Pittacus Lore - The Lost Files - Six's Legacy

“What is it?” I ask. Katarina mumbles through her gagged mouth, and I feel bad for asking her a question she can’t possibly answer.

I lean forward, as far as I can, pulling Katarina with me. I can hear Katarina protest from beneath her gag, but curiosity pushes me forward. I stretch into the darkness, bringing my face as close to the steel bars as I can.

Another rustle in the dark.

Another captive? I wonder. Some kind of beast?

My heart fills with pity.

“Hello?” I speak into the void. The person or creature makes low whimpers of distress. “Are you okay?”

Jaws snap with sudden force against the bars of the cage, eyes the size of fists flashing red in the dark. The breath of the beast sends my hair back. I pull away in terror and disgust, the smell so revolting I almost retch.

I try to scoot away, but the huge beast, unappeased, keeps its head pressed to the bars, its red eyes fixed on me. I know that were it not for the bars, I’d be dead already.

This is no captive. No fallen ally. This is a piken. Katarina told me about these beasts before, savage accomplices and hunters for the Mogadorians, but I had taken them for fairy tales.

Katarina helps me nudge us back towards the rear, giving me more space to pull away from the beast. As I back farther away, so does the piken, disappearing into the dark of its cage.

I know I am safe for the moment. But I also know this animal, this foul, fearsome creature, may be pitted against me in the coming days or weeks. My stomach turns in fear and helpless rage: I don’t know whether to vomit or pass out or both.

I nestle my damp head against Katarina’s, wishing this nightmare away.

I fall into an agitated half-sleep, awoken only by Katarina’s voice.

“Six. Wake up. Six.”

I snap to.

“Your gag?” I ask.

“I worked it off. It’s taken this whole time to get it off.”

“Oh,” I say stupidly. I don’t know what else to say, what good it does us to speak. We are caught, without defense.

“They bugged our car. Back in Texas. That’s how they found us.”

How stupid of us, I think. How careless .

“It was my job to think of that,” she says, as if reading my thoughts. “Never mind that. I need you to prepare for what’s coming.”

What’s that? I think. Death?

“They will torture you for information. They will . . . ” I hear Katarina succumb to weeping, but she pulls herself together and resumes. “They will inflict unthinkable torments on you. But you must bear them.”

“I will,” I say, as firmly as I can.

“They will use me to make you bend. You can’t let them . . . no matter what. . . . ”

My heart freezes in my chest. They will kill Katarina in front of me if they think it will make me talk.

“Promise me, Six. Please . . . they can’t know your number. We can’t give them any more power over the others than they already have, or power over you. The less they know about the charm, the better. Promise me. You have to.”

Imagining the horrors to come, I can’t. I know my vow is all Katarina wants to hear, but I just can’t.

I have been in my cell for three days. I have nothing in here with me but a bucket of water, another bucket to use as a toilet, and an empty metal tray from yesterday’s meal.

There is not a speck of food left on the tray: I licked it clean yesterday. When I woke up in my cell three days ago it had been my intention to mount a hunger strike against my captors, to refuse all food and water until they let me see my Katarina. But two days passed with no food or water from them anyway. I had begun to imagine I’d been forgotten in my cell. By the time the food arrived, I was so far out of my mind with hopelessness that I forgot my original plan and wolfed down the slop they shoved through the little slot of my cell door.

The odd thing is that I wasn’t even particularly hungry. My spirits were low but I didn’t feel weak from hunger. My pendant throbbed dully against my chest during my days in the dark, and I began to suspect the charm was keeping me safe from hunger and dehydration. But even though I wasn’t starving, or dehydrated, I’d never gone so long without food or water in my life, and the experience of being deprived drove me to a kind of temporary madness. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty physically, but I was mentally.

The walls are made of heavy, rough stone. It feels less like a prison cell and more like a makeshift burrow. It seems to have been carved out of a natural stone formation instead of built. I take this as a clue that we’re in some natural structure: a cave, or the inside of a mountain.

I know I may never find out the answer.

I have attempted to chip at the walls of my cell, but even I know there is nothing I can do. In my attempts, all I accomplished was to wear my nails down until the tips of my fingers bled.

The only thing left now is to sit in my cell and try to hold on to my sanity.

That is my sole mission: to not let my solitary confinement drive me to madness. I can let it harden me, I can let it toughen me, but I must not let it make me crazy. It’s a strange challenge, staying sane. If you focus too hard on maintaining your sanity, the slipperiness of the task can only make you crazier. On the other hand, if you forget your mission, if you try to maintain your sanity by not thinking about the matter at all, you can find your mind wandering in such dizzying patterns that you wind up, again, at madness. The trick is to forge a middle ground between the two: a detachment, a state of neutrality.

I focus on my breathing. In, out. In, out.

When I’m not stretching or doing push-ups in the corner, this is what I do: just breathe.

In, out. In, out.

Katarina calls this meditating. She used to try to encourage me to do meditation exercises to keep my focus. She felt it would aid me in combat. I never followed her advice. It seemed too boring. But now that I’m in my cell, I find it is a lifeline, the best way for me to keep my sanity.

I am meditating when the door to my cell opens. I turn around, my eyes straining to adjust to the light coming in from the hall. A Mog stands in the light, backed by several others.

I see he’s holding a bucket, and for a second I imagine he’s brought fresh water for me to drink.

Instead, he steps forward and empties the bucket over my head, dousing me in cold water. It is a harsh indignity and I shiver at the cold, but it’s also bracing, restorative. It brings me back to life, back to my pure hatred of these bastard Mogs.

He lifts me off my feet, dripping wet, and wraps a blindfold around my head.

He drops me again and I struggle to stay upright.

“Come,” he says, shoving me out of my cell and into the hall.

The blindfold is thick, so I am walking in total blackness. But my senses are keen and I manage a nearly straight line. I can also sense other Mogs all around me.

As I walk, my feet cold against the rough stone floors, I hear the varied screams and moans of my fellow prisoners. Some are human, some are animal. They must be locked inside cells like mine. I have no idea who they are or what the Mogs want them for. But I am too focused on my survival right now to care: I am deaf to pity.

After a long march, the Mog leading the guard says “Right!” and shoves me to the right. He shoves me hard , and I land on my knees, scraping them against stone.

I struggle to get to my feet, but I am picked up before I can, two Mogs throwing me against a wall. My hands are raised and chained to a steel cord dangling from the ceiling. My torso is stretched, my toes just barely touching the ground.