United as One (28 page)

The Augment doesn't see me coming. He's about to take another pass at Five when I hit him full speed with both feet between the shoulder blades. I pin him like that and ride him two hundred feet down, onto the ledge, where he smashes with a sickeningly wet sound and stops moving.

Five lands next to me and, with no fanfare, shoves his blade through the back of the already-dead Augment's head. Making sure, I guess. He looks up at me, and, for the first time, I see something like horror in Five's eye.

“Did you see that thing?” he asks me.

“I saw it.”

“Why . . . ?” He shakes his head. “He promised the Mogs,
he promised me
, new Legacies. Who would want something like
that
?”

I shake my head and approach Five, touching the eroded sections of his arms and shoulders so I can heal them. He flinches away for a moment, then calms down and lets it happen.

“He's a madman, Five,” I say. “You were taken in by a madman.”

“He has to die.”

“Finally, we agree on something,” Nine says, jumping down from the ledge above ours. Marina climbs off his back and studies the dead Augment.

“This is an abomination,” she says. “He has twisted the work of Lorien into something . . . something . . .” Marina covers her mouth with the back of her hand and walks away. Her path takes her across the entrance to the nearest tunnel, where she immediately freezes. “Oh . . . oh my God.”

We all rush to her side.

It's the smell that hits me first. The rotten odor, the stench of decay, made all the more inescapable by the oppressive heat down here, close as we now are to the vat of black ooze.

Bodies are piled high in this tunnel. Some of them have the dark hair and pale skin of Mogadorians. Those are half-disintegrated, warped, their limbs turned into fragile, dusty husks. Others are unmistakably human. They look like they've been drained, their flesh gray and puckered, dried black veins visible beneath their skin. It looks like he's sucked the vitality right out of them. A closer look reveals that, despite their shriveled appearances, the human bodies are exclusively teenagers.

I remember Lawson telling me about how the Russians were turning over suspected Garde to the Mogadorians, and it dawns on me. These are ours.
The human Garde from the countries that surrendered and the other ones his people tracked down. He pulled the Loric spark right out of them.

Staring at this, unconsciously, I've drawn my Voron dagger. It glows with a dull red energy now. Seeing it in my hand, Nine takes a step back.

“Careful with that thing, Johnny,” he says weakly. His eyes are actually filled with tears from the sight of the bodies. Marina covers her face. Five simply stares.

I've charged the dagger with Dreynen without even realizing it. When I talked to Ella, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to use my Ximic to copy this power because of how unnatural it feels. But no, I've never wanted to cut someone off from Lorien so badly as I do Setrákus Ra.

I spin away from this latest atrocity, stand at the edge of the ledge and scream.

“SETRÁKUS RA!”

There's a rumble overhead. Rock dust drifts down from the ceiling. It feels like the earth itself moved. I'm not sure if that was caused by my yelling or something else.

And I don't care. Because I see movement down below. In the center of the lake of Mogadorian ooze.

Setrákus Ra emerges from the oily muck, rising up from the depths. The worms of ooze don't drip off him, rather they slither under his skin like they're seeking
shelter. He wears the red-and-black Mogadorian armor that I've seen before, ornate and showy, with a flowing black cape attached to his studded shoulders. His bulbous, pale head is coated with thick bristles of dark hair. That's new. Similarly, his features aren't so sunken anymore, not so old. Even the purple scar around his neck has begun to fade. He's younger, healthier than I've ever seen him. He floats with his hands spread out at his sides like some twisted savior.

He cranes his neck to look up at us and smiles. “Welcome,” he says. Noticing the tunnel we're standing in front of, he lowers his eyes and frowns, mockingly demure. “Please, do not be offended by the sight of my failures. They were not fit to carry my gifts. Like you all, they were not ready for prog—”

No more goddamn words.

I pitch a fireball at him. I don't expect it to hit; it's just meant to cover my approach. I fly forward, reckless, as fast as I can. Behind me, I can feel the others moving forward too. This is it.

Kill or be killed.

Setrákus Ra raises his hand, and a plume of ooze shaped like a shield extends from his palm. My fireball is absorbed. Doesn't matter.

With him distracted, I fling my dagger at him. I use my telekinesis to boost its speed.

The blade buries itself in his shoulder, punching
right through his armor. A wound that he won't be able to heal thanks to the Voron and no more Legacies thanks to my Dreynen.

Except, it seems too easy. Almost like he wanted me to hit him.

“Very good, John,” Setrákus Ra says smugly. “You've mastered Dreynen.”

Nothing happens. He still floats. He still smiles.

“You've cut me off from that piece of Lorien still living within me. I won't be able to take your Legacies,” Setrákus Ra continues conversationally. “It won't matter.”

Setrákus Ra pulls the dagger out of his shoulder and whips it back at me. I fly aside and, behind me, Nine catches the weapon with his telekinesis.

“I am beyond that now. Beyond Legacies. Your powers derive from a primitive being with no rhyme or reason. My Augmentations are of my own choosing, limited not by an outside Entity, but only by my own genius. Which, I might add, is staggering.”

The wound on his shoulder doesn't heal. Instead, it fills with the black ooze.

I barely have time to process this information as I propel myself forward, enraged. If Dreynen won't work, there are other ways.

Brute force.

I slam into Setrákus Ra with my shoulder. He barely
budges. Quickly, I light my Lumen, my fists spouting white-hot flames, and throw one punch, two punches, three punches. He moves his head just enough to the side each time, his speed impossible.

The next punch he catches. I smell burning flesh as his hand covers mine. He doesn't seem to notice.

“After all these years,” Setrákus Ra says, the two of us face-to-face, “do you still not understand?”

Five crashes into Setrákus Ra's back and starts to stab him. He jams his blade through Setrákus Ra's throat, into his back, through his cheek.

Each wound is quickly sealed over by black ooze.

Setrákus Ra's free arm rotates around in the socket 180 degrees. His hand turns over like he's double-jointed, and, without turning away from me, he grasps Five by the throat. Now he's holding on to both of us.

“You could never win,” Setrákus Ra finishes his thought. “You were only sent here to die.”

Then he crushes my hand. I feel every finger break, every knuckle get compacted. The pain is excruciating. He flings me away from him with such force that I lose control of my flight. Luckily, Nine leaps up in the air and catches me around the waist. Marina, positioned on the ledge, creates an ice floe on the lake of ooze where Nine and I can safely land.

Nine stares at me, wild-eyed. “John, what . . . what the hell are those powers?”

I swallow hard, trying to quickly heal my hand, grimacing as the compacted bones pop back into place. “I don't know.”

Meanwhile, Setrákus Ra swings his arm around to its normal position, still holding Five by the neck. Five has given up on stabbing the Mogadorian and is instead desperately prying at Setrákus Ra's fingers.

“You,” Setrákus Ra says. “One of my greatest disappointments. The power I could have given you, boy. . . .”

Setrákus Ra holds up his hand. His fingertips shimmer, each of them tipped with a razor-sharp claw. He wants us to see this. He's toying with us.

I pull at Five with my telekinesis. I sense that Nine and Marina do the same. We aren't strong enough to drag him from Setrákus Ra's grip.

There's a piercing screech of metal, and then Five starts to scream. Setrákus Ra drags his clawed fingers over Five's face, slicing through his steel skin like it was butter. Then he peels it away, like taking off a mask, and tosses the metal chunk of face aside.

Five's not screaming anymore. I'm not sure if he's conscious or even alive.

“Let me show you what you missed out on, traitor,” Setrákus Ra says.

Setrákus Ra's arm stretches out as if it was made of rubber, and he dunks Five into the Mogadorian slime. Now, Five thrashes; and, briefly, his skin changes
consistency, taking on the oily quality of the ooze. As I watch, bits of light-blue energy are sucked out of Five and drawn into the muck.

It only takes a few seconds until Five stops moving. Setrákus Ra lets his body sink beneath the surface of the muck. I grasp at my ankle, but there's no new scar. Either Five's somehow still alive, or Setrákus Ra and his muck have stripped away the energy that granted his Legacies so that the charm no longer recognizes him.

A single bubble rises up to the surface of the ooze, pops, and then the dark lake is still. There's no way anyone could survive that.

Setrákus Ra turns to us. Smiles.

“You children were never meant to live this long,” he says. “A discrepancy I shall soon remedy.”

WHEN WE MAKE IT UP TO THE MOUNTAIN BASE
control room, there are only six Mogs left in a space that could accommodate five times that. They're all glued to a bank of monitors attached to the cave wall, fixating on the screens that show the base's exterior. On those screens, the rest of our group are destroying the many vatborn protecting the entrance to the mountain.

Adam and I are invisible. These six don't hear us come in. I give his arm a squeeze, asking if he's ready to take this group down. He pats my hand slowly twice. A signal to wait.

Looking closer, I realize all these Mogs are trueborn. They cradle blasters, but they don't look all that eager to rush out and join the fray.

A male trueborn with a stupid Mohawk says something in Mogadorian to a female trueborn with long braids. She snaps back at him. They're arguing. The others join in.

Suddenly, Mohawk aims his blaster at Braids's face. She follows suit. In a matter of seconds, they're all pointing guns at each other, still yelling harsh words in Mogadorian.

It's a tense situation that I'm happy to help along.

With my telekinesis, I depress one of the blaster triggers, then another. The trueborn do the rest, screaming with rage and firing into each other. In a matter of seconds, they're all down. A few of them begin to disintegrate in sections.

I let go of Adam's arm, and we turn visible. He puffs out his cheeks with a sigh, looking down at these dead trueborn with disappointment, and then begins searching the control panels for the one that operates the mountain's force field.

“What were they fighting about?” I ask him. Like the Mogs before, my eyes are drawn to the battle playing out on screen.

“The one with the Mohawk wanted to know how this could happen. He wanted to know why Beloved Leader would allow the
Anubis
to fall, why he'd let the Garde get this far,” Adam explains morosely. “The woman, she said that Setrákus Ra has gone mad, that the Augmentations are disturbing. The others called this blasphemy and . . .” He waves his hand in the air, indicating that I know the rest.

“Huh,” I reply, glancing down at the female Mog. Unlike the others, she hasn't disintegrated at all. I nudge
her with my toe, and her head lolls to the side. It's weird to me when they leave bodies. Makes me feel something I'd almost call guilt. “Maybe we should've helped her.”

Adam shakes his head. “She would've tried to kill us,” he replies.

“Rex didn't.”

“If there are other sympathetic Mogadorians like Rex, we will not find them in the heat of battle,” he responds.

Adam finds the right interface and begins to hit a few buttons. A flashing symbol pops up on his screen—a warning in any language. He makes an annoyed noise and keys in another sequence.

“I've got to bypass a security protocol,” he says. “See if there's a key card on one of those bodies.”

Quickly, I pat down the Mogadorian uniforms. I find a plastic chip in the front pocket of the first trueborn I check, blow some dust off it and hand it over to Adam.

“Great,” he says. He inserts the key card, throws a lever, and seconds later there's a loud electric sigh. Adam turns to me. “Shields are down.”

“Awesome,” I reply. I feel a tickle in my mind, like for a moment there's someone else taking up space in my brain. That's Ella checking in. She's probably already reported our progress to John. I clap my hands. “Let's hit it.”

“Wait,” Adam says hesitantly. “There's something I need to tell you before—before it's too late.”

I cock my head. “Right now?”

Adam nods, his lips in a tight line. “John has asked me to go back to our warship and destroy this mountain. If you don't kill Setrákus Ra—he wants me to bring it down even if you're still in here.”

I think this over for a moment. “Okay. So?”

“So?” he replies, incredulous.

“Yeah, so what? If we don't kill Setrákus Ra, then we're probably dead anyway, right?” I shrug. “Do what he told you.”

“What about living to fight another day?”

“I think we're about out of more days, don't you? Time to end this, one way or the other.”

If Adam has any more protests to make, they're cut off by a flash of light on the monitors. Both of us turn to watch as our warship opens fires on the Mogs outside, John and the others safely ensconced under what looks like a stone turtle shell.

“They'll be in soon,” I say. “Let's get down to meet the—”

My sentence finishes in a wet cough. I look down at myself, puzzled by a sudden pain in my chest.

There's a sharpened tentacle of oily Mogadorian ooze protruding from under my left breast. It went in my back, between the shoulder blades. I can feel it, itchy and burning inside me. Nicked a lung, probably. My breath wheezes out of me, blood on my lips.

“Oh” is all I think to say.

“Six!” Adam shouts.

“Oh, how I hoped it would be you two,” says a familiar voice behind me.

I turn my head because I'm unable to move the rest of my body, impaled as I am by a tentacle. Phiri Dun-Ra stands in the control room doorway. Her Augmentation is just like John described: a sickening mass of writhing black ooze that's attached to her shoulder where her arm should be.

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.