I slowly back away from the cell. Alone again.
That’s when I hear it. Something Malcolm and Sam are too caught up to hear: the sound of marching soldiers.
Staring out over the gangway, I see soldiers pouring in from multiple shadowed doorways, from every corner of the complex.
Worse still, these are not human soldiers. They’re Mogs.
“Guys,” I say, shaking Malcolm’s shoulder. “We have company.”
I act without thinking, pulling Malcolm away from the bars and shouting to Sam, “Stand in the center of your cell and cover your head!”
Sam is confused, unsure of what I’m about to do, but he’s smart enough to know we don’t have time for explanations: he quickly assumes a huddle in the middle of his cell.
I reach my hands through the bars, sending feelers out to the other side of the cell’s wall. I find the wall, the floor, then I sense the entire structure of the wall.
And then I blast.
The wall behind Sam crumbles, seismic shock ripping straight up its seams. But this whole structure is connected, and the impact sends aftershocks through the concrete floor beneath Sam. The floor of the cell juts out against the gangway, banging it so hard it almost buckles.
Sam tumbles forward and Malcolm and I are knocked hard against the gangway’s railing.
The Mogadorians are getting closer.
I turn back to the cell, where the dust is beginning to settle. There’s now an opening for Sam to get through the wall to the other side.
“Go!” I say. “Run!”
Sam picks himself off the floor, looks at me, then does as I tell him.
I look around. The floor beneath the cell has fissured, warping the cell bars enough that I think we can squeeze through them. I push Malcolm forward, but he struggles to get through the bars.
Mogadorians have completely swarmed the complex now—there must be at least thirty of them, with more coming, and they’re already making their way up the stairs to the gangway we’re standing on. We have thirty seconds, max.
Malcolm finally squeezes through into the cell, then turns to me.
“Hurry!” he pleads.
I look back at the approaching Mogadorian swarm. In the rear, in commander’s attire, I see Ivanick. The only person in this world I fear as much as my father.
The General said he had been promoted, that he was working in the Southwest. And here he is.
My blood runs cold.
I step to the bars, about to squeeze through. Then I stop.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm begs. “Adam?”
I realize I’m not going through those bars. If Malcolm and Sam are going to have a shot of escaping the Mogadorians, one of us is going to have to hold them off. They won’t stop chasing Malcolm and Sam unless someone
Besides, I don’t want to run from my own people anymore. I want to kill them.
“Go,” I say.
“What? Adam, no.”
“Go with your son. Now.”
I can see from Malcolm’s eyes, from the dawning horror in his face as he realizes what I’m saying, how much he cares about me.
But I also know he has a greater responsibility to his son than he has to me. After one last moment’s hesitation, he turns and disappears through the hole in the cell’s wall.
I turn back to the approaching Mogs. They’ve slowed down, but their swords are raised. They’re coming from both ends of the gangway, surrounding me.
I scan the complex. The stairways are full, the first floor is swarming with Mogs, and both routes down the gangway are blocked.
I have a choice: be captured, or go out swinging.
I aim my Legacy at the corner of the room behind one group of Mogadorians, and blast. The entire room shudders, and the gangway breaks free from the wall, knocking several Mogadorians to the ground below.
I grip onto the gangway as tight as I can. Whirling to the other side of the room, I blast again.
This time I almost flip over the gangway myself as the struts supporting it give out
