The Fallen Legacies (Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files #3)(39)

Katarina bats my hand away before I can hit Enter. “Six!”

I pull back, ashamed of my imprudence, my haste.

“We have to be careful. The Mogadorians are on the hunt. They’ve killed One, for all we know they have a path to Two, to Three—”

“But they’re alone!” I say. The words come out before I have a chance to think what I’m saying.

I don’t know how I know this. It’s just a hunch I have. If this member of the Garde has been desperate enough to reach out on the internet, looking for others, his or her Cêpan must have been killed. I imagine my fellow Garde’s panic, her fear. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my Katarina, to be alone. To consider all I deal with … without Katarina? It’s unimaginable.

“What if it’s Two? What if she’s in England, and the Mogs are after her, and she’s reaching out for help?”

A second ago I was scoffing at Katarina’s absorption in the news. But this is different. This is a link to someone like me. Now I am desperate to help them, to answer their call.

“Maybe it’s time,” I say, balling my fist.

“Time?” Katarina is scared, wearing a baffled expression.

“Time to fight!”

Katarina’s head falls into her hands and she laughs into her palms.

In moments of high stress, Katarina sometimes reacts this way: she laughs when she should be stern, gets serious when she should laugh.

Katarina looks up and I realize she is not laughing at me. She is just nervous, and confused.

“Your Legacies haven’t even developed!” she cries. “How could we possibly start the war now?”

She gets up from the desk, shaking her head.

“No. We are not ready to fight. Until your powers are manifest, we will not start this battle. Until the Garde is ready, we must hide.”

“Then we have to send her a message.”

“Her? You don’t know it’s a she! For all we know, it’s no one. Just some random person using language that accidentally tripped my alert.”

“I know it’s one of us,” I say, fixing Katarina with my eyes. “And you do too.”

Katarina nods, admitting defeat.

“Just one message. To let them know they’re not alone. To give her hope.”

“‘Her’ again,” laughs Katarina, almost sadly.

I think it’s a girl because I imagine whoever wrote the message to be like me. A more scared and more alone version of me—one who’s been deprived of her Cêpan.

“Okay,” she says. I step between her and the monitor, my fingers hovering over the keys. I decide the message I’ve already typed—“We are here”—will suffice.

I hit Enter.

Katarina shakes her head, ashamed to have indulged me so recklessly. Within moments she is at the computer, scrubbing any trace of our location from the transmission.

“Feel better?” she asks, turning off the monitor.

I do, a little. To think I’ve given a bit of solace and comfort to one of the Garde makes me feel good, connected to the larger struggle.

Before I can respond I’m electrified by a pain, the likes of which I’ve only known once before; a lava-hot lancet digging through the flesh of my right ankle. My leg shoots out from beneath me, and I scream, attempting to distance myself from the pain by holding my ankle as far from the rest of me as I can. Then I see it: the flesh on my ankle sizzling, popping with smoke. A new scar, my second, snakes its way across my skin.

“Katarina!” I scream, punching the floor with my fists, desperate with pain.

Katarina is frozen in horror, unable to help.

“The second,” she says. “Number Two is dead.”





Read more about Nine’s explosive story!





CHAPTER ONE


There are rules for hiding in plain sight. The first rule, or at least the one that Sandor repeats most often, is “Don’t be stupid.”

I’m about to break that rule by taking off my pants.

Spring in Chicago is my favorite season. The winters are cold and windy, the summers hot and loud, the springs perfect. This morning is sunny, but there’s still a forbidding chill in the air, a reminder of winter. Ice-cold spray blows in off Lake Michigan, stinging my cheeks and dampening the pavement under my sneakers.

I jog all eighteen miles of the lakefront path every morning, taking breaks whenever I can, not because I need them, but to admire the choppy gray-blue water of Lake Michigan. Even when it’s cold, I always think about diving in, of swimming to the other side.

I fight the urge just like I fight the urge to keep pace with the neon spandex cyclists that zip past. I have to go slow. There are more than two million people in this city and I’m faster than all of them.

Still, I have to jog.

Sometimes, I make the run twice to really work up a sweat. That’s another one of Sandor’s rules for hiding in plain sight: always appear to be weaker than I actually am. Never push it.

It’s dumb to complain. We’ve been in Chicago for five years thanks to Sandor’s rules. Five years of peace and quiet. Five years since the Mogadorians last had a real bead on us.

Five years of steadily increasing boredom.

So when a sudden vibration stirs the iPod strapped to my upper arm, my stomach drops. The device isn’t supposed to react unless trouble is near.