Pittacus Lore - The Power of Six

But he doesn’t move, and neither does anyone else. Hector seems to have forgotten all about the pain of his wounds as he watches, too.

“Go!” Crayton finally yells, and then he spins around and fires on the Mogadorians to cover us as we run over a slight hill and then down into a valley. I see the dam on my right, which connects two lower mountains. It’s too far away to realistically believe we’ll reach it. Hector’s face has turned white and he’s fading fast, and I start looking for a place to rest so I can heal him. Crayton’s gun falls silent. I look behind me fearing the worst, but he’s merely out of ammo. He chucks the gun over his shoulder and catches up to us.

“We’re not going to make it to the dam!” He yells. “Run to the lake!”

The rain starts up again as the four of us change direction. Bullets zip into our grassy footprints and ricochet off boulders. The clouds shift over us with a roar. A second later it’s as if we’ve gone under a bridge: the rain just stops. I look over my shoulder and see that just a few paces back, the rain still falls heavy and hard. The wind picks up significantly, and suddenly the Mogadorians behind us are stuck in the worst rainstorm I’ve ever seen. They completely disappear in a blur.

Our shoes slip over the sand on the shore, and Ella and Crayton dive into the water headfirst.

“I can’t do it, Marina,” Hector says, stopping before his feet reach the water.

I drop my Chest and grab his arm and say, “I can fix you, Hector. You can make it.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t know how to swim.”

“I’m Marina of the sea, Hector. Remember?” I allow the iciness to spread from my fingertips to the bullet hole in his arm. I watch it turn from black and gray and red to a tan patch of wrinkled skin. I quickly concentrate on the bite wound on his stomach beneath his shirt, and Hector suddenly stands up straight with energy. I look into his eyes. “As the Queen of the sea, I will swim with you.”

“But you have that,” Hector says, pointing at the Chest.

“You’ll have to hold it then,” I say, dropping it into his arms.

We jog into the water until our feet no longer touch the lake floor, and then I wrap my right arm around Hector’s chest and paddle with my left. Hector hugs the Chest to his stomach, and he floats on his back, his head just above water. Ella and Crayton tread water in the middle of the lake, and I pull Hector towards them.

The clouds overhead dissipate, shrinking into a hundred wispy lines of gray in the sky. The advancing Mogadorians are no longer a blur in a rainstorm, and the moment they can see they charge at the lake with dozens of krauls yipping in front of them.

A tiny black speck falls from above as the last cloud disappears, and the closer the speck gets, the more it appears to be a human.

Wearing a large blue pendant around her neck, she lands on the shore, rippling the sand. It’s a strikingly beautiful girl with raven-colored hair; and the second I see her I know she’s the one I’ve been dreaming of, the one I painted on the cave’s wall.

“She’s one of us!” I shout.

The girl looks around, we make eye contact, and then she vanishes a moment later. I’m shocked, crushed, believing I must have imagined her.

“Where’d she go?” Ella asks.

The moment I realize Ella saw her, too, that I hadn’t imagined her, I watch as the two nearest krauls are somehow yanked backwards in the air. They’re hovering, yipping and snarling at something behind them, and then they slam into each other until they fall limp. One kraul goes sailing into the legs of two soldiers, and the other is swung in the air, connecting with other krauls and soldiers.

“Invisibility. She has the Legacy of invisibility.” Crayton breathes.

She’s invisible? I’m amazed and jealous at the same time, but most of all I’m grateful. Every kraul that touches the water is yanked backwards by an unseen hand and slammed into the hard sand or a Mogadorian soldier. A dropped cannon rises from the grass and starts firing in all directions. Kraul after kraul is destroyed. Dozens of Mogadorians burst into clouds of ash.

Cannon blasts come from the other side of the lake, and I spin to see twenty or more Mogadorians wading in up to their waists. Rays of light hit the water all around us, creating enough steam that I can barely see Hector in front of me.

“Ella?” I shout.

“Over here!” she yells from my left.

“Take Hector.”

She wraps her arm around Hector’s chest. “Why?”

“Because I’m not going to stay out here while that girl fights all by herself. This is my war, too.”

Before anyone can stop me, I sink below the surface and the water instantly tickles my lungs. I swim deeper until the green-blue color of the lake becomes gray. I see the hulking body of Olivia below me; she’s lying lifeless on the lake floor, clouds of blood billowing from the hundreds of bite wounds on her back.

I head towards the opposite shore and after a minute I can see the legs of the Mogadorians. I swim next to the one farthest on the left. I plant my feet in the muddy bottom and launch myself out of the water. The Mogadorian doesn’t have enough time to react as I toss him towards the middle of the lake with my mind. I float his cannon into my hands, shoot him, and never let go of the trigger. The Mogadorians along the lake burst into ash, and when I’ve killed them all, I aim towards the hundreds near the vehicles.

There’s movement in the water behind me and I’m too slow; a kraul jumps and sinks its teeth into my side. The pain is immediate and horrible, as if someone was holding a hot branding iron to my ribs. The beast whips me headfirst into the water and then against the sand of the shore. I catch my breath and scream as it arcs me back over and into the water again. I’m sure this is how I will die, but suddenly the kraul’s mouth widens and releases me. I fall onto my stomach on the shore and watch as the kraul’s mouth continues to widen until I hear bones snapping. The raven-haired girl materializes before my eyes, her hands on the beast’s quivering lips. She looks back at me before yanking the jaws completely vertical, killing the kraul.

“Are you okay?” the girl asks me.

I lift up my shirt and place a hand on my wound. “I will be in a second.”

She ducks a blast from a cannon. “Good. What number are you?”

“Seven.”

“I’m Six,” she says before vanishing.

The iciness spreads from my fingers over my body, but I know I won’t be able to heal myself completely before the oncoming wave of Mogadorian soldiers reaches me. I roll into the lake and stay underwater. My wound is almost healed when I rise above the surface.

Number Six is on top of one of the armored Humvees with a glowing sword. She’s fighting several soldiers at once: hacking off body parts, blocking cannon fire with her blade, using telekinesis to aim a floating cannon high above her so it blasts through dozens of Mogadorians on the formation’s edge. She then hurls her sword into a crowd, impaling three soldiers at once. Number Six grabs the large gun mounted on top of the vehicle and mows down dozens of Mogadorians in seconds.

There are only twenty or thirty soldiers left. Maybe four krauls. Number Six holds one hand over her head while the gun in the other shoots and destroys the Humvees along the shore. Dark clouds form over the mountains and bolts of lightning crack and split the ground near her. The Mogadorians show fear for the first time, and I watch a few drop their weapons and run towards the woods.

“Out of the water!” I yell, fearful of the lightning. Ella drags Hector to the edge of the lake and Crayton follows.

I reach the shore near Number Six and pick up two cannons. I struggle to keep my footing as I press both triggers, turning more soldiers to ash, destroying two of the krauls. An injured soldier hiding behind a wrecked Humvee tosses a grenade at Number Six’s back, but I’m able to shoot it in the air. The explosion rotates Number Six and the mounted gun, and a moment later the injured soldier is nothing but ash.