differently. For all of us.’
I crouch down over the General’s remains and carefully remove the simple black leather sheath
that he wore across his back. It’s a little singed but still holding together. I pick up the sword from where Adam dropped it, sheath it and hold it out to him.
‘I don’t want that,’ Adam says, staring at the sword with a look of disgust.
‘Things can end differently,’ I tell him. ‘Use this in a way that your father never did. Help us win this war and change the fate of both our people.’
Adam hesitates for a moment before accepting the sword from me. He holds the blade in both
hands and stares down at it. After a long moment of contemplation, Adam slings the sheath over his
shoulder. He grunts at the weight but manages to stand up straight.
‘Thank you, John,’ he says quietly. ‘I swear to you, this blade will never again be used against a
Loric.’
Sam walks over to us. ‘You guys all right?’
Adam nods. I touch the skin of my throat, which already feels swollen and puffy from where the
General strangled me.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ I reply, then look to Adam. ‘Are we done, though? Or are there more coming?’
He shakes his head. ‘I shut down communications right before my – right before the General caught
up with me. There won’t be any reinforcements.’
‘Nice,’ Sam replies, looking out at the empty windows of Ashwood Estates. ‘So we just took over
a Mogadorian base.’
Before I can bask in any sense of accomplishment, I notice a dark look on Adam’s face. He’s no
longer staring down at his father. Instead, his eyes are turned towards the horizon, like he’s expecting to see something bad headed our way at any moment.
‘What is it?’ I ask him.
‘There was something else,’ he says slowly, choosing his words carefully. ‘I was only on the
communications network for a few moments, but I picked up some chatter. Troop movements. Mass
relocations of trueborn to the West Virginia fortress. Deployments of warrior groups to population
centers.’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ I say, holding up my hands. ‘What does all that mean?’
‘Invasion,’ Adam replies. ‘Invasion is imminent.’
1 0
Setrákus Ra has some of his minions stick me in a cold room without any windows. No more polite
conversations over nasty dinners, I guess. It’s so small in here that I can stand at the center, stretch out my arms and almost brush the opposing walls with my fingertips. There’s a little dome-shaped
protrusion in the middle of the ceiling. I bet it’s a camera. Against one wall is a small metal desk with a chair that looks like it’s designed for maximum discomfort. On the desk is a copy of The Great
Book of Mogadorian Progress.
I’m supposed to sit here and study my grandfather’s masterwork. Read three sections and spend at
least twenty minutes in deep contemplation of each.
No thanks.
I’m not sure if it’s the same copy I used to hit that Mogadorian lady on my first day here. There are
a lot of these books lying around the Anubis. It’s like the only thing the Mogs read. Anyway, they’ve chained this one to the desk to make sure I don’t turn it into a weapon.
Instead of studying, I lean against the wall farthest from the desk and wait for the Mogs to run out of patience. I try to ignore the itching sensation coming from the Mogadorian charm freshly burned into
my ankle. If they’re watching me – and I’m almost certain that they’re always watching me – I don’t want them to see me looking uncomfortable.
I definitely don’t want them to know how disgusted I am at the idea of being connected to Setrákus
Ra. The Mogs hate the Loric, but they fall over themselves to please their ‘Beloved Leader,’ even
though he used to be one of us. Based on what he told me at dinner, Setrákus Ra turned himself into
some freakish hybrid species made from the powerful Legacies of an Elder and the technological
advancements of the Mogs. Or so he says. It’s hard to figure out what’s fact and fiction with him.
Whatever he is now – Loric, Mog or something in between – Setrákus Ra has spent centuries making
the Mogs view him as a savior. As a god. Where he came from doesn’t matter to them anymore. And
even though I get a few sideways looks from some of the soldiers aboard the Anubis, to most of the crew, I’m on Setrákus Ra’s level.
I’m the granddaughter of a self-proclaimed god. So far, that’s keeping me safe.
As if being blood relatives wasn’t enough, now we’re bonded by his version of a Loric charm. I
remember feeling left out when I discovered all the other Garde were connected in the same way, all
of them once protected by the same force. I wanted to be part of that. Now I’ve got two thick and
jagged bands of scar tissue around my ankle.
Be careful what you wish for, Ella.
I’m zoning out, trying to think up a way to test what the charm does without hurting myself, when a
noise starts playing in the room. It sounds almost exactly like a smoke alarm. At first it’s like a
ringing in my ears, but seconds later it’s amplified enough that it drowns out my thoughts. I cover my ears, but the sound only gets louder. It’s coming through the walls from every direction at once.
‘Turn it off!’ I yell to the Mogs I’m sure are watching me. In response, the volume increases. My
head feels like it might split open.
I stumble away from the wall and the volume immediately lowers from a deafening shriek to a
piercing whistle. When I take another step towards the Great Book, the volume drops another
fraction. I get the hint. When I finally open up the book, the noise drops to an annoying buzz.
So that’s how Setrákus Ra intends to ‘educate’ me – by making it so the only peace I can find is
literally in the pages of his Mogadorian encyclopedia.
Maybe I should try to make the most of this. There might be some information I can use against him
in Setrákus Ra’s painfully boring book. It can’t hurt to skim a little. There’s no way I’ll ever believe any of the lies on these pages.
The ringing cuts off entirely when I start to read the first page. Even though I resent it, I can’t help but let out a little sigh of relief.
There is no greater achievement for a species than the shouldering of one’s own genetic destiny. It is for that reason that the Mogadorian race must be considered the most elevated of all life throughout the universe.
Ugh. I can’t believe this thing goes on for like five hundred pages, or that it’s become required
reading for an entire species. I’m not going to find anything useful in here.
As soon as my eyes drift away from the page, the heinous buzzing resumes, more intense than
before. I grit my teeth and look back at the book, skimming over a couple more sentences until
something occurs to me.
I grab the top of the first thirty pages or so and tear them out of the bindings. The piercing noise in my ears reaches siren level, my eyes watering, but I force myself to go on. I hold up the pages so that whichever Mogadorian is watching can see, and then I tear them down the middle. Then I tear them
into fourths, smaller and smaller, until I’ve got two handfuls of Great Book confetti to toss into the air.
‘How am I supposed to read it now?’ I shout.
The wailing goes on for another couple of minutes. It gets to the point where my neck and back start
to ache from the way my shoulders are bunched up, like they’re trying to cover my ears. I continue
tearing more pages out of the book. I can’t even hear the paper ripping.