POPULATION 5,243
“Welcome home,” Sam whispers.
I press my forehead against the window and recognize a dilapidated barn, an old sign for apples, a green pickup still for sale. A warm feeling comes over my entire body. Of all the places I’ve ever lived, Paradise has been my favorite. It’s where I made my first best friend. It’s where I developed my first Legacy. It’s where I fell in love. But Paradise was also where I met my first Mogadorians. Where I had my first real battle and felt real pain. It’s the place where Henri died.
Bernie Kosar jumps onto the seat next to me, and his tail wags at an amazing rate. He shoves his nose through the small crack in his window, and he sniffs furiously at the familiar air.
As we take the first side road on the left and make several more turns, backtracking here and there, making sure we’re not being followed, finding the best and least conspicuous place to leave the SUV, we go over the plan once more.
“After we get the transmitter we go right back to the car and we leave Paradise immediately,” Six says. “Right?”
“Right,” I say.
“We don’t make contact with anyone else; we just go. We leave.”
I know she’s referring to Sarah, and I bite my lip. Finally after all these weeks on the run, I’m back in Paradise and I’m told I can’t see Sarah.
“Got it, John? We leave? Right away?”
“Lay off already. I know what you’re getting at.”
“Sorry.”
Sam parks the SUV on a dark street under a maple tree two miles from his house. My shoes drop to the asphalt, my lungs take their first real breath of Paradise air and I instantly want to go back to how it was, back to Halloween, back to coming home to Henri, back to sitting on my couch next to Sarah.
We don’t take any chances of losing my Chest in an unguarded car, so Six opens the back door and lugs it onto her shoulder. Once comfortable, she makes herself invisible.
“Wait,” I say. “I want something out of there first. Six?”
Six reappears and I open the Chest and retrieve the dagger, slipping it into the back pocket of my jeans. “Okay. Now I’m ready. Bernie Kosar, buddy, are you ready?”
Bernie Kosar transforms into a small brown owl, and he flaps his way onto a low branch of the maple tree.
“Let’s do this already.” Six picks up my Chest and disappears again.
Then we run. With Sam trailing at a good pace, I jump a fence and pick up speed on the edge of the nearest field. After a half mile, I’m veering into the forest, loving the way the branches break off my chest and arms, how the tall patches of grass whip my jeans. I look over my shoulder often, and Sam is never farther than forty yards behind me, jumping over logs, sliding under branches. There is a noise beside me, but before I can reach for my dagger Six whispers that it’s just her. I see a swatch of grass part down the middle and I follow.
Luckily, Sam lives on the outskirts of Paradise with large yards separating each neighbor. I stop just inside the lip of the forest when his house comes into view. It’s a small, modest house with white aluminum siding and black shingles, a thin chimney on its right side, a tall wooden fence enclosing the backyard. Six materializes and sets down my Chest.
“That it?” she asks.
“That’s it.”
Thirty seconds later, Bernie Kosar lands on my shoulder. Four minutes go by until Sam lumbers through a line of brush and stands next to us, out of breath, his palms planted firmly on his thighs. He looks up at his house in the distance.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Like a fugitive. Like a bad son.”
“Think about how proud your dad would be if we pull this off,” I say.
Six turns herself invisible to run reconnaissance, checking the shadows of the nearby houses, the backseats of every car on the street. She returns and says everything looks okay, but there are some motion sensor lights on the house on the right. Bernie Kosar flies away, perching himself on the highest point of the roof.
Six grabs Sam’s hand and they turn invisible. I tuck the Chest under my arm and quietly follow them to the back fence. They reappear, and Six goes over first, then Sam. I toss the Chest over and climb quickly after. We duck behind an overgrown shrub, and I survey the backyard and its trees, high grass, a big tree stump, a rusty swing set, and an antique wheelbarrow on its side. There’s a back door on the left side of the house and two dark windows on the right.
“There it is,” Sam whispers, pointing.
What I first thought was a tree stump peeking out of the middle of the yard is actually, upon closer inspection, a wide stone cylinder. Squinting, I see a triangular object sticking up off its top.
“We’ll be right back,” Six whispers to Sam.
My hand in Six’s, I turn invisible and say, “Okay, Eagle Goode. Guard that Chest as if my life depends on it. Because it does.”
Six and I carefully walk through the high grass towards the well, and then kneel in front of it. Numbers border the circumference of the sundial—one through twelve on the left side and another one through twelve on the right, zero at the top—and the numbers are surrounded by a series of lines. I’m about to grip the middle triangle and twist randomly when I hear Six gasp.
“What?” I whisper, raising my eyes to the dark back windows.
“In the middle. Look. The symbols.”
I study the sundial again, and my breath is caught in my throat. They’re faint and easy to overlook, but in the middle of the circle are nine shallow Loric symbols. I recognize the numbers one through three because they match the scars on my ankle, but the others are new to me.
“What’s Sam’s birthday again?” I ask.
“January fourth, nineteen ninety-five.”
The triangle clicks like a lock as I turn it right to the Loric number one. I turn it left, swallowing hard as I aim it at what must be number four. My number. Then I rotate the triangle to one, nine, back around to nine again, and five. Nothing happens for a few seconds, and then the sundial begins to hiss and smoke. Six and I step back and watch as the stone lid of the well flips back and opens with a loud echoing crack. When the smoke clears, I see a ladder inside.
Sam is jumping up and down near the fence. One hand over his mouth, the other raised in a fist.
One of the dark windows of the house turns yellow. Bernie Kosar lets out two long hoos from the roof. Before I can think, Six yanks me forward, and soon I’m visible and descending the ladder inside the well. Six follows, pulling the lid almost closed above her. I illuminate my palms and see we’re twenty feet from a cement floor.
“What about Sam?” I whisper.
“He’ll be fine. Bernie Kosar’s up there.”
We reach the floor and find ourselves in a short hallway that curves to the left. The air is musty. I shine my palms back and forth as we walk through the curve; and when the hallway straightens again, we see there’s a room ahead with a cluttered desk and hundreds of papers pinned to the wall. I’m about to run inside, but that’s when my lights catch a long white object in the doorway.
“Is that . . .” Six trails off.
I’m stuck in my tracks. It’s an enormous bone. Six pushes me forward and I pull the dagger from my back pocket.
“Ladies first?” I offer.
“Not this time.”
With a running start, I jump over the bone and immediately light up the room with my hands. A yell escapes my mouth as I take in the skeleton sitting against the wall. Six jumps inside, and when she sees it, she stumbles backwards into the desk.
The skeleton is over eight feet tall, with giant feet and hands. Thick blond hair falls from the top of its skull and reaches past its wide shoulder blades. Around its neck hangs a blue pendant similar to mine.
“That’s not Sam’s dad,” Six says.
“Definitely not.”
“Then who is it?”
I step forward and examine the pendant. The blue Loralite stone is slightly larger than mine, but everything else is the same. I stare at it and feel an overwhelming connection to whoever this was. “I’m not sure, but I think he was a friend.” I reach over his head and retrieve the pendant, handing it to Six.
We move to the desk. I don’t know where to start. A heavy layer of dust covers stacks of papers and writing utensils. The writing on the papers pinned to the wall above the desk is in every language but English. I recognize a few Loric numbers, but nothing else. A white electronic tablet sits on a dilapidated wooden chair, and I pick it up and press my fingers over its black screen. Nothing happens.
Six opens the top drawer to find more papers, and as she grabs the second drawer’s handle, an explosion aboveground knocks us off our feet. A long crack travels along the room’s ceiling and then the concrete buckles. Chunks fall all around us.
“Run!” I yell.
With the pendant around her neck, Six tears a dozen papers from the wall and I stuff the white tablet in the back of my waistband. We scramble up the ladder and peek out the sliver of space between the well and the sundial. Dozens of Mogs. Smoldering fires. Bernie Kosar has transformed himself into a tiger with the curling horns of a ram. A Mog’s arm is in his teeth. Sam is no longer at the fence, and neither is my Chest.
I’m about to burst out of the well when Six launches herself past me in a tornado of clouds. The sundial lid whips backwards, and she rips through a huddle of five Mogs, sending them across the yard. I pull myself out of the well and close it as she picks up a gleaming Mog sword, turning invisible.
I use my telekinesis to toss three armed Mogs standing near the well against the house. They explode into thick ash, and when I turn I see a shirtless man frozen in the back door with a shotgun in his hands. Behind him stands Sam’s frightened mom in a nightgown.
Six materializes next to two Mogs running at me with glowing cannons, and she swings the sword through both their necks. Then she uses her telekinesis to throw the wheelbarrow at another, turning him into a pile of ash. I toss two Mogs against another, and Six impales all three in one quick motion. Bernie Kosar leaps into the middle of the yard and digs his teeth into a few Mogs struggling to their feet.
“Where’s Sam?” I yell.
“Here!”
I twist to see Sam lying on his stomach under a charred shrub. Blood runs down his scalp.
“Sam!” his mom yells from the doorway.
He struggles to his knees. “Mom!”
His mom yells again, but a Mog reaches down and pulls Sam up by his shirt. I concentrate and uproot the rusty swing set, but before one of its metal poles can spear the Mog in the chest, he tosses Sam over the fence.
With an intensity I’ve never seen in her before, Six slices through the remaining Mogs. She’s covered in ash when she jumps over the fence after Sam. I leap onto Bernie Kosar and we follow.
Sam is on his back in the neighbor’s yard. Motion sensor lights flood over him. I jump off Bernie Kosar and pick him up.
“Sam? Are you okay? Where’s my Chest?”
He opens his eyes halfway. “They got it. I’m sorry, John.”
“There!” Six points to several Mogs running through a field towards the forest.
