I Am Number Four ll-1

by Pittacus Lore

  “What is that?” I ask, nodding to the rock.

  “It’s a healing stone,” says Henri.

  “Stuff like that really exists?”

  “On Lorien it does, but the pain of healing is double that of the original pain caused by whatever has happened, and the stone only works when the injury was done with the intent to harm or kill. And the healing stone has to be used right away.”

  “Intent?” I ask. “So, the stone wouldn’t work if I tripped and cut my head by accident?”

  “No,” Henri says. “That’s the whole point of Legacies. Defense and purity.”

  “Would it work on Mark or Sarah?”

  “I have no idea,” Henri says. “And I hope we don’t have to find out.”

  Six catches her breath. She stands straight, feeling her arm. The red in her face begins to fade. Behind her, Bernie Kosar is running back and forth from the blocked door to the windows, which are placed too high off the ground for him to see out of, but he stands on his hind legs and tries anyway, growling at what he feels is out there. Maybe nothing, I think. Occasionally he bites at the air.

  “Did you get my phone today when you were at the school?” I ask Henri.

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t grab anything.”

  “It wasn’t there when I went back.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t work here anyway. They’ve done something to our house and the school. The power is off, and no signals penetrate whatever sort of shield they’ve set up. All the clocks have stopped. Even the air seems dead.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Six interrupts.

  Henri nods. A slight grin appears while he looks at her, a look of pride, maybe even relief.

  “I remember you,” he says.

  “I remember you, too.”

  Henri reaches out his hand and Six shakes it. “It’s shit good to see you again.”

  “Damn good,” I correct him, but he ignores me.

  “I’ve been looking for you guys for a while,” Six says.

  “Where is Katarina?” Henri asks.

  Six shakes her head. A mournful look crosses her face.

  “She didn’t make it. She died three years ago. I’ve been looking for the others since, you guys included.”

  “I’m sorry,” Henri says.

  Six nods. She looks across the room at Bernie Kosar, who has just begun to growl ferociously. He seems to have grown tall enough so that his head is able to peek out the bottom of the window. Henri picks the shotgun up off the floor and walks to within five feet of the window.

  “John, turn your lights off,” he says. I comply. “Now, on my word, pull the blinds.”

  I walk to the side of the window and wrap the cord twice around my hand. I nod to Henri, and over his shoulder I see that Sarah has placed her palms against her ears in anticipation of the blast. He cocks the shotgun and aims it.

  “It’s payback time,” he says, then, “Now!”

  I pull the cord and the blind flies up. Henri fires the shotgun. The sound is deafening, echoing in my ears for seconds after. He cocks the gun again, keeps it aimed. I twist my body to look out. Two fallen scouts are lying in the grass, unmoving. One of them is reduced to ash with the same hollow thud as the one in the hallway. Henri shoots the other a second time and it does the same. Shadows seem to swarm around them.

  “Six, bring a fridge over,” Henri says to her.

  Mark and Sarah watch with amazement as the fridge floats in the air towards us and is positioned in front of the window to block the Mogadorians from entering or seeing into the room.

  “Better than nothing,” Henri says. He turns to Six. “How much time do we have?”

  “Time is short,” she says. “They have an outpost three hours from here, in a hollowed-out mountain in West Virginia.”

  Henri snaps the gun open, slides in two new cartridges, snaps it shut.

  “How many bullets does that hold?” I ask.

  “Ten,” he says.

  Sarah and Mark whisper to each other. I walk over to them.

  “You guys okay?” I ask.

  Sarah nods, Mark shrugs, neither really knowing quite what to say in the terror of the situation. I kiss Sarah on the cheek and take hold of her hand.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll get out of this.”

  I turn to Six and Henri. “Why are they just out there waiting?” I ask. “Why don’t they break a window and rush in? They know they have us outnumbered.”

  “They only want to keep us here, inside,” Six says. “They have us exactly where they want us, all together, confined to one place. Now they’re waiting for the others to arrive, the soldiers with the weapons, the ones who are skilled at killing. They’re desperate now because they know we’re developing our Legacies. They can’t afford to screw it up and risk us getting stronger. They know that some of us can now fight back.”

  “We have to get out of here then,” Sarah pleads, her voice soft and shaky.

  Six nods reassuringly to her. And then I remember something I had forgotten in all the excitement.

  “Wait, your being here, us being together, that breaks the charm. All the others are fair game now,” I say. “They can kill us at will.”

  I can see by the look of horror on Henri’s face that it had slipped his mind as well.

  Six nods. “I had to risk it,” she says. “We can’t keep running, and I’m sick of waiting. We’re all developing, all of us are ready to hit back. Let’s not forget what they did to us that day, and I’m not going to forget what they did to Katarina. Everybody we know is dead, our families, our friends. I think they’re planning to do the same thing to Earth as they did to Lorien, and they are almost ready. To sit back and do nothing is to allow that same destruction, that same death and annihilation. Why stand back and let it happen? If this planet dies, we die with it.”

  Bernie Kosar is still barking at the window. I almost want to let him outside, see what he can do. His mouth is frothing with his teeth bared, hair standing tall down the center of his back. The dog is ready, I think. The question is, are the rest of us?

  “Well, you’re here now,” Henri says. “Let’s hope the others are safe; let’s hope they can fend for themselves. Both of you will know immediately if they can’t. As for us, war has come to our doorstep. We didn’t ask for it, but now that it’s here we have no choice but to meet it, head on, with full force,” he says. He lifts his head and looks at us, the whites of his eyes glistening through the dark of the room.

  “I agree with you, Six,” he says. “The time has come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WIND FROM THE OPEN WINDOW RUSHES INTO the home economics room, the refrigerator in front of it doing little to prevent the cold air. The school is already chilly from the electricity being off. Six is now wearing only the rubber suit, which is entirely black aside from a gray band slicing diagonally down the front of it. She is standing in the middle of our group with such poise and confidence that I wish I had a Loric suit of my own. She opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted by a loud boom from outside. All of us rush to the windows but can see nothing of what is happening. The crash is followed by several loud bangs, and the sounds of tearing, gnashing, something being destroyed.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “Your lights,” Henri says over the sounds of destruction.

  I turn them on and sweep them across the yard outside. They reach but ten feet before being swallowed by the darkness. Henri steps back and tilts his head, listening to the sounds in extreme concentration, and then he nods in resigned acceptance.

  “They are destroying all the cars out there, my truck included,” he says. “If we survive this and escape this school, it’ll have to be on foot.”

  Terror sweeps across both Mark’s and Sarah’s faces.

  “We can’t waste any more time,” Six says. “Strategy or no strategy, we have to go before the beasts and soldiers arrive. She said we can get out through the gymnasium,” Six says,
and nods at Sarah. “It’s our only hope.”

  “Her name is Sarah,” I say.

  I sit in a nearby chair, unnerved by the urgency in Six’s voice. She seems to be the steady one, the one who has remained calm under the weight of the terrors we have seen thus far. Bernie Kosar is back at the door, scratching at the fridges that are blocking it, growling and whining in impatience. Since my lights are on, Six has a good look at him for the first time. She stares at Bernie Kosar, then squints her eyes and inches her face forward. She walks over and bends down to pet him. I turn and look at her. I find it odd that she is grinning.

  “What?” I ask.

  She looks up at me. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Her grin widens. She looks back at Bernie Kosar, who races away from her and charges back to the window, scratching at it, growling, the occasional bark in frustration. The school is surrounded, death imminent, almost certain, and Six is grinning. It irritates me.

  “Your dog,” she says. “You really don’t know?”

  “No,” says Henri. I look at him. He shakes his head at Six.

  “What the hell?” I ask. “What?”

  Six looks at me, then at Henri. She emits a half laugh and opens her mouth to speak. But just before any words escape something catches her eye and she rushes back to the window. We follow and, as before, the very subtle glow of a set of headlights sweeps around the bend in the road and into the lot of the school. Another car, maybe a coach or teacher. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

  “It could mean nothing,” I say.

  “Turn your lights off,” Henri says to me.

  I turn them off, clench my hands into fists. Something about the car outside causes anger within me. The hell with the exhaustion, with the shakes that have been present ever since I jumped through the principal’s window. I can’t take being confined in this room any longer, knowing that the Mogadorians are out there, waiting, and plotting our doom. That car outside may be the first of the soldiers arriving on the scene. But just when that thought pops into my mind, we see the lights quickly retreat from the lot, and speed away in a hurry, down the same road they came.

  “We have to get out of this damn school,” Henri says.

  Henri sits in a chair ten feet away from the door with the shotgun aimed right at it. He is breathing slowly though he is tense and I can see the muscles flexed in his jaw. None of us say a word. Six made herself invisible and slipped out to do some exploring. We’re just waiting, and finally it comes. Three slight taps on the door, Six’s knock so that we know it’s her and not a scout trying to enter. Henri lowers the gun and she walks in and I return one of the fridges to block the door behind her. She was gone for a full ten minutes.

  “You were right,” she says to Henri. “They’ve destroyed every car in the lot, and have somehow moved the wreckage to block every door from being opened. And Sarah is right; they’ve overlooked the stage hatch. I counted seven scouts outside and five inside walking the halls. There was one outside this door but it’s been disposed of. They seem to be getting antsy. I think that means the others should have been here already, which means they can’t be far.”

  Henri stands and grabs the Chest and nods at me. I help him open it. He reaches in and pulls out a few small round pebbles that he sticks in his pocket. I have no idea what they are. Then he closes and locks the Chest and slides it into one of the ovens and closes the door. I move a refrigerator up against the oven to keep it from being opened. There really is no other choice. The Chest is heavy, it would be impossible to fight while carrying it, and we need every available hand to get out of this mess.

  “I hate to leave it behind,” Henri says, shaking his head. Six nods uneasily. Something in the thought of the Mogadorians getting ahold of the Chest terrifies them both.

  “It’ll be fine here,” I say.

  Henri lifts the shotgun and pumps it once, looks at Sarah and Mark.

  “This isn’t your fight,” he tells them. “I don’t know what to expect out there, but if this thing goes badly you guys get back in this school and stay hidden. They aren’t after you, and I don’t think they’ll care to come looking if they already have us.”

  Sarah and Mark both look stricken with fear, both holding their respective knives with white-knuckled grips in their right hands. Mark has lined his belt with everything from the kitchen drawers that might be of use—more knives, the meat tenderizer, cheese grater, a pair of scissors.

  “We go left out of this room, and when we reach the end of the hall, the gymnasium is past double doors twenty or so feet to the right,” I say to Henri.

  “The hatch is in the very middle of the stage,” Six says. “It’s covered with a blue mat. There were no scouts in the gym, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be there this time around.”

  “So we’re just going to go outside and try to outrun them?” Sarah asks. Her voice is full of panic. She’s breathing heavily.

  “It’s our only choice,” says Henri.

  I grab her hand. She is shaking badly.

  “It’ll be okay,” I say.

  “How do you know that?” she says in a more demanding tone than a questioning one.

  “I don’t,” I say.

  Six moves the fridge from the door. Bernie Kosar immediately starts scratching at the door, trying to get out, growling.

  “I can’t make you all invisible,” Six says. “If I disappear, I’ll still be nearby.”

  Six grabs hold of the doorknob and Sarah takes a deep, shaky breath beside me, squeezing my hand as tightly as she can. I can see the knife quivering in her right hand.

  “Stay close to me,” I say.

  “I’m not leaving your side.”

  The door swings open and Six jumps out into the hall, Henri close behind. I follow and Bernie Kosar races ahead of us all, a ball of fury speeding away. Henri points the shotgun one way, then the other. The hallway is empty. Bernie Kosar has already reached the intersection. He disappears. Six follows suit and makes herself invisible and the rest of us run towards the gym, Henri in the lead. I make Mark and Sarah go ahead of me. None of us can really see a thing, can only hear each other’s footsteps. I turn my lights on to help guide the way, and that’s the first mistake I make.

  A classroom door to my right swings open. Everything happens in a split second and, before I have a chance to react, I am hit in the shoulder with something heavy. My lights shut off. I crash straight through a glass display window. I’m cut on the top of my head and blood runs down the side of my face almost immediately. Sarah screams. Whatever it was that hit me clubs me again, a hollow thud in my ribs that knocks the wind from me.

  “Turn your lights on!” Henri yells. I do. A scout stands over me, holding a six-foot-long piece of wood that it must have found in the industrial arts classroom. It raises it in the air to hit me again, but Henri, standing twenty feet away, fires the shotgun first. The scout’s head disappears, blown to pieces. The rest of its body turns to ash before it even hits the floor.

  Henri lowers the gun. “Shit,” he says, catching sight of the blood. He takes a step towards me and then from the corner of my eye I see another scout, in the same doorway, a sledgehammer raised over its head. It comes charging forward and, with telekinesis, I throw the nearest thing to me without even knowing what that thing is. A golden glinting object that speeds through the air with violence. It hits the scout so hard that its skull cracks on impact, and then it falls to the ground and lies motionless. Henri, Mark, and Sarah rush over. The scout is still alive and Henri takes Sarah’s knife and thrusts it through its chest, reducing it to a pile of ash. He hands Sarah back her knife. She holds it out in front of her, between thumb and forefinger, as though she’s just been handed a pair of somebody’s dirty underwear. Mark bends down and lifts the object I had thrown, now in three separate pieces.

  “It’s my all-conference trophy,” he says, and then can’t help but chuckle to himself. “It was given to me last month.
”

  I stand. It was the trophy case that I crashed through.

  “You okay?” Henri asks, looking at the cut.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

  We rush down the hall and into the gymnasium, sprint across the floor, jump up onto the stage. I flip my lights on to see the blue mat being moved away as though of its own volition. Then the hatch is thrown up. Only then does Six make herself visible again.

  “What happened back there?” she asks.

  “Ran into a little bit of trouble,” Henri says, climbing down the ladder first to make sure the coast is clear. Then Sarah and Mark go.

  “Where is the dog?” I ask.

  Six shakes her head.

  “Go on,” I say. She goes down first, leaving only me on the stage. I whistle as loudly as I can, knowing full well that I’m giving away my position by doing so. I wait.

  “Come on, John,” Henri calls up from below.

  I crawl into the hatch, my feet on the ladder, but from the waist up I’m still on the stage, watching.

  “Come on!” I say to myself. “Where are you?” And in that split second when I have no choice but to give up, but just before I drop down, Bernie Kosar materializes on the far side of the gym and comes sprinting my way, ears pinned to the sides of his head. I smile.

  “Come on!” Henri yells this time.

  “Hold on!” I yell back.