Pittacus Lore - The Power of Six

“Wicked,” Sam says.

“Wait,” I interrupt. “From what I’ve seen, Mogadorians are pretty recognizable. Their skin is so white it looks bleached. And their teeth and eyes . . .” I trail off. “How could you not have known it in the diner? Why’d you let him into the room?”

“I’m pretty sure only the scouts and soldiers look like that. They’re the Mogadorians’ version of the military. That’s what Katarina said, anyway. The rest of them look as much like normal humans as we do. The one who came into the diner looked like an accountant, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, black slacks, and a white short-sleeved dress shirt and that tie. He even had a really dorky mustache. I remember him being tan. We had no idea they had followed us.”

“That’s reassuring,” I say sarcastically. I replay the image of the knife plunging into Six’s skull and killing the Mogadorian instead. If one of them tried the same thing with a knife on me, right now, I would be killed. I push the thought away and ask, “Do you think they’re still in Paradise?”

She says nothing for a minute, and when she finally speaks, I wish she had stayed silent instead. “I think they might be.”

“So Sarah’s in danger?”

“Everyone’s in danger, John. Every person we know in Paradise, every person we don’t know in Paradise.”

All of Paradise is probably under surveillance, and I know it’s not safe to go within fifty miles of it. Or to call. Or even to send a letter, or they’d learn the pull Sarah has on me, the connection we have.

“Anyway,” Sam says, wanting to get back to the story. “The Mogadorian accountant falls to the floor and dies. Then what?”

“Katarina threw the Chest to me and grabbed our suitcase, and we sprinted out of the motel room, Katarina still in her robe. The truck was unlocked, and we jumped inside. Another Mog came charging out from behind the motel. Kat was so flustered that she couldn’t find the keys. She locked the doors, though, and the windows were rolled up. But the guy wasted no time at all and punched straight through the passenger-side glass and grabbed me by the shirt. Katarina screamed, and some men nearby jumped into action.

“Others poured out of the diner to see what was happening. The Mogadorian had no choice but to let go of me to face the men.

“‘The keys are in the motel room!’ Katarina yelled. She looked at me with these big, huge, desperate eyes. She was panicking. We both were. I jumped out of the truck and sprinted back to our room for the keys. Those men in Texas, they were the only reason we got away then; they saved our lives. When I came out of the motel room with the keys, one of the Texans was aiming a gun at the Mogadorian.

“We have no idea what happened after that because Katarina sped away and we didn’t look back. We hid the Chest a few weeks later, right before they caught up to us for good.”

“Don’t they already have the Chests from the first three?” Sam asks.

“I’m sure they do, but what use are they? The second we die the Chest unlocks itself, and everything inside becomes useless,” she says, and I nod, knowing that much from past conversations with Henri.

“Not only are the objects worthless,” I say, “but they completely disintegrate the same way the Mogadorians do when they’re killed.”

“Wicked,” Sam says.

And then I remember the sticky note I found when saving Henri in Athens, Ohio.

“Those guys Henri visited who ran the They Walk Among Us magazine?”

“Yeah?”

“They had this source who apparently caught a Mogadorian and tortured it for information, and he supposedly knew that Number Seven was being trailed in Spain and that Number Nine was somewhere in South America.”

Six thinks about it a moment. She bites her lip and glances in the rearview mirror. “I know for a fact that Number Seven is a girl; I remember that much from the ride in the ship.” The second this leaves her mouth, a siren blares behind us.

THE SNOW STOPS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE SCRAPING sound of shovels against asphalt fills the night air. From the window I can see the faint silhouettes of residents throwing snow to less cumbersome places, readying themselves for the morning walk for Sunday obligations. There’s a certain tranquillity to the town at work on a quiet night, everyone bound by the same cause, and I wish I was out there among them. And then the bedtime bell tolls. In the room fourteen girls find their beds within the minute, and the lights are shut off.

The second I close my eyes the dream begins. I stand in a field of flowers on a warm summer day. To my right, in the distance, the outline of a jagged mountain range stands against the backdrop of the setting sun; to my left lies the sea. A girl dressed in black, with raven hair and striking gray eyes, appears out of nowhere. She wears a smile, both fierce and confident. It’s just the two of us. Then a great disturbance kicks up behind me, as though an isolated earthquake has just begun, and the ground is split open and torn apart. I don’t turn to see what’s actually happening. The girl lifts her hand, beckoning me to take it, her eyes locked on mine. I reach for it. My eyes open.

Light streams in through the windows. While it feels as though minutes have passed, in reality the whole night has gone by. I shake my head free of the dream. Sunday is the day of rest, though ironically for us it’s the busiest day of the week, starting with a long Mass.

Ostensibly the large Sunday crowd is because of religious devotion within the community, but really it’s because of El Festin, the grand dinner that follows Mass. All of us who live here must work it. My place is in the cafeteria line. It’s only after dinner that we’re finally free. If I’m lucky we’ll finish by four, then we’re not due back until the sun sets. This time of year it comes a little after six.

We rush to the showers, quickly bathe, brush our teeth and our hair, then dress in our Sunday best, identical black-and-white outfits that leave only our hands and heads showing. When most of the other girls have fled the room, Adelina walks in. She stands in front of me and fixes the neck of my tunic. It makes me feel much younger than I really am. I can hear the throng of people filing into the nave. Adelina remains silent. So do I. I look at the gray streaks in her auburn hair, which I hadn’t noticed before. There are wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. She’s forty-two but looks ten years older.

“I had a dream about a girl with raven hair and gray eyes who reached her hand out to me,” I say, breaking the silence. “She wanted me to take it.”

“Okay,” she says, unsure of why I’m telling her about a dream.

“Do you think she could be one of us?”

She gives the collar a final tug. “I think you shouldn’t read into your dreams so much.”

I want to argue with her, but I’m not sure what to say. So instead I utter, “It felt real.”

“Some dreams do.”

“But you said a long time ago that on Lorien we could sometimes communicate with each other over long distances.”

“Yes, and right after that I would read you stories about a wolf who could blow down houses and a goose who laid golden eggs.”

“Those were fairy tales.”

“It’s all one big fairy tale, Marina.”

I grit my teeth. “How can you say that? We both know it’s not a fairy tale. We both know where we came from and why we’re here. I don’t know why you act as if you didn’t come from Lorien and you don’t have a duty to teach me.”

She puts her hands behind her back and looks at the ceiling. “Marina, since I’ve been here, since we’ve been here, we’ve been fortunate to learn the truth about creation and where we came from and what our real mission is on Earth. And that’s all found in the Bible.”