United as One (23 page)

FIVE FLIES FORWARD AT TOP SPEED. HE HOLDS
his blaster by the barrel, not bothering to shoot it. Instead, he wields the weapon like a club. He hits the line of Mog warriors like a whirlwind, caving in their skulls with his weapon's handle. As he dusts one Mog, he grabs a second blaster from the Mog's disintegrating hand. When one of the warriors tries to leap on his back, Five throws a vicious elbow, his metal carapace causing a resounding crunch. He shoves one Mog back with telekinesis, lets him bounce off the wall, then headbutts him to the ground.

I've never been so happy to see Five.

“Traitor! Beloved Leader gave you everything!” Phiri Dun-Ra shrieks at Five. She unleashes a fireball in his direction. Five ducks to the side—his bathrobe catches on fire—but the heat doesn't harm his metal skin.

“He gave me nothing!” Five yells back, and flings
one of his blasters end over end at Phiri. It hits her right between the eyes and knocks her off her feet. Dark blood coats her face, her nose broken.

If I was Phiri Dun-Ra, I would've caught that blaster with my telekinesis, no problem. I realize that just because Phiri is capable of stealing my Legacies, that doesn't mean she knows how to use them. She's lashing out with one Legacy at a time, trying to do the most damage while not playing any defense.

It gives me an opening.

With Phiri stunned, I wrap my hands around the Voron noose and yank it out of her grasp. I pull it over my head before any of her cronies can stop me. Most of them are too distracted with Five anyway.

Now I just need to get her piercing tentacles out of my back.

Phiri's pushed herself up on her elbows, shaking off Five's blow. I lunge forward from my knees and drive my forearm right into her throat, trying to cave in her windpipe.

She gurgles once and then reacts. I feel a tearing sensation in my back as Phiri's tentacles lift me off of her. They turn me over and send me straight up, face-first into the ceiling and then back down to the floor.

I'm dazed, the wind knocked out of me, a tooth loose in my mouth. I'm still hooked to Phiri Dun-Ra. I can hear her coughing, as well as the dull, bludgeoning
sounds of Five working his way through the vatborn squadron.

When my eyes finally focus, I notice the Thin Mog has edged closer to the fray. He cups his hands in front of his mouth and exhales another cloud of those spores he used to mind control Mark and the soldiers. In the darkened hallway, the only light Five's smoldering robe, the spores look like a cloud of spiders.

“Five!” I manage to yell, tasting blood as I do. “Watch out! Don't breathe those in!”

Five slams one of the last vatborn to the ground just as I finish my warning. He turns his head, confused, and sees the spores coming at him. His chest puffs out as he tries to hold his breath, but they're already all over his mouth and nose. They move with a mind of their own, forcing their way up his nostrils and through his lips.

No. If they mind control Five, all will be lost. No one will survive this place.

I try to shove myself towards the Thin Mog, but Phiri's tentacles are still digging into my back. I'm too weak.

The telltale black veins are already spreading across Five's face. His grip loosens on his blaster, and his skin goes back to normal. His back arches as the burning robe comes in contact with his normal flesh.

“Yes . . . ,” the Thin Mog commands. “Don't fight it.”

Five glares murderously at the Thin Mog. He's frozen in place, though, his muscles twitching, out of his control.

“Hey.”

The Thin Mog manages to half turn at the voice. That's the last thing he does. Sam, having crept out from one of the nearby cells, pulls the trigger on a blaster at point-blank range. The shot takes the back of the Thin Mog's head clean off. The hallway is suddenly filled with those spores, like a piñata burst. It's like the Thin Mog's entire head was packed with the moldy growths, the things now floating harmlessly to the floor, where they wilt and turn to ash.

Rattled, Five sneezes and spits, shaking off the Thin Mog's grasp.

“John—,” Sam starts to say, but then his eyes widen, and he dives back into the cell just ahead of a jagged piece of dark-colored ice.

Phiri Dun-Ra is back on her feet. She reels me towards her using her tentacles. With most of her backup dead, her eyes are suddenly wild and desperate.

“Extraction!” she shrieks into an earpiece. “I need extraction!”

Five rams into her, grabbing her around the throat with two hands. His skin is the speckled white and black of the tile floor. Phiri lets a gout of fire loose in Five's face, but it only singes his carapace and makes
him angrier. His hands tighten around her neck.

It's a relief when one of Phiri's tentacles slides out of my back. That feeling doesn't last long. Phiri lashes the oily appendage around Five's neck and lifts him off the ground so that his feet are no longer touching the tile floor. His skin loses its hardened coating—now it's back to normal—and Phiri is able to squeeze his throat closed with her tentacle.

Now's it's Five wheezing for breath.

“Let's see what you have for me, boy,” Phiri says. The sharpened end of her tentacle slaps across Five's face, seeking out his empty eye socket. She's going to attach herself to Five like she's attached herself to me.

That's when I see Five's blade lying abandoned on the floor. One of the Mogs he dusted must have been carrying it.

“Five!” I shout, trying to get his attention as he starts to turn blue. I stretch my leg out as far as I can and kick the blade towards him. I hope he can hear it skittering across the floor.

Before Phiri can plug into Five, he uses his telekinesis to yank his blade towards him and strap it to his arm. It's so smooth, I get the sense that's not the first time Five's practiced that move. And what comes next . . . well, I know Five's got experience in this area.

With maniacal glee, Five stabs at Phiri Dun-Ra. He hacks away at the tentacle around his neck until it's
nothing but pulp and he's able to drop to the floor. His skin takes on the hardened tile texture again, just in time to absorb a desperate burst of fire from Phiri. Undeterred, Five goes right for the mass of ooze attached to her shoulder, mutilating it until the tentacles attached to me drop loose and wither to ash. Phiri screams in frustration, even as her sick appendage keeps regrowing. Every time it does, Five seems almost glad to get another chance to slash it apart. I'd almost forgotten how sadistic he is.

“Just kill her, Five!” I yell, edging backwards across the floor and grimacing as I notice the size of the blood trail I leave behind.

“Don't rush me,” he snarls.

The Shadow Mog emerges from the darkness behind Phiri Dun-Ra. This must be the extraction she was screaming for a few seconds ago. He wraps his arms around Phiri's waist and yanks her backwards, the shadows like liquid around them, swallowing them up.

Except Five doesn't let go. He buries his blade in Phiri's shoulder and launches himself through the shadows after them. The teleportation is completely soundless. One second they're here and the next the hallway is completely still. Wherever the Shadow Mog brought Phiri to, he took Five with them.

“John!”

Sam falls to his knees on the floor next to me. I can
tell by the look on his face that I'm a mess. There are puncture wounds on my side and my back, broken bones in my arm and deep gashes around my neck. Everything is sticky with my blood.

“I'm . . . I'm all right,” I tell him.

“Shit, no, you are definitely not,” he replies. “Can you heal?”

“I am healing,” I say.

Sam looks down at me. “No. You're bleeding.”

“It's . . . it's going to happen slow.”

Now that I'm separated from Phiri Dun-Ra, I feel my Legacies gradually returning. With some effort, I lift up my arm and examine the puncture wound underneath it. The black oil is slowly seeping out of me, pushed out by my Legacy as it struggles to knit my body together. Once all that's cleared from my system, I hope my powers will be fully charged. It'll just be a matter of me having the strength left to use them.

Sam rips off a piece of his T-shirt and clamps it to my neck.

“This cut isn't closing even a little,” he says.

“It won't,” I tell him. I weakly hold up the noose. “They used that Voron noose on me. Like what Pittacus used on Setrákus Ra.”

“Oh man, you're going to have a scar,” Sam mumbles, shaking his head.

There's movement on the ceiling. I spot the Shadow
Mog just in time. He falls feetfirst out of the darkness, a blaster pointed at us. Back to finish us off.

I shove Sam off me and roll onto my back. The blast burns into the wall between us. Sam reacts swiftly, getting his blaster oriented to return fire. The Mog drops straight down, into another patch of shadows on the floor, and disappears through them.

“Keep your head on a swivel,” I warn as I sit up, clutching the noose.

The Shadow Mog walks out of one of the darkened cells behind me. I don't turn around in time, but Sam uses his telekinesis to knock the Mog's blaster aside. His latest shot sizzles into the floor next to me. With a frustrated grunt, our enemy again dives towards some darkness.

I fling the noose towards him.

It isn't my brightest idea. Without my telekinesis, there's no way I can make that throw. Luckily, Sam catches on quickly and uses his own telekinesis to guide my impromptu lasso. We get the noose around the Shadow Mog's head before he disappears, and I yank back on it with what little strength I have left.

I'm hoping to take his head clean off, but no such luck. The Shadow Mog stops midteleport, waist deep in shadow, and clutches the noose. It's a tug-of-war, and he's winning. The Voron rope, slick with blood, starts to slide through my hands.

“Behind you!” Sam yells.

I manage to flick a glance over my shoulder. The Shadow Mog's legs are ten yards down the hall, emerging from another pocket of shadows. He's just going to keep teleporting through the darkness until he wears us down. The Voron rope slips a little farther out of my hands.

“Lights on!” Sam shouts.

All at once, the lights in the hallway come back on brighter than ever. No more shadows.

The Mog lets out a gasp. His torso flops to the ground in front of us, and his legs drop behind us. He's been cut in a perfectly straight line through the waist. I yank the noose through his neck with little resistance—he's already beginning to disintegrate.

“Nicely done,” I tell Sam as he kneels down next to me.

“Guy was really pissing me off,” Sam grumbles, once again fussing over the cut on my neck. “This is going to need stitches, man.”

I put my hand over his as he applies pressure. “Sam, where's your dad . . . ?”

“He's fine! I mean, he was the last time I saw him. There was no way out, so he and the other scientists hid down in the old library. The Chimærae were keeping them safe. He's got my homemade cloaking devices. I ran off to, uh, to let out our secret-weapon psychopath
there before Dad could stop me.” Sam takes a breath and looks around. “Where's Mark?”

I compress my lips and shake my head. Sam looks away from me.

“Goddamn them,” he says quietly. “Goddamn them for all this shit.”

We both go silent at the sound of gunfire from an adjoining hallway. The shooting is cut off by an animalistic roar, desperate screams soon following. That's got be the huge, deformed Augment that I saw upstairs, the Piken-Mog. It's close.

Sam looks at me. “Can you fight?”

I grimace and manage to create a weak ball of fire with my Lumen. As soon as I do, my healing Legacy stops working, and my torso is pure agony. I extinguish the flame and focus on healing, shaking my head at Sam.

“Not yet,” I say.

“Then we better move,” he replies. “Unless you want to try that lasso trick again.”

“No thanks,” I say. “This one doesn't teleport. He knocks down walls.”

Sam gets his arms under me and gently helps me to my feet. I fling my good arm over his shoulders, the other clutched against my stomach, and we shuffle quickly down the hall. Sam's got one arm around my waist, and the other points a blaster straight ahead. Behind us, the heavy footsteps and grunting of the
Piken-Mog echo, slowly becoming more distant.

“You know what I thought the first day I met you in school?” Sam asks me, his voice low, breathing heavily.

I raise an eyebrow at the question. “Uh, no. What?”

“I thought, here's a guy who's going to make me carry him halfway across New York City and then later through a top secret underground military base while he bleeds all over the place. I hope we can be best friends.”

I actually laugh at that, even though it hurts my punctured ribs. “You've gotten really good at it,” I say.

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam replies with a grim smile.

We edge around a corner, and a gunshot rings out. I feel the bullet whiz right past my cheek.

“Hold your fire!” yells Agent Walker. “Goddamn it, they're ours!”

Agent Walker stands with an assault rifle at the ready, her face smeared with ash, a nasty-looking blaster burn on one of her legs. In front of her, one of them still aiming a pistol in our direction, are the twins, Caleb and Christian. It was the dead-eyed one, Christian, who took a shot at us. Caleb punches him in the arm to get him to finally lower his gun.

“Sorry,” Caleb says, nodding towards Sam's blaster. “We saw the blaster coming around the corner and . . .”

“Don't sweat it,” Sam says. “I've been getting shot at for a long time.”

“Good God, if
you're
here, how are we losing?”

That comment, directed at me, comes from General Lawson. He's sandwiched between Walker and the twins, like they're his bodyguards. The whole unflappable-grandfather act is out the window. Lawson looks like crap. His uniform is torn and bloodstained, he's got an open gash over his eyebrow and he looks about ten years older than I remember.