Page 51 of The Fall of Five (Lorien Legacies 4)

“There’re three,” I whisper to Sarah. She’s standing next to me, her back against the wall. “They must be the vat-grown ones Malcolm was talking about. Pale and ugly, as usual. ”

“What’re they doing here?”

“Don’t know,” I reply. “But they’re easy targets. ”

“I didn’t bring a gun on our date,” she whispers back. “I should’ve known better. ”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “They haven’t spotted us. ”

Sarah looks down at my hands. “We can’t just let them do whatever they’re doing, can we?”

“Hell no,” I reply, realizing that my fists have clenched. For once, I’ve got the drop on Mogadorians. I want to know what they’re up to. No more running scared. “If things go bad, you run for help. ”

“Things won’t go bad,” Sarah says firmly, and confidence flows through me. “Light those assholes up. ”

I step into the alley and walk right towards the Mogs. Their hollow eyes focus on me in unison. For a moment, that old familiar chill runs through me, that fugitive feeling. I shove it down; this time, I’m choosing fight over flight.

“You guys lost?” I ask casually, striding closer.

“Get outta here, kid,” one of them hisses, flashing a row of tiny teeth. The Mog next to him opens up his coat, showing me the handle of a blaster tucked into his pants. They’re trying to scare me off like I’m just some human taking a really ill-advised shortcut home. They don’t recognize me for what I am. That means whatever they’re doing here, it isn’t hunting me.

“Getting kinda chilly,” I say, stopping about ten yards away from them. “You warm enough?”

Without waiting for a response, I trigger my Lumen. A fireball swirls into existence over my palm and I lob it at the closest Mog. He doesn’t even have a chance to react before it envelops his face, lighting him up like a matchstick for a moment before he disintegrates to ash.

The second Mog at least manages to reach for his blaster but that’s as far as he gets. I hit him with a fireball right in the chest. He lets loose a short scream and then joins the first Mog as dust on the dirty alley ground.

I don’t hit the final Mog with my Lumen. He’s the one holding that envelope and I don’t want to risk torching it. I want to see what the Mogs are after, what secret mission has these Mogadorians skulking around Chicago. He stares at me, almost as if he’s waiting for me to dispatch him as easily as I did the others, the envelope clutched to his chest. When he realizes that I’m hesitating, he takes off, sprinting down the alley.

A Mogadorian running from me. Now there’s a welcome change of pace.

I grab the Dumpster with my telekinesis and launch it at the Mog before he can get too far. The Dumpster’s metal sides screech as they grind against the alley wall. It hits the Mog and pins him up against the wall, his bones crunching.

“Tell me what you’re doing here and I’ll make this quick,” I say, walking over to him. To demonstrate, I put a little telekinetic pressure on the Dumpster, grinding it farther into his mangled body. A bubble of dark blood dribbles down the Mog’s chin. His scream of frustration and pain makes me hesitate. I’ve never done anything like this before. The Mogs I’ve killed have all been quick and in self-defense. I hope I’m not going too far.

“You—you’re all going to die,” spits the Mog.

I’m wasting my time. I’m not likely to learn anything important from some lowly scout. I shove the Dumpster one last time with my telekinesis, finishing him off. Then I pull the Dumpster away from the wall and pluck the envelope from the pile of Mogadorian ash. I turn it over in my hands—it’s stuffed with papers.

“What is it?” Sarah asks, approaching cautiously from the mouth of the alley.

I light up one of my hands so I can see the papers in the darkness. I’m holding three pages covered in rigid script that looks like a cross between hieroglyphics and Chinese. Written in Mogadorian, of course. I guess it’d be too lucky to catch the Mogs sending secret orders in English. I hold up the papers so that Sarah can see.

“Know any good Mogadorian translators?” I ask.

Back at the penthouse, I gather everyone in the dining room to describe my encounter with the Mogs. Nine pats me on the back when I get to the part about killing the three Mogadorians.

“You should’ve brought that last one back here,” he says. “We could’ve tortured something out of him like they did to us. ”

I shake my head. I glance over at Sam, who has begun surreptitiously rubbing his scarred wrists. “That’s not what we do,” I say. “We’re better than that. ”

“It’s a war, Johnny,” Nine replies.

“What does this mean?” Marina asks. “Do they know where we are?”

“I doubt it,” I say. “If they were here for us, they’d have sent more than three. They didn’t even recognize me when I approached. ”

“Yeah, and you’re a famous Mogadorian killer,” says Eight. “Weird. ”

“They’d have come by now if they were coming,” Six adds. “They aren’t exactly known for their subtlety. We need to figure out what these papers say. It could be some kind of invasion plan. ”

“Just like my dream,” whispers Ella.

The papers in question are being passed around the table, everyone taking a look at the meaningless symbols on the pages.

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