“And we have no idea how many of these kids who just got superpowers are in the US, right? Jesus, we’re talking about American citizens. We can’t hand them over to invaders.”
I think back to what his daughter said, trying to make sense of everything that’s happening. The shared dream. Ra’s threats. The Loralite stones.
“If there are teleportation areas popping up around the world, you may also be dealing with an influx of these newly powered individuals traveling to the US. It sounds like John Smith is rallying them behind him. And he’s in New York.”
“A whole army of superhuman teenagers,” Lawson says from behind me. “Interesting.”
Jackson shoots him a pointed look. I don’t know how long he’s been standing just around the corner, but he’s obviously heard plenty.
“These kids you’re talking about could make for good soldiers if we provide them with strong leadership,” he says. “Not Melanie, of course. She’ll stay hidden away for security reasons. But if there’s an army of brand-new superheroes out there, we’ll want them fighting on our side. The faster you can get a leash on them, the better things will be in the long run.”
“They aren’t dogs, General,” I say, turning to him. If he tries to put a leash on my son, I’ll remind him that I don’t have to have superpowers to fight.
“Of course not. Sounds like they’re weapons. Isn’t that what you’re getting at?”
“They’re kids,” I say. “Probably scared out of their minds.”
“Welcome to war, Mr. Goode.” Lawson sneers.
“Doctor,” I say, a petty correction I haven’t made in over a decade. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my temples.
Lawson’s nostrils flare a little. “Everyone’s terrified, Doctor. That’s something we can use.”
I turn my back to him. “Mr. President, I know this is all a lot to process, both as a father and as a leader. But just remember: whatever’s happening, your daughter is wrapped up in this now. She may not be Loric, but she may as well be one of the Garde. Remember that as you make your decisions. You can’t give them up. The Garde are not our enemy. The Mogadorians are.”
Jackson holds my gaze, nodding slightly, before turning to Lawson.
“If these . . . human Garde are going to start appearing in America wanting to fight, our job will be to make sure they don’t do anything foolish, but not to subdue them. We can’t fight a war on two fronts. General, call everyone back to the war room in thirty minutes. I want to firm up our plan of action. Our primary threat right now is the race of aliens that has warships parked over our cities. We’ve still got over forty hours of ‘peace’ to come up with a plan.” His lips purse a little bit. “And I want to talk to John Smith myself.”
“Yes, sir,” General Lawson says, disappearing around a corner.
“And Dr. Goode, I want you there as well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check on my daughter.”
He goes into the suite, leaving me alone in the hallway.
Back at my own room, Briggs is shifting his weight on his crutch outside my door.
“There was, ah . . . ,” he says. “It sounded like there was maybe something buzzing in there earlier.”
I don’t respond. All I know is that I have to get to the phone. Sure enough, I have a string of missed calls from the number Sam reached me from earlier. I press all the wrong buttons trying frantically to redial, not even bothering to hide from any bugs or recording devices. Finally, it connects.
“Dad?” Sam’s voice is frantic, shaking. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I hear him speak, and the air rushes from my lungs in relief.
“Sam, thank God, what is it?” I ask. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Oh, shit,” he says. “I thought something had happened to you too. I . . .”
Too?
“I’m fine, Dad, but . . .” In the background I can hear shouting, pained and animal. “Something terrible’s happened. Could you . . . Dad, we need you back.”
I don’t hesitate to answer. I know that elsewhere in this bunker the leaders of the nation are gathering again. There’s a seat for me at their table now.
But my son needs me. And it’s not like I can’t advise the president from afar.
“Of course, Sam,” I say, motioning for Gamera to follow me. “Just tell me where to go. I’m already on my way.”
“I . . .” He pauses. When he talks again, it sounds like he’s holding the phone away from his ear. “John, wait, where are you . . . ?” Hushed voices I can’t understand, and then “Dad, let me call you back in five, okay?”
He’s hung up before I can ask any of the dozens of questions I need answered, chiefly What the hell happened?
Still, I’ve got five minutes to figure out how to escape from a secret bunker. I think back to Richards telling me that I could leave whenever I wanted but that he’d have men escort me out, making sure I couldn’t lead anyone else back to the bunker. At the time it had seemed like a thinly veiled threat, but I don’t think the president would actually let Richards kill me—especially not now. Still, it would definitely be faster and easier for me to get out of here unnoticed.
The trouble is, I’m not even sure where I am. Maybe sixty miles outside of DC if the train ride was an hour? Farther? And what do I even do for transportation?
In the hallway Briggs must be able to tell something’s wrong—and that I’m bolting.
“No,” he says, shaking his head.
“I thought I wasn’t a prisoner,” I say.
He doesn’t have an immediate answer for me.
“It’s my son,” I say. “I have to go.”
“My orders are to report—”
“Please, Samuel,” I say. “This is my family. If your mom was in trouble you’d go, right? Especially if she was wrapped up in everything that’s happening like my boy is. My son needs me, and I’m leaving. If you try to keep me here, you’re just ensuring that I won’t help.”
I can see the conflict in Briggs’s eyes. He glances around the halls.
“Follow me,” he says. “Quickly.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer before walking in the direction opposite the war room and the president’s suite. We go through a series of gray corridors. He nods to the people we pass, who probably assume he’s leading me to or from some appointment. Finally, we reach the big cement room where we first entered the bunker. Our train car still sits in the center of it.
The man in the lab coat has his face buried in an electronic tablet. He glances up when we enter.
“I’m here to relieve you, Joe,” Briggs says. “Clearance Juliett Delta Kilo.”
Joe—I guess—squints at us. “I’m not due for a break for another hour.”
Briggs snorts. “You want to keep working, that’s fine with me.”
The man’s nose twitches as he turns his attention to me, raising an eyebrow.
“Our guest’s a science guy.” Briggs shrugs. “He’s interested in the software we’re using. Plus, it’s boring as shit down here, and he’s keeping me entertained with stories about ETs.”
“Fine, whatever,” Joe says. He gets up and leaves, muttering something about how bad the food is here. Briggs glares at him as he exits.
“We go way back,” he mutters. “That guy’s such a prick.”
“Come with me,” I say. “You’re going to be in trouble when they find out you helped me.”
He shakes his head. “I’d be in more trouble if I deserted. Besides, technically you’re not a prisoner. I’ll just tell them you manipulated me into helping you and I fell for it. Which . . . probably isn’t far from the truth. Unless you want to hit me over the head with my gun or something, but I think I’d rather them think you outsmarted me than overpowered me. No offense.”
“Briggs, I . . .” But I don’t know what else to say. “Thank you.”
He taps on the controls. I scrawl a number down on a notepad I find lying nearby.
�
�This is my number. See if you can get it to Richards. Tell him this is how Jackson can reach me. Tell them . . . it’s a family matter. Believe it or not, I think the president might understand.”
On the wall opposite us, a metal panel slides away, revealing a small elevator.
“That’ll take you topside,” Briggs says, pocketing the note. “Eventually someone will come looking for you. Better not be in the area when they do. They might insist you come back.”
“I think I’ve run more in the last few days than in my entire life,” I say as I jog to the elevator. Gamera buzzes after me.
It’s only when the door starts sliding shut that I realize I don’t know what’s waiting for me above. “Wait, where are we?”
“Didn’t Richards tell you? Liberty Base.” He gets a little grin before he disappears behind the closing metal door.
I’m shot up what feels like several stories before I finally come to a stop. The door opens, and for a moment the sunshine is blinding. I step out onto a bed of grass and pine needles as my eyes adjust.
I turn in time to see the wall behind me slide shut, until it looks like nothing but another section of the giant white stone wall in front of me—a dam of sorts. I take a few steps away, trying to figure out where I am. That’s when I see a faded brochure and map on the ground, half buried. “Liberty Reservoir,” it reads. I dust it off. According to the map on the back, I’m north of DC, not that far from Baltimore.
“All right,” I say, glancing at the dragonfly on my shoulder. “Let’s find a road.”
I start to jog. Gamera zips forward, morphing in midair, until he’s turned into a horse. He rears back and then stands in front of me, shaking his mane.
I think I’ve found a faster way to get away from the bunker.
My phone rings as I hoist myself onto Gamera’s back. Sam’s on the other end of the line when I answer.
“Hi, Dad,” he says.
“Son,” I say as Gamera starts to gallop. “Where am I going?”
EXCERPT FROM THE FATE OF TEN
DON’T MISS BOOK SIX IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING I AM NUMBER FOUR SERIES
PROLOGUE
THE FRONT DOOR STARTS SHAKING. IT’S ALWAYS done that whenever the metal security gate two flights down bangs closed, ever since they moved into the Harlem apartment three years ago. Between the front entrance and the paper-thin walls, they are always aware of the comings and goings of the entire building. They mute the television to listen, a fifteen-year-old girl and a fifty-seven-year-old man, daughter and stepfather who rarely see eye to eye, but who have put their many differences aside to watch the aliens invade. The man has spent much of the afternoon muttering prayers in Spanish, while the girl has watched the news coverage in awed silence. It seems like a movie to her, so much so that the fear hasn’t truly sunk in. The girl wonders if the handsome blond-haired boy who tried to fight the monster is dead. The man wonders if the girl’s mother, a waitress at a small restaurant downtown, survived the initial attack.
The man mutes the TV so they can listen to what’s happening outside. One of their neighbors sprints up the stairs, past their floor, yelling the whole way. “They’re on the block! They’re on the block!”
The man sucks his teeth in disbelief. “Dude’s losing it. Those pale freaks ain’t gonna bother with Harlem. We’re safe here,” he reassures the girl.
He turns the volume back up. The girl isn’t so sure he’s right. She creeps toward the door and stares out the peephole. The hallway outside is dim and empty.
Like the Midtown block behind her, the reporter on TV looks trashed. She’s got dirt and ash smudged all over her face, streaks of it through her blond hair. There’s a spot of dried blood on her mouth where there should be lipstick. The reporter looks like she’s barely keeping it together.
“To reiterate, the initial bombing seems to have tapered off,” the reporter says shakily, the man listening raptly. “The—the—the Mogadorians, they have taken to the streets en masse and appear to be, ah, rounding up prisoners, although we have seen some further acts of violence at—at—the slightest provocation . . .”
The reporter chokes back a sob. Behind her, there are hundreds of pale aliens in dark uniforms marching through the streets. Some of them turn their heads and point their empty black eyes right at the camera.
“Jesus Christ,” says the man.
“Again, to reiterate, we are being—uh, we are being allowed to broadcast. They—they—the invaders, they seem to want us here . . .”
Downstairs, the gate rattles again. There’s a screech of metal tearing and a loud crash. Someone didn’t have a key. Someone needed to knock the gate down entirely.
“It’s them,” the girl says.
“Shut up,” the man replies. He turns down the TV again. “I mean, keep quiet. Damn.”
They hear heavy footfalls coming up the stairs. The girl backs away from the peephole when she hears another door get kicked in. Their downstairs neighbors start to scream.
“Go hide,” the man says to the girl. “Go on.”
The man’s grip tightens on the baseball bat that he retrieved from the hall closet when the alien mother ship first appeared in the sky. He inches closer to the shaking door, positions himself to one side of it, his back to the wall. They can hear noise from the hallway. A loud crash, their neighbor’s apartment door being knocked off its hinges, harsh words in guttural English, screaming, and finally a sound like compressed lightning being uncorked. They’ve seen the aliens’ guns on television, stared in awe at the sizzling bolts of blue energy they fire.
The footsteps resume, stopping outside their shaky door. The man’s eyes are wide, his hands tight on the bat. He realizes that the girl hasn’t moved. She’s frozen.
“Wake up, stupid,” he snaps. “Go.”
He nods toward the living room window. It’s open, the fire escape waiting outside.
The girl hates when the man calls her stupid. Even so, for the first time she can remember, the girl does what her stepfather tells her. She climbs through the window the same way she’s snuck out of this apartment so many times before. The girl knows she shouldn’t go alone. Her stepfather should flee, too. She turns around on the fire escape to call to him, and so she’s looking into the apartment when their front door is hammered down.
The aliens are much uglier in person than on television. Their otherness freezes the girl in her tracks. She stares at the deathly pale skin of the first one through the door, at his unblinking black eyes and bizarre tattoos. There are four aliens altogether, each of them armed. It’s the first one that spots the girl on the fire escape. He stops in the doorway, his strange gun leveled in her direction.
“Surrender or die,” the alien says.
A second later, the girl’s stepfather hits the alien in the face with his bat. It’s a powerful swing—the old man made his living as a mechanic, his forearms thick from twelve-hour days. It caves in the alien’s head, the creature immediately disintegrating into ash.
Before her stepfather can get his bat back over his shoulder, the nearest alien shoots him in the chest.
The man is thrown backwards into the apartment, muscles seizing, his shirt burning. He crashes through the glass coffee table and rolls, ends up facing the window, where he locks eyes with the girl.
“Run!” her stepfather somehow finds the strength to shout. “Run, damn it!”
The girl bounds down the fire escape. When she gets to the ladder, she hears gunfire from her apartment. She tries not to think about what that means. A pale face pokes his head out of her window and takes aim at her with his weapon.
She lets go of the ladder, dropping into the alley below, right as the air around her sizzles. The hair on her arms stands up and the girl can tell there’s electricity coursing through the metal of the fire escape. But she’s unharmed. The alien missed her.
The girl jumps over some trash bags and runs to the mouth of the alley, peeking around the corner to see the street she gr
ew up on. There’s a fire hydrant gushing water into the air; it reminds the girl of summer block parties. She sees an overturned mail truck, its undercarriage smoking like it could explode at any minute. Farther down the block, parked in the middle of the street, the girl sees the aliens’ small spacecraft, one of many she and her stepfather saw unleashed from the hulking ship that still looms over Manhattan. They played that clip over and over on the news. Almost as much as they played the video about the blond-haired boy.
John Smith. That’s his name. The girl narrating the video said so.
Where is he now? the girl wonders. Probably not saving people in Harlem, that’s for sure.
The girl knows she has to save herself.
She’s about to run for it when she spots another group of aliens exiting an apartment building across the street. They have a dozen humans with them, some familiar faces from around the neighborhood, a couple of kids she recognizes from the grades below her. At gunpoint, they force the people onto their knees on the curb. A big alien freak walks down the line of people, clicking a small object in his hand, like a bouncer outside of a club. They’re keeping a count. The girl isn’t sure she wants to see what happens next.
Metal screeches behind her. The girl turns around to see one of the aliens from her apartment climbing down the fire escape.
She runs. The girl is fast and she knows these streets. The subway is only a few blocks from here. Once, on a dare, the girl climbed down from the platform and ventured into the tunnels. The darkness and rats didn’t scare her nearly as much as these aliens. That’s where she’ll go. She can hide there, maybe even make it downtown, try to find her mother. The girl doesn’t know how she’s going to break the news about her stepfather. She doesn’t even believe it herself. She keeps expecting to wake up.
The girl darts around a corner and three aliens stand in her path. Her instinct makes her try to turn back, but her ankle twists and her legs come out from under her. She falls, hitting the sidewalk hard. One of the aliens makes a short, harsh noise—the girl realizes he’s laughing at her.
I Am Number Four: The Lost Files #14 Page 8