The Fallen Legacies (Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files #3)(6)

What a useless memory. The General won’t be impressed if all I come back with is intel on Loric birthday parties.

Just like that the world goes blurry again and I’m falling. Time passes in a rush and I’m swept along, feeling sickeningly out of control.

Another memory takes shape.

Number One wanders through an open field, her hands extended so that the tall grasses tickle her outstretched palms. She’s maybe a year older than at the birthday party, still just a child, happily wandering around her undestroyed planet.

Boring.

One bends down and picks some flowers, twining the stalks together, then wrapping the flower chain around her wrist like a bracelet. How much of this am I going to have to sift through?

Maybe if I focus I can get some control of these memories. I need to see the other Garde, not this girly, happy Loric crap. I try to think about what I want to see—the faces of the Garde, their Cêpans—and then the memory in the field flashes away and I am somewhere else.

It’s nighttime, although the darkness is lit by dozens of fires raging nearby. The two Loric moons hang on opposite sides of the horizon. The ground shakes beneath my feet, an explosion nearby.

Number One and eight other children rush across a secluded airstrip, headed for a ship. Their Cêpans hurry them along, shouting orders. Some of the children are crying as their feet slap against the pavement. Number One is not; she stares over her shoulder as a Loric in a sleek bodysuit fires a cone of freezing cobalt energy into the face of a snarling piken. Number One’s eyes widen in admiration and fear.

This is it. The First Great Expansion. Exactly the memory I need to see.

“Run!” the Loric in the bodysuit shouts at the fleeing group of young Garde. His Legacies fully developed and powerful. Still, he’ll die on this night, just like all the others.

I sweep my eyes over the children, trying to take in as many details as I can. There’s a feral-looking boy with long black hair and another blond girl, younger than Number One, being carried by her Cêpan. Number One is older than most of the other kids, a detail that I know will help my father construct profiles of the remaining Garde. I count how many of them are boys and how many are girls, and try to memorize their most distinguishing features.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The voice is clearer than the thunderous sounds of war from the memory, as if it’s being piped right into my brain.

I turn my head and realize Number One is standing right next to me. Not the child Number One of the memory—no, this is Number One as I last saw her: blond hair flowing down her back, shoulders squared defiantly. A ghost. She’s looking right at me, expecting an answer.

She can’t be here; that doesn’t make sense. I wave my hand in front of her face, figuring that this must be some kind of glitch in Anu’s machine. There’s no way she’s really seeing me.

Number One slaps my hand away. I’m surprised that she can touch me, but then I remember that we’re both ghosts here.

“Well?” she asks. “Who are you? You don’t belong here.”

“You’re dead,” are the only words I can muster.

One looks down at herself. For a moment, the massive wound on her abdomen flickers into being. Just as quickly, it’s gone.

“Not in here.” She shrugs. “These are my memories. So in here I guess you’re stuck with me.”

I shake my head. “It’s impossible. You can’t be talking to me.”

One squints at me, thinking. “Your name is Adam, right?”

“How do you know that?”

She smirks. “We’re sharing a brain, Mog-boy. Guess that means I know a thing or two about you, too.”

Around us, the fleeing Garde have all boarded their ship, the engines now rumbling to life. I should be scanning the ship for any helpful details, but I’m too distracted by the dead girl sneering at me.

“Your scary-ass pops is going to be so disappointed when you wake up with nothing juicy to tell him.” She grabs me by the elbow, and the feeling is so real that I have to remind myself that this is basically just a dream.

A dream that Number One is suddenly in control of.

“You want my memories?” she asks. “Come on. I’ll give you a guided tour.”

As the scene changes again, I start to understand what’s happened.

I’m trapped in here with my sworn enemy. And she seems to be in charge.





CHAPTER 6


This time the memory shift is different. Before, I was falling through time, falling through memory. Now I feel still, and suddenly I’m standing outside a secluded ranch in Coahuila, Mexico. In this memory, One and her Cêpan are carrying boxes into the house. It’s moving day. This is the first place One and her Cêpan—Hilde, her Cêpan’s name was Hilde—settled after the Garde landed on Earth and parted ways.

Wait—how do I know all this?

It’s strange. In addition to finding myself existing here, observing this particular moment in One’s life, I also have a general sense of her memories of the time. I know the things that she knows and remember what she remembers. The memories are so vivid, it’s like they’re my own.

It’s like I’m her.

Ghost-One appears next to me, watching with me as the younger version of herself and Hilde unpack dishes in the kitchen. It’s creepy to have her here, gives me a feeling like vertigo. I try to ignore her, but she just keeps talking to me.