I stare at myself in my bedroom mirror. I’m taller than I was. I’m skinnier, too, even though I didn’t think that was possible. Whatever my parents had me hooked up to during my coma, it certainly didn’t build any muscle. I suck in a deep breath and watch my rib cage protrude through my chest’s too-pale skin.
Even standing in front of the mirror, examining my three-years-older body, takes a physical toll. I must look wobbly, because my mother grabs me by the elbow and leads me back to bed. She’s been quiet since shooing Kelly and her rapid-fire questions from the room, giving me time to gather myself. I’m grateful for that. My mother has always been the gentle one in the family, often to the General’s chagrin.
I can tell by the way she looks at me that she didn’t expect me to wake up. She strokes my hair.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
“Strange,” I reply. It’s true; my body feels weak and foreign, having grown up without me. But it’s more than that. It feels strange to be back here with my own people, knowing what I do now. Even my mother, here stroking my hair, is a brutal warrior at heart, intent on killing the Garde.
I picture the Mogadorians swarming One, feel her fear and anger anew. I can’t help but see my mother’s face on one of the soldiers. As she gently takes my hand in hers, I’m imagining my mother plunging a sword into One’s back.
Suddenly I don’t trust my own family.
“I don’t remember anything,” I say, even though she didn’t ask. “The machine didn’t work.”
My mother nods. “Your father will be disappointed.”
I decided to lie when I was still living in One’s memories, when we were sitting on the beach together. I won’t be telling my people anything that I saw. Not that anything I learned would help Mogadore win its war anyway. What could I even say? That unlike Mogadorians, the Loric are allowed to develop individuality? That their freedom from doctrines like those in the Great Book is simultaneously their greatest strength and ultimate weakness? That I’ve seen what our people did to Lorien and that it looks like shit?
Yeah, that would go over big.
I’m grateful for the chance to practice this lie on my mother. When it comes time to tell the General, he won’t be so gentle.
“Dr. Anu will have to go back to the drawing board, I guess,” I say, probing a bit to see if she bought it.
“That won’t be happening,” replies my mother. “When you didn’t wake up …”
She hesitates, but I don’t need her to finish telling me. I can picture the General enraged, storming into Anu’s laboratory and drawing his sword.
“Your father never liked Anu. Honestly, the way that old man talked, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”
There are heavy footfalls on the staircase, approaching my room. So here comes the General at last. Here to debrief his only trueborn son, probably to rebuke me for not waking up sooner.
“What’s up, skinny?”
Ivan leans in the doorway, grinning. How old would he be now—fourteen? He looks like he could play linebacker for a college football team. Like me, Ivan has grown taller in the last three years, but he’s also grown wider in every conceivable way. I imagine all the strength and combat training he’s been doing without me, likely coached by the General himself. I wonder how his Mogadorian theory grades have fared without me around to coach him.
“Did you have a nice nap?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Thanks.”
“Awesome,” he says. “Anyway, Father wants to see you downstairs.”
I feel my mother grow tense beside me.
Since when did Ivan start calling the General “Father”?
“Adamus needs his rest,” says my mother.
Ivan snorts. “All he’s been doing is resting,” he says, then turns to me. “Come on, get dressed.”
There is a familiar note of authority in Ivan’s voice. He sounds very much like the General.
CHAPTER 13
I’m expecting Ivan to lead me to my father’s office, but instead we take the elevator down into the tunnels beneath Ashwood Estates.
“You woke up just in time for some action,” he says.
“Great,” I reply, struggling not to sound halfhearted. “What’s happening?”
“You’ll see,” he says. “Big shit going down.”
When the elevator doors hiss open, Ivan slaps me hard on the back. In my weakened state, I stumble forward a few steps. I’d probably have fallen right to the floor if not for Ivan grabbing me. He pulls me into a brotherly embrace, but in addition to an intimidating amount of strength, I feel a kind of menace in the way Ivan pats me roughly on the back. My palms begin to sweat.
“Seriously,” he whispers. “So glad you’re awake. Father’s going to be pleased that his favorite son is finally up and about.”
Ivan leads me to the briefing room. There, two dozen Mogadorian warriors sit in a semicircle before the General. My father is as big as ever, his towering presence commanding the attention of everyone assembled, none of them even noticing when Ivan and I slip into the room.
Projected on the wall behind my father is the image of a red-haired man in his early forties. The picture is grainy; it looks as if it was culled from surveillance footage.
“This man,” my father intones, midbriefing, “calls himself Conrad Hoyle. We believe, based on several tips from sources as well as extensive surveillance, that he is a member of the Loric insurgency. A Cêpan.”
My father clicks a button on the remote in his meaty hand. Conrad Hoyle’s face is replaced by an image of a burned-down cottage in some rural area.
“One of our scout teams had an altercation with Hoyle at this location in the Scottish Highlands. We sustained heavy losses. Hoyle was able to escape.”
Another image appears. Conrad Hoyle, seated on a train, his face intent on a laptop screen. Whoever took this picture clearly did so with a camera-phone hidden a few rows ahead of Hoyle.
“A secondary scout team was able to pick up Hoyle’s trail and has been following him ever since. We believe he and his charge, a priority Garde target we know to be roughly thirteen years old and female, have split up. It stands to reason that Hoyle and his Garde have a safe house where they plan to reunite.”
A city appears behind my father, and I recognize it from my studies of Earth’s prime urban targets.
London.
“Conrad Hoyle is headed to London,” continues the General. “There, we believe he will reunite with his Garde and attempt to disappear.”
My gaze drifts over the warriors in the room. All of them are paying strict attention to my father, yet something is off.
“We will follow Hoyle to London and wait for him to lead us to the girl. And we will terminate or apprehend them both. Preferably terminate.”
As the General makes this pronouncement, I notice her. She’s sitting in the front row. Her blond hair stands out in this gathering of burly, dark-haired Mogadorians, but no one else notices her.
No one else can even see her.
Slowly, One turns around in her seat. She looks right at me.
“You have to stop them,” says One.
CHAPTER 14
The briefing room has emptied out except for the General and Ivan. I’m seated at one of the desks previously occupied by a Mogadorian warrior. My head is swimming, just like it was when I first woke up.
My father looms over me, studying me. He sets a glass of water down on the desk and I drink greedily.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You fainted,” snickers Ivan.
My father spins on Ivan. “Boy,” he snarls. “Leave us.”
As Ivan sulks from the room, I think back to the briefing, to One appearing. Was I hallucinating? It felt so real, just like all those times when we spoke inside her memories. But all that was like a dream, a construction of my mind. She shouldn’t be able to appear to me now. It doesn’t make sense.
Yet somehow I know it wasn’t a hallucination. Somehow One is still inside my mind.