The Revenge of Seven Read online

  ‘I’ll heal you if that happens,’ Marina offers over her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Adam says. He turns to look up at the temple, his hands on his hips. He looks nervous. ‘Why would you even want me to go in there? It’s a Loric place.’

  ‘Like that Phiri bitch said, you’re part Garde now,’ I explain. ‘You’re not Loric, but you’ve got Legacies.’

  ‘I’ve got one Legacy,’ Adam clarifies. ‘And it wasn’t even mine to start with. I – I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to have it.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. If I understood what Malcolm told us – and I guess that’s maybe a big if – there’s a living piece of Lorien in that temple. That’s where our Legacies come from. Which means you’re connected to it, just like us.’

  ‘Everything has happened for a reason,’ Marina says as she climbs up on to our ship’s hull. She looks back at us, a thoughtful frown straining her soft features. ‘Just look at Eight’s prophecies.’

  Adam looks unconvinced. He swallows hard.

  ‘We don’t know what’s waiting for us in there or what to expect. We might need you in there. So man up.’

  I’m not sure how Adam will respond to being called out. A smile flickers across his face, like that one in the cockpit when he was spacing out.

  ‘I’m in,’ he says. ‘Assuming that invisible wall doesn’t burn my face off.’

  We walk over to the ship to help Marina. She pulls the Chest with our gathered Inheritance out of the cockpit and floats it down to me with telekinesis. Then, she carefully floats Eight’s body out of the ship. She has him hover right in front of her, almost like she was carrying him in her arms. To my surprise, she unzips the top half of the body bag. There’s Eight, looking just as he did when he was alive, those Mogadorian electrodes preserving him.

  ‘Marina? What are you doing?’

  ‘I want him to see the Sanctuary,’ she says, then gently smooths some of Eight’s curly hair back from his forehead. ‘You’re going home,’ she whispers to him.

  Marina climbs down from the ship, focusing her telekinesis so that Eight’s body stays with her the entire way. There’s a look of deep purpose on her face, and she doesn’t even look at me or Adam before walking towards the temple. I realize that she’s been waiting days for this moment, the time when she can properly lay Eight to rest. Wordlessly, Adam and I join her somber procession.

  As we approach the edge of the land the Mogs cleared, the wild and overgrown temple looming before us, I feel a strange tickle against my chest. I look down to find John’s pendant glowing brightly and rising up against the front of my tank top. I adjust my shirt and the pendant floats out in front of me, straining against its chain. It’s like it’s magnetically drawn to the Sanctuary. The two pendants Marina wears are doing the same thing.

  Adam gives me a look and arches an eyebrow at my gravity-defying jewelry. I shrug in response. This is all new to me, too.

  Marina is the first to pass over the threshold. The force field appears again, cobalt and electric, and there’s a static popping as she passes through it. Loose tangles of her hair charged by the energy float up around her head, but otherwise nothing happens.

  I’m only a few steps behind her. The force field gives my skin a fizzy feeling. It only lasts a second and then I’m standing on the other side, the cracked and vine-riddled steps of the Sanctuary rising up before me.

  I turn back to check on Adam. He’s stopped right in front of the force field. Cautiously, he extends his index finger and makes contact with the energy. It pops loudly and he jumps back, but he isn’t scorched like the other Mogadorian was.

  ‘You’re sure this is a good idea?’

  ‘Don’t be a wimp,’ I reply.

  Adam sighs, steels himself, and reaches forward again, this time with his whole hand. The energy crackles and sparks against his pale skin way more than it did with Marina and me, but it lets him through without incinerating him. I grin at him and he gives me a relieved look, wiping some sweat off his forehead.

  ‘Now what?’ he asks.

  Marina has paused a few yards in front of us, still floating Eight’s body. She reaches behind her head and takes off one of her pendants. Loosed from her neck, the pendant bobs slowly towards the stone steps of the temple, and then begins to rise up them.

  ‘We climb,’ Marina says.

  Her pendant glints blue in the sunlight and it occurs to me that the Loralite is glowing a little brighter. Like it’s charged up or something. I feel it, too. The Sanctuary is giving off some kind of energy beyond just the force field. There’s a sense that every cell in my body has been suddenly invigorated. I glance up to the sky and know that I could call up a larger storm than ever before. I feel more in touch with my Legacies. And somehow, it all seems so natural – like I’ve known this feeling before.

  Marina was right, I realize. We’re home.

  25

  It takes us about thirty minutes to climb to the top of the Mayan pyramid. I try passing the time by counting the steps, but I lose track somewhere around two hundred. There are sections where the stone steps have crumbled into ankle-twisting crevices, and other spots where rain has eroded the ancient stonework down to smooth slopes. We use the overgrown vines that spill forth from the jungle to assist us over the difficult parts, ascending hand over hand. We don’t talk much, except to tell each other when a particularly tricky section of steps is coming. Somehow, it seems rude to disturb the silence of the Sanctuary.

  We take a break once we reach the top of the temple. Marina is sweating from the heat, the climb and the exertion of using her telekinesis to carry Eight’s body for so long. I set down the Chest I’ve been carrying and flex my fingers. Adam stands with his hands on his hips and gazes out over the temple’s edge.

  ‘Some view,’ he says.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I agree.

  At the temple’s pinnacle, we are above the treetops. It’s possible to see beyond the overgrown trees that crowd the pyramid, beyond the stripped ring of land the Mogs cleared and out to the rest of the Mayan ruins and the thriving jungle beyond. I imagine some old Mayan ruler standing up here and gazing out at his domain. And then, I imagine that same ruler turning his eyes to the heavens as a Loric ship descends from the clouds. The image seems so real and vivid; I get the strange feeling that my imagination didn’t just conjure it up. Centuries ago, something like that really happened here – the Loric visited, and the Sanctuary remembers.

  ‘You guys, look at this,’ Marina calls to us.

  Adam and I turn away from the view and walk across the flat roof of the temple. At the centermost point is a stone door. At first, I think the door is carved from the same pale stone as the rest of the pyramid, but as I draw closer it becomes obvious that the door is smooth and unblemished, the ivory-colored material not showing the same effects of age as the rest of the temple. The door may have been here for some time, yet it’s apparent that it was plunked down on top of the already built pyramid.

  The door doesn’t lead anywhere, a fact Marina demonstrates by walking in a circle around it. Her floating pendant hovers in front of the door, waiting for us to catch up.

  I stop in front of the door and examine its surface. It is completely smooth – no handles, knobs, or anything like that – with the exception of nine round divots arranged in a circle at the door’s center.

  ‘The pendants,’ I say, brushing my fingers over cool stone.

  Marina plucks her pendant out of the air and guides the stone into one of the notches. It fits perfectly and emits a crisp clicking sound. The door doesn’t move, though.

  ‘We only have three,’ I say, grimacing. ‘It isn’t enough.’

  ‘We have to try,’ Marina says, already pulling off her remaining pendant.

  She’s right. We’ve come too far to turn back now. I pull off John’s pendant and fit it into the notches on the stone door.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ I say, as I push the final pendant home.
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br />   Immediately, the Loralite stones begin to glow with the same energy as the force field. The glow spreads between the stones, connecting them, the energy filling the gaps where we’re missing pendants. The circular symbol that takes shape on the door reminds me of the scars we get on our legs when one of the Garde dies.

  And then, with an ancient grinding noise, the stone door slides down into the temple, leaving behind only a thin frame. Instead of jungle through the doorframe, I see a dusty room lit by the dim blue glow of Loralite.

  ‘I thought we’d need more,’ I say. ‘We don’t even have a majority.’

  ‘Or maybe the Sanctuary knows how badly we need to enter,’ Marina suggests.

  ‘It’s some kind of portal,’ Adam says, squinting into the room beyond the doorframe. ‘Is that inside the temple?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ I say. I pick up Marina’s Chest and step over the threshold.

  Immediately, I get that disorienting, end-over-end, roller-coaster feeling that I used to have whenever Eight would use his teleportation Legacy. It only lasts a second, and then I’m blinking my eyes to adjust to the dimmer lighting of this inner sanctum. My ears pop from the pressure change, and I get the sense that I just stepped through a portal into the middle of the Mayan temple. Or maybe, considering the way the jungle sounds have been completely sealed out, we’re even deeper than that. Maybe this Sanctuary is completely beneath the pyramid.

  Marina – with Eight’s body in tow – and Adam follow me through, the both of them squinting to adjust to the lower light. When they’re on the other side, the doorway blinks out of existence. There’s no exit in its place, only a solid limestone wall, although a circle of notches just like the one from the door are carved into it. Our pendants clatter to the floor and I hurriedly pick them up.

  ‘The Sanctuary,’ Marina breathes.

  ‘How long ago did your people put this here?’ Adam asks.

  ‘Hell if I know. We heard they’d been coming to Earth for centuries,’ I reply absently, peering around. ‘I guess this is what they were doing.’

  ‘They were preparing for this day,’ Marina adds, that eerie certainty back in her voice.

  ‘What’d they leave us, though?’ I ask, a little disappointed as I look around. ‘An empty room?’

  The Sanctuary is one long, rectangular room with high ceilings and absolutely no doors or windows. It’s as if our ancestors teleported into a solid chunk of rock, somehow managed to carve out a room, and then forgot to furnish it. There’s nothing here. Veins of glowing Loralite are threaded through the stone walls and ceiling in chaotic patterns that cast the entire room in a cobalt hue. My eyes glide over the swoops and swirls of Loralite – there’s something vaguely familiar there, something that I’m just not seeing.

  ‘It’s the universe,’ Adam says. ‘It’s … more than we even know about. The Mogadorian star maps don’t cover this much.’

  It takes me a moment to realize what he’s saying. But then I notice the way the Loralite veins pool into circles at some spots and I recognize the other veins as the swirling stars of the cosmos and beyond. It’s just like the Macrocosms, only way bigger and covering way more universe. I find Lorien on one wall, the glowing puddle of Loralite at its heart shining much dimmer than some other spots.

  ‘Our home,’ I say, and touch Lorien gently with my finger. A chill goes through me as the Loralite seems to pulse in answer, almost as if it recognizes me.

  ‘My home,’ Adam says dryly. He points to an area that’s notable only for its complete absence of Loralite, like a void existing in the glowing universe. He frowns. ‘At least your ancestors got the whole forbidding-darkness thing right.’

  ‘Those aren’t our homes, not anymore,’ Marina says, tracing her fingers across the wall, following the exact trajectory our ship took from Lorien to Earth. ‘This is our home now.’

  The Loralite outline of Earth glows much stronger than any other section of the wall. Marina presses her fingers against it and the Loralite crackles and vibrates.

  Something below us is moving.

  Dust and dirt shake loose from the ceiling, the motes sparkling in the suddenly hypercharged light of the Loralite. I know I shouldn’t be scared – this is a Loric place, it won’t hurt us – but I can’t help backing up to the nearest wall, the Sanctuary suddenly feeling very claustrophobic now that it’s shaking around me. Adam stumbles in next to me, his eyes wide.

  With an ancient groan and a grinding of stone, a circular section of the floor at the room’s center rises up. It’s like an altar or a pedestal extending up from the floor. The room stops shaking when the thing has risen to about waist high. This new extension is made from pure Loralite. The slab of plain limestone floor sits atop the Loralite cylinder, almost like a seal holding in whatever might be down below. Cautiously, the three of us approach.

  ‘It looks like this piece comes off,’ I say, touching the limestone seal, but not yet removing it.

  ‘It almost looks like a well,’ Adam says, musing. ‘What do you think is down there?’

  ‘No clue,’ I reply.

  ‘Look,’ Marina says. ‘The drawings.’

  I see them. They’re similar to the cave paintings that Eight showed us back in India, except these are carved directly into the well’s Loralite sides. I have to walk a circle around the well to take all the images in.

  Nine silhouettes looming over a planet that looks like Earth, with nine smaller silhouettes standing on the planet below them.

  A person – I can’t tell if it’s a male or female – standing in front of a hole in the ground and dumping the contents of a box into the opening.

  Nine silhouettes again, this time arranged in front of a castle, fending off something that looks like a tidal wave or maybe a three-headed dragon.

  ‘More prophecies?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe,’ Marina replies. She is paused in front of the carving of the person with the box. ‘Or maybe they’re instructions.’

  I stand next to her. ‘Do you think this is the place? Where we, uh, commit our Inheritances to the Earth?’

  Marina nods. She sets Eight’s body gently down to the ground, then uses her telekinesis to push the slab of limestone that seals the well aside. It crumbles on to the ground with a huge thud, the old stone instantly breaking apart.

  A column of pure blue light flows up from the well, so bright that I have to shield my eyes. It’s like a spotlight. I can feel the warmth from the light deep in my bones.

  ‘This is …’ Adam trails off, unable to complete his thought. There’s profound amazement in his dark Mogadorian eyes.

  Marina kneels down in front of her Chest and opens it up. She cups her hands and removes a handful of Loric gemstones, then drops them into the Sanctuary’s well. They glitter and flash as they slip through her fingers, falling into the light. In response, the whole room seems to get a little brighter. The Loralite veins in the walls pulse stronger.

  ‘Help me, Six,’ Marina says excitedly.

  I grab the pouch of soil from the Chest, open it up and dump the contents down the well. A fragrant, greenhouse-like aroma fills the dusty chamber, and the light grows stronger still. Marina follows the soil with the bundle of dried branches and leaves. In that moment before they leave her hand, while they’re bathed in the light, I could swear the branches look green and alive again. As they drop out of sight, a swirling breeze fills the chamber, cooling us down.

  ‘It’s working,’ I say, even though I’m not sure what exactly we’re doing. I’m only sure that it feels right.

  When we’ve emptied out the Chest of everything else, I pick up the can of Henri’s ashes. Carefully, I remove the lid and empty it into the light. Each of the ashes briefly sparks as they swirl downward into the well. I wish John could’ve been here to see this.

  I turn back to Marina, inclining my head gently towards where Eight’s body rests on the ground. ‘Should we …?’

  Marina shakes her head, looking down at Eight. ‘I
’m not ready yet, Six.’

  I take a moment to sweep my gaze over the room, checking to see if anything’s changed. The light from the well is nearly as bright as the sun, but it doesn’t really hurt my eyes anymore. The Loralite veins in the walls pulse with energy. Our Chest is empty and Henri’s ashes have been spread.

  ‘There’s nothing else to do,’ I say to Marina. ‘It’s time.’

  ‘The pendants, Six,’ Marina says. ‘We have to give it the pendants.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Adam says, stepping forward for the first time. He’s been watching all this take place with awe, but Marina’s words snap him back. ‘If you drop those pendants down there, we’ll have no way out of here.’

  I’m still holding all of our pendants. I clutch them tightly as I think it over.

  ‘We have to have faith, right?’ I say, shrugging my shoulders. ‘We have to trust that whatever’s down there, whatever the Elders left for us, that it’ll show us a way out.’

  Marina nods. ‘Yes.’

  Adam looks at me for a moment, then to the light. Everything he’s seen today must go against his Mogadorian instincts. But he has Garde in him, too.

  ‘All right,’ Adam says. ‘I trust you.’

  I hold on to the pendants for a moment longer. I’ve worn an amulet around my neck for most of my life. There were many times that it reminded me who I was, where I was from, and what I was fighting for. It was heartbreaking to lose two pendants and I’ve never felt right without one. It’s as much a part of who I am – who we all are – as the scars on our ankles. But it’s time to let that go.

  I drop the three pendants into the well.

  The response is immediate and blinding. The light from within the well goes supernova. I shout and shield my eyes, and I’m pretty sure Marina and Adam do the same. There is a whooshing sound from down below, like thousands of wings taking flight, or a miniature tornado touching down beneath the Earth. There is a loud, baritone thump that sends vibrations through my teeth. A few seconds later, the sound repeats.