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Comforting as it was to see Eight again, it was still saying good-bye. I can’t imagine what Marina’s going through. She loved him and now he’s gone. Again.
Marina stops and glances back at the temple, almost like she might go back inside. Next to me, Adam clears his throat.
“Is she going to be okay?” he asks me, his voice low.
Marina shut down on me once before, back in Florida, after Five betrayed us. After he killed Eight. This isn’t the same—she isn’t radiating a constant field of cold, and she doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of strangling whoever comes close. When she turns back to us, her expression is almost serene. She’s remembering, storing that moment with Eight away and steeling herself for what’s to come. I’m not worried about her.
I smile as Marina blinks her eyes and wipes a hand across her face.
“I can hear you,” she replies to Adam. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” Adam says, awkwardly looking away. “I just wanted to say, about what happened in there, uh, that I . . .”
Adam trails off, both Marina and I looking at him expectantly. Being a Mog, I think he still finds it a little uncomfortable to get too personal with us. I know he was amazed by the Loric light show inside the Sanctuary, but I could also tell he felt like he didn’t belong, like he wasn’t worthy enough to be in the presence of the Entity.
When Adam’s pause stretches on, I pat him on the back. “Let’s save the heart-to-heart for the ride, okay?”
Adam seems relieved as we walk back towards our Skimmer, the ship parked alongside a dozen other Mog crafts on the nearby landing strip. The Mog encampment in front of the temple is exactly the way we left it—trashed. The Mogs that were trying to break into the Sanctuary had cleared jungle in a precise ring around the temple, getting as close to the temple as the Sanctuary’s powerful force field would allow.
It isn’t until we cross from the vine-strewn overgrowth of the land directly in front of the temple to the scorched brown soil of the Mog camp that I realize the force field is gone. The deadly barrier that protected the Sanctuary for years is no more.
“The force field must have shut down while we were inside,” I say.
“Maybe it doesn’t need protection anymore,” Adam suggests.
“Or maybe the Entity diverted its power elsewhere,” Marina replies. She pauses for a moment, thinking. “When I kissed Eight . . . I felt it. For a split second, I was part of the Entity’s energy flow. It was spreading out everywhere, all through the Earth. Wherever the Loric energy went, now it’s spread thin. Maybe it can’t power its defenses here.”
Adam gives me a look, like I should be able to explain what Marina just said.
“What do you mean it spread through the Earth?” I ask.
“I don’t know how to explain it better than that,” Marina says, gazing back at the temple, now cast half in shadow by the setting sun. “It was a feeling like I was one with Lorien. And we were everywhere.”
“Interesting,” Adam says, eyeing the temple and then the ground beneath his feet with a mixture of caution and awe. “Where do you think it went? Are your Legacies . . . ?”
“I don’t feel any different,” I tell him.
“Me neither,” Marina says. “But something has changed. Lorien is out there now. On Earth.”
It’s definitely not the tangible result I was hoping for, but Marina seems so upbeat about it. I don’t want to rain on her parade. “I guess we’ll see if anything’s changed back in civilization. Maybe the Entity’s out there kicking ass.”
Marina glances back at the temple. “Should we leave it this way? Without protection?”
“What’s left to protect?” Adam asks.
“There’s still at least some of the, uh, the Entity left in there,” Marina replies. “Even now, I think the Sanctuary is still a way to . . . I don’t know, exactly. Get in touch with Lorien?”
“We don’t have a choice,” I reply. “The others will need us.”
“Wait a second,” Adam says, looking around. “Where’s Dust?”
With everything that happened inside the Sanctuary, I completely forgot about the Chimæra we left outside the temple to stand guard. There’s no sign of the wolf anywhere.
“Could he have gone into the jungle looking for that Mog woman?” Marina asks.
“Phiri Dun-Ra,” Adam replies, naming the trueborn that survived our initial assault. “He wouldn’t just go off on his own like that.”
“Maybe the Sanctuary’s light show scared him off,” I suggest.
Adam frowns, then cups both his hands around his mouth. “Dust! Come on, Dust!”
He and Marina fan out, searching for any sign of the Chimæra. I climb onto our Skimmer to get a better look at the surrounding area. From up here, something catches my eye. A gray shape squirming out from beneath a rotten log at the edge of the jungle.
“What’s that?” I yell, pointing the writhing form out to Adam. He races over, Marina right behind him. A moment later, Adam carries the small shape over to me, his face twisted with concern.
“It’s Dust,” Adam says. “I mean, I think it is.”
Adam holds a gray bird in his hands. It’s alive but its body is stiff and twisted, like it suffered from an electric shock and never recovered from the spasms. His wings jut out at odd angles and his beak is frozen half-open. Even though this is nothing like the powerful wolf we left behind just a short time ago, there’s a quality that I immediately recognize. It’s Dust, for sure. Bad as he looks, his black bird eyes dart around frantically. He’s alive, and his mind is working, but his body isn’t responding.
“What the hell happened to him?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Adam says, and for a moment I think I see tears in his eyes. He steadies himself. “He looks . . . he looks like the other Chimæra did right after I rescued them from Plum Island. They were experimented on.”
“It’s okay, Dust, you’re okay,” Marina whispers. She gently smooths down the feathers on his head, trying to calm him. She uses her Legacy to heal most of the scratches that cover him, but it doesn’t release Dust from the paralysis.
“We can’t do anything more for him here,” I say. I feel bad, but we need to keep moving. “If that Mog did this to him, she’s long gone. Let’s just get back to the others. Maybe they’ll have ideas about what to do.”
Adam brings Dust on board the Skimmer and wraps him in a blanket. He tries to make the paralyzed Chimæra as comfortable as possible before he sits down behind the ship’s controls.
I want to get in touch with John, find out how things are going outside the Mexican jungle. I retrieve the satellite phone from my pack and settle into the seat next to Adam. While he begins powering up the ship, I call John.
The phone rings endlessly. After about a minute, Marina leans forward to look at me.
“How worried should we be that he’s not answering?” she asks.
“The normal amount of worried,” I reply. I can’t help but glance down at my ankle. No new scars—as if I wouldn’t have felt the searing pain. “At least we know they’re still alive.”
“Something’s not right,” Adam says.
“We don’t know that,” I reply quickly. “Just because they can’t answer right this second doesn’t mean—”
“No. I mean with the ship.”
When I take the phone away from my ear, I can hear the strange stuttering noise the Skimmer’s engine is making. The lights on the console in front of me flicker erratically.
“I thought you knew how to work this thing,” I say.
Adam scowls, then angrily flips down switches on the dashboard, powering the ship off. Beneath us, the engine rattles and clangs, like something’s not catching.
“I do know how to work this thing, Six,” he says. “It’s not me.”
“Sorry,” I reply, watching as he waits for the engine to settle before powering the ship up again. The engine—Mogadorian technology that should be deathly silent—once a
gain burps and spasms. “Maybe we should try something besides turning it off and on again.”
“First Dust, and now this. It doesn’t make sense,” Adam grumbles. “The electronics are still working. Well, everything except for the automated diagnostic, which is exactly what would tell us what’s wrong with the engine.”
I reach over and hit the button that opens up the cockpit. The glass dome parts above our heads.
“Let’s go have a look,” I say, standing up from my seat.
We all climb back out of the Skimmer. Adam jumps down to inspect the ship’s underside, but I remain atop the hood, next to the cockpit. I find myself gazing at the Sanctuary, the ancient limestone structure casting a long shadow thanks to the setting sun. Marina stands next to me, silently taking in the view.
