“Get them,” Phiri Dun-Ra says.
The Thin Mog smiles. He cups his hands in front of his mouth and blows out. Tiny black spores rise up from his palms and float down the hallway. I try to yell out a warning, but Phiri twists her tentacles inside me. The soldiers are completely unprepared for this kind of fight. How could they be? I’ve never seen anything like it either. The spores head right for them, like they’ve got a mind of their own, slipping through gaps in the barricade. I can’t see exactly what happens, but I can hear gagging noises. Then, silence.
The Thin Mog makes a lifting motion with his hands, and the marines stand up as one. Black veins have spread beneath the skin on their faces. They move the same way Mark did, like puppets, their eyes completely terrified as their bodies act out the Thin Mog’s commands.
Now, the squadron of marines leads the way for the Mogadorians.
Soon, we encounter another group of soldiers trying to lock down a hallway. They hesitate, seeing their friends walking towards them.
“Kill them,” whispers the Thin Mog.
Without hesitation, the mind-controlled marines let loose on their comrades, shooting indiscriminately. The vatborn Mogs watch with glee. The hallway fills with smoke from all the shooting. Phiri Dun-Ra laughs as I look away.
“Isn’t this fun?” she asks.
Suddenly, every mind-controlled marine’s assault rifle is ripped from his hand by an unseen force. The vatborn raise their blasters and are summarily disarmed as well.
Telekinesis.
It’s just like Nine taught them. Disarm your opponents.
“Bloody hell,” I hear Nigel’s voice. “Careful, Ran, those are friendlies!”
A moment later, when the hallway explodes, I know the Japanese girl didn’t listen.
Ran must have thrown one of her charged projectiles, because bodies fly everywhere. Some of them are the mind-controlled soldiers and some of them are vatborn, many of the latter disintegrating from the force. I’m tossed backwards as well, and I can feel the noose gouging my neck as a result, warm blood pouring down my shoulder. I’m only alive because the impact caused Phiri Dun-Ra to let go of the leash.
My ears ring. The hallway is even smokier than before. I catch sight of the Thin Mog and some disarmed vatborn taking cover in an empty room off the hallway. I try to crawl away, but Phiri’s tentacles are still piercing me. She’s nowhere in sight and I’m still stuck to her somehow.
At least I can get rid of this noose. I reach up to pull it off.
Wait.
I’ve lost sight of myself. I can’t see my hands, my arms, my . . .
We’re invisible.
Phiri Dun-Ra is using my Legacy. She’s making us invisible.
We flicker back to visibility for a moment. Phiri’s control is shaky. But she spots me messing with the noose, and immediately her tentacles twist inside me. My hands drop away from my neck and clutch at my midsection.
Then we’re invisible again.
As the smoke begins to clear, I see Ran and Nigel inching their way down the hallway. Fleur and Bertrand are with them too. All of them are armed with assault rifles except for Ran; she’s got an old paperback novel clutched in her hands, the thing glowing, charged with her explosive Legacy. They’ve already got plenty of scrapes and cuts, and all of them look pretty shaky.
They’re walking right towards me, which means they’re walking right towards Phiri Dun-Ra.
“Look out!” I scream. “Get back!”
As a group, they jump at the sound of my voice. But they can’t see me.
And now it’s too late.
Phiri Dun-Ra appears from thin air. So do I, and the sight of me—leashed, impaled, on all fours—is exactly the distraction the Mogs need. All four of the human Garde look at me in shock and terror. Even Ran lets the glow fade from her projectile.
“Jo—John?” Nigel stammers, wide-eyed.
“RUN!” I shout in response, even though I know it’s too late.
Before the others can act, Phiri Dun-Ra unloads.
First, she extends her hand palm out towards Fleur. Six icicles, jagged and sharp, the frozen water not clear like when Marina or I use this Legacy but tinged an ugly rust color, rocket into Fleur’s chest. The girl crumples with a gasp that’s wet with blood.
“No! Fleur!” Bertrand shouts. The kid tries to do something heroic. He reaches down and grabs Fleur around the shoulders, attempts to drag her out of harm’s way.
Phiri Dun-Ra engulfs them both in a fireball, the flames tinged purple and smelling like burned tires.
These are bastardized versions of my Legacies she’s using to kill the human Garde I was stupid enough to invite here. The ones I swore to train and protect. I want to close my eyes and stop watching.
“You bitch!” Nigel screams, his eyes filled with tears. He manages to raise his gun, but Phiri Dun-Ra twists the barrel down with telekinesis. When he pulls the trigger, the weapon backfires in his hands. Nigel cries out. I’m not sure where he’s hit or how bad—it won’t matter in a moment.
Except there’s Ran. Luckily, Nigel stumbles backwards into her. She grabs him by the scruff of the neck and slings him down an adjoining hallway. With a parting glance at me, Ran does what I told her. She runs, pushing the injured Nigel along as she goes, just ahead of another one of Phiri Dun-Ra’s fireballs.
She starts after them, but I put my weight down. Her tentacles dig deeper into my body, and I can taste blood in my mouth. I slow her down, though, and knowing that she needs to stay connected to me to maintain my stolen Legacies, she doesn’t give chase.
“You are only delaying the inevitable, John,” she says. Phiri looks down at the two bodies—Bertrand and Fleur, barely recognizable, their skin charred black—and a new tentacle juts out from her oily mass of an arm, probing around them. She sighs. “The spark in these two had barely even started, hmm?”
“You picked them before they were ripe,” says the Thin Mog as he and the other vatborn emerge from the room where they’d taken cover. The vatborn scramble around, grabbing their blasters.
Phiri Dun-Ra picks up my leash—I never got it over my head—and shrugs at the Thin Mog. She looks down at me. “I wonder, is this how you felt as you slaughtered your way through our warship?” She makes a sound that’s close to purring. “Did you enjoy that as much as I am enjoying this?”
She gives my noose a tug, and we’re moving again. As she drags me past Bertrand and Fleur, I reach towards them. I know it’s futile—I’m cut off from my Legacies as long as Phiri Dun-Ra has control of me—but I harbor a desperate hope that I’ll somehow be able to push some of my healing Legacy into them. My fingers barely manage to graze Fleur’s shoulder; nothing happens, and then I’m forced onwards.
We turn down the hallway where Nigel and Ran fled, the vatborn once again leading the way. At this point, the only thing I can do to help is slow the Mogs’ pace. Ignoring the bite of the Voron collar, I follow Phiri’s lead as slowly as I can.
It’s not entirely a defensive strategy, I realize as my vision begins to swim. I’m losing a lot of blood. At one point, I fall down on my elbows and hear something in my shoulder crack. There’s so much pain and I’m so disoriented, I’m not even sure where we are in Patience Creek anymore.
I can’t believe this is how it ends.
The sound of fighting rings out from all around the base. Distantly, I’m aware of shooting and screaming. Echoes of losing battles nearby. We stick to the quiet halls, hunting stragglers.
“There!” the Thin Mog shouts.
I look up just in time, peering between Phiri Dun-Ra’s legs, as a lone person skids into view. The vatborn immediately take aim and open fire.
“Shit!” Sam yelps as he dives for cover around a corner.