United as One

“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.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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.”