“Give me your cell phone,” I say.
“I don’t have one.”
I walk to the dummy and remove the noose from around its neck.
“Come on, man,” he pleads.
“Shut up. You’ve kidnapped my friend. You’re holding him against his will. You’re lucky all I’m doing is tying you up.”
I pull his arms behind him and tie the rope tightly around them, then tie him to one of the chairs. I don’t think that it will hold him for very long. Then I duct-tape his mouth shut so that he can’t yell and I sweep down the stairs and rip the Steelers banner from the wall, revealing a black door that is locked. I unlock it as I did the other. A set of wooden stairs leads down to total darkness.
The smell of mildew reaches my nose. I flip the light switch on and begin walking down, slowly, terrified at what I might find. The rafters are littered with cobwebs. I reach the bottom and immediately feel the presence of somebody else, somebody there with me. I stiffen, take a deep breath, and then turn.
There, in the corner of the basement, sits Henri.
“Henri!”
He is squinting from the light, his eyes adjusting. A length of duct tape is across his mouth. His hands are bound behind him, his ankles tied to the legs of the chair in which he is sitting. His hair is tousled, and down the right side of his face is a line of dried blood that looks almost black. The sight of it fills me with rage.
I rush over to him and rip the piece of tape from his mouth. He takes a deep breath.
“Thank God,” he says. His voice is weak. “You were right, John. It was foolish to come here. I’m sorry. I should have listened.”
“Shh,” I say.
I bend down and begin untying his ankles. He smells like urine.
“I was ambushed.”
“How many are there?” I ask.
“Three.”
“I’ve tied one of them up upstairs,” I say.
I free his ankles. He stretches his legs out and sighs with relief.
“I’ve been in this damn chair all day.”
I begin working his hands free.
“How in the hell did you get here?” he asks.
“Sam and I came together. We drove down.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I had no other way.”
“What did you drive?”
“His father’s old truck.”
Henri is silent a minute while he ponders what that means.
“He doesn’t know anything,” I say. “I told him aliens are a hobby of yours, nothing more.”
He nods. “Well, I’m happy you made it. Where is he now?”
“Trailing one of them. I don’t know where they went.”
The creak of a floorboard comes from above us. I stand, Henri’s hands only halfway untied.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper.
We both watch the door with our breaths held. A foot steps onto the top stair, and then a second, and all at once the large man I passed earlier, the one Sam was trailing, comes into view.
“The party’s over, fellas,” he says. He is holding a gun aimed at my face. “Now, step away.”
I hold my hands up in front of me and take a step back. I think of using my powers to pull the gun away, but what if I somehow cause it to fire by accident? I’m not confident in my abilities just yet. It’s too risky.
“They told us you might be coming. That you would look like humans. That you were the real enemy,” the man says.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“They’re delusional,” Henri says. “They think we’re the enemy.”
“Shut up!” the man screams.
He takes three steps towards me. Then he moves the gun from me and fixes it straight on Henri.
“One false move by you and he gets it. You understand?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Now, catch this,” he says. He pulls down a roll of duct tape from the shelf beside him and throws it towards me. As it moves through the air, I stop it, suspended about eight feet off the ground, halfway between us. I start spinning it very quickly. The man stares at it, confused.
“What the…”
While he’s distracted, I move my arm towards him with a throwing motion. The roll of tape flies back and slams him in the nose. Blood starts gushing, and as he reaches for it he drops the gun, which hits the ground and goes off. I point my hand towards the bullet and I make it stop, and behind me I hear Henri laugh. I move the bullet so that it hangs in front of the man’s face.
“Hey, fat boy,” I say.
He opens his eyes and sees the bullet in the air in front of his face.
“You’re gonna need to bring more.”
I let the bullet fall to the ground at his feet. He turns to run, but I bring him back across the room and slam him against a large support pole. It knocks him out and he slumps to the floor. I grab the tape and tie him to the pole. After I’m sure he’s secured, I turn to Henri and finish freeing him.
“John, I think that’s the best surprise I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he says in a whisper, such relief in his voice that I think tears might come next.
I smile proudly. “Thanks. It showed at dinner.”
“Sorry I missed it.”
“I told them you were tied up.”
He smiles.
“Thank God the Legacy came,” he says, and I realize that the stress of my Legacies forming—or the fear of them not forming—took a far greater toll on Henri than I imagined.
“So what happened to you?” I ask.
“I knocked on the door. All three of them were home. When I walked in one of them clubbed me in the back of the head. Then I woke up in this chair.” He shakes his head and says a long string of words in Loric that I know are curses. I finish untying him and he stands and stretches his legs.
“We need to get out of here,” he says.
“We have to find Sam.”
And then we hear him.
“John. You down there?”
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. I watch 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,
