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She’s killed me. I can’t believe it.
Dust acts the quickest. He lunges away from Adam’s side, his wolf form growing huge, gray fur bristling over his muscular back, teeth gnashing. He hits Phiri Dun-Ra with his massive front paws and knocks her off her feet. His teeth snap in front of her face, but she manages to lean her head back just enough to avoid getting bitten. One of her tentacles wraps around Dust’s snout, muzzling him. The others begin to stab at his body. Still, the Chimæra struggles, clawing at her and pressing his weight down.
As a result of Dust’s attack, Phiri’s tentacle snaps out of me. I would probably fall over if Adam wasn’t there to catch me. He presses a hand to my wound, helping me to lean against the wall. My blood bubbles over his hand, and I can tell by the panic in his eyes that it doesn’t look good.
“Six, we need to get you to Marina or John—”
Adam’s cut off by a yelp, and then a heavy weight smashes into both of us. It’s Dust, thrown by Phiri Dun-Ra’s sick appendage. His fur is soaked with blood, piercings from Phiri’s tentacles all over his rapidly shrinking form. He tries to stagger to his feet and almost makes it before his legs buckle. Dust’s dark eyes settle on Adam as he lies down on his side, whimpers once and then is still.
Adam screams.
Phiri Dun-Ra has only now gotten back to her feet, her face and chest covered in Dust’s claw marks. Adam takes up his blaster and fires. He gets her once in the chest, but the next two shots are absorbed by her tentacles. She ducks back out the doorway, running for cover.
Six! It’s Ella’s voice in my mind. I’m sending the others up to help you!
No! I think back, forcing myself to stand. We’ve got this. Tell them to focus on Setrákus Ra.
But—
I imagine Phiri Dun-Ra taking control of my or Adam’s Legacies, using them to get behind the rest of our friends, then wiping them out. I call to mind John’s secret orders to Adam, how he’s supposed to destroy the mountain base if anything goes wrong. And I think about the time Ella herself leaped into a torrent of Loric energy because she knew it meant defeating Setrákus Ra.
Priorities. Sacrifices.
We stop Phiri Dun-Ra here. We make sure the others don’t have any surprises creeping up behind them.
I stagger to my feet even though it isn’t easy. When I try to take a deep breath, my body’s response is to fill my chest with a shooting pain. It feels like I’ve got a stitch in my entire left side. I can still fight, though.
I have to.
I cover my wound with one hand as best I can and limp after Adam. He’s already barreled his way into the hallway, enraged, chasing after Phiri Dun-Ra. He squeezes off a couple more blaster shots. She leaps up, her tentacle wraps around a stalactite and she yanks herself over Adam’s attack. Then she slings herself back at Adam.
Phiri Dun-Ra kicks the blaster out of Adam’s hand. Before she can slice into Adam with her tentacles, I shove her with my telekinesis and slam her into the wall. I keep her pinned there, a telekinetic weight against her chest. The muscles in her neck strain as she tries to jerk forward and can’t.
“Six, you—” Adam looks surprised to see me standing, like he’s going to admonish me for getting back in the fight. I try to gulp down a breath while maintaining my telekinetic hold on Phiri and feel like I’m about to throw up. I lean against the doorway of the control room.
“I’m fine,” I wheeze. “Finish her.”
Adam turns to Phiri, and, of course, she starts talking.
“Doesn’t it bother you to be on the losing side of history, Sutekh?” Phiri asks, high-pitched desperation in her voice.
“This is what winning looks like to you, Phiri?” Adam replies dryly, picking up his blaster.
Phiri rambles on, screeching. “When these battles are added to the Great Book, you will be a cautionary tale, a traitorous footnote, a—”
“Shut up already,” I say.
She strains against my telekinesis to no avail, even her Augmented appendage futilely squirming, only capable of writhing against the wall. Unlike in Mexico, Marina’s not around to keep us from killing this bitch. After what she did to John, to Dust, to everyone at Patience Creek, I don’t think Marina would raise any objections even if she was.
The sound of a blaster ends Phiri Dun-Ra’s pleas.
My back burns.
Phiri Dun-Ra cackles.
Adam spins around, wide-eyed.
I glance behind me. See the trueborn woman with the braids, the one we thought was dead, half sitting up.
She just shot me in my back.
Adam fires on her, takes her head clean off.
But the startling fresh pain was enough. For the briefest of moments, I lose my grip on Phiri Dun-Ra.
Her tentacles lash out. Two of them plunge right into Adam’s abdomen, and he immediately doubles over. The other gropes for me, but I throw myself backwards, into the control room, avoiding it. Through all the pain I’m feeling, I try to grab Phiri Dun-Ra with my telekinesis.
She stomps down on the ground, and a seismic tremor knocks me backwards, slamming me hard against one of the metal computer cases. There’s a groan beneath us, like old stones shifting and scraping together. I cough blood onto the shaky floor.
Phiri Dun-Ra laughs cheerfully. “Amazing! I wasn’t sure if you’d have a Loric spark to feed on, Adamus. I thought you were simply an early Augmentation, a failed experiment.” Phiri smacks her lips, like she’s trying to figure out what she’s tasting. “But you really are like them! Will it make you happy to die knowing you were special? The worst of both worlds?”
Adam hangs limp from Phiri’s tentacles. I can see motes of Loric energy winking through the oily mass of her deadly limb, pulled from Adam and into her. I try to push myself up, but my arms give out.
Slowly, Adam raises his head, tossing dark hair out of his eyes. He stares at Phiri Dun-Ra.
“I am like them,” he says through gritted teeth. “But I am also like you.”
Adam plunges his hands into the black oil of her tentacles. They both gasp—her in shock, him in pain—as the ooze coalesces over his hands. He pulls backwards, and the ooze begins to tear itself away from the stump of Phiri’s shoulder and bond with Adam. It must recognize his Mogadorian genetics. The sick substance is tangled between the two of them. The flow of Loric energy from Adam to Phiri stops.
“What—?” she starts to say, wild-eyed.
Adam stomps on the ground. A powerful tremor spreads out from him.
The resulting rumble is deafening. The cavern floor breaks open. Stalactites snap loose from above. A chasm opens up beneath the two Mogadorians. Phiri Dun-Ra tries to recoil, tries to grope for the ledge with her arms, her tentacles. But Adam holds on to her tightly.
They fall into the darkness.
“ADAM!” I scream. Despite the jagged, blinding pain throughout my chest, I dive towards the edge of the newly created pit
. I reach out with my telekinesis.
Too late. Nothing but shadows down there.
He’s gone.
“Adam . . . ,” I say, my hands hanging limply into the chasm, blood pooling on the rocks beneath me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EVERYTHING.
Everything I’ve got, I throw at him.
First, my Lumen. My oldest, most trustworthy Legacy. I fly off the ice floe that Marina made, leave Nine behind and blast Setrákus Ra with two twin torrents of fire. His stupid cape ignites, his armor heats to red-hot. I watch as his pale skin bubbles and chars, peels back and, in the blink of an eye, is smoothed over by the arteries of ooze that circulate through his body.
He doesn’t even seem bothered by my attack. It’s like he doesn’t feel any pain. He just floats above his lake of black muck, staring me down, an infuriating hint of a smile on his face.
“Is that the best you can do?” he asks.
Setrákus Ra flies towards me at a speed I couldn’t duplicate and punches me square in the sternum. There are spikes growing out of his knuckles that weren’t there a second ago, and I hear my ribs crunch. I’m tossed backwards onto a rocky outcropping at the edge of the vat, skidding to a stop on my elbows. Immediately, I start to heal my broken ribs.
I’m going to need to keep healing as fast as he can hurt me and hope that I can figure out a way to outlast him.
With a roar, Bernie Kosar flies towards Setrákus Ra. In his griffin form, he’s a formidable opponent, even if Setrákus Ra is moving at super-speed. Maybe one good bite could make the difference.
BK never makes it there.
Setrákus Ra raises a hand, and the ooze from the lake springs up around BK. It forms a cage over him, like something out of a zoo, the bars thick sections of oil. Slashing and biting, BK can’t break free. Slowly, the cage begins to contract around him, forcing him to shape shift into smaller and smaller forms or be crushed.
“I never did finish my work with the Chimærae,” Setrákus Ra muses, watching as the muck swallows BK. “Thank you for bringing me one.”
