sprawling down here as the hollowed-out mountain in West Virginia, but it definitely puts Dulce Base
to shame. I wonder how long it took them to carve all this out, the Mogs tunneling into the Earth
during those years I was on the run with Henri, expanding their reach without us even realizing it.
There’s a jagged and long crack in the wall that starts about halfway down the steps and runs ahead
deeper into the tunnels. Sam reaches out to drag his hand along it, coating his fingers with concrete
dust.
‘We’re sure this place isn’t going to collapse, right?’
‘Adam doesn’t think so,’ Sam replies, clapping his hands clean, the noise echoing. ‘It creeps me
out down here, though. Seriously claustrophobic.’
‘Don’t worry. We won’t be staying long.’
We pass other cracks as we navigate the twisting hallways, places where the foundation shifted,
broken sections of concrete grinding against each other. The damage was caused the last time Adam
was here, when he unleashed his earthquake Legacy to rescue Malcolm. There are some hallways
where the ceilings have outright collapsed.
Down the hall, we pass by a large, well-lit room that looks like it might have been a laboratory at
one point, lots of nozzles and levers and worktables, but no equipment. Everything must have gotten
destroyed in Adam’s attack, and the Mog salvage team never got the chance to replace it. Next to the
lab, we pass a row of oppressive eight-by-eight rooms with thick doors made from bulletproof glass.
Cells. All of them currently unoccupied.
‘The archives are up here,’ Sam tells me. ‘Dad’s been in there nonstop. The Mogs recorded
everything.’
We stop by a small room – almost like an office – with a huge bank of monitors. Malcolm sits
behind the room’s single computer terminal, bleary-eyed from watching who knows how many hours
of footage. On-screen, a Mogadorian scout speaks directly into the camera.
‘It has been three days since we leaked rumors of a Loric presence in Buenos Aires,’ the scout
reports. ‘There has yet to be any sign of Garde, but surveillance continues –’
Malcolm pauses the video when he notices us, rubbing his eyes.
‘Find anything useful?’ I ask.
Malcolm shakes his head and pulls up a list of files on the computer. He brushes a finger down the
touch screen, and the files begin an endless scroll. There are thousands of them, and all their titles are in Mogadorian.
‘From what I can gather, this is almost five years’ worth of Mogadorian intelligence,’ Malcolm
explains. ‘I’d need an entire team to go through it all. Even with Adam translating these titles, which are basically just dates and times, it’s hard to figure out where to begin.’
‘Maybe we can hire some interns,’ Sam suggests, then tugs my arm. ‘Come on, we gotta see Adam.’
‘Do what you can,’ I tell Malcolm before Sam drags me away. ‘Even the smallest bit of
information might help.’
A few more steps down the hall and we reach the room Adam described as the control center. The
room is pretty much undamaged, so it’s where we set up shop. The walls are covered in monitors,
security-camera footage from Ashwood streaming over some, but also video feeds from other places,
including one hacked security camera outside the barricaded John Hancock Center. Beneath the
monitors are a row of computers, not exactly user-friendly since all the keys are in Mogadorian.
I put my hands on my hips and survey this place, watching the camera feeds that not too long ago
would’ve been trained on me. It feels strange to be on the other side. Like Sam, this place makes me
uneasy.
‘Are we safe here?’ I ask. ‘All these cameras … there aren’t any pointed back at us?’
‘I’ve disabled them,’ Adam replies. He’s in a swivel chair at one of the computers, typing out a
string of commands. He turns around to face me. ‘Using the General’s authorization, I’ve sent a code
back to the Mogadorian command in West Virginia reporting that the salvage team uncovered a toxic
chemical leak. It’ll take some time to clean up. They’ll assume the failed cameras have something to
do with the salvage team’s work.’
‘How much time does that buy us?’
‘A couple of days? A week?’ Adam replies. ‘They’ll become suspicious when the General doesn’t
check in, but we should slip through the cracks for a while.’
‘What do we look for in the meantime?’
‘Your friends,’ Adam replies. ‘In fact, I believe I’ve already found them.’
‘Yeah, Florida,’ I say. ‘We already knew that.’
‘No, he found them. Like, exactly,’ Sam replies, grinning at me. ‘That’s why I came to get you.
Check this out.’
Sam points at one of the screens, this one displaying a map of the United States. The map is
covered in triangles of various sizes. There’s a small triangle over our location along with a few
similar-sized indicators scattered throughout the country. There are bigger triangles glowing on top of population centers. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston – all these cities are marked on the
map. The biggest triangle of all is to the west of us, right around where the Mogs’ mountain base is
hidden in West Virginia.
‘This is a, uh …’ Sam looks over at Adam. ‘What’d you call this thing?’
‘Tactical asset overview,’ Adam replies. ‘It shows where my people have ongoing operations.’
‘They’re massing in the major cities,’ I say, studying the map.
‘Yeah,’ Adam replies, grimly. ‘In preparation for the invasion.’
‘Let’s not focus on the i-word right now, okay?’ Sam says. ‘Look at this.’
Sam has plugged the tablet displaying the location of the other Garde into one of the computers. He
hands it to me and my eyes immediately shoot to Florida. My heart skips a beat; there’s only one
blinking dot on the map. It takes me a moment to realize that the four dots symbolizing each of the
remaining Garde have actually gotten so close together that they perfectly overlap.
‘They’re almost on top of each other,’ I say. ‘All four of them.’
‘Yep,’ Sam replies, taking back the tablet. ‘And look at this.’
He holds the tablet up next to the map of Mogadorian activity. The four dots perfectly line up with
one of the smaller orange triangles in Florida.
‘The Mogs have them,’ I say, gritting my teeth. ‘Adam, is that a base of some kind?’
‘A research station,’ he replies. ‘The records show there was some genetic experimentation being
done there. It isn’t the kind of place we’d normally keep prisoners, especially not Garde.’
‘Why even take prisoners at this point?’ Sam asks. ‘I mean, I get Setrákus Ra has some weird thing
for Ella. But the others …’
‘They aren’t prisoners,’ I say, hitting Sam on the arm in excitement as this dawns on me. ‘The
others are up to something. They’re on the attack.’
‘I’m working on getting us a visual of the base,’ Adam says, his fingers racing across the keyboard.
‘How’re you going to do that?’ I ask.
I sit down in the swivel chair next to Adam and watch his hands flick across the Mogadorian
keyboard. Whatever he’s doing seems almost like second nature.
‘I’ve locked down a scout ship so they won’t be able to operate it. That was the easy part.
Accessing and isolating its onboard surveillance while still keeping the craft inoperable is proving
trickier.’
‘You’re hacking into a ship?’ Sam asks, leaning over the back of Adam’s chair.
I watch the monitor directly in front of Adam crackle with static. ‘How does that help us?’