I see Mark right away. He stands in the doorway to Patience Creek, his back to me. Last time I saw him, he was a mess and punched me in the face. Now he’s stiff, his head cocked in a strange way.
“Mark,” I say cautiously. “You’re back.”
He turns to me, his motions all herky-jerky. I see it immediately—how pale his skin is, the dark-black veins that make a spiderweb across his cheek. Mark’s eyes are wide. He’s crying, but other than that his face is completely devoid of emotion. I note that his fingers are clenched into claws, like he’s paralyzed.
“I’m—I’m sorry, John,” he manages to stammer out.
“Mark—”
“They muh—muh—made me.”
I almost manage to spin around in time. Three tendrils of black ooze lance towards me, the tip of each one sharpened like a drill bit. One pierces the back of my shoulder, the other shoots through my hip and the third penetrates my armpit as I raise my hand to defend myself. It’s like being stabbed by something living, something that burrows. I feel the tendrils digging deeper into me. My healing Legacy kicks in, tries to fight them off. When it does, an acidic burning washes over my every nerve ending. I scream and fall to my knees.
“We did make him,” says a cheery female voice. “But we didn’t have to try very hard.”
I recognize her from the Mog communicator and from the others’ stories. The trueborn standing over me is Phiri Dun-Ra.
I twist around in the grass to get a look at her. Phiri Dun-Ra’s entire left arm is missing, replaced by a writhing mass of Setrákus Ra’s black ooze, thick and oily, shaped like a dead tree. The three tendrils spearing me, they emanate right from her. I try to pry them out of my body with my bare hands, but the ooze hardens at my touch, becomes razor sharp, and I only succeed in cutting my palms.
I try to shove her away with my telekinesis. It doesn’t work.
Nothing works.
As I struggle, I see sparks of Loric energy pulsing out of me, traveling up my connection to Phiri Dun-Ra and guttering out inside her arm. Her eyes roll back in her head for a moment. Then she holds out her normal arm, palm up.
Phiri Dun-Ra’s hand glows. A ball of fire rises up from her palm, the flames tinged with purple.
“Oh, this is nice, John Smith,” she says. “I could get used to it.”
More Mogs begin to emerge from the trees around Patience Creek. I don’t know how I missed them, there’s so many. But then I see one step out of a shadow—literally step out from where there was nothing before—and I realize that they’re teleporting in somehow.
Setrákus Ra has succeeded. Some of these Mogs, like Phiri Dun-Ra, have Legacies. No—I won’t call them that. They’re sick.
What word did Setrákus Ra use? “Augmentations.” That’s what these twisted powers are.
An older trueborn, bald and impossibly thin, comes to stand next to Phiri Dun-Ra. His eyes are completely glazed black. He ignores me, staring instead at Mark. The Thin Mog curls a finger in Mark’s direction, and I’m vaguely aware of a sound like locusts moving through leaves.
The ooze under Mark’s skin moves, and he’s forced into motion. He stumbles down the steps of Patience Creek, his hands pulling out something from inside his coat, each movement looking painfully forced.
“We heard stories about these Inheritances you Loric received from your dead parents or whoever,” Phiri Dun-Ra says conversationally, smiling. “Little keepsakes from your dead planet. Here’s a secret, John. . . . Beloved Leader kept some things too. Mementos. Trophies to help him remember his first great conquest.”
Mark holds in his hands something that looks like a rope, except it’s deep purple in color and glistening. Something not found on this world.
I recognize it. Of course I recognize it. From a vision of the past.
It’s the noose Pittacus Lore once tied around Setrákus Ra’s neck. The one that gave him his scar. I remember from Ella’s vision that the material is called Voron, that it only grew on Lorien and that my Legacy won’t heal its wounds.
Mark kneels down and loops the noose over my head.
Phiri Dun-Ra grins at me. “Beloved Leader thought you would enjoy the irony.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“HE DID WHAT?” MARINA EXCLAIMS.
Ella shrugs her shoulders and looks down at her feet. “He . . .”
“She heard you,” I tell Ella, my lips pursed. “She just can’t believe John would do something so completely stupid.”
Next to me, Nine winds up and kicks a big tuft of dirt out of the ground. “What the hell, Six? Are we like sidekicks now or something? This is bullshit.”