Five's Betrayal (3 page)

Deltoch lets out a little laugh.

“You look pale all of a sudden, Five,” he says, his voice a low bellow.

I don’t answer. I can’t take my eyes off Nine. Another Garde. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in person instead of in the photograph pinned up in my study. He’s thinner now than he is in the picture—a side effect of whatever they have or haven’t been feeding him I assume—but he’s still built like a Greek statue. Strong looking. Deltoch has obviously noticed this, because he’s quick to mention it.

“He’s managed to stay in incredibly formidable shape despite being a prisoner,” he says, very pointedly not looking at my less-than-athletic build. “I’m told he spends most of his waking moments exercising in his cell.”

I change the subject.

“Why doesn’t he use his powers to escape?” I ask.

“He’s tried. Many times.” Deltoch motions to the pulsing blue shield. “But we’ve learned to keep him under control.”

“Maybe he’s just waiting for the perfect time to lash out,” I say.

Deltoch bares his teeth.

“Come with me,” he says, turning and heading deeper into the detention wing. Eventually we come to some kind of cell that looks like it’s part interrogation room and part laboratory. There are chains hanging from the ceilings and silver gurneys on one side, and a few tables on the other. The room smells of bleach.

“What is this place?” I murmur.

“This is where many of our prisoners’ fates are decided,” Deltoch says. “Where they choose to give themselves over to the Mogadorians and offer us their intelligence, or they condemn themselves to a cell indefinitely.”

I glance at Ethan, but his eyes are fixed on Deltoch. Usually Ethan knows everything that’s going on at the base—or at least he does when it involves me—but he seems to be as confused as I am as to why we’re here.

“Many brave soldiers gave their lives in this room when Nine first arrived, as they tested the strength of the Loric magic that protects him,” Deltoch says, running his finger over a tray of shiny scalpels. “That’s how
they
proved themselves loyal to the Mogadorian empire.”

“And you were okay with wasting soldiers like that?” I ask.

“We do not consider it a waste.” The commander has an angry edge to his voice now. “It is the highest honor to die for the Mogadorian cause. Besides, the Loric charm is not something we wholly understand. We weren’t sure if it was possible to weaken the charm so much that it broke completely. It was a possibility we could not ignore.”

“But you couldn’t get rid of it.” It’s more a statement than a question that comes out of my mouth.

“No.” Deltoch frowns. “No matter how hard we tried. And Nine didn’t say a word. He just laughed as some of our finest men died in front of him.” His expression changes and becomes almost pleasant. “But his Cêpan did talk.”

“What?” Ethan asks. Apparently this is news to him as well.

“This is confidential information,” Deltoch says, shrugging towards Ethan.

“What about his Cêpan?” I ask. “Do you have him too?”

“We did,” Deltoch says. “But Number Nine murdered him.”

My mouth drops open.

“He what?”

“His Cêpan was smart. We were still trying to negotiate and give Nine and his guardian a chance to join our cause. The Cêpan was going to talk—to cut a deal with us—and when Nine found out, he murdered the Loric in cold blood.”

Deltoch takes a few files off one of the lab tables and hands them to me.

“See for yourself,” he says.

I open the top folder and am greeted by a stack of photos—stills from a security camera in the very room I’m standing in. Only in the photos, there are two figures. One looks like an older human. He’s hanging upside down from the ceiling with thick chains wrapped around his ankles. There’s blood everywhere. Nine stands beside the man, a dagger in his hands.

“It’s my own fault, really,” Deltoch says. “I left the two of them in this room together and assumed that Nine had a sense of loyalty. Obviously I was wrong. The Garde used his powers to break through his containment field and attacked the brave Mogs guarding him. It took a few minutes before we were able to get into the room, but that’s all he needed.”

I flip through the photos. They’re like a slide show, and I watch as Nine steps closer and closer to his Cêpan, raising his weapon. And then finally, he buries the blade in his guardian’s chest. In the next few pictures, Mogs show up and drag him away, but the damage has already been done. Nine struggles against their grip, gnashing his teeth, and then he’s gone. The last photo is just the Cêpan, hanging upside down. Alone. Lifeless.

My memory jumps back to Rey, dying in our little hut on the beach. Sure, we didn’t get along a lot of the time, and he was probably a little crazy, but I can’t imagine I could ever have killed him. He was the person who raised me.

I’d always been taught to think that the Garde were these saintlike people—that we had to be perfect in order for our planet to have a chance at being resurrected. That the Loric were a peaceful, inherently good race while the Mogs were evil incarnate. It dawns on me that this was just more Loric propaganda. That the Loric and Mogs probably don’t have that many differences between them, other than the fact that the Mogs don’t pretend to be anything that they aren’t. Ethan always says that history is subjective, and that the history I knew to be true was just the Loric side of things. Besides, now that I’ve felt the power that comes with my Legacies and how good it feels to have people see the potential in me, I can’t imagine that Lorien was the utopia Rey made it out to be.

“Have you brought me here to kill him?” I ask.

“Not yet,” Deltoch says. “Not until we figure out a way to break this charm. There’s no way of knowing what would happen if one of the other Garde tried to inflict death upon him, and we don’t want to lose our secret weapon: you.”

“Your most valuable asset,” Ethan says to the Mog. “Exactly,” Deltoch says. He motions to the photographs. “But when the time comes, be careful. He’s unhinged. He’s hardly even an intelligent life-form anymore. Just an animal. I imagine he wouldn’t think twice about killing you if given the opportunity.”

I turn back to the photographs.
An animal.
Staring at the crazed look in Nine’s eyes as he howls—his Cêpan’s blood on his hands—I believe it.

All I can think is what an idiot he is to willingly choose murder and imprisonment instead of the opportunity I’ve been given. How stupid Nine must be.

And how one day this chained-up animal will be my ticket to the top of the food chain.

AFTER SEEING NINE IN ACTION—AT LEAST IN
photos—Deltoch insists that I take the rest of the files the Mogs have on him so that I can study them well. “Know your enemy,” he says, and then he cancels my afternoon training with Ethan while I retreat to my room on the other side of the compound. The place they’ve made for me here in Mog central isn’t as nice as, say, Ethan’s beach house in Miami, but it’s pretty plush. I wouldn’t even know I was half a mile inside a mountain if it wasn’t for the fact that all the walls are made of smoothed-down stone. I’ve got a big king-size bed, a
giant
TV, and an arsenal of gaming consoles and games I’ve never even heard of before—Mogadorian battle simulators that have graphics any next-gen console would kill for. The Mogs had them arranged for me because Ethan told them how much time I’d spent playing games in my downtime back in Florida. These are unlike anything I’ve ever played, though—a weird combination of military and governing missions. It took me a while to get the hang of them because I was so used to playing games where you got points deducted every time you caused collateral damage or civilian casualties. But I’m getting a lot better.

With Nine’s files in hand, though, I ignore all the electronics and stuff that the Mogs gave me and go straight to my bed. There, I spread out the papers and reports on Nine. Ethan had told me that Nine lived in luxury in Chicago, but it turns out that’s pretty general speculation based on what they pieced together from Nine and some former girlfriend of his who was working with the Mogs for a while. They don’t actually know where his place is in the city.

One of the things included in the files is a transcription from an interview with Nine’s Cêpan that the Mogs have typed up for me. He says that Nine lived a charmed life. He never wanted for anything, and went and did whatever he pleased. On one hand, I’m not surprised that he ended up in a Mog cell, but on the other, my jealousy of how he got to grow up compared to how I lived burns somewhere deep in my chest. They even have quotes from his Cêpan about how Nine was a popular kid in school who had girls following after him wherever he went and lived like a miniature king on campus. Meanwhile I was eating coconut meat for lunch and sweating half to death in the Caribbean.

At the end of the interview is a brief section where the Cêpan discusses how the Elders decided on our numbers:

It wasn’t random. They were given that order for a reason. The Elders judged who they thought were the strongest and brightest—those with the most potential—and saved them for the end. The first few were hardly anything more than cannon fodder. Their Cêpans were instructed to keep them hidden no matter the cost to their well-being so that the higher numbers would be kept safe. After all, the Garde couldn’t very well die if their order wasn’t up. I always considered myself lucky to have been assigned to the highest number. Nine rarely thought of anyone lower than him unless it was from a tactical standpoint: it was always assumed that if the Garde ever did come together to fight, Nine would be the one who would command them.

I have to stop reading. My head pounds, and with one brisk surge, I send the files flying across my room in a telekinetic wave. I throw open my Loric Chest that sits on the nightstand beside me. My favorite thing inside it—the only thing I’ve really learned to use—is a concealed blade inside a gauntlet. I use my powers to send it sailing through the air, popping out the knife hidden inside. It skewers the sheet of paper with the Cêpan’s interview on it and embeds itself in the stone wall of the room. I start to rummage through my Chest, which usually helps me focus and calm down, but it’s no good. I’m too wound up. Then I throw myself down onto the bed and crack my knuckles as anger boils up inside me. So that’s what Nine thought of us—of
me.
That I was worthless. That I’d be someone he could command one day. Well, the joke’s on you, Nine. Because now you’re the one hidden away, and I’m the person with all the power. I’m the one who’s going to control everyone else.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I continue my daily routine of studying, training and learning more about Mogadorian culture. Every time I see the picture of Nine in my study, I get frustrated and pissed off as I think about the files—of him and his Cêpan regarding the lower numbers as being weak. I try to channel this into my training, like when Ethan takes me into an unused room in order for us to do a little training on my Legacies. Ethan sets a box down on the metal table in the middle of the room while I use my telekinesis to straighten all the chairs and get them all pushed in and out of the way.

“Your ability to move things with your mind has really progressed both in terms of strength and finesse,” Ethan says. “The Mog leaders and I are all very impressed.”

“Thanks,” I say with a grin. “I
have
gotten pretty good at moving boulders around in the tunnels.”

“True.” He nods. “So today I want us to focus on your Externa. In particular, the quickness with which you can change forms and the length of time you can stay in them.”

This sounds easy enough. I’ve gotten good at taking on the properties of the things I touch. I reach into my pocket, where my fingers find the red rubber ball. My skin stretches, and my fingers take an elongated form, like the kind of fingers people who have never actually seen an alien would expect me to have.

“Let’s do it.”

Ethan starts to toss things at me left and right from the box he brought with him, hardly giving me time to change before my body has to reset and transform again. I hold a leather-bound book, and my skin grows tough. I catch a smooth white stone, and I’m a moving statue.

“Excellent,” Ethan says. “But can you do it while flying?”

Without answering, I float up in the air and continue to change as Ethan tosses more and more objects at me. We keep it up for a few minutes, and then suddenly I start to get tired—I’ve never overworked my Legacies like this before. But I don’t show any weakness. I think about Nine’s Cêpan and how he thought the higher numbers were better than me, and I power through the fatigue, gritting my teeth and imagining myself standing over Nine as he begs for mercy.

Ethan tosses me something small and shiny that I catch with my telekinesis and float over to my hand.

“Do the stone, not the band,” he says as it travels through the air. I don’t understand until I realize that I’ve got a diamond ring in my palm.

“No problem,” I say, touching the gem with the tip of my pinkie. My skin hardens and takes on a brilliant shine. The tips of my fingers are completely clear. I float over to the steel table and drag one of my fingernails along the top of it, engraving the numeral “5” into it.

“Now
this
could come in handy,” I say.

“Sure,” Ethan says. “If you want to be the target of every weapon on the battlefield. Your skin is too shiny. It would be impossible to be incognito. But keep this form for now. Let’s see how long you can hold it.”

I wave my arms around in front of me and watch the light bounce off them, sending reflections all around the room.

“I think I met some people down in Miami who would have me chopped up into pieces and sold off for millions if they could see me now.”

The harder I concentrate while I touch the stone, the clearer my body gets and the harder my skin becomes. But it takes work. And the more I focus, the more my head starts to pound, and I start to feel like I’m losing control of my body. When I first developed the Externa ability, I was terrified that I’d never be able to revert back to my normal form again. Suddenly, that same fear attacks me, and my heart rate and breathing go through the roof.