When I find him, Adam is standing in front of a small bonfire, his hands shoved into a threadbare winter coat. It’s freezing out here. Adam’s dark hair, grown longer than before, pokes out from beneath a wool hat. Even bundled up, he shivers. Snow blows in sideways. It’s the midafternoon, and there’s no sunlight. This part of Alaska—fifty miles north of the nearest town—doesn’t get a lot of light this time of year.
This specially constructed prison camp is where the UN put the Mogadorians that surrendered. The ones that were captured. The vatborn fought to the last; they didn’t know any better. The trueborns, however, self-preservation kicked in for some of them, especially once Setrákus Ra was killed.
A dozen longhouses with spotty heating, food air-dropped in and nothing else. A village of Mogadorians in the middle of nowhere—one with a perimeter of UN soldiers who outnumber the surviving Mogs twenty-to-one at all times. There are missiles aimed here perpetually. Drones designed to withstand the elements fly overhead.
There was talk about executing them all. There still is. For now, the captured Mogs stay here and wait.
“I renounce the teachings of the Great Liar!” shouts a Mog with scars across his bald head from where he carved off his tattoos. He throws a copy of the Great Book into the bonfire, and a small huddle of Mogs, Adam and Rex among them, come forward to hug and congratulate him.
Maybe there’s hope for rehabilitation.
Another, larger contingent of Mogs watch the book burners. There’s nothing but malice in their eyes. One of them in particular stands out to me. She’s a dark-haired girl a few years younger than Adam with his same sharp features. This girl and her group seem like they want nothing more than to murder Adam’s followers, and, judging by the scrapes and bruises on the faces of some of Adam’s trueborn friends, there have been attempts.
Adam stares back at the trueborn malcontents watching him, his chin raised in defiance.
A siren blares overhead. A warning that the Mogs need to disperse. One of the rules here is that they aren’t supposed to gather in large numbers.
As the chastened Mogs head back to their destitute bunks, I float down alongside Adam.
“Probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to be seen here, huh?” I whisper to him without turning visible. The siren is loud enough to mask my voice.
Adam’s whole body tenses, his fists ball, and for a moment I think he’s about to swing at me. He’s on edge and afraid of getting snuck up on.
“Easy now,” I say. “It’s me.”
Adam quickly regains his composure. He kneels down in the snow and pretends to tie his boot. The other Mogs from his group drift sullenly towards the longhouse, giving us room.
“John,” Adam says quietly, the ghost of a smile on his face. “It’s good to see . . . ah, it’s good to hear your voice.”
I put my hand on Adam’s shoulder without turning him invisible too. I let my Lumen trigger a bit, radiating some heat.
“You’re going to spoil me,” he says with a sigh.
“I could get you out of here right now,” I say. “No one would know.”
“My people would notice when there was no one here to defend them from the others,” he replies sadly. “And besides, technically, I can leave at any time.”
This is true. Owing to his role in fighting off the Mogadorian invasion, Adam received a pardon pushed through by General Lawson himself. He elected not to use it. When the captured trueborn started getting shipped in to Alaska, Adam was here waiting for them.
“I saw a girl in the crowd who looked like you,” I say tentatively, not sure how nosy I should be.
“My sister,” Adam replies gloomily. “She loved our father. I think she hates me now, but maybe one day . . .”
“What about your mother?” I ask.
Adam shakes his head. “She disappeared. Maybe she died fighting in the invasion, maybe she’s in hiding. A part of me hopes she’ll show up here one day, and a part of me hopes that she doesn’t.”
“You don’t want her to have to live here,” I say.
“More like I’m worried whose side she would be on,” Adam says. “It’s bleak, John, but this is my duty now. I’m doing more good here than I could do anywhere else.”
I let that sink in. I hate to see my friend up here, lumped in with the rest of them, so I don’t want to come out and agree. But he could be right.
I take Adam’s hand and press an object from my wooden box into it. He looks down, startled at the cobalt-blue glow that radiates from his palm. Quickly, he hides what I gave him underneath his shirt.
“For when you’re ready.”
I’ve already gone out of my way by visiting Alaska before my next destination. It’s my last stop to make in North America. I’ve put it off long enough.
I haven’t been back to Paradise since Sam and I snuck back into town to seek out his dad’s hidden bunker. I almost got myself killed that night, but I just had to try seeing Sarah.
I break out in a cold sweat as soon as the small town comes into view. My eyes are drawn to the Jameses’ house. The roof is caved in, the sides still black and charred. They never rebuilt after the fire that happened there during Mark’s party, the one where I got caught jumping out his window.
I never got along with Mark. We never liked each other. He did his best to help us, though. He did good, and he died in a horrible way that he didn’t deserve. In all the retrospectives they’ve been playing on television, no one mentions Mark James.
Someday, I think maybe I’d like to track down his father. I did some quick internet sleuthing but could only find out that he quit his sheriff’s job and left Paradise. I’d like to tell him what happened to Mark and what he did for us before he died, even if he might not want to hear that.
There are some things I’m not ready for. That’s one of them. The other is here too.
I land in the Goode family’s backyard, happy to find Malcolm working in the garden. It takes me a minute of watching him to realize why the patch of earth he’s tending looks so strange—it’s where his bunker used to be hidden. Looks like Malcolm and Mrs. Goode decided to level the old well that used to lead down to Malcolm’s secret chamber. In the fresh soil, they’ve planted flowers of every conceivable color. I assume Pittacus Lore’s body is still buried underneath there, and, if so, I imagine he’d be pleased with this resting place.
Malcolm hugs me for a long time when I surprise him. My eyes well up when he does. It’s the place. I can’t help thinking about everything that happened here. I can’t help imagining, for just a second, that Malcolm is Henri.
After I give him the same gift that I’ve given all the others, Malcolm tries to get me to stay for dinner.
“I can’t,” I tell him. “Too much left to do.”
He shakes his head ruefully. “Still off saving the world, huh?”
“Nothing quite so serious,” I reply. “I’m going to visit Sam next.”
“Tell him to call his mother!” Malcolm says with a shake of his head. “And tell him he needs to come home eventually and finish high school or he’ll never get into a good college. There’s a limit to how much vacation a young man should be allowed to take, no matter how many planets he’s helped saved.”
Laughing, I promise to tell Sam all that. Then I fly out of Malcolm’s backyard, turn invisible again and land a few houses over.
Sarah Hart’s house.
I stand on the front walk, not turning visible, not moving. It’s just like I remember it. I imagine jogging up the sidewalk and ringing the doorbell, how excited I would be to see her, my heart racing. She’d invite me in, and her house would smell amazing like it always would, and we’d—
There’s no movement in the windows. The house is dark. There’s a FOR SALE sign driven into the front yard.
I’ve imagined this a hundred times over the last year. How I would come here and ring the doorbell like old times. How I would see Sarah’s parents and tell them how much I loved their daughter, how much she meant to me, how much she meant to the world even if not many people know it and how sorry I am that I dragged her into everything that happened. I would tell them that I miss her every day. And then I would throw myself on their mercy.
I’ve imagined it so many times, but I can’t do it. I can’t take that walk up those steps.
I’m too scared. I don’t want to see the look in their eyes. I don’t want to grapple with the pain I’ve caused them.