The Lost Files: Six's Legacy Part 6

I go fully invisible and wait for the next food drop. It takes some of my energy to maintain the invisibility, energy I wish I could conserve, but I have only that single instant for my snare to work and I can't risk them seeing me transform.

Finally, a Mog appears. The food slot opens, the tray is tossed in. It shuts.

I worry the snare hasn't worked. Maybe the Mogs don't bother to check on me, to look for me in my cell? In which case my power is totally useless- The slot opens again. Two beady eyes peer into the shadows, squinting.

In, out. Sometimes nerves can send me back into visibility and I can't spoil this moment. In, out. The worst-case scenario is them discovering my power before I can use it against them.

It is a strange thing, willing someone to see my absence.

The slot closes again. I hear the Mog walk away and my heart plummets. Where'd he go? Didn't he notice that I'm not here- The door opens suddenly. Soon, my tiny cell is filled with Mogadorian guards, four in total. I press myself against the far corner, hiding. They are huddled close, conferring about my apparent disappearance. No way out.

One leaves and runs down the hall. His exit creates more s.p.a.ce in the room, less chance that someone will stumble onto me, and I breathe easier.

One of them whirls his arm in frustration, and I have to duck as quickly as I can. He barely misses me. Close call.

I dodge, quiet as a cat, into the corner nearest the door. Two of the Mogs stand deep in the cell, but one of them blocks the exit.

Move, I think. Move.

I can hear footsteps, racing towards the cell. More Mogs. I know that all it will take is one Mog brus.h.i.+ng my shoulder or sensing my breath for me and my new Legacy to be discovered. The footsteps are getting closer. The Mog by the door steps further into the cell to accommodate those on their way and I lunge out into the hallway.

I nearly fall on the stone floor outside my cell, but I catch my balance just in time. Flesh slapping against stone: I surely would've been discovered.

A horde of Mogs is racing down the hall towards my cell from the left. No choice but to run right. I take off, landing as delicately as I can. Quiet as a cat.

It is a long hall. I struggle to maintain quiet, my bare feet making only the faintest of noises as I run and run and run. At first I am scared, but then I can feel it: freedom, up ahead.

I go faster, landing on arched feet to mute the noise. My heart leaps up into my chest as I exit the hall and find myself in the center of the Mogadorian complex, a ma.s.sive cavern fed by many other tunnels like the one I just came from. Closed-circuit security cameras are everywhere. When I spot them, my chest leaps with fear, but then I remember I am invisible, to cameras as well as to Mogs.

For how long, I don't know.

A siren is pulled. I should've expected that. Flas.h.i.+ng security lights go off as the cavern is filled with the alarm's shriek. The high walls of the cave only amplify it.

I take off again, choosing a tunnel at random.

I pa.s.s other cells like mine, then steel doors that probably hold more prisoners.

I wish I had time to help them. But all I can do is run, and keep running, as long as my invisibility will hold.

I dodge left off the tunnel, pa.s.sing a large, gla.s.s-windowed room to my right. It is illuminated by bright fluorescents. Inside hundreds and hundreds of computers in rows hum and sift data, no doubt looking for signs of my fellow Garde. I keep running.

I pa.s.s another laboratory, also gla.s.s-windowed, this one to my left. Mogadorians in white plastic suits and goggles stand inside. Scientists? Bomb chemists? I am past them before I have a chance to see what they're doing. I can only a.s.sume something awful.

My brain is split by the siren, and I want to close my ears. But I need my hands to keep my balance as I run, to keep my footsteps dainty and soundless. I have the strange thought that for all my bluntness, my tomboyishness, my warrior's training, I now find myself calling on such a feminine skill-being lightfooted, like a ballerina.

The tunnel feeds into another center, this one even larger than the other. I had a.s.sumed that what I saw earlier was the heart of the complex, but this is truly it: a cavernous hall half a mile wide and so dark and murky I can barely see across to the other side.

I am covered in sweat, out of breath. It is hot in here. The walls and ceiling are lined with huge wooden trellises keeping the cave from collapsing in on itself. Narrow ledges chiseled into the rock face connect the tunnels dotting the dark walls. Above me, several long arches have been carved from the mountain itself to bridge the divide from one side to the other.

I catch my breath and wipe my brow, to keep my own sweat from blinding me.

There are so many tunnels, none of them marked. My heart plummets. I realize I could run and run through this complex for days without finding the way out. I imagine myself like a rat in a laboratory maze, scampering and weaving to no avail.

Then I see it: a single pinp.r.i.c.k of natural light, up above. There must be a way out up there. It will be a steep climb up these walls, but I can do it. As I grab the trellis to hoist myself up, I hear it.

"She will be found."

It's him. Katarina's executioner.

He is speaking to a few guard Mogs, on a walkway above me. The guards tramp off. My eyes pin to the executioner as he takes a detour back into the complex.

I must choose. Between escape and vengeance. The light above beckons me like water in a desert. I wonder exactly how long it's been since I last saw sunlight.

But I turn around.

I choose vengeance.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

I follow him through the halls on tiptoe, careful to maintain my invisibility-I've learned enough about my Legacy by now to know that any surprise or break in concentration can cause me to fade back in.

I watch as he ducks into a cell. I sneak in behind him as the door shuts.

Unaware he has company, he walks to the corner of the room and begins to tidy up. I look down. There is blood on the floor, his weapons are out. He has tortured and killed others.

I have never killed a Mogadorian before. Not counting the Mogadorians who died trying to kill me, I have only in my entire life killed a rabbit, and a piken. To my own shock, I realize I am thirsty for murder.

I grab a razor from his desk and approach him. The blade feels good in my hand. It feels right.

I know better than to give him a chance to beg, or plead, to shake me from my resolve. I clutch him from behind and slit his throat with one clean slice. His mouth gurgles and spews blood across the floor, against my hands. He falls to his knees and then bursts into ash.

I feel more alive than I've ever felt.

I open my mouth to speak. That's for Katarina, I'm about to say. But I don't.

I don't speak because I know it's a lie.

That wasn't for Katarina. That was for me.

I emerge from the complex an hour later, exhausted and struggling to stay invisible as I climb out to the mountaintop, as I run from the mountain to a hill opposite. I have to stop to rest, to adapt to the blinding midday sun.

My translucent skin bakes beneath the sun. I stare at the mouth of the complex, already hard to make out from this distance. I don't trust my memory, so I pause to memorize its shape, its precise location.

I am sure Mogs have fanned out through the complex, looking for me. And I'm sure they have crawled out of the exit, and are even right now searching through the trees along these hills.

Let them look.

They'll never find me.

I run for a few miles through trees, until I come to a road in a small mining town. I'm running barefoot, so the road slaps hard against my feet, killing my joints. I don't care; I'll get a pair of sneakers eventually.

I find a truck idling at the town's only stoplight. I lightly hop into the back of the pickup, letting the truck take me farther and farther away from the Mogadorian complex. When the trucker stops for gas a few hours later, I dash, still invisible, into the cab, rifling through his stuff. I take a handful of quarters, a pen, a couple sc.r.a.ps of paper, and an uneaten bag of barbecue chips.

I run behind the gas station and sit in the shade. I draw a map of the complex's entrance on one side of the paper, and a diagram of the tunnels inside as best as I can remember. It will be a long time before I put this to use, but I know my memory of their hideaway is the most valuable thing I possess, and it must be preserved.

Once I finish the diagram, I throw my head back. It's sunset, but I can still feel of the warmth of the sun on my face. I open the bag of chips and eat them in three messy bites. The salty-sweet chips taste delicious, wonderful.

I am in a motel room, at long last. For a full day I wandered, driven by the urge for shelter and rest. There was no way I could afford a room, and in my desperation I began to consider thievery. Pick a few pockets, plunk down the cash I'd need. Using my Legacy, stealing would be a piece of cake.

But then it occurred to me I wouldn't need to steal, not yet anyway. Instead I went into the lobby of a small motel, went invisible, and snuck into the hotel manager's office. I lifted the key for room 21 off the hook. I wasn't sure how I was going to get the floating key past the crowded lobby and I paused for a moment, frozen in the office. But soon the key disappeared too, in my palm.

I'd never made an object disappear before, only myself and my clothes. A hint of my Legacy's other uses.

I've been in the room for a couple hours. So I feel less like I'm thieving, I sleep above the covers, in the chill of the room's AC.

I catch myself: I've been invisible the whole time I've been in the room, clenched from the exertion of sustaining it. It's like holding your breath.

I get up and approach the mirror across the room, letting it go. My body fills in in the mirror, and I see my face for the first time in over seven months.

I gasp.

The girl who stares back at me is almost unrecognizable. I'm hardly even a girl anymore.

I stare at myself for a long time, standing alone in the room, unattended, unaccompanied, aching for Katarina, aching for a worthy tribute to her.

But it's right there. In the new hardness and definition of my face, in the muscled curve of my arm. I am a woman now, and I am a warrior. Her love and the loss of her is etched forever in the firm set of my jaw.

I am her tribute. Survival is my gift to her.

Satisfied, I return to the motel bed and sleep for days.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Years have pa.s.sed.

I live an unsettled life, hopping from town to town. I avoid connections or ties, and focus on developing my fighting abilities and developing my Legacies. Invisibility was followed by telekinesis, and in recent months I've discovered a new ability: I can control and manipulate the weather.

I use that Legacy sparingly, as it's an easy way to attract unwanted attention. It manifested months ago, in a small suburb outside Cleveland. I had been following a lead on one of the Garde that didn't go anywhere and, discouraged, I was ambling back towards my motel, sipping an iced coffee. My leg burst into searing pain, and I dropped my drink on the ground.

My third scar. Three was dead.

I fell to the ground in pain and in rage, and before I knew what was happening the sky above me filled with clouds. A full-on lightning storm followed.

I am in Athens, Georgia, now. It's a cool little city, one of the best I've pa.s.sed through in the past couple years. College students everywhere. I've got a bit of a vagabond roughness to my appearance that stands out in suburban areas, but surrounded by college-age hippies and music nerds and hipsters I don't look quite so unusual. This makes me feel safe.

All of my leads have gone dead, and I have yet to discover one of my kind. But I know it is coming. Time to a.s.semble the Garde. If my Legacies are developing at this rate, I am certain the same is true of the others like me. There will be signs soon, I can feel it.

I am patient, but excited: I am ready to fight.

I wander the street, sipping the dregs of an iced coffee. It's become my drink of choice. I have resorted to pickpocketing to finance my appet.i.tes, but it's become so easy that I never have to outright fleece anyone. I just take a few bucks here or there to get by.

I am suddenly knocked by a gust of wind, practically off my feet. For a second I think I've lost control, that it's my own power that caused it. But the wind ends as soon as it began, and I realize it did not come from me. But it has swung the door of another cafe open.

I almost keep walking, but my eye is caught by an open computer terminal at the back of the cafe. I use internet cafes to keep tabs on the news, looking for items that could turn into a lead on my kind. Doing it makes me feel closer to Katarina. I have become my own Cpan.

I chuck my empty cup in the trash outside and step into the air-conditioned chill of the place. I take my seat, and begin scanning the news.

An item from Paradise, Ohio, catches me. A teenager was seen leaping from a burning building. New to town. Named John. The reporter mentioned how hard it was to get solid information on him.

I stand up so quickly I send the chair flying out from under me. I know in an instant he's one of us, though I don't know how I know. Something in that gust of wind. Something about the way b.u.t.terflies are now fluttering in my stomach, brus.h.i.+ng my insides with their wings.

Perhaps this recognition is a part of the charm, something that lets us know that a hunch is more than I hunch. I know.

I just know.

My heart races with excitement. He's out there. One of the Garde.

I run out of the cafe and onto the street. Left, right . . . I'm not sure which way to turn, how to get to Paradise as quickly as I can.

I take a deep breath.

It's beginning, I think. It's finally beginning.

I laugh at my own paralysis. I remember that the bus station is a mile down the road. I make a habit of memorizing all transport routes into and out of any town I visit, and the bus route out of Athens returns to my mind. The beginning of a plan to get to Paradise starts to develop.

I turn and begin the walk to the station.

See where it all began . . .

PROLOGUE.