United as One (29 page)

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.”

The cage stops compressing when BK is squished down to beagle form. BK tries to go smaller and sneak between the bars, but the whole thing instantly seals up like a cocoon. I can't see him anymore. BK floats in a solid bubble of ooze just above the lake's surface.

At least, from the sound of it, Setrákus Ra doesn't plan to kill him right away.

Can't say the same about the rest of us.

As I scramble to my feet, Setrákus Ra lands a few yards away. He holds out his hands like a saint in a stained glass window. My lips curl in disgust.

“Like insects before a giant,” he says. “So do you children quail before a god.”

“You're no god,” I reply, tossing a fireball at him that he simply absorbs.

He snorts. “You Loric, so pious even at the end. The thing you worship, the Entity that now hides beneath the earth, it is nothing more than a resource. Like ore, like water. You pray to a river while I create dams. You rely on the whims of nature while my intellect shapes galaxies. Do you not see now what my work, my progress, has the power to create?”

“I see a lonely old asshole living in a fucking cave!” shouts Nine as he launches in from the side.

Nine throws a haymaker that Setrákus Ra easily ducks under. As Nine stumbles and tries to regain his balance, Setrákus Ra grabs him by the hair and yanks him backwards. Setrákus Ra's hand is flat, the edge gleaming like the blade of a sword. He swings in a chopping motion for Nine's neck.

I yank Nine to me with my telekinesis before Setrákus Ra can cut off his head. He's left with a
handful of Nine's hair, ripped right out of his head.

The speed. The invulnerability. Twisting his body into whatever sick shapes he can imagine. It's crazy to think I was once intimidated by Setrákus Ra when all he could do was change sizes and cancel out our Legacies.

This monster before me is so much worse.

“Ideas?” Nine says to me.

“Flank him,” I reply, and we spread out.

Nine holds up my dagger. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

We're trying to put on a show of confidence, but I can tell Nine's shaken by Setrákus Ra's display of power. We're in trouble.

With a wolfish smile, Setrákus Ra starts to advance on us. Before he gets too close, he's peppered by a volley of icicles from the ledge above. He's a pincushion, the ice shards stabbing up and down his back.

“All you've made is pain and suffering!” Marina yells down at him. “All those bodies up there! For what? So you could craft these hideous powers?”

Setrákus Ra chuckles. “Oh no, my dear. Lorien is stingy with its gifts. The pitiful sparks that hide within all of you are mere drops in the bucket. I needed to tap directly into the source to create what you see down here.” He runs a hand vainly across his own cheek. “Draining those others was merely a trial run of one of
my new Augmentations. They died in service to glorious progress.”

“You're mad!” Marina counters. “For all your supposed genius, you've never created anything as beautiful as Lorien did!”

A sudden wave of heat radiates from Setrákus Ra, and the icicles melt right out of him. Then he spins around to face Marina, his appearance changing. His skin darkens to a caramel color, and his head sprouts a mop of curly dark hair.

“Haven't I?” he asks. His face, his voice—he's taken on the shape of Eight.

Marina recoils in horror as he starts to float up to her.

“Didn't I promise to reunite you with your love?” Setrákus Ra asks, his eyes filled with malice Eight's never held in life. “That could still be yours, dear Marina. . . .”

Using my stone-vision, I turn his lower half into solid granite and connect that to the cavern floor so Setrákus Ra is now a stalagmite rising up from the rocks. He looks down at himself—Eight's appearance abandoned, his own younger self returned—and makes a face.

“Primitive,” he growls.

Primitive or not, it slows him down. Nine charges in, runs up my rock formation and takes a swipe at
Setrákus Ra with my Voron dagger. Stuck in place, Setrákus Ra can't dodge, and Nine cleaves off a huge chunk of his face. For a moment, I think I see blood. But then the Mogadorian sludge fills in the wound, smooths it over, and his face is back to normal.

Still, he was hurt. We can find ways to hurt him.

As Nine comes around for another pass, I push out with my telekinesis. I put pressure on the armor that Setrákus Ra wears, crushing it, compacting it, hoping to tighten it around his guts. I sense Marina add her strength to mine, and soon we're squeezing the armor like a tin can.

Bellowing, Setrákus Ra rips the armor loose and tosses it aside. He's bare-chested now. Right over his heart, in the spot where Six impaled him, there's a throbbing mass of the black ooze, like a spider at the center of its web.

The stuff isn't concentrated like that on any other part of his body. That has to be where he's deriving all this power from.

Nine!
Instead of speaking, this time I use my telepathy. I don't want Setrákus Ra to know we've figured him out.
Go for the heart!

Duh
, he thinks back.

Setrákus Ra kicks free of the rocks I built around his legs like they were nothing more than pebbles. As soon as he's free, I activate my stone-vision and trip
him up again. At the same time, Marina assails him with another vicious barrage of ice. He swats the frozen daggers away, growling, distracted.

“This grows tiresome,” he says.

And then Nine is on him, leading with the Voron dagger, powering out of a crouch, thrusting forwards with all he's worth.

Stabbing Setrákus Ra right through the heart.

Nine buries the blade to the hilt. Its tip pokes out through Setrákus Ra's back.

Setrákus Ra looks down at the weapon.

He smiles.

“Is this a children's story?” he asks, sounding amused. “I have spent centuries perfecting my work. And you think . . . what? That there is a weak point?”

He takes a deep breath, and the blade, along with Nine's hand still on the hilt, is sucked fully into the black mass on his chest. Setrákus Ra looks towards Marina.

“Behold, a demonstration.”

Nine screams. His arm first turns blue, like the circulation's been cut off, then gray and withered and finally as black as the ooze. The muscles melt, his skin sags off his bones. It's like watching time-lapse photography of his arm decomposing.

Setrákus Ra again stomps free of the stone I placed around his legs and kicks Nine in the chest. Nine flies backwards.

His arm stays with Setrákus Ra. It hangs from his chest for a moment, and then it's like the ooze begins to digest the limb, breaking it down, drawing it into Setrákus Ra. When the process is over, the arm is fully absorbed. Nine lies on the ground, clutching the empty space where his arm used to be. Marina leaps down, wide-eyed.

“Oh God, oh God,” she mumbles, groping at the spot on Nine's shoulder. There's no blood; the flesh is dried and dead. Still, she activates her healing Legacy and tries . . . tries something.

Setrákus Ra advances on them, wetting his lips.

I fly forward—stone-vision, a bombardment of ice, a blast of fire—try to slow him down.

I'm not strong enough.

He grabs my head, palms my face and slams me down to the stone floor.

“You will be last, Pittacus,” he says.

Blood streams into my eyes. Woozy, dazed, I struggle to my knees as Setrákus Ra stalks towards my friends.

We can't win this.

Marina throws up her hands, and a wall of solid ice separates her and Nine from Setrákus Ra. The Mogadorian sighs, annoyed, and punches straight through it.

While this happens, I reach out with my telepathy. Search for Adam's mind. In the heat of battle, it didn't occur to me until now that Six never showed up. Maybe she went back to the warship with Adam for
some reason, I allow myself to briefly hope.

Nothing. I can't find Adam's mind.

Or Six.

Split seconds pass telepathically, but it feels like an eternity of searching. Finally, I manage to make contact with Ella, still floating above the mountain in our warship. The anxiety radiating from her mind is palpable as soon as we connect. She anticipates my questions.

Adam . . . Adam fell into a chasm with Phiri Dun-Ra
, Ella tells me.
And Six, she's hurt bad. I think she's unconscious.

Damn it.

I switch from Ella's mind to Sam's. I can sense him up there, pacing back and forth, watching the darkened entrance of the Mogadorian base through the warship windows.

Sam
. I make an effort to keep my thoughts calm and collected. Like my friends aren't dying. Like I'm not losing this war.

I need you to do something for me.

John?
His mind practically leaps towards mine. Our entire conversation takes place in the space of one of his nervous strides, his foot hovering above the floor of the bridge.
What's happening? Ella won't say.

I need you to do something for me.

Anything!

Use your Legacy. Command the ship to destroy the mountain.

. . . What?

Images flash to the forefront of Sam's mind. He and I walking through the halls of Paradise High School. Nine grabbing him in a loose headlock. Most prominently, he and Six standing on a breathtaking mountaintop somewhere, gazing out at a crystal clear ocean.

It's the only way to stop him, Sam. He's strong, but we can trap him down here!

No! I won't! Not while you're all still in there!

All this telepathy happens at the speed of thought as I get to my feet, as Setrákus Ra crosses towards Marina and Nine. I'm out of time, though—he's there; I need to act.

“Get up, Nine, come on,” Marina pleads, still trying to heal the dead flesh on his shoulder.

Holding Sam in my mind, letting him see what I see, I fly towards Setrákus Ra, hoping to buy Marina some more time.

He anticipates me. Backhands me with a force that cracks my jaw and sends me crashing to the cave floor, skittering through the broken shards of Marina's ice wall.

Nine is still on the ground, moaning and shaking, probably going into shock. Marina presses both her
hands to his stump. Our healing Legacies don't regrow limbs, though. There's nothing we can do.

Setrákus Ra grabs Marina by the hair and yanks her off her feet. She thrashes, raking her hand across his face. She hits the exact spot that Nine sliced with the Voron blade just a minute ago.

Setrákus Ra drops her, recoils and clutches at his cheek.

That part of his face slips off, the black oil holding it together receding into his body.

Marina and I make eye contact.

What did you do?
My thought hits her mind with urgency.

Healing!
she replies.
I was still using my healing!

I remember New York City, right before the invasion. Secretary of Defense Sanderson and the black ooze running through his veins. It took minutes and it was exhausting, but I was able to burn that gunk out from inside his body by using my healing.

We can kill Setrákus Ra. We just have to make him Loric again. We have to expel these Augmentations and destroy what's left of the man.

Marina's already got the idea. As Setrákus Ra recovers, she flashes forward, hand extended in his direction.

Setrákus Ra sidesteps. He catches her by the elbow and twists, wrenching Marina's arm behind her back and dislocating her shoulder. Then he slashes her face
with his claws, opening up four deep scratches diagonally across her face. Meanwhile, his own sick visage has already been restored by the ooze.

I fly into Setrákus Ra before he can finish off Marina. I wrap my legs around his chest and grab him on either side of his head, pumping as much of my healing energy into him as I can. At the same time, I muster as much force as I can and fly us across the cavern, hoping that keeping him away from his vat will weaken him further. I can feel the Augmentations inside him, the oil writhing in every part of his body. There's more of that inside him than there is man. It's like I'm trying to beat back a tidal wave.