"I don"t understand."
"We needed to help the Garde." She looks away from me, like this is as hard for her to say as it is for me to hear. "But after your defeat at Ivan"s hands, you felt you had nothing to offer the cause. You said you were too weak, too skinny, that you weren"t the hero I am. That you didn"t have any power.
"But now you do."
Her Legacy. She"s... given it to me? I get to keep it?
"I"m sorry for tricking you, Adam. But you needed to get to this point. If you hadn"t come back here, a part of you still would"ve been attached to your family, to your people. You"ve seen how little they value you, how little they value anything but bloodshed and war. Now you"re ready to walk with the Garde, to truly fight against your own people."
No. I pull away, my mind reeling.
"Please Adam. Use my Legacy well."
Across the sea, shadows dance and crackle and writhe in the clouds. Out there I can see her moving in slow-motion combat. Her last seconds, playing out in front of us.
"One," I plead. "Please stop."
"This is how it has to be. Deep down you knew it all along, Adam. I"m not real. I was never real." She turns to the roiling storm, to the tragic movie of her death playing in the clouds. The blade of some faceless Mogadorian"s sword penetrates her through her back, erupting from her stomach. The killing blow.
"Deep down you knew. I"ve been dead this whole time."
I look at One. She"s my best friend. She"s everything to me.
She turns from the scene of her death to look at me. "You created me, made me out of my memories, so you wouldn"t have to walk this path alone."
"That"s not possible. You"re all I have."
She smiles. "No. You have you. The courage it took to turn against your people, the courage it took to come back here, to risk your life to get the power you"d need to walk a hero"s path ... that was always all you."
One has never spoken so highly of me. I should be flattered, but all I am is scared. I"m going to lose her.
"I can"t be alone." I feel pathetic, exposing my fears and weakness so totally to One. But I"m desperate. I"ve lost too much already to lose her too.
"Adam, the alone part is over. I promise you."
"One," I say, my eyes filling with tears. "I love you."
She nods, smiling, then reaches forward to touch my cheek. She"s crying now too. "If I"d lived, I think ..." she says, "I think you really would have."
She kisses me and says good-bye.
And then she"s gone forever.
CHAPTER 12.
There"s a shape in the dark, moving around me.
I see the sky. Stars above.
The shape is moving my limbs. Resting my head on a soft mound of earth. Pouring water over my wounds. Forcing me to drink.
The shape"s skin is as white as the moon.
"Malcolm," I say.
"Yes," he says. He laughs, crouching beside me. "I"m Malcolm. I remember that now."
I sit up, half expecting to find myself still trapped in the lab, despite the sky. Despite the stars. But we"re in the wilderness, in a field at the edge of a forest.
"I carried you as far as I could. Then I needed to rest." He sighs, taking a sip of water. "But we have to keep moving soon."
I"m baffled, utterly confused. How did we escape?
Malcolm senses my confusion. "I woke up in the lab. Mogadorians were at the doors, trying to break in. That doctor was on the floor. And you ... you were convulsing. And then, just as the Mogadorians came through the door, there was ..."
He trails off, laughing with amazement. "There was an earthquake."
As soon as I regain my strength, we begin to make our way on foot through forests, pastures, and farmland, traveling mostly at night to escape detection. We"re headed west, trying to put as much s.p.a.ce between us and what remains of Ashwood Estates as we can.
Outside of Ashwood, with only the sky to measure time, days and nights pa.s.s without comment. I lose track of the hour, the day of the week, how long we"ve been on the road. Ten days? Twelve days? I cease to measure time in numbers, counting instead the shifting landscapes, the changing scenery.
Malcolm eventually explains that the earthquake seriously damaged the underground facilities. He says it was a miracle he was able to get us both out through the collapsing structure without being apprehended. He says it was as if the entire structure was collapsing around us, but never on us-almost like it was creating an escape for us with every step he took. He figures the Mogs have their hands full rebuilding, that there"s a good chance they haven"t yet realized we even survived the devastation.
But he thinks we need to keep moving to be safe.
I agree.
We"ve camped out for the day in an unused shed at the edge of a tobacco farm. My limbs are tired from our constant trekking, but my cuts and sc.r.a.pes are starting to heal.
Malcolm sees me mopping down the worst of my remaining cuts. "It"s a miracle you weren"t hurt worse." He shakes his head in wonderment. "It"s a miracle we weren"t both killed. And it"s an even bigger miracle the earthquake happened in the first place. If not, there would"ve been no escape."
Now"s as good a time as any to tell him.
"It was no miracle."
He stops what he"s doing, looks at me curiously.
I haven"t used One"s Legacy on my own since the day I used it to destroy the Mogadorian lab. But I know the ability is still inside me. I can feel it there, nestled, pulsing, waiting for me to pick it up. To play.
I close my eyes and concentrate. The ground beneath us heaves and ripples, the walls of the shed quake. A few rusted tools, hung by hooks, clatter off the wall to the ground.
It"s nothing major, barely a tremor: I only wanted to test myself, and to show Malcolm my gift.
Malcolm"s stunned, eyes bulging. "That was amazing."
"It"s a Legacy. A gift from the Loric."
Malcolm looks at me with one of his befuddled expressions.
"Do you know about the Loric?" I ask. I still don"t really know what Malcolm remembers, how much is left of his brain.
"I know a little," he says. "My memory, it has ... patches." He sighs heavily, clearly frustrated. "I"ve been working on it. Trying to remember everything. But mostly I remember the darkness."
"The darkness?" I ask, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize what he means. The darkness of the containment pod. All those years in an induced coma, hooked up to machines, having his brain dredged for information. I shudder.
"When I try to summon a memory, it"s like I have to go back into the darkness to find it. I have to go back through years of nothing to remember any one thing." He laughs, with a note of bitterness I"ve never heard in his voice before. "But there are a few things I remember that I don"t have to fight to recall. Important things."
Malcolm goes quiet, lost in thought. Before I can press him to explain, he changes the subject.
"You said you were given a Loric"s power." He leans forward. "So you"re not a Loric?"
I grin. "You thought I was Loric?"
He nods. "Yeah. That or a high-priority human captive like me."
"No," I say, a bit nervously. "I"m not human. And I"m not Loric." I"ve been dreading telling him the truth. How will he react if he knows I belong to the same breed that held him in captivity and tortured him for years? But I knew I"d have to come clean eventually. I figure now"s as good a time as any.
"I"m a Mogadorian."
That befuddled look again. "If I"d known that," he says, "I probably would"ve left you in the lab."
Uh-oh.
But then he begins to laugh..
Before I know it, I"m laughing too, and starting to tell him my story.
Malcolm and I develop a routine, sleeping by day and walking by night. We graze farmland and forests and roadside Dumpsters for sustenance. We cross hills, streams, and highways. We spend weeks-months?-like this. I begin to lose track of time.
When we"re in remote fields, far from roads and houses, we train. Malcolm has no experience with Legacies, but then neither do I. Brute force with my newfound power is no problem: I was able to nearly decimate Ashwood Estates-quite literally-in my sleep. But my precision and control need work. So we focus on that.
In today"s training session Malcolm takes a position on the other side of a field. I stand, getting ready to wield my power. When we"re both ready, we signal each other with our arms. Training time.
I stare across the field at Malcolm, mentally mapping the distance between us. Malcolm has set pebbles on top of the fence posts running the distance between us; for every pebble I knock off its post, he will deduct a few points. It"s easy to send out my seismic force in an indiscriminate wave, knocking everything in its path, but he wants me to hit the area right beneath him, and only that area. He says this practice will increase my precision.
I focus hard on where he is, until everything else disappears. Then I unleash my power.
There are days when I can"t even reach Malcolm, when the farthest I can send my power is ten yards in front of me. There are other days when distance comes too easy, and I wildly overshoot, felling trees fifty yards past Malcolm"s position. Sometimes I hit him with pinpoint accuracy, and the ground trembles delicately below him. When this happens he calls out, telling me to sustain that gentle force. But sometimes the intensity of my seismic power slips outside of my control, and the ground will erupt beneath him, sending him ten feet in the air.
He"s always patient, gracious, and kind about my misfires. Which only makes me happier when I manage a perfect score at this game we"ve created, rumbling the earth immediately beneath his feet without sending him flying. It takes extraordinary control, and so much mental effort I usually wind up with a minor migraine, but it"s worth it to see his proud face.
My parents disowned me. I don"t think my father ever loved me. I was never going to have the kind of unconditional love from a parent I saw on television or read about in human literature.
During the three years I spent in One"s mind, I saw her close relationship with Hilde, and I was jealous. They fought all the time, but on some deep level they trusted and loved each other. Hilde trained and cultivated One"s talents, encouraged her when she succeeded. Ever since I witnessed that, I"ve craved something like it. A mentor. And now I have one.
One promised me I wouldn"t be alone. She was right.
Our route through the country becomes a zigzagging path, designed to escape Mogadorian detection. It"s so roundabout that I never even consider we"re heading somewhere specific, that Malcolm has a destination in mind.
I enjoy the aimlessness. I feel safer off the grid, like I did back at the aid camp. But I know that eventually we"re going to need a plan, some way to reconnect with the scattered Garde. I may cringe at bloodshed, and I may fear that they will reject me for being a Mogadorian, but I can"t help being excited by the prospect of meeting my new allies.
After a long night"s trek, we camp out in a small grove at the edge of the woods in rural Ohio. Malcolm devotes so much time and energy to training me that I"ve been repaying the favor, usually as we"re settling down for a day"s sleep.
I train him. I ask him questions about his past, trying to jog his memory. I know his patchy memory is frustrating, but he will never recover his memories unless he works at it. So I grill him, pressing him for details.
"What happened before the darkness?" I ask tonight.
He"s clearing some brush on the ground, making a smooth surface to sleep on. "I hate this."
"I know," I say. We"re both exhausted and mental training is the last thing either of us wants to do right now.
But I keep going. "What happened before the darkness?"
"I"m tired," he says, stretching out on the dirt. "And I can"t really remember."
"Come on. One thing," I say. "Just tell me one thing you remember from before the Mogs took you."
He"s quiet.
"Malcolm. You already told me there"s one important thing you remember from before, one thing you didn"t even have to try to remember." I figure I can at least get that out of him. "Just tell me that."
He turns to me, suddenly serious. "My son. I remember my son."
Whoa. I had no idea he had a son.
"The details of how I made contact with the Loric, how I was captured by the Mogs ... those things are starting to come back to me, though they"re still fuzzy. But I remember everything about my life back in Paradise." He smiles. "I remember everything about Sam."
"Don"t you want to see him?" I ask.
"Of course I do. That"s why I"ve been leading us back towards my old hometown." He looks at me, clearly concerned about how I will react.
I"m stunned. "That"s where he is?"
"Well, I can"t be sure he"s still there, but it"s my only guess. It"s only a day or two days" trek from here."
I"m confused. I thought we were just running from the Mogadorians, but this whole time Malcolm"s been leading us to his home. "But our path, it"s been so random."
"I"m still trying to keep the Mogadorians off our tail. That we continue to evade detection is even more important, the closer we get to Sam." He sits up, giving me a solemn look. "You don"t have to come into town with me. It could be dangerous. For all I know the Mogadorians are waiting for me there."
Malcolm looks at me, waiting to see how I"ll react. Under his gaze, I feel it: that familiar twinge of fear in my gut. My typical reluctance to enter the fray.