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What about after Sam and I move on? They’re predators. If we leave them alive, eventually they’ll find prey.
As I’m considering this, Sam nudges me, pointing towards a nearby alley that will let us avoid the Mogs. “Come on,” he says quietly. “Before they get too close.”
I stay rooted in place, considering our odds. There are only twelve of them, plus the ship. I’ve fought bigger groups before and won. Granted, I’m still fatigued from an afternoon spent battling nonstop, but we’d have the element of surprise on our side. I could take down the Skimmer before they even realize they’re under attack, and the rest would fall easily.
“We can take them,” I conclude.
“John, are you nuts?” Sam asks, grabbing my shoulder. “We can’t fight every Mog in New York City.”
“But we can fight these ones,” I reply. “I’m feeling stronger now and if something goes wrong I’ll just heal us after.”
“Assuming we don’t, you know, get shot in the face and killed outright. Battle to battle, healing us right after—how much of that can you take?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s too many of them. We have to pick our battles.”
“You’re right,” I admit grudgingly.
We dart down the alley, hop a chain-link fence and emerge on the next block over, leaving the Mogadorian patrol to its hunting. Logically, I know Sam is right. I shouldn’t be wasting my time with a dozen Mogs when there’s a greater war to be won. After an exhausting day, I should be conserving my strength. I know all this is true. Even so, I can’t help feeling like a coward for avoiding the fight.
Sam points up at a sign for First Street and Second Avenue. “Numbered streets. We’re getting closer.”
“They were fighting around Fourteenth Street, but that was at least an hour ago. The way they were going at it, they could’ve gone in any direction from there.”
“So let’s keep our ears open for explosions and creative cursing,” Sam suggests.
We only make it a few more blocks uptown before crossing paths with another Mogadorian patrol. Sam and I huddle behind a delivery truck, abandoned carts of fresh-baked bread still sitting on the off-loading ramp. I poke my head around the front of the truck, taking a head count. Once again, there are twelve warriors with a Skimmer supporting them. This group behaves differently than the last one, though. The ship hovers in place, its spotlight fixed on the shattered front window of a bank. The Mogs outside all have their blasters pointed into the building. Something has them spooked.
I recount the pale heads glaring in the spotlight. Eleven. Only eleven where there were definitely twelve before. Did one of them just get ashed without me noticing?
“Come on,” Sam says warily, probably thinking that I’m spoiling for a fight again. “We should go while they’re distracted.”
“Hold up,” I reply. “Something’s happening here.”
With the others covering them, two Mogs stalk towards the front of the bank. They stay low, weapons at the ready, looking for something beyond the reach of the Skimmer’s spotlight.
When they reach the bank’s threshold, both Mogs toss their blasters into the air. The entire squad pauses, frozen, stunned by this development.
It’s telekinesis. Someone just disarmed those Mogs with a Legacy.
I give Sam a wide-eyed look. “Nine or Five,” I say. “They’re pinned down.”
Spurred to action, the rest of the Mogs open fire on the darkness of the bank. The two disarmed warriors are lifted off their feet, again by telekinesis, and used as shields. They disintegrate in the flurry of their squad’s blaster fire. Then a desk comes flying out from within the bank. Two Mogs are crushed by the airborne furniture, and the rest backpedal for better cover. Meanwhile, the Skimmer maneuvers closer to the street, its guns coming around, angling for a shot inside the bank.
“I’ll take the ship, you take the warriors,” I say.
“Let’s do it,” Sam replies, nodding once. “I just hope it’s not Five holed up in there.”
I spring out from behind the truck and run toward the action, firing up my Lumen as I go. The nerve endings in my hands feel fried. I can actually feel the heat from my own Lumen, like I’m waving my hand over a candle. The pain is bearable, an obvious side effect of overdoing it today. I push through, quickly tossing a fireball at the Skimmer. My first attack explodes their spotlight, darkening the street. The ship is knocked off course just as it unloads on the bank, the heavy blaster fire carving chunks off the brick side of the building. With the main gun distracted, I hope to see Nine charge out from the bank and join the fray.
No one comes out. Maybe whichever Garde is inside is injured. After a long day of fighting each other and the Mogs, they’re probably more worn out than me.
I hear a sizzle of electricity behind me—Sam firing off his blaster—and watch as the two closest Mogs go up in clouds of ash. Seeing us coming from behind, another Mog tries to duck behind a parked car. Sam yanks him out of cover with his newfound telekinesis and lights him up.
One of the Mogs screams a burst of grating Mogadorian words into a communicator. Probably radioing for help.
Broadcasting our location—that’s not good.
I bound up the hood of an SUV parked conveniently beneath the Skimmer. On my way, I lob a fireball at the Mog with the communicator. He’s engulfed by flames and is soon nothing more than ash pooled around some melted gear. Even so, the damage is done. They know we’re here. We need to get out of here quick.
I leap from the roof of the SUV, putting a huge dent into the metal as I push off. At the same time, I hit the Skimmer with a telekinetic punch. I don’t have the power to bring the ship down, but I hit it hard enough so that one side of the saucer-shaped craft dips low, towards me. I land right on top of the thing, two Mogadorian pilots staring at me in shock.
A few weeks ago, it might’ve felt good to see the Mogs recoil in fear. I might’ve even said something funny, borrowed some quip from Nine’s playbook before killing them. But now—after the terror they’ve unleashed on New York—I don’t waste the breath.
I tear the cockpit door loose from its hinges and send it flying into the night. The Mogs try to unbuckle from their seats, groping for their blasters. Before they can do anything, I unleash a funnel of white-hot fire. The Skimmer immediately begins to careen out of control. I leap free of the ship, landing hard on the sidewalk below, my tired legs barely supporting me. The Skimmer smashes into a storefront across the street and explodes, black smoke rising out from the store’s shattered window.
Sam runs up next to me, his blaster pointed at the ground. The rest of the area is clear of Mogs. For the moment.
“Twelve down, like a hundred thousand left to go,” Sam says dryly.
“One of them got off a distress call. We gotta go,” I tell Sam, but even as I say this, I feel the same light-headedness from earlier creeping on. The rush of battle gone, my fatigue is now back. I have to support myself on Sam’s shoulder for a minute, until I get my bearings.
“No one’s come out of the bank,” Sam says. “I don’t think it’s Nine in there. Unless he’s hurt, it’s way too quiet.”
“Five,” I growl, moving cautiously towards the bank’s busted entrance. I’m not sure I can handle a fight with him at this point. My only hope is that Nine’s done a good job of softening him up.
“There,” Sam says, pointing into the darkened lobby. Someone’s moving around. Whoever it is, they appear to have spent the battle hiding behind a sofa.
“Hey, it’s all clear out here,” I call into the bank, gritting my teeth as I shine my Lumen inside. “Nine? Five?”
It isn’t one of the Garde who cautiously steps into my beam of light. It’s a girl. She’s probably about our age, only a couple of inches shorter than me, with a lean sprinter’s body. Her hair is pulled back in tight rows of braids. Her clothes are scuffed up either from the fight or the general chaos, but otherwise she looks unhurt. Tossed over the girl’s left sh
oulder is a heavy-looking duffel bag. She looks from Sam to me with wide brown eyes, eventually focusing on the light shining from the palm of my hand.
“You’re him,” the girl says, inching forward. “You’re the guy from TV.”
Now that the girl is close enough to see, I shut off my Lumen. Don’t want to be lighting up our location for the Mog reinforcements that are on their way.
“I’m John,” I tell her.
“John Smith. Yeah, I know,” the girl says, nodding eagerly. “I’m Daniela. You really killed the hell out of those aliens.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Was there someone else in there with you?” Sam cuts in, craning his neck to look past her. “A dude with anger issues and a habit of taking off his shirt? A gross one-eyed guy?”
Daniela cocks her head at Sam, eyebrows raised. “No. What? Why?”
“We thought we saw someone attack those Mogs with telekinesis,” I say, looking Daniela over again, feeling equal parts curious and cautious. We’ve been tricked before by potential allies.
“You mean this?” Daniela reaches out her hand and one of the dead Mogs’ blasters floats to her. She plucks it out of the air, resting it against the shoulder not supporting her duffel bag. “Uh-huh. That’s a new development for me.”
“I’m not the only one,” Sam breathes, looking at me with wide eyes.
My mind is cycling through possibilities so quickly that I’m struck speechless. I might not have understood the why of it, but Sam getting Legacies made sense to me on a gut level. He’s spent so much time around us Garde, done so much to help us—if any human was going to suddenly develop Legacies, it would be him. The hours since the invasion have been so crazy that I didn’t really have time to think about it. Didn’t need to, really. Sam with Legacies just seemed logical. When I imagined other humans besides Sam getting Legacies, I’d been thinking of people we know, people who have helped us. I was thinking of Sarah, mostly. Definitely not some random girl. This girl, though, Daniela, her having Legacies means something bigger than I imagined has happened.
