“What did you do?” Six asked. She felt tingly all over, a little light-headed, but better than she remembered feeling in days.
“I think we killed the thing in your head,” Nine answered. “Or at least slowed it down long enough for you to come back. How do you feel?”
“Weird,” Six said, sitting up. “But actually pretty good.”
“Do something,” Nine said. “You know, with your Legacies.”
Six looked around. She had no idea where they were at first. Then she remembered—the show. They were backstage, surrounded by props and pieces of equipment. She focused on one of them, a wooden box about three feet high and just as wide. She lifted it up easily with her telekinesis, then set it down again. Then she tried going invisible. She barely had to even think about it before she blinked out. When she reappeared again she was smiling. “Looks like I’m back,” she said.
Then she remembered other things. “What happened to Eleni?” she asked. “And that—whatever it was.”
“Still out there somewhere,” Nine said. “We can deal with her next. I was more concerned about you.”
“Aww,” Six said. “You care.”
Nine snorted. “Hardly.”
Six touched her head. “It’s still in there,” she said.
“They’ll take it out back at HGA,” Nine said. “The one in Sam, too.”
“You have him?” Six said hopefully.
Nine shook his head. “Nemo and Max are looking into it,” he said. “But I’m not sure he’s even here. He could be anywhere.”
Six’s elation at having her Legacies back faded a little.
“Don’t worry,” Nine said. “We’ll find him.”
Six nodded. “What’s going on here anyway? What are the Mogs doing? And how did they manage it? Those things weren’t exactly tiny. Someone had to have helped them set this up.”
“Lexa did some snooping after you called us,” Nine said. “Turns out the Saturn Hotel is owned by one of Helena Armbruster’s companies.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“My guess is they’ve been planning this for a while,” Nine continued. “Maybe with the help of someone inside Cirque des Étoiles.”
“But those things are huge,” Six said. “Where have they been keeping them?”
Nine shook his head. “How about we ask them when we catch them?” he said. “Speaking of that, are you up for getting going?”
He stood and offered Six his hand. She allowed him to help her to her feet.
“How do you feel?”
“Are you going to ask me that every five minutes, Dad?” Six said.
“Keep that attitude and there’ll be no ice cream for you, little lady,” Nine said, shaking his finger at her.
“I feel fine,” Six said. “Where to now?”
“We should probably follow the fire and the screaming,” Nine said.
They walked back into the arena. In the time that they’d been backstage, the fire department had arrived and was putting out the dozen or more fires blazing around the place. Seeing Six and Nine, one of the firefighters trotted over.
“You can’t be in here,” she said. Then she looked again. “Hey—you’re the Garde! What are you doing in here?”
“Same thing you are,” Nine said. “Trying to get this under control.”
“What the hell is going on?” the woman asked. “People are saying there are monsters running loose.”
“Animatronics,” Nine said. “Built for the show. Something went wrong.”
The woman looked doubtful. She nodded at the dead beast lying by the ruins of the stage. The metal pole still jutted from its body. Sticky black blood oozed from the wound. “That looks pretty real,” she said.
“Hydraulic fluid,” Nine said smoothly. “And don’t touch it. It could be corrosive.”
The firefighter ignored the comment. “There are bodies,” she said, indicating several telltale black bags lying off to one side.
Nine and Six looked at one another.
“Listen,” Six said. “We’re going to contain this. For now, all you know is that those things are robots built for the show. Something went wrong with them and some people got hurt. Okay?”
The woman looked doubtful. She started to say something.
“We’ll take care of it,” Six said quickly. “I promise.”
The firefighter nodded. “Animatronic space monsters,” she said. “You got it.”
“Thank you,” said Six.
“By the way, some of those injured people are pretty famous,” the woman said. “It won’t be long before someone tweets or posts about this to their millions of followers. So you should probably have a plan.”
“I always do,” Nine said, giving the woman his most charming grin.
The woman looked at Six, obviously not enraptured by Nine’s personality.
“We’ll take care of it,” Six said again.
The woman went back to work, ordering the various crews around the arena. Six and Nine left her to do her job, walking into the tunnel connecting the arena to the hotel. It too was in ruins.
Nine took out a phone and started typing.
“What are you doing?” Six asked.
“Looking at Instagram,” he said. “Just kidding. I’m letting Lexa know that she needs to start doing damage control. We can’t have anyone knowing that a bunch of monsters are trying to destroy Las Vegas. And we don’t want a mass panic about the Mogadorians.”
“It’s going to be kind of hard to cover this up,” Six said as they reached the lobby. She pointed outside. “Those monsters aren’t exactly tiny.”
Nine looked. Three creatures were out there. A throng of people had gathered around, and lights from police cruisers flashed red and blue.
“Shit,” Six said. “There’s a news van.”
They walked towards the doors and went outside. Six expected to find people in a panic, but was surprised to discover that many of them were actually doing things like taking video of the three creatures with their phones and snapping photos of themselves or their friends standing with the monsters in the backgrounds. The beasts themselves were oddly still. They looked around, occasionally roaring and rearing up on their back legs to claw at the sky, but they weren’t attacking.
“This is weird,” Six said.
“They’re waiting,” Nine said.
“For what?”
“I’m guessing a signal of some kind,” Nine said. “It’s like they’re trying to draw as big a crowd as possible here before starting the next attack.”
Six understood. “They want witnesses,” she said. “An audience.”
“Dude, those things are awesome,” a young man standing next to them said to his friend. “They look totally real.”
“I heard it’s part of a promo for the new Revengers movie,” the friend said.
“You guys really need to get out of here,” Six said.
The boys looked at her. Their faces lit up. “You’re Six!” one of them said. His eyes shifted to Nine. “And you’re . . . that other dude.”