The Search for Sam (10 page)

I see a house up ahead, through the trees.

“That’s it,” he says.

As we walk, the texture of the dirt beneath our feet begins to shift. I look down:
it’s burned. Scarred. My antennae go up, preparing for a possible attack.

The closer we get, the worse it is. More scorched earth, more fallen trees. There’s
been a battle here.

“Malcolm,” I say. “The Mogadorians have been here.”

But of course he’s already noticed. He’s speeding up, racing towards the house. I
keep pace behind him, worried what we’re running into.

But when he runs up to the house’s side door and bangs on it, and a shocked-looking
woman steps outside, eyes bulging at Malcolm, I stop running. Malcolm’s given me no
instruction; I have no idea what’s going on.

I hang back.

Malcolm holds the woman by the shoulders, talking to her, asking her questions. The
woman’s expression of shock and wonderment begins to melt, giving way to something
else.

Anger.

She slaps him. Then slaps him again. Soon she’s unleashed a barrage, and Malcolm just
stands there, absorbing each and every blow. I can’t hear her from where I stand,
but I know what she’s saying. “Where were you? Where were you? Where were you?”

She falls to her knees on the porch and begins to sob. Moments later, Malcolm joins
her.

I wait. Malcolm has been inside with the woman for an hour now. We exchanged a look
before he headed inside with her. I nodded, giving him the sign that I’d be fine out
here on my own.

Kicking the scorched dirt, I’m anxious, keyed up. To judge by the tracks, by the burned
patches of earth, there was some kind of conflict here not long ago. Mogadorians could
be close.

I have One’s Legacy now, I remind myself. Even if I come face-to-face with a Mog force,
I’m not powerless anymore. I can fight back.

The more time passes, the more I worry about Malcolm. To come all this way and discover
that something has happened to his son would be devastating.

Malcolm finally emerges from the house. He walks with a hard-nosed determination,
strutting right past me and back into the woods.

All he says is “Come.”

I follow him across the backyard to a large stone well.

“It’s open,” he says, shaking his head.

“So?” I ask. “Malcolm, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

Without answering, Malcolm climbs into the well and disappears.

Again, I follow.

I make my way down a long, narrow ladder and finally arrive at the bottom of the well.

“Malcolm?” I ask. No response. I feel my way along the walls down a narrow passageway,
which slowly gives way into a room.

A large halogen lamp lights up, illuminating the space. Malcolm holds it, and swings
it around the room.

I follow the arc of the beam. Bare walls, some computer equipment in the corner. A
shelf with supplies: water bottles, canned food—

Startled by what I see, I gasp. Against the wall, close enough for me to touch, is
a massive skeleton.

The skeleton’s head is tipped downwards in an angle of dignified, almost lordly resignation.
But it’s still a skull, with deep hollow sockets pointing right at me. I yelp, backing
against the opposite wall.

“The Mogadorians didn’t find this place,” says Malcolm. “If they had, they wouldn’t
have left it like this. They would have destroyed this skeleton, or taken it. But
the well was open. Someone’s been here.” Malcolm resumes poking around in the chamber.
“The tablet’s gone. He must have come here, and then after …”

“Malcolm,” I whisper, hoping he will calm down and explain himself. “I’m in the dark
here,” I say. “Quite literally.”

He ignores my joke.

“My wife saw Sam with some other kids; she said there was a battle. By what she described,
those other kids had to be members of the Garde. Sam was with them, fighting by their
side.”

I experience a brief chill of excitement at the thought that the Garde was here only
a short time ago. The Garde. My people. My
new
people.

“In my absence, I guess he took up my cause, and wound up in battle with Mogs and
… now he’s gone.”

Malcolm stares at me, a haunted look on his face.

“My son Sam is gone.”

Malcolm’s wife won’t let him in the house again. She’s too angry.

As a result, we’ve camped out in his underground bunker, stretching out on the bare
stone floor. I’ve slept in some pretty rough quarters since going on the run with
Malcolm, but I’ve never faced a challenge quite like trying to fall sleep under the
hollow nose of an eight-foot-tall skeleton.

Malcolm explains that she is crushed by grief for her missing son. That as angry as
she is with Malcolm for disappearing, the worst part is him finally reappearing only
weeks after Sam disappeared—too late to save him.

She blames Malcolm for whatever’s happened to Sam. And Malcolm says she’s
right
to blame him.

“It was my fault. I was so excited to make contact with the Loric, I didn’t even consider
the consequences. Once I saw what the Mogadorians were capable of, I realized my role
as a Greeter might be a danger to my family, but it was too late. Before I could do
anything to protect them, I was taken.”

Malcolm theorizes that, haunted by his disappearance, Sam began to unravel some of
the mysteries of the Mogadorian invasion. That he somehow forged an alliance with
members of the Garde.

And that at some point in the past few weeks, in battle near his house, he was captured
by the Mogs, and either killed or detained.

When Malcolm says this, my mind races back to the memo I encountered while snooping
around the underground server in the Media Surveillance facility. The memo was already
a year old when it declared all future detainees and captives were to be routed to
the Dulce base in New Mexico. If Sam was captured weeks ago, there’s a good chance
he’s being kept there.

I stare at Malcolm, stretched out on the floor, his back to me.

“Malcolm,” I say.

He rolls over and turns to me. I can see from his gaze that he’s lost in doubt and
guilt and grief. Clearly the search for his son is what’s been driving him since we
escaped from Ashwood.

“I think I know where your son is.”

I stand back as Malcolm opens the garage door. Inside, covered in dust, is an old
Chevy Rambler. “I can���t believe it’s still here,” he says, diving towards the passenger
door.

We are at a storage facility on the outskirts of Paradise. Malcolm explains that he
paid for this garage space many years in advance, keeping the car fueled up and ready
should he ever need to skip town on short notice. In fact, he was headed for this
garage when he was abducted by the Mogadorians years ago.

I’m impressed with his recall. “Your memory’s improving.”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling slyly. “It seems to be. Must be all of your annoying quizzes.”
I laugh as he turns to the car’s glove compartment, pulling something out. He holds
it out of the car door for me to see.

A spare pair of prescription glasses.

“Jackpot,” he says, triumphantly. He wipes the lenses with the tail of his shirt and
slips them onto his head.

He sits back in the passenger seat, looking at me through the windshield.

“I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to be able to see clearly. It’s been so long,”
he says.

He lets out a contented sigh. “Amazing.”

“I didn’t even know you needed glasses.”

“Big-time,” he says. “This is actually the first time I’ve seen your face as anything
but a big smudge.” He squints up at me. “I can definitely see the Mogadorian thing,
now. Yeah, definitely something evil about your face.”

I laugh, giving him the finger. Teasing me for being a Mogadorian has become a running
joke between us. Joking about it is really just a testament to how accepting of me
Malcolm has been.

“Full tank?” I ask.

He leans over, starts the engine, peering owlishly as the gas gauge whirs up.

“Very nearly.”

He slides behind the wheel as I get into the passenger seat. We’re traveling light.
Heading to New Mexico.

“You ready for this?” he asks.

“Not at all,” I reply.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me neither.”

And we’re off.

If we weren’t traveling incognito, trying to avoid detection by taking side roads,
we could’ve made the trip to the base in three days. As it is, the trip takes almost
a week.

I don’t mind the extra time.

Sitting beside Malcolm in the passenger seat, it occurs to me that we may be driving
towards our own ends. That just as I had to say good-bye to One, I may have to say
good-bye to Malcolm. Right when I thought I’d found a father figure, I now find myself
embarking on what could be a suicide mission with him. I can’t be Malcolm’s son. He
already has a son, and—for better or worse—I have a father. But I can help save Sam.

I remember what One said to me, that she’d pegged me for a hero, wanted me to try
for “great” things.

Well, it turns out a hero’s lot is not glory or reward, but sacrifice. I’m still not
sure I’m ready for that. I’d be happy if this car trip lasted forever. But soon enough
we’ll cross the border into New Mexico and be only hours away from the base.

A big part of me doesn’t want to go find Sam. If I can’t have a normal life, I want
to stay with Malcolm, living on the edges of society and evading the Mogs.

But I know that’s not possible.

I know what we’re doing is what must be done.

We’re at the fenced edge of the Dulce base. We parked out in the desert at dusk and
crossed the still hot sands to the electrified perimeter fence, which is a quarter
mile or so from the compound itself. Malcolm explained that he knew how to find the
base from his alien-conspiracy days, long before he’d known anything about Mogadorians
or Loric, when his awareness of extraterrestrials was limited to conspiracy newsletters
and countless viewings of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. The Dulce base was a lightning rod for crazed speculation about governmental cover-ups
of alien life. The irony, he said, is that all that speculation must have predated
any actual human contact with the real extraterrestrials by several years. Until recently,
it probably
was
just a military base. “Guess me and my wacko friends were ahead of our time,” he
joked.

We crouch low to the ground, figuring there are surveillance cameras surrounding the
fence. We’ve approached at the rear edge of the compound, far away from the base’s
entrance. Malcolm thinks security might be a little more diffuse at this end of the
base.

For all of Malcolm’s knowledge from old newsletters, not to mention the tiny bit of
preparatory research we did at an internet café en route, there’s only so much you
can find out about a secret government base through public channels. We’re mostly
going in blind.

Malcolm pulls out a crappy pair of binoculars we bought at a truck stop and scans
the facility.

After a moment he taps me, pointing out a watchtower a few hundred yards down the
fence. Squinting through the evening’s half-light, I can see a generator a few paces
off from the watchtower. We can only hope that generator powers the fence. If I can
hit it with my Legacy, it’s our one chance of getting inside.

“Tower’s got to be three hundred yards … no, four hundred yards away.”

“Yeah,” I say. I start pounding my fist into my hand, a little pre-Legacy ritual I
picked up. It doesn’t make any sense that warming up my hands would help with my accuracy—the
power comes from deep inside me, from my core, not from my hands—but it’s become habit
by now.

“That’s like three regulation football fields, Adam. We never trained for that.”

“I got it,” I say, confidently.

I don’t actually feel confident, but figure acting confident can only help my odds.

I reach deep into myself, eyes focused tight on the area encompassing the watchtower
and generator.

The trick, I’ve discovered, is anger. And it has to be my own. The first few weeks
I was able to channel One’s rage at losing Hilde to access my Legacy, but its efficacy
quickly waned. I needed to find my own rage.

So now I think of Kelly, too ashamed of me to even speak to me. I think of my mother,
leaving me to rot in the Mog lab. I think of Ivanick, his hands at my back, pushing
me down the ravine. Mostly, I think of my father: delivering the killing blow to Hannu.
Sentencing me to death. And a million other, smaller injustices, perpetrated over
my entire life.

I hate them. I hate everything they stand for.

And then I feel it, my power, my rage, coursing below the ground, in search of the
watchtower. Like a giant stone hand, its fingers curl upward, fondling the earth,
feeling.