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‘He would forgive you,’ she says softly, adding, ‘I forgive you.’
Nine puts his arm around Marina and pulls her into a hug that’s tight enough to make her squeak. He buries his face in her hair, hiding his tears. My mind is and has always been racing – wondering about John, Sam and the others, worrying about how we’re going to find our way back to them, if they’re even still alive and uncaptured – but seeing Marina and Nine like this, coming together, starting to heal, it gives me hope. We’re a strong people. We can get through anything.
‘We need to get moving,’ I say gently, reluctant to end this moment but knowing that I have to.
Nine finally releases Marina, and I carefully zip up Eight’s body bag. Nine reaches down and, with an equal amount of care, lifts Eight’s body into his arms.
Just as we turn towards the hangar doors, they rumble open.
The group of Mogadorians who were working on the scout ship. I forgot all about them. They stand in the doorway, caught in the middle of pushing their broken ship into the hangar. They look about as surprised to see us as we are to see them.
Before we can do anything, a mechanical grinding emanates from the ship. The front – or at least the side of the saucer aimed directly at us – opens up, a blaster turret clanking into view and whirring to life with an electric sizzle. There must be a Mog inside.
‘Get down!’ Nine shouts.
There’s no cover in this empty hangar except the metal table, and it’s way too late to go invisible. Marina flips over the table, Nine crouches with Eight’s body still in his arms, and I dive to the side, hoping that we’re fast enough as the turret opens fire.
13
‘Does the name Grahish Sharma mean anything to you?’ Sarah asks.
I think for a moment, trying to pluck the name out of my memory. ‘Sounds kind of familiar. Why?’
I’m standing in the yard outside Adam’s old house, Sarah’s voice arriving long-distance over the disposable cell phone. Beyond the empty basketball courts, the sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon. A large bird cuts across the orange sky and I wonder if it’s one of ours – we’ve set the Chimærae up as sentries all around the grounds of Ashwood Estates with orders to find us if any intruders should appear. So far, it’s been quiet. If I didn’t know better, it’d seem like I was hanging out in a peculiarly quiet suburb, one where everyone’s still at work.
‘He’s from India,’ Sarah explains. ‘He’s the commander of something called the Vishnu Nationalist Eight.’
The name clicks at the mention of Eight and I snap my fingers. ‘Oh, right. That’s the army guy who was protecting Eight in the Himalayas.’
‘Hmm,’ Sarah says. ‘So his story checks out.’
I pace across the lawn, picturing Sarah with her blond hair pulled up in a studious bun, pens and pencils stuck through it, poring over some documents in the new offices of They Walk Among Us. Never mind that those offices are located in an abandoned ranch fifty miles outside of Huntsville, Alabama. Never mind that Sarah was escorted there by her ex-boyfriend Mark, who’s actually turned out to be surprisingly capable at this cloak-and-dagger stuff. It’s the image of Sarah that I focus on.
‘What story is that?’
‘Well, it’s a lot of rumor and internet weirdness that we’re trying to cut through. But this Sharma guy is claiming to have shot down an alien spacecraft and captured its crew.’
‘Some of the Mogs who were after Eight, probably,’ I reply.
‘Right. Took them alive and everything. Even though it happened in India, it should still be national news, but it’s not. Someone’s keeping a lid on it. Mark’s trying to make contact with Sharma. He wants to run the story on They Walk Among Us, hopefully expose the Mogs to the general public.’
‘Huh,’ I say, rubbing the back of my neck and thinking out loud. ‘Might help rally some support if things get bad.’
‘How bad are things going to get, John?’
I swallow hard. Even though I used my healing Legacy shortly after battle, I can still feel the General’s fingers clenched around my throat.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, not sure why I’m hiding Adam’s theory on imminent invasion from Sarah. I guess maybe I’m still trying to protect her. I quickly change the subject. ‘How’s Mark doing, anyway?’
‘He’s doing fine,’ Sarah replies. ‘He’s changed a lot.’
‘How so?’
Sarah hesitates. ‘I … it’s hard to explain.’
I don’t dwell for very long on the present state of Mark James. It isn’t what I want to talk about. Really, after nearly dying this afternoon, all I want is to hear Sarah’s voice.
‘I miss you,’ I say.
‘I miss you, too,’ Sarah replies. ‘After a long day of fighting alien invaders and unraveling international conspiracies, I wish we could just snuggle up on that old couch in my basement and watch a movie.’
That makes me laugh, the feeling bittersweet as I picture the kind of normal life Sarah and I might be leading if we weren’t trying to save the world.
‘Soon,’ I tell her, trying to sound confident.
‘I hope so,’ she replies.
I sense movement behind me and turn around to find Sam standing on the ruined porch of Adam’s house. He motions for me to come inside.
‘Sarah, I’ve gotta go,’ I say, feeling reluctant to hang up the phone. We’ve been checking in with each other every eight hours like we planned, and I feel a sense of relief every time I hear her voice. Every time I disconnect, I start thinking about the next time … the time when she won’t call. ‘Be careful, okay? Things might be getting pretty heavy soon.’
‘Things aren’t already heavy?’ she asks. ‘You be careful, too. I love you.’
I say good-bye to Sarah and tilt my head at Sam. He looks almost excited, like he’s gotten some good news in the last five minutes.
‘What’s up?’
‘Come down,’ he says. ‘We figured something out.’
I climb on to what’s left of the porch after this afternoon’s skirmish and follow Sam through the half-sunken doorway into the living room. The interior of the house matches the exterior – the perfect idea of human suburbia – except the furniture looks like it was arranged exactly as seen on the pages of a catalogue. There’s absolutely no sense of it being lived in. I try to imagine what it was like for Adam growing up here, try to picture him bashing little Piken action figures together on the floor, and just can’t do it.
At the back of the living room is a massive metal door secured by a series of locks operated by a keypad covered in Mogadorian symbols. The door is the one thing that breaks the suburban illusion and it’s actually kind of surprising to me that the Mogs didn’t try hiding it behind a bookcase or something. I guess they never thought their enemies would make it this far. The door is already open, unlocked by Adam earlier, and it’s through there that Sam and I descend into the tunnels beneath Ashwood Estates.
We walk down a long metal staircase, the phony homeliness above immediately replaced by sterile stainless steel and buzzing halogen lights. The labyrinthine network of tunnels beneath Ashwood is much more in keeping with my idea of the Mogadorians – functional and cold. It’s not quite as sprawling down here as the hollowed-out mountain in West Virginia, but it definitely puts Dulce Base to shame. I wonder how long it took them to carve all this out, the Mogs tunneling into the Earth during those years I was on the run with Henri, expanding their reach without us even realizing it.
There’s a jagged and long crack in the wall that starts about halfway down the steps and runs ahead deeper into the tunnels. Sam reaches out to drag his hand along it, coating his fingers with concrete dust.
‘We’re sure this place isn’t going to collapse, right?’
‘Adam doesn’t think so,’ Sam replies, clapping his hands clean, the noise echoing. ‘It creeps me out down here, though. Seriously claustrophobic.’
‘Don’t worry. We won’t be staying l
ong.’
We pass other cracks as we navigate the twisting hallways, places where the foundation shifted, broken sections of concrete grinding against each other. The damage was caused the last time Adam was here, when he unleashed his earthquake Legacy to rescue Malcolm. There are some hallways where the ceilings have outright collapsed.
Down the hall, we pass by a large, well-lit room that looks like it might have been a laboratory at one point, lots of nozzles and levers and worktables, but no equipment. Everything must have gotten destroyed in Adam’s attack, and the Mog salvage team never got the chance to replace it. Next to the lab, we pass a row of oppressive eight-by-eight rooms with thick doors made from bulletproof glass. Cells. All of them currently unoccupied.
‘The archives are up here,’ Sam tells me. ‘Dad’s been in there nonstop. The Mogs recorded everything.’
We stop by a small room – almost like an office – with a huge bank of monitors. Malcolm sits behind the room’s single computer terminal, bleary-eyed from watching who knows how many hours of footage. On-screen, a Mogadorian scout speaks directly into the camera.
‘It has been three days since we leaked rumors of a Loric presence in Buenos Aires,’ the scout reports. ‘There has yet to be any sign of Garde, but surveillance continues –’
Malcolm pauses the video when he notices us, rubbing his eyes.
‘Find anything useful?’ I ask.
Malcolm shakes his head and pulls up a list of files on the computer. He brushes a finger down the touch screen, and the files begin an endless scroll. There are thousands of them, and all their titles are in Mogadorian.
‘From what I can gather, this is almost five years’ worth of Mogadorian intelligence,’ Malcolm explains. ‘I’d need an entire team to go through it all. Even with Adam translating these titles, which are basically just dates and times, it’s hard to figure out where to begin.’
