The Fall of Five

28

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asks when I suddenly pull away from her.

“My bracelet’s warning me. Something’s up,” I reply, spinning around, trying to take in everything around us at once. “Something bad.”

“This seriously can’t keep happening,” Sarah says with disbelief, referring to last night’s BK emergency.

“No, this is different. Worse.”

Instinctively I touch my bracelet as it sends icicles up and down my arm. We’re on a pretty crowded street in downtown Chicago. I scan the faces around us; people walking home from work, couples heading out for dinner, humans all of them. Not a pale face with a penchant for dark clothing to be seen. Yet the bracelet has never steered me wrong in the past. There’s danger nearby.

“We should get back home,” Sarah says. “Warn the others.”

I shake my head. “No. If they’re following us and we don’t flush them out, we could end up leading them to the others.”

“Crap, you’re right. So what do we do?”

“We have to find them.” I grab Sarah’s hand and walk a few steps down the block. The pins-and-needles sensation on my wrist begins to fade, which means the danger is in the other direction. I turn back around and head that way, although I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“John . . . ,” Sarah says warningly, clutching my hand in both of hers. She’s trying to hide the glow that my skin is suddenly giving off. My Lumen has triggered, both my hands lighting up, ready for a fight. I take a deep breath and calm myself, willing my hands to go back to normal. Luckily, no one around us seems to notice.

“Over here,” I say, and lead Sarah towards the mouth of a dark back alley. The bracelet is practically screaming at me now, my entire arm numb from the pins and needles. I slide up against the wall and poke my head around the corner of the alley.

There are three of them. Mogadorian scouts by the look of them. They’re not even making much effort to pass as human, their pale heads clean shaven but without tattoos, dressed in the dark trench coats that would spook just about anyone. Whatever they’re doing here, it’s pretty clear they aren’t expecting to be spotted. Two of them are keeping watch while the third runs his hands underneath a Dumpster. He yanks something free from beneath the metal, an envelope of some kind.

“There’re three,” I whisper to Sarah. She’s standing next to me, her back against the wall. “They must be the vat-grown ones Malcolm was talking about. Pale and ugly, as usual.”

“What’re they doing here?”

“Don’t know,” I reply. “But they’re easy targets.”

“I didn’t bring a gun on our date,” she whispers back. “I should’ve known better.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “They haven’t spotted us.”

Sarah looks down at my hands. “We can’t just let them do whatever they’re doing, can we?”

“Hell no,” I reply, realizing that my fists have clenched. For once, I’ve got the drop on Mogadorians. I want to know what they’re up to. No more running scared. “If things go bad, you run for help.”

“Things won’t go bad,” Sarah says firmly, and confidence flows through me. “Light those assholes up.”

I step into the alley and walk right towards the Mogs. Their hollow eyes focus on me in unison. For a moment, that old familiar chill runs through me, that fugitive feeling. I shove it down; this time, I’m choosing fight over flight.

“You guys lost?” I ask casually, striding closer.

“Get outta here, kid,” one of them hisses, flashing a row of tiny teeth. The Mog next to him opens up his coat, showing me the handle of a blaster tucked into his pants. They’re trying to scare me off like I’m just some human taking a really ill-advised shortcut home. They don’t recognize me for what I am. That means whatever they’re doing here, it isn’t hunting me.

“Getting kinda chilly,” I say, stopping about ten yards away from them. “You warm enough?”

Without waiting for a response, I trigger my Lumen. A fireball swirls into existence over my palm and I lob it at the closest Mog. He doesn’t even have a chance to react before it envelops his face, lighting him up like a matchstick for a moment before he disintegrates to ash.

The second Mog at least manages to reach for his blaster but that’s as far as he gets. I hit him with a fireball right in the chest. He lets loose a short scream and then joins the first Mog as dust on the dirty alley ground.

I don’t hit the final Mog with my Lumen. He’s the one holding that envelope and I don’t want to risk torching it. I want to see what the Mogs are after, what secret mission has these Mogadorians skulking around Chicago. He stares at me, almost as if he’s waiting for me to dispatch him as easily as I did the others, the envelope clutched to his chest. When he realizes that I’m hesitating, he takes off, sprinting down the alley.

A Mogadorian running from me. Now there’s a welcome change of pace.

I grab the Dumpster with my telekinesis and launch it at the Mog before he can get too far. The Dumpster’s metal sides screech as they grind against the alley wall. It hits the Mog and pins him up against the wall, his bones crunching.

“Tell me what you’re doing here and I’ll make this quick,” I say, walking over to him. To demonstrate, I put a little telekinetic pressure on the Dumpster, grinding it farther into his mangled body. A bubble of dark blood dribbles down the Mog’s chin. His scream of frustration and pain makes me hesitate. I’ve never done anything like this before. The Mogs I’ve killed have all been quick and in self-defense. I hope I’m not going too far.

“You—you’re all going to die,” spits the Mog.

I’m wasting my time. I’m not likely to learn anything important from some lowly scout. I shove the Dumpster one last time with my telekinesis, finishing him off. Then I pull the Dumpster away from the wall and pluck the envelope from the pile of Mogadorian ash. I turn it over in my hands—it’s stuffed with papers.

“What is it?” Sarah asks, approaching cautiously from the mouth of the alley.

I light up one of my hands so I can see the papers in the darkness. I’m holding three pages covered in rigid script that looks like a cross between hieroglyphics and Chinese. Written in Mogadorian, of course. I guess it’d be too lucky to catch the Mogs sending secret orders in English. I hold up the papers so that Sarah can see.

“Know any good Mogadorian translators?” I ask. Back at the penthouse, I gather everyone in the dining room to describe my encounter with the Mogs. Nine pats me on the back when I get to the part about killing the three Mogadorians.

“You should’ve brought that last one back here,” he says. “We could’ve tortured something out of him like they did to us.”

I shake my head. I glance over at Sam, who has begun surreptitiously rubbing his scarred wrists. “That’s not what we do,” I say. “We’re better than that.”

“It’s a war, Johnny,” Nine replies.

“What does this mean?” Marina asks. “Do they know where we are?”

“I doubt it,” I say. “If they were here for us, they’d have sent more than three. They didn’t even recognize me when I approached.”

“Yeah, and you’re a famous Mogadorian killer,” says Eight. “Weird.”

“They’d have come by now if they were coming,” Six adds. “They aren’t exactly known for their subtlety. We need to figure out what these papers say. It could be some kind of invasion plan.”

“Just like my dream,” whispers Ella.

The papers in question are being passed around the table, everyone taking a look at the meaningless symbols on the pages.

Malcolm takes the papers, frowning. “I spent time in captivity, but I never learned their language.”

“Pretty sure there’s some translating software on Sandor’s computer,” offers Nine. “Doubt it has Mogadorian, though.”

Malcolm runs a hand over his beard, still looking over the papers. “There are patterns here, like with all languages. This can be cracked. If you show me that software, I may be able to use it.”

Everyone around the table looks nervous. It’s the first whiff of the Mogadorians we’ve had since battling them in Arkansas.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I say. “Whatever is in those documents, I’m sure it’s something the Mogadorians don’t want us to know. It’s something we can use to our advantage. But, until we know for sure, we press on with the plan we’ve already made. Get some rest, everyone; we leave for Florida in the morning.”