not to fall asleep; but after being up all night, I can’t help myself. Instantly, I feel a vision forming and hear the whispers. I feel myself floating up through the darkness, then, as if shot through a cannon, I blaze through a shadowy tunnel. Black turns to blue. Blue turns to green. The whispers follow me, growing weaker the farther down the tunnel I go. Suddenly, I’m jolted to a stop and everything falls silent. A gust of wind appears with a bright light, and when I look down, I realize I’m standing on the snowy peak of a mountain.
The view is spectacular, with mountains stretching for miles. There’s a deep green valley below me and a crystal blue lake. I’m drawn to the lake and begin descending when I see tiny bursts of light surrounding it. As if I’m wearing binoculars, my vision is suddenly magnified and I see hundreds of heavily armed Mogadorians shooting at four running figures.
My anger is immediate and colors blur as I run down the mountain. A few hundred yards from the lake, the sky growls above me with a black wall of clouds. Bolts of lightning crash into the valley and thunder roars. I’m knocked off my feet as lightning strikes all around me, and that’s when I see the glowing eye form and stare down from the clouds.
“Six!” I yell, but the thunder drowns me out. I know it’s her, but what is she doing here?
The clouds part, and someone drops into the valley. My vision magnifies again, and I see that I was right: Six stands furious between the advancing army of Mogs and two young girls and two older men. Her arms are above her head, and a steady sheet of rain falls.
“Six!” I yell again, and a pair of hands grabs my shoulders from behind.
My eyes snap open and I whip my head off the table. The lights in the interrogation room are on, and there’s a tall man with a round face standing above me. He’s wearing a dark suit with a badge clipped to his belt. In his hands is the white tablet.
“Chill out, kid. I’m Detective Will Murphy, FBI. How we doing today?”
“Never better,” I reply, dazed by the vision. Who was Six protecting?
“Good,” he says. The detective sits, a pen and legal pad in front of him. He carefully displays the tablet on the left side of the table.
“So,” he begins, slowly drawing it out. “Six what? What do you have six of?”
“What?”
“You were yelling the number six in your sleep. You want to tell me what that’s all about?”
“It’s my golf handicap,” I say. My mind tries to conjure up the faces of the two girls behind Six in the valley, but they’re fuzzy.
Detective Murphy chuckles. “Yeah, right. How about you and me have a little chat? Let’s start with the birth certificate you gave to Paradise High. It’s counterfeit, John Smith. In fact, we can’t find a single thing about you prior to you showing up in Paradise several months ago,” he says, squinting as though expecting some reply. “Your social security number belongs to a dead man in Florida.”
“Was there a question there?”
His grin turns into a smirk. “Why don’t you start by telling me your real name.”
“John Smith.”
“Right,” he says. “Where’s your father, John?”
“Dead.”
“How convenient.”
“Actually, it’s probably the most inconvenient thing that’s ever happened to me up until now.”
The detective writes something on the notepad. “Where are you originally from?”
“The planet Lorien, three hundred million miles away.”
“Must have been a long trip, John Smith.”
“Took almost a year. Next time I’m bringing a book.”
He drops his pencil on the table, interlocks his fingers behind his head, and leans back. Then he pushes forward again and holds up the tablet. “You want to tell me what this thing is?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. We found it in the woods.”
He holds it by its edge and whistles. “You found this in the woods? Where at in the woods?”
“Near a tree.”
“Are you going to be a wiseass with every question?”
“That depends, detective. Are you working for them?”
He sets the tablet back on the desktop. “Am I working for who?”
“The Morlocks,” I say, the first thing I remember from English class.
Detective Murphy smiles.
“You can smile, but they’ll probably be here soon,” I say.
“The Morlocks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like from
“That’s the one. That’s like our Bible.”
“And let me guess; you and your friend, Samuel Goode, you’re members of the Eloi?”
“The Loric, actually. But for our purposes today, the Eloi will be fine.”
The detective reaches into his pocket and slams my dagger on the table. I stare at its four-inch diamond blade as if I’ve never seen it before. I could easily kill this man just by moving my eyes from the blade to his neck, but I need to free Sam first. “What’s this for, John? Why would you need a knife like this?”
“I don’t know what knives like that are for, sir. Whittling?”
He picks up his notepad and pencil. “Why don’t you tell me what happened in Tennessee.”
“Never been,” I say. “I hear it’s a nice place, though. Maybe I’ll visit when I’m out of here, take a tour, see the sites. Any suggestions?”
He nods, tosses the notepad onto the table, and then launches the pencil at me. I deflect it without lifting a finger, sending it bouncing against the wall; but the detective doesn’t notice, and leaves through the steel door with the tablet and my dagger.
Soon I’m shoved back into my old cell. I have to get out of here.
“Sam?” I yell.
The guard who’s been sitting outside my cell jumps off his chair and swings the nightstick at my fingers. I let go of the bars just before they’re crushed.
“Shut up!” he orders, pointing his nightstick at me.
“You think I’m afraid of you?” I ask. Getting him inside my cell sounds like a pretty good option.
“I could give a damn, peewee. But if you keep it up, you’re gonna regret it real fast.”
“You couldn’t hit me if you tried; I’m too quick and you’re too fat.”
The guard chuckles. “Why don’t you just sit back on your bed and shut your mouth, huh?”
“You know I can kill you any time I want to, right? Without even lifting a finger.”
“Oh yeah?” he replies. The guard steps forward. His breath smells rancid, like stale coffee. “What’s stopping you then?”
“Apathy and a broken heart,” I say. “Both of those will go away eventually, though, and that’s when I’ll just get up and leave.”
“I can hardly wait, Houdini,” he says.
I’m extremely close to taunting him inside, and as soon as he unlocks the door, Sam and I are as good as free.
“You know who you look like?” I ask.
“Tell me,” he says.
I turn around and bend over.
“That’s it, punk!” The guard reaches for a control panel on the wall, and as he’s stomping towards the door of my cell, an earsplitting blast rattles the entire jail. The guard stumbles into the bars and smacks his forehead, falling to his knees. I drop and instinctively roll beneath the bed. Pandemonium erupts-yells and gunshots, clanking metal, and loud bangs. An alarm goes off, and a blue light flashes in the corridor.
I roll onto my back and twist my hands to get a firm grip on the chain binding my wrists. While using my legs as leverage, I straighten myself and snap the chain binding my hands and feet in two. I use telekinesis to unlock my cuffs and drop them to the floor. I do the same with the pair around my ankles.
