceiling and stained
glass windows line the walls. Wooden pews run the length
of the open room and can seat nearly three hundred
people. Sister Dora and I are the last to enter. I sit alone in
one of the center pews. Sister Lucia, who opened the door
to Adelina and me when we first arrived and who still runs
the convent, stands at the pulpit, closes her eyes, lowers
her head and presses her hands together in front of her.
Everyone else does the same.
“Padre divino,” the prayer begins in somber unison. “Que
nos bendiga y nos proteja en su amor …”
nos bendiga y nos proteja en su amor …”
I tune it out and look at the back of the heads before me,
all of which are bowed in concentration. Or just bowed. My
eyes find Adelina, sitting in the very first row six pews in
front of me and slightly to the right. She is on her knees,
deeply meditative, her brown hair pulled into a tight braid
that falls to the middle of her back. She doesn’t look up
once, doesn’t try to find me at the back of the room like she
used to during our first few years here, a covert smile on
each of our faces as our eyes met, acknowledging our
shared secret. We still share that secret, but somewhere
along the way Adelina has stopped acknowledging it.
Somewhere along the way the plan to bide our time until we
felt strong enough and safe enough to leave has been
replaced with Adelina’s desire to simply stay—or her fear
to leave.
Before the news of John Smith, which I’d told Adelina
about when it broke, it had been months since we last
talked about our mission. In September I had shown her my
third scar, the third warning that said another Garde has
died and that she and I are one step closer to being hunted
and killed by the Mogadorians, and she had acted like it
didn’t exist. Like it didn’t mean what we both know it
means. Upon hearing the news about John, she merely
rolled her eyes and told me to stop believing in fairy tales.
“En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espiritu
Santo. Amen,” they say, and everyone in the room makes
the sign of the cross in unison with this last sentence,
myself included to keep up appearances: forehead, chest,
left shoulder, right shoulder.
I had been asleep, dreaming of running down a mountain
with my arms out at my sides as if I was about to take flight,
when I had been awoken by the pain and glow of the third
scar wrapping itself around my lower leg. The light had
woken several girls in the room, but thankfully not the
attending Sister. The girls thought I had a flashlight and a
magazine under the covers and that I was breaking the
rules of curfew. On the bed next to mine, Elena, a quiet
sixteen-year-old with jet-black hair she often sticks in her
mouth when speaking, had thrown a pillow at me. My flesh
had begun to bubble, and the pain had been so intense I
had to bite on the edge of my blanket to remain quiet. I
couldn’t help but cry, because somewhere Number Three
had lost his or her life. There were six of us left now.
Tonight I file out of the nave with the rest of the girls and
head to our sleeping quarters filled with creaky twin beds
evenly spaced apart, but in my mind I’m hatching a plan. To
compensate for the hard beds and the concrete chill of
every room, the linens are soft and the blankets heavy, the
only real luxury we’re afforded. My bed is in the back
corner, farthest from the door, which is the most sought
after spot; it’s the quietest, and it took me a long time to get
it, moving one bed closer as each girl left.
The lights are shut off once everyone is settled in. I lie on
my back and stare at the faint, jagged outline of the high
ceiling. An occasional whisper breaks the silence, followed
immediately by the attending Sister shushing whoever it
came from. I keep my eyes open, waiting impatiently for
everyone to fall asleep. After a half hour the whispers fade,
replaced by the soft sounds of sleep, but I don’t dare risk it
yet. Too soon. Another fifteen minutes and still no sounds.
Then I can’t stand it any longer.
I hold my breath and inch my legs over the edge of the
bed, listening to the rhythm of Elena’s breathing beside me.
My feet find the icy floor, and turn cold instantly. I stand
slowly to keep the bed from creaking and then tiptoe
across the room and towards the door, taking my time,
being careful not to bump any beds. I reach the open
doorway and rush out into the hall and down to the
computer room. I pull out the chair and push the computer’s
power button.
I fidget waiting for the computer to boot up and keep
peering towards the hallway to see if anyone has followed.
I’m finally able to type in the web address and the screen
goes white, then two pictures take shape in the center of
the page, surrounded by text with a top headline in bold
black letters too blurry to read. Two images now—I wonder
what changed since I tried to check earlier. And then, at
last, they come into focus:
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS?
John Smith, with his square jaw, shaggy dark blond hair,
and blue eyes, fills the left side of the screen, while his
father—or more likely Cepan—Henri takes up the right.
What’s there isn’t a photo but a black-and-white artist’s
sketch done in pencil. I skim the details I already know—
demolished school, five deaths, abrupt disappearance—
and then come to the breaking news only now being
reported:
In a bizarre twist, FBI investigators today un-covered
what is believed to be the tools of a professional
counterfeiter. Several machines typically used for the
creation of documents were found in the Paradise,
Ohio, home rented by Henri and John Smith in a hatch
beneath the floorboards of the master bedroom,
leading investigators to consider possible links to
terrorism. Creating local uproar within the Paradise
community, Henri and John Smith are now considered
a threat to national security, fugitives; and investigators
are asking for any and all information that might lead to
their whereabouts.
I scroll back to John’s image, and when my gaze meets
his, my hands begin to shake. His eyes—even in this
sketch there’s something familiar about them. How could I
know them if not from the yearlong journey that brought us
here? Nobody can convince me now that he isn’t one of the
six remaining Garde, still alive in this foreign world.
I lean back and blow my bangs out of my eyes, wishing I
could go in search of John myself. Of course Henri and
John Smith are able to elude police; they’ve kept hidden for
eleven years now, just as Adelina and I have. But how can I
possibly hope to be the one to find him when the whole
world is looking? How can any of us hope to come
together?
The eyes of the Mogadorians are everywhere. I have no
idea how One or Three were found, but I believe they
located Two because of a blog post he or she had written. I
had found it, and then I’d sat there for fifteen minutes
thinking how best to respond without giving myself away.
Though the message itself had been obscure, it was very
obvious to those of us looking: Nine, now eight. Are the rest
of you out there? It had been posted by an account called
Two. My fingers found the keyboard and I’d typed a quick
response, and just before I hit the Post button, the page
refreshed—somebody else had responded first.
We are here, it read.
My mouth had dropped open, and I’d stared in utter
shock. Hope flooded through me from those two brief
messages, but just as my fingers had typed a different
reply, a bright glow appeared at my feet and the sizzling
sound of burning flesh reached my ears, followed closely by
a searing pain so great that I’d dropped to the floor and
writhed in agony, screaming at the top of my lungs for
Adelina, holding my hands over my ankle so no one else
would see. When Adelina arrived and realized what was
happening, I’d pointed at the screen, but it was blank; both
posts had been deleted.
I look away from John Smith’s familiar eyes on the
screen. Beside the computer sits a small flower that’s been
forgotten. It’s wilted and tired, shrunken down to half its
normal height, a brown, crispy tinge at the edge of its
leaves. Several petals have dropped, now dry and crinkled
on the desk around the pot. The flower isn’t dead yet, but
it’s not far off. I lean forward and cup my hands around it,
move my face near enough so that my lips brush against
the edge of its leaves, and then I blow hot air over it. An icy
feeling shoots down my spine and, in response, life bursts
through the small flower. It springs upward and a verdant
green floods the leaves and stalk and new petals bloom,
colorless at first, then turning a brilliant purple. A
mischievous grin sprouts on my face, and I can’t help but
think of how the Sisters would react if they were to see such
a thing. But I’ll never let them. It would be misinterpreted,
and I don’t want to be cast out into the cold. I’m not ready
for that. Soon, but not just yet.
I turn off the computer and hurry back to bed while
thoughts of John Smith, somewhere out there, swim in my
head.
Be safe and stay hidden, I think. We’ll find each other
yet.

Categories: The Power of Six

The Power of Six - Chapter 1

Chapter 1


MY NAME IS MARINA, AS OF THE SEA, BUT I WASN’T called that until
much later. In the beginning I was known merely as Seven,
one of the nine surviving Garde from the planet Lorien, the
fate of which was, and still is, left in our hands. Those of us
who aren’t lost. Those of us still alive.
I was six when we landed. When the ship jolted to a halt
on Earth, even at my young age I sensed how much was at
stake for us—nine Cepan, nine Garde—and that our only
chance waited for us here. We had entered the planet’s
atmosphere in the midst of a storm of our own creation, and
as our feet found Earth for the very first time, I remember
the wisps of steam that rolled off the ship and the goose
bumps that covered my arms. I hadn’t felt the wind in a year,
and it was freezing outside. Somebody was there waiting
for us. I don’t know who he was, only that he handed each
Cepan two sets of clothes and a large envelope. I still don’t
know what was in it.
As a group we huddled together, knowing we might
never see one another again. Words were spoken, hugs
were given, and then we split up, as we knew we must,
walking in pairs in nine different directions. I kept peering
over my shoulder as the others receded in the distance
until, very slowly, one by one, they all disappeared. And
then it was just Adelina and me, alone. I realize now just
how scared Adelina must have been.
I remember boarding a ship headed to some unknown
destination. I remember two or three different trains after
that. Adelina and I kept to ourselves, huddled against each
other in obscure corners, away from whoever might be
around. We hiked from town to town, over mountains and
across fields, knocking on doors that were quickly
slammed in our faces. We were hungry, tired, and scared. I
remember sitting on a sidewalk begging for change. I
remember crying instead of sleeping. I’m certain that
Adelina gave away some of our precious gems from Lorien
for nothing more than warm meals, so great was our need.
Perhaps she gave them all away. And then we found this
place in Spain.
A stern-looking woman I would come to know as Sister
Lucia answered the heavy oak door. She squinted at
Adelina, taking in her desperation, the way her shoulders
drooped.
“Do you believe in the word of God?” the woman asked
in Spanish, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes in
scrutiny.
“The word of God is my vow,” Adelina replied with a
solemn nod. I don’t know how she knew this response—
perhaps she learned it when we stayed in a church
basement weeks before—but it was the right one. Sister
Lucia opened the door.
We’ve been here ever since, eleven years in this stone
convent with its musty rooms, drafty hallways, and hard
floors like slabs of ice. Aside from the few visitors, the
internet is my only source to the world outside our small
town; and I search it constantly, looking for some indication
that the others are out there, that they’re searching, maybe
fighting. Some sign that I’m not alone, because at this point
I can’t say that Adelina still believes, that she’s still with me.
Her attitude changed somewhere over the mountains.
Maybe it was with the slam of one of the doors that shut a
starving woman and her child out in the cold for another
night. Whatever it was, Adelina seems to have lost the
urgency of staying on the move, and her faith in the
resurgence of Lorien seems to have been replaced by the
faith shared by the convent’s Sisters. I remember a distinct
shift in Adelina’s eyes, her sudden speeches on the need
for guidance and structure if we were to survive.
My faith in Lorien remains intact. In India, a year and a
half ago, four different people witnessed a boy move
objects with his mind. While the significance behind the
event was small at first, the boy’s abrupt disappearance
shortly thereafter created much buzz in the region, and a
hunt for him began. As far as I know, he hasn’t been found.
A few months ago there was news of a girl in Argentina
who, in the wake of an earthquake, lifted a five-ton slab of
concrete to save a man trapped beneath it; and when news
of this heroic act spread, she disappeared. Like the boy in
India, she’s still missing.
And then there’s the father-son duo making all the news
now in America, in Ohio, who the police are hunting after
the two allegedly demolished an entire school by
themselves, killing five people in the process. They left no
trace behind other than mysterious heaps of ash.
“It looks like a battle took place here. I don’t know how
else to explain it,” the head investigator was quoted as
saying. “But make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of
this, and we will find Henri Smith and his son, John.”
Perhaps John Smith, if that’s his real name, is merely a
boy with a grudge who was pushed too far. But I don’t think
that’s the case. My heart races whenever his picture
appears on my screen. I’m gripped with a profound
desperation that I can’t quite explain. I can feel it in my
bones that he’s one of us. And I know, somehow, that I must
find him.

Categories: The Power of Six