“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you with the sandwich,” Sam says as I pluck the food out of the air. “I’m still getting used to this. Obviously.”
“No worries. It’s easy to shove and pull with telekinesis. Precision’s the hardest part to learn.”
“No kidding,” he says.
“You’re doing amazing for someone that’s had telekinesis for all of four hours, man.”
Sam sits down on the futon next to me with his own sandwich. “It helps if I imagine that I have, like, ghost hands. Does that make sense?”
I think back to how I trained my own telekinesis with Henri. It seems like so long ago.
“I used to visualize whatever I focused on moving, and then will it to happen,” I tell Sam. “We started small. Henri used to toss me baseballs in the backyard and I’d practice catching them with my mind.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think playing catch is really an option for me right now,” Sam says. “I’m finding other ways to practice.”
Sam floats his sandwich up from his lap. He initially brings it too high for him to bite, but gets it at mouth level after a second more of concentration.
“Not bad,” I say.
“It’s easier when I’m not thinking about it.”
“Like when we’re fighting for our lives, for instance?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, shaking his head in wonder. “Are we going to talk about how this happened to me, John? Or why it happened? Or . . . I don’t know. What it means?”
“Garde develop Legacies in their teens,” I say, shrugging. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”
“Dude, have you forgotten that I’m not Loric?”
“Neither is Adam, but he’s got Legacies,” I reply.
“Yeah, his gross dad hooked him up to a dead Garde and . . .”
I hold up a hand to stop Sam. “All I’m saying is that it’s not so cut-and-dry. I don’t think Legacies work the way my people always assumed.” I pause for a moment to think. “What’s happened to you has to have something to do with what Six and the others did at the Sanctuary.”
“Six did this . . . ,” Sam says.
“They went down there to find Lorien on Earth; I think they did it. And then, maybe Lorien chose you.”
Without even realizing it, I’ve already devoured the sandwich and applesauce. My stomach growls. I feel a little better, my strength starting to come back to me.
“Well, that’s an honor,” Sam says, looking down at his hands and thinking it over. Or, more likely, thinking about Six. “A terrifying honor.”
“You did good out there. I couldn’t have saved all those people without you,” I reply, patting Sam on the back. “The truth is, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I don’t know how or why you suddenly developed a Legacy. I’m just glad you have it. I’m glad there’s a little hope mixed into the death and destruction.”
Sam stands up, pointlessly brushing some crumbs off his dirt-caked jeans. “Yeah, that’s me, the great hope for humanity, currently dying for another sandwich. You want one?”
“I can get it,” I tell Sam, but when I lean forward to get off the futon, I’m immediately woozy and have to sink back down.
“Take it easy,” Sam says, playing it off like he didn’t notice what a mess I am. “I got the sandwiches covered.”
“We’ll just hang here for a few more minutes,” I say groggily. “Then we’ll go track down Nine.”
I close my eyes, listening to Sam clatter around in the kitchen, trying to spread peanut butter with a telekinetically held knife. In the background, always in the background now, I can hear the steady thunder of fighting somewhere else in Manhattan. Sam’s right—we’re the resistance. We should be out there resisting. If I can just rest for a few more minutes . . .
I don’t open my eyes until Sam shakes me by the shoulder. Immediately, I can tell that I’ve dozed off. The light in the room is changed, the streetlights coming on outside, a warm yellow glow under the curtains. A plate stacked with sandwiches waits on the couch next to me. I’m tempted to dive right in and chow down. It’s like all my urges are animal now—sleep, eat, fight.
“How long was I out for?” I ask Sam, sitting up, feeling a little better physically but also feeling guilty for sleeping when there are people dying all over New York.
“About an hour,” Sam replies. “I was going to let you rest, but . . .”
In explanation, Sam gestures behind him, towards the small flat-screen television attached to the room’s far wall. The local news is actually broadcasting. Sam’s got the volume muted and the picture occasionally gives way to bursts of static, but there it is—New York City burning. Grainy footage shows the looming hulk of the Anubis crawling across the skyline, its side-mounted cannons bombarding the uppermost floors of a skyscraper until there’s nothing left but dust.
“I didn’t even think to check if it was working until a few minutes ago,” Sam says. “I figured the Mogs would’ve knocked out the TV stations for, you know, war reasons.”
I haven’t forgotten what Setrákus Ra said to me as I dangled from his ship over the East River. He wants me to watch Earth fall. Thinking even further back, to that vision of Washington, D.C., which I shared with Ella, I remember that city looking pretty busted up, but it wasn’t completely razed. And there were survivors left over to serve Setrákus Ra. I think I’m beginning to understand.
“It’s not an accident,” I say to Sam, thinking out loud. “He must want the humans to be able to see the destruction he’s bringing down. It’s not like on Lorien where his fleet just wiped everyone out. That’s why he tried putting on that big show at the UN, it’s why he tried all that shadowy MogPro shit to bring Earth under his control peacefully. He’s planning to live here afterwards. And if they’re not going to worship him like the Mogs do, he at least wants his human subjects to fear him.”
“Well, the fear thing is definitely working,” Sam replies.
On-screen, the news has switched to a live shot of an anchor at her desk. The building that houses this channel has probably taken some damage from the fighting because it looks like they’re barely keeping themselves on the air. Only half the lights are on in the studio and the camera is cockeyed, the picture not as sharp as it should be. The anchor is trying to keep up a professional face, but her hair is caked with dust and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. She speaks directly into the camera for a few seconds, introducing the next piece of footage.
The anchor disappears, replaced by shaky video shot with a cellular phone. In the middle of a major intersection, a blurry figure spins round and round, like an Olympic discus thrower warming up. Except this guy’s not holding a discus. With inhuman strength he’s whipping around another person by the ankle. After a dozen spins, the guy lets go of the curled-up body, flinging it through the front window of a nearby movie theater. The video stays centered on the thrower as, shoulders heaving, he yells out what’s probably a curse.
It’s Nine.
“Sam! Turn it up!”
As Sam gropes for the remote, whoever’s filmed Nine dives behind a car for cover. It’s disorienting as hell, but the cameraman manages to keep recording by sticking one hand above the car’s trunk. A group of Mogadorian warriors have appeared in the intersection, blasting away at Nine. I watch as he dances nimbly aside, then uses his telekinesis to fling a car in their direction.
“. . . again, this is footage taken in Union Square just moments ago,” the shaky-voiced anchor is saying as Sam turns up the volume. “We know this apparently superpowered, um, possibly alien teenager was at the UN scene with the other young man identified as John Smith. We see him here engaged in combat with the Mogadorians, doing things not humanly possible . . .”