The Fate of Ten

CHAPTER EIGHT

I SNAP AWAKE ON A HARD PLASTIC BENCH, MY legs dangling off the end. I know I’m back in my body, no longer in Ella’s dreamworld because of the intense ache that immediately soaks through my every muscle. I’m on my side, facing the orange and yellow seatbacks of the subway bench. I’ve never been on one of these cars before, but I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to recognize them immediately. On the wall above my head is a poster reading IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.

With a groan, I prop myself up on an elbow. Sam is slumped on the two-seater adjacent to my bench with his head propped against the window, snoring gently. Outside the window, I can see only darkness. This train is stalled underground somewhere¸ inside the tunnel. The passengers must have abandoned it early on during the attack. The train car is dead, unmoving and powerless, the panels of overhead lights completely dark.

And yet, there’s light coming from somewhere.

I sit up and look around, immediately spotting a row of cell phones spread throughout the train’s main aisle. With their flashlight apps turned on, the phones function like battery-powered candles. On the bench opposite from me, awake and watching, sits Daniela. Her feet are propped up on the duffel bag she carried out of that bank, the thing presumably filled with stolen money.

“You’re alive,” she says, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Sam. I do the same, even though Sam’s snoring like he could sleep through another Anubis bombing.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“It’s morning according to the phones,” Daniela replies. “About six hours, I guess.”

Morning already. I shake my head. An entire night wasted. We couldn’t find Nine and Five, and who knows which part of New York they’ve fought their way to by now. To make matters worse, I know where Setrákus Ra and the Anubis are heading—right to the last known location of the rest of the Garde. Because I lost contact with Ella at the last minute, I’m not sure what to do with that information, even if I could get in contact with Six and the others. Should they be getting ready to turn around and head back to the Sanctuary? Or does Ella want me to keep them as far from there as possible?

I need to move, to do something productive. But my body still doesn’t feel one hundred percent and Sam is out like a light.

“We’re still in the subway?” I ask Daniela, knowing the answer, but wanting to get a better grip on our situation before I make any decisions.

“Yeah. Obviously. We dragged you in here after you fainted.”

“Fainted,” I repeat with a grimace. “I passed out from exhaustion.”

“Same diff. Anyway, we were all pretty wiped after that cave-in stunt,” Daniela continues, maybe sensing my annoyance. “I fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got here.” Daniela glances at Sam, a faint smile on her face. “Your boy Sam was gonna stand guard, but I guess that didn’t go so hot. No big deal. Not like anyone is looking for us down here.”

“Not yet, at least,” I reply, thinking about the Mogadorians on the surface and wondering how their occupation of New York City is progressing.

One of the phones winks out. Daniela crouches over it, pressing a few buttons, but the battery is dead.

“People slept in front of the store for these things,” she says, holding up the dead phone for me to inspect. “Shit goes down, though . . . lot of people drop everything and run. What’s that make you think about humanity, alien guy?”

“That they’ve got their priorities straight,” I reply, glancing again at the duffel bag full of money.

“Yeah. I guess,” Daniela says, then casually tosses the phone to the other end of the train car, where it hits the floor and breaks apart. Even the phone shattering doesn’t disturb Sam. “That felt surprisingly good,” Daniela tells me, smirking in my direction. “You should try it.”

“Where’d you get all the phones?” I ask Daniela, watching her closely as she sits back down.

I still don’t know what to make of her. She’s a human with Legacies, which we don’t even have a word for. But she seems to think this entire situation is one big joke. I can’t tell if she’s unhinged like Five or hiding behind a massive defense mechanism. She mentioned before that the Mogs killed her stepfather and that her mom is missing. I know what it’s like—to lose people, to not know what’s happening to your loved ones. I could tell her that, except I don’t really think Daniela’s the type to open up easily. I wish Six were here. I have a feeling they’d get along great.

“I woke up first,” she says, gesturing around the train. “Went through all the cars. People left a lot of shit behind.”

“Back at the bank, did somebody leave all that cash behind, too?” I ask, jerking my chin at her duffel bag.

“Oh yeah, that,” Daniela says, looking to the side with feigned guilt, but unable to keep the smile off her face. “Wondered if you noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“Thing’s heavier than you’d think,” she says, nudging the bag with her filthy sneaker toe.

I rub my hand across my face, trying to figure out how I should approach this. It’s not like I haven’t stolen before. I always did it out of necessity, though, and never right in the middle of a full-scale invasion.

“Weird you had time to rob a bank while you were searching for your mom.”

“First of all, I didn’t steal it. I mean, not technically. There were some dudes hiding from the Mogs in that bank. They were the ones robbing it. I just ended up taking cover in there. They got blasted, then you showed up. I figure, why waste a perfectly good duffel bag?”

I frown, shaking my head. I have no idea if what Daniela’s telling me is the truth. I’m not sure if it even matters how she got the money. I’m more concerned with figuring out if this new Garde is someone we can trust. Someone we can rely on.

“Second of all,” she continues, leaning toward me, “my mom would be pissed if she found out I missed an opportunity like that.”

She tries to keep her voice cavalier, but a tremor sneaks in when she mentions her mom. Maybe this attitude is all a front, a way to cope with how screwed up her world has gotten in the last twenty-four hours. I get that. My expression must be too sympathetic, though, or maybe she noticed me noticing her voice shaking, because Daniela raises her voice and keeps going, more heated than before. It occurs to me that as much as I’m trying to figure her out, she’s also trying to figure out me.

“Third, I didn’t sign up for these superpowers that you don’t even know why I have. And I damn sure didn’t sign up to fight in your alien war. Neither did my family.”

“You think there was an alien invasion sign-up sheet getting passed around?” I ask sharply, trying and failing to keep my temper from flaring. “No one asked for this. The Loric, my people, we didn’t ask for the Mogs to destroy our home world. It happened anyway.”

Daniela holds up her hands defensively. “All right, so you know what this is like. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be judging how I choose to spend my alien invasion. Shit is nuts.”

“I was too young to fight back when they attacked Lorien,” I tell her. “But you . . .”

“Oh shit, here it comes. The recruitment speech.” Daniela starts to do an impression, her voice suddenly higher pitched, her words theatrically enunciated. “Look outside your window,” she recites. “The Mogadorians are here. The Garde will fight them. Will you stand for Earth?”

I shake my head, confused. “What’s that?”

“It’s from your video, dude. The whole support the Garde thing. They played it on the news.”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Daniela studies my face for a moment, and eventually seems satisfied with my bafflement. “Huh. You really don’t. Guess you probably haven’t been watching much TV. Me? I was glued to it when those ships first started appearing. It’s like, all of a sudden we’re living in one of those alien invasion movies. Was pretty cool until, well . . .”

Daniela waves her hand, encompassing not just our current situation of hiding out underground, but the citywide destruction we both lived through. I notice her hand trembles a little. She quickly hides this, folding her arms tightly across her chest

“Sam and I helped a group of people get out of Manhattan yesterday,” I tell her. “I wondered how some of them knew my name, but it was too chaotic to ask. Was it on the news? Did they show me fighting at the UN?”

Daniela nods. “They showed some of that. Except when that Clooney-looking creep turned into a genuine alien monster, people really started to freak out and the cameras got all shaky. You were featuring pretty heavy on the news before that, though.”

I tilt my head, not understanding. “How do you mean?”

“There was this, like, YouTube video. It got posted on some stupid conspiracy website first—”

“Wait—was it ‘They Walk Among Us’?”

Daniela shrugs. “‘Nerds Walk Among Us,’ I dunno, sure. It starts off with a picture of Earth that they totally snagged from Google images and this girl’s narrating like—‘This is our planet, but we are not alone in the galaxy, blah blah blah.’ She’s trying to sound all professional like it’s a nature documentary or something, but you can tell she’s our age. Why are you making that stupid face?”

While Daniela’s speaking, I can’t help a dumb smile from crossing my face.

I try to keep my expression neutral as I lean forward. “What else happens?”

“So, they show some pictures of Mogadorians and say they’ve come to enslave humanity. These pale aliens look like they could be guys in corny monster makeup or something. Nobody would’ve taken this shit seriously if, you know, there weren’t a ton of UFOs menacing cities. And then, she starts talking about you. There’s video of you jumping out of a burning house that shouldn’t be possible, and then there’s footage of you healing this FBI agent’s burned-up face and . . . well, it’s pretty grainy but the special effects would have to be mad good for it to be fake.”

“What . . . what does she say about me?”

Daniela smirks, eyeing me. “She says your name is John Smith. That you’re a Garde. That you’ve been sent to our planet to fight these aliens. And now, you need our help.”

That’s what Daniela was quoting before. Her terrible impression was supposed to be Sarah. I sit back, thinking about the video that Sarah and Mark made, their contribution from the sideline. Even though she’s mocking it, the video seems to have made an impression on Daniela. She could quote it from memory. Hell, the survivors we came across in the street had certainly seen it. They trusted me. They were ready to stand and fight. But was it all too little too late?

I grimace involuntarily, thinking out loud. “I’ve spent my whole life hiding from the Mogadorians that were hunting me here on Earth. Getting stronger. Training. The war was always being fought in secret. We were starting to get our allies together, though, starting to figure things out. I wonder if we’d only gone public sooner, how many lives could we have saved if New York was ready for an attack like this?”

“Nah,” Daniela says, dismissing this notion with a wave of her hand. “Nobody would’ve believed that shit even a week ago. Not without people on CNN shouting about spaceships appearing over New York. I mean, you needed that whole UN fight for it to really sink in. Before that, the news people were debating whether it was a hoax, a viral stunt for a movie, whatever. I saw one lady on TV saying you were an angel. Pretty funny.”

I chuckle dryly, not really feeling in the mood. “Yeah. Hilarious.”

I realize that Daniela’s trying to comfort me in her caustic way. I’ll never know what would have happened if we’d spent the last few months trying to make our war with the Mogadorians public. There were humans at high levels involved with MogPro that would’ve made any attempt at exposing the Mogs extremely difficult, if not impossible. I know all this, logically. And yet I can’t help feeling that yesterday’s colossal loss of life is on me. I should’ve done more.

“How old are you, anyway?” Daniela asks.

“Sixteen,” I tell her.

“Yeah.” Daniela nods, like she already knew this. “You’re like the girl that narrates the video. You got that whole wise-beyond-your-years thing going, that’s true. And you look like you’ve been through some shit. But take a closer look . . .” She trails off, clicking her tongue in thought. “You should be finishing high school, man. Not saving the world.”

I can’t let what happened in New York bury me under guilt. I need to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. I need to find my friends and figure out a way to kill Setrákus Ra, once and for all.

I square my shoulders and smile at Daniela, affecting a nonchalant shrug. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

Daniela smiles back for a second, then catches herself and looks away. For a second there, I thought she might volunteer to join the fight. I can’t make her stick with us after we get out of the subway. I just have to trust that she, and the other humans out there, have developed their Legacies for a reason.

“We need to get moving,” I say.

I shake Sam’s shoulder and he snorts awake. His eyes are bleary for a moment, adjusting slowly to the bluish LCD lighting of the subway car.

“So it wasn’t a bad dream,” he sighs, standing up slowly and stretching out his back. His gaze drifts over to Daniela. “You decided to hang around, huh?”

Daniela shrugs, like the question embarrasses her. “You mentioned getting some people out of New York . . . ,” she says to me.

“Yeah. The army and the police have secured the Brooklyn Bridge. They’re evacuating people from there. At least, they were last night.”

“I’d like to go there,” Daniela replies, standing up. She straightens her dust-covered and blood-spattered T-shirt. “Maybe see if my mom made it.”

“All right,” I say. I don’t want to push her on joining forces. If it’s going to happen, she’s the one who has to make the decision. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stick together for the time being. “We should head that way too.”

Sam rubs his eyes, still working moisture into his mouth. “You think Nine and Five battled their way to the evacuation point?”

“Doubt it,” I reply. “But Nine’s a big boy, he can handle himself for a little longer. Priorities have changed. I really need to get in touch with Six. If anywhere has working phones, I think it’ll be the evacuation point.” I turn to Daniela. “Can you lead us out of here?”

Daniela nods. “Only one way to go with the uptown tracks caved in. We follow the tracks for a few more stops, we should just about make it to the bridge.”

“Wait. How did priorities change while we were sleeping down here?” Sam asks.

I tell Sam how Ella reached out to me telepathically from her prison aboard the Anubis, explaining that Setrákus Ra is headed for the Sanctuary. Daniela listens in, her eyes wide and locked on me, mouth slightly opened. When I’m finished describing the dreamscape, prophecies and endangered Lorien historical sites, she shakes her head in total mystification.

“My life has gotten so effing weird,” she says, walking down the train car towards the exit.

“Hey,” Sam calls after her. “You forgot your bag!”

Daniela glances over her shoulder. Then, she looks at me. I don’t know if she wants permission or if she’s challenging me to stop her. When I don’t say anything, she doubles back and lifts the heavy bag with a grunt.

“Use your telekinesis,” I say casually. “It’s good practice.”

Daniela eyes me for a moment, then nods and grins. She concentrates and floats the bag out in front of her.

“What’s in there, anyway?” Sam asks.

“My college fund,” she replies.

Sam gives me a look. I just shrug.

When Daniela reaches the end of the car, she levitates the bag aside and yanks the metal door open with a sharp clatter. She steps onto the gangway that connects to the next car. Sam and I follow a few feet behind her.

“Whoa, whoa,” Daniela says, her words not directed to us. Her duffel bag rockets back into our subway car, Sam and I both having to jump out of the way. Daniela telekinetically slides the bag under a bench, like she’s trying to hide it. A second later, she steps backwards through the door, her hands raised in surrender. Immediately, my muscles tense. I thought we were safe down here in the tunnels.

But we aren’t alone.

A machine-gun barrel with a flashlight attachment is leveled inches from Daniela’s face. A shadowy form, covered in bulky equipment and body armor, inches cautiously into our train car, backing Daniela down. Too late, I notice flashlight beams in the next car over—at least a dozen of them, maybe more. A second halogen beam shines right into my eyes, a second gunman boarding our car. Without thinking about it, I ignite my Lumen, fire slithering across my fists.

“Wait,” Sam warns. “They aren’t Mogs.”

I hear the telltale click of a round being chambered, probably in response to my channeling a fireball. The subway car aisle is narrow, Daniela is in the way and the light in my face makes it difficult to see. Definitely not ideal conditions. I could probably disarm them with my telekinesis, but I don’t want to risk them getting off a burst of automatic fire at such close quarters. Better to wait and see how this plays out.

I let my Lumen wink out, and at the same time the soldier in front lowers his flashlight beam out of my face, pointing his gun at the floor. He’s wearing a helmet, fatigues and night-vision goggles. Despite all that, I can tell he’s only a few years older than me.

“You’re him,” the soldier says, a bit of awe in his voice. “John Smith.”

I’m still not used to this whole being-recognized thing, so it takes me a moment to answer. “That’s right.”

The soldier snaps a walkie-talkie off his belt and speaks into it. “We’ve got him,” he says, not taking his eyes off me.

Daniela edges towards Sam and me, glancing between us and the soldiers, more of whom are now filtering into our train car, fanning out, making the whole area even tighter. “Friends of yours?”

“Not sure,” I reply quietly.

“Sometimes the government likes us, other times not so much,” Sam explains.

“Great,” Daniela replies. “For a second there, I thought they were here to arrest me.”

The soldier’s walkie-talkie crackles to life, a familiar woman’s voice filling the train car. “Ask them nicely, but bring them in,” the woman commands.

The soldier clears his throat uncomfortably, staring at us.

“Please come with us,” he says. “Agent Walker would like a word.”