United as One

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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.