The Forgotten Ones

by Pittacus Lore

Page 6

 

  “You think we can catch a train straight to New York from here?” Rex asks as we walk across the polished marble floor. I feel strange to be back in a crowd after the loneliness of the last few weeks. The place is packed, with lots of people coming and going, including plenty of college kids. The hectic nature of it all makes me a little antsy, but I know it’s a good thing. We can blend right in.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. There’s a row of ticketing machines off to one side of the actual service counters, and I step up to one of those. When I punch in New York as our destination, I get an unpleasant surprise.

  “No, there’s nothing that goes straight there,” I reply finally, staring at the screen as if that’ll make it change its mind. “We can get from here to Chicago, though, and then from Chicago to New York. ” I study the information a bit more. “It’ll take thirty-three hours in all,” I report, “and cost us about three hundred per ticket. ” That’s more money than I’d like to spend—it will leave barely any cash in our pockets—and I don’t want to spare the time either, but I don’t see much we can do about it.

  The way Rex sighs, I’m pretty sure he agrees. “Fine,” he says finally. “Just do it. ”

  As I’m about to hit PURCHASE TICKETS I see a strange reflection in the screen. Someone is walking by and glancing my way—I know because there’s a faint flicker of pale skin with a dark band across it—sunglasses. The rest of the reflection is dark too—dark coat, dark hat. Almost exactly like Mog scouts wear. Panic flashes through me and I whip around, but I can’t find the figure or anyone like him in the crowd.

  I get an idea. I change our destination to St. Louis—that’s only thirty bucks apiece instead of three hundred—and buy the tickets. I take the tickets but leave the receipt behind, and turn away fast. “Come on. ”

  Rex sticks with me without a word as we hurry down the hall to our platform. I keep moving to the end, then quickly push through the door marked EXIT—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  “What’re we doing?” he asks as we step outside. Just as I’d hoped, we’re in the rail yard itself. There’re trains everywhere, and a few people loading luggage or refueling or just walking around checking on things. None of them pays us any attention, and I don’t look their way more than a second either. The best plan, I figure, is to move fast and look like I know what I’m doing.

  Maybe I’ll even convince myself.

  There’s still Rex to deal with though. “We’re not getting on our train, are we?” he asks, putting a hand on my arm and pulling me to a stop. “What’s up?”

  Well, the moment of truth. I square my shoulders. “I think I saw a scout,” I tell him, watching him closely. And then I wait. And tense, gathering my strength. If he tries to grab me, I think I can use my Legacy to knock him down long enough for me to lose him in the yard, but I’d rather not do that unless I really have to. And I still have Dust in my pocket.

  After a few seconds that feel like forever, he nods. “So what now?”

  “Now we hitch a ride instead. ” I gesture toward the freight trains on the other side of the yard.

  Surprisingly, Rex grins. “All right, then!” And he breaks into a jog. I guess it makes sense he’d get into the idea of something as physical—and as dangerous—as train hopping. Ivan probably would have loved it too.

  “How’re we gonna know which train to hop?” Rex asks over his shoulder as he slows by the first group of cars. “Are they labeled or something?”

  I glance at the cars, hoping they have address labels or big destination signs like buses, but each one just has a number, plus stuff like the manufacturer and model. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m making this up as I go along. ” Rex snorts. But then I spot a guy walking around in a rail-yard uniform, carrying a clipboard. “I bet he’d know. ”

  “Yeah?” Rex scoffs as we both slide between two cars so the guy won’t see us. “What, you gonna go ask him?”

  The man’s past us now—and as I watch he heads to a little shack in the center of the yard and enters it. But not before hanging the clipboard on a hook outside. “Not me, maybe,” I answer, grinning. “Dust?”

  I pull him out of my pocket and hold him in my palm. He twitches his tail as if to tell me he’s ready for action. We’ve developed such a rapport that it sometimes feels like he knows what I want before I know it myself.

  “We need that clipboard. ” In a flash, he’s a hawk again, arrowing across the yard. He swoops down, snags the clipboard between his talons and then soars up into the sky. The few people who see him gasp and stare, but lose him in the sun—which is why nobody notices when he drops down to my shoulder a minute later. He changes back into a lizard as he lands, and the clipboard falls free, right onto the ground for me to scoop it up. “Nice one,” I say.

  I scan the list. “Here,” I say after a second, stabbing a finger at one line. “There’s a train heading to Philly in a few minutes. Track twelve. ” All the tracks are numbered, and twelve is only a few rows away. “Let’s go. ”

  Rex nods and we take off, but then he pauses, stoops down—and comes back up with a thick, blackened metal spike. “To jam the door open,” he explains. “Sliding doors, probably won’t open from the inside. ” That makes sense. Of course, it also means that now he has a blunt object that he can use as a weapon.

  He doesn’t try anything, though. We get to track twelve just as the train starts to rumble into motion. I quickly spot a boxcar and start moving toward it, but Rex is on board before I’m even to the train: he jogs over, hauls himself onto the ladder affixed to the side and yanks the door right open. Then he swings in and, kneeling down, slams the spike under the door’s bottom edge to keep it from closing.

  It bothers me a little to see exactly what a miraculous recovery he’s made. When we left the base, he could barely move his arm and now he’s swinging around like a champion athlete. As if it’s nothing. Instinctively I pat my pocket, reassured by Dust’s very presence.

  “Come on!” Rex calls. “Let’s go!”

  I pick up the pace. Unfortunately, so does the train. I manage to get a hand on the ladder, but I can’t jump up without stopping first.

  My feet are scraping the ground now, the train accelerating beyond what I can manage, and I’m forced to pull my legs up and grip the ladder for dear life. If I fall now I’ll probably get pulled under the wheels. My hands are starting to lose their grip, my feet are drifting down again and the ground is now whistling past below me. If I don’t do something, and fast, I’m not going to go any farther because I’ll be nothing but a smear across a few miles of Missouri track.

  Rex solves that problem. He reaches down and grabs me around the chest just below my arm, then he just lets himself fall back, pulling me with him into the boxcar. We both land on the worn wooden floor with a thud and lay there a second, winded.

  Then he starts to laugh.

  “Woo!” he shouts, still laying there, the biggest grin I’ve seen yet plastered all over his face. “We just jumped onto a moving train!”

  I smile too. Rex just saved my life. Now we’re even. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

  We have to hide once, in Columbus, Ohio, when the train stops and rail-yard cops check all the cars for stowaways like us, but it’s easy to hear them coming. We just duck out of the boxcar as soon as the train lurches to a halt, taking the spike with us, and then circle around, hopping back on once they’ve gone.

  It would almost be fun if I wasn’t so preoccupied with what’s going to happen once we get to New York. I still have no idea how we’re going to make it to Plum Island at all, much less how I’m going to get inside, get past whatever security measures the Mogs have and free the Chimæra.

  It’s overwhelming, but I’m starting to doubt myself less now. When I look back and think of how much I’ve managed to accomplish since I left Ashwood, I’m amazed. I could actually pull this off.

  However, I still haven’t managed t
o get in touch with Malcolm, and that is worrying me. Why wouldn’t he be answering his phone? Unless he never got to the Garde at all.

  I can’t let myself think about what that would mean.

  Rex and I are silent for most of the trip, but somewhere halfway through the journey, as I’m watching the countryside fly by, I surprise myself with the sound of my own voice.

  “Why destroy it all? What’s the point?”

  Rex doesn’t hesitate before he rattles off one of the most important tenets from the Good Book. “Conquer, consume, cauterize. ” He shrugs. “It’s what we do. ”

  It’s a phrase I’ve heard so many times that I’ll be able to repeat it by heart for the rest of my life. It’s the perfect summation of the Mog objective—travel to a new world, conquer it completely, drain all of its resources, then leave it a burnt-out husk and move on to the next one. It used to make sense to me.

  “But why?” I ask. “Don’t you ever question it?”

  “Because it’s the way of the universe. It’s the way progress happens. The Piken eats the Kraul. He doesn’t feel guilty about it. He just does it. ”

  “Because he has to,” I argue. “Survival is one thing. This is different. ”

  Rex’s face hardens into a stubborn frown. “Look at what happened on Lorien. They had so much power. Their Legacies alone should have allowed them to fight us off easily. But they’d gotten soft. Even with all that power, they were weak. Their world was stagnating. It was disgusting. ”

  “They were happy. What’s disgusting about that?”

  He fixes me with a glare so hard that I can practically feel it. “I almost forgot who you are,” he says coldly. It’s the voice of the old Rex. “I forgot what you are. And what you’ve done. I won’t forget again. ”

  Then I know that, whatever came over Rex on the course of this trip, it was only temporary. He’s not going to change. It’s in his blood. And when we get to Plum Island, he won’t need me anymore. He’ll be back with his true people; he’ll have no reason not to turn on me.

  I look away. I’m alone again. I don’t even know where Dust is—he turned himself into a mouse a few hours ago and has been exploring the train on his own ever since.

  Ten hours after Rex pulled me on board, we arrive in Philly in silence. We haven’t said a word since our argument.

  Dust appears from behind a crate and slides into my pocket as Rex is jumping out into the rail yard. I’m about to follow behind him when I see that he’s left the railroad spike behind. I guess he thinks I’m so weak that he doesn’t need it. I shove it in my pocket and leap out into the chilly Philadelphia night.

  We’ve still barely spoken more than a few words to each other as we’re boarding the bus to Manhattan. Then, in theory, it’s just a quick hop over to Plum Island.