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“Sick,” Nine replies.
“I didn’t want to give him what he was after.”
“Uh-huh. I know we usually lose when the bad guys get their way, John. But, man, I think this one was a win-win.”
“I disagree.”
Nine rolls his eyes, then looks towards Five. “We can never trust him, though. You know that, right?”
“I know that.”
“And if it comes down to it, I’m not gonna hesitate to do it again. You won’t be able to stop me.”
“You must still be concussed,” I say to him with a smile, deflecting the bluster. I gesture to his chest and arms, still covered in scrapes and blaster burns, and his broken hand. “You want me to finish healing all that?”
Nine nods. “Unless you only do work on murderers now,” he replies.
While I heal Nine, Daniela comes over and introduces herself. She gets the usual Cheshire grin from the big idiot. We bring him up to speed on everything that happened while he was brawling across the city with Five. When I’m finished, Nine turns to look out at the water and the burning city beyond.
“We should’ve done better,” he says quietly, shaking out his arms and legs, stretching his muscles. “Should’ve gotten him when we had the chance.”
“I know,” I reply. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
“We’ll have more chances,” Nine says, then claps his hands and turns to Agent Walker. “So, you bringing us to Mexico or what, lady?”
Walker raises an eyebrow at Nine. Just then, Agent Murray returns, jogging back with his arms full of thick rope he must’ve freed from the boat. He hands it over to me and I proceed to tie up the still-unconscious Five, binding his wrists and ankles as tightly as possible. The cuffs of his jeans hitch up as I’m yanking closed the knots and I catch a glimpse of his scars. So similar to mine, identifying us as part of the same nearly extinct people. How did Five ever get to this point? And what happens next?
“What’re we going to do with him?” Sam asks, reading my mind.
“Prison,” I respond, realizing this is what I want only when I say it. “Just because I saved his life doesn’t mean there won’t be justice. We need a padded room for him, one where he can’t touch anything remotely hard.”
“That can be arranged,” Walker says.
She makes this offer quickly. It makes me wonder if she and the government have already designed places like that for us, prisons capable of holding us in spite of our Legacies. Maybe that was something MogPro was working on.
“Arrange it after you figure out how to get us to Mexico,” I tell her. “We’re not waiting any longer, Walker.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if the president or those generals or whoever the hell’s in charge over there don’t get us on a jet in the next ten minutes, we’re just going to take one.”
Walker snorts at this. “You can’t fly a jet.”
“Bet you somebody’ll volunteer when I start breaking faces,” Nine says, stepping forward to back my play.
Agent Murray unclips his own walkie-talkie from his belt and offers it to Walker.
“Just make the call, Karen,” he sighs.
Walker gives Murray an icy look and produces her own satellite phone and walks a few steps away from us. Despite our history, I’m pretty convinced that Walker really does want to help us. It’s the rest of the government that isn’t convinced we’re a good bet to win this war. She’s doing everything she can in the face of that. Our window to be of any help to Six, Sarah and the others is getting smaller and smaller, though. I can’t stand around anymore hoping that these people will support us in our fight. We’re going to save them, whether they want us to or not. That’s all there is to it.
“You guys aren’t really going to attack the army now, are you?” Daniela asks, keeping her voice low so the agents don’t overhear.
“Shit, I can barely stand up,” Nine replies quietly.
“We do need to get down there, though,” Sam says, and I know he’s thinking about Six as much as I’m thinking about Sarah. “If she can’t help us, what’re we going to do?”
Nine looks at me. “You’d actually go through with it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “If they won’t help, we’ll make them.”
Daniela whistles through her teeth. “That’s intense, man.”
I look over at Walker. She’s keeping her voice quiet, but is making a lot of emphatic hand gestures.
“She knows what’s at stake. Walker will come through.” As I say this, I produce my own satellite phone. I should check in with Sarah and Six, see where they’re at and make sure they aren’t going to try taking on Setrákus Ra by themselves.
Before I can hit the button to dial, there’s a strange and loud whooshing sound from the water. We all turn in that direction just in time to see a large metallic cylinder fly out of the river. It soars high into the air, jets of water shooting off it as it spins towards the nearby docks. The thing is big—big enough that when it lands, with a shriek of crumpling metal, bricks go exploding outwards from the impact. I see the captain of our commandeered coast guard boat go diving overboard into the water to avoid the flying debris.
It’s the submarine we saw in the harbor earlier.
“What—how is that possible?” Sam exclaims.
Something tossed the submarine right out of the water.
We run towards the docks to check for survivors, although it doesn’t look good. The back half of the vessel is crumpled in like a crushed aluminum can and there are jagged trenches clawed in the sub’s side paneling. We can see right through the walls as we get closer—the ship definitely took on water. Loose wires from the fried electrical systems spit sparks as we approach.
“Careful,” I say. “Don’t get too close.”
“What the hell could’ve done this?” Nine asks, his hands braced on his knees as he catches his breath.
As if in answer, the captain of our boat screams. One minute he’s treading water and waiting for us to tell him it’s all clear, and the next there’s a dark shadow growing underneath him. He’s sucked beneath the waves with a sharp cry and swallowed whole by the beast that slowly rises from the depths of the Hudson River.
We all take a step back, then another. Two of the agents break off into sprints in the opposite direction, horrified by the size of the creature before us. Water flows off the monster’s knobby skin, which is translucent to the point where I can see the black blood pumping through its power-line-sized veins. It is hairless, neckless and hunched. Crooked fangs protru
de from its lower jaw and make it impossible for the thing to fully close its mouth, a steady stream of yellowish drool spilling forth. Gills the size of helicopter propellers spasm as the monster takes its first breath of air. It’s on all fours, its hind legs bowed, its front legs more like thick gorilla arms, and already it’s almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
The tough-girl attitude drops pretty quickly for Daniela. She screams and Nine has to clap a hand over her mouth. I don’t blame her. The monster is terrifying and I’ve fought plenty of the Mogadorians’ twisted creations before.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispers. “It’s a freaking tarrasque.”
My head whips around to Sam in disbelief. “You’ve seen one of these before?”
“No, I—I—,” he stammers. “It’s a D&D thing.”
“Nerd,” Nine mumbles as he slowly backpedals.
Daniela shoves Nine’s hand away, getting it together enough to glare at me. “You didn’t tell me they have, uh—freaking Mogasaurs!”
This must’ve been what Setrákus Ra dropped into the water when the Anubis left this morning. One last gift for the decimated city of New York. A reminder for the military presence of who’s really in charge. I let my Lumen course over my hands. I’ll have to generate a lot of fire if I’m going to make a mark on this beast.
“I know you can see this thing!” Walker shouts into her satellite phone, probably blowing out the eardrum of whoever she was having a hushed conversation with just moments ago. “Air support! Get me some goddamn air strikes!”
The Mogasaur tilts its flat face towards the sky. The viscous membranes that I take to be nostrils start to twitch. Then it opens its eyes—each one milky white, arranged in a diamond pattern on the beast’s broad forehead. It’s hard to make out at this distance, but I could swear I see a glimmer of cobalt blue in each of those eyes. From the center of each eye, where the pupil would be, I can definitely see a ripple of bluish energy firing into the creature.
The color, the energy—it reminds me of our pendants. Could this be the result of what Setrákus Ra was doing when I glimpsed him on board the Anubis? But what does that mean? Besides being as big as a building, what can this monster do that the others we’ve faced can’t? Are the stolen pendants powering it somehow? Or are they doing something else entirely?
