As I get closer, I get a better look at this latest Augment. His entire lower body is missing. From the waist down, he’s nothing but semisolid shadows. These shadow limbs wave back and forth like fishtails and propel him through the air. Worse yet, his jaw and a good part of his upper chest are missing. It looks like he’s stuck in a perpetual scream, an acidic green spray frothing from his mouth. That’s what burned Nine, and it’s what is currently tormenting Five, the spray melting through even his metal-encased skin.
The Augment doesn’t see me coming. He’s about to take another pass at Five when I hit him full speed with both feet between the shoulder blades. I pin him like that and ride him two hundred feet down, onto the ledge, where he smashes with a sickeningly wet sound and stops moving.
Five lands next to me and, with no fanfare, shoves his blade through the back of the already-dead Augment’s head. Making sure, I guess. He looks up at me, and, for the first time, I see something like horror in Five’s eye.
“Did you see that thing?” he asks me.
“I saw it.”
“Why . . . ?” He shakes his head. “He promised the Mogs, he promised me, new Legacies. Who would want something like that?”
I shake my head and approach Five, touching the eroded sections of his arms and shoulders so I can heal them. He flinches away for a moment, then calms down and lets it happen.
“He’s a madman, Five,” I say. “You were taken in by a madman.”
“He has to die.”
“Finally, we agree on something,” Nine says, jumping down from the ledge above ours. Marina climbs off his back and studies the dead Augment.
“This is an abomination,” she says. “He has twisted the work of Lorien into something . . . something . . .” Marina covers her mouth with the back of her hand and walks away. Her path takes her across the entrance to the nearest tunnel, where she immediately freezes. “Oh . . . oh my God.”
We all rush to her side.
It’s the smell that hits me first. The rotten odor, the stench of decay, made all the more inescapable by the oppressive heat down here, close as we now are to the vat of black ooze.
Bodies are piled high in this tunnel. Some of them have the dark hair and pale skin of Mogadorians. Those are half-disintegrated, warped, their limbs turned into fragile, dusty husks. Others are unmistakably human. They look like they’ve been drained, their flesh gray and puckered, dried black veins visible beneath their skin. It looks like he’s sucked the vitality right out of them. A closer look reveals that, despite their shriveled appearances, the human bodies are exclusively teenagers.
I remember Lawson telling me about how the Russians were turning over suspected Garde to the Mogadorians, and it dawns on me. These are ours. The human Garde from the countries that surrendered and the other ones his people tracked down. He pulled the Loric spark right out of them.
Staring at this, unconsciously, I’ve drawn my Voron dagger. It glows with a dull red energy now. Seeing it in my hand, Nine takes a step back.
“Careful with that thing, Johnny,” he says weakly. His eyes are actually filled with tears from the sight of the bodies. Marina covers her face. Five simply stares.
I’ve charged the dagger with Dreynen without even realizing it. When I talked to Ella, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use my Ximic to copy this power because of how unnatural it feels. But no, I’ve never wanted to cut someone off from Lorien so badly as I do Setrákus Ra.
I spin away from this latest atrocity, stand at the edge of the ledge and scream.
“SETRáKUS RA!”
There’s a rumble overhead. Rock dust drifts down from the ceiling. It feels like the earth itself moved. I’m not sure if that was caused by my yelling or something else.
And I don’t care. Because I see movement down below. In the center of the lake of Mogadorian ooze.
Setrákus Ra emerges from the oily muck, rising up from the depths. The worms of ooze don’t drip off him, rather they slither under his skin like they’re seeking shelter. He wears the red-and-black Mogadorian armor that I’ve seen before, ornate and showy, with a flowing black cape attached to his studded shoulders. His bulbous, pale head is coated with thick bristles of dark hair. That’s new. Similarly, his features aren’t so sunken anymore, not so old. Even the purple scar around his neck has begun to fade. He’s younger, healthier than I’ve ever seen him. He floats with his hands spread out at his sides like some twisted savior.
He cranes his neck to look up at us and smiles. “Welcome,” he says. Noticing the tunnel we’re standing in front of, he lowers his eyes and frowns, mockingly demure. “Please, do not be offended by the sight of my failures. They were not fit to carry my gifts. Like you all, they were not ready for prog—”
No more goddamn words.
I pitch a fireball at him. I don’t expect it to hit; it’s just meant to cover my approach. I fly forward, reckless, as fast as I can. Behind me, I can feel the others moving forward too. This is it.
Kill or be killed.
Setrákus Ra raises his hand, and a plume of ooze shaped like a shield extends from his palm. My fireball is absorbed. Doesn’t matter.
With him distracted, I fling my dagger at him. I use my telekinesis to boost its speed.
The blade buries itself in his shoulder, punching right through his armor. A wound that he won’t be able to heal thanks to the Voron and no more Legacies thanks to my Dreynen.
Except, it seems too easy. Almost like he wanted me to hit him.
“Very good, John,” Setrákus Ra says smugly. “You’ve mastered Dreynen.”
Nothing happens. He still floats. He still smiles.
“You’ve cut me off from that piece of Lorien still living within me. I won’t be able to take your Legacies,” Setrákus Ra continues conversationally. “It won’t matter.”
Setrákus Ra pulls the dagger out of his shoulder and whips it back at me. I fly aside and, behind me, Nine catches the weapon with his telekinesis.
“I am beyond that now. Beyond Legacies. Your powers derive from a primitive being with no rhyme or reason. My Augmentations are of my own choosing, limited not by an outside Entity, but only by my own genius. Which, I might add, is staggering.”
The wound on his shoulder doesn’t heal. Instead, it fills with the black ooze.
I barely have time to process this information as I propel myself forward, enraged. If Dreynen won’t work, there are other ways.
Brute force.
I slam into Setrákus Ra with my shoulder. He barely budges. Quickly, I light my Lumen, my fists spouting white-hot flames, and throw one punch, two punches, three punches. He moves his head just enough to the side each time, his speed impossible.
The next punch he catches. I smell burning flesh as his hand covers mine. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“After all these years,” Setrákus Ra says, the two of us face-to-face, “do you still not understand?”
Five crashes into Setrákus Ra’s back and starts to stab him. He jams his blade through Setrákus Ra’s throat, into his back, through his cheek.
Each wound is quickly sealed over by black ooze.
Setrákus Ra’s free arm rotates around in the socket 180 degrees. His hand turns over like he’s double-jointed, and, without turning away from me, he grasps Five by the throat. Now he’s holding on to both of us.
“You could never win,” Setrákus Ra finishes his thought. “You were only sent here to die.”
Then he crushes my hand. I feel every finger break, every knuckle get compacted. The pain is excruciating. He flings me away from him with such force that I lose control of my flight. Luckily, Nine leaps up in the air and catches me around the waist. Marina, positioned on the ledge, creates an ice floe on the lake of ooze where Nine and I can safely land.
Nine stares at me, wild-eyed. “John, what . . . what the hell are those powers?”
I swallow hard, trying to quickly heal my hand, grimacing as the compacted bones pop back into place. “I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, Setrákus Ra swings his arm around to its normal position, still holding Five by the neck. Five has given up on stabbing the Mogadorian and is instead desperately prying at Setrákus Ra’s fingers.
“You,” Setrákus Ra says. “One of my greatest disappointments. The power I could have given you, boy. . . .”