The Fate of Ten

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MASSIVE WARSHIP, BIGGER THAN AN AIRCRAFT carrier, becomes visible in the night sky when it’s still five or so blocks away. It pushes slowly through the acrid smoke its recent bombings kicked up. Sam and I had been able to stay ahead of the Anubis earlier that afternoon, fighting our way south as it slowly prowled the skyline to the east. But now, here it is, looming up the avenue, right in the direction of Union Square.

I clench my fists. Setrákus Ra and Ella are on board the Anubis. If I could just get on there, maybe I could fight my way to the Mogadorian leader. Maybe I could kill him this time.

Sam stands at my side. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea. We need to run, John.”

And as if to punctuate Sam’s declaration, a sizzling ball of electric energy gathers in the barrel of the Anubis’s huge hull-mounted cannon. It’s like a miniature sun building up within the barrel, and for a moment it lights the surrounding blocks in a ghostly blue. Then, with a sound like a thousand Mog blasters going off at once, the energy erupts forth from the cannon, shearing through the façade of a nearby office building, the twenty-story structure almost immediately collapsing inwards.

A wave of dust rolls down the street towards us. Coughing, the three of us have to shield our eyes. The dust might give us some cover, but that doesn’t really matter when the warship has a gun that can demolish whole buildings. The Anubis lumbers closer, already prepping for another shot. I’m not sure if Setrákus Ra is aiming at heat signatures in the buildings or if he’s just destroying things at random, hoping to hit us. It doesn’t matter. The Anubis is like a force of nature and it’s headed in our direction.

“Hell with this,” I hear Daniela say, and then she takes off.

Sam follows her and so do I, the three of us retreating the way Sam and I just came from. We’ll have to find another way to track down Nine. If he’s still in the area, I hope he manages to ride out this bombing.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Sam yells to Daniela.

“What? You guys are following me now?”

“You know the city, don’t you?”

Another building explodes behind us. The dust is thicker this time, choking, and my back gets pelted by small chunks of plaster and cement. The explosions are too close. We might not be able to outrun the next one.

“We need to get off the street!” I shout.

“This way!” Daniela yells, hooking a sharp left that momentarily takes us out of the deluge of building debris that funnels down the avenue.

When Daniela turns, something slips loose from under the broken zipper on her duffel bag. For a split second, my eyes track a hundred-dollar bill as it floats through the air and is quickly swallowed by the billowing cloud of debris. Weird what you notice when you’re running for your life.

Wait. What exactly was she doing in that bank when the Mogs pinned her down?

There’s no time to ask. Another explosion rocks the area, this one deafeningly close and strong enough that it knocks Sam off his feet. I drag him back up and we scramble onwards, both of us covered in the clinging, choking dust of the destroyed buildings. Even though Daniela is just a few yards ahead, she’s only visible as a silhouette.

“In here!” she yells back to us.

I try to shine my Lumen ahead but it doesn’t do much good in the swirling building fragments. I have no idea where Daniela’s leading us, not until the ground disappears from beneath my feet and I fall headfirst into a hole in the ground.

“Oof!” Sam yelps as he hits the concrete floor next to me. Daniela is on her feet a few yards away. My hands and knees are scraped from the landing, but otherwise I’m unhurt. I glance over my shoulder, seeing a darkened staircase that’s rapidly filling in with debris from above.

We’re in a subway station.

“A little warning would’ve been good,” I snap at Daniela.

“You said off the street,” she replies. “This is off the street.”

“You okay?” I ask Sam, helping him up. He nods, catching his breath.

The subway station begins to vibrate. The metal turnstiles rattle and more dust filters down from the ceiling. Even through the barrier of concrete, I hear the mighty growl of the warship’s engines. The Anubis must be right above us. Electric-blue light pours into the station from outside.

“Go!” I yell, shoving Sam, Daniela already hopping a turnstile. “Into the tunnels!”

The cannon unloads with a high-pitched shriek. Even shielded by layers of concrete, I tingle from the electricity, my body fizzing down to its bones. The subway station shakes and, above us, a building lets out a mournful groan as its steel girding twists and collapses. I turn and run, jumping onto the tracks after Sam and Daniela. I look over my shoulder as the ceiling starts to cave in, first sealing off the stairs we just fell down, then spreading farther into the station. It isn’t going to hold.

“Run!” I yell again, straining to be heard over the crumbling architecture.

Into the darkness of the subway tunnel we sprint. I fire up my Lumen so that we can see, my light glinting off the steel tracks on either side of us. I sense movement at my side and it takes a moment to realize that there’s a herd of rats running alongside us, also fleeing the collapse. Somewhere down here, a pipe must have burst, because I’m running through ankle-deep water.

With my enhanced hearing, I listen to the stonework that surrounds us grinding and tearing. Whatever the Anubis destroyed on the street level, it caused major damage to the foundation of the city. I glance at the ceiling just in time to see a jagged crack spread through the cement, breaking off into tributaries that spread down the mold-covered walls. It’s like we’re trying to outrun the structural damage.

We can’t win this race. The tunnel’s going to collapse.

I’m about to yell out a warning when the tunnel gives way above Daniela. She only has time to look up and scream as a dislodged chunk of cement plummets towards her.

I put everything into my telekinesis and shove upwards.

It holds. I manage to stave off the cave-in centimeters from Daniela’s head. I exert so much counterforce to support the massive weight overhead that I’m pushed down to my knees. I feel the veins in my neck protruding, fresh sweat dampening my back. It’s like carrying a tremendous weight when you’re already exhausted. And meanwhile, new cracks are spiderwebbing out from the broken piece of ceiling. It’s physics—the weight has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is going to be right on top of us.

I can’t hold this. Not for long.

I taste blood in my mouth and realize I’m biting my lip. I can’t even yell to the others for help. If I shift even a tiny bit of focus away from my telekinesis, the weight will become too much.

Luckily, Sam realizes what’s happening.

“We have to hold up the ceiling!” he shouts at Daniela. “We have to help him!”

Sam stands next to me and throws his hands up. I feel his telekinetic strength join mine and it alleviates some of the pressure. I’m able to get up from my knees.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Daniela hesitate. The truth is, if she ran now, with Sam and me supporting the tunnel, she could probably make it to safety. We’d be screwed, but she’d make it.

Daniela doesn’t run. She stands on the other side of me and pushes up. The cement in the ceiling groans and more cracks erupt in the tunnel walls. It’s a delicate balance—our telekinesis just forces the weight from the broken stonework to shift elsewhere. No matter what we do, eventually, this tunnel is going to collapse.

Enough of the weight’s been taken off that I can speak again. I ignore the burning agony in my muscles, the heaviness sinking into my shoulders. Sam and Daniela are holding, waiting for my instructions.

“Walk . . . walk backwards,” I manage to grunt. “Let it go . . . slowly.”

Shoulder to shoulder, the three of us march slowly backwards down the tunnel. We keep the telekinetic pressure on directly above us, gradually letting go of the sections of ceiling that we’ve safely passed under. It rumbles and collapses in our wake. At one point, I see a couple of cars fall into the tunnel, quickly swallowed by more debris. The street above is collapsing, but the three of us manage to hold it at bay.

“How long?” Sam asks through gritted teeth.

“Don’t know,” I reply. “Keep going.”

“Shit,” Daniela repeats over and over, her voice a hoarse whisper. I can see her arms shaking. Both she and Sam are raw, not used to telekinesis. I’ve never supported this much weight before, and I certainly didn’t come close to it on my first day with Legacies. I can feel their strength waning, beginning to slip.

They just need to hold on a little bit longer. If they don’t, we’re dead.

“We’re going to make it,” I growl. “Keep going!”

I can feel the subway tunnel gradually sloping downwards under my feet. The deeper we get, the sturdier the ceiling is above us. Step by step, the telekinetic counterpressure we need to exert lessens, until finally we reach a section of tunnel where the ceiling is stable.

“Let go,” I groan. “It’s okay, let go.”

As one, we release our hold on the ceiling. Ten yards away, the last bit of ceiling we’d been supporting crashes into the tunnel, blocking off the way we came. Above us, the tunnel creaks and holds. All three of us collapse into the filthy water that fills the bottom of the tunnel. I feel as if an actual weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I hear a retching noise next to me and realize that Daniela’s throwing up. I try to stand up to help her, but my body doesn’t cooperate. I fall face-first into the water.

A second later, Sam’s hands are under my arms, lifting me up. His face is pale and strained, like he doesn’t have much left to give.

“Oh man, is he dying?” Daniela asks Sam.

“However much ceiling we were holding, he was probably carrying four times as much,” Sam replies. “Help me with him.”

Daniela slides underneath my other arm. She and Sam lift me up, dragging me down the tunnel.

“He just saved my life,” Daniela says, still breathless.

“Yeah, he does that kinda thing a lot.” Sam turns his head, speaking into my ear. “John? Can you hear me? You can shut off the lights. We can make it in the dark for a bit.”

That’s when I realize that I’m still illuminating the tunnel with my Lumen. Running on fumes, and still I’m instinctually keeping the lights on. It takes a conscious effort on my part to let my Lumen go out, to not fight against my own exhaustion, to allow myself to be carried.

I let go. Trust in Sam.

And then I can no longer feel Sam’s and Daniela’s arms around me. I can’t feel my feet dragging through the thick slop of the subway tunnels. All my aches and pains melt away until I’m peacefully floating through darkness.

A girl’s voice interrupts my rest.

“John . . .”

A cold hand slips inside mine. It’s slender and girlish, fragile, but it squeezes with enough force to bring me back to my senses.

“Open your eyes, John.”

I do as she says and find myself stretched out on an operating table in an austere room, an array of ominous-looking surgical machinery spread out around me. Right next to my head is a machine that looks almost like a vacuum cleaner—a suction tube with scalpel-sharp teeth at its end is attached to a barrel filled with a viscous, writhing black substance. The ooze floating through the machine reminds me of the stuff I cleansed from the secretary of defense’s veins. Just looking at it makes my skin crawl. It’s inherently unnatural and Mogadorian.

This isn’t right. Where am I? Were we captured while I was unconscious?

I can’t feel my arms or my legs. And yet, strangely, I don’t panic. For some reason, I don’t feel like I’m in any real danger. I’ve had this kind of out-of-body experience before.

I’m in a dream, I realize. But not my own dream. Someone else is controlling this.

With some effort, I manage to turn my head to the left. There isn’t anything in that direction except more bizarre-looking equipment—a mixture of stainless-steel medical tools and complicated machinery like the stuff we found inside Ashwood Estates. On the far wall, though, there’s a window. A porthole, really. We’re in the air, the sky dark outside, lit only by the fires in the city below.

I’m on board the Anubis, floating above New York City.

Trying to take in every detail, I turn my head to the right. A team of Mogadorians dressed in lab coats and wearing sterilized gloves huddle around a metal table exactly like the one I’m laid out on. There’s a small body on the table. One of the Mogs holds the tube from another of those ooze machines, in the process of pressing it into the sternum of the young girl on the table.

Ella.

She doesn’t cry out when the blades on the hose pierce her chest. I’m powerless to do anything as the black Mogadorian goo is slowly pumped into her.

I want to scream. Before I can, Ella turns her head and locks eyes with me.

“John,” she says, her voice totally calm despite the gruesome surgery being performed on her. “Get up. We don’t have much time.”