The Fate of Ten

“No, actually, I’d like an answer to that question, too,” Walker says, her gun still trained on Five. “He attacked our soldiers and helped the Mogadorians. He’s basically a war criminal. You just want to leave him here?”

“Don’t you have some kind of top secret space prison for evil metal guys?” Daniela whispers to me.

“Hell with him,” Sam says. He’s the only one who gets that we have more important things to deal with. He waves dismissively at Five and bends down over Nine, trying to help him up. “Come on, John. We gotta get out of here.”

I’m about to help Sam when Five speaks up again. “That’s it?” he asks, sounding almost sullen. “You’re just going to leave?”

I straighten up and glare at him. “What the hell do you want, Five? Do you know how much of our time you’ve already wasted with your stupid theatrics?” I gesture towards Manhattan, plumes of smoke still rising into the air there. “You’re not a priority right now, man. You noticed we’re at war, right? You’re not so far gone that you missed your old Mog friends killing thousands of people, did you?”

Five actually looks towards the city, contemplating the destruction there. His bottom lip juts out. “They aren’t my friends,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, no shit,” I reply. “Too bad you’re only figuring that out now. They used you, Five, and now they don’t want you anymore. And neither do we. You’re lucky I don’t come over there and finish what Nine started.”

My temper flares as I remember all the crap Five has pulled in the short time I’ve known him. In spite of my words, I take a sudden step towards him. Sam puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t,” he says. “Let’s just go.”

I nod, knowing Sam’s right. I still have to get a few last shots in, though. I need to get this stuff off my chest. “I guess you can be alone now,” I say to Five. “That’s kinda what you wanted all along, isn’t it? So, go run back to one of your tropical islands and hide, or whatever it is you want to do. Just stay out of our way and stop wasting our time.”

Five looks down at the grass in front of him. “You didn’t have to come,” he says bitterly.

That actually makes me laugh. The sheer insanity of this guy. “You made us come here. You said you’d kill Nine if we didn’t.”

Five’s forehead makes a metal clinking noise when he knocks against it, like he’s trying to remember something. “That’s not what I told those army losers when they found me,” he says. “I told them you’d get a new scar.”

“Why are we still talking to him?” Sam asks, his voice rising a bit in bewilderment. He leans back down over Nine, loops Nine’s arm over his shoulders and grunts as he tries to lift him up.

Five’s single eye holds mine. He’s locked in on me, totally ignoring everyone else. I know he’s baiting me into something, I just don’t know what. Sam’s right that we shouldn’t be wasting time here, but I can’t help myself.

“What’re you saying?” I ask him grudgingly, knowing that it’s exactly what he wants.

In response, Five takes off his shirt.

The simple action seems to take a lot of effort, like it’s hard for Five to lift his arms. The shirt snags on something as Five pulls it over his head and he yelps. It takes me a moment of looking at his chest, metal-plated just like the rest of him, to realize there’s something wrong.

Five has a piece of steel sticking out of his sternum. It looks like a broken-off pole from a street sign. He turns to the side slightly so that I can see the jagged other end poking out through his back. Each end comes out only a few inches, and both are twisted and warped like Five had to shorten the pole by ripping it with his hands. It’s straight through and, at the very least, has to be puncturing one of Five’s lungs and part of his spine. The steel pole could even be right up against his heart.

“I was already in my metal form when he drove it through me. That didn’t stop him, though,” Five explains, wheezing his words a bit. He looks at Nine with something close to admiration. “My instincts kicked in. I used my Externa in a way I hadn’t before, made the metal part of me. I can feel it cold inside me, Four. It’s weird.”

Five seems almost casual about this. I take a tentative step towards him and he smiles.

“I’m tired and I can’t hold my Externa forever,” Five says. “So I wanted it to be up to you. You’re the good one, John. The reasonable one. And you were always right in front of me in the order, keeping me alive all those years, whether you knew me or not. So what’s it going to be?”

I take another cautious step towards him. “Five . . .”

“Live or die?” Five asks, and then, without warning, he turns himself back into flesh.

Chapter SEVENTEEN

FIVE CHOKES ON THE NEXT BREATH HE TAKES. A bubble of blood spews from his mouth. His skin, no longer covered by a layer of steel, goes pale in a hurry. His remaining eye goes wide and, in that moment before I watch it roll back in his head, I see fear there. Maybe Five thought he wanted this. But now, looking death in the face, he is scared.

Five collapses backwards into the grass, seizing and struggling to pull in painful-sounding breaths. Ten seconds. Impaled by a sign pole, that’s how long I’d guess Five has left to live.

He betrayed us. He told the Mogs where they could find us and got Nine’s safe house blown up. Because of Five, Setrákus Ra was able to kidnap Ella, and Sam’s dad was almost killed. He murdered Eight. With that needle-shaped blade that even now tears up chunks of dirt as Five spasms in the grass, Five executed one of his own people. He deserves this.