Nine's Legacy (9 page)

“Almost there,” I shout over my shoulder.

I lead us toward the window. Escape is only a few feet away. I realize that we aren’t being chased anymore. Are they letting us go?

Suddenly Maddy plants her feet. I jerk to a stop, still holding her hand. I turn to face her, expecting one of the Mogs to have grabbed her.

But she’s just standing her.

“Maddy?” The sight of her, eyes downcast, face ghostly pale, doesn’t make any sense to me. Something tells me I should run, but I can’t bring myself to let go of her hand. I look down and see a taser in a white-knuckled grip in her free hand. Where did she get that?

“I’m sorry,” she says. And then she tases me. The electric current surges through us both. We fall off the ceiling, both of us spasming, bouncing hard off the floor.

The Mogs descend on us.

Chapter Twenty

I come to in the back of a van. I’m seated on a bench, my hands bound behind me, my ankles similarly secured. I can tell that we’re traveling fast. My spine bounces uncomfortably against the van’s steel wall.

Maddy is seated across from me. The look of shell shock has returned to her face. She keeps her eyes pinned to the van’s floor. They haven’t even bothered to tie her up. It’s starting to dawn on me why that is, but I put it out of my head. I’m not ready to think about it now.

Next to Maddy is the huge Mogadorian from the apartment. He studies a small object, turning it over in his thick hands.

It’s my iMog.

The Mog notices that I’m awake and watching him. His lips peel back and I’m forced to endure his sickening smile up close.

“Cute toy,” he says, holding up my iMog. The screen is littered with red dots. “Too bad it didn’t do you any good this time.”

He crushes the device between his hands, dropping it mangled to the van floor.

He watches with amusement as I strain against my bonds. There’s no give at all in the metal shackles securing my wrists and ankles. I take a closer look around the back of the van; the benches on either side are bolted to the floor, a chain-link mesh separating us from the driver, nothing else of note.

There’s no escape.

I consider throwing myself at him. Maybe I can get close enough to bite him. However, I’m not just shackled, I’m also chained to the bench. They’ve taken every precaution.

“You’re stuck with me,” says the Mog, sensing my resignation.

I grit my teeth and stare at him. He smiles back.

“Tell me. Where is your Cêpan?”

“Rio de Janeiro,” I reply, picking the first place that comes to mind.

He scoffs. “How stupid do you think we are?”

“Pretty freaking stupid.”

“Hmm. We found you, didn’t we? One of my scouts goes missing. His last reported location is the Chicago lakefront, tailing a boy matching your description. For my scout to simply disappear, I figure you brought him someplace. So, you must have a safe house in the area.” He kicks the broken pieces of my iMog. “You must have a way to get the drop on him.”

I try to keep my expression neutral, but inside I’m screaming. This is my fault.

“Where is your Cêpan?” repeats the Mog. “Where is your safe house?”

“You don’t know?” I ask. “Tough luck, dude. I guess you’re on your own.”

He sighs. “So much bravado. I wonder if that will hold true once we’ve killed our way to whatever number you are.”

My mind races. I try to figure out how much the Mogs could know. They had my description, knew that I liked the lakefront, and guessed that we had some way to see them coming. What else could they know? How much did I tell Maddy about my life?

Maddy. I look over at her. It had to be her. She was helping them. But why would she do that? And how long has it been going on? Did they get to her after the car chase? Coerce her somehow? Could she be one of them? I dismiss the last possibility—my iMog would have alerted me.

I remember the mess my fight with the Mogadorians made in Maddy’s room, the contents of her purse all over the floor. So many ID cards. Way more than normal. I didn’t think anything of it in the heat of battle. Those IDs, just like the one I have for Windy City Wall, but different. I realize they were membership IDs for rec centers all over Chicago.

My stomach turns over as I think back to the way Maddy looked at me on that first day. So interested at first, yet nervous when I noticed her, and then disappearing before I could talk to her.

“You were looking for me,” I say, dumbfounded.

The Mogadorian lounges back, lazily draping an arm around Maddy’s shoulders. She shudders and attempts to shrink away, but he holds her close.

Her just happening to show up at the thrift store. Taking my picture. The way the Mogs appeared in that van on the night of our date. How mad she was at the end of the car chase. None of it was coincidence. As much as I don’t want it to, suddenly Maddy’s interest in me begins to make sense.

“You Lorien act so high and mighty, yet you’re just like the humans. All it takes is a pretty face to cloud your judgment.”

He pinches Maddy’s cheek. I make a futile lunge forward, only succeeding in rattling my chains and hurting my wrists. The Mog chortles.

“So chivalrous,” he sneers. “Are you so dense that you don’t realize what’s happened? She betrayed you, boy. The girl works for us. We’ve had her for some time, although we didn’t know what to do with her. Humans. So useless, you know? But when we asked her to find you, she did a bang-up job. Didn’t you, sweetheart?” He gives Maddy a mockingly affectionate squeeze.

I know all this is true, as true as the electric shock she pumped into my body just a few hours ago, but I don’t want to believe it. There has to be an explanation.

I ignore the Mog, trying to catch Maddy’s eye.

“Why?” I ask her.

Her mouth tightens, almost as if she has to stop herself from answering. He responds for her.

“Her father the so-called astronomer saw something he shouldn’t have,” he says. “These primitives and their telescopes, sometimes they get lucky. We were forced to detain him and her mother.”

I can see the pain in Maddy’s face as the Mog gleefully finishes his explanation.

“She traded you for them.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The Mog spends the next couple of hours trying to wheedle information out of me, alternating between taunting me and trying to frighten me. I adopt a strict policy of silence and eventually he gives up. But I know it’s not over. We ride on in silence.

I stare at Maddy. She never once looks up at me.

If what the Mog told me is true—and it must be, or otherwise Maddy would have defended herself—then she’s been playing me since I first saw her. The connection I felt between us was just a sham, something I let myself believe because of how desperate and lonely I was. I was so stupid to believe that a girl like Maddy would be interested in me.

And yet the more I study Maddy’s face, the more I’m able to convince myself that maybe it wasn’t all just some Mog trick. She looks terrified, like she’s stuck in a nightmare that refuses to end. But it isn’t just terror that keeps her from looking at me. That’s guilt.

She wouldn’t feel guilty if there had never been anything at all between us. Would she?

Sandor was right. I’ve been acting like a child.

I know the responsible thing to do is to remain silent, to keep up my air of detachment until a way to escape presents itself. But I need to know the truth.

“Did you ever like me?” I ask Maddy.

Maddy cringes when I speak. The Mog claps his hands, delighted, but I ignore him. Slowly, Maddy raises her head to look at me.

“I’m s-sorry,” she stammers. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know you better.”

“How romantic,” quips the Mog, and then he grabs Maddy roughly by the shoulders, shoving a black hood over her head.

“You’re next, loverboy,” says the Mog, yanking a hood over my head as well.

I never have a chance to ask Maddy what she meant.

Sitting in the dark, I try to put myself in Maddy’s position. What would I do if the Mogs had taken Sandor hostage and forced me to work for them?

I’d kill them all, of course. But, that really wasn’t an option for Maddy.

I don’t blame Maddy, I realize. How could she have done anything different? She had no idea what was really at stake.

I can still fix this. I can escape, and I’ll bring Maddy with me. It doesn’t matter what she did. I know she’s not the real enemy here.

The van stops and the Mogs pull me and Maddy out. We stumble along in darkness, at first over rough terrain that I take for the woods, and then over metal grates that cause our footsteps to echo loudly. Wherever the Mogs have taken us, it sounds cavernous and busy, activity reverberating around us.

For a while I keep track of Maddy’s footsteps as she staggers behind me, but at some point the Mogs yank her in a different direction. They prod me onward, forcing me to shuffle awkwardly with my shackled ankles across narrow catwalks and down endless hallways.

Finally, we stop. The large Mog from the van yanks the hood off my head, ripping out a few strands of my hair in the process. We’re in a dark room with no furniture or distinguishing features to speak of, only a single large window cut out of one wall. Some other Mogs have gathered there, most of them leering at me, others excitedly peering out the window.

“I thought you’d like to see this,” says the Mog, dragging me by the elbow over to the window.

The room is some kind of observatory. Outside the window, below us, I see Maddy walking through a large, empty room. Seeing her alone down there, my stomach begins to churn.

A door at the opposite end of the room hisses open and a middle-aged man and woman step slowly into view. They both look thin and dirty. The man is particularly haggard, one sleeve of his yellowed dress shirt actually ripped off and tied around his forehead in a crude bandage. The woman has to partially support him as the pair walk toward Maddy.

“We promised we’d reunite her with her parents when she brought us to you,” muses the Mog. “A job well done, I’d say.”

Maddy races across the room, nearly bowling over her parents when she reaches them. They hug and I can see even from this distance that they are all crying. I press my forehead to the glass, wishing I could be down there with them.

“However,” says the Mog, “we never said we’d let them leave.”

I hear the beast before I see it, a ferocious roar rattling the walls around us. The Mogs on either side of me shift in excitement as the creature lumbers into view. Sandor told me about the piken and the role they played in the destruction of Lorien, but I’ve never seen one in person. The piken is as big as a truck with a body that would resemble an ox if not for the two extra legs and row of twisted spikes that curve down its spine. Its head is snakelike and narrow, its slavering mouth filled with crooked fangs.

Maddy’s father sees the piken first. He tries to put himself between his family and the beast, but he’s too weak. He collapses onto one knee before the piken has even begun to circle.

Maddy is looking up at the observatory window. I’m not sure if she can see me. She waves her arms and screams. It’s hard to hear exactly what she’s saying through the thick glass, but I think it’s “You promised!” over and over.

And then, as the piken lunges forward, her words change. This time, I have no problem reading her lips.

“Stanley!” Maddy screams. “Help us!”

I throw up.

My mouth tastes like bile. I sink down to my knees, humiliated, turning my head away from the gruesome scene below.

The Mogs laugh and cheer. This is like sport to them.

The big one pats my shoulder companionably.

“If it’s any consolation,” he says, “pretty soon that will be you down there.”

Chapter Twenty-two

My life becomes push-ups and silence.

The Mogs have stuck me in a small cell and seem to have forgotten me. There’s no night and day here and, as best as I can tell, they only feed me when they feel like it. Keeping track of the time becomes impossible. So I do push-ups. On the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling—wherever I can in my tiny prison.

I think about Sandor. I have faith that he’s still out there looking for me. One day he’ll find me. We will break out of here and I will kill every Mog that dares stand in my way.

I thought I was in good shape before, but I’m getting bigger and stronger. I can tell by the way the Mogs who bring my food keep a careful distance that I intimidate them.

I’m glad. Let them think about what’s coming when I get out of here. I hope they dream about it like I do.

Sometimes the large Mog who captured me, or one of the other important-looking ones, stops by my cell to ask me some vague question. Where have I hidden my transmission device? What do I know about Spain?

I never answer. I haven’t spoken since my first day here. I grunt and growl, and show them my teeth. Let them think that I’ve gone crazy, that captivity has turned me into some kind of animal. Maybe it has.

When I sleep, the nightmares come. They feel as real as the vision I had of Lorien, but offer none of the comfort. In them, an enormous Mogadorian covered in heinous tattoos and scars points a golden weapon shaped like a giant hammer in my direction. On the flat part is painted a black eye that pulses when aimed at me, creating a sensation like having my guts scooped out.

Somehow, I know who this giant monster is. Setrakus Ra. My enemy.

Sleeping is bad, but sometimes being awake is even worse. These are days where I feel like I can’t breathe. It feels as if the entire cavernous prison is sitting on top of me. The need to escape becomes primal then, and I throw myself against the glowing blue force field that keeps me in my cell, letting it buffet me across the tiny space until I’m too exhausted to do it again.

The nausea sets in then. I learn to fight through it. Each time I hit the force field, it hurts a little less.

I try not to think about Maddy.