The Fall of Five

18

I can’t sleep that night. Stretched out on the choicest couch in Nine’s showroom of a living room, I should’ve slept like a baby. It was a huge upgrade over the stiff, flea-bitten motel beds my dad and I had been enduring, not to mention the wonderful accommodations of Setrákus Ra.

There is just too much to think about. Finally reunited with the Garde and my father, ready to really begin the fight against the Mogadorians, I feel uneasy. Uneasy about the future. Uneasy about fitting in with the Loric.

I wonder how my dad is sleeping. He seemed exhausted after dinner; I know answering the Garde’s questions with his fractured memory put a major strain on him.

Maybe I was just feeling awkward after meeting so many new Garde. I’d had time to forge friendships with John and Six, time to get used to the whole alien thing. Being around the rest of them sort of threw me off balance. I could handle Nine’s bluster. Marina and Ella seemed normal enough. But then there was Eight, with that story about basically tricking humans into fighting for him. And Five—well, I don’t think anyone really understood what his deal was yet. Sometimes he seemed like the most socially inept person in the world, and other times like he was slyly mocking everyone.

What was my role going to be here? John’s buddy from high school and plucky sidekick? I want to contribute more than that. I’m just not sure how I can.

I must’ve slept at least a bit, tossing and turning on the couch. The ornate hands of the ridiculously expensive-looking antique grandfather clock in the corner show that it’s early. I might as well get out of bed and do something. My hands are fidgeting. Maybe I can go down to the Lecture Hall, get a head start on some of the work my dad wanted to finish. I can’t exactly rebuild a mainframe or anything, but I’m pretty sure I could connect some of the severed wires on my own.

The penthouse is eerily quiet as I pad through it. The floorboards creak in the hallway and almost immediately Five’s door whips open, startling me. He’s still fully dressed, which is odd, like he’s just been crouching by his door and waiting to leap out at the first sign of trouble. One of his hands moves nervously, a pair of marble-sized balls turning over in his palm.

“Hey,” I whisper. “It’s just me. Sorry if I woke you.”

“What’re you doing up?” he whispers back suspiciously.

“I could ask you the same question,” I reply.

He sighs and seems to back down a bit, like he doesn’t want a confrontation. “Yeah, sorry. I can’t sleep. This place weirds me out. It’s too big.” Five pauses, scrunching up his face like he’s embarrassed. “Ever since Arkansas, I keep thinking one of those monsters is just going to show up and get me.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling. It’s okay. I think we’re safe here.” I motion down the hallway. “I’m gonna go work in the Lecture Hall. You want to come?”

Five shakes his head. “No thanks.” He starts to close his door, then stops. “You know, I don’t really think you and your dad are Mogadorian spies or whatever. At dinner I was just playing, uh, devil’s advocate, I guess.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“I mean, if I was a Mogadorian recruiting spies I’d pick humans that seemed a little tougher, you know?”

“Uh-huh,” I reply, crossing my arms. “You really don’t know when to stop talking during an apology, do you?”

“Ugh, I’m sorry. That came out wrong,” Five replies, knuckling his forehead. “I’ve got really crappy social awareness. Do you think anyone else has noticed?”

“Uh . . .”

Five smiles. “I’m joking, Sam. Of course they’ve noticed. I know I’m a freaking jerk. Like you said, I just can’t shut up sometimes.”

“If they’ve gotten used to Nine, they can get used to you,” I offer.

“Yeah. That’s, uh, heartening, I guess.” Five sighs. “Good night, Sam. Don’t hatch any evil plans in the Lecture Hall.”

Five shuts his door. I stand in the hallway, listening to him rustling around in his room. He’s a little off-putting, sure, but I can definitely understand why he’d be feeling anxious around the other Garde. I feel the same way.

I’m surprised to find the lights in the Lecture Hall already on. Sarah’s there, standing in the firing-range portion. She’s wearing a tank top and sweatpants. She’s also holding a crossbow, which might be one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. I watch her get ready to fire off an arrow.

“Can I take your picture for the yearbook?” I ask. My voice echoes in the vast space.

Sarah jumps. The arrow she was about to fire goes whizzing wide of the paper Mog hanging at the opposite end of the room. She turns around with a grin, brandishing the crossbow and gritting her teeth menacingly. I snap a picture with an imaginary camera.

“The kids in Paradise won’t believe that one,” I say. “But you’re a shoo-in for the Most Likely to Maim award.”

Sarah laughs. “God, we’re a long way from yearbook meetings, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Sarah sets the crossbow down and surprises me with a hug.

“What was that for?”

“It looked like you could use one,” she replies, shrugging. “Also, don’t tell the others I said this, but it’s so nice to have another human around.”

I realize that Sarah is pretty much the only other teenager on Earth who knows what it’s like to be friends with a bunch of aliens fighting an intergalactic war. We’ve never really talked about it, but we’ve shared a ton of the same whacked-out experiences.

“We should have like a two-person support group,” I suggest.

“You know, if you’d asked me last year, I’d say the scariest thing I’d ever seen was an AP chemistry final.” Sarah laughs. “And now, just yesterday, I watched my boyfriend fight a giant worm monster.”

I laugh. “Life sure got crazy in a hurry.”

“No wonder we’re turning into insomniacs.”

I wander over to the Lectern and start looking at some wires that my dad was working on before. Sarah sits down cross-legged next to me and watches.

“So you come down here and shoot a crossbow when you can’t sleep?”

“It’s as good as a warm glass of milk,” she replies. “Actually, I’ve been working on learning to shoot but I didn’t want to wake everyone up firing off guns.”

“Yeah, probably not a good idea. Everyone’s a bit on edge, huh?”

“That’s an understatement.”

I glance over at Sarah. It’s so hard to believe this is the same girl I went to high school with. What really throws me is that we’re having a conversation about artillery training.

“Been coming in here a lot, actually,” she continues. “John doesn’t sleep much. When he does, it’s all tossing and turning. And then he slips out of bed in the morning to go brood on the roof. He thinks I don’t notice, but I do.”

I smirk at Sarah, arching an eyebrow. “Sharing a bed, huh?”

She kicks at me playfully. “Whatever, Sam. There are only so many bedrooms. It’s not what you think, though. There’s something really not romantic about hiding from murderous alien invaders, you know? Not to mention I don’t like the idea of Eight just teleporting in or something.” She squints at me. “Even so, don’t tell my parents.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I tell her. “Us humans have to stick together.”

I finish reconnecting the wires and something hums to life inside the Lectern. One of the panels along the wall suddenly juts out like a piston, then retracts.

“What’s that for?” Sarah asks.

“It’s like combat-simulation stuff, I guess. Nine told me his Cêpan had all kind of obstacles and traps set up in here.”

Sarah knocks on the floor in front of her. Something metallic rattles beneath her hand and she jerks back. “Maybe I should watch where I’m sitting.”

I stop messing with the wires, wanting to wait for my dad before I go any further and also not wanting to accidentally trigger some kind of spike trap under Sarah.

Sarah gently touches my arm. “So why aren’t you sleeping, Sam?”

Without realizing it, I find that I’m rubbing the scars on my wrists. “I had a lot of time to think when I was a prisoner,” I tell her.

“I know what you mean.”

Well, there’s another thing Sarah and I have in common. “I spent a lot of time thinking about John and the others. About how I could help them.”

“And?”

I open up my hands, showing Sarah what I came up with: a whole lot of nothing.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, there’s always the crossbow.”

“I’m worried I won’t be able to help. Like sooner or later I’ll end up captured again, or worse, and that’ll just screw things up for the others. Then I hear a story like Eight told tonight and I wonder if maybe it wouldn’t have been better if John had left me in Paradise like Eight left those soldiers. Like maybe he’d be better off without having to worry about me.”

“Or me,” Sarah says, frowning.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say hurriedly.

“It’s okay,” Sarah says, touching my arm. “It’s okay because you’re wrong, Sam. John and the others do need us. And there are things we can do.”

I nod, wanting to believe her, but then I look down at the scars on my wrists and remember what Setrákus Ra told me in West Virginia. I fall silent. Sarah hops to her feet, holding her hand out.

“For starters,” she says, “we could go make some breakfast. They probably won’t make us honorary Loriens for it, but it’s a start.”

I force a smile and climb to my feet. Sarah doesn’t let go of my hand. She’s looking at the dark purple scars on my wrists.

“Whatever happened to you, Sam,” she says, holding my gaze, “it’s over now. You’re safe.”

Before I can respond, a piercing shriek erupts from one of the bedrooms.