Chereads / I AM NUMBER FOUR / Chapter 21 - CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chapter 21 - CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EVERYTHING SLOWS. I SEE A SECOND PERSON AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS.

Sam yelps in surprise and I turn to him, silence filling my ears with the discordant hum that comes with slow motion. The man behind him gives him a hard shove that causes his feet to leave the ground, and, when he hits, it will be at the bottom of the stairs, where the concrete floor awaits. Iwatch him sail through the air, flailing his arms with a look of terror on his anguished face. Without giving it a single thought, my instinct takes over and I lift my hands at the very last second and catch him, his head a mere two inches above the basement floor. I set him down gently.

Shit, Henri says.

Sam sits up and crawls backwards like a crab until he reaches the cinder-block wall. His eyes are wide-open, staring at the steps, his mouth moving but no words coming out. The figure who pushed him stands at the top of the stairs trying to figure out, like Sam, what just happened. It must be the third one.

Sam, I tried to, I say.

The man at the top of the stairs turns and tries to sprint away but I force him down two of the stairs. Sam looks at the man being held by an unseen force, then looks at my one arm extended towards him. He is shocked and speechless.

I grab the duct tape and lift the man in the air and carry him up to the second floor, keeping him suspended the entire way.

He yells obscenities while I tape him into a chair, but I hear none of them because my mind is racing to figure out what we will say to Sam about what just happened.

Shut up, I say.

He unloads another string of cuss words. I decide Ive had enough so I tape his mouth shut and walk back to the basement. Henri is standing near Sam, who is still sitting there, with the same blank stare on his face.

I dont get it, he says.

What just happened?

Henri and I look at each other. I shrug.

Tell me whats happening, Sam says, his voice pleading with us, tinged with desperation to know the truth, to know that hes not crazy and that he didnt imagine what he just saw.

Henri sighs and shakes his head. Then he says, What the hells the point?

The point in what? I ask.

He ignores me, and instead turns to Sam. He purses his lips together, looks at the man slumped in the chair to make sure he is still out, and then at Sam. We arent who you think we are, he says, and pauses. Sam stays silent, staring at Henri. I cant read his face, and I have no idea what Henri is about to tell him if he will again make up some elaborate story or, for once, tell him the truth and its this latter that Im truly hoping for. He looks at me and I nod my head in agreement.

We came to Earth ten years ago from a planet named Lorien. We came because it was destroyed by the inhabitants of another planet named Mogadore. They destroyed Lorien for its resources because they had turned their own planet into a cesspool of decay. We came here to hide until we could return to Lorien, which we will one day do. But we were followed by the Mogadorians. They are here hunting us. And I believe they are here to take over Earth, and that is why I came here today, to find out a little more.

Sam says nothing. Had it been me who told him as much, Im sure that he wouldnt believe me, that he might become angry, but it is Henri who has told him, and there is a certain integrity within Henri that I have always felt, and I have no doubt that Sam feels it also. He looks over at me.

Iwas right: youre an alien. You werent joking when you admitted it, Sam says to me.

Yes, you were right.

He looks back at Henri. And those stories you told me on Halloween?

No. Those were just that, Henri says. Ridiculous stories that made me smile when I stumbled across them on the internet, nothing more. But what I told you now is the honest truth.

Well, Sam says, and trails off, grasping for words.

What happened just now?

Henri nods to me. John is in the process of developing certain powers. Telekinesis is one of them. When you were pushed, John saved you.

Sam still smiles beside me, watching me. When I look at him he nods his head.

I knew you were different, he says.

Needless to say, Henri says to Sam, youre going to have to be quiet about this. Then he looks over at me. âmWe need information and we need to get out of here.

Theyre probably nearby.

The guys upstairs might still be conscious.

Lets go talk to them.

Henri walks over and picks the gun up from the floor and pulls the clip. Its full. He removes all the bullets and sets them on a nearby shelf, then snaps the clip back in and tucks the gun in the waistband of his jeans. I help Sam to his feet and we all go upstairs to the second floor. The man I brought up with my telekinesis is still struggling. The other one is sitting still.

Henri walks over to him.

You were warned, Henri says.

The man nods.

Now youre going to talk, Henri says, and he pulls the tape from the mans mouth. And if you dont He pulls the slide back on the gun and aims it at the mans chest. Who visited you?

There were three of them, he says.

Well, there are three of us. Who cares? Keep talking.

They told me if you showed up and I said anything, theyd kill me, the man says. I wont tell you anything more.

Henri presses the barrel of the gun against the mans forehead. For some reason it makes me uncomfortable. I reach out and move the gun down so it points only at the floor. Henri looks at me curiously.

There are other ways, I say.

Henri shrugs and sets the gun down.

The floor is yours, he says.

I stand five feet in front of the man. He looks at me with fear.

He is heavy, but after catching Sam as he sailed through the air, I know that I can lift him. I hold my arms out, my body straining in concentration. Nothing at first, and then very slowly he begins to rise off the floor. The man struggles but he is taped to the chair and there is nothing he can do. I concentrate with everything I have, and yet in my peripheral vision I can see that Henri is smiling proudly, and that Sam is, too. Yesterday I couldnt lift a tennis ball; now Im lifting a chair with a two-hundredpound man sitting in it. How quickly the Legacy has developed.

When I have raised him to face level, I flip the chair over and he hangs upside down.

Come on! he yells.

Start talking.

No! he yells. They said theyd kill me.

I let go of the chair and it falls. The man screams but I catch him before he hits the ground. I raise him back up.

There were three of them! he yells, talking fast.

They showed up the same day we sent out the magazines.They showed up that night.

What did they look like? Henri asks.

Like ghosts. They were pale, almost like albinos. They wore sunglasses, but when we wouldnt talk one of them took the sunglasses off. They had black eyes and pointy teeth, but they didnt look natural like an animals would.

Theirs looked as though they had been broken and chiseled.

They all wore long coats and hats like some shit out of an old spy movie. What the hell more do you want?

Why did they come?

They wanted to know our source for the story. We told them. A man had called, said he had an exclusive for us, starting raging about a group of aliens that wanted to destroy our civilization. But he called on the day we were printing, so instead of writing the full story, we put in a small quip and said more to follow next month. He talked so fast that we hardly grasped what he was saying. We were planning on calling him the next night, only that didnt happen, because the Mogadorians showed up instead.

How did you know they were Mogadorians?

What the hell else could they have been? We wrote a story about the Mogadorian race of aliens and lo and behold a group of aliens shows up on our doorstep the same day wanting to know where we got the story. It wasnt hard to figure out.

The man is heavy and Im having trouble holding him. My forehead is beaded with sweat and its a struggle to breathe. I flip him back over, begin to lower him. When he is within a foot of the floor I drop him the rest of the way and he lands with an Oomphf. I bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

What the hell, man? Im answering your

questions, he says.

Im sorry, I say. Youre too heavy.

And thats the only time they came? says Henri.

The man shakes his head. They came back.

Why?

To make sure we didnt print anything else. I dont think they trusted us, but the man who called us never answered his phone again, so we had nothing else to print.

What happened to him?

What do you think happened? the man asks.

Henri nods. So they knew where he lived?

They had the phone number we were supposed to call him back on. Im sure they could have figured it out.

Did they threaten you?

Hell, yes. They trashed our office. They screwed with my mind. I havent been the same since.

Whatd they do to your mind?

He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath.

They didnt even look real, he says.

I mean, here are these three men standing in front of us talking in deep, raspy voices, all in trench coats and hats and sunglasses even though it was nighttime. It looked like they were dressed up for a Halloween party or something. They looked funny and out of place, so at first I laughed at them he says, his voice

trailing off.

But the second I laughed I knew I had made a mistake.

The other two Mogadorians started towards me with their sunglasses off. I tried to look away, but I couldnt. Those eyes. I had to look, as though something was pulling me there. It was like seeing death. My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love. Things werent so funny anymore.

Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too. The uncertainty. The pain. The complete and utter terror. I wasnt in that room anymore.And then came things Ive always feared as a kid. Images of stuffed animals that came to life, with sharp teeth as mouths, razor blades for claws. The usual stuff all kids are afraid of. Werewolves. Demonic clowns.

Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me.And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body, I could feel the blood pour from the wounds. I couldnt stop screaming.

Did you try to fight back at all?

They had two of these little weasel-looking things, fat, with short legs. No bigger than a dog. They were frothing at the mouth. One of the men was holding them on a leash, but you could tell they were hungry for us. They said they would turn them loose if we resisted. Im telling you, man, these things werent from Earth. If they were dogs, big deal, we would have fought back. But I think those things would have eaten us whole despite our size. And they were pulling against the leash, growling, trying to get to us.

So you talked?

Yes.

When did they come back?

The night before the next magazine went out, a little over a week ago.

Henri gives me a concerned look. Only one week ago the Mogadorians were within a hundred miles of where we live.

They could still be here somewhere, maybe monitoring the paper. Perhaps that is why Henri has felt their presence of late.

Sam stands beside me, taking everything in.

Why didnt they just kill you like they did your source?

How the hell do I know? Maybe because we publish a respectable paper.

How did the man who called know about the

Mogadorians?

He said he had captured one of them and tortured it.

Where?

I dont know. His phone number was from the area code near Columbus. So north of here. Maybe sixty or eighty miles north.

You spoke to him?

Yeah. And I wasnt sure if he was crazy or not, but we had heard rumors about something like this before. He started talking about them wanting to wipe out civilization as we know it, and sometimes he talked so fast that it was hard to make sense of anything he said. One thing he kept repeating was that they were here hunting something, or somebody. Then he started spouting numbers.

My eyes open wide. What numbers? What did they mean?

I have no idea. Like I said, he was talking so fast that it was all we could do to write it all down.

You wrote while he talked? Henri says.

Of course we did. Were journalists, he says incredulously. Do you think we make up the stories we write?

Yeah, I do, says Henri.

Do you still have the notes that you wrote? I say.

He looks at me and nods. Im telling you,

theyre worthless. Most of what I wrote are scribbles on their plan to destroy the human race.

I need to see them, I nearly bellow. Where, where are they?

He motions towards a desk against one of the walls.

On the desk. On sticky notes.

I walk over to the desk, which is covered with papers, and start looking through the sticky notes. I find some very vague notes on the Mogadorians hope to conquer Earth. Nothing concrete, no plans or details, just a few indistinct words:

Overpopulation

Earths resources

Biological warfare?

The Planet Mogadore.

I come to the note Im looking for. I read it carefully three or four times.

Planet Lorien? The Loric?

1, 2, 3 dead

4?

7 trailed in Spain.

9 on the run in SA

(what is he talking about? What do these numbers

have to do with invading Earth?)

Why is there a question mark after the number 4? I ask.

Because he said something about it but he talked too fast and I didnt get it.

Youve got to be kidding me?

He shakes his head. I sigh. Just my luck, I think. The one thing said about me is the one thing that wasnt written.

âWhat does SA mean? I ask.

SouthAmerica.

Did he say where in SouthAmerica?

No.

I nod, stare at the slip of paper. Iwish I could have heard the conversation, that I could have asked questions of my own. Do the Mogadorians really know where Seven is? Are they really following him or her? If so, the Loric charm still holds. I fold the sticky notes and slip them into my back pocket.

Do you know what the numbers mean? he asks.

I shake my head. I have no idea.

I dont believe you, he says.

Shut up, Sam says, and pokes him in the gut with the heavy end of the bat.

Is there anything else you can tell me? I ask.

He thinks about it for a moment, then says, I think bright light bothers them. It seemed to cause them pain when they took their sunglasses off.

We hear a noise downstairs. Like someone trying to slowly open the door. We look at each other. I look to the man in the chair.

Who is that? I quietly say.

Them.

What?

They said theyd be watching. That they knew someone might be coming.

We hear quiet footsteps on the first floor.

Henri and Sam look at each other, both terrified.

Why didnt you tell us?

They said theyd kill me.And my family.

I run to the window, look out the back. Were on the second floor. Its a twenty-foot drop to the ground.

Theres a fence around the yard. Eight feet of wood slats. I move quickly back to the stairs, and peer down. I see three huge figures, in long black trench coats, black hats, and sunglasses. Theyre carrying long gleaming swords.

Theres no way were going to make it down the stairs.

My Legacies are growing stronger, but they arent strong enough to take on three Mogadorians. The only way out is through one of the windows or over a small porch at the front of the room. The windows are smaller but the backyard will allow us to escape unseen. If we go out the front, we will most likely be visible. I hear noise coming from the basement and the Mogadorians talking to each other in an ugly, guttural language.

Two of them move towards the basement while the third starts walking towards the stairs that lead to us.

I have a second or two to act. The windows will break if we go through them. Our only chance is the doors leading to the second-floor porch. I open them using telekinesis. Its black outside. I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I pull Sam and Henri over to me and I throw each of them over my shoulders like sacks of potatoes.

What are you doing? whispers Henri.

I have no idea, I say. But I hope it works.

Just as I see the top of the first Mogadorians hat, I sprint towards the doors and right before the ledge of the porch, I jump. We go flying into the night sky. For two or three seconds were floating. I see cars moving down the street beneath us. I see people on the sidewalk. I dont know where were going to land, or if my body will support all the weight Im carrying when we do. When we hit the roof of a house across the street I collapse, with Sam and Henri on top of me. I let my breath knocked out of me, and it feels like my legs are broken. Sam starts to stand, but Henri keeps him down. He drags me to the far end of the roof and asks if I can use my telekinesis to get him and Sam onto the ground. I can and I do.

He tells me I need to jump. I stand on legs that are wobbly and still hurt, and just before I jump, I turn and see the three Mogadorians are standing on the porch across the street, looking confused. Their swords are gleaming. Without a second to spare, we got away without them seeing us.

We get to Sams truck. Henri and Sam have to help me walk. Bernie is there waiting for us. We decide to leave Henris truck because they most likely know what it looks like and would track it. We pull out ofAthens and Henri starts driving back to Paradise, which it really might be after the night we just had.

Henri starts from the beginning, telling Sam everything. He doesnt stop until we are pulling into our driveway. Its still dark. Sam looks over at me.

Unbelievable, he says, and smiles. Its the coolest thing Ive ever heard of. I look at him and I see the validation he has always looked for in his life, an affirmation that the time hes spent with his nose in the conspiracy rags, looking for clues to his fathers disappearance, wasnt in vain.

Are you really resistant to fire? he asks.

Yes, I say.

God, thats awesome.

Thanks, Sam.

Can you fly? he asks.At first I think he is joking, but then I see that he isnt.

I cant fly. Im resistant to fire and can turn my hands into lights. I have telekinesis, which I only learned to use yesterday. More Legacies are supposed to come soon. We think so, anyhow. But I have no idea what they will be until they actually develop.

I hope you learn to make yourself invisible, Sam says.

My grandfather could. And anything he touched also became invisible.

Seriously?

Yes.

He starts laughing.

I still cant believe you two drove all the way to Athens by yourselves, Henri says. You guys are really something. When we stopped for gas I saw that the plates have been expired for four years. I really dont see how you made it without getting stopped.

Well, you can count on me from now on, says Sam.

Ill do whatever it takes to help stop them. Especially because I bet theyre the ones who took my dad.

Thanks, Sam, says Henri. The most important thing you could do is stay quiet with our secret. If anyone else finds out about this it could lead to our deaths.

Dont worry. Ill never tell anyone. I dont want John using his powers on me.

We laugh and thank Sam again and he pulls away. Henri and I go inside. Even though I slept on the drive back, Im still exhausted. I lie down on the couch. Henri sits in a chair across from me.

Sam wont say anything, I say.

He doesnt respond, just stares at the floor.

They dont know were here, I say.

He looks up at me.

They don, I say. If they knew theyd be following us now.

He stays silent. I cant take it.

Im not leaving Ohio on nothing more than speculation.

Henri stands.

Im happy that youve made a friend. And I think Sarah is great. But we cant stay. Im going to start packing, he says.

No.

When were packed Ill go into town and buy a new truck. We need to get out of here. They might not have followed us, but they know how close they were at catching us, and that we might still be nearby. I believe the man who called the magazine did in fact capture one of them. That was his story, that he captured one and tortured it until it talked and then he killed it. We dont know what kind of tracking technology they have, but I dont think it will take them long to find us.

And when they do, well die. Your Legacies are emerging, and your strength is growing, but youre nowhere near ready to fight them.

He walks out of the room. I sit up. I dont want to leave. I have a real friend for the first time in my life. A friend who knows what I am and isnt scared, doesnt think Im a freak. A friend who is willing to fight with me, and go into danger with me. And I have a girlfriend. Someone who wants to be with me, even without knowing who I am. Someone who makes me happy, someone Iwould fight for, or go into danger in order to protect. My Legacies havent all emerged yet, but enough of them have. I took down three grown men. They didnt stand a chance. It was like fighting with little kids. I could do anything I wanted to them. We also now know that humans can also fight, and capture, and hurt, and kill Mogadorians. If they can, then I definitely can. I dont want to leave. I have a friend, and I have a girlfriend. I am not going to leave.

Henri walks back out of his room. He is carrying the Loric Chest that is our most prized possession.

Henri, I say.

Yes?

Were not leaving.

Yes we are.

You can if you want, but Ill go live with Sam. Im not leaving.

This is not your decision to make.

Its not? I thought Iwas the one being hunted. I thought Iwas the one in danger. You could walk away right now and the Mogadorians would never look for you. You could live a nice, long, normal life. You could do whatever you want. I cant. They will always be after me. They will always be trying to find me and kill me. Im fifteen years old. Im not a kid anymore. It is my decision to make.

He stares at me for a minute. That was a good speech, but it doesnt change anything. Pack your stuff. Were leaving.

I raise my hand and point it at him and lift him off the ground.

Hes so shocked that he doesnt say anything. I stand and move him into the corner of the room, up near the ceiling.

Were staying, I say.

Put me down, John.

Ill put you down when you agree to stay.

Its too dangerous.

We dont know that. Theyre not in Paradise.

They might not have any idea where we are.

Put me down.

Not until you agree to stay.

PUT ME DOWN.

I dont say anything back. I just hold him there. He struggles, tries to push off the wall and the ceiling, but he cant move. My power holds him in place. And I feel strong doing it. Stronger than Ive ever felt in my life. I am not leaving. I am not running. I love my life in Paradise. I love having a real friend, and I love my girlfriend. Im ready to fight for what I love, be it with the Mogadorians, or be it with Henri.

You know youre not coming down until I bring you down.

Youre acting like a child.

No, Im acting like someone who is starting to realize who he is and what he can do.

And youre really going to keep me up here?

Until I fall asleep or get tired, but Ill just do it again once I get some rest.

Fine. We can stay. With certain conditions.

What?

Put me down and well talk about it.

I lower him, set him on the floor. He hugs me. Im surprised; I expected him to be pissed. He lets go of me and we sit down on the couch.

Im proud of how far youve come. Ive spent many years waiting and preparing for these things to happen, for your Legacies to arrive. You know my entire life is devoted to keeping you safe, and making you strong. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. If you died on my watch, Im not sure how I would go on. In time the Mogadorians will catch up with us. Iwant to be ready for them when they come. I dont think you are yet, even though you do. You have a long way to go. We can stay here, for now, if you agree that training comes first. Before Sarah, before Sam, before everything. And at the first sign that theyre nearby, or are on our trail, we leave, no questions asked, no fighting about it, no levitating me up to the ceiling and holding me there.

Deal, I say, and smile.