Authors: Pittacus Lore
“You want me to rule alongside you?” I ask. My head spins.
“The moment you carry out this mission, you will become the second most powerful person on this planet. There is no need for a ceremony, only action.” He walks closer to me, crossing behind my chair and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Ethan is a liability, Five. He must be dealt with if you are to ascend.”
And that’s all there is to it, really. I have endless potential. I will rule alongside our Beloved Leader. I’ll finally get to go back to Canada, which I liked so much when I was young—only this time I won’t have to be afraid. I will be the one who everyone loves and respects. Or fears. But in order for that to be a reality, I have to do one thing. This one small thing.
I have to.
“I agree, my Beloved Leader,” I say, but in the back of my head, I’m wondering if I can find another way around this. Like I did with Emma. I just need some time to think.
Setrákus Ra smiles.
“You have forty-eight hours,” he says. “Since we were unsure of his true loyalties, we moved him back to the Mog safe house in Miami. You should know where it is—you lived there for a year. We have eyes on the place. You shouldn’t meet any outside resistance. If you cannot kill him, you are nothing more than another injured kraul.”
It’s not hard to get what he’s implying. Fail to do this, and I’m the problem. I’ll end up in a cell like Nine did. Or worse. They’ll kill Ethan, anyway—probably in front of me. Or draw it out, slowly bleeding him dry to show me the error of my ways.
But I am not weak. I am not the problem. I am endless potential and power.
I am the future ruler of this forsaken planet.
And as much as I owe to Ethan, our Beloved Leader has made up his mind. Ethan no longer has a place here. The best thing I can do for him is make sure his death is quick and painless.
“I’ll ready a ship for you,” Setrákus Ra says. He comes back around to the front of my chair and offers me his hand. I take it, and he pulls me to my feet.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I can get there on my own.”
THERE ARE ALMOST A THOUSAND MILES BETWEEN
West Virginia and my destination in Miami. I could take a plane or a ship—I actually can’t wait to see what kind of warships and transports the Mogs have that I haven’t seen—but I choose to go alone. To fly myself. Partly because I know long-distance flying will be good training for me, and partly because I need to clear my head and focus on the task at hand, and I know that’s not something I’ll be able to do if other people are around.
Besides, I’ve been living in the compound with thousands of other people for months now. Always under scrutiny. I could use a little time to myself.
Setrákus Ra agrees to let me go out unaided and doesn’t even make me wear any kind of tracking device or communicator. Instead, he wishes me luck and has one of the scientists give me some kind of light suit that fits me like a second skin. I wear it under my clothes in order to fight against the cold air of the high altitude. I’m not sure what exactly is going to happen next, so I shove my Loric Chest in a duffel bag and strap it to my back. I don’t want to leave it behind.
And then I’m off.
I stay above the clouds so no one on the ground has the chance to see me and so there aren’t bugs constantly smashing into my face. I spot a few airplanes now and then, but I just swerve one way or the other and put some distance between us. Otherwise, it’s just me and the sky. And my thoughts.
I have almost a thousand miles to talk myself into killing Ethan. Because, as much of a front as I put up for my Beloved Leader, there is still a big part of me that needs convincing.
The conversation with Setrákus Ra keeps playing over and over again in my head as I constantly try to remind myself that going to Miami is what I have to do—that I can’t just take a right turn and head out into the Midwest or up to Canada. I
want
to be the right hand of our leader. I want to rule. I don’t want to go back into hiding, where I never feel safe and can’t show off my power. Especially now that the charm seems to be broken.
I’m mortal. I can be hurt and killed. Even if I wanted to betray the Mogs, there’s no way they’d let me live.
The route I take to Miami is close to the one I took through the Appalachian Trail with Rey when I was just a kid, when his cough started getting bad and we moved down through the states and to the islands. I probably wouldn’t have realized this if Ethan hadn’t shown me a map of that journey recently. But when I was a kid on those trails, we were moving slowly, and I was scared the whole time that at any moment the Mogs might show up and take me away. It’s almost funny looking at it from where I am now, flying like a jet, not from the Mogs but for them.
I think of Rey in earnest for the first time in what seems like weeks. Already that part of my life feels so distant and far away, like it was a weird dream I suddenly woke up from one day. I wonder what he would say if he knew what I was doing. It’s not like Rey wasn’t a murderer. I think about all the animals he slaughtered for us to eat and survive on when we lived on the island, or even the snakes that he beheaded just to make sure they didn’t attack us. And I realize for the first time that Rey killed other things too. People. Mogadorians. When the Mogs came for me in Canada—when I’d hidden in a tree scared out of my mind that the boogeymen Rey always talked about had come to take me away—he killed them. Turned them to ash right in front of me. And I’d never thought about it as being anything bad because he’d always told me they were evil. He killed them without a second thought because he thought they were a threat.
That’s sort of what I’m doing, right? Maybe Rey would completely understand the mission I’m on. I wonder if he might even have seen reason if he hadn’t gotten sick and had actually sat down and
talked
with the Mogs instead of just blindly follow the Loric orders to destroy them.
I stop somewhere in Georgia to rest and refuel myself with a couple of burgers. The Mogs gave me a fat stack of cash to use in case I needed shelter for the night, but my adrenaline is pumping. So I take to the sky again.
I have to focus.
How am I even going to do what I have to do?
The easiest thing would be to use my telekinesis, I guess. I could just snap Ethan’s neck the moment I see him. We wouldn’t even have to talk. He’d never see it coming. Or I could send him sailing through the sky and into the sea. Or I could use my Externa and become a walking blade. I realize that there are a million different ways that this could play out—a million different ways to kill—and I wonder how I’m supposed to decide on one perfect end that is humane and painless and honorable. How am I ever supposed to do this?
I wonder if Ethan really was involved in the attack on the base. I don’t want to think it’s possible, but it could be. And I guess that’s all that matters. That tiny sliver of doubt is the kind of thing that has to be eliminated. Just like the rest of Mogadore’s enemies. Just like it says in the Great Book.
It’s not like this is my decision. Setrákus Ra has determined Ethan’s fate. He is going to die whether I kill him or not. If I don’t do this, who will? Would they throw him in a cell for a while? Torture him? I don’t want him to have to go through that.
I am doing the right thing.
It’s almost midnight by the time I reach the beach house, and by that point I’m completely exhausted. The place is just as nice as I remember it. How long ago was it that I first saw it? A year and a half? Two years? I guess I wasn’t keeping track of time for a while there. But seeing the house again for the first time in months makes my stomach jump. It’s a weird sensation, one I’m not used to.
Something like going home.
I float in the air above the front gate and tell myself that it’s not too late. I can turn around and go. But even as I’m thinking this, my shoes are on the ground and my finger is on the doorbell and another voice is in my head, saying, “This is the only way, and when it’s done you will rule this place.”
A servant answers the door—a maid I don’t recall but who must know me because she gasps when she sees me and then disappears inside. There’s some kind of commotion in the living room, and then Ethan shuffles out.
He’s changed so much in the tiny window of time since I saw him last.
His right arm has been amputated above the elbow and is wrapped in white cotton. He has a bandage on the right side of his face. There’s a dark smudge threatening to bleed through from the other side of it. I knew that his eye was bad, but it looks like the green lava must have eaten through half his face. When he sees me and tries to smile, he ends up wincing, and I picture the most grotesque injuries imaginable under all the gauze and cotton.
Do it,
I think.
Now is the time. Just get it over with; finish it right here.
But he speaks. And I can’t.
“I know I’m not much to look at,” he says.
“I’m just glad you’re alive,” I say. Even as the words come out of my mouth I know how ridiculous they are, but I can’t stop them. It’s like my mind has slipped into autopilot and is making me say things that I know a normal person would say. I’m just pretending. Just lying.
“I was worried—I don’t really remember much about everything that happened. When I woke up, I was in a Mog helicopter. They’d treated me with something that had counteracted whatever the green stuff did to me, but . . .” He raises what’s left of his right arm. “As advanced as their medicine is, the damage had already been done. They told me you were fine, though. That you’d saved me from falling into the green lake.”
I nod.
“But the attackers escaped, right?” he asks.
“Yeah. They did.”
Ethan laughs a little and shakes his head, even though I don’t think anything is actually funny. Then his face gets really serious for a second.
“That’s a shame,” he says, and his voice is gloomier than I’ve ever heard it before.
I just nod. He narrows his good eye as he inspects me.
“You’ve got bug guts on your shoulders, and your hair’s all matted down. Don’t tell me you flew all the way here.”
“It was good training,” I said.
“Jesus. Who forced you to do that?”
“No one. I suggested it.”
Ethan just nods a little bit.
“You’ve outgrown all your teachers,” he says quietly.
“We’re about to start the next phase of my mission,” I say. “The endgame is about to begin. I have about forty-eight hours before I’m needed back. Well, less than that now. About a day.”
The words keep coming out because part of me wants to stall. Maybe because I know as soon as I finish my mission, everything will happen very quickly. And as ready as I am to take my place at our Beloved Leader’s side, I want to savor my last few hours in the calm before the storm.
Or maybe—more likely—it’s because Ethan really is my weakness. And seeing him here in the house where he took me in and trained me is too much, and I can’t go through with what I’m supposed to do. Not yet.
“You look tired.” Ethan smiles as best he can beneath his bandage. “Your old room is empty. How about we catch up over breakfast. I’m sure there’s been a lot going on since the attack. You are staying here, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Only for one night. I just came to say good-bye.”
EVEN THOUGH I’M OVERWHELMED BY THE NOSTALGIA
of being in my old room, I pass out the moment my head hits the bed, still fully dressed. As good as I am at flying, it’s zapped the energy out of me. But it’s not a restful or deep sleep that I enter. I wake up several times throughout the night in a cold sweat, until finally, the last time, I say screw it and just get out of bed completely.
It’s dark outside, but there’s a hint of light coming up over the beach. In the bedroom closet, I find a bunch of my old clothes. I change, slipping on a T-shirt and oversize light hoodie. I don’t want to wake up anyone else in the house—especially Ethan, who I’d have to make small talk with—so I open the bedroom window and slip out. I bring my Chest with me as I float down to the edge of the water—I need only one thing out of it, really, but cataloging the Chest’s contents always helps to center me when I need to focus. On the beach, I kick off my shoes and roll up the legs of my pants. There’s the slightest chill in the air coming off the ocean. The sand is cold between my toes as I burrow my feet down into it.
It’s been too long since I had my feet in sand.
The rising sun feels different in Florida than in West Virginia. Maybe it’s just because I’ve spent so much time underground and haven’t really felt it on my skin lately. I plunk my Chest into the beach next to me and open it, rifling through it. I find what I’m looking for inside. Then I let my fingers fall across the other items, until I pull out the file on Nine that Deltoch gave me a while ago. The notes are tattered and falling apart where I’ve folded them and unfolded them over and over again. I read them to remind myself that though the Mogs recognize me for what I am, the Garde do not. That my future is as a ruler, not as a servant to a bunch of dead old Loric who sent me to Earth with an impossible mission.
I read the pages to psyche myself up. To get my blood flowing and my anger raging. To get ready for what I’m about to do. What I
have
to do. Just this one thing and then the world will be mine. All the power I could possibly want.
Somewhere to my left, seagulls make a racket. Most of my life I wanted off a deserted island. Wanted to be in the action, in the thick of things. In cities. In battles. But sitting here now, for a moment I kind of wish I could disappear and become an anonymous speck on the map again. Not forever, but for a day or two. As much as I hated the island, there was a kind of peace with not having anyone around or anything to do.
But then Ethan shows up and the moment passes. “Good morning,” he says.
“Hey,” I answer, pulling the sleeves of my hoodie down over my fingers. “You’re up early.”
“I wanted to catch the sunrise,” he says, staring out across the ocean. “I haven’t seen one in a long time. It’s more beautiful than I remember.”