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“I might not share your ideology, Phiri Dun-Ra,” Adam says, raising his voice to be heard over her screaming, “but I do share your biology. I know where your nerves are, where to hurt you best. I will spend the rest of the night picking you apart until you beg for disintegration.”
Adam releases his grip on Phiri, letting her fall back into the dirt. She’s panting, struggling to get in a deep breath.
“Or you can tell us where you hid the conduits,” Adam says calmly. “Now.”
“I’ll never—” Phiri is cut off, flinching as Adam stands up. He’s suddenly lost interest in her.
He saw the same thing I did. The way Phiri Dun-Ra’s eyes flicked towards a moss-covered log at the edge of the clearing. Adam walks over to the log while she squirms around in the dirt, trying to keep her eyes on him. On closer inspection, the log is rotten, hollowed out by termites. Adam plunges his hand inside and tugs out a small duffel bag. Phiri must have shoved the bag in there before attacking Marina.
“Aha,” he says, giving the bag a good shake. Inside, metal parts clang together. “Thanks for your help.”
Marina and I exchange a relieved look, even as Phiri screeches out her latest taunt.
“It doesn’t matter, traitor,” she says. “Nothing you do matters anymore!”
That gets my attention. I give Phiri a not-so-gentle kick in the back to make her roll over and look at me.
“What does that mean?” I ask her. “What’re you saying?”
“War came and went,” Phiri replies, laughing at me. “Earth is already ours.”
My stomach drops at the thought, but I don’t let it show. We have to get out of Mexico and see for ourselves.
“Are the parts intact?” I ask Adam.
“She’s lying to you, Six. It’s what she does,” he reassures me, maybe detecting a tremor of nervousness in my voice. He tosses down the duffel bag and crouches over it.
“What should we do with her?” Marina asks me. She focuses on Phiri Dun-Ra for a second, reinforcing the ice shackles that have begun to melt.
I’m considering my answer when Adam grunts, yanking on the zipper that appears to be stuck on something. When the zipper comes loose, something inside the duffel bag clicks, like a timer being armed.
“Watch out!” Adam screams as he shoves the bag away from him. Everything happens so fast. I see the ground rise up in front of the duffel bag and realize that Adam is using his seismic Legacy to try shielding us. With an orange flash of light and a loud pop, the bomb inside the bag detonates right in front of him. Chunks of dirt and deadly shrapnel fly through the clearing. I’m thrown to the ground from the concussion blast. I can feel fresh pain in my leg—a jagged piece of metal, probably ship parts, is lodged in my thigh.
Above the ringing in my ears, I can hear Phiri laughing hysterically.
CHAPTER
SIX
A HEAVY WEIGHT FALLS ACROSS MY LEGS, DRIVING the shrapnel sticking out of my thigh even deeper. It’s Phiri Dun-Ra. She has fresh lacerations on her face and arms, the results of her own improvised bomb. Her wrists and ankles are still bound by the ice manacles, but that hasn’t stopped her from throwing herself on top of me. I’m still stunned from the blast, so I don’t react as quickly as I should. Phiri headbutts me in the sternum as she worms her way across my body.
“Now you die, Loric trash,” she says maniacally, still giddy over the success of her booby trap.
I’m not sure what her plan is here—maybe to bite me to death or smother me with her body, but I’m not so out of sorts that either of those things is going to happen. With a quick burst of telekinesis, I swipe Phiri Dun-Ra off me. She tumbles through the dirt, rolling across glowing bits of scorched duffel bag. She tries to get herself onto her feet, screaming in frustration as her bonds get in the way.
She’s silenced when I kick her across the face as hard as I can. Phiri flops to the ground unconscious.
“Stay with me!”
It’s Marina’s voice that snaps me out of my rage or I’d probably kill Phiri right there. I spin around and see her bent over Adam.
“Is he . . . ?!”
I limp across the clearing, forgetting that there’s a six-inch piece of jagged steel protruding from my thigh. I ignore the pain. Adam’s in much worse shape than I am.
I stagger around the small hill of earth Adam was able to construct in the few seconds before the explosion. It absorbed a lot of the shrapnel, but not enough. The bomb still basically detonated right in front of him, so Adam took the brunt of the blast. He’s on his back now, Marina leaning over him, and I cringe at the amount of damage he’s taken. His entire midsection is blown open, like he’s been scooped out. He should’ve dived out of the way instead of standing there like a human shield. Stupid Mog, trying to be a hero.
Amazingly, Adam’s still conscious. He can’t speak; all the strength he can muster seems to be going into breathing. His eyes are wide and scared as he sucks in wet, rattling breaths. His hands, soaked with his blood, are curled into tight fists.
“I can do this, I can do this . . . ,” Marina repeats to herself, not hesitating at all as she lays her hands on Adam’s grisly wound. Looking over her shoulder, helpless, I realize how sadly familiar this situation must be for Marina. It’s like Eight all over again.
As Adam’s breathing becomes more and more ragged, I watch as his insides begin to knit themselves back together under Marina’s touch. And then something disturbing happens—there’s a crackle and hiss, like a fire starting, and a piece of Adam’s midsection briefly sparks before disintegrating into that familiar Mogadorian death ash.
Marina cries out in surprise, pulling her hands away.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, eyes wide.
“I don’t know!” Marina yells. “Something’s fighting me, Six. I’m afraid I’m hurting him.”
The second Marina’s healing stops, Adam’s still-open wound begins bleeding again. He’s getting pale. More pale than usual, even. His hand scrabbles through the dirt and gropes for Marina.
“Don’t . . . agh, don’t stop,” Adam manages to gurgle, and when he does I can see that there’s dark blood in his mouth. “Whatever happens . . . don’t stop.”
Steeling herself, Marina again presses down on Adam’s injury. She squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates, fresh sweat dripping down the sides of her dirt-smudged face. I’ve seen Marina heal a lot of injuries before, but this is definitely the most effort I’ve seen her expend. Adam’s body slowly begins to regenerate, until another section of his insides sparks and disintegrates, looking like the fuse of a bomb burning up inside him. When that’s over, though, the rest of him heals normally.
It takes a couple of minutes, but Marina finally gets Adam closed up. She falls backwards onto her butt, breathing like she’s just finished sprinting, her hands shaking. Adam remains on his back, running his fingers over the skin of his abdomen that minutes ago wasn’t there. Finally, he props himself up on an elbow and looks at Marina.
“Thank you,” he says, locking eyes with her, his face a mixture of amazement and gratitude.
“Don’t mention it,” Marina replies, catching her breath.
“Um, Marina . . . would you mind?” I gesture to the piece of metal still sticking out of my leg.
Marina groans from the exertion, but nods, maneuvering around so she’s on her knees in front of me. “
Do you want me to pull it out or . . . ?”
Before she can finish, I yank the jagged piece of shrapnel out of my thigh. A fresh spurt of blood trickles down my leg. The pain is bad, but Marina quickly numbs it with a blast of cold before using her healing Legacy to close me up. Compared to putting Adam back together, it takes no time at all.
When she’s finished with me, Marina immediately looks back at Adam. “What was that when I was healing you? Why was it so hard?”
“I . . . I don’t know, exactly,” Adam replies, staring into the distance.
“You started to disintegrate a little,” I say. “Like you were dying.”
“I was dying,” Adam says. “But that shouldn’t happen to me. The vatborn warriors you’ve faced turn to ash because they’re made entirely from Setrákus Ra’s genetic experimentation. Some trueborn, like me, receive modifications that would cause them to disintegrate when they die. I haven’t received anything like that, though. At least . . .”
“Not that you know of,” I finish the thought for him.
“Yeah,” Adam replies, looking down at himself like he suddenly doesn’t trust his own body. “I was in a coma for years. It’s possible my father might have done something to me. I don’t know what, though.”
“Whatever it was, I think my healing burned it out of you,” Marina says.
“I hope so,” Adam replies.
All three of us fall silent. With the medical emergencies averted, it becomes clear just how badly we’ve screwed up. I walk over to the scorched patch of dirt where Phiri Dun-Ra’s explosive went off, kicking around tattered bits of duffel bag and misshapen hunks of metal. The bag was probably filled with conduits, but I don’t find anything even slightly salvageable.
We are now totally stranded here.
