Six's Legacy

CHAPTER THREE

Katarina rushes to the tap, fills a pitcher, and dumps it across my leg. I am nearly catatonic from the pain, biting my lip so hard it bleeds. I watch the water sizzle as it hits my burned flesh, then it floods the game board, washing the army pieces off onto the floor.

“You win,” I say, making a feeble joke.

Katarina doesn’t acknowledge my attempt at wit. My protector, she has gone into full-on Cepan mode: pulling first-aid supplies out from every corner of our shack. Before I know it she’s applied a cooling salve to my scar and wrapped and taped it with gauze.

“Six,” she says, her eyes moist with fear and pity. I’m taken aback-she only uses my real name in moments of extreme crisis.

But then I realize that’s what this is.

Years had passed since One’s death, without incident. It had gotten easy to imagine it was a fluke. If we were feeling really hopeful, we could imagine One had died in an accident. That the Mogadorians hadn’t caught our scent.

That time is over. We know for sure now. The Mogadorians have found the second member of the Garde, and killed him or her. Two’s message to us, to the world, was the last thing he or she would ever do. Their violent death was now written across my skin.

We know two deaths is no fluke. The countdown has truly begun.

I almost faint, but pull myself to consciousness by biting my lip even harder. “Six,” Katarina says, wiping the blood from my mouth with a cloth. “Relax.”

I shake my head.

No. I can never relax. Not ever.

Katarina is straining to keep her composure. She doesn’t want to frighten me. But she also wants to do the right thing, to honor her responsibilities as a Cepan. I can tell she’s torn between every possible reaction, from outright panic to philosophical cool; whatever is the best for me and for the fate of the Garde.

She cradles my head, wipes the sweat from my brow. The water and the salve have taken the sharpest edge off the pain, but it still hurts as bad as the first time, maybe worse. But I won’t comment on it. I can see that my pain, and this evidence of Two’s passing, is tormenting Katarina enough.

“We’ll be okay,” says Katarina. “There are still many others. . . .”

I know she is speaking carelessly. She doesn’t mean to put the lives of the Garde before me-Three, Four, and Five-ahead of my own. She is just grasping for consolation. But I won’t let it pass.

“Yeah. It’s so great others have to die before me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I can see my words have upset her.

I sigh, putting my head against her shoulder.

Sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I use a different name for Katarina. Sometimes to me she’s not Katarina or Vicky or Celeste or any of her other aliases. Sometimes-in my mind-I call her “Mom.”