Nine smiles up at him, clear eyed and calm. ‘Trying to decide which one of you I’m going to kill first.’
‘Shut him up!’ a woman yells as she enters the house, also carrying a Mog cannon. Two men press their boots against Nine’s shoulders and force him back to the floor. The woman motions at me, and someone takes me by the shoulders and pulls me onto my feet. Another man grabs my wrists to put me in handcuffs.
‘Son of a bitch!’ he cries as he touches my red bracelet. I may not know what all the bracelet does, but I like this part of it.
Once upright, I get my bearings. There are ten or twelve men in masks, all holding rifles. The man and woman who were speaking seem like they’re in charge. I look for Bernie, but don’t see him. Even so, I can hear him inside my head.
Just wait. Let’s see what they want and what they know.
‘What do you want with us?’ I ask the man with the broken nose.
He laughs and looks over at the woman. ‘What do we want, Special Agent Walker?’
‘For starters, I want to know who your friend is over there,’ she says, pointing the tube back at Nine.
‘I don’t know this kid,’ Nine says. He blows his hair out of his face and offers a smile. ‘I just stopped by to sell him a vacuum cleaner. The place looked like a dump and I thought he could use it.’
The man circles over to Nine. ‘Is that what you have in these fancy chests here? Vacuum cleaners?’ He nods to one of the other officers and says, ‘Let’s have a look at these vacuum cleaners, shall we? I may be interested in one myself.’
‘Be my guest.’ Nine’s smile is menacing. ‘I’m having a sale. Two for the price of three.’
For a split second, Nine and I make eye contact. Then Nine sweeps his eyes over to the wall, where a moth is hovering near the ceiling. Bernie Kosar. I’m sure Nine also heard BK ’s orders to wait to see where this is going. I wonder if he’ll be able to control himself. One of the soldiers slaps a pair of handcuffs on Nine, and he quickly sits up again. I can see the handcuffs around his wrists are already broken. He’s only holding his hands together to keep up the charade.
Nine’s just waiting for the right time to attack. I don’t know if he ever intended to do as BK asked. I pull my arms apart behind me, quietly and easily breaking my own handcuffs. Whatever is about to happen, I’d better be ready.
A bunch of the men have surrounded Nine’s Chest. One of them is slamming the butt of his rifle over and over on the lock holding it closed, but it doesn’t have any effect. He smashes it a few more times anyway, clearly frustrated.
‘How about this.’ Special Agent Walker pulls out a revolver. She fires at the lock and the bullet ricochets around the room, barely missing another officer’s leg.
The broken-nose man grabs Nine by the back of his neck, pulls him to his feet, then shoves him forward. Nine can’t maintain the ruse of his handcuffs and braces his fall, landing on his hands and knees. Realizing Nine’s hands are now unrestrained, the man yells over his shoulder, ‘Somebody get me some more handcuffs! We’ve got a broken pair over here!’
His chin tucked into his chest, Nine’s whole body vibrates with laughter. He pops his legs out and does a pushup. Then he does another one. An officer kicks his right hand out from underneath him, but Nine doesn’t miss a beat. He does another pushup with just his left hand. The officer kicks at his left hand, but Nine is too fast to let that knock him over. His right hand is down in a flash and his one-handed pushup shows off his perfect form. Four officers jump on him, each one holding a leg or arm, but Nine just keeps on laughing. Suddenly, I find myself joining him. His bizarre sense of humor is infectious. Man, I have to give him props.
Special Agent Walker turns to me. I slowly pull my arms out from behind me, the broken handcuffs dangling from my wrists. I wiggle my fingers and casually place both hands behind my head and start whistling.
She narrows her eyes and arranges her face in the most intimidating glare she has. ‘Do you know what happens to kids like you in prison?’ she asks.
‘They escape? Like I did last time?’ My eyes are wide and innocent.
I hear Nine howling with laugher at my performance from under the pile of officers. I have to admit, Nine does bring a weird kind of fun to the proceedings. My smile breaks wide now. I know these men are just trying to do their jobs. They think they’re keeping their country safe. Right now, though, I hate them. I hate them for slowing us down and I hate this woman’s tough-guy act. I hate that they have Mog cannons. But most of all I hate them for working with Sarah to capture Sam and me last week. I wonder what they promised her to get her to turn me in. Did they play on her sympathies? Convince her she would save me, by letting them take us? Did they say she could visit me, while I paid the price for my socalled mistakes? I look over at Bernie Kosar, but I don’t see the moth anymore. That’s when a fat brown and white cockroach scurries up my leg and burrows into my jeans pocket.
Nine will go along with this for a while longer, BK tells me. But I don’t know how much longer. Find out everything you can, quickly.
The lead guy claps his hands to get the attention of the other men. ‘Okay! Let’s get these guys out of here before our friends show up.’
‘Who are your friends?’ I ask him, though I’m already pretty sure that for some reason the U.S. government and the Mogadorians are working together. That’s the only explanation for why they’d be using Mog weapons against us. ‘Who don’t you want to show up?’
‘Shut up!’ Special Agent Walker yells. She pulls out a cell phone and dials a number. ‘We’re bringing him in, plus another one,’ she says into the phone. ‘Two Chests. No, but we’ll get them open. See you soon.’
‘Who was that?’ I ask. She ignores me as she puts her phone away.
‘Hey, buddy, I thought you wanted to buy a vacuum,’ Nine says to me. ‘I really need this sale. My boss is going to kill me if I come home with a full box of Hoovers again.’
They pull Nine to his feet. He stretches his back and smiles, like a cat smug and full of mouse. ‘It doesn’t matter where you take us, there’s no prison that can hold us. If you knew who we are, you wouldn’t waste your time with this crap.’
Agent Walker laughs. ‘We know who you are, and if you were as smart or as tough as you think you are, we would have never found you in the first place.’
Officers pick up our Chests and walk out the front door. New handcuffs are slapped over our wrists. They use three pairs on Nine.
‘You have no idea what we’re capable of,’ Nine says in a sickeningly sweet voice as they lead us through the front yard. ‘If I wanted to, I could kill you all in a matter of seconds. You’re damn lucky I’m being such a good boy. For now.’
9.
We’re at a gate. There is a narrow path beyond it and it goes straight up the mountain. Crayton asks me to cover the trail behind us while Six takes the lead with Commander Sharma. I wonder if his soldier’s betrayal has had any effect on him. I wonder if he will question the loyalty of his troops when he returns to his command. I can’t imagine asking him, not without somehow suggesting he should have known. Of course, maybe he should have.
I’m carrying the small tree branch from my Chest. I need to figure out what it does. The first time I’d held thisZ – the first time I’d ever opened my Chest, back in Santa Teresa at the convent, when Adelina was still alive – I hadn’t had time to figure out what it did. But I did remember that when I’d held it out the window, I’d felt some kind of magnetic force. Almost instinctively, I rub its smooth, pared surface with my thumb. After a while, I notice it has an effect on the trees we pass. I aim and concentrate on what I want from the trees, and soon I hear the creaking of their roots and the clattering of their branches. I turn and walk backwards up the path, asking the trees on the edges to keep us safe, and they bend and twist into each other, making it impossible for anyone to follow. I want so much to be of help, I want so much not to be a curse, and to put my Inheritance to use to help us, t
hat every time a tree responds a huge wave of relief washes over me.
We walk mostly in silence. At one point, to break up the boredom of the hike, I tickle Six’s face by lowering a branch right in front her. She swats it away without breaking stride, too completely focused on what may lay ahead. As we walk I think about Six. About how fearless she was back with the soldiers. She’s always so calm, cool and collected. She takes command and makes decisions as if it were the most natural thing for her to do. One day I’ll be like her. I’m sure of it.
I wonder what Adelina would think of Six – and about me now. I wonder how much further along I’d be if she had trained me. I know all those years in the orphanage without guidance from her means I’m not where I should be. I’m not as strong and confident as Six. I’m not even as knowledgeable as Ella. I try to bury my resentment and focus on Adelina’s final act of honor. She charged at the Mog fearlessly, armed with just a kitchen knife. I try to stop the memory before I get to the part where she dies. I almost never do. If only I’d had the courage to fight alongside her, or knew then how to use my telekinesis to unwrap the Mogadorian’s hand from Adelina’s neck. If I had, she might be walking with us right now.
‘We rest here,’ the commander says, his voice breaking through my reverie. He points to a couple of flat boulders bathed in the afternoon sun. Just beyond the rocks I can see a small stream of fresh water. ‘Not long, however. We need to make a lot more progress up this mountain before nightfall.’ He looks up at the midafternoon sky.
‘Why? What happens at nightfall?’ Six asks.
‘Very strange things. Things you are not yet ready to see.’ Commander Sharma takes off his shoes and socks, rolls up the cuffs of his pants in a fussy sort of way and wades into the stream.
Crayton removes his shoes and socks too, and follows him. ‘You know, Commander, we’re already taking a pretty big leap of faith just following you up this mountain. The least you could do is answer our questions when we have them. We have a very important mission. And we deserve your respect.’
‘I do respect you, sir,’ he says. ‘But I follow Vishnu’s orders.’
Crayton shakes his head in frustration and walks further upstream. I notice Ella has wandered away and is sitting alone on one of the boulders by the stream. She’s been wearing the dark glasses from my Chest the entire hike, and she takes this moment to clean them carefully on her shirt. Seeing my gaze on her, she holds them out to me. ‘I’m sorry, Marina. I don’t know why I hung on to them. It’s just that –’
‘It’s okay, Ella. They helped you see that attack before any of us could. We may not know their full power, but you seem to be doing just fine with them.’
‘I guess so. I wonder if there’s anything more I can get them to do.’
‘What have you seen as we’ve been walking?’ Six asks.
‘Trees, trees and more trees,’ Ella says. ‘I keep waiting for something to happen, or to see something unusual. I wish I knew for sure this meant there is nothing for me to see.’ I can tell she is frustrated with herself, not the glasses.
With the small branch in my hand, I bend a large tree over to create shade on the boulders. ‘Well, keep trying.’
Ella holds the dark glasses up to the light. As she turns them over it’s almost as though I can read her thoughts, thanking me for making her feel like she’s part of the team, doing some good.
I look over at Six, who has stretched out on the ground. ‘What about you, Six?’ I ask. ‘You want to check out anything in my Chest?’
She stands, yawns and looks up the path. ‘I’m okay, I think. Maybe later.’
‘Sure,’ I say. I walk down to the stream and splash water on my face and on the back of my neck. Just as I’m about to take a drink, Commander Sharma wades out of the stream and says it’s time to go. We all get ready to continue up the mountain. I grab my Chest and balance its weight on my hip.
Immediately, the trail becomes much steeper. It’s also surprisingly slick and absent of rocks, as if this path had been recently washed clear by a storm. We’re all having difficulty keeping our footing. Crayton tries running to gain some momentum, but he slips and falls in the dirt.
‘This is impossible,’ he says, standing up and brushing himself off. ‘We’re going to need to cut through the forest to gain any kind of traction.’
‘Out of the question,’ the commander says, his arms out like a tightrope walker. ‘We will not conquer our obstacles by running away from them. Speed does not matter, just that we do not stop.’
‘It doesn’t matter how slowly we go? This message brought to you from the guy who says very strange things happen at nightfall,’ Six snorts. ‘I think you need to tell us how much further we have to go, and if it’s longer than three hours on foot, then I say we enter the forest and forgo these obstacles,’ she says, staring him down.
I look at the small branch in my hand and an idea comes to me. I concentrate on the trees around us, lowering branches in from both sides. Suddenly we have a way to pull ourselves up wards, rope climbing the Lorien way. ‘How about this?’ I ask.
Six grabs the line of branches and tests their strength, moving up a few feet. Over her shoulder, she yells, ‘Brilliant move, Marina! You rock!’
I continue to bend the trees as we climb. Still wearing the dark glasses, Ella watches the woods around us, occassionally glancing over her shoulder. Once the path levels out and it’s easier to maintain our footing, Six digs in and starts to run up the trail ahead of us, circling back regularly to report on what she’s seen ahead. Every time it’s the same: ‘It just keeps going.’ Finally, she returns to say there’s a fork up ahead. Hearing this, Commander Sharma looks confused and picks up the pace.
When we reach the fork in the dirt path, Commander Sharma frowns. ‘This is new.’
‘How can it be new?’ Crayton asks. ‘Both paths look exactly the same. Well traveled and equally so.’
The commander paces in front of the fork. ‘I promise you the path on the left did not exist before. We are very close to Vishnu. We go this way.’ He begins to walk confidently up the path to the right and Crayton follows.
‘Wait,’ Ella says, ‘I see nothing up ahead on the right. The glasses are just showing me dark emptiness.’
‘That’s all I need to hear,’ Six says.
‘No. We go right,’ the commander says to Six. ‘I’ve traveled this many times, my dear.’ Six pauses, then slowly turns to look at him.
‘Do not call me dear,’ Six warns.
As Commander Sharma and Six glare at each other my eyes are drawn to something scratched in the mouth of the path on the left. The figure is shallow and just a few inches long, and I have to look closely, but there is no question. It’s the number eight.
‘According to this, Ella’s right. We go left,’ I say, pointing at the number.
Six walks over to the markings and drags the toe of her shoe under the number eight. ‘Good eye, Marina.’ Crayton looks at it too, and smiles.
We fall back into our normal positions, with Six and a reluctant Commander Sharma up front and me taking up the rear. The path ascends slightly, turning rocky. Then, to everyone’s surprise, a steady stream of water begins to flow from ahead of us, down the trail. The rocks under our feet soon become tiny islands. I jump from one rock to another, but in a few minutes the rocks are submerged. All of a sudden, we’re walking through a river.
Ella is the first one to speak. ‘Maybe the glasses were wrong? Maybe this path wasn’t the right one after all.’
‘No. This is correct,’ the commander says, bending down to drag the tips of his fingers along the surface of the water. ‘This is a sign I’ve seen before.’ We have no idea what this cryptic comment means but we’ve gone this far, so we might as well keep going.
The river current becomes faster and it’s harder to move against it. We trudge higher up the path until the water is to Ella’s waist and I’m having trouble keeping my balance. But just as quickly as it began, the wat
er slows and the land levels out and opens into a large pool of water. A jagged wall of stone stands high behind the pool, and four separate waterfalls descend from its top, crashing into the water.
‘What’s that?’ Ella points.
In the middle of the giant pool, a white boulder juts out of the surface. A gleaming blue statue of a crowned man with four arms rests atop the boulder.
‘The Almighty Lord Vishnu,’ Commander Sharma whispers.
‘Wait. That’s supposed to be Eight? A statue?’ Six says, turning to Crayton.
‘What’s he holding?’ Ella asks. I follow her gaze and see that there’s an object in each of his four hands: a pink flower, a white shell, a gold wand, and on the tip of one of his index fingers, a small blue disc that looks like a CD.
The commander wades further into the pool. He’s smiling and his hands are shaking. He turns to us. ‘Vishnu is the Supreme God. In his left hands, he holds a conch shell to show he has the power to create and maintain the universe, and under that is a mace to signify his power to destroy materialistic and demoniac tendencies. In his right hands are the chakra, to show he has a purified spiritual mind, below that there is the beautiful lotus flower.’
‘Which shows divine perfection and purity,’ Crayton adds.
‘Among other things, yes! That is right, Mr. Crayton. Very good.’
I stare at the statue, at its serene blue face and gold crown and the objects in its hands, and I feel myself forgetting about everything else. About the battle at the base of the mountain and the carnage back in Spain. About Adelina and John Smith and Héctor. I forget about my Chest and Lorien and the fact that I’m standing in cold water. The energy flowing through me is magnificent. And judging by the peaceful looks on the faces of the others, the energy is contagious. I find myself closing my eyes and feeling blessed to be here.
‘Hey! He’s gone!’ Ella yells. My eyes snap open to see her whipping off the dark glasses. ‘Vishnu’s gone!’
[Lorien Legacies 03.0] The Rise of Nine Page 6