The Navigator (7 page)

THE BLOOD DRAINS FROM ZOPHIE’S FACE WHEN
we tell her what happened, and she starts to shake. We decide to leave. Immediately. None of us feels safe in Giza anymore. Fortunately, Zophie’s already packed most of our things in anticipation of our trip to the United States. The Chimærae shrink, and we take them and our bags down to the lobby. Then we’re in a taxi to Cairo, which is a city that doesn’t feel far enough away, even though it’s large and full of millions of people and is the kind of place where it should be easy to disappear. But without passports, we can’t leave the country yet, so our options are limited. Besides, this is where our documents—our tickets out of here—will be made.

The Mogs are on Earth. They’re seeking out the Loric here—they must be, if the Loralite necklace is the reason they found us at the jewelry store.

Why? What do they want? They already took our
planet from us. What more could we possibly have to give?

In Cairo, we check into another hotel. It’s similar to the one in Giza, but it feels different.
Everything
feels different. The illusion of safety this world offered us has been destroyed. No one says it, but I know what we’re all thinking: What if the Mogs have gotten to Janus and the others already? And if not, are they aware that they’re being hunted?

While Zophie and Crayton unpack in their rooms, I refocus my efforts to try to find hints of the Garde and Cêpans online, anything that could be connected to them. We must find them now not just to reunite Janus and Zophie and get answers, but also to warn them.

Later that night I go to the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel to grab dinner and let my eyes take a break. I find Crayton at the bar, huddled over a glass of brown liquid.

“Do you mind?” I ask, motioning to the seat beside him. He shakes his head.

“Ella?” I ask. It’s unlike him to leave her alone.

“Zophie has her right now,” he says. “She wanted to feed her dinner for once, and I couldn’t say no to an evening that didn’t end with me smelling like mashed peas.”

I nod and order some food to take back to my room. We sit in silence until finally I speak again.

“How’s your leg?”

He shrugs.

“I’ll live. I don’t think I’ll be running much for the next few weeks, but it’s the least of my worries right now.”

I nod. We sit in silence again.

“Tomorrow morning we need to have photos taken,” I say. “For the passports. All of us—even Ella.”

He shakes his head, not in disagreement but in despair.

“You still aren’t sure we should be going after this photo lead, are you?” I ask.

“I think it sounds dangerous.” He stares down at the bar for a few seconds. “I know it’s what we always intended, but now that we’re on Ear . . .” He grimaces, and lowers his voice. “Now that we’re here, the idea of traveling all around the world looking for Janus and the others seems crazy. Especially because we know the Mogs are here. And
looking
for us. Or the Loric in general. By chasing after the Garde, we run the risk of chasing after the Mogs too.”

“You’re worried about Ella,” I say.

“Obviously.” He gives me a weak smile. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me on the ship. About how I’d do anything and tell her anything to keep her safe. I don’t think I realized what you meant until we got here, where everything is new. I just want
to make sure I’m making the right decisions. How do I know? How do normal parents know?”

I think of Zane. Even though I wasn’t his parent, I was so overprotective of him. And look where that led.

“I guess you just have to figure it out as you go.”

He nods, motioning for the bartender to pour him another drink.

“Be careful,” I say. “I don’t think the drinks here are the same as the ampules back home.”

Crayton laughs a little at this, but then his face goes serious. He reaches into his pocket and then slides a key to me.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“To my room.” He holds up his glass, shaking it back and forth before downing the rest of its contents. “Just in case I’m sleeping so deeply in the morning that I’m not up and ready to be photographed. One of you might have to drag me out of bed.”

My food arrives, and I tell Crayton good night. He leans over and hugs me unexpectedly. I stand there, one hand pinned to my side and the other holding a Styrofoam container. I wonder if he’s had too many drinks, or if this is just affection brought out by the fact that we came so close to being captured or killed by the Mogs earlier.

“I’ll keep her safe,” he says quietly. “Everything’s
going to be okay.”

WHEN WE WAKE UP, CRAYTON AND ELLA ARE
gone. There’s a letter on his bed, written on the hotel’s stationery.

Zophie’s eyebrows draw together in confusion as she reads the letter over and over again, but I can only think of my conversation with Crayton the night before. How he gave me his key. He knew then that he was leaving, and he didn’t say a word to me about it. Only hugged me. If I had been thinking more clearly, maybe I would have realized what was going on. Instead, I left him in the bar and returned to my room so I could get my eyes back onto my computer screen.

I take the letter from Zophie, find a pack of hotel matches on the desk and then set Crayton’s good-bye
on fire.

“What are you doing?” Zophie asks.

“We leave no trail behind,” I say, walking to the bathroom and tossing the burning note into the toilet.

“How could he . . . ?” She keeps shaking her head.

“He’s doing what he thinks is best for her,” I say, all too aware of how my previous conversations with Crayton about Ella’s future may have inspired him to run. “He’s her guardian. It’s his decision.”

“Maybe he didn’t leave that long ago.” Zophie starts for the door. “Maybe we can still catch him.”

“Even if we did catch him,” I say, “what then? We drag him to the other side of this planet against his will?”

She stops and stares at me for a little while, her face falling.

Finally, she whispers: “That bastard left us.”

“Yes,” I say. “But we’re not alone.”

We move on. Zophie buys us plane tickets. Two passports are much cheaper than four. I have them made for us by men who also try to sell me guns, which I decline only because I’ve read enough about airport customs to know I’ll have a difficult time getting them on a plane. Instead, I pack up the weapons from Raylan’s supplies and leave them with the concierge at the front desk of the hotel, along with several large currency notes.
When we are more settled in the United States, I’ll phone him and have the Loric weapons shipped to us.

I scour our rooms, making sure we leave nothing behind. And then we say good-bye to Egypt, our first Earth home.

Getting the Chimærae across an ocean is a complicated task, but we manage to figure out ways. They shrink down to tiny lizards and insects, and hide in our pockets and luggage. It’s a little awkward but necessary, and as soon as we’re locked inside the primitive airplane, I’m much more concerned with not falling out of the sky than with the Chimærae in my coat.

The counterfeit passports get us into the new country. We change over our money and rent a big SUV using the fake driver’s license that my passport people created for me as well. We pile in, the Chimærae filling the backseats, and then we’re off.

It takes me a little while to get used to the handling of the SUV and traffic customs in the United States. Drivers in yellow taxis scream at me as I wander in and out of lanes or go far too fast or slow for their liking. But I get the hang of it. Zophie sits in the passenger seat giving me directions from a big map of New York State she has spread out on the dash.

We reach the village of Newton Falls in an area known as the Adirondacks shortly after noon. This is the place where I’ve tracked the forum post to. Tall
green trees line streets that occasionally narrow to small wooden bridges crossing thin bodies of running water. Yesterday we were surrounded by desert. The change of scenery might seem drastic if it wasn’t for the fact that not long ago we were on a ship, and before that another planet.

I suggest we find a hotel to stow our things and let the Chimærae out, but Zophie won’t have it.

“We’re here,” she says. “We should find out what the man knows immediately.”

And so we track down the cabin located at the edge of the little town where Eric Bird is supposed to live. There’s a truck in the driveway. We park behind it.

I knock three times before someone finally opens the door, and even then it’s only cracked. I can barely make out the shape of a man’s face through the darkness of the entryway.

“Hi,” I say in my improving English. “I’m looking for—”

“Go away.” The man’s voice is rough and cracked. He tries to close the door, but I put my boot in the way.

“I just have a few questions. Mr. Bird?”

“I have nothing to say.”

The man pushes harder on the door, all but crushing my foot. I’m about to shout and possibly ram the door in when Zophie steps forward.

“Please,” she says, her eyes wide and dewy. “It’s
about my brother. He’s missing. You’re our only lead.”

Her voice bleeds with desperation. Eric takes some of his weight off my foot. He lets the door open just enough for the chain lock to catch.

“I don’t know anything,” he says, a little calmer but no less resolutely.

“You posted a photo of a spaceship,” I say. “We’re looking for it.”

Eric crams his head into the space between the door and the doorframe. I can finally see part of his face now. Dark circles sit underneath his bloodshot eyes. He’s got a scraggly red beard and hair that shoots out in every direction, like it hasn’t been washed or combed in days. His skin is sallow.

“I already told him everything I know,” he says. “I saw the ship. I snapped a picture. It looked like it was headed for the mountains, but I didn’t follow it. What more do you want from me?”

“Who?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“You told
who
everything?” I lean forward a little bit, and he flinches.

“The man who came.” Eric’s lips quiver a little. “He was a giant. His eyes were so black. Like a demon’s.”

My fingers ball into fists at my sides.

“Did he have tattoos on his head?” I ask, thinking about the other big Mogs I’ve seen.

Eric begins to nod, his whole body shaking now.

“How did you know?”

Zophie lets out a small cry beside me as my stomach twists and clenches.

THE MOGADORIANS ARE SEARCHING FOR JANUS
too. How long have they been on Earth? These monsters that annihilated our planet are several steps ahead of us—is it possible they’ve already tracked down not only Janus, but the Garde and Cêpans too? And if so, why? To what end?

More questions we can’t answer. More knowledge we don’t have.

Zophie is broken. I can tell by the dullness in her eyes. All her hopes had been tied up in finding Janus easily after we came to this country, no matter how blindly optimistic that seemed. Now she looks as though she’s a breath away from bursting into tears. At first I wonder if Crayton had the right idea—if we should be hiding instead of looking for the others. But I tell myself we’ve done the right thing. We have a better idea of what’s happening on Earth now. We have
to soldier on. We have to outsmart the Mogadorians and warn the others, keeping faith that they’re still out there somewhere, free.

I do my best to keep us going. The day after we talk to Eric Bird, I find a cabin thirty miles away, in the mountains he said the ship was headed toward. We rent it and set up camp.

I buy more computing equipment and a cheap station wagon for us that I get secondhand from someone in a small town nearby who doesn’t ask for identification or a signature, just hands over the keys. I have the weapons in Egypt shipped to a post office two towns over. The cabin is only a few rooms, already furnished with homemade wood furniture. I set up an office in a spare bedroom, and wire cameras and alarms all around the outside just in case anyone comes snooping around. The Chimærae split their time between keeping guard over the perimeter and nesting in a garage in the backyard. For a while, we wake up early every morning and take them into the mountains, searching for the ship. Zophie makes us stay out longer than we should, until night has fallen and she’s so exhausted she can barely stand.

We have no luck. It starts to get cold. We go back to the world of internet searching that I’m familiar with but that Zophie is still learning. We endure.

After a month in the cabin, I find Zophie in the living
room, huddled over the small laptop I bought her. She spends most of her free time on it, clicking randomly through websites and news articles, trying to find anything that might be related to the Loric. I’ve warned her a million times about being careful, about not sharing any personal information with anyone or mentioning anything related to Lorien directly. She mostly sticks to news sites, so I don’t worry much. Besides, I’ve blocked the computer’s IP address and location.

“Lexa,” she says when I come in. “I have a few articles that look promising. Maybe you can look into them? One is from this guy in Vermont who swears a young girl caused his car to levitate after he yelled at her to get off his lawn. Doesn’t that sound like—”

“Is it from Occult News Daily?” I ask.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean—”

“I checked that lead out last night. In the last year the same man has also reported that his town is infested with creatures that survive on the blood of virgins, that a restaurant was serving human meat and that a foreign government was preparing an ancient dragon for warfare. And that’s not even the craziest stuff.”

“Oh,” Zophie says, dejected.

Her eyes go dewy, and I feel terrible. Hard truths always worked when I spoke with Crayton—they were the only kind of advice I felt qualified to give. But I don’t know how to talk to Zophie now that she’s become so
fragile. I can empathize, but I don’t know how to fix anything. To fix
her.
I knew her brother only by name and reputation. To me, he’s the means to an end—a way to get answers to all my questions and figure out what all this was for. Sometimes I forget that to her, he’s everything.

“Sorry,” I say quietly. “I’ll look again. Maybe I can get into the police reports from around the area. It’s worth another go.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Don’t bother. The Mogadorians are tracking this sort of thing too, right? They’ve probably already tortured the man and gotten every ounce of information from him. Or a confession that he made the story up.” She runs her fingers through her hair, pulling it back. “Where are you, Janus? Where are you?”

I stand there awkwardly, not knowing what to do or say. One of the Chimærae has taken the form of a cat and rubs against Zophie’s leg, trying to comfort her. She looks up at me.

“Do you think . . . ,” she begins. “Do you think the Mogs have him?”

“No,” I say. “I’m sure they don’t.”

And she’s desperate enough to believe me, even though she knows I have no evidence.

It pains me to see her like this—so lost and hopeless. If it wasn’t for her, I would have died on Lorien. I would have been killed by the Mogadorians. So I owe her.

I have to find the others. No matter what the cost.

I leave Zophie in the living room and retreat to my office. I’ve been extremely careful when it comes to seeking out information on the internet. I haven’t typed “Lorien” into a search engine for fear this might sound a Mog alarm somewhere—that despite my best efforts and all my digital cloaking they would use something like that to be able to find us. But we can’t keep living like this, waiting for one of the Garde to screw up and get his or her face spread across news sites for using a Legacy in public.

We have nothing to go on. We’re lost, and Zophie needs a reason to hope again. We both do.

So I take a more direct approach to our search.

In a particularly busy forum about alien encounters, I set up an account. My IP address is encrypted. My location signal is bounced across a dozen satellites. I should be untraceable. A ghost.

I bite my lip and stare at the screen, typing a few words. Finally, I hit Submit.

The post goes up, written in our native language:

        
Where are you?

It’s a long shot, but if for some reason Janus or the other Loric or maybe even the contact Zophie said they were meeting on this planet sees this message, they’ll recognize that there are more of us here. That they’re
not alone on this planet. That we’re looking for them.

There’s nothing to do now but wait. I open up my email and find a dozen news stories Zophie has forwarded me. I flit through them, seeing the obvious holes that she’s overlooking, or refusing to acknowledge. Spaceship sightings that don’t really match descriptions of any of Lorien’s ships. The teenage boy who claims to have telekinetic powers but also has an online presence dating back several years, well before Lorien fell.

“Lex!” Zophie yells from the living room. “Check out what I just sent you! I think this could be it!”

I find another message from her in my in-box. Reports from two different media outlets in Montreal about a small gang of men with tattoos on their heads who were allegedly seen chasing a young boy into the woods on the outskirts of the city—though neither the men nor the boy were found.

Now that sounds much more promising. And potentially damning.

I’m about to tell Zophie that she may have just found our first real lead since Eric Bird when my computer beeps again. This time notifying me of a comment on my post in the forum.

The response is written in Loric.

        
Anonymous: I’m here.