“I was right: you’re an alien. You weren’t joking when you admitted it,” Sam says to me.
“Yes, you were right.”
He looks back at Henri. “And those stories you told me on Halloween?”
“No. Those were just that,” Henri says. “Ridiculous stories that made me smile when I stumbled across them on the internet, nothing more. But what I told you now is the honest truth.”
“Well…,” Sam says, and trails off, grasping for words. “What happened just now?”
Henri nods to me. “John is in the process of developing certain powers. Telekinesis is one of them. When you were pushed, John saved you.”
Sam still smiles beside me, watching me. When I look at him he nods his head.
“I knew you were different,” he says.
“Needless to say,” Henri says to Sam, “you’re going to have to be quiet about this.” Then he looks over at me. “We need information and we need to get out of here. They’re probably nearby.”
“The guys upstairs might still be conscious.”
“Let’s go talk to them.”
Henri walks over and picks the gun up from the floor and pulls the clip. It’s full. He removes all the bullets and sets them on a nearby shelf, then snaps the clip back in and tucks the gun in the waistband of his jeans. I help Sam to his feet and we all go upstairs to the second floor. The man I brought up with my telekinesis is still struggling. The other one is sitting still. Henri walks over to him.
“You were warned,” Henri says.
The man nods.
“Now you’re going to talk,” Henri says, and he pulls the tape from the man’s mouth. “And if you don’t…” He pulls the slide back on the gun and aims it at the man’s chest. “Who visited you?”
“There were three of them,” he says.
“Well, there are three of us. Who cares? Keep talking.”
“They told me if you showed up and I said anything, they’d kill me,” the man says. “I won’t tell you anything more.”
Henri presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s forehead. For some reason it makes me uncomfortable. I reach out and move the gun down so it points only at the floor. Henri looks at me curiously.
“There are other ways,” I say.
Henri shrugs and sets the gun down. “The floor is yours,” he says.
I stand five feet in front of the man. He looks at me with fear. He is heavy, but after catching Sam as he sailed through the air, I know that I can lift him. I hold my arms out, my body straining in concentration. Nothing at first, and then very slowly he begins to rise off the floor. The man struggles but he is taped to the chair and there is nothing he can do. I concentrate with everything I have, and yet in my peripheral vision I can see that Henri is smiling proudly, and that Sam is, too. Yesterday I couldn’t lift a tennis ball; now I’m lifting a chair with a two-hundred-pound man sitting in it. How quickly the Legacy has developed.
When I have raised him to face level, I flip the chair over and he hangs upside down.
“Come on!” he yells.
“Start talking.”
“No!” he yells. “They said they’d kill me.”
I let go of the chair and it falls. The man screams but I catch him before he hits the ground. I raise him back up.
“There were three of them!” he yells, talking fast. “They showed up the same day we sent out the magazines. They showed up that night.”
“What did they look like?” Henri asks.
“Like ghosts. They were pale, almost like albinos. They wore sunglasses, but when we wouldn’t talk one of them took the sunglasses off. They had black eyes and pointy teeth, but they didn’t look natural like an animal’s would. Theirs looked as though they had been broken and chiseled. They all wore long coats and hats like some shit out of an old spy movie. What the hell more do you want?”
“Why did they come?”
“They wanted to know our source for the story. We told them. A man had called, said he had an exclusive for us, starting raging about a group of aliens that wanted to destroy our civilization. But he called on the day we were printing, so instead of writing the full story, we put in a small quip and said more to follow next month. He talked so fast that we hardly grasped what he was saying. We were planning on calling him the next night, only that didn’t happen, because the Mogadorians showed up instead.”
“How did you know they were Mogadorians?”
“What the hell else could they have been? We wrote a story about the Mogadorian race of aliens and lo and behold a group of aliens shows up on our doorstep the same day wanting to know where we got the story. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
The man is heavy and I’m having trouble holding him. My forehead is beaded with sweat and it’s a struggle to breathe. I flip him back over, begin to lower him. When he is within a foot of the floor I drop him the rest of the way and he lands with an Oomphf. I bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
“What the hell, man? I’m answering your questions,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re too heavy.”
“And that’s the only time they came?” says Henri.
The man shakes his head. “They came back.”
“Why?”
“To make sure we didn’t print anything else. I don’t think they trusted us, but the man who called us never answered his phone again, so we had nothing else to print.”
“What happened to him?”
“What do you think happened?” the man asks.
Henri nods. “So they knew where he lived?”
“They had the phone number we were supposed to call him back on. I’m sure they could have figured it out.”
“Did they threaten you?”
“Hell, yes. They trashed our office. They screwed with my mind. I haven’t been the same since.”
“What’d they do to your mind?”
He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath.
“They didn’t even look real,” he says. “I mean, here are these three men standing in front of us talking in deep, raspy voices, all in trench coats and hats and sunglasses even though it was nighttime. It looked like they were dressed up for a Halloween party or something. They looked funny and out of place, so at first I laughed at them….,” he says, his voice trailing off.
“But the second I laughed I knew I had made a mistake. The other two Mogadorians started towards me with their sunglasses off. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. Those eyes. I had to look, as though something was pulling me there. It was like seeing death. My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love. Things weren’t so funny anymore. Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too. The uncertainty. The pain. The complete and utter terror. I wasn’t in that room anymore. And then came things I’ve always feared as a kid. Images of stuffed animals that came to life, with sharp teeth as mouths, razor blades for claws. The usual stuff all kids are afraid of. Werewolves. Demonic clowns. Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me. And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body, I could feel the blood pour from the wounds. I couldn’t stop screaming.”
“Did you try to fight back at all?”
“They had two of these little weasel-looking things, fat, with short legs. No bigger than a dog. They were frothing at the mouth. One of the men was holding them on a leash, but you could tell they were hungry for us. They said they would turn them loose if we resisted. I’m telling you, man, these things weren’t from Earth. If they were dogs, big deal, we would have fought back. But I think those things would have eaten us whole despite our size. And they were pulling against the leash, growling, trying to get to us.”
“So you talked?”
“Yes.”
“When did they come back?”
“The night before the next magazine went out, a little over a week ago.”
Henri gives me a concerned look. Only one week ago the Mogadorians were within a hundred miles of where we live. They could still be here somewhere, maybe monitoring the paper. Perhaps that is why Henri has felt their presence of late. Sam stands beside me, taking everything in.
“Why didn’t they just kill you like they did your source?”
“How the hell do I know? Maybe because we publish a respectable paper.”
“How did the man who called know about the Mogadorians?”
“He said he had captured one of them and tortured it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. His phone number was from the area code near Columbus. So north of here. Maybe sixty or eighty miles north.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Yeah. And I wasn’t sure if he was crazy or not, but we had heard rumors about something like this before. He started talking about them wanting to wipe out civilization as we know it, and sometimes he talked so fast that it was hard to make sense of anything he said. One thing he kept repeating was that they were here hunting something, or somebody. Then he started spouting numbers.”
My eyes open wide. “What numbers? What did they mean?”
“I have no idea. Like I said, he was talking so fast that it was all we could do to write it all down.”
“You wrote while he talked?” Henri says.
“Of course we did. We’re journalists,” he says incredulously. “Do you think we make up the stories we write?”
“Yeah, I do,” says Henri.
“Do you still have the notes that you wrote?” I say.
He looks at me and nods. “I’m telling you, they’re worthless. Most of what I wrote are scribbles on their plan to destroy the human race.”
“I need to see them,” I nearly bellow. “Where, where are they?”
He motions towards a desk against one of the walls.
“On the desk. On sticky notes.”
I walk over to the desk, which is covered with papers, and start looking through the sticky notes. I find some very vague notes on the Mogadorians’ hope to conquer Earth. Nothing concrete, no plans or details, just a few indistinct words:
“Overpopulation”
“Earth’s resources”
“Biological warfare?”
“The Planet Mogadore.”
I come to the note I’m looking for. I read it carefully three or four times.Planet Lorien? The Loric?1–3 dead4?7 trailed in Spain.9 on the run in SA(what is he talking about? What do these numbers have to do with invading Earth?)
“Why is there a question mark after the number 4?” I ask.
“Because he said something about it but he talked too fast and I didn’t get it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?”
He shakes his head. I sigh. Just my luck, I think. The one thing said about me is the one thing that wasn’t written.
“What does ‘SA’ mean?” I ask.
“South America.”
“Did he say where in South America?”
“No.”
I nod, stare at the slip of paper. I wish I could have heard the conversation, that I could have asked questions of my own. Do the Mogadorians really know where Seven is? Are they really following him or her? If so, the Loric charm still holds. I fold the sticky notes and slip them into my back pocket.
“Do you know what the numbers mean?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I have no idea.”
“I don’t believe you,” he says.
“Shut up,” Sam says, and pokes him in the gut with the heavy end of the bat.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I ask.
He thinks about it for a moment, then says, “I think bright light bothers them. It seemed to cause them pain when they took their sunglasses off.”
We hear a noise downstairs. Like someone trying to slowly open the door. We look at each other. I look to the man in the chair.
“Who is that?” I quietly say.
“Them.”
“What?”
“They said they’d be watching. That they knew someone might be coming.”
We hear quiet footsteps on the first floor.
Henri and Sam look at each other, both terrified.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“They said they’d kill me. And my family.”
I run to the window, look out the back. We’re on the second floor. It’s a twenty-foot drop to the ground. There’s a fence around the yard. Eight feet of wood slats. I move quickly back to the stairs, and peer down. I see three huge figures, in long black trench coats, black hats, and sunglasses. They’re carrying long gleaming swords. There’s no way we’re going to make it down the stairs. My Legacies are growing stronger, but they aren’t strong enough to take on three Mogadorians. The only way out is through one of the windows or over a small porch at the front of the room. The windows are smaller but the backyard will allow us to escape unseen. If we go out the front, we will most likely be visible. I hear noise coming from the basement and the Mogadorians talking to each other in an ugly, guttural language. Two of them move towards the basement while the third starts walking towards the stairs that lead to us.
I have a second or two to act. The windows will break if we go through them. Our only chance is the doors leading to the second-floor porch. I open them using telekinesis. It’s black outside. I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I pull Sam and Henri over to me and I throw each of them over my shoulders like sacks of potatoes.
“What are you doing?” whispers Henri.
“I have no idea,” I say. “But I hope it works.”
Just as I see the top of the first Mogadorian’s hat, I sprint towards the doors and right before the ledge of the porch, I jump. We go flying into the night sky. For two or three seconds we’re floating. I see cars moving down the street beneath us. I see people on the sidewalk. I don’t know where we’re going to land, or if my body will support all the weight I’m carrying when we do. When we hit the roof of a house across the street I collapse, with Sam and Henri on top of me. I get my breath knocked out of me, and it feels like my legs are broken. Sam starts to stand, but Henri keeps him down. He drags me to the far end of the roof and asks if I can use my telekinesis to get him and Sam onto the ground. I can and I do. He tells me I need to jump. I stand on legs that are wobbly and still hurt, and just before I jump, I turn and see the three Mogadorians are standing on the porch across the street, looking confused. Their swords are gleaming. Without a second to spare, we got away without them seeing us.
We get to Sam’s truck. Henri and Sam have to help me walk. Bernie is there waiting for us. We decide to leave Henri’s truck because they most likely know what it looks like and would track it. We pull out of Athens and Henri starts driving back to Paradise, which it really might be after the night we just had.
Henri starts from the beginning, telling Sam everything. He doesn’t stop until we are pulling into our driveway. It’s still dark. Sam looks over at me.
“Unbelievable,” he says, and smiles. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.” I look at him and I see the validation he has always looked for in his life, an affirmation that the time he’s spent with his nose in the conspiracy rags, looking for clues to his father’s disappearance, wasn’t in vain.
“Are you really resistant to fire?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“God, that’s awesome.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“Can you fly?” he asks. At first I think he is joking, but then I see that he isn’t.
“I can’t fly. I’m resistant to fire and can turn my hands into lights. I have telekinesis, which I only learned to use yesterday. More Legacies are supposed to come soon. We think so, anyhow. But I have no idea what they will be until they actually develop.”
“I hope you learn to make yourself invisible,” Sam says.
“My grandfather could. And anything he touched also became invisibl
e.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He starts laughing.
“I still can’t believe you two drove all the way to Athens by yourselves,” Henri says. “You guys are really something. When we stopped for gas I saw that the plates have been expired for four years. I really don’t see how you made it without getting stopped.”
“Well, you can count on me from now on,” says Sam. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help stop them. Especially because I bet they’re the ones who took my dad.”
“Thanks, Sam,” says Henri. “The most important thing you could do is stay quiet with our secret. If anyone else finds out about this it could lead to our deaths.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll never tell anyone. I don’t want John using his powers on me.”
We laugh and thank Sam again and he pulls away. Henri and I go inside. Even though I slept on the drive back, I’m still exhausted. I lie down on the couch. Henri sits in a chair across from me.
“Sam won’t say anything,” I say.
He doesn’t respond, just stares at the floor.
“They don’t know we’re here,” I say.
He looks up at me.
“They don’t,” I say. “If they knew they’d be following us now.”
He stays silent. I can’t take it.
“I’m not leaving Ohio on nothing more than speculation.”
Henri stands.
“I’m happy that you’ve made a friend. And I think Sarah is great. But we can’t stay. I’m going to start packing,” he says.
“No.”
“When we’re packed I’ll go into town and buy a new truck. We need to get out of here. They might not have followed us, but they know how close they were at catching us, and that we might still be nearby. I believe the man who called the magazine did in fact capture one of them. That was his story, that he captured one and tortured it until it talked and then he killed it. We don’t know what kind of tracking technology they have, but I don’t think it will take them long to find us. And when they do, we’ll die. Your Legacies are emerging, and your strength is growing, but you’re nowhere near ready to fight them.”
He walks out of the room. I sit up. I don’t want to leave. I have a real friend for the first time in my life. A friend who knows what I am and isn’t scared, doesn’t think I’m a freak. A friend who is willing to fight with me, and go into danger with me. And I have a girlfriend. Someone who wants to be with me, even without knowing who I am. Someone who makes me happy, someone I would fight for, or go into danger in order to protect. My Legacies haven’t all emerged yet, but enough of them have. I took down three grown men. They didn’t stand a chance. It was like fighting with little kids. I could do anything I wanted to them. We also now know that humans can also fight, and capture, and hurt, and kill Mogadorians. If they can, then I definitely can. I don’t want to leave. I have a friend, and I have a girlfriend. I am not going to leave.
I Am Number Four ll-1 Page 17
