“Oy, you made it,” says Nigel. He and Ran are huddled in between some Mog statues, using them as a hiding spot. The British kid is pale, the wounds he suffered against Phiri Dun-Ra still bleeding heavily.

I nod, feeling guilty, like I let them down. Too much death here. Too much destruction.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Patience Creek has gone quiet. Without anything chasing or shooting at us, our ragtag group makes the elevator without a problem. It still works, although we have to spend some time clearing out a couple of bodies. There are a lot of those. And not enough survivors.

We head to the lowermost level first and find Malcolm, along with a few scientists, Agent Noto and the five Chimærae. All the animals made it through the fighting with nothing worse than some singed fur and, in Bandit’s case, a mangled tail. Everyone, humans and Chimærae alike, look downright exhausted.

After that, we start to search the other floors. We don’t encounter anything but death until we reach the uppermost level, the one where Lawson previously kept his control center. There, we’re drawn to the sound of televisions tuned to what sound like a dozen terrified newscasts.

Five stands in Lawson’s office, his back to the door, watching the news on the wall of screens. He extends his blade when he hears us coming but quickly sheathes it once he realizes that we aren’t Mogs.

“She got away,” Five says simply, sounding frustrated. “They had a staging area a few miles south of here in the forest. Took off when they realized the tide was turning. I know how they operate. They’ll be back soon with reinforcements.”

Sam and I enter the room cautiously while Five speaks, the rest of our group waiting outside. Five wears a set of fatigues that he either found lying around Patience Creek or stripped off a dead soldier. I guess the latter is more likely considering the blood splatters on the camouflage.

“You going to try locking me up again?” Five asks, looking at me over his shoulder.

“No,” I reply.

“Good.”

Sam and I come to stand alongside Five, the three of us staring at the monitors. The Mogadorian bombardment has begun. We’re looking at footage from at least ten different cities, all of them being slowly erased by warship fire. My eyes bounce from catastrophe to catastrophe, eventually settling on the Arc de Triomphe as it crumbles down the middle, its two pillars breaking apart against each other.

“This planet is toast,” Five says.

Sam ignores him and looks at me. “What now, John?”

“We throw everything we have at them,” I say immediately, glancing in Five’s direction. “Everything. And we either end this war, or we die trying.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO MOURN OUR DEAD. OUR friends, and the ones we barely got a chance to know. We don’t have time to grapple with how many lives were lost, our responsibility for that.

It’s probably for the best.

By the time we land Lexa’s ship outside of Patience Creek, the massacre is over. We’re just in time to help the survivors escape. We don’t want to be here when the Mogs send in reinforcements. There are other battlefields that need our attention.

We fly into the night, leaving the quaint cabin and its secret tunnels behind.

News trickles in from around the world. Some cities have already fallen as a result of the warships opening fire. Others are holding strong, fighting a protracted cat-and-mouse game against the Mog ground troops, staying one step ahead of warship bombardment. Some armies have pulled back, waiting to launch a counterstrike.

They’re waiting for our help.

“One coordinated assault using the cloaking technology you’ve provided,” Lawson says, once again going over the details. His satellite phone has been buzzing nonstop since we picked up him and the others. “All our allies—England, China, Germany, India, every country with any military capability—we strike back simultaneously, before they realize we’ve cracked their shields. We throw everything we’ve got at them while we’ve still got the element of surprise.”

“And while that happens, we hit West Virginia,” John says. “We take out Setrákus Ra and destroy what he’s built there.”

John looks terrible. The wounds that he suffered at the hands of Phiri Dun-Ra have healed up with the exception of the cuts ringing his neck, but his pallor is still dramatic, the bags under his eyes now deep purple. With all of us crammed into this little ship, John is one of the few people who sits. He looks like he needs it. While he goes over the plan with Lawson, Marina stitches up the deepest of the gashes in his neck. He winces a few times. We didn’t think to bring one of the surviving army medics on board with us. It’s been a while since we couldn’t just heal an injury.