“So,” Dad begins casually, like he’s asking me how my day was at school. “How’d you end up being best friends with one of the Garde?”
“His name’s John,” I reply. “His Cêpan actually came to Paradise looking for you. We just met at school and had, uh, some mutual friends.”
I look out the window, watching Texas fly by. It’s been awhile since I thought of high school, of Mark James, of the manure in my locker and that psychotic hayride. It’s hard to believe I once considered Mark and his crew the most dangerous people in my world. I laugh softly and dad glances over at me.
“Tell me everything, Sam. I feel like I’ve missed so much.”
So I do. I begin with meeting John at school, jump to the battle on the football field, and finish with our time on the run and my capture. I have tons of questions for my dad, but it actually feels really good to talk. It’s not just that I spent weeks alone in that cell; I’ve missed confiding to my father.
It’s late when we pull up to a motel on the outskirts of town. Even though Dad and I are both filthy—we look like we just tunneled out of prison, which we pretty much did—the tired old man renting rooms doesn’t ask us any questions.
Our room is on the second floor with a view of the neglected motel pool, filled with equal parts murky brown water, dead leaves and fast food wrappers. Before heading up, we stop back at the car to grab some gear. My dad pulls a backpack out of the trunk and hands it to me.
“This was Adam’s stuff,” he begins awkwardly. “There should be some clean clothes in there.”
“Thanks,” I reply, studying my father. There’s a worried look on his face. “I’ll keep it safe for him.”
My dad nods, but I can tell that he’s thinking the worst. He’s worried about this Mogadorian guy and, suddenly, I’m wondering if he worried this much about me when he was away all those years.
With a grunt, I shoulder Adam’s pack and head towards the motel room. Apparently, there was a bond between my father and Adam that I can’t really understand, and part of me starts to feel a little jealous. But then my dad puts his hand on my shoulder as we walk and I’m reminded just how long I’ve been searching for him, how he saved me and how he left Adam behind to do it. He abandoned the Mogadorian who has somehow developed a Legacy to save me. I put aside my petty thoughts and try to think rationally about what it all means.
“How did you meet Adam?” I ask as he unlocks our door.
“He rescued me. The Mogadorians were holding me prisoner. Experimenting on me.”
The motel room is small and about as grungy as I expected. A cockroach skitters out of sight beneath the bed when we turn on the light. The place smells like mildew. There’s a small bathroom and, even though the tub is dotted by islands of mold, I’m looking forward to taking a shower. Compared to washing myself with ice-cold water from a metal bucket, this place is paradise.
“What kind of experiments?”
My dad sits down on the foot of the bed. I sit next to him and together we stare at our reflections in the smudged hotel mirror. We make quite the pair—both of us filthy and gaunt from our recent imprisonments. Father and son.
“They were trying to get into my mind. To tear out anything useful I might know about the Garde.”
“Because you were one of the ones who met the Garde when they came to Earth, right? We found your bunker in the backyard. I pieced some stuff together.”
“Greeters,” my dad says sadly. “We met the Loric when they landed, helped them to get on their feet and on the run. Those nine children, all of them so frightened. And yet, that ship landing, it was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen.”
I smile, thinking back to the first time I saw John use his Legacies. It was like a curtain being pulled back revealing a universe of possibility. All the nerdy alien books I’d read, that I’d so badly wanted to be true—suddenly, they were.
“We proved easier to hunt than the Garde, I suppose. We had families. Lives that couldn’t just be uprooted. The Mogadorians found us.”
“What happened to the others?”
My dad’s hands shake a bit. He sighs. “They were all killed, Sam. I’m the last one.”
I stare in the mirror at the haunted look on his face. Imprisoned by the Mogs for all these years; I feel bad asking him to go back to what must be horrible memories.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No,” he replies, resolute, “you deserve to know why I wasn’t—why I wasn’t in your life as much as I should’ve been.”
My dad’s face is scrunched up like he’s trying to remember something. I let him take his time, leaning down to unlace my shoes. My toes are swollen from where I kicked that Mog in the face. I start rubbing them gently, making sure there aren’t any bones broken.
“They were trying to rip things out of our memories. Anything that might help them hunt the Garde.” He pushes a hand through his hair, rubbing his scalp. “What they did to me . . . it left gaps. There are things I don’t remember. There are important things—things that I know I should remember, but can’t.”
I pat him on the back. “We’ll find the Garde and maybe they’ll, I don’t know, have some way to reverse what the Mogs did to you.”
“Optimism,” my dad says, smiling at me. “It’s been so long since I remember feeling that.”
My dad stands up and grabs his backpack. He pulls out one of those cheap-looking plastic cell phones they sell over the counter at gas stations and looks forlornly down at the screen.
“Adam has this number,” my dad says. “He should’ve called by now to check in.”
“It was crazy back there. Maybe he lost his phone.”
My dad’s already punching in a number. He holds the phone up to his ear, listening. After a few seconds of silence, he hangs up.
“Nothing,” he says, sitting back down. “I think I got that boy killed tonight, Sam.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I TAKE WHAT HAS TO BE THE GREATEST SHOWER of my life in that grungy motel bathroom. Even the dark mold that spreads from the drain to the curled edges of the rubber bath mat can’t dampen the experience. The hot water feels amazing, washing away weeks of Mogadorian captivity.
After wiping fog off the cracked bathroom mirror, I take a long look at my reflection. My ribs show, my stomach muscles pronounced enough to give me a starving person’s six pack. I have dark circles under my eyes and my hair is grown out more than it’s ever been.
So, this is what a human freedom fighter looks like.
I pull on a T-shirt and jeans that I found in Adam’s backpack; I have to use the very last notch on the belt to secure the jeans and they still hang loose around my hips. My stomach growls and I pause to wonder what kind of room service a sleazy motel like this might have. I bet the old man behind the front desk would be happy to send over a grilled-cheese-and-cigarette-butt sandwich.
Back in the room, my dad has set up some of his equipment. There’s a laptop open on the bed, a program scanning news headlines running. He’s already trying to figure out our next move. It’s late, well past midnight, and I haven’t slept. Still, badly as I want to hook up with the Garde, I was hoping our next move could be a stack of pancakes at the nearest diner.