United as One (6 page)

“In the vats?” John asks.

“Yes,” Ella replies.

Nine makes a face. “Like, floating in goop together? Damn, that's nasty.”

“The vats work differently than before, now that they're powered with what . . . what he stole from us,” Ella continues. “While he heals, Setrákus Ra is also working. He is— I don't know exactly. These others with him, he is making them into something new.”

I don't like the sound of that. Judging by the faces around the table, no one does. I remember back to that
vision of Setrákus Ra's past that we all shared—how hell-bent he was to grant people Legacies. That's got to be what he's doing down there.

Before I can say anything, Lawson butts in, his head cocked. “What did Setrákus Ra steal from you?”

Ella first looks at me, then at John, like she's asking for permission to tell Lawson that Setrákus Ra mined a bunch of Loric energy from the ground in Mexico. I don't know how honest we're supposed to be with these people; my instinct is, not very. I'm sure everyone on our side of the table has figured out what that scumbag is up to, but it doesn't seem wise to share that information with the military. No need to freak them out any more than we need to. Or give them any ideas about what's possible when you hideously exploit a resource.

I'm relieved when John subtly shakes his head in response to Ella.

Ella turns back to Lawson. “Something precious to our people,” she says.

Lawson seems to know there's more to the story, but he doesn't press the matter. Instead, he motions to one of the officers standing by the door. The guy immediately exits, off to fetch something for his boss. I get a sinking feeling. Mysterious hand signals are always a bad sign.

“All right, then. If we're ready to discuss counterstrike opportunities—,” Lawson begins.

“About time,” mutters Nine.

“—we should have all our intelligence assets available,” Lawson finishes.

At that moment, the officer who Lawson sent scurrying into the hall a second ago returns. He leads in two guards, both of them armed with assault rifles and in full combat gear. They don't take their eyes off the prisoner who stands between them, shackled hand and foot, and looking close to exhaustion.

It's Adam.

FOR A FEW MINUTES THERE, I ACTUALLY THOUGHT
this meeting might go off without a hitch and I could quickly get back to my own plans to take down Setrákus Ra. Guess I underestimated the depths of the government's stupidity.

Six is the first one to her feet when they bring Adam into the room, his chains clanking together. She's up so fast that her chair topples over. Some of the armed soldiers at the room's edges anxiously lift their weapons just a fraction. When she stands up, so do Sam and Nine.

“What is this bullshit?” Six yells at Lawson while pointing at Adam.

“It's all right, Six,” Adam says tiredly, his eyes on the armed guards. “I'm fine.”

Nine turns around to look at the guards with a grin. He nods to one guy whose finger is hovering just over
his assault rifle's trigger.

“He's with us, old man,” Six growls at Lawson, ignoring Adam's attempt to defuse the situation. “He's our
friend
.”

Lawson hasn't even moved from his seat. In fact, he looks amused by the whole situation. I wonder if this is him trying to get a rise out of us on purpose, trying to see just how far he can push us, wondering what kind of allies we'll be.

“Your friend,” Lawson responds calmly, “is a member of a hostile alien race that is bent on the subjugation of this planet. You brought him here—to the doorstep of humanity's best hope for resistance—and expected, what? That we let him roam around freely?”

“Pretty much,” Nine says.

When she first came into the room, I noticed the way Six sized up the military firepower. I recognized that look. She was figuring out our odds of taking them in a fight. Though I didn't expect things to go south, I have to admit that I made my own similar calculation. It's a survival instinct we'll probably never shake.

Judging by the apprehensive looks on a lot of the soldiers' faces, they've also done the math. They don't know Six or some of the others, but I'm sure they've seen footage or heard rumors about what I did in New York City.

They know they can't win.

I think of Sarah. I know she'd tell me to stay calm, and she'd be right. I don't want to hurt anyone. We need to work with these people if we're going to save the planet. I know that. But they also need to know just what we're capable of, especially General Lawson. He needs to know that we aren't
his
asset in the war against Setrákus Ra.

He's
ours
.

I stand up very slowly so that no one gets more jumpy. As I do, I look around and use my telekinesis to eject the cartridge from every firearm in the room. The soldiers' eyes widen when their ammo spills across the carpet.

Everyone is watching me now. Good. I step around the table and approach the two guards holding on to Adam's arms.

“Step back,” I tell them.

They do.

Adam catches my eye, and I see him subtly shake his head, like he doesn't want me to make a bigger scene. But I've got to get my point across.

I ignite my Lumen, my hand white-hot in a matter of seconds. I reach out and carefully melt through Adam's chains so that his hands are free.

With that done, I turn around and look at the others. The government types all wear the same expression, caught somewhere between anger and fear. Some of our
people—like Daniela and Sam—look nervous. Others, like Nine and Six, look at me with devilish encouragement. Agent Walker, surprisingly, hides an amused smile behind her hand.

I focus on Lawson. His expression remains completely controlled and neutral.

“You could've just asked for the keys,” he tells me.

“We don't answer to you,” I reply, putting my now-cool hand on Adam's shoulder. “You don't get to make decisions about us. Do you understand,
sir
?”

“I understand, and it won't happen again,” Lawson replies without even an ounce of bad feeling. His mellowness is almost worrying. “You need to understand, we had to make sure your . . . your friend here was on the level.”

“And you need to understand that we're going after Setrákus Ra as soon as my people are well enough,” I say.

And as soon as I'm strong enough, I almost add. As soon as I've added as many Legacies to my arsenal as possible.

“We're going to kill him and bury him inside that mountain of his,” I continue. “How does that align with your plans for a counterattack?”

“Sounds pretty darn great,” Lawson says, and motions for me to retake my seat. I nudge Adam and let him take my chair at the head of the table instead.

With the situation relatively defused, Six and the others sit back down. The soldiers around us don't make a move to pick up their ejected magazines. While everyone's getting settled again, Six leans across the table to Adam.

“You all right?”

He nods quickly, brushing the whole thing off, even though there are still handcuff bracelets around his wrist. “All they did was ask me questions, Six. No big deal.”

I fold my arms and look down at Lawson. “So what else is there to discuss?”

Lawson clears his throat, still unperturbed. “While we support your assassination of the Mogadorian leader wholeheartedly, we do have some timing issues that need to be ironed out. As well as some other questions and concerns.”

“Timing issues,” I repeat dully. “Questions and concerns.”

“For instance,” Lawson continues. “I'm aware that you recently used a sort of extrasensory perception to communicate with what's believed to be hundreds of LANEs around the world.”

I blink at that. He's talking about the telepathic summit that Ella dragged us into. For a second, I'm off balance, not sure how Lawson could possibly be aware of that. Then I glance over his shoulder at the two
stone-faced twins—Christian and Caleb—who have been hovering around Lawson constantly since we got here. They've got Legacies, so of course they were in the room when I met all the newly powered-up humans. They must have reported the details to Lawson. If not them, then maybe it was the president's daughter.

“What about it?” I ask him.

“Well, John, these are hundreds of minors who you're recruiting from all over the world. There are concerns for the safety of these children.”

I shoot a meaningful look at the twins flanking Lawson before responding, hoping that he appreciates the irony.

“There's going to be nowhere safe on this planet soon,” I tell Lawson. “They need training that only we can give them.”

“I get that,” Lawson responds. “But you understand why it might make some people nervous, don't you? You building an army from our young people?”

I shake my head in disbelief and hope my expression conveys just how ridiculous I find this bureaucratic nonsense. It almost makes me look back fondly on my days on the run.

“We aren't building anything,” I say, then look at the twins. “You two. Did I demand that you come here? Did I force the others?”

The twins look taken aback to be spoken to directly.
They exchange a glance, then look to Lawson for permission.

“Speak freely,” he says.

“No. You didn't do anything like that,” Caleb replies immediately, his brother sitting there stone-faced. Caleb points at Nine. “That one did call us all wimps, though.”

Nine shrugs at that. I look at Lawson.

“Satisfied?”

“For now,” he replies. “At least give us a heads-up if you're going to do anything like that again.”

I sigh. “You said something about timing concerns?”

Lawson motions to the map behind him, the one depicting the positions of two dozen Mogadorian warships.

“Like I said, we're all for you trying to chop the head off this snake. Hell, I'll send as much backup with you to West Virginia as we can afford to spare,” Lawson begins. “But right now the enemy thinks we're belly-up. When we strike, what happens to all these cities? Everyone's in evacuation mode right now, but it isn't easy moving millions of people. One attack on Setrákus Ra could open up battles on every front.”

Lexa speaks up. “As the only survivor of our planet's Mogadorian invasion old enough to really remember how it went down, let me tell you, their tactics have changed. They laid waste to our planet in hours. . . .”

“Heartening,” Lawson responds.

“They want to occupy Earth, not blast it to inhabitability,” Lexa continues. “Doesn't knowing that give us some advantage?”

“Could Setrákus Ra be bluffing?” Lawson asks.

“It's true that my people want to occupy,” Adam says with a thoughtful frown. “In all likelihood, the fleet isn't capable of another intergalactic trip. They need to stay here. But if you think that somehow limits their willingness to destroy even dozens of cities, you underestimate them.”

“So we're back to a doomsday countdown,” Lawson replies. “Once you attack Ra, we have to assume that countdown stops and the destruction begins.”

“What happens when he recovers and realizes his deadline passed while he was licking his wounds?” Six interjects. “He'll attack then anyway.”

“Exactly.” Lawson nods. “The attacks are an inevitability either way. That doesn't mean we want to hurry them up. We want to be as ready as we can be. Get as many civilians to safety as possible. Use every minute of this delay you've given us.”

“You want us to wait,” I say, gritting my teeth. Although I still need more time to collect Legacies, I'm eager for a fight. Right now, it's what I'm living for. Sitting through this meeting has been difficult enough. “How long?”

“It isn't easy coordinating a series of international strikes against a technologically superior opponent,” Lawson says. “We've received the cloaking devices your team recovered from Mexico, and our science guys are attempting to reverse engineer them.”

Lawson's people have probably spent more time with those cloaking devices than I have. Lexa—who I only met in person this morning—brought the Mogadorian technology to me first thing. They don't look all that impressive. Solid black boxes with a few inputs and wires, about the size of a paperback book, but they're the key to the human armies having a chance. We turned most of them over to Lawson a couple of hours before this meeting. We kept the one already installed in Lexa's ship, and I set one aside for myself.

“I can help with that,” Adam says to Lawson. “I know the tech fairly well.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Mog,” Lawson replies. “Even if we do crack the devices and put them into production, we've still got to get this tech into the hands of our allies around the world. Now that we know what they look like, other countries, particularly India, have had some success knocking down the Skimmers during skirmishes and stripping out the cloaking devices themselves. Assuming we get beyond the shields, we're still assessing whether we'll be better served attempting to board these warships or rely on ballistic missiles.”

“Neither approach will be easy,” Adam replies.

“Can't you just nuke them?” Nine asks.

Lawson's eyes narrow. “We're evacuating our imperiled cities, young man, but there are still people down there. Nuclear warfare is off the table here in America. I can't say the same for other countries. . . .”

“Bad enough to blow up those giant ships over the cities,” Daniela mutters.

Lawson holds up a hand. “One problem at a time. Regardless of what approach we take, the cloaking devices remain our biggest hurdle. We're working with an incredibly small stockpile when we need one per ship or one per missile. And then there's the small matter of getting them into the hands of our allies.” Lawson pauses for breath. “How long will it take to have enough on hand to mount an attack on the warships?”

“All of them?” I ask. “At once?”

“That's how this operations plays out, John. We hit them all at once to maximize our only advantage . . . the element of surprise. If we let them know we can break their shields too early, the parameters change. They might step up their attacks. Right now, they've got a boot on our necks; they think we're pinned, out of the fight. They don't know we've still got a knife up our sleeve. But we need that tech. And we're up against a ticking clock. Unless you know how long Setrákus Ra will be in this vat of his?” he asks, looking at Ella.

Ella shakes her head.

“Then you understand how precarious our situation is,” Lawson concludes. “We'll likely get one shot at this, and it needs to be soon.”

I take all this in, a little on my heels. Lawson doesn't paint a very rosy picture. Maybe I'm not in the right mind-set to help coordinate an international counterattack. Luckily, I've got backup.

Six peers down the table at Ella. “There are new Loralite stones growing across the Earth, right?”

“Yes,” Ella says. “I can sense them.”

Six snaps her fingers. “There you go. We use those to deliver the cloaking devices around the world.”

Lawson looks at me. “These are the stones you mentioned to the LANEs in your . . . ah . . . psychic briefing, yes?”

I nod.

“Hmm.” Lawson glances at the map over his shoulder. “Once we caught wind of those, we encouraged our international partners to lock down as many of them as they could find.”

I cock my head. “You did?”

“Yes, John, of course we did. That said, some leaders have outright laughed at me when I asked them to divert resources to guarding some magical rocks. Not to mention, we only know the location of a fraction of these Loralite growths.”

“How many human Garde have been intercepted?” I ask, my voice cold.

“A few,” Lawson replies cagily. “For their own protection. Most of them are still overseas. Assuming we survive the next few days, maybe we can discuss how you'll train them. With proper supervision, of course.”