I’m only a few steps behind her. The force field gives my skin a fizzy feeling. It only lasts a second and then I’m standing on the other side, the cracked and vine-riddled steps of the Sanctuary rising up before me.
I turn back to check on Adam. He’s stopped right in front of the force field. Cautiously, he extends
his index finger and makes contact with the energy. It pops loudly and he jumps back, but he isn’t
scorched like the other Mogadorian was.
‘You’re sure this is a good idea?’
‘Don’t be a wimp,’ I reply.
Adam sighs, steels himself, and reaches forward again, this time with his whole hand. The energy
crackles and sparks against his pale skin way more than it did with Marina and me, but it lets him
through without incinerating him. I grin at him and he gives me a relieved look, wiping some sweat
off his forehead.
‘Now what?’ he asks.
Marina has paused a few yards in front of us, still floating Eight’s body. She reaches behind her
head and takes off one of her pendants. Loosed from her neck, the pendant bobs slowly towards the
stone steps of the temple, and then begins to rise up them.
‘We climb,’ Marina says.
Her pendant glints blue in the sunlight and it occurs to me that the Loralite is glowing a little
brighter. Like it’s charged up or something. I feel it, too. The Sanctuary is giving off some kind of
energy beyond just the force field. There’s a sense that every cell in my body has been suddenly
invigorated. I glance up to the sky and know that I could call up a larger storm than ever before. I feel more in touch with my Legacies. And somehow, it all seems so natural – like I’ve known this feeling
before.
Marina was right, I realize. We’re home.
2 5
It takes us about thirty minutes to climb to the top of the Mayan pyramid. I try passing the time by
counting the steps, but I lose track somewhere around two hundred. There are sections where the
stone steps have crumbled into ankle-twisting crevices, and other spots where rain has eroded the
ancient stonework down to smooth slopes. We use the overgrown vines that spill forth from the jungle
to assist us over the difficult parts, ascending hand over hand. We don’t talk much, except to tell each other when a particularly tricky section of steps is coming. Somehow, it seems rude to disturb the
silence of the Sanctuary.
We take a break once we reach the top of the temple. Marina is sweating from the heat, the climb
and the exertion of using her telekinesis to carry Eight’s body for so long. I set down the Chest I’ve been carrying and flex my fingers. Adam stands with his hands on his hips and gazes out over the
temple’s edge.
‘Some view,’ he says.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I agree.
At the temple’s pinnacle, we are above the treetops. It’s possible to see beyond the overgrown
trees that crowd the pyramid, beyond the stripped ring of land the Mogs cleared and out to the rest of the Mayan ruins and the thriving jungle beyond. I imagine some old Mayan ruler standing up here and
gazing out at his domain. And then, I imagine that same ruler turning his eyes to the heavens as a Loric ship descends from the clouds. The image seems so real and vivid; I get the strange feeling that my
imagination didn’t just conjure it up. Centuries ago, something like that really happened here – the
Loric visited, and the Sanctuary remembers.
‘You guys, look at this,’ Marina calls to us.
Adam and I turn away from the view and walk across the flat roof of the temple. At the centermost
point is a stone door. At first, I think the door is carved from the same pale stone as the rest of the pyramid, but as I draw closer it becomes obvious that the door is smooth and unblemished, the ivory-colored material not showing the same effects of age as the rest of the temple. The door may have
been here for some time, yet it’s apparent that it was plunked down on top of the already built
pyramid.
The door doesn’t lead anywhere, a fact Marina demonstrates by walking in a circle around it. Her
floating pendant hovers in front of the door, waiting for us to catch up.
I stop in front of the door and examine its surface. It is completely smooth – no handles, knobs, or
anything like that – with the exception of nine round divots arranged in a circle at the door’s center.
‘The pendants,’ I say, brushing my fingers over cool stone.
Marina plucks her pendant out of the air and guides the stone into one of the notches. It fits
perfectly and emits a crisp clicking sound. The door doesn’t move, though.
‘We only have three,’ I say, grimacing. ‘It isn’t enough.’
‘We have to try,’ Marina says, already pulling off her remaining pendant.
She’s right. We’ve come too far to turn back now. I pull off John’s pendant and fit it into the
notches on the stone door.
‘Here goes nothing,’ I say, as I push the final pendant home.
Immediately, the Loralite stones begin to glow with the same energy as the force field. The glow
spreads between the stones, connecting them, the energy filling the gaps where we’re missing
pendants. The circular symbol that takes shape on the door reminds me of the scars we get on our legs
when one of the Garde dies.
And then, with an ancient grinding noise, the stone door slides down into the temple, leaving
behind only a thin frame. Instead of jungle through the doorframe, I see a dusty room lit by the dim
blue glow of Loralite.
‘I thought we’d need more,’ I say. ‘We don’t even have a majority.’
‘Or maybe the Sanctuary knows how badly we need to enter,’ Marina suggests.
‘It’s some kind of portal,’ Adam says, squinting into the room beyond the doorframe. ‘Is that inside
the temple?’
‘Let’s find out,’ I say. I pick up Marina’s Chest and step over the threshold.
Immediately, I get that disorienting, end-over-end, roller-coaster feeling that I used to have
whenever Eight would use his teleportation Legacy. It only lasts a second, and then I’m blinking my
eyes to adjust to the dimmer lighting of this inner sanctum. My ears pop from the pressure change, and I get the sense that I just stepped through a portal into the middle of the Mayan temple. Or maybe,
considering the way the jungle sounds have been completely sealed out, we’re even deeper than that.
Maybe this Sanctuary is completely beneath the pyramid.
Marina – with Eight’s body in tow – and Adam follow me through, the both of them squinting to
adjust to the lower light. When they’re on the other side, the doorway blinks out of existence. There’s no exit in its place, only a solid limestone wall, although a circle of notches just like the one from the door are carved into it. Our pendants clatter to the floor and I hurriedly pick them up.
‘The Sanctuary,’ Marina breathes.
‘How long ago did your people put this here?’ Adam asks.
‘Hell if I know. We heard they’d been coming to Earth for centuries,’ I reply absently, peering
around. ‘I guess this is what they were doing.’
‘They were preparing for this day,’ Marina adds, that eerie certainty back in her voice.
‘What’d they leave us, though?’ I ask, a little disappointed as I look around. ‘An empty room?’
The Sanctuary is one long, rectangular room with high ceilings and absolutely no doors or
windows. It’s as if our ancestors teleported into a solid chunk of rock, somehow managed to carve
out a room, and then forgot to furnish it. There’s nothing here. Veins of glowing Loralite are threaded through the stone walls and ceiling in chaotic patterns that cast the entire room in a cobalt hue. My