The Search for Sam

But I know that’s not possible.

I know what we’re doing is what must be done.

We’re at the fenced edge of the Dulce base. We parked out in the desert at dusk and crossed the still hot sands to the electrified perimeter fence, which is a quarter mile or so from the compound itself. Malcolm explained that he knew how to find the base from his alien-conspiracy days, long before he’d known anything about Mogadorians or Loric, when his awareness of extraterrestrials was limited to conspiracy newsletters and countless viewings of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Dulce base was a lightning rod for crazed speculation about governmental cover-ups of alien life. The irony, he said, is that all that speculation must have predated any actual human contact with the real extraterrestrials by several years. Until recently, it probably was just a military base. “Guess me and my wacko friends were ahead of our time,” he joked.

We crouch low to the ground, figuring there are surveillance cameras surrounding the fence. We’ve approached at the rear edge of the compound, far away from the base’s entrance. Malcolm thinks security might be a little more diffuse at this end of the base.

For all of Malcolm’s knowledge from old newsletters, not to mention the tiny bit of preparatory research we did at an internet cafe en route, there’s only so much you can find out about a secret government base through public channels. We’re mostly going in blind.

Malcolm pulls out a crappy pair of binoculars we bought at a truck stop and scans the facility.

After a moment he taps me, pointing out a watchtower a few hundred yards down the fence. Squinting through the evening’s half-light, I can see a generator a few paces off from the watchtower. We can only hope that generator powers the fence. If I can hit it with my Legacy, it’s our one chance of getting inside.

“Tower’s got to be three hundred yards … no, four hundred yards away.”

“Yeah,” I say. I start pounding my fist into my hand, a little pre-Legacy ritual I picked up. It doesn’t make any sense that warming up my hands would help with my accuracy—the power comes from deep inside me, from my core, not from my hands—but it’s become habit by now.

“That’s like three regulation football fields, Adam. We never trained for that.”

“I got it,” I say, confidently.

I don’t actually feel confident, but figure acting confident can only help my odds.

I reach deep into myself, eyes focused tight on the area encompassing the watchtower and generator.

The trick, I’ve discovered, is anger. And it has to be my own. The first few weeks I was able to channel One’s rage at losing Hilde to access my Legacy, but its efficacy quickly waned. I needed to find my own rage.

So now I think of Kelly, too ashamed of me to even speak to me. I think of my mother, leaving me to rot in the Mog lab. I think of Ivanick, his hands at my back, pushing me down the ravine. Mostly, I think of my father: delivering the killing blow to Hannu. Sentencing me to death. And a million other, smaller injustices, perpetrated over my entire life.

I hate them. I hate everything they stand for.

And then I feel it, my power, my rage, coursing below the ground, in search of the watchtower. Like a giant stone hand, its fingers curl upward, fondling the earth, feeling.

There it is.

I let it rip.

The ground beneath me and Malcolm remains still, but I can see the watchtower rumble, erupting with tremendous force. The generator, sundered from the ground, shoots sparks. Then the tower collapses.

Malcolm turns to me, shocked, amazed. Proud.

He smiles. “Touchdown,” he says.

CHAPTER 14

We creep over the fence, no longer electrified. We know that the generator’s explosion and the collapse of the watchtower must’ve attracted the attention of the base’s perimeter guards, and in fact we’re banking on that to be able to run aboveground without interference. If they’re too distracted by the explosion to maintain sufficient ground cover along our path, we’ve got a shot.

Our optimism pays off. We make it close to the compound without anyone seeing us. Most of the guards have been drawn to the watchtower; if they’re even aware of a breach in their perimeter, they probably think it’s all the way over there.

Then I stop. On the other side of the sprawling compound, over the horizon, there is chaos. Noise. Explosions. Smoke. Weaponry firing.

I turn to Malcolm. “Weapons testing?” I ask.

Malcolm shakes his head.