Pittacus Lore - The Lost Files - Six's Legacy

I nearly fall on the stone floor outside my cell, but I catch my balance just in time. Flesh slapping against stone: I surely would’ve been discovered.

A horde of Mogs is racing down the hall towards my cell from the left. No choice but to run right. I take off, landing as delicately as I can. Quiet as a cat .

It is a long hall. I struggle to maintain quiet, my bare feet making only the faintest of noises as I run and run and run. At first I am scared, but then I can feel it: freedom, up ahead.

I go faster, landing on arched feet to mute the noise. My heart leaps up into my chest as I exit the hall and find myself in the center of the Mogadorian complex, a massive cavern fed by many other tunnels like the one I just came from. Closed-circuit security cameras are everywhere. When I spot them, my chest leaps with fear, but then I remember I am invisible, to cameras as well as to Mogs.

For how long, I don’t know.

A siren is pulled. I should’ve expected that. Flashing security lights go off as the cavern is filled with the alarm’s shriek. The high walls of the cave only amplify it.

I take off again, choosing a tunnel at random.

I pass other cells like mine, then steel doors that probably hold more prisoners.

I wish I had time to help them. But all I can do is run, and keep running, as long as my invisibility will hold.

I dodge left off the tunnel, passing a large, glass-windowed room to my right. It is illuminated by bright fluorescents. Inside hundreds and hundreds of computers in rows hum and sift data, no doubt looking for signs of my fellow Garde. I keep running.

I pass another laboratory, also glass-windowed, this one to my left. Mogadorians in white plastic suits and goggles stand inside. Scientists? Bomb chemists? I am past them before I have a chance to see what they’re doing. I can only assume something awful.

My brain is split by the siren, and I want to close my ears. But I need my hands to keep my balance as I run, to keep my footsteps dainty and soundless. I have the strange thought that for all my bluntness, my tomboyishness, my warrior’s training, I now find myself calling on such a feminine skill-being lightfooted, like a ballerina.

The tunnel feeds into another center, this one even larger than the other. I had assumed that what I saw earlier was the heart of the complex, but this is truly it: a cavernous hall half a mile wide and so dark and murky I can barely see across to the other side.

I am covered in sweat, out of breath. It is hot in here. The walls and ceiling are lined with huge wooden trellises keeping the cave from collapsing in on itself. Narrow ledges chiseled into the rock face connect the tunnels dotting the dark walls. Above me, several long arches have been carved from the mountain itself to bridge the divide from one side to the other.

I catch my breath and wipe my brow, to keep my own sweat from blinding me.

There are so many tunnels, none of them marked. My heart plummets. I realize I could run and run through this complex for days without finding the way out. I imagine myself like a rat in a laboratory maze, scampering and weaving to no avail.

Then I see it: a single pinprick of natural light, up above. There must be a way out up there. It will be a steep climb up these walls, but I can do it. As I grab the trellis to hoist myself up, I hear it.

“She will be found.”

It’s him. Katarina’s executioner.

He is speaking to a few guard Mogs, on a walkway above me. The guards tramp off. My eyes pin to the executioner as he takes a detour back into the complex.

I must choose. Between escape and vengeance. The light above beckons me like water in a desert. I wonder exactly how long it’s been since I last saw sunlight.

But I turn around.

I choose vengeance .

I follow him through the halls on tiptoe, careful to maintain my invisibility-I’ve learned enough about my Legacy by now to know that any surprise or break in concentration can cause me to fade back in.

I watch as he ducks into a cell. I sneak in behind him as the door shuts.

Unaware he has company, he walks to the corner of the room and begins to tidy up. I look down. There is blood on the floor, his weapons are out. He has tortured and killed others.

I have never killed a Mogadorian before. Not counting the Mogadorians who died trying to kill me, I have only in my entire life killed a rabbit, and a piken. To my own shock, I realize I am thirsty for murder.

I grab a razor from his desk and approach him. The blade feels good in my hand. It feels right .

I know better than to give him a chance to beg, or plead, to shake me from my resolve. I clutch him from behind and slit his throat with one clean slice. His mouth gurgles and spews blood across the floor, against my hands. He falls to his knees and then bursts into ash.

I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.

I open my mouth to speak. That’s for Katarina, I’m about to say. But I don’t.

I don’t speak because I know it’s a lie.

That wasn’t for Katarina. That was for me .

I emerge from the complex an hour later, exhausted and struggling to stay invisible as I climb out to the mountaintop, as I run from the mountain to a hill opposite. I have to stop to rest, to adapt to the blinding midday sun.

My translucent skin bakes beneath the sun. I stare at the mouth of the complex, already hard to make out from this distance. I don’t trust my memory, so I pause to memorize its shape, its precise location.

I am sure Mogs have fanned out through the complex, looking for me. And I’m sure they have crawled out of the exit, and are even right now searching through the trees along these hills.

Let them look.

They’ll never find me.

I run for a few miles through trees, until I come to a road in a small mining town. I’m running barefoot, so the road slaps hard against my feet, killing my joints. I don’t care; I’ll get a pair of sneakers eventually.

I find a truck idling at the town’s only stoplight. I lightly hop into the back of the pickup, letting the truck take me farther and farther away from the Mogadorian complex. When the trucker stops for gas a few hours later, I dash, still invisible, into the cab, rifling through his stuff. I take a handful of quarters, a pen, a couple scraps of paper, and an uneaten bag of barbecue chips.

I run behind the gas station and sit in the shade. I draw a map of the complex’s entrance on one side of the paper, and a diagram of the tunnels inside as best as I can remember. It will be a long time before I put this to use, but I know my memory of their hideaway is the most valuable thing I possess, and it must be preserved.

Once I finish the diagram, I throw my head back. It’s sunset, but I can still feel of the warmth of the sun on my face. I open the bag of chips and eat them in three messy bites. The salty-sweet chips taste delicious, wonderful.

I am in a motel room, at long last. For a full day I wandered, driven by the urge for shelter and rest. There was no way I could afford a room, and in my desperation I began to consider thievery. Pick a few pockets, plunk down the cash I’d need. Using my Legacy, stealing would be a piece of cake.

But then it occurred to me I wouldn’t need to steal, not yet anyway. Instead I went into the lobby of a small motel, went invisible, and snuck into the hotel manager’s office. I lifted the key for room 21 off the hook. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the floating key past the crowded lobby and I paused for a moment, frozen in the office. But soon the key disappeared too, in my palm.

I’d never made an object disappear before, only myself and my clothes. A hint of my Legacy’s other uses.