[Lorien Legacies 01.0] I Am Number Four Read online

  I Am Number Four

  Pittacus Lore

  Contents

  Chapter One

  IN THE BEGINNING THERE WERE NINE OF US. We left…

  Chapter Two

  I STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DRIVE AND STARE…

  Chapter Three

  WE PULL OFF FOR FOOD AND GAS AND NEW PHONES.

  Chapter Four

  ANOTHER NEW IDENTITY, ANOTHER NEW SCHOOL. I’ve lost track of…

  Chapter Five

  I CRAWL TO THE DOOR AND UNLOCK IT. IT SWINGS…

  Chapter Six

  I WALK INSIDE AND LIE ON THE BARE MATTRESS in…

  Chapter Seven

  I WAKE BEFORE THE ALARM. THE HOUSE IS COOL and…

  Chapter Eight

  HENRI IS PARKED EXACTLY WHERE HE SAID HE would be.

  Chapter Nine

  EVERY MUSCLE IN MY BODY IS FLEXED, EVERYTHING tense. Henri…

  Chapter Ten

  BERNIE KOSAR IS SCRATCHING AT MY BEDROOM door when I…

  Chapter Eleven

  IMAGES COME TO ME, AT RANDOM TIMES, USUALLY when I…

  Chapter Twelve

  HENRI AND I GO INTO TOWN ON SATURDAY FOR the…

  Chapter Thirteen

  KIDS RUNNING, SCREAMING, ON SLIDES AND jungle gyms. Every kid…

  Chapter Fourteen

  KEVIN STEPS FROM THE TREES, DRESSED AS A mummy. He’s…

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE FIRST SNOWFALL COMES TWO WEEKS LATER. A slight dusting,…

  Chapter Sixteen

  SAM IS AVOIDING ME. AT SCHOOL HE SEEMS TO disappear…

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE NEXT DAY I WAKE EARLIER THAN NORMAL, crawl out…

  Chapter Eighteen

  AFTER DEBATING IT FOR SEVERAL HOURS, Henri wakes up the…

  Chapter Nineteen

  WHILE I WAIT FOR SAM I WALK THROUGH THE house…

  Chapter Twenty

  WE DRIVE SOUTH UNTIL, NESTLED IN THE FOOTHILLS of the…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  EVERYTHING SLOWS. I SEE A SECOND PERSON at the top…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  WINTER COMES EARLY AND WITH FULL FORCE to Paradise, Ohio.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE DAY HAS GROWN DARK. THE WARM NIGHT carries a…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  FOR ONCE, SINCE WE ARRIVED IN OHIO, THINGS seem to…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  AND THEN THE WEATHER WARMS. BRISK WINDS, bitter cold, and…

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  NOBODY SPEAKS. ALL EYES ARE WIDE-OPEN, staring up in shock.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I CAN’T SLEEP. I LIE IN BED STARING THROUGH the…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “ARE YOU OKAY, MR. SMITH?” THE PRINCIPAL asks. I look up…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “HOW DID YOU KNOW IT WAS ME?” I ASK.

  Chapter Thirty

  WIND FROM THE OPEN WINDOW RUSHES INTO the home economics…

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ANOTHER ROAR CUTS THROUGH THE NIGHT AIR. through the walls…

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  AFTER ALL THIS TIME, ONLY NOW DO I UNDERSTAND. The…

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THE HAZY IMAGE SHARPENS. THROUGH THE exhaustion and pain and…

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  IMAGES FLICKER, EACH ONE BRINGING ITS own sorrow or its…

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE EVENTS IN THIS BOOK ARE REAL.

  NAMES AND PLACES HAVE BEEN CHANGED

  TO PROTECT THE LORIEN SIX,

  WHO REMAIN IN HIDING.

  TAKE THIS AS YOUR FIRST WARNING.

  OTHER CIVILIZATIONS DO EXIST.

  SOME OF THEM SEEK TO DESTROY YOU.

  THE DOOR STARTS SHAKING. IT’S A FLIMSY THING made of bamboo shoots held together with tattered lengths of twine. The shake is subtle and stops almost immediately. They lift their heads to listen, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fifty-year-old man, who everyone thinks is his father but who was born near a different jungle on a different planet hundreds of lightyears away. They are lying shirtless on opposite sides of the hut, a mosquito net over each cot. They hear a distant crash, like the sound of an animal breaking the branch of a tree, but in this case, it sounds like the entire tree has been broken.

  “What was that?” the boy asks.

  “Shh,” the man replies.

  They hear the chirp of insects, nothing more. The man brings his legs over the side of the cot when the shake starts again. A longer, firmer shake, and another crash, this time closer. The man gets to his feet and walks slowly to the door. Silence. The man takes a deep breath as he inches his hand to the latch. The boy sits up.

  “No,” the man whispers, and in that instant the blade of a sword, long and gleaming, made of a shining white metal that is not found on Earth, comes through the door and sinks deeply into the man’s chest. It protrudes six inches out through his back, and is quickly pulled free. The man grunts. The boy gasps. The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: “Run.” He falls lifeless to the floor.

  The boy leaps from the cot, bursts through the rear wall. He doesn’t bother with the door or a window; he literally runs through the wall, which breaks apart as if it’s paper, though it’s made of strong, hard African mahogany. He tears into the Congo night, leaps over trees, sprints at a speed somewhere around sixty miles per hour. His sight and hearing are beyond human. He dodges trees, rips through snarled vines, leaps small streams with a single step. Heavy footsteps are close behind him, getting closer every second. His pursuers also have gifts. And they have something with them. Something he has only heard hints of, something he never believed he would see on Earth.

  The crashing nears. The boy hears a low, intense roar. He knows whatever is behind him is picking up speed. He sees a break in the jungle up ahead. When he reaches it, he sees a huge ravine, three hundred feet across and three hundred feet down, with a river at the bottom. The river’s bank is covered with huge boulders. Boulders that would break him apart if he fell on them. His only chance is to get across the ravine. He’ll have a short running start, and one chance. One chance to save his own life. Even for him, or for any of the others on Earth like him, it’s a near impossible leap. Going back, or going down, or trying to fight them means certain death. He has one shot.

  There’s a deafening roar behind him. They’re twenty, thirty feet away. He takes five steps back and runs—and just before the ledge, he takes off and starts flying across the ravine. He’s in the air three or four seconds. He screams, his arms outstretched in front of him, waiting for either safety or the end. He hits the ground and tumbles forward, stopping at the base of a mammoth tree. He smiles. He can’t believe he made it, that he’s going to survive. Not wanting them to see him, and knowing he needs to get farther away from them, he stands. He’ll have to keep running.

  He turns towards the jungle. As he does, a huge hand wraps itself around his throat. He is lifted off the ground. He struggles, kicks, tries to pull away, but knows it’s futile, that it’s over. He should have expected that they’d be on both sides, that once they found him, there would be no escape. The Mogadorian lifts him so that he can see the boy’s chest, see the amulet that is hanging around his neck, the amulet that only he and his kind can wear. He tears it off and puts it somewhere inside the long black cloak he is wearing, and when his hand emerges it is holding the gleaming white metal sword. The boy looks into the Mogadorian’s deep, wide, emotionless black eyes, and he speaks.

  “The Legacies live. They will find each other,
and when they’re ready, they’re going to destroy you.”

  The Mogadarian laughs, a nasty, mocking laugh. It raises the sword, the only weapon in the universe that can break the charm that until today protected the boy, and still protects the others. The blade ignites in a silver flame as it points to the sky, as if it’s coming alive, sensing its mission and grimacing in anticipation. And as it falls, an arc of light speeding through the blackness of the jungle, the boy still believes that some part of him will survive, and some part of him will make it home. He closes his eyes just before the sword strikes. And then it is over.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IN THE BEGINNING THERE WERE NINE OF US. We left when we were young, almost too young to remember.

  Almost.

  I am told the ground shook, that the skies were full of light and explosions. We were in that two-week period of the year when both moons hang on opposite sides of the horizon. It was a time of celebration, and the explosions were at first mistaken for fireworks. They were not. It was warm, a soft wind blew in from off the water. I am always told the weather: it was warm. There was a soft wind. I’ve never understood why that matters.

  What I remember most vividly is the way my grandmother looked that day. She was frantic, and sad. There were tears in her eyes. My grandfather stood just over her shoulder. I remember the way his glasses gathered the light from the sky. There were hugs. There were words said by each of them. I don’t remember what they were. Nothing haunts me more.

  It took a year to get here. I was five when we arrived. We were to assimilate ourselves into the culture before returning to Lorien when it could again sustain life. The nine of us had to scatter, and go our own ways. For how long, nobody knew. We still don’t. None of them know where I am, and I don’t know where they are, or what they look like now. That is how we protect ourselves because of the charm that was placed upon us when we left, a charm guaranteeing that we can only be killed in the order of our numbers, so long as we stay apart. If we come together, then the charm is broken.

  When one of us is found and killed, a circular scar wraps around the right ankle of those still alive. And residing on our left ankle, formed when the Loric charm was first cast, is a small scar identical to the amulet each of us wears. The circular scars are another part of the charm. A warning system so that we know where we stand with each other, and so that we know when they’ll be coming for us next. The first scar came when I was nine years old. It woke me from my sleep, burning itself into my flesh. We were living in Arizona, in a small border town near Mexico. I woke screaming in the middle of the night, in agony, terrified as the scar seared itself into my flesh. It was the first sign that the Mogadorians had finally found us on Earth, and the first sign that we were in danger. Until the scar showed up, I had almost convinced myself that my memories were wrong, that what Henri told me was wrong. I wanted to be a normal kid living a normal life, but I knew then, beyond any doubt or discussion, that I wasn’t. We moved to Minnesota the next day.

  The second scar came when I was twelve. I was in school, in Colorado, participating in a spelling bee. As soon as the pain started I knew what was happening, what had happened to Number Two. The pain was excruciating, but bearable this time. I would have stayed on the stage, but the heat lit my sock on fire. The teacher who was conducting the bee sprayed me with a fire extinguisher and rushed me to the hospital. The doctor in the ER found the first scar and called the police. When Henri showed, they threatened to arrest him for child abuse. But because he hadn’t been anywhere near me when the second scar came, they had to let him go. We got in the car and drove away, this time to Maine. We left everything we had except for the Loric Chest that Henri brought along on every move. All twenty-one of them to date.

  The third scar appeared an hour ago. I was sitting on a pontoon boat. The boat belonged to the parents of the most popular kid at my school, and unbeknownst to them, he was having a party on it. I had never been invited to any of the parties at my school before. I had always, because I knew we might leave at any minute, kept to myself. But it had been quiet for two years. Henri hadn’t seen anything in the news that might lead the Mogadorians to one of us, or might alert us to them. So I made a couple friends. And one of them introduced me to the kid who was having the party. Everyone met at a dock. There were three coolers, some music, girls I had admired from afar but never spoken to, even though I wanted to. We pulled out from the dock and went half a mile into the Gulf of Mexico. I was sitting on the edge of the pontoon with my feet in the water, talking to a cute, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl named Tara, when I felt it coming. The water around my leg started boiling, and my lower leg started glowing where the scar was imbedding itself. The third of the Lorien symbols, the third warning. Tara started screaming and people started crowding around me. I knew there was no way to explain it. And I knew we would have to leave immediately.

  The stakes were higher now. They had found Number Three, wherever he or she was, and Number Three was dead. So I calmed Tara down and kissed her on the cheek and told her it was nice to meet her and that I hoped she had a long beautiful life. I dove off the side of the boat and started swimming, underwater the entire time, except for one breath about halfway there, as fast as I could until I reached the shore. I ran along the side of the highway, just inside of the tree line, moving at speeds as fast as any of the cars. When I got home, Henri was at the bank of scanners and monitors that he used to research news around the world, and police activity in our area. He knew without me saying a word, though he did lift my soaking pants to see the scars.

  In the beginning we were a group of nine.

  Three are gone, dead.

  There are six of us left.

  They are hunting us, and they won’t stop until they’ve killed us all.

  I am Number Four.

  I know that I am next.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DRIVE AND STARE up at the house. It is light pink, almost like cake frosting, sitting ten feet above the ground on wooden stilts. A palm tree sways in the front. In the back of the house a pier extends twenty yards into the Gulf of Mexico. If the house were a mile to the south, the pier would be in the Atlantic Ocean.

  Henri walks out of the house carrying the last of the boxes, some of which were never unpacked from our last move. He locks the door, then leaves the keys in the mail slot beside it. It is two o’clock in the morning. He is wearing khaki shorts and a black polo. He is very tan, with an unshaven face that seems downcast. He is also sad to be leaving. He tosses the final boxes into the back of the truck with the rest of our things.

  “That’s it,” he says.

  I nod. We stand and stare up at the house and listen to the wind come through the palm fronds. I am holding a bag of celery in my hand.

  “I’ll miss this place,” I say. “Even more than the others.”

  “Me too.”

  “Time for the burn?”

  “Yes. You want to do it, or you want me to?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Henri pulls out his wallet and drops it on the ground. I pull out mine and do the same. He walks to our truck and comes back with passports, birth certificates, social security cards, checkbooks, credit cards and bank cards, and drops them on the ground. All of the documents and materials related to our identities here, all of them forged and manufactured. I grab from the truck a small gas can we keep for emergencies. I pour the gas over the small pile. My current name is Daniel Jones. My story is that I grew up in California and moved here because of my dad’s job as a computer programmer. Daniel Jones is about to disappear. I light a match and drop it, and the pile ignites. Another one of my lives, gone. As we always do, Henri and I stand and watch the fire. Bye, Daniel, I think, it was nice knowing you. When the fire burns down, Henri looks over at me.

  “We gotta go.”

  “I know.”

  “These islands were never safe. They’re too hard to leave quickly, too hard to escape from. It was foo
lish of us to come here.”

  I nod. He is right, and I know it. But I’m still reluctant to leave. We came here because I wanted to, and for the first time, Henri let me choose where we were going. We’ve been here nine months, and it’s the longest we have stayed in any one place since leaving Lorien. I’ll miss the sun and the warmth. I’ll miss the gecko that watched from the wall each morning as I ate breakfast. Though there are literally millions of geckos in south Florida, I swear this one follows me to school and seems to be everywhere I am. I’ll miss the thunderstorms that seem to come from out of nowhere, the way everything is still and quiet in the early-morning hours before the terns arrive. I’ll miss the dolphins that sometimes feed when the sun sets. I’ll even miss the smell of sulfur from the rotting seaweed at the base of the shore, the way that it fills the house and penetrates our dreams while we sleep.

  “Get rid of the celery and I’ll wait in the truck,” Henri says. “Then it’s time.”

  I enter a thicket of trees off to the right of the truck. There are three Key deer already waiting. I dump the bag of celery out at their feet and crouch down and pet each of them in turn. They allow me to, having long gotten over their skittishness. One of them raises his head and looks at me. Dark, blank eyes staring back. It almost feels as though he passes something to me. A shudder runs up my spine. He drops his head and continues eating.

  “Good luck, little friends,” I say, and walk to the truck and climb into the passenger seat.