The Guard (7 page)

DON’T MISS BOOK SIX IN THE
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING I AM NUMBER FOUR SERIES

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.

“We’ll get out as soon as we can,” Sam replies.

“You hear me down there?” The cop is talking to
me now. Lecturing me in the same way Henri used to. I wonder if he’s got kids somewhere. “There’s nothing left for you to do here. You got us this far, let us do the rest. We’ll carry you to the bridge if we have to.”

The survivors assembled around the cop nod, murmuring in agreement. Sam looks at me, his eyebrows raised in question. His face is smeared with dirt and ash. He looks hollowed out and weak, like he’s barely standing himself. A Mog blaster hangs from his hip, hooked there by a chopped piece of electric cord, and it’s like Sam’s entire body slumps in that direction, the extra weight threatening to pull him over.

I force myself to stand up. My muscles are limp and almost useless, though. I’m trying to show the police officer and the others that I’ve got some fight left in me but I can tell by the pitying way they’re staring at me that I don’t look very inspiring. I can barely keep my knees from shaking. For a moment, it feels like I’m going to crash down to the floor. But then something happens—I feel like a force is lifting and pulling me, supporting some of my weight, straightening my back and squaring my shoulders. I don’t know how I’m doing this, where I’m finding the strength. It’s almost supernatural.

No, actually, it’s not supernatural at all. It’s Sam. Telekinetic Sam, concentrating on me, making it look like I’ve still got some gas left in the tank.

“We’re staying,” I say firmly, my voice scratchy. “There are more people to save.”

The cop shakes his head in wonder. Behind him, a girl that I vaguely remember rescuing from a collapsing fire escape bursts into tears. I’m not sure if she’s inspired or if I just look terrible. Sam remains completely focused on me, stone-faced, a fresh bead of sweat forming on his temple.

“Get to safety,” I tell the survivors. “Then, help however you can. This is your planet. We’re all going to save it together.”

The cop strides forward to shake my hand. His grip is like a vise. “We won’t forget you, John Smith,” he says. “All of us, we owe you our lives.”

“Give them hell,” someone else says.

And then all at once the rest of the group of survivors are blurting out their good-byes and their gratitude. I grit my teeth in what I hope is a smile. The truth is, I’m too tired for this. The cop—he’s their leader now, he’ll keep them safe—he makes sure everyone keeps it quiet and quick, eventually hustling them out of the apartment building’s lobby and onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

As soon as we’re alone, Sam releases me from the telekinetic grip he was using to hold me upright and I slump backwards against the wall, struggling to keep my feet under me. He’s out of breath and sweating from the exertion of keeping me standing. He’s not Loric
and he’s had no proper training, yet somehow Sam has developed a Legacy and begun using it the best he can. Considering our situation, he’s had no choice but to learn on the fly. Sam with a Legacy—if things weren’t so chaotic and desperate, I’d be more excited. I’m not sure how or why this happened to him, but Sam’s newfound powers are pretty much the only win we’ve had since coming to New York.

“Thanks,” I say, the words coming easier now.

“No problem,” Sam replies, panting. “You’re the symbol of the Earth’s resistance; we can’t have you laying around.”

I try to push off from the wall, but my legs aren’t ready yet to support my full weight. It’s easier if I just lean against it and drag myself towards the nearest apartment door.

“Look at me. I’m not the symbol of anything,” I grumble.

“Come on,” he says. “You’re exhausted.”

Sam puts his arm around me, helping me along. He’s dragging too, though, so I try not to put much weight on him. We’ve been through hell in the last few hours. The skin on my hands still tingles from how much I’ve had to use my Lumen, tossing fireballs at squad after squad of Mog attackers. I hope the nerve endings aren’t permanently singed or something. The thought of igniting my Lumen right now makes my knees nearly buckle.

“Resistance,” I say bitterly. “Resistance is what happens after you lose a war, Sam.”

“You know what I meant,” he replies. I can tell by the way his voice shakes that it’s a strain for Sam to stay optimistic after everything we’ve seen today. He’s trying, though. “A lot of those people knew who you were. They said there was some video of you on the news. And everything that happened at the UN—you basically unmasked Setrákus Ra in front of an international audience. Everyone knows you’ve been fighting against the Mogadorians. That you tried to stop this.”

“Then they know that I failed.”

The door to the first-floor apartment is ajar. I shove it the rest of the way open and Sam closes and locks it behind us. I try the nearest light switch, surprised to find that the electricity is still on here. Power seems to be spotty throughout the city. I guess this neighborhood hasn’t been badly hit yet. I turn the lights off just as quickly—in our current condition, we don’t want to attract the attention of any Mogadorian patrols that might be in the area. As I stumble towards a nearby futon, Sam moves around the room closing curtains.

The apartment is a small one-room studio. There’s a cramped kitchen cordoned off from the main living space by a granite counter, a single closet and a tiny bathroom. Whoever lives here definitely left in a hurry; there are clothes spilled across the floor from a hasty
packing job, an overturned bowl of cereal on the counter and a cracked picture frame near the door that looks like it was crushed underfoot. In the picture, a couple in their twenties pose in front of a tropical beach, a small monkey perched on the guy’s shoulder.

These people had a normal life. Even if they made it out of Manhattan and to safety, that’s over now. Earth will never be the same. I used to imagine a peaceful life like this for Sarah and me once the Mogs were defeated. Not a tiny apartment in New York City, but something simple and calm. There’s an explosion in the distance, the Mogs destroying something uptown. I realize now how naïve those life-after-war dreams were. Nothing will ever be normal after this.

Sarah. I hope she’s okay. It was her face that I called to mind during the roughest parts of our block-by-block battle through Manhattan. Keep fighting and you’ll get to see her again, that’s what I kept telling myself. I wish I could talk to her. I
need
to talk to her. Not just Sarah, but Six too—I need to get in touch with the others, to find out what Sarah learned from Mark James and his mysterious contact, and to see what Six, Marina and Adam did in Mexico. That has to have something to do with why Sam suddenly developed a Legacy. What if he’s not the only one? I need to know what’s happening outside of New York City, but my satellite phone was destroyed when I fell into the East River and the
regular cell phone networks are down. For now, it’s just me and Sam. Surviving.

In the kitchen, Sam opens the fridge. He pauses and glances over to me.

“Is it wrong if we take some of this person’s food?” he asks me.

“I’m sure they won’t care,” I reply.

I close my eyes for what feels like a second but must be longer, opening them only when a piece of bread bumps against my nose. With one hand extended theatrically like a comic book character, Sam telekinetically floats a peanut butter sandwich, a plastic container of applesauce and a spoon in front of my face. Even feeling down and out as I am, I can’t help but smile at the effort.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you with the sandwich,” Sam says as I pluck the food out of the air. “I’m still getting used to this. Obviously.”

“No worries. It’s easy to shove and pull with telekinesis. Precision’s the hardest part to learn.”

“No kidding,” he says.

“You’re doing amazing for someone that’s had telekinesis for all of four hours, man.”

Sam sits down on the futon next to me with his own sandwich. “It helps if I imagine that I have, like, ghost hands. Does that make sense?”

I think back to how I trained my own telekinesis
with Henri. It seems like so long ago.

“I used to visualize whatever I focused on moving, and then will it to happen,” I tell Sam. “We started small. Henri used to toss me baseballs in the backyard and I’d practice catching them with my mind.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think playing catch is really an option for me right now,” Sam says. “I’m finding other ways to practice.”

Sam floats his sandwich up from his lap. He initially brings it too high for him to bite, but gets it at mouth level after a second more of concentration.

“Not bad,” I say.

“It’s easier when I’m not thinking about it.”

“Like when we’re fighting for our lives, for instance?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, shaking his head in wonder. “Are we going to talk about how this happened to me, John? Or why it happened? Or . . . I don’t know. What it means?”

“Garde develop Legacies in their teens,” I say, shrugging. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”

“Dude, have you forgotten that I’m not Loric?”

“Neither is Adam, but he’s got Legacies,” I reply.

“Yeah, his gross dad hooked him up to a dead Garde and . . .”

I hold up a hand to stop Sam. “All I’m saying is that it’s not so cut-and-dry. I don’t think Legacies work the way my people always assumed.” I pause for a moment
to think. “What’s happened to you has to have something to do with what Six and the others did at the Sanctuary.”