“What do—?”
She cuts me off, grabbing my arm. “John, listen! Six, the others, you have to warn them! Tell them—”
Ella’s hands pass through me. I see it all again—the Sanctuary and the Anubis, Ella squirming on the operating table, the darkened subway car—and then all the colors blend together, nothing solid to grab on to. Ella screams something at me, but she’s too far away. The words don’t reach me.
Then, darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I SNAP AWAKE ON A HARD PLASTIC BENCH, MY legs dangling off the end. I know I’m back in my body, no longer in Ella’s dreamworld because of the intense ache that immediately soaks through my every muscle. I’m on my side, facing the orange and yellow seatbacks of the subway bench. I’ve never been on one of these cars before, but I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to recognize them immediately. On the wall above my head is a poster reading IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.
With a groan, I prop myself up on an elbow. Sam is slumped on the two-seater adjacent to my bench with his head propped against the window, snoring gently. Outside the window, I can see only darkness. This train is stalled underground somewhere¸ inside the tunnel. The passengers must have abandoned it early on during the attack. The train car is dead, unmoving and powerless, the panels of overhead lights completely dark.
And yet, there’s light coming from somewhere.
I sit up and look around, immediately spotting a row of cell phones spread throughout the train’s main aisle. With their flashlight apps turned on, the phones function like battery-powered candles. On the bench opposite from me, awake and watching, sits Daniela. Her feet are propped up on the duffel bag she carried out of that bank, the thing presumably filled with stolen money.
“You’re alive,” she says, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Sam. I do the same, even though Sam’s snoring like he could sleep through another Anubis bombing.
“How long have I been out?” I ask.
“It’s morning according to the phones,” Daniela replies. “About six hours, I guess.”
Morning already. I shake my head. An entire night wasted. We couldn’t find Nine and Five, and who knows which part of New York they’ve fought their way to by now. To make matters worse, I know where Setrákus Ra and the Anubis are heading—right to the last known location of the rest of the Garde. Because I lost contact with Ella at the last minute, I’m not sure what to do with that information, even if I could get in contact with Six and the others. Should they be getting ready to turn around and head back to the Sanctuary? Or does Ella want me to keep them as far from there as possible?
I need to move, to do something productive. But my body still doesn’t feel one hundred percent and Sam is out like a light.
“We’re still in the subway?” I ask Daniela, knowing the answer, but wanting to get a better grip on our situation before I make any decisions.
“Yeah. Obviously. We dragged you in here after you fainted.”
“Fainted,” I repeat with a grimace. “I passed out from exhaustion.”
“Same diff. Anyway, we were all pretty wiped after that cave-in stunt,” Daniela continues, maybe sensing my annoyance. “I fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got here.” Daniela glances at Sam, a faint smile on her face. “Your boy Sam was gonna stand guard, but I guess that didn’t go so hot. No big deal. Not like anyone is looking for us down here.”
“Not yet, at least,” I reply, thinking about the Mogadorians on the surface and wondering how their occupation of New York City is progressing.
One of the phones winks out. Daniela crouches over it, pressing a few buttons, but the battery is dead.
“People slept in front of the store for these things,” she says, holding up the dead phone for me to inspect. “Shit goes down, though . . . lot of people drop everything and run. What’s that make you think about humanity, alien guy?”
“That they’ve got their priorities straight,” I reply, glancing again at the duffel bag full of money.
“Yeah. I guess,” Daniela says, then casually tosses the phone to the other end of the train car, where it hits the floor and breaks apart. Even the phone shattering doesn’t disturb Sam. “That felt surprisingly good,” Daniela tells me, smirking in my direction. “You should try it.”
“Where’d you get all the phones?” I ask Daniela, watching her closely as she sits back down.
I still don’t know what to make of her. She’s a human with Legacies, which we don’t even have a word for. But she seems to think this entire situation is one big joke. I can’t tell if she’s unhinged like Five or hiding behind a massive defense mechanism. She mentioned before that the Mogs killed her stepfather and that her mom is missing. I know what it’s like—to lose people, to not know what’s happening to your loved ones. I could tell her that, except I don’t really think Daniela’s the type to open up easily. I wish Six were here. I have a feeling they’d get along great.
“I woke up first,” she says, gesturing around the train. “Went through all the cars. People left a lot of shit behind.”
“Back at the bank, did somebody leave all that cash behind, too?” I ask, jerking my chin at her duffel bag.
“Oh yeah, that,” Daniela says, looking to the side with feigned guilt, but unable to keep the smile off her face. “Wondered if you noticed.”
“I noticed.”
“Thing’s heavier than you’d think,” she says, nudging the bag with her filthy sneaker toe.
I rub my hand across my face, trying to figure out how I should approach this. It’s not like I haven’t stolen before. I always did it out of necessity, though, and never right in the middle of a full-scale invasion.
“Weird you had time to rob a bank while you were searching for your mom.”
“First of all, I didn’t steal it. I mean, not technically. There were some dudes hiding from the Mogs in that bank. They were the ones robbing it. I just ended up taking cover in there. They got blasted, then you showed up. I figure, why waste a perfectly good duffel bag?”
I frown, shaking my head. I have no idea if what Daniela’s telling me is the truth. I’m not sure if it even matters how she got the money. I’m more concerned with figuring out if this new Garde is someone we can trust. Someone we can rely on.
“Second of all,” she continues, leaning toward me, “my mom would be pissed if she found out I missed an opportunity like that.”
She tries to keep her voice cavalier, but a tremor sneaks in when she mentions her mom. Maybe this attitude is all a front, a way to cope with how screwed up her world has gotten in the last twenty-four hours. I get that. My expression must be too sympathetic, though, or maybe she noticed me noticing her voice shaking, because Daniela raises her voice and keeps going, more heated than before. It occurs to me that as much as I’m trying to figure her out, she’s also trying to figure out me.
“Third, I didn’t sign up for these superpowers that you don’t even know why I have. And I damn sure didn’t sign up to fight in your alien war. Neither did my family.”
“You think there was an alien invasion sign-up sheet getting passed around?” I ask sharply, trying and failing to keep my temper from flaring. “No one asked for this. The Loric, my people, we didn’t ask for the Mogs to destroy our home world. It happened anyway.”
Daniela holds up her hands defensively. “All right, so you know what this is like. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be judging how I choose to spend my alien invasion. Shit is nuts.”
“I was too young to fight back when they attacked Lorien,” I tell her. “But you . . .”