The Lost Files: Six's Legacy(14)

Then he asks me what number I am.

I know what he wants to hear: that I am number Four. I can’t be Three, or else they would have been able to kill me. But if I’m Four then all he’ll need is to find and kill Three before he can begin his bloody work on me.

“I am Number Eight,” I say finally. I am so scared I say it, with a desperate, cringing sigh, that I know that he’s fooled. His face falls.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I croak out.

His disappointment is short-lived. He begins to beam, victorious. I may not be the number he wanted, but he got my number out of me. Or what he thinks is my number.

I search out Katarina’s eyes, and though she is barely conscious, I can see the faintest hint of gratitude in her eyes. She is proud of me for giving him the wrong number.

“You really are weak, aren’t you?” He stares at me with contempt. Let him, I think. I feel a surge of superiority over him: he was dumb enough to believe my lie.

“Your relatives on Lorien, as easy as they fell, at least they were fighters. At least they had some bravery and dignity. But you . . .” He shakes his head at me, then spits on the floor. “You have nothing, Number Eight.”

At that, he raises his arm with the blade and thrusts it, deep into Katarina. I hear the sound of bone cracking, of the knife pushing through her sternum, right into her heart.

I scream. My eyes search out Katarina’s. She meets my gaze for one last instant. I will myself past my chains towards her, struggling to be there for her in her last moment.

But her last moment goes fast.

My Katarina is dead.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



Weeks turn into months.

Some days they don’t feed me, but my pendant keeps me from dying of thirst or starvation. What’s harder is the absence of sunlight, the endless immersion in darkness. Sometimes I lose track of where my body ends and the darkness begins. I lose sense of my own existence, my own borders. I am a cloud of ink in the night. Black on black.

I feel forgotten. Incarcerated, with no hope of escape, and with no information that can lead them to the others, I am useless to them for now. Until they’ve killed the ones before me, until my extinction date.

The urge to survive has gone dormant in me. I live not because I want to but because I can’t die. Sometimes, I wish I could.

Even so, I force myself to do the work of staying as fit and limber and as ready for combat as I can. Push-ups, situps, games of Shadow.

In these games of Shadow I have learned to play Katarina’s part as well as my own, giving myself instructions, describing my imagined attackers, before I respond with my commands.

I loved this game before, but now I hate it. Still, in Katarina’s honor, I continue to play.

As I was lying to the Mog, I thought I was doing it so he would spare Katarina, let her live. But as soon as I saw his knife pierce her heart I realized what I was really doing: hastening her end. I was giving him everything I knew so he would finish her off, so she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, so I wouldn’t have to watch her suffer anymore.

I tell myself that was the right thing to do. That it’s what Katarina would’ve wanted. She was in such pain.

But I’ve been without her so long at this point that I would give anything for another moment with her, even if she had to suffer unimaginable torments for it. I want her back.

The Mogadorians continue to test the boundaries of my conditional immortality. These trials take time to plan and construct. But every week or so I am dragged out of my cell and brought to another, jury-rigged for my destruction.

The first week after Katarina’s death I was brought to a small chamber and made to stand on a sharp steel grill several feet off the floor. The door was sealed behind me. I waited for a few minutes as the room filled with noxious-looking gas, curling up from beneath the grill in green tendrils. I covered my mouth, trying not to breathe it, but I could only hold my breath for so long. I gave up, gulping in their poison, only to discover it smelled like the coolest and freshest of mountain breezes to me. Furious Mogs dragged me out of the room minutes later, pushing me quickly back to my cell, but I could see the pile of dust beside the door on the way out. The Mog who had pushed the button releasing the gas had died in my place.

The next week they tried to drown me; the week after, they tried burning me alive. None of these affected me, of course. Last week, they served me food laced so heavily with arsenic I swear I could taste each poison grain. They had brought a cake to my cell. They had no reason to treat me with dessert, and I knew at once that it was their hope to trick me with the cake—and in turn trick the charm. They hoped that if I didn’t know my life was in danger, the charm wouldn’t work.

Of course I suspected them at once.

But I ate the cake anyway. It was delicious.

By eavesdropping against the slot of my cell door, I later learned that not one but three Mogadorians perished from the attempted poisoning.

How many Mogadorians does it take to bake a cake? I asked myself later. Then, with malevolent satisfaction, I answered: Three.

I allow myself to imagine a happy outcome in which the Mogadorians, who seem to place little value even on their own lives, keep trying to kill me and end up dying in the attempt, until there are no Mogadorians left. I know it is just a fantasy, but it’s a happy one.

I have no idea how long I’ve been here. But I have grown so hardened to their execution attempts that I am fearless as they drag me through the halls to yet another. This time I am thrown into a large, drafty space with dim lights, larger than any room I’ve been in so far. I know I am being watched through one-way glass or a video monitor, so I wear my face in a sneer. A sneer that reads: Bring it on.