When it’s done, the girl looks down at her hands. She doesn’t know where this power came from. She doesn’t know what it means.
But she’s going to use it.
CHAPTER ONE
WE RUN PAST THE BROKEN WING OF AN EXPLODED jet fighter, the jagged metal lodged in the middle of a city street like a shark’s fin. How long ago was it that we watched the jets scream by overhead, a course set for uptown and the Anubis? It feels like days, but it must only be hours. Some of the people we’re with—the survivors—they whooped and cheered when they saw the jets, like the tide was going to turn.
I knew better. Kept quiet. Only a few minutes later, we could hear the explosions as the Anubis blew those jets out of the sky, scattering pieces of Earth’s most sophisticated military all over the island of Manhattan. They haven’t sent any more jets in.
How many deaths is that? Hundreds. Thousands. Maybe more. And it’s all my fault. Because I couldn’t kill Setrákus Ra when I had the chance.
“On the left!” a voice shouts from somewhere behind me. I whip my head around, charge up a fireball without thinking about it, and incinerate a Mog scout as he comes around a corner. Me, Sam, the couple dozen survivors we picked up along the way—we barely break stride. We’re in lower Manhattan now. Ran here. Fought our way down. Block by block. Trying to put some distance between us and Midtown, where the Mogs are strongest, where we last saw the Anubis.
I’m exhausted.
I stumble. I can’t even feel my feet anymore, they’re so tired. I think I’m about to collapse. An arm goes around my shoulders and steadies me.
“John?” Sam asks, concerned. He’s holding me up. It sounds like his voice is coming through a tunnel. I try to reply to him, but the words don’t come. Sam turns his head and speaks to one of the other survivors. “We need to get off the streets for a while. He needs to rest.”
Next thing I know, I slump back against the wall of an apartment building lobby. I must have gone out for a minute. I try to brace myself, try to pull myself together. I have to keep fighting.
But I can’t do it—my body refuses to take any more punishment. I let myself slide down the wall so that I’m sitting on the floor. The carpet is covered in dust and broken glass that must’ve blown in from outside. There are about twenty-five of us huddled together here. These are all we could manage to save. Bloodstained and dirty, a few of them wounded, all of us tired.
How many injuries did I heal today? It was easy, at first. After so many, though, I could feel my healing Legacy draining my own energy. I must have hit my limit.
I remember the people not by name but by how I found them or what I healed. Broken-Arm and Pinned-Under-Car look concerned, scared.
A woman, Jumped-from-Window, puts her hand on my shoulder, checking on me. I nod to tell her I’m all right and she looks relieved.
Right in front of me, Sam talks with a uniformed cop in his fifties. The cop has dried blood all over one side of his face from a cut on top of his head that I healed. I forget his name or where we found him. Their voices sound far away, like they’re echoing down a mile-long tunnel. I have to focus my hearing to understand the words, and even that takes a colossal effort. My head feels wrapped in cotton.
“Word came in over the radio that we’ve got a foothold on the Brooklyn Bridge,” the cop says. “NYPD, National Guard, army . . . hell, everyone. They’re holding the bridge. Evacuating survivors from there. It’s only a few blocks away and they say the Mogs are concentrated uptown. We can make it.”
“Then you should go,” Sam answers. “Go now while the coast is clear, before another of their patrols comes through.”
“You should come with us, kid.”
“We can’t,” Sam replies. “One of our friends is still out there. We have to find him.”
Nine. That’s who we have to find. The last we saw him, he was battling Five in front of the United Nations. Through the United Nations. We have to find him before we can leave New York. We have to find him and save as many people as we can. I’m starting to come to my senses, but I’m still too exhausted to move. I open my mouth to speak, but all I manage to do is groan.
“He’s had it,” says the cop, and I know he’s talking about me. “You two have done enough. Get out with us now, while you can.”
“He’ll be fine,” Sam says. The doubt in his voice makes me grit my teeth and focus. I need to press on, to dig down and keep fighting.
“He passed out.”
“He just needs to rest for a minute.”
“I’m fine,” I mumble, but I don’t think they hear me.
“You’re gonna get killed if you stay, kid,” the cop tells Sam, sternly shaking his head. “You can’t keep this up. There’s too many for just you two to fight. Leave it to the army, or . . .”
He trails off. We all know the army already made their attempt. Manhattan is lost.