Still gasping, I look up. Now I am in a large arena, with thousands of Mogadorians going wild in the stands. They chant and throw things down at me while fights break out among them. The floor is a shiny black slab of rock. I rise from all fours shakily. When I take one step forward, the ground behind me falls away, leaving only a black abyss. Above me is a giant hole and through this hole I see a group of clouds moving across a blue sky. It takes me a moment to realize where I am – inside the peak of a mountain.
‘Four!’ It’s Nine’s voice. Nine! I’m not alone. I look around and try to yell back, but my throat is still clogged. A beam of light escapes my mouth. Instinctively, I twist around and try to aim the light until it finally lands on Nine. He’s on the other side of the arena, but something is blocking my view of him. It’s Sam. He’s hanging between us, his wrists in shackles. Agent Purdy and Special Agent Walker stand below him, their Mogadorian cannons aimed at Sam’s chest. I don’t hesitate. I run to my best friend, the rock falling away behind me with every step I take. The roar of the crowd escalates until it’s absolutely deafening.
When I’ve almost reached them, the black rock where the agents stand drops away, and they fall with it.
‘Help! Help me, please, help me,’ Sam yells, his body twisting, trying to break free from the shackles.
I try using my telekinesis to free him, but it doesn’t work. I try to use my Lumen, but my palms remain dark. My Legacies are failing me.
‘Bring the rest, John,’ Sam says to me. ‘Bring them all.’
His voice sounds strange, like it’s not his. It’s almost like someone – or something – evil is speaking through him.
Suddenly the tan, thin boy who appeared in my last vision is next to me. Once again, he’s transparent, like a ghost. When I see he’s wearing a Loric pendant around his neck, I reach out for him. But he shakes his head at me and places a finger to his lips. The boy leaps onto Sam and climbs up his legs and body until he can get his hands around the chains. I watch him strain, trying to pull apart the shackles, and I can see the surprise on his face when he realizes he doesn’t have the strength to do it.
In my last vision, he asked me what number I was, and I feel an enormous pull to speak to him. I cough, clear my throat, and I know my voice has finally returned. I yell, ‘I am Number Four!’ just as the arena falls silent.
‘Have you made your decision?’ Sam asks. He continues to twist and turn in his shackles, the other boy still struggling to break his chains above him. Sam looks right at me and I can see his eyes are a deep maroon color. This is not Sam, I tell myself.
All at once, Sam’s body begins shaking so violently that the other boy loses his grip on him and I can only watch in horror as he falls and disappears into the same chasm that swallowed the agents. A purple glow then surrounds Sam, and the chains break of their own accord. Instead of falling, like the boy, like the agents, Sam floats, suspended in midair. A spotlight snaps on and I watch, disbelievingly, as Sam grows and transforms – into Setrákus Ra. The three Loric pendants around Setrákus Ra’s neck glow brightly, as does the purple scar circling his throat. ‘Do you want the human back?’ he bellows.
‘I will take him back!’ I yell at him, furious. I’m rooted to the spot, nothing but abyss around me, nowhere to step on to get closer to him.
Setrákus floats slowly to the ground. He lands and the rocks show no sign of giving way as they have for the rest of us. ‘This is your surrender? Fine. I shall accept your pendant now.’
I look down and my pendant is already gone. I look up again to see it hanging from Setrákus Ra’s giant fist. His cracked lips open to reveal a sharp, crooked-toothed grin.
‘No! I will not surrender!’ The moment I say it, I feel a sudden weight around my neck. My pendant is back.
The other boy leaps from the chasm into which he fell and lands near Setrákus Ra, his head held high. The boy joins my cry, ‘I will never surrender to you! Let Devdan go, and fight me!’
‘Time is running out,’ Setrákus Ra says and I now realize he is speaking to both of us – that he has been the whole time. He was trying to get both of us to surrender. Did he think he could convince us both to sacrifice ourselves in the belief that he would allow the others to live? I can only hope none of the others fall for his tricks.
The blue stain on the ceiling of the train car is suddenly all I see, and I sit up abruptly, trying to shake off the dream that has left my brain fuzzy. I touch the bracelet around my wrist. Before I drifted off into my vision, my nightmare, I had discovered that by concentrating on the bracelet’s abilities, I was able to remove it. But the moment it left my wrist, I felt unsafe without it and hurriedly popped it back on. I touch it again and wonder if my reliance on it is a good or a bad thing. All of a sudden, something small bumps against my back and I jump up and spin around.
Clearly I’m on edge from my dream. It’s just Bernie Kosar, this time as a beagle, my favorite incarnation of him.
‘Another nightmare?’ Nine yawns from the corner. He sits on his Chest, absentmindedly carving symbols into the wall with a nail, the very picture of someone who is not on edge. The soles of his bare feet are black.
‘They’re getting really strange,’ I say, and I hope I don’t sound as shaken as I feel. Last thing I need is Nine seeing me as some kid, scared by bad dreams. ‘And I think others are having them at the same time.’
Nine lifts the nail to examine it more closely. He tilts his head, as if it’s a rare specimen and not the most ordinary object in the world. With his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth he looks as if he is concentrating all of his energies on this one nail. With a small smile, he bends it between his fingers, snapping it into two perfectly equal pieces. He turns to face me. ‘And what does that mean? You think they are all having visions of some kind? Or, they are having the same action-packed nights you are?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I keep seeing this really skinny kid with curly black hair. He’s wearing one of our pendants, so I have to assume he’s one of us. We are aware of one another, but things in the dream seem to be tailored for him in some ways and to me in others. I see you in these visions too.’
Nine frowns, then opens his Chest and digs around inside. I’m hoping he is going to pull out something that will help me decipher my visions, help me figure out what, if anything, I’m supposed to do with them. ‘I’d like to try to contact the others with the red stone, but I guess the government has it tapped somehow. Which is total bullshit.’ He sits back looking frustrated.
I walk across the empty car to where he’s sitting. He has a yellow cube in his hand that I’ve never seen before. ‘What do you think it means, if the government has your stone tapped? How do you think it happened? I mean, it must have been the Mogs, but how did they convince the government to work with them?’
Nine looks at me incredulously. ‘Are you serious? Who cares why they’re working together or what the Mogs had to say to get them on their side? The point is, they are working together. The U.S. government and the Mogadorians have teamed up! For them, it is officiaclass="underline" we are the bad guys!’
‘But the Mogs will destroy Earth – or worse – once they get rid of us. Doesn’t the government know this? Isn’t it obvious that we’re the good guys?’