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Still standing just off the shore, the Mogasaur swings its head around and looks directly at us.
“Shit,” Nine says, stepping back. “Is it coming this way?”
“Now!” Walker screams into the phone, backing up as well. “It’s a goddamn giant!”
“I think it can sense us,” I say. “I think—I think Setrákus Ra left this here to hunt us.”
“Okay,” Daniela replies. “I gotta go.”
As if in answer, the Mogasaur lets out a deafening roar in our direction, spraying mist from the river and its rotten-fish breath all over us. Then, it lifts one of its front arms out of the river muck and brings it crashing down on the dock. Wooden beams explode in splinters and the concrete walkway caves in, two of the ferry boats pushed underwater like toys.
It’s coming this way.
I lob a fireball at the Mogasaur. Quickly, I realize it’s too small to do any damage. The fireball sizzles and leaves a scorch mark in the monster’s hide, but it doesn’t even notice.
“Run!” I shout. “Fan out! Use the statue as cover!”
Nine, Daniela, Walker and Murray all run back towards the grass and the statue. But Sam stays rooted in place, even as the Mogasaur takes another booming step towards us.
“Sam! Come on!” I shout, grabbing him by the arm.
“John? Do you feel that?”
I stare at Sam. Both of his eyes are changed—filled up with crackling energy. They look almost like two out-of-tune TVs, except the light Sam’s eyes gives off is bright azure.
“Sam? What the he—?”
Before I can finish my question, Sam spasms once and collapses. I manage to catch him and try to drag him backwards. Daniela and Nine see this happen and stop in their tracks.
“Johnny, what’s wrong with him?” Nine shouts.
“Grab him and run!” Daniela adds.
Boom. Another explosion behind us. The Mogasaur has gotten all its limbs out of the water, practically crushing the entire dock beneath it. The submarine is stuck like a thorn in the palm of its front hand, and the beast is temporarily distracted trying to shake it loose. I don’t know what’s wrong with Sam, but I don’t think the gargantuan brute behind us is the cause. His affliction is something else entirely.
“He passed out!” I yell to Nine. “He—”
I’m cut off as both Daniela and Nine go all herky-jerky, their eyes filling with the same blue light. They slump to the ground at the same time, collapsing on top of each other.
“No!”
And then it happens to me.
A tentacle of vivid blue light rises up from the ground in front of me. For some reason, I’m not afraid. It’s almost like I recognize this weird energy formation. I can sense that it runs deep into the earth, and I can also sense that if Agent Walker or the Mogasaur or someone without Legacies was to look where I’m staring right now, they’d see nothing but empty space. This is just for me.
It’s my connection. My connection to Lorien.
Faster than my eye can follow, the finger of light attaches to my forehead. Right now, I’m sure my eyes are spilling electric energy just like the others did before they passed out.
I feel it happening. I’m leaving my body.
I recognize this sensation. It’s exactly like when Ella pulled me into her vision.
“Ella?” I say, although I’m pretty sure this word doesn’t actually come out of my mouth. I’m pretty sure that my body’s currently prone on the docks, not all that far from the biggest monster I’ve ever seen in my life.
Hi, John, Ella replies inside my head. When she does, I can hear her saying other words as well, like she’s holding down hundreds of conversations at once.
I don’t think to ask how this is possible. Ella’s supposed to be thousands of miles away with Setrákus Ra or, hopefully, in the process of getting rescued by Six. She’s not this powerful. Her powers don’t work like this. I don’t think of any of that. I’m more focused on my physical body, not to mention Nine, Sam and Daniela. Whatever Ella’s doing to us, she couldn’t have picked a worse possible time.
“What the hell is happening? You’re going to get us killed!”
Any second, I expect to hear the crunch of my bones as the Mogasaur steps on me. It doesn’t come. Instead, shapes begin to form in front of my eyes—blurry, indistinct forms, like a movie projector that’s out of focus.
Don’t worry, Ella says, and again there’s that echo of other voices. This will only take a second.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
HOW LONG AM I KNOCKED OUT FOR? IT CAN’T be more than a couple of minutes before I’m awakened by icy pinpricks along the side of my face. It’s Marina, pouring her healing Legacy into me. My head’s in her lap. I get a strange pulling sensation at my hairline as the tissue there regrows, the gash I took from falling bricks quickly healed up.
Marina’s got her non-healing hand clasped over my mouth, I guess in case I woke up screaming. I widen my eyes at her to show her that I’m with it and she takes her hand away. Her face is covered with chalky brown dust from the exploded temple. There are tear streaks running through the grime on Marina’s face.
“He destroyed it, Six,” she whispers raggedly. “He destroyed the whole thing.” I sit up and assess our situation. We’re still at the edge of the jungle, hidden behind the fallen tree trunk and now a whole bunch of dislodged chunks of limestone. There are gaps in the canopy above our heads from where the pieces of the Sanctuary came crashing down. Luckily, no one else appears injured, or else Marina already took care of them.
Marina stays next to me as I crawl forward to approach the others. Mark and Adam lie on their stomachs, side by side, just to the right of the fallen log. They’ve got their blasters pointed out and are using a block of stone for cover. I notice bloodstains on Mark’s shirt and remember that he took a piece of shrapnel to the chest right before I got knocked out.
I touch his shoulder. “You okay?”
He shoots a grateful look in Marina’s direction. “I’m good. Really don’t want to make a habit of that, though. You?”
“Same.”
Sarah is right up against the fallen log, peeking out from behind it. Phiri Dun-Ra is shoved in next to her. She wasn’t crushed by any of the debris that landed in our area, which just seems unfair. The Mogadorian is still unconscious or, more likely, playing possum. I make sure to check her bonds quickly before sliding in next to Sarah. She gives me a look—tight-lipped, squinty-eyed. It reminds me a lot of John’s brave face, actually. The one where he’s scared shitless but wants to keep fighting anyway.
“What’re we going to do, Six?” Sarah asks.
“Stay within arm’s length in case we need to go invisible,” I say, not just to Sarah but to everyone. “We’ve still got a plan.”
Mark snorts at that and his hands shake a little on his blaster’s grip. He’s got the detonator for our explosives in the dirt next to him.
“There’s no Sanctuary to protect,” Marina says forlornly.
“We can still take the Anubis,” I reply. “And there’s still Ella.”
“Man, I can’t see shit from back here,” Mark adds.
I turn invisible so that I can poke my head out from behind the log without running any risk of being seen. I get a way better view of the landscape than what Mark and Adam can see from their spots behind cover. The dust from the Anubis attack is still settling in the clearing; between that and the sunset, the entire area is cast in a gritty golden haze. Three thick plumes of black smoke curl into the air—booby-trapped Skimmers that had their bombs explode when the Anubis discharged its fury. However, even though some of them are flipped over or knocked into distant areas, I still see a bunch of the Skimmers that we set to blow.
So we might still be able to salvage one of our traps to fight off the Mogadorians. But the pit we spent so much effort digging is gone. Or, more accurately, it has gotten a whole lot bigger.
The land where the Sanctuary sat for cent
uries is now a smoking crater. It’s about sixty feet deep with stubborn chunks of the temple’s bricks still rooted in the ground and small fires from the Anubis’s cannon blast only now guttering out in the heat-baked dirt. That force field was in place precisely so something like this wouldn’t happen. We made it into the Sanctuary and this is the result. Total destruction.
Unless . . .
Still invisible, I climb up onto the log so I can get a better angle on the crater. Sarah flinches at the noise I make and brings her blaster up in my direction.
“Relax, it’s just me,” I whisper quickly. “I’m trying to get a look at something.”
