There’s no fear in me. Fear, I guess, is rooted entirely in anticipation. Worrying that things won’t turn out the way you’ve planned, that something will hurt; dreading the sorrow to come—all that goes away when you simply accept finality.
It isn’t so bad, knowing there’s no future. It’s freeing.
On my way down from the observation deck, I bump into Marina. She stands on the stairs, arms crossed, looking out over our friends as they acquaint themselves with the warship. I know exactly where she’s staring.
Five. His shoulders are hunched as he sits at one of the weapons consoles, running a diagnostic while Sam and Malcolm look on. He must feel her glaring at him, but he chooses to endure it rather than acknowledge it. When I get close, I notice that the air around Marina is a little cooler.
Marina looks over at me, and her lips quirk downward in a frown.
“I already know what you’re going to say,” I tell her. “We can’t trust him. He’s dangerous. All of which I agree with.”
“And I already know what you are going to say to me,” she replies, mimicking my tone. “He is a necessary evil. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Tell me I don’t use that many clichés.” She frowns at me. I rub my hands together to warm them up. “He saved lives at Patience Creek, Marina. He saved my life.”
“Yes, I heard about his . . . performance,” she replies, a note of distaste in her voice. “Sam told me how he relished what he was doing, how he could’ve simply killed Phiri Dun-Ra but instead repeatedly chopped at her arm. If we let ourselves become that ruthless and that brutal, do we really win?”
I think about how many Mogs I killed during my attack on this warship. And then I remember how Five looked at me when I first spoke to him at Patience Creek. How he told me I was like him now.
A shadow must pass over my face, because Marina squeezes my arm.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to lecture,” she says. “I just want us to remember, where Five is concerned, killing a common enemy does not make him an ally. Using him as a weapon does not mean he’s willingly saving lives.”
“Usually, I’d agree with you. But not tonight.”
Marina nods slowly, resigned to the fact she’ll be fighting alongside Five. “And what about after, John? Will he pay for what he did?”
There’s that word again. “After.” I look away from Marina.
“After will be up to you,” I tell her.
She starts to ask me another question, but I’m already hustling the rest of the way down the steps. Adam catches my eye as I stride onto the bridge.
“We’re almost there,” he says. “I don’t want to get us too close, in case they’ve got scouts deployed.”
“All right,” I reply, and glance over at Ella. She sits at one of the abandoned stations massaging her temples. “Were you able to create that map?”
She nods. “I scanned it in. Malcolm helped with estimating the scale.” At that, Sam’s dad tips an imaginary hat.
“Pulling it up now,” Adam says.
A wide section of the bridge’s floor-to-ceiling window goes opaque, and, a second later, a three-dimensional map of the Mogadorian mountain base appears on screen. It isn’t exactly blueprint quality considering Ella and Malcolm produced it by hand and from memory. But it’s accurate. Those memories were drawn from me, from Nine, from Six and Sam and from Adam. We’d all been inside the mountain base before; we’ve all carried around visions of its interior, even though they’re colored with panic or chaos or torture. Ella sat with each of us for a few minutes, plucked out those memories and turned them into something tangible.
“All right, once we’ve dealt with the Anubis, we’re attacking here.” I indicate the mountain’s cavernous entrance. While the entrance is at ground level, it’s at about the midway point of the map. The Mogs have hollowed out the mountain both above and below the entrance. “We’ve got one cloaking device still hooked up to Lexa’s ship. She’ll drop us through the base’s force field and then pull back to a safe distance until we need extraction. It’ll be me, Six, Marina, Nine, Adam and Five down there.”
Sam’s brow furrows at that, like I expected it would. “Wait. What are the rest of us doing?”
“At first, Ella will be coordinating the different groups telepathically. In the event that Setrákus Ra takes away our Legacies, I want a backup team to bring in Ella so she can use her Dreynen and even the odds.” Ella nods at that, although she looks uneasy at the prospect of facing her great-grandfather again. “Until then, the rest of you will be flying this warship and destroying anything that comes out of that mountain that isn’t one of us. With your Legacy, Sam, you’ll do more good up here.”
Nine snaps his fingers at Rex and gets the wide-eyed Mog’s attention. “And don’t try any bullshit. My man Sam Goode here will kill you.”
Sam sighs and looks apologetically at Rex. “I’m not going to kill you,” Sam says, although he immediately reconsiders that statement. “I mean, I will if you try something, but you seem like an okay guy so, yeah, don’t do that. I’ll mess you up.”
Adam pats Rex on the shoulder. The other Mog shakes his head and becomes real interested in the schematics in front of him.
“We’re expecting to hit heavy resistance in the fifty yards between the force field and the entrance,” I continue. “We’re going to use blunt force to fight our way in.”
Five and Nine both smile at that.
“Except for Five,” I continue, and his face falls.
“What?” he asks.
I turn to him. “You’re going to fly Six and Adam through the entrance—while invisible.”
Six looks in Five’s direction. “You’re sane at the moment, right?”
“Yes,” Five answers brusquely. He keeps his eye pinned to the map and takes a deep breath. “It’s a good strategy.”
“No one was asking you,” Marina says.
I press on before this can get any more heated.
“Once they’re in, Six and Adam will attempt to disable the base’s shields.” I point to an elevated section above the entrance. “We’re not exactly sure where those controls are, but Adam thinks they’re around here. While they’re doing that, Five will hit the Mogs from behind.”
Sam raises his hand. “What are the rest of us doing up here?”
“Once the shields are down, hopefully you guys can give us some air support. You’ll want to have the main energy cannon ready to go.”
“We’ve got a mountain to knock down,” Six adds.
“Exactly. We’re going to bury Setrákus Ra in there. But first we’ve got to make sure whatever twisted experiments he’s concocted are destroyed.” I point into the depths of the mountain, down twisting corridors and across narrow rock bridges. I remember the sounds that came from those depths from the last time I visited the mountain base—animal screams, tortured cries. “We figure if Setrákus Ra is anywhere, he’s down here. That’s where the vats are. It’s where he’ll be working his experiments.”
“You assume he doesn’t come up to say hello when we knock,” Nine says.
“You’re right,” I agree. “He might come out to fight us. Either way, he and everything he’s touched gets destroyed. By the time the sun rises, he’s dust in a fucking crater.”
“You make it all sound so easy,” Five mutters.
“Oh, it won’t be easy,” I reply. “But we can do this. We have to do this.”
“It’s everything,” Six adds. “This is for everything.”
I can sense some of my friends looking at me expectantly. I try to think of the kind of speech I would’ve given a few days ago, when Sarah was still alive.
“Look, there’s nothing more I can say. We’ve come this far together, and we’re going to get through this together. No more running, no more hiding, no more words. We fight until we win.”
Nods all around. I look at every face, meet every set of eyes or eye, and I’m amazed by how calm I feel. I look beyond the mountain map on the window, into the night. The stars are out.
It’s time.
“I’m going to go scout the Anubis,” I say. “I’ll tell you when you’re clear to approach.”