More whispering in a language I don’t recognize, but somehow still understand. The words burst forth anxiously. The darkness fades, and the world I’m in turns a shade of gray on its way to a white so bright I have to squint to see. A mist drifts in front of me and filters away, revealing a large open room with candles lining the walls.
“I—I don’t know what went wrong,” a voice says, clearly shaken.
The room is long and wide, the size of a football field. The acrid smell of sulfur burns my nostrils, makes my eyes water. The air is hot and stuffy. And then I see them at the far end of the room: two figures shrouded in shadows, one much bigger than the other, and menacing even from a distance.
“They got away. Somehow they got away. I don’t know how. . . .”
I move forward. I feel the sort of calm that sometimes comes in dreams when you’re aware you’re asleep and that nothing can really hurt you. Step by step, nearing the growing shadows.
“All of them, all of them killed. Along with three piken and two krauls,” the smaller of the two says, standing with fidgeting hands beside the larger man.
“We had them. We were about to—,” comes the voice, but the other cuts him off. He scans the air to see what he’s already sensed. I stop, stand motionless, and hold my breath. And then he finds me. A shudder runs up my spine.
“John,” somebody says, the voice a distant echo.
The larger figure comes towards me. He towers over me, twenty feet tall, muscular, a chiseled jaw. His hair isn’t long like the others’, but cut short instead. His skin is tan. Our eyes stay locked as he slowly approaches. Thirty feet away, then twenty. He stops ten feet short. My pendant grows heavy and the chain cuts into my neck. Around his throat, like a collar, I notice a grotesque, purplish scar.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he says, his voice level and calm. He lifts his right arm and pulls a sword from the sheath on his back. It comes alive at once, keeping its shape while the metal turns nearly liquid. The wound in my shoulder, from the soldier’s dagger during the battle in Ohio, screams with pain as though I’m being stabbed all over again. I fall to my knees.
“It’s been a very long time,” he says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a language I’ve never spoken before.
I want to leave immediately, wherever this place is. I try to rise, but it’s as if I’m suddenly stuck to the ground.
“Don’t you?” he asks.
“John,” I hear again from somewhere on the periphery. The Mogadorian doesn’t seem to notice, and there’s something about his gaze that holds my own. I can’t look away.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say. My voice sounds watery. Everything dims until it’s just the two of us and nothing else.
“I can make you disappear if that’s what you want,” he says, slashing a figure eight with the sword, leaving a stark white streak hanging in the air where the blade passes through. And then he charges, his sword held high and cracking with power. He swings, and it comes down like a bullet, aimed for my throat, and I know that there’s nothing I can do to stop the blow from decapitating me.
“John!” the voice screams again.
My eyes whip open. Two hands grip me hard by the shoulders. I’m covered in sweat and out of breath. I focus first on Sam standing over me, then on Six, with her stark hazel eyes that sometimes look blue and sometimes green, kneeling beside me, appearing tired and worn as though I just woke her, which I probably did.
“What was that all about?” Sam asks.
I shake my head, letting the vision dissipate, and I take in my surroundings. The room is dark with the curtains drawn, and I’m lying in the same bed I’ve spent the last week and a half in, healing from the battle wounds. Six has been recovering beside me, and neither she nor I have left this place since we arrived, relying on Sam to head out for food and supplies. A shabby motel room with two full beds off the main street in Trucksville, North Carolina. To rent the room, Sam had used one of the seventeen driver’s licenses Henri created for me before he was killed, and luckily the old man at the front desk was too busy watching TV to study the photograph. Situated on the northwestern edge of the state, the motel is a fifteen-minute drive from both Virginia and Tennessee, a location chosen mainly because we had traveled as far as we could go given the extent of our injuries. But our wounds have slowly healed, and our strength is finally returning.
“You were talking in a foreign language I’ve never heard before,” Sam says. “I think you made it up, dude.”
“No, he was talking in Mogadorian,” Six corrects him. “And even a little Loric.”
“Really?” I ask. “That’s totally weird.”
Six walks to the window and pulls back the right side of the curtains. “What were you dreaming about?”
I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. I was dreaming, but I wasn’t dreaming, you know. Having visions, I guess, and they were about them. We were about to have a battle; but I was, I don’t know, too weak or confused or something.” I look up at Sam, who is frowning and looking at the TV. “What?”
“Bad news.” He sighs, shaking his head.
“What?” I sit up, wipe the sleep from my eyes.
Sam nods to the front of the room, and I turn to the glow of the television. My face takes up the entire left half of the screen, while an artist’s rendering of Henri’s is on the right. The drawing looks nothing like him: his face seems sharp and haggard to the point of emaciation, giving him the appearance of being twenty years older than he really is. Or was.
“As if being called a threat to national security or a terrorist wasn’t bad enough,” Sam says. “They’re now offering a reward.”
“For me?” I ask.
“For you and Henri. A hundred thousand dollars for any information leading to your and Henri’s capture, and two hundred and fifty thousand if somebody brings either of you in on their own,” Sam says.
“I’ve been on the run all of my life,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “What difference does it make?”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t and they’re offering a reward for me, too,” Sam says. “A measly twenty-five grand, if you can believe that. And I don’t know how good of a fugitive I am. I’ve never done this before.”
I gingerly scoot up the bed, still a little stiff. Sam sits on the other bed and places his head in his palms.
“You’re with us, though, Sam. We have your back,” I say.
“I’m not worried,” he says into his chest.
I chew on the insides of my cheeks, thinking about how I’m going to keep him safe, and me and Six alive, without Henri. I turn to face Sam, who is stressed enough to be picking a hole in his black NASA T-shirt. “Listen, Sam. I wish Henri was here. I can’t even tell you how much I wish he was here, for so many reasons. Not only did he keep me safe when we were running from one state to the next, but he also had all this knowledge about Lorien and my family, and he had this amazing calming way about him that’s kept us out of trouble for so long. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to do what he did to keep us safe. I bet if he were alive today, he wouldn’t have let you come with us. There’s just no way he would have put you in this kind of danger. But, listen, you’re here and that’s that, and I promise that I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I want to be here,” Sam says. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.” There is a pause, and then he looks me in the eyes. “Plus you’re my best friend, and I’ve never had a best friend.”
“Neither have I,” I say.
“Just hug already,” Six says. Sam and I laugh.
My face is still on the screen. The photo on the TV is the one Sarah took on my very first day of school, the day I’d met her; and I have an awkward, uncomfortable look on my face. The right side of the screen is now filled with smaller photos of the five people we’re being accused of killing: three teachers, the men’s basketball coach, the school janitor. And then the screen changes yet again to images of the wrecked school—and it really is wrecked; the entire right side of the building is nothing more than a heap of rubble. Next come various interviews with Paradise residents, the last being Sam’s mom. When she comes on screen she’s crying, and looking straight into the camera she desperately pleads with the “kidnappers” to “please please please return my baby safely to me.” When Sam sees this interview, I can tell something inside of him shifts.
Scenes from the past week’s funerals and candlelight vigils come next. Sarah’s face flashes on the screen, and she’s holding a candle as tears stream down her cheeks. A lump forms in my throat. I’d give anything to hear her voice. It kills me to imagine what she must be dealing with. The video of us escaping Mark’s burning house—which is what started all of this—has blown up on the internet, and while I was blamed for starting that blaze as well, Mark stepped in and swore up and down that I had no part in it, even though using me as a scapegoat would have let him off the hook completely.
When we had left Ohio, the damage to the school had first been attributed to an out-of-season tornado; but then rescue crews filtered through the rubble, and in no time all five bodies had been found lying equal distances from each other—without a single mark on them—in a room untouched by the battle. Autopsies reported that they had died of natural causes, with no trace of drugs or trauma. Who knows how it really happened. When one of the reporters had heard the story of me jumping through the principal’s window and running away from the school, and then when Henri and I couldn’t be found, he’d run a story blaming us for everything; and the rest had been quick to follow. With the recent discovery of Henri’s forgery tools, along with a few of the fake documents he had left at the house, the public outrage has grown.
“We’re going to have to be very careful now,” Six says, sitting against the wall.
“More careful than staying inside a crummy motel room with the curtains drawn?” I ask.
Six goes back to the window and pulls aside one of the curtains to peer out. A sliver of sunlight cuts across the floor. “The sun will set in three hours. Let’s leave as soon as it’s dark.”
“Thank God,” Sam says. “There’s a meteor shower tonight we can see if we drive south. Plus if I have to spend one more minute inside this crappy room, I’m going to go nuts.”
“Sam, you’ve been nuts since the first time I met you,” I kid. He throws a pillow at me, which I deflect without lifting a hand. I twist the pillow over and over in the air with my telekenisis and then send it like a rocket at the television, shutting it off.
I know Six is right that we should keep moving, but I’m frustrated. It seems like there’s no end in sight, no place where we’ll be safe. At the foot of the bed, keeping my feet warm, is Bernie Kosar, who’s hardly left my side since Ohio. He opens his eyes and yawns and stretches. He peers up at me, and through my telepathy communicates that he’s also feeling better. Most of the small scabs that covered his body are gone, and the larger ones are healing nicely. He’s still wearing the makeshift splint on his broken front leg, and he’ll limp for a few more weeks; but he almost looks like his old self. He offers a subtle wag and paws at my leg. I reach down and pull him up to my lap and scratch his tummy.