I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Last Defense(18)

“Sure,” I say, wondering if it would’ve been smarter to have stayed in Ashwood after all.

Richards stops in front of two thick double doors guarded by four armed men in military fatigues.

“The fate of America and quite possibly the world is being decided here. There’s a chair for you against the back wall. Stay quiet until you’re spoken to.”

He pushes open one of the doors and ushers me through.

It’s dimly lit inside, most of the light coming from the huge monitors that cover the walls, showing news feeds from around the world. At least two of them are showing the footage from Sarah’s video about John and the Garde. Another shows shaky cam footage of a destroyed building in Manhattan.

Is Sam safe?

The room itself is almost entirely filled by a giant rectangular table of lacquered mahogany where a dozen men and women sit. They range from my age to people well into their sixties, maybe even a little older. I recognize a few of them as cabinet members. A handful of younger-looking aides flit around in the background, taking notes, tapping on electronic devices, occasionally whispering into the ear of someone seated at the table.

Voices fill the air, overlapping one another, all vying for attention.

“. . . the National Guard in Brooklyn. Troops are being mobilized in Georgia but the fastest we could get them there . . .”

“. . . obviously it would be a last resort, but we do have untested prototype weapons that could prove to be effective . . .”

“. . . saw what happened in China. The warships are protected by some kind of force field. We might as well be bombing our own civilians if we launch missiles at them. . . .”

“. . . suggests a full-scale evacuation of major American cities might save millions of lives, but the cost and logistics would . . .”

“. . . march forces across the Brooklyn Bridge while simultaneously dropping units into Central Park . . .”

At the far end of the room, Arnold Jackson, the president of the United States, stands with his back to everyone. He’s got a landline phone to his ear. After a few seconds he lowers it. I watch as he takes a deep breath, composing himself, before turning around to the table. He doesn’t sit, just leans over with his hands pressed on top of the polished wood. There are bags under his eyes. His close-cropped black hair is peppered with gray, more so than I’ve noticed on TV. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. The rest of the room goes quiet.

“The European Union is officially open to the idea of negotiating with Ra despite strong disapproval from several nations, including Germany and Spain. There are widespread riots in Moscow. There’s been visual confirmation of a ship over North Korea, but there’s no communications coming out of the country, so we have no idea how they’re going to react. No one plans to attack the ships after seeing what happened in Beijing and what resistance in New York led to, but everyone is quietly assembling forces for a counterstrike if necessary. And here we are, hiding underground while warships hover over millions of American citizens. So tell me, what do we do now?”

Everyone starts to talk at once. It lasts for maybe five seconds.

“Enough,” Jackson says. He turns to an older man seated at his left who’s dressed in an officer’s uniform covered in stars and pins. “General Lawson. What’s your assessment of the situation?”

Lawson leans back in his chair.

“New York and Beijing were power plays,” he says. He speaks slowly, with a vague Southern accent I can’t place. “These aliens are smart. They’ve been slowly infiltrating us for years. That means they know how we function as individual countries and as a planet. They know how we tick. You don’t just destroy a city like New York because of a bad-press event. You do it to show you’re the ones with the power. That you can do it again. New York was their A-bomb. Hell, I’d bet that the counterattacks in Beijing were orchestrated by the bastards to show the rest of the world that they can’t be touched. They’re telling us, in no subtle terms, that this world is theirs if they want it. Seems to me like we’ve got two courses of action: try to outsmart them, or try to blow ’em out of the sky. Neither way’s going to be easy.”

“There’s another option,” the president says. “We listen to the Mogadorians. We play along—at least for now. If they start killing more civilians, what other choice do we have?”

“You’re talking surrender?” Lawson asks, narrowing his eyes. I shift on my feet as he continues. “I’d rather see humanity’s extinction before we become slaves. There’s the possibility that employing some more extreme measure might—”

“I’m not authorizing a nuclear attack on American soil,” the president says. “Even if it did manage to take down one of those ships, the fallout would be catastrophic, and the enemy would likely immediately open fire on the other cities.”

“Oh, I agree,” Lawson says. “Besides, we’ll let some other country with an itchy trigger finger test out nukes first. What I suggest is sending out a few small teams in New York. Quietly take some of their smaller ships and soldiers hostage. See what we can figure out or reverse engineer. We should also start interrogating the MogPro traitors who were arrested. Aggressively.”

Jackson nods, then points to one of the monitors playing Sarah’s PSA.