I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Search for Sam Page 3

  Oh. She couldn’t believe that part.

  “I’ve always known physical combat wasn’t your gift. I told your father a thousand times you’d be better suited to a tactical role, but he was determined not to break with custom, and insisted we make no distinction between combat and strategy. Everyone must fight in the war. But when he told me you’d been killed, that that disgusting Loric had thrown you off a cliff … it felt like my worst fears had come true.”

  My mind reels. It was my adopted brother Ivan who threw me into the ravine, under my father’s approving gaze. I hadn’t been killed by a Loric: I’d joined the Loric cause.

  “They said they searched high and low for you …”

  A lie. They left me for dead.

  “… that they were as heartbroken as I was …”

  More lies.

  “But they didn’t find your body, and that gave me some hope. I knew in my heart that somehow you had managed to survive.”

  She hugs me again. It takes all of my effort to receive her hug without betraying the revolution going on inside me. I expected to return home to a Mogadorian firing squad, but instead I’ve come back as a fallen soldier.

  “No.” His voice. My mother and I turn at once to see my father in the doorway, his mouth open in shock.

  “He’s come back to us,” my mother exclaims. “Our boy’s alive!”

  I have never in my entire life seen the General at a loss for words, but there he is, too stunned to speak.

  In a flash I understand everything. My father lied to my mother. My father lied to the rest of the Mogadorians. Whether to protect his ego from disgrace or to maintain his authority as a general, or both, he fabricated an honorable death for me. No one here except my father—and Ivan, wherever he is—knows that I turned against the Mogadorian cause.

  I only have a moment to act, to interpret my father’s stunned silence and play it to my advantage.

  I leap off the couch and embrace him.

  “I’m alive, Father.” I feel all six and a half feet of his body stiffen in disgust, but I forge ahead with my ruse. “I’ve come home.”

  I tell them a story of my return to Ashwood. Washing up on the shore at the bottom of the ravine, being rescued by a local, recovering at the aid camp. I adjust the truth slightly, characterizing my human friends as fools, claiming that I deliberately manipulated Elswit for his assistance in order to get back here, painting myself as the Mogadorian loyalist I no longer am—but this version is close enough to the truth. And I know it’s what they need to hear.

  “I had to get back here to see you,” I conclude. “To keep serving the cause.”

  I force myself to stare right into my father’s eyes. It takes all of my effort not to flinch from his gaze, just as I know it’s taking all of his will not to lunge across the coffee table and strangle me where I stand.

  In the kitchen, the oven timer dings. My mother, clucking over my heroic and daring escape, excuses herself to check on whatever is in the oven.

  “So …” I say to my father, waiting for his reaction.

  He says nothing but jumps at me, gathering my shirt in his fist and lifting me off the ground. I hover inches from the floor, held tight by his grip.

  His face, getting redder every second, glowers before mine. “Tell me why I shouldn’t break your neck right this instant.”

  “If you wanted the truth to come out, wanted people to know how I failed you, you wouldn’t have bothered to lie to everyone.” My twisted collar is beginning to cut off my oxygen. I force myself to keep talking. “How’d you convince Ivan to keep your secret?”

  He ignores my question. “If you think having this over me will keep you safe, you are sorely mistaken. If I killed you now, the only person I’d have to tell the truth to is your mother.” He gives me a violent shake. “She’d learn to accept it. She’d have no choice.”

  My heart seizes: I know he’s serious. He could kill me. He wants to kill me.

  I quickly switch tacks, hoping I’m not too late.

  “I’m sorry, General.” Channeling my own mortal terror, I will repentant tears to my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looks at me with renewed contempt: the sight of his son groveling for his life is probably as hard for him as the sight of me turning against the cause. I know my new tactic is as risky as my old one: he could just as easily kill me out of disgust as out of anger.

  But I keep going. This is the only gambit I have.

  “I failed you and I failed my people. I’m a coward. I don’t have what it takes to kill. On the field of battle I … I couldn’t stand to see bloodshed.”

  My father releases my shirt and I drop hard to the floor.

  “I knew coming back was a risk. That I might be justifiably executed for treason. But I thought it was worth it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” I say, pausing for dramatic effect, scrambling back onto my feet. “I hoped you would give me a chance to make up for my failure.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  I fix my shirt and give him the most unblinking stare I can muster. “Clearly, I don’t have what it takes to be a warrior. I’m not like Ivan.”

  At that, my father lets out a derisive snort. “Son, you are unworthy of even an unflattering comparison to Ivanick.”

  “But I am a better tactician. Ivan never would’ve gotten through his early studies if I hadn’t been there to do his work for him, every step of the way.”

  The General’s not even looking at me anymore: he’s staring towards the kitchen, no doubt preparing himself for the explanation he’ll have to give my mother once he’s killed me. I can see I’m losing him. Yet I press on, trying not to let my desperation show.

  “I found Number Two first. Back in London, well before your entire team of surveyors managed to pinpoint her location. And in Kenya I got to Number Three ahead of Ivan. I didn’t have the will to kill them myself, but I found them first. I could be one of the best trackers you have if you just give me a chance—”

  My father lunges at me again, grabbing me by the throat this time. I can’t breathe.

  This is it, I think. This is the end.

  “One week,” he says. “I’ll give you one week to show me what you can do.”

  He releases me.

  “And if you fail to produce a miracle for me in that time …” He trails off. I can tell from his look he expects me to finish his statement.

  “You’ll kill me.”

  His level stare confirms that I’ve guessed right.

  I nod, accepting his terms.

  CHAPTER 6

  I lie in my old bed, in my old bedroom, staring at the wall. I was surprised to find everything just as I left it, half-expecting it to be stripped bare following my supposed “death.” I guess my mother won that battle with the General.

  I try to get comfortable. After months on a bare cot at the aid camp, my expensive pillow-top mattress should feel unbelievably fluffy and soft. But it feels like a bed of nails.

  After a strained dinner, during which my father and I both pretended to be happy I was home, alone in my room I can finally let my guard down and drop the fake smile. I’m exhausted and scared. Even if I somehow manage to avoid being executed within the trial week the General has granted me, that’s no guarantee I’ll manage to break into the labs. And even if I do, that’s no guarantee I’ll find a successful means of reviving One, of keeping her imminent disappearance at bay. And even if I manage to save her, I have no plan for how to save myself, for how to escape this place once I’m done.

  I’ll need to figure that out, because right now death doesn’t even feel like the worst-case scenario. Passing my father’s test and being “allowed” to remain in this place, having to indefinitely maintain the pretense of being a loyal Mogadorian, feels like the grimmest fate of all.

  “That was hard to watch.” One appears, standing in the doorway.

  I sigh, grateful for her presence.

 
“Didn’t realize you were there.”

  She ambles towards me and sits at the foot of the bed. “I hung back. Tried to stay out of your line of sight. Figured you needed to focus.” She gives me an affectionate look. “Performance of a lifetime, huh?”

  “You said it.”

  She looks guilty, worried for my safety. “You sure I’m worth it?”

  I manage to fake a confident smile. “Definitely.”

  My bedroom door opens and my sister Kelly swings in.

  Surprised, I hop off the bed.

  “So you’re back,” she says bluntly, sizing me up.

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m not sure if I should rush up and embrace her.

  I decide to wait and follow her lead.

  “Well, that’s good, I guess.” She fiddles with the doorknob hesitantly.

  “You weren’t at dinner.” Over dinner my father explained that Ivan had been promoted to a new position somewhere in the Southwest—news that filled me with such relief I had to cover my mouth so the General wouldn’t see how happy I was—but I hadn’t been given a reason for Kelly’s absence.

  “Ran late. I’m doing an afterschool program at the Nursery now.” The Nursery is what some of us call the piken pens in the underground complex. Pikens are bred in the labs down there and conditioned for combat. “I think I’m going to be a trainer when I graduate. They say I have what it takes.”

  “Oh,” I reply. “That’s great.”

  I can’t believe how dumb I sound, how tentative. Back in the hornets’ nest of Ashwood, and I’m scared of my own kid sister. It’s pathetic.

  “Whatever,” she says. “So listen. Congratulations on surviving and stuff, and for coming back here. But, you know, having you dead was embarrassing enough. Now I have to explain to my friends that my loser brother is back. You’re basically ruining my life.”

  I’m stunned by her callousness, but I understand. In Mogadorian society, dying in combat is not afforded the prestige it is among most human cultures. And failing in combat and surviving is hardly better than being a traitor. My mother’s relief at my survival won’t be shared by my sister … or anyone else at Ashwood.

  “I’m just telling you this so when I ignore you in front of the others, you don’t freak out, okay?”

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says.

  She leaves, without a good night, much less that hug.

  I shoot One a despairing look.

  She quickly covers her expression of pity with one of her best, most sarcastic grins. “Welcome home, Adamus,” she says.

  CHAPTER 7

  A kid a little older than me named Serkova comes to get me in the morning. According to the General, he’s a promising young surveyor in the Media Surveillance division. My father assigned him to bring me up to speed and put me to work.

  We ride the elevator down to the underground complex together. He gives me a sidelong glance. “Heard you bit it in Kenya.”

  “Yeah,” I concede, feigning sheepishness.

  “And now you’re angling for a position as a surveyor?”

  “That’s the idea,” I say.

  He snorts. Serkova has a generic trueborn face, but there is something gross and oddly piggish about his nose that’s even grosser when he snorts.

  “I didn’t know we were in the business of giving failed soldiers second chances.” He turns his stare on me. “Guess there’s an exception for the General’s son.”

  The elevator doors open and we stride into the hub at the center of the underground complex. The domed ceiling and orb-like fluorescent light fixture give it the feel of a massive—and massively ugly—atrium.

  Trueborns and vatborns stride in every direction in and out of the various tunnels radiating out from the hub. I feel them react to my presence: the trueborns avoid my gaze, while the vatborns sneer at me with naked contempt. Word sure traveled fast, even down here.

  We make our way past the entrances to the Southeast and Northeast tunnels on our way to the Northwest tunnel. With the exception of the General’s briefing room, I’ve never been granted access to any of the tunnels off the hub before. But it’s fairly common knowledge that the tunnels lead in one direction to combat training facilities, and in the other direction to weapons stores and bunkers for the vatborn. We’re heading down a third tunnel, to the R+D laboratories and the media and surveillance compounds.

  I struggle to keep pace with Serkova. It’s obvious he doesn’t like me and resents being saddled with the job of babysitting me.

  “What’s your problem with me?” I genuinely want to know: the Mogadorian worldview has become foreign to me so quickly. “So I’m being given a second chance. Why should you care?”

  Serkova turns to me, a contemptuous sneer on his lips. “You think I don’t get enough shit as it is from the combat Mogs for being a surveyor? They already call us tech wienies. Now we’re being forced to take on a proven loser in combat. So the next time they say we’re only surveyors because we’re not good enough for combat, they’ll be right. All thanks to you.”

  Great.

  I follow him into the Media Surveillance facility, a large room lit only by the screens of the twenty or so computer monitors throughout the room. No one looks up as Serkova leads me to my monitor. Thanks to his outburst, I don’t have to wonder why.

  He explains to me what our job is, then sits down at the console next to mine. “Good luck, Adamus,” he says, with evident sarcasm, then gets to work.

  I turn to my monitor.

  A steady stream of links scrolls across my screen, in color-coded text. The Mogadorian mainframe scours satellite and cable TV, radio transmissions, and every last corner of the internet, 24/7. A certain amount of automated culling occurs before these links reach our screens: most human interest stories are weeded out in advance, as are most articles or news segments devoted to U.S. or international politics. But a significant majority of what remains—weather reports, natural-disaster coverage, police blotters—makes it to our screens as a veritable geyser of hyperlinks.

  Our job is to sift through the links on our respective screens and sort them, moving material that is clearly of no pertinence to the Mogadorian cause to the “Discard” directory, while kicking material that might have some bearing on our interests up to the “Investigate” directory, where it will be assessed personally by the lead surveyor before being dismissed or moved up the chain to Command HQ. We are also supposed to tag and grade the material we move to the “Investigate” directory according to our judgment of its possible relevance: “PV” for Possible Value, “HP” for High Priority, and “EHP” for Extremely High Priority. Items we flag with an “EHP” rating are simultaneously routed to the lead surveyor and to a small cadre of analysts over at command HQ for immediate review.

  Ultimately, if Command HQ is persuaded a news item is a legitimate sign of Garde activity, reconnaissance teams are dispatched.

  All three eliminated Garde members were located with some degree of surveyor assistance. But despite our importance, we’re really just data monkeys. Exciting stuff like reconnaissance and combat occur outside our purview as surveyors.

  Not that it’s easy work. Within minutes of struggling through this endlessly updating data stream, I miss the clarity and simplicity of my physical labor back in Kenya. Jumping all over the place on the internet—from a story about the birth of quintuplets in Winnetka, Illinois, to a grainy web-video from a Syrian insurgent—without getting involved in what I’m reading or seeing is a challenge, and after just twenty minutes of wide-eyed staring at the monitor, my eyes feel like they’re going to bleed.

  Then it gets worse.

  At the end of the first hour, a little digital bell sounds and a tab pops up on the upper right-hand corner of my screen. My heart sinks.

  “Oh yeah,” says Serkova, managing to smirk at me without looking up from his monitor. “I forgot to mention. We get ranked hourly.”

  Our individual results are tabulated at
the end of every hour and broadcast to all the terminals. Number of Discards, number of Investigates, as well as a provisional computer-graded percentage score for accuracy.

  There I am, all the way at the bottom, in last place: twenty-seven Discards, six Investigates, and a provisional accuracy ranking of 71 percent. I scan up the list to see Serkova in second place, with a whopping eighty-two discards, thirteen Investigates, and a provisional accuracy ranking of 91 percent. I’m going to have to go a lot faster.

  “What was that you were telling your father?” Serkova cracks.

  I’m too distracted to respond. I need to improve my score, and I resent Serkova’s ability to work and needle me at the same time.

  “Something ’bout what a great tracker you are, how much better you’ll be at surveying than we are?”

  Ugh. Not only has the General given me an impossible task, in which failure will result in my death, he’s also poisoned the well with my new coworkers by reporting what I said about my superior tracking skills.

  But I don’t bother to respond: I don’t have time.

  I get back to work, fighting against my own dismay. One reason I manipulated the General into placing me in the Media and Surveillance facility was because I thought I might have enough downtime to use my console to hack into the servers of the adjacent laboratories, do some digging into Dr. Zakos’s research. I know that One’s only hope lies in those files. But if I don’t pull my ranking up soon, my father could justifiably terminate our agreement: I’d be killed before I even got a chance to help One.

  I need to improve my score.

  I manage to go faster. The trick, I learn, is not to process any of the information I encounter. Instead I let my consciousness skim just above the text or video, then let my judgment occur without thought or reasoning. Basically the trick is to accept that I am just a cog in a data-combing machine.

  Finally, I feel myself getting into a groove. In the next hourly ranking, I’ve climbed two positions. In the one after that, I’m position thirteen out of twenty.