I close my eyes and when I reopen them the fight has ended. Smoke rises from the ground among the dead and the dying. Trees broken, the forests burned, nothing standing save the few Mogadorians that have lived to tell the tale. The sun rising to the south and a pale glow growing on the barren land bathed in red. Mounds of bodies, not all of them intact, not all of them whole. On top of one mound is the man in silver and blue, dead like the rest. There are no discernible marks on his body, but he is dead all the same.
My eyes snap open. I can’t breathe, and my mouth is dry, parched.
“Here,” Henri says. He helps me off the coffee table, guides me into the kitchen and pulls out a chair for me. Tears are coming to my eyes though I try to blink them back. Henri brings me a glass of water and I drink every bit of it without stopping. I give him the glass and he refills it. I drop my head, still struggling to breathe. I drink the second glass, then look at Henri.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about a second ship?” I ask.
“What are you talking about?”
“There was a second ship,” I say.
“Where was there a second ship?”
“On Lorien, the day we left. A second ship that took off after ours.”
“Impossible,” he says.
“Why is it impossible?”
“Because the other ships were destroyed. I saw it with my own eyes. When the Mogadorians landed they took out our ports first. We traveled in the only ship that survived their offensive. It was a miracle that we made it off.”
“I saw a second ship. I’m telling you. It wasn’t like the others, though. It ran on fuel, a ball of fire following behind it.”
Henri watches me closely. He is thinking hard, his brows crinkled.
“Are you sure, John?”
“Yes.”
He leans back in his chair, looks out the window. Bernie Kosar is on the ground, staring up at us both.
“It made it off Lorien,” I say. “I watched it the whole way until it disappeared.”
“That makes no sense,” Henri says. “I don’t see how it could be possible. There was nothing left.”
“There was a second ship.”
We sit through a long silence.
“Henri?”
“Yes?”
“What was on that ship?”
He fixes me with a stare.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I truly don’t know.”
We sit in the living room, a fire in the hearth, Bernie Kosar in my lap. An occasional pop from the logs breaks the silence.
“On!” I say, and snap my fingers. My right hand illuminates, not as brightly as I’ve seen it before, but close. In the short amount of time since Henri started coaching me I’ve learned to control the glow. I can concentrate it, making it wide, like the light in a house, or narrow and focused, like a flashlight. My ability to manipulate it is coming more quickly than I expected. The left hand is still dimmer than the right, but it’s catching up. I snap my fingers and say “on” just to show off, but I don’t need to do either to control the light, or to have it come on. It just happens from within, as effortlessly as twitching a finger or blinking an eye.
“When do you think the other Legacies will develop?” I ask.
Henri looks up from the paper. “Soon,” he says. “The next one should start within the month, whatever it is. You just have to keep a close watch. Not all the powers will be obvious like your hands.”
“How long will it take for them all to come?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes all is complete within two months, sometimes it takes up to a year. It varies from Garde to Garde. But however long it takes, your major Legacy will be the last to develop.”
I close my eyes and lean back against the couch. I think about my major Legacy, the one that will allow me to fight. I’m not sure what I want it to be. Lasers? Mind control? The ability to manipulate the weather as I had seen the man in silver and blue do? Or do I want something darker, more sinister, like the ability to kill without touching?
I run my hand down Bernie Kosar’s back. I look over at Henri. He’s wearing a nightcap and a pair of spectacles on the tip of his nose like a storybook rat.
“Why were we at the airfield that day?” I ask.
“We were there for an air show. After it was over we took a tour of some of the ships.”
“Was that really the only reason?”
He turns back to me and nods. He swallows hard, and it makes me think that he’s keeping something from me.
“Well, how was it decided that we would leave?” I ask. “I mean, surely a plan like that would’ve needed more time than a few minutes’ notice, right?”
“We didn’t take off until three hours after the invasion started. Do you not remember any of it?”
“Very little.”
“We met your grandfather at the statue of Pittacus. He gave you to me and told me to get you to the airfield, that that was our only chance. There was an underground compound beneath the airfield. He said there had always been a contingency plan in case something of the sort occurred, but it was never taken seriously because the threat of an attack seemed ludicrous. Just like it would be here, on Earth. If you were to tell any human now that there is a threat of an attack by aliens, well, they would laugh at you. It was no different on Lorien. I asked him how he knew about the plan and he didn’t answer, just smiled, and said good-bye. It makes sense that no one would really know about the plan, or only a few would.”
I nod. “So just like that, you guys came up with a plan to come to Earth?”
“Of course not. One of the planet’s Elders met us at the airfield. He’s the one who cast the Loric charm that branded your ankles and tied you all together, and gave you each an amulet. He said you were special children, blessed children, by which I assume he meant you were getting a chance to escape. We originally planned to take the ship up and wait out the invasion, wait for our people to fight back and win. But that never happened…,” he says, trailing off. Then he sighs. “We stayed in orbit for a week. That was how long it took for the Mogadorians to strip Lorien of everything. After it became clear that there would be no going back, we set our course for Earth.”
“Why didn’t he cast a charm so that none of us could be killed, regardless of numbers?”
“There’s only so much that can be done, John. What you are talking about is invincibility. It’s not possible.”
I nod. The charm only does so much. If one of the Mogadorians tries killing us out of order, whatever damage it attempts is reversed and done to it instead. If one had tried shooting me in the head the bullet would have gone through its own head. But not anymore. Now if they catch me, I die.
I sit in silence for a moment thinking about it all. The airfield. Lorien’s lone remaining Elder who cast the charm on us, Loridas, now dead. The Elders were the first inhabitants of Lorien, those beings who made it what it was. There were ten of them in the beginning, and they contained all Legacies within them. So old, so long ago that they seem more of a myth than anything based in reality. Aside from Loridas, no one knew what had happened to the rest of them, if they were dead.
I try to remember what it was like orbiting the planet waiting to see if we could go back, but I don’t remember any of it. I can recall bits and pieces of the journey. The interior of the ship we traveled in was round and open aside from the two bathrooms that had doors. There were cots pushed to one side; the other side was devoted to exercise and games to keep us from getting too antsy. I can’t remember what the others look like. I can’t remember the games we played. I remember being bored, an entire year being spent inside an airship with seventeen others. There was a stuffed animal I slept with at night, and though I’m sure the memory is wrong, I seem to recall the animal playing back.
“Henri?”
