Return to Paradise

Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files - 8

Pittacus Lore

CHAPTER ONE

I HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING MYSELF WHO I AM the first week at the new school. Not, like, I lost my memory or something. I know who I am in a literal sense. But I have to keep forcing myself to remember what being me means. So all week I keep a single thought repeating through my head:

You are Mark James.

It’s what I think on Monday when some douche bag trips me while I try to find an empty seat among a precalc classroom full of strangers.

You are Mark James, the guy everyone at your old school looked up to. These idiots will learn.

And Wednesday when someone loots my locker during weight training and forces me to walk around in sweaty gym clothes for the last two periods.

You are Mark James, all-conference quarterback. They’re just jealous.

And at lunch on Thursday when I sit on the tailgate of my truck and someone in a loud old Camaro zips past, hurling an oversize Styrofoam cup of orange soda at me while yelling what I think is “ass pirate.”

You are Mark James, and you are the best fucking athlete the Paradise High Pirates ever saw.

If someone had asked me a year ago what my future held, I’d probably have said something like “Mark James, Ohio State star quarterback.” Maybe if I’d had a beer or two I’d go so far as to say, “Mark James, first-round NFL draft pick.”

What I wouldn’t have said—what I couldn’t have even imagined thinking—was anything remotely close to “Mark James, survivor of an alien attack.”

For my entire life, the future seemed set for me. As soon as I threw my first pass, I knew what I wanted to do. Paradise High QB, college football star, NFL hopeful. But now the future is this stupid, dark thing I can’t predict, and I feel like my whole life has been heading towards something that doesn’t even matter. Might not even exist if we end up conquered by a bunch of superpowered aliens. I mean, my all-conference trophy was used to murder an alien. A Mogadorian. A bunch of pale, janky-looking assholes from another planet came to Earth hunting for a very human-looking alien named John Smith—ha—and his invisible friend. Then they destroyed my school. My kingdom. Almost killing me in the process.

Some people did die. I guess I should count myself lucky, but I don’t feel lucky. I feel like someone who’s just found out that vampires exist or that reality is actually an elaborate video game. Everyone else keeps going on as usual, but the world has changed for me.

There are only a few people who know what really happened at Paradise High. Everyone thinks the school’s in shambles because weirdo-drifter/new student John Smith went crazy and jumped through the principal’s window one day, then came back that night and caused massive amounts of damage that took out half the building. Then he fled town. Word is that he’s some kind of teenage terrorist or member of a sleeper cell or a psychopath—it depends on who is telling the story.

But one exploding school can’t stand in the way of education, so now everyone from Paradise is being shipped to the next town over where there’s an actual building for us to go to. It just so happens that the next school over is Helena High, our biggest rival, who I beat in the best football game of my life, capping off an undefeated season by completely annihilating their defense. So, yeah, I guess I can see why I’m not the most loved guy in school. I just never thought I’d spend my last semester of high school washing orange soda out of my hair. Maybe if I was still the same old Mark James I’d think it was kind of fun even. I’d be dreaming up ways to get back at the other students, ways for me and my football buddies to prank them and get the last laugh. But filling someone’s locker full of manure isn’t as high on my list of priorities now that I know beings from another world are walking among us and that a complete alien invasion is possible at any time. I wish manure were still higher on my to-do list.

A bunch of my teammates have told me I’ve gotten quiet and seem different since it happened, but I can’t help it. It’s kind of pointless to talk about cars and partying when I was literally almost squashed by some kind of extraterrestrial monster. How am I supposed to go back to being fun-loving, beer-chugging Mark James after all that? Now I’m “Paranoid That Aliens Are Going to Hunt Me Down” Mark James.

I can deal with the new school. Hell, I probably deserve it for the shit I put people like John through back in Paradise. It’s only a semester, and then I’ll have graduated. Maybe they’ll even be able to fix up the school auditorium in time for me to walk the stage in Paradise. What sucks is that I can’t tell everyone what’s going on. They’d throw me in a mental institution. Or worse, those bad aliens—the Mogs—would be after me to try and shut me up.

At least I have Sarah to talk to. She was there. She fought with me, almost died beside me. As long I have Sarah, I don’t feel like I’m going to go crazy.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE ARE BIG SCHOOL BUSES SHUTTLING KIDS back and forth between Helena and Paradise, but I was able to talk the principal into letting me drive myself. I told him I wanted to stay late and work out—that I didn’t want what happened in Paradise to keep me from being an unstoppable college football machine. He said that was fine: I’m guessing partly because he hopes anything I do in the future will make Paradise High look good, and partly because everyone in town still feels kind of bad for me because I threw a party and some kids accidentally burned down my house.

I don’t think that had anything to do with aliens. At least, I’ve made sure to tell everyone who insinuates that John blew up my house that it was really a couple of stoners down in the basement who were lighting stuff on fire for fun. That usually shuts people up—especially adults who like to pretend that stuff like that never happens in good old Paradise. Besides, John saved Sarah and both of my dogs. There’s a YouTube video to prove it. No one should be giving him shit for that night. He gets a free pass on that one.

I meet Sarah in the parking lot after the last bell on the Friday of our first week in Helena. She waits for me at my truck. It’s kind of gray outside, and she’s got on a plaid sweater that makes her eyes look like they’re practically glowing blue. She looks gorgeous.

She always does.

Sarah Hart was—is—the love of my life. Even after she dropped cheerleading and came back to school as some kind of emo hipster who suddenly didn’t want to be dating the star QB. Even after she dumped me and started sorta dating an alien.

I smile at her as I approach, all teeth. It’s a reflex. I can’t help it. She smiles too but not as wide as I’d like.

Even with the “You are Mark James” mantra in my head all day, sometimes I don’t feel like me at all. Instead of being the cool, put-together guy I’ve always been, I start worrying about intergalactic war and if Mogs are watching me have breakfast. But even when I start to wonder if I should be building a bomb shelter out in the middle of the woods or something, part of me wants to stay planted in the world I knew before there was definite proof of aliens on Earth, where I’m just a dude who’s trying to win back his ex-girlfriend.

If this whole ordeal has had any bright side, it’s that I see a lot more of Sarah than I did before. I like to think that me saving John’s life impressed her, maybe even showed her that there’s more to me than she thought. Someday when this is all said and done, Sarah is going to come to her senses and realize that even if John is a good alien, he’s still freaking E.T. And I’ll be waiting, even if it means fighting off space invaders to keep her safe and show her I’m better than he is.

The waiting totally blows.

“You’re begging to get jumped, aren’t you?” she says as I get closer.

At first I’m confused, but then I realize she’s nodding at my chest, where my name is embroidered in gold over the heart on my Paradise High varsity letter jacket.

“What, this?” I ask, flexing a little and puffing out my chest. “I’m just repping our school. Trying to bring a little bit of Paradise to hell. That way we all feel like we’re at home.”

She rolls her eyes.

“You’re provoking them.”

“They’re the least of my problems these days.”

“Whatever,” she says. “Your truck still smells like orange soda.”

Once we’re in my truck, Sarah leans her head against the passenger window and exhales a long breath, as if she’s been holding it in all day. She looks tired. Beautiful but tired.

“I got a new name in bio today,” she says, her eyes closed.

“Oh yeah?”

“‘Sarah Bleeding Heart.’ I was trying to explain that John wasn’t a terrorist who was going to try to blow up the White House. Like, literally, someone said that they heard he was going to blow up the White House.”

“Now who’s the one asking for it?”

She opens her eyes just enough to glare at me.

“I feel like all I do now is defend him, but everyone else refuses to listen. And every time I try to say something about how they don’t know the whole story, I lose a friend. Did you know that Emily thinks he kidnapped Sam? And I can’t even tell her that it’s not true. All I can say is that John wouldn’t do that, and then she looks at me like I’m part of some big plot to destroy America or something. Or worse, some lovesick loser who’s in denial.”

“Well, you’ve still got me,” I say reassuringly. “And I try to defend John whenever I can. Though I don’t think I’ve been very good at it. All the guys on the team think he was able to kick our asses after the hayride because he was trained as a special agent from Russia or something.”

“Thanks, Mark,” Sarah says. “I know I can count on you. It’s just . . .”

She opens her eyes and looks out the window as we speed past a few empty fields, never finishing her sentence.

“Just what?” I ask, even though I know what’s coming. I can feel the blood in my veins start to pump a little faster.

“Nothing.”

“What, Sarah?” I ask.

“I just wish John was here.” She gives me a sad smile. “To defend himself.”

Of course, what she really means is that she wishes John was here because she misses him. That it’s killing her not to know where he is or what he’s doing. For a moment, I feel like my old self again as my hands tighten around the steering wheel. I want to find John Smith and punch him square in the jaw, then keep hitting him until my knuckles bleed. I want to go straight into a rant about how if he really loved her, he wouldn’t have left her here to get picked on and laughed at. He would have manned up. Even if he did leave to find other aliens like him to save our planet. If I were in his shoes, I’d have figured out a way to keep Sarah and the world safe. And happy.

I can’t believe these are the types of conversations I have with myself on a daily basis now.

Being super pissed at John just makes me sound like the Mark that Sarah broke up with. So instead of talking shit about him, I swallow my anger and change the subject.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happened lately. How the FBI and stuff have been handling it. My dad says that it’s kind of weird how they’re keeping the local law enforcement in the dark. I mean, he’s the sheriff and they aren’t telling him anything about what’s going on.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that so they can keep a lid on the investigation?” Sarah asks. “That’s the FBI’s job, right?”

“My dad doesn’t think so. He should at least be kept in the loop, even if he can’t tell the rest of his officers about what’s happening. Plus, I know they found some bodies at the school and there was a lot of damage, but John got moved straight to the FBI’s most-wanted list. That seems a little extreme, right? Especially considering there’s no actual evidence that John was the one behind all this.”

“So, what? Do you think this is some kind of government conspiracy?” She sits up straighter in the passenger seat, leaning towards me.

“I just think maybe they know more about what’s going on with John’s people than they let on. I’m guessing some of the people in black suits are smart enough to realize that it wasn’t just some angry teenager who dug gigantic claw marks in the football field.”

“Jesus, Mark, you’re starting to sound like Sam,” she says. Then she shrugs a little. “But I guess he was right about some of that stuff we all thought was crazy. That would make sense. I mean, if stuff like this is happening across the country, someone is keeping track of it all, right? The FBI swooped in here really fast. Maybe they’re working with John’s . . . species?”

I can’t believe Sarah has fallen for someone who could be classified as another species.

“Or else they’re working with the monsters with all the glowing swords,” I say. “Which would mean we’ve just allowed the opposing team to set up shop in town.”

Sarah lets her head fall against the window again.

“Where are you, John?” she whispers, her breath fogging up the glass in front of her. “Where are you?”

We’re quiet for the rest of the drive home.

All I can think of is the promise I made to John when everything was going down at the school—that I would keep Sarah safe. Of course I’ll do that. I’d be doing it even if he hadn’t asked me to. But it makes my insides twist up to know that he’s the one she’s thinking of while I’m the one who’s actually looking out for her.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER I DROP SARAH OFF AT HER HOUSE, I switch into detective mode.

It’s only been a little while since the whole “aliens are real and attacking your school” thing, but since then I’ve been trying to get as much information about what’s going on as possible. I’d like to say that it’s so that if Earth has to fight, I can take on the bad guys, but I think it’s mostly just because I need something to do. And because I like to be a person in the know. Preferably the one calling the shots. Maybe that’s what made me such a good quarterback. It’s surprisingly tough to go from being the guy who knows everything that’s going on in school to some dumb jock who didn’t even realize there was a war going on around him.

I can fix that. I just have to gather info.

Plus, it gives me something to talk to Sarah about other than whether or not I think John—and the others, but mostly just John—is okay or not. Even if it does make me sound a little like nutso Sam.

I take the long way home and drive past the high school. Not that I can get anywhere close to it—the authorities have the whole area around it pretty locked down. It isn’t the police who are running the show now. If so, I could probably camp out on the school lawn if I wanted to since my dad is the sheriff. No, there are people much higher up running the investigation. The FBI, and I’m guessing some other three-letter government groups that we civilians aren’t even supposed to know about. There are a lot of people in black suits walking around Paradise these days, which I guess makes sense since this is some grade-A Area 51 shit. Once I’d tried to sneak over to the school through the woods that border it, but they’ve got all the surrounding areas lit up with giant floodlights at night. I couldn’t get within a few yards of the edge of the trees or else someone might have seen me.

It would have been a nice time to have that alien girl—Six—and her invisibility powers around.

Today I recognize the cop who’s posted to make sure that no one turns down the street that leads to the school. Todd is only three or four years older than me. He was a big town football star back in the day and always likes to corner me and talk stats and plays when I’m at the station. I hesitate for a second and then decide to try my luck. I want to know what’s going on at the school. Maybe if I can get close enough to see what kind of detective work they’re doing, I can get an idea of how much they do or don’t know. Maybe I can even talk one of them into spilling a few secrets if I don’t see any pale dudes walking around.

I make a loop and come back to the school. As I’m doing so, I take off my letter jacket and toss it into the backseat, shoving my backpack on top of it.

“Hey, man,” I say, pulling up beside Todd. A couple of traffic barrels sit in front of my bumper. “How’s it going?”

“Just freezing my ass off to protect this sacred ground,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets and nodding his head towards the school. I can’t tell if he’s joking about the sacred ground or not because he’s definitely the kind of guy who will be talking about his high school glory days until his dying breath.

“Yeah,” I say, trying my best to sound casual. “What are they doing over there, anyway? I mean, I heard the place is a mess, but Dad says they aren’t telling you much about whether they’re finding anything useful or not.”

“It’s all classified intel,” Todd says, raising his eyebrows just a little bit to make it sound really important. “You know. Homeland-security-type stuff. Apparently the government doesn’t like it too much if you try to destroy a school.”

“I bet, man.” I nod. “Hey, so I actually left my letter jacket in the locker room back before all this shit went down and—I know this is stupid, but I feel kind of naked without it. Do you think I could just run in really fast and grab it? I mean, you probably felt the same way about yours when you were racking up touchdowns, right? It’s like a second skin.”

Something weird happens to Todd’s face. He’s quiet, and it looks like he just got a big whiff of something foul. Finally, he just shakes his head.

“No can do, buddy,” he says slowly. “The place is off-limits. I’m not even supposed to go all the way to campus.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No,” he says again. This time there’s no room for argument.

I squint my eyes and try to see as far down the street that dead-ends into campus as I can, but all I can make out is a handful of big black SUVs and a couple of moving figures dressed in dark clothes.

Todd clears his throat, and I snap back to the present.

“It’s cool,” I say. “I just thought I’d ask.” I force a grin. “But if something happens to my jacket, I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Todd gives a little smile as I back up and head away from the school.

They won’t even let him all the way up to campus? I think. What the hell are they doing there?

CHAPTER FOUR

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IS AN OLDER HOME IN the country, two stories tall and filled with so much wood paneling that it feels kind of like a cabin on the inside. It’s where my parents and I are staying for the time being since our house is basically a pile of ash. My parents were going to start looking at building something new when everything in town went crazy, so now we’re camping out with Nana—my dad’s mom—indefinitely.

I’m hardly out of my truck before Abby, our golden retriever, is on her hind legs and trying to lick my face. Dozer, our bulldog, stands up on the porch and looks for a moment like he’s going to come greet me too before he just falls back down and starts to snore.

Inside, the house smells delicious—like pot roast and mashed potatoes. It’s my dad’s favorite, which means he’s probably in a bad mood today and Nana is trying to snap him out of it. My guess is justified, because when my grandmother peeks around the corner from the kitchen, she tells me Mom’s staying in Cleveland for another few weeks visiting her family, which, knowing my mom, is code for “I’m going crazy in this house with my mother-in-law.” She’s been acting kind of weird and distant since the whole house fire thing, but I keep telling myself things will be fine and she’ll come back to Paradise once everything’s blown over.

Dad gets home not much later than I do. I guess that’s one of the perks of being cut out of a big investigation—you get to have dinner on time every night. He tosses his dark sheriff’s hat on a table near the front door and heads to the guest room he’s staying in upstairs. Soon he’s back down in a sweatshirt and jeans, and the three of us sit down for dinner at Nana’s ancient round dining-room table that must weigh two tons.

Nana says grace and asks us about our days. I give a vague answer about school going well—as far as my family knows, there’s no difference in who I was at Paradise and who I am at Helena. My dad asks a few questions about whether or not the administration has decided if Paradise will have a baseball team this spring or if we’ll get merged with our new school, which would be worse than having no baseball at all. I shrug and dig into my dinner.

Eventually, I get to prodding about the investigation.

“I saw Todd today,” I say between bites of meat. “He told me they’re not even letting him up to the campus, even though he’s supposed to be protecting the site.”

“Officer Charleston,” Dad says, chewing through Todd’s last name, “is not supposed to be gossiping about police affairs. And certainly not about any ongoing investigations.”

“It was my fault. I stopped by when I saw he was manning the roadblock. Forced him into talking to me. Don’t worry; he wouldn’t let me step so much as a foot past him.”

Dad doesn’t say anything, just keeps on chewing with his eyes on his plate. I clear my throat a little and keep talking.

“So, uh. Have you been over to the school? What have they got going on over there? Any ideas about who or what was behind everything?”

“The Smith kid and his father were behind it,” Dad says, parroting the same thing everyone else has been saying.

I want to correct him and tell him that Henri wasn’t actually John’s father. That he was some kind of guardian who protected me and Sarah and the others—who died doing so. And that I watched his body burn in a ceremony behind a slummy motel close by.

But as far as Dad knows, John Smith was just a quiet guy in some of my classes, and I was nowhere near Paradise High the night everything went down. So instead I just ask: “How can they be sure it was him, though?”

“They’re sure.” Dad’s voice is gruff, meaning he’s done talking about the subject.

“Who wants more rolls?” Nana asks.

“Yeah, but what proof do they have?” I ask, feeling a little bad for ignoring my grandmother. “They must have something on him if they keep telling everyone he did it.”

Dad drops his fork down on his plate and looks across the table at me.

“Do you know who the ‘they’ is you keep mentioning, Mark?”

“Uh, sort of. The FBI, for one.”

“And you’ve probably seen enough movies to know how the FBI works. And what happens to people who ask questions about top-secret investigations, right?”

“Sure,” I say. “Black bags over your head and stuff.”

“I don’t know about that, but the last thing I want is for my son to end up in trouble because he was poking around in things he should’ve let be. It’s bad enough that Sarah was involved with this boy. The last thing I want is for you to get wrapped up in it too.”

“Of course,” I say.

He picks up his fork and keeps eating, but my head spins. Sarah was involved with this boy. It’s not the fact that this is true that makes my stomach drop, it’s that my dad knows. I rack my brain, trying to think of a moment I might have mentioned that Sarah and John were dating before, or even after everything happened, but I can’t think of one. Talking about a guy who kicked my ass and stole my girl is not exactly the type of thing I would bring up with my family. If Dad knows Sarah was “involved” with John, it’s from the investigation. Meaning the FBI and whoever else is in Paradise right now must know too.

“You got another letter from Ohio State today,” Nana says as she tries to force a second round of mashed potatoes on me.

The nice thing about living in a small town is that if your house burns down, the mailman can probably still find you.

“I’ll look at it later.”

“Just like the letters from other colleges you said you’d take care of, right?” Dad asks. “The ones that have piled up on your desk? I went and looked at them earlier, and half of them haven’t even been opened yet.”

“It’s just—,” I start, but he won’t have it.

“Jesus, Mark. Do you have any idea how lucky you are? Do you have any idea how many other kids would kill to have schools clawing at each other to have you attend. To have even half of the scholarship money some of these places are offering you just to do what you love? To play football? How ungrateful . . .”

He keeps going, but I zone out a little bit. When I think back on how hard and boring I thought the application process was for colleges, I feel like an idiot. But it was the most important thing in my life at the time, trying to remember whether or not I’d sent off all the right transcripts and letters of recommendation. Now I realize there are much, much bigger things to worry about.

Dad keeps lecturing me. He’s normally a really nice guy. Good to us. Always there when I need him. The one thing he doesn’t like, though, is when he feels useless. When things get taken out of his hands or jurisdiction and he gets cut out of the loop. Then he gets cranky and starts to become a real dick at home.

I guess that’s something I must have inherited from him.

CHAPTER FIVE

ALEX DAVIS TEXTS ME AFTER DINNER. HE’S A wide receiver a year younger than me who was part of my close circle at Paradise High. Apparently his parents are out of town for the weekend, and he’s managed to score a whole keg. Everyone we know is going over there. “No open flames lol,” he says. I text Sarah to ask if she wants to go, but she says no, as I expected. Inviting her is just a gesture. Neither of us is really in the mood to party lately. Pick any Friday night in the years before Mogs invaded Paradise, and I would have been out with friends—maybe out with Sarah—partying at someone’s house or in a clearing in the woods that we’d circled our cars around. But now, I just don’t see the point. There’s an alien war that could break out here at any moment. When that happens, I don’t want to be trying to recover from my third keg stand.

My friends—my teammates—bothered me about my newfound lack of social life a lot at first. Then I told Sarah’s friend Emily that I was weirded out about parties ever since my house burned down. That’s not actually true, but Emily’s kind of a gossip, and pretty soon no one was giving me shit about staying home so much. Or at least, most people weren’t.

I text Alex and say I’ll pass and he calls me a little bitch and for half a minute I think that maybe I’ll go over there to kick his ass and remind him which one of us was MVP, but then I just click my phone to silent and head upstairs.

My room at the house used to be my granddad’s office before he died. At least, everyone called it his “office.” Really it was just the spare room where my grandmother stored all his old history books and navy trunk and stuff like that. But there’s a desk and a foldout couch in there, which is all I really need.

The first thing I do when I sit at the desk is log on to this blog I’ve started following called “Aliens Anonymous.” I stumbled on it by chance, back in the first few days after the battle at the high school, and despite its dumb name, it’s turned out to be pretty interesting. One of the guys running it—a dude who goes by the name GUARD—posted a story from the local paper and wrote a bunch of stuff about how the whole destruction at the high school might be a cover-up for alien activity. At first I thought GUARD might have been from around here, but the Paradise incident was actually just one of many accidents or events he’d pegged as being somehow linked to aliens. In this case, at least, he’d guessed correctly. He’d even made the connection that the “John Smith” that everyone kept pinning stuff on was probably not exactly of this world.

Searching through the blog’s archives, I’d come across a few stories that sounded like they might have had to do with the Loric or Mogs. The site is mostly a lot of posts that look like they belong in one of those “Elvis Still Lives!” magazines at the grocery store, but some of them sound true—or at least like they could be true, given what I’ve seen. I knew I could help the blog by telling them some of what I know, and by doing that I could get them to help me search for clues as to where John and Sam and Invisible Girl might be now.

So after browsing the blog for a while, I’d contacted GUARD and told him I was from Paradise and that I thought he might be right. There were a couple of weird emails from him full of instructions that had made me wonder if I was dealing with some kind of messed-up lunatic wearing a tinfoil hat—a guide on how to hide my IP address, passwords to access restricted sections of the blog, rules on when and how I could contact him—but after a while we started to get to know one another. I guess I started to trust him, because before long I’d told him about what happened at the school that night.

GUARD doesn’t know everything, though. I’ve seen enough specials on the news to realize that I should question the identity of anyone I meet on the internet, especially now that I know the Mogs would do anything to find John and the others. I didn’t tell him my name or anything. Just that I saw things that made me a true believer. On the blog I go by the name JOLLYROGER182, which I stole from the skull-and-crossbones flags flown at the Paradise Pirates football games and some of my granddad’s old navy stuff that’s framed in the upstairs room. He was part of the Fighting 182nd in the navy. I wonder what he’d say if I told him I was gearing up to maybe have to one day fight for Earth.

There are a couple of other people who are regulars on the blog, or “editors” as we call ourselves. Usually it takes a long time to earn that title, but I must have really convinced GUARD that I was legit, because he gave me full access to the blog pretty fast. The others are fine and all, but GUARD is the de facto ringleader, and the dude who’s the most serious about everything that’s going on.

I’m happy to see he’s online. We start chatting immediately.

JOLLYROGER182: wassup man

JOLLYROGER182: anything new 2night?

GUARD: Hey, JR. Still trying to make sense of that thing in TN.

GUARD is convinced that a freak storm in Tennessee was caused by one of the Loric’s powers, but we haven’t been able to track down any evidence. The story came from a police officer who had too much whiskey one night and started yelling to everyone at a bar about how some magic kids with the power to control thunderstorms were tearing across the state, and somehow that made it into the local paper. I called to see if I could talk to the officer, pretending I was someone from the Paradise police department, but they told me the guy had been transferred to a different county and they couldn’t put me in touch with him. I have a sneaking suspicion that’s the FBI’s version of sending a dog to a nice farm upstate, which probably provides more evidence that it was John and the others than anything else.

JOLLYROGER182: want me 2 look into it some more? i can try to call around again

GUARD: No. Take a look at this. Sound familiar?

He sends me a link to a post on an online journal. It belongs to some girl named Meredith down in Miami. It starts out really sad—her parents think she’s on drugs and have had her in and out of institutions—and I can’t figure out why GUARD is interested in it. Then, after a few paragraphs, I get to what he’s talking about: the reason her parents think she’s on drugs is because she says she watched some random dude on the streets of Miami use what she describes as “mind powers” to shove her boyfriend up against the wall of a coffee shop, keeping him pinned there a few feet off the ground.

My chat window dings while I’m reading.

GUARD: What do you think? Telekinesis?

GUARD: Could this be your friend? The time stamp on the journal entry is yesterday, but she doesn’t say when the coffee shop event happened.

GUARD: Emailed to find out more info but she hasn’t gotten back to me.

JOLLYROGER182: hold on

Luckily, this girl’s listed the facility her parents had checked her into and her full name. Not exactly smart stuff to put on the internet, but great for me. I look up the hospital and call the front desk.

“Hi,” I say when a woman picks up. “I’m trying to get in contact with Meredith Harris.”

“Just one minute,” the woman says. I can hear the clacking of keys in the background for a few moments before her voice comes back again. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir, but Ms. Harris was checked out a few days ago.”

“Oh, um . . . ,” I say, trying to come up with my next question. I realize that I probably should have thought this through more before I called, but thinking before I act isn’t really my style. I go off instinct.

“Um, that can’t be right,” I continue. On my computer screen, I see the date of the journal post, and something clicks in my head: It’ll be easier to figure out if it was John in Miami if I know when this chick first got sent to the hospital. “Maybe I have the wrong number. When was your Meredith Harris checked in?”

“Well . . . ,” the woman says. I can tell she’s hesitant to give me any more info.

“Please, ma’am, this is my sister. I’m just trying to make sure I know where she’s at.”

I must have come up with the right amount of sob story, because she gives me a date—one that puts Meredith Harris going into the hospital at the same time I was trying to kick John’s ass on the hayride.

I thank the woman on the other end of the line and hang up, then turn back to GUARD.

JOLLYROGER182: no dice. i called the hospital. the girl was admitted while John Smith was here

GUARD: Maybe the actual incident occurred before he came to Paradise?

JOLLYROGER182: i don’t think his powers came until he was here

At least, that’s what John told Sarah. In all our conversations about the Loric and the Mogs, I’ve gotten to know basically everything he ever told her about himself.

GUARD: Ah. Okay. Maybe it’s another Loric then.

JOLLYROGER182: must be a dumb one begging to become Mog food.

GUARD: So much stuff happening these days. A lot of weird activity.

GUARD: I get the feeling everything must be coming to a head sometime soon. Don’t you?

I hate that I agree with him.

I poke around online a little more before calling it a night, my eyes strained too much and a headache coming on. I lie in bed and think of the same scene that’s been replayed in my head a million times since everything went crazy. It’s not even one of the weirder moments, like when a damned lizard monster attacked us or John’s dog turned into some kind of dragon. Or when alien bad guys turned into ash after being stabbed. It was when I was at John’s house.

It was when I’d found out that aliens existed.

I’d gone over to John’s house to ask about the video. That stupid video someone had shot on their phone of John flying like Superman out of my burning house, Sarah and the dogs with him. I’d ended up in the middle of a fight between him and the guy I’d thought was his father, Henri. And then weird stuff started happening. Henri stopped moving, like he was frozen in place, which I now realize meant that John was using his telekinesis. They were talking about Sarah being in trouble, and then John was just gone. Running, I guess, all the way to the school.

After he’d left, Henri was able to move again. I’d been furious that no one was answering my questions, but I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. He looked like he was about to break in every way possible. I’d kept asking questions, but he kept ignoring me. He ran into another room. When he came back out, he was carrying a shotgun and this locked box with all kinds of weird symbols carved into it. I could tell he was on some kind of mission as he headed to his truck. I was fast, though, and got there before him, planting myself in the passenger seat. I needed to know what was going on. Especially if Sarah was involved.

“I don’t have time to deal with you,” Henri had said as he jumped into the truck. “Out!”

What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to react to that?

“If Sarah’s in danger, you take me to her,” I said. “No matter what.” And I meant it. Suddenly that was the only thing that mattered.

Henri had looked at me long and hard before starting his truck. As we peeled out of his driveway, he shoved the locked chest into my lap.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Henri just shook his head.

“Boy, you’ve got a lot to learn in the next five minutes.”

Then everything went to hell.

Lying on my pullout bed at Nana’s, I think about this interaction, wondering why I got in the truck in the first place. I don’t know, really. Looking back on it, I should have called my dad. Or let Henri go alone. Or any number of options that wouldn’t have put me at Mog ground zero. But something had told me to go with him. I’m glad I did. I mean, I saved John that night, and probably Sarah too.

But a little part of me wishes that I’d never gotten into that truck. That Henri hadn’t told me about the war we were driving towards—a battle on Earth between two alien races.

Part of me wishes I’d just walked away. Life would have been a lot less complicated that way.

CHAPTER SIX

THE NEXT MORNING I REALIZE I NEED TO TELL Sarah that the FBI and the police know about her and John. We’d assumed they had, but every concrete piece of information we can find helps us build a clearer picture of what’s going on. Plus, I want to tell her about the stuff I’ve been researching with GUARD. I’ve only ever talked about “Aliens Anonymous” in an abstract way, mentioning articles I’ve found online but not explaining that I’m now a part of a super-nerdy alien conspiracy blog. Maybe today’s the day to tell her.

She agrees to meet me for lunch, and by the time I get to the pizza place on the downtown square, she’s already there.

“Hey,” I say as I slide into a booth opposite her. She looks at me with concern, her eyes darting around nervously. I’m confused. “If you don’t want pizza, we can go someplace else.”

“No,” she says, forcing a smile. “I’m just having kind of a weird day.”

“How so?”

“Is there a woman with red hair in a black suit behind me?” Sarah whispers.

I scrunch my eyebrows together in confusion and then look over her shoulder. Sure enough, there’s a red-haired woman in dark clothes drinking a coffee alone and reading from an electronic tablet a few tables behind us.

“Yeah, why?”

Sarah exhales a long, steady breath, shaking her head.

“We went out for dinner last night, and she was there. This morning I went on a run, and she drove by me four times. Now she’s here.”

“Shit,” I murmur. “Well, there goes what I had to tell you.”

“What do you mean?” She sits up straighter, concerned.

“Just that my dad mentioned the FBI knew you were connected to John in some way. I didn’t figure they’d have you followed.”

“Crap,” she says.

We sit without saying anything for a few moments, trying to figure out what to do next. The silence is finally broken when the waitress comes by to take our order.

“Hey, Mark,” she says sweetly. I’ve eaten enough pizza here in my lifetime to receive hall of fame status. She knows me well. “What can I get you?”

“Hey. Uh, we’ll take a medium half meaty, half veggie.” Mine and Sarah’s old standby order. “I’ll have a soda.”

The waitress smiles at me and then turns to Sarah. She sneers in a way that makes it obvious she wants Sarah to notice.

“You want anything?” she asks, an edge to her voice.

This is Sarah’s life now—the mad bomber’s girlfriend. I want to cause a scene but swallow down the urge because apparently we’re already getting enough attention as it is. Sarah turns her head and locks eyes with the waitress, giving her a look that I recognize. I’ve been on the receiving end of it too many times—the kind of glare that makes you think your face is going to melt off.

“Diet soda, ma’am,” she says, emphasizing the last word.

The waitress rolls her eyes and walks away. Sarah just sighs.

“Jeez, some people,” I say.

“It’s not some people. It’s all people. I mean, half the town thinks I’m some kind of terrorist floozy. Even if they don’t say it, you should see the looks I get. And that’s not counting the people who are following me.”

“Okay, so what do we do now? Run away and try to find John and the others? I’ll go with you if you do. Hell, I’ll drive.”

I have no desire to go on a blind search for the Loric, but if Sarah wants to go, I’m not letting her go alone. And I have to admit, the idea of a road trip with Sarah is appealing—even if it is to track down her alien boyfriend.

“How would we even find them?” she asks.

“Actually,” I say, lowering my voice, “I’ve kind of been doing some research on the whole . . . Well, you know. Everything. There are other people out there who know about this stuff. People like Sam, who the rest of us thought were just kind of crazy. I’ve been talking to some of them, and we think we might have figured out a little more about what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah says, perking up. “What kind of stuff?”

“Well, now that I’ve seen John and Six in action, I kind of get what you’d need to look for. There was a girl in Miami who saw her boyfriend get picked up using telekinesis. It wasn’t John, but it might have been one of the others like him. Maybe someone who’s in contact with John. And one of the other bloggers has been keeping track of this guy in India who some of the locals have been worshipping as a god.”

“Yeah, but how do you know these bloggers or the people they’re writing about aren’t just a bunch of crazy people?”

“Well, a day or two after John and the others left Paradise, a police officer in Tennessee had pulled over some teenagers driving a suspicious car, but before he could arrest them, some kind of supernatural winds basically blew him out of the way.” Sarah raises her eyebrows, a glint of hope in her eyes. “Sound familiar?”

“Six.”

“That’s what I think.”

She grins, but it only lasts for a few seconds before the reality of the situation sets in.

“They could be anywhere by now,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“So there’s nowhere for us to even start our search.”

We pause as the waitress comes back and sets down my drink in front of me, then half slams Sarah’s onto the table, sending little drops of diet soda lapping over the rim of the glass. She leaves without saying a word.

“We could go anyway,” I suggest, trying not to sound enraptured by the idea of all that alone time with Sarah. “Skip this small town and let everything blow over.”

She gives me a little smile and shakes her head.

“My family . . . ,” she says, but I can tell I’ve overstepped my bounds in her mind and am sounding too much like an ex-boyfriend who’s trying to drop the “ex” part. “Plus, if John came back looking for me, he’d be heartbroken if I wasn’t here.”

“He’d be an idiot if he came back to Paradise,” I mutter. The words come out before I can stop them, so I try to explain. “I mean, with all the suits running around here.”

As if she overheard this as her cue, the red-haired woman gets up and walks over. She slides into the booth beside Sarah. Before I can react, there’s another dark-suited person sliding in beside me—a man who looks like he’s in his late twenties, with olive skin and close-cropped black hair.

We’re trapped in the booth.

“What the—,” I start.

“You’re Mark James,” the red-haired woman says. “The sheriff’s son. And you’re Sarah Hart.”

“What do you—,” Sarah says.

“My name is Agent Walker, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and this is my associate, Agent Noto. I hope you don’t mind if we join you.”

“We do,” I say, narrowing my eyes.

Agent Walker smiles. Noto hasn’t said a word or done anything but stare back and forth between Sarah and me. I wonder how close he was to us. Did he hear me talking about the blog earlier? Does he know what we’ve been talking about?

“We’re just trying to get an idea of what happened with John Smith here in town. As you probably know, he’s a person of high interest. There are several incredibly generous rewards that are being offered for any information on his whereabouts.” She turns her attention to me. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to your home, by the way. But I’m sure the reward money could go far in rebuilding.”

Is this woman really trying to bribe me into telling her about John?

“After all, I’m told the blaze started at a party you were throwing,” she continues. “I’m sure you’ve been wondering how you can make things up to your parents after something like that.”

My mouth drops open a little, and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.

“You’ve been watching me,” Sarah says, changing the subject. “I’ve seen you.”

“Of course you’ve seen me,” the woman says. “We wanted you to know that we’re here, keeping the town safe.”

“You’re following me,” Sarah says, gritting her teeth a little.

“I’m simply doing my job by ensuring that we follow up on every lead.”

“And you think Sarah is a lead?” I ask.

“We think you know more about John Smith than you might even realize.” Walker never takes her eyes off Sarah. “You were dating him. You must have some information that would be relevant to our investigation. Something that might help us to decipher exactly what happened at your school.”

“I hardly knew him,” Sarah says, staring down at the table. “We weren’t dating.”

“We saw a video that looked like he was flying out of your burning house,” the woman says to me. She turns back to Sarah. “He was carrying you.”

Sarah smiles.

“It’s crazy what you can do with cameras and a few hours on the computer, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Sam was always good at stuff like that when we had presentations at school,” I add. “He probably did it.”

Sarah kicks me under the table. I can’t figure out why until the agent turns to me and smiles.

“Samuel Goode. His mother, Patricia Goode, is a nurse. Father is Malcolm Goode, a . . .” She pauses for a moment before smiling a bit. “Current whereabouts unknown. Sam hasn’t been home since that night either. His mother is worried sick about him. It would be nice if she had any assurance that her son was alive.”

“Sam is . . . ,” Sarah starts, but then stalls. I recognize the look on her face. She’s trying to connect all the dots and carefully plotting out what she’s going to say.

Speaking carefully has never been my strong suit.

“Sam Goode is a conspiracy theory nut job,” I say, lounging back in my booth a little. “That little twerp wears the same NASA T-shirt every day of the week. You should hear the kinds of things he talks about. Aliens. The Illuminati. Personally, I think it’s his way of trying to get people to notice him when all the attention goes to me and my buddies on the team. He probably finally had enough of it and ran away, using the school thing as an excuse. He’s smart, but he’s also a total wuss. Trust me when I say he can’t handle himself in a fight. Not exactly terrorist material. If you ask me, he’s probably hunting for Sasquatches in the woods somewhere. That’s where I’d try to find him, at least.”

I take a big swig of my soda and glance over at Sarah, who’s looking at me with a mixture of disgust and confusion. I give her a little kick under the table, and she manages a smirk.

I take a chance and lean forward, grabbing Sarah’s hands in mine. They’re soft and tremble slightly. I have to hold them still against her initial urge to pull away.

“Isn’t that right, babe?” I ask, flashing the toothiest grin I can muster her way.

“That’s probably true,” she mutters.

“Well, that’s very enlightening, Mr. James,” Agent Walker says.

“I think I’m ready to go now,” Sarah says, scooting towards Walker.

The agent doesn’t move.

“But you haven’t even eaten yet,” she says. Agent Noto still hasn’t so much as breathed as far as I can tell.

“I’m not hungry,” Sarah says.

“Why don’t we talk a little more?”

“Oh, are you charging us with something?” I ask.

“What would we have to charge you with?” Walker says with a smile that’s just a little too forced.

“Nothing.” I shrug. “I just know you can’t keep us here unless you are actually going to arrest us or something. That’s how my father’s always said the law works.”

Walker gives a few short laughs, which seem to say, “How very cute that you think that’s how things work around here.” Still, she slides out of the booth. Agent Noto follows her.

“If you happen to remember anything,” Walker says, pulling a business card from her suit pocket and holding it out to Sarah, “do let us know. We’ll be in touch.”

In a flash, Sarah’s left the booth and headed for the door. It takes me a little longer to get out, and Walker’s standing in my way when I stand.

“That girl is trouble,” she says, still holding up the card. “Don’t let her take you down with her.”

We stare at each other for a moment. Her eyes are light and intense. Finally, I take the card and slip it into my pocket then push past her. On the way out, our waitress rounds the corner with our steaming pizza.

“Hey, where are you going?” she asks, clearly ticked off.

I shrug and point to Agent Walker.

“Red’s taking care of our lunch,” I say. And then I’m gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SARAH’S WAITING FOR ME ON THE SIDEWALK A few stores down. When I get close, she starts to walk away quickly, and I have to jog a few steps to catch up to her.

“What was all that about?” she asks.

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” I say.

“All that stuff about Sam, for starters.”

“I was just trying to cover my ass if they didn’t already think he was with John after I stupidly said his name. Trying to throw them off the trail.”

“Okay, then what about holding my hand. What was that?”

I stop and turn to her. We’re on the corner. The wind whips her hair back and forth across her face, and she looks like tears might fall from her eyes at any moment. I have no doubt that the agents are still watching us, so I step to the side to make sure that they can’t see her face from inside the pizza place.

“Sarah, if they think you’re his girlfriend, they’re going to keep watching you,” I say softly. “You know that. I was just trying to throw them off you as well.”

“I can look out for myself,” she says.

“I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to. John shouldn’t have—”

“I know.” She cuts me off in a huff. “Trust me, I know. I’m well aware of how messed up this situation is. All of it. And if there was some way I could fix everything, I would. I half wish John would get arrested because at least that way I’d know where he is, and that he’s safe.”

The wind whistles a little as we stand, not talking to one another. I want to hug her—to touch her in any way—and it takes a good amount of my willpower to remind myself that if I freak Sarah out, I lose the only person I care about, and the only person I can talk to about everything that’s happening. Other than a bunch of random people online who are probably old dudes living in their moms’ basements and surviving on caffeine and corn chips.

Besides, I’ve already pushed her as much as I can today.

“Sam doesn’t believe in Sasquatches,” Sarah finally says with a faint smile. “We talked about it before. No Bigfoot hunting for him.”

“At this point I’m not sure that I don’t believe in Bigfoot,” I say.

This gets a little laugh out of her, which makes me smile.

“I don’t know. I think I’d trust Sam on this one. He was way ahead of us on all this alien stuff. He probably knows more about John’s history than John does.”

This is true. It’s something I file away for the future. What did Sam know? How did he find stuff out? And did he leave any records?

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Sarah continues.

“Okay, where do you want to go?”

She shakes her head.

“I just need to be alone for a little while,” she says, digging for her keys in her purse.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I ask. “I can come over if you want. Or we can stay out in public where no one can get to you.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. Besides, my brothers are home this weekend, and there’s nothing they love more than trying to act tough and protect their little sister. We’ll talk later, all right?”

“Yeah,” I say.

I watch her walk away and make sure she gets to her car okay. She’s just a speck down the road when my senses come to and I start putting things together about our weird encounter at the pizza place. Agent Noto was sitting behind me.

Does that mean I’m being followed too?

I walk around our tiny downtown for a little while, half to clear my head and half to keep an eye over my shoulder and see if I’ve got some kind of tail watching me while pretending to read a magazine or something. But there’s no one. At least not anybody I can see.

The card Agent Walker gave me gives me absolutely no info—it’s blank other than a phone number, which goes straight to voice mail when I call it from the only pay phone I know of in Paradise. I don’t leave a message. Instead, I pull up the “Aliens Anonymous” blog on my phone and message GUARD, telling him that I’ve had a really weird run-in with the FBI and that this is the contact number they gave me. GUARD is good with computers and stuff, so maybe he can use it to find some new information or something.

When I’m walking back to my truck, I run into Kevin, an offensive lineman from school. He’s a giant of a guy, with patches of red hair all over his face that almost make it look like he’s capable of growing an actual beard. Almost. A few of the younger members on the team are with him, but they hang back, letting him lead. I briefly wonder if that’s what I looked like when I was always running around town with my own posse.

“Duuuude,” he says when he sees me. We do an elaborate series of handshakes and fist bumps. “We were grabbing burgers and saw you talking with Sarah on the corner. Looked pretty intense. What’s going on with you two—you hitting that now that Bomberman is gone?”

Fire rages in me, and I can feel my face turning red with anger.

“Look, man,” one of the younger guys says. “He’s blushing.”

“Don’t talk about Sarah like that,” I say. My jaw is clenched.

The whole pack “Oooooooo”s as if they were a studio audience.

“Sorry, man, I didn’t realize you two were a thing again.”

“We’re not,” I say, trying to smile. “But I’m working on it.”

“Must be hard being sloppy seconds to a terrorist,” Kevin says with a smirk. “Gotta make you wonder what she saw in a dude like him.”

I move before I think. In a flash I’ve got Kevin up against a brick wall, holding him by the arms of his letter jacket. He may be a giant, but I’m fast, and after years of strength training and weight lifting, I’m not exactly a lightweight.

It feels like one of my veins is going to pop out of my head. It’s been a while since I was in a fight—a real fight. Since the Mogs took over the school. And even then, I spent half the time hiding in a classroom with Sarah. Part of me wants to unleash on Kevin, just wale on him until I feel better about all the shit that’s gone down. But I don’t. He may be kind of a douche bag, but even if everything’s changed for me, nothing is different for him.

Kevin’s expression morphs from surprise, to fear, to something else—something friendlier. Something like recognition.

“Check it out, you guys,” he says, turning his head to the others, who are waiting for his instructions. “Mark James is BACK.”

My pulse slows a little, and I suddenly start to feel a little high. I smirk.

“John Smith had my sloppy seconds,” I say. “I’m just reclaiming what was mine to begin with.”

The guys laugh and jeer at me. Someone yells, “It’s Mark James, bitch!” a little too loudly, and we get disapproving looks from other people on the street.

“We’re heading back over to Alex’s to try and finish off what’s left of his keg before it goes flat. You coming or what?” Kevin asks.

“Yeah, man,” I say, not even thinking about it. It feels surprisingly good just to be standing around being bros again.

Then I feel a buzz in my pocket.

“In a little bit,” I say. “Tell Alex I’ll be over later.”

“Right on,” Kevin says, and after another elaborate series of high fives and shakes, they’re gone.

I pull my phone out. There’s a message from GUARD:

Have you ever heard of an Agent Purdy?

CHAPTER EIGHT

I SPEND THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON AT HOME on the computer, talking to the blog editors. Saturday afternoons must be a lazy day for conspiracy theorists, because GUARD and this other editor named FLYBOY are both online and wanting to talk. FLYBOY seems cool but is much more of a skeptic about the stuff that GUARD and I talk about. Which is good, I guess—sometimes I think we need a rational person to keep us from totally going off the deep end.

It turns out that GUARD called the number Agent Walker gave me and got the same voice mail but didn’t leave a message. A few minutes later, his phone rang—even though he’d purposefully blocked his number. GUARD answered because he’s not the type of dude to let a chance like that go by. The person on the other end of the line kept asking him how he got the number, but GUARD played it cool and kept saying he knew what was going on in Paradise and demanded to talk to someone in charge.

Finally, he got on the line with an FBI guy named Purdy.

According to GUARD, Purdy was a huge hard-ass who sounded really annoyed and anxious to get off the phone until GUARD said he knew about the Mogs. This, apparently, got Purdy’s attention. Only then GUARD didn’t want to talk anymore, and Purdy wasn’t giving him any info about what the FBI knew or didn’t know.

FLYBOY says this doesn’t mean anything, but I think otherwise: if this Purdy guy works for the FBI and recognized what GUARD was talking about, it proves that the FBI here know what’s really going on.

The only question then is how much they know. And who they’re trying to help.

We chat online for a few hours as we try to dig up anything we can on Purdy, but all we find is a picture of a piggish-looking man standing in the background at some government ceremony. It’s not much to go on. Not anything to go on.

My phone buzzes constantly with messages from my teammates over at Alex’s. There are more and more typos in them as the hours wear on. Finally I give in and head over once my brain is so full of government conspiracies and half-formed conclusions that I feel like it might just leak out of my ears. When I tell my dad I’m headed to Alex’s to hang out with the guys, he gets a wide grin on his face.

“Good to see you getting out of the house and being a high schooler again,” he says. “I thought you were turning into some kind of loner.”

I shrug and force a laugh, then head out before the conversation gets any deeper than that. I’m almost out the door when he yells to me.

“My truck’s parked behind yours. Just take mine, if you don’t mind.” He tosses me his keys.

“Sure,” I say. Dad’s truck—the thing he likes to drive when he’s off duty and wants to get away from the police cruiser—is a small, single cab. Kind of a piece of crap, but I’m not going far.

I keep an eye out for any cars following me, but I don’t see anyone. Plus, it’s all back roads from my grandmother’s place to Alex’s, which is about as clandestine as you can be in Paradise.

I think about calling Sarah and seeing if she wants to come, but I know she’ll say no. Especially since the FBI’s got eyes on her. (Would the FBI bother with busting a bunch of underage drinkers?) Besides, I know the guys well enough to guess that they’ll start talking about either me and her or her and John, and the last thing she needs is to be harassed by a bunch of drunk football players.

As expected, everyone at Alex’s is pretty buzzed. Half the team is there, and for a while it feels like it could be any Saturday night out of the last few years. Still, I spend the few hours I’m there sipping on the same warm beer just in case I need to keep my wits about me. No one seems to notice that I never need a refill as long as I’ve got a red plastic cup in my hands and mime drinking every so often.

When it starts to get a little late, I sneak out the back and to my dad’s truck. I don’t bother saying good-bye to anyone—tomorrow morning no one will remember what time I left, and I’ll get a text or two talking about hangovers and asking if I got home okay. I’m about to start the truck when I realize there are extra keys on Dad’s ring. One for our old house. One for my grandmother’s. And a few more with rubber around the tops: the keys to the police station.

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I consider the possibilities of what this could mean.

From what my dad’s told me, the FBI is basically working on-site at the school. That means at this time of night there are only a couple of officers at the station. Maybe a few agents too. But I know my way around pretty well up there. If I were to drop by, I could probably figure out a way to sneak past the front desk and get into my dad’s office, where all kinds of files might be kept. Even if the FBI’s taken over, there must still be initial reports at the station. Whatever it was that my dad and his officers saw when they arrived on scene that night.

If I could get my hands on some of those, maybe they could shed more light on the investigation.

I drive towards the police station before I can talk myself out of it.

CHAPTER NINE

TODD’S THE ONLY OFFICER ON DUTY. I THINK I’m the luckiest guy alive until he rolls his eyes and gives me a long, drawn-out sigh as I walk in.

“Go home, Mark,” he says curtly.

“Todd, man, what are you doing here all alone?”

“Someone mentioned that I was talking to civilians while on duty yesterday, and I got switched to the graveyard shift. That’s what.”

“Oh,” I say. Oops.

“Plus there’s been some kind of electrical fire on the outskirts of town that everyone was raring to get to.” He inhales and wrinkles his nose a bit. “Jesus. You smell like a bar.”

I’m not exactly surprised. Alex’s house smelled like it had been sprayed down with cheap beer. Still, this electrical fire is great news for me.

“I was just at a party,” I say with a shrug. “Someone must have spilled something on me. You know how it is. You’ve told me about the epic ragers you guys used to throw when you were on the team.”

Todd gets a wide grin and goes into a story I’ve heard a hundred times from him about how he drank the entire special team’s roster under the table out in the woods on his eighteenth birthday. I smile and nod and tell myself that I’m never going to be this dude when I get older. If humans aren’t the alien workforce or something by then.

Finally he’s done.

“Man, that sounds so hard-core,” I say, forcing a grin. “I’m super jealous. Anyway, I just came by to pick up some stuff my dad left for me in his office.”

Todd nods and gestures to my dad’s door, still grinning from his memories.

I unlock the office with Dad’s keys and quietly close the door behind me. The place is a mess of files strewn about the desk and seemingly random sheets of paper stacked on every surface. I start digging through the piles, but after a few minutes of searching, all I’ve come up with are weeks-old traffic violations and endless paperwork on stuff not at all related to John or the Mogs. Then I realize that of course that stuff’s not going to be lying around, and I use one of the small keys on the key ring to open the filing cabinet by my dad’s desk. After flipping through a few hanging folders, I come to the one I’m looking for: PARADISE HIGH SCHOOL.

Yes.

The first file I pull out is full of initial incident reports and nondisclosure agreements from the first responders. I toss it on the desk to come back to later. The second file’s a jackpot: full-page photos of the destruction at the school. The trenches dug through the football field and the huge divots I recognize as actually being footprints. Shotgun shells littering a classroom we holed up in for a while. The trashed auditorium. All signs that point to the fact that this was maybe something other than the work of a teenager with a vendetta against the school.

My pulse pounds as I take out my phone and start to snap photos of the pictures. I can upload them all to the blog later. GUARD and the others will flip when they see this shit. I rifle through the pictures as fast as I can, recording each one. My brain is buzzing, and I can hear my blood thumping in my ears.

Maybe that’s why I don’t hear anyone come in.

Someone yanks the back collar of my shirt and jacket, choking me. I’m swung around, and the surprise causes me to drop my phone. The file photos scatter across the floor. I expect to be staring into the face of a Mogadorian, or one of the agents.

But it’s worse.

It’s my father.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he bellows.

“Dad, I was—”

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in if someone else caught you in here? How much trouble I’d be in?”

“Dad, let me—”

“This is a matter of national security, Mark. I mean, Christ.”

He pushes me backwards with a strong shove. I stumble over my feet and hit the ground hard just as Dad’s picking up my phone. He taps on it, systematically deleting everything I’ve taken pictures of, cursing the entire time. It’s only then that I realize how weird it is that he’s here in full uniform so late. Whatever happened with the fire tonight, it must have been important enough to call him in.

When he’s done deleting things, he just stands there staring down at me for a minute.

“Go home, Mark,” he says, emphasizing every syllable he can. “And stay there.”

He starts to hand my phone to me when my text message sound goes off twice, so instead he turns the screen to see what’s on it.

That’s when his face goes white.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t respond, only reaches down and pulls me up to my feet, half dragging me out of the office.

“Todd!” he barks, and then Todd is standing by the front door. “Outside, now.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

He’s still pulling me behind him. I could fight back, but I can tell he’s furious. Something’s wrong. Something bad has happened.

When we get to Todd’s police car, Dad pulls open the back driver’s-side door and shoves me inside. I manage to rip my phone out of his hands as I go in, and Dad slams the door before he realizes I’ve taken it. He yells at Todd.

“You take him straight back to my mother’s house. If he puts up any fight, arrest him.”

Todd looks at me, shaking his head as my dad runs to his patrol car, yelling something into his radio.

It’s only then that I look down at my phone. There are two texts from Sarah.

OMG John is here.

Don’t come but if something weird happens I’ll txt u.

Shit.

My mind starts to race as I figure out what to do next. I call Sarah immediately. When she doesn’t answer, I text:

DAD SAW THIS. HE’S COMING 4 JOHN. GET OUT.

And then I realize what this means. Dad’s calling in the FBI, the police—hell, the fire department. Everyone’s about to converge on Sarah’s house, and she doesn’t know. She’s probably making out with a fucking alien, and the FBI and weirdo Agent Walker are going to find her.

I start banging my fist against the metal separating the front and back seats in Todd’s car, shouting as he gets in.

“NO! We have to go to her. Todd, man, take me to Sarah’s. You have to take me to Sarah’s right now. Go, go, go.”

“The only place I’m taking you is home.”

I keep beating on the metal until blood starts to trickle from my knuckles and Todd slams his own fist against the grate, yelling at me to shut up, then muttering profanities to himself. I’m frantically texting Sarah as he says: “And I thought the explosion at the Goodes’ place was going to be the highlight of the night.”

The Goodes’ place. Explosion.

My head tries to put everything together, ignoring the pain in my hand and the blood beating in my brain.

John’s here. He’s in Paradise, probably with Sam and Six. There was an explosion at Sam’s house. All the cops were called out to it. If there was an explosion, that must mean there was fighting. And the only people John would be fighting . . .

The Mogs.

The Mogs are here. They’re after John. And John’s with Sarah.

CHAPTER TEN

I STAY HOME FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. I don’t really have a choice. Nana sits in a chair at the bottom of the stairs, with one eye on my door and another on my truck outside—Dad’s personal sentry. I have no doubt that if I take one step outside the house, there’ll be an officer ready to pick me up before I even make it to the street. The last thing I need is to get thrown into a holding cell—even though it’s possible that would actually put me closer to Sarah.

Sarah. She’s all I can think about. In the upstairs office, I drive myself crazy pacing back and forth, hoping that she’s all right and that if things got bad, John at least was able to keep her safe. As much as I hate it, I have to believe that no matter what, he’d protect her. I text GUARD and tell him that shit’s going down in Paradise, but he doesn’t text me back. Of course this is the one night he’s not glued to one of his screens.

I text Dad about a thousand times, at first apologizing and then asking what’s happened. He doesn’t respond, until finally I ask him just to tell me that Sarah is okay and he replies with a single magic word: “yes.”

At least there’s that.

As I pace, I listen to my dad’s old police scanner, which I grabbed from his room. There’s so much yelling and chatter that I can barely make anything out. There’s something about a suspect being in custody, then a lot of static. I hear Sarah’s name and someone mention the Paradise station, and then someone says something about a “Dumont” facility. After that all the messages stop. Radio silence.

Someone must have realized that the police radios weren’t secure enough. I imagine Agent Walker pulling a giant plug that disables the entire radio system, even though I know that’s not how any of this actually works.

An internet search of “Dumont facility FBI” brings up some articles about some huge, strictly off-limits FBI compound in Dumont, Ohio, about two hours away.

If Sarah has been taken in, I have to believe that she is being detained in the station jail and not being shipped out to some secret FBI prison. And so at dawn I take a chance and head downstairs and out into the front yard. Nana’s no longer at her post, so I guess her orders were just to make sure I stayed in through the night. I jump in my truck and head into town. Dad’s phone’s going straight to voice mail by now. I park across from the station, watching, trying to get a look at Sarah or anyone else coming in or out. Every time the front door swings open, my chest pounds, only to be disappointed when someone other than Sarah walks out. Each time this happens, I get a little more worried.

It’s a little past 8 a.m. when Sarah comes outside, and I feel so supercharged with happiness and relief. She’s still here. They’ve let her go. Maybe this will end up all right after all.

Sarah looks a little scared, and it’s my first instinct to jump out and sprint straight to her. Instead, I drive along beside her as she walks down the street.

“Sarah,” I say as I pull up to the curb. The whites of her eyes are red, like she’s been crying recently. “Get in.”

“My parents are coming,” she says. “They came to the station when they realized I wasn’t at home and stuff was going crazy outside, but the agents at the front desk made them go back home—threatened to have them arrested if they stayed around asking questions about what happened. I told them to pick me up at the grocery store down the street so they wouldn’t have to come back in. They’re going to have so many questions.”

“Tell them I’m taking you home.”

“My cell phone’s gone.”

“You can use my mine,” I say, leaning over and opening the passenger-side door.

After a short phone call—lots of “I’ll explain in five minutes when I’m home”—she hands me back my phone and lowers her head into her hands.

“What are you going to tell them?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell them I need some sleep before we talk.”

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she says through her fingers. “John came back. I got super emotional and weird with him because I was feeling so crappy about everything before he just magically showed up, and then the FBI tackled me. I don’t know where John is now, and I am officially pegged as a person who is somehow connected to all this. I’ve been sitting in an interrogation room for the last three hours.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It was that Walker agent and a few other people. Noto. And some guy named Purdy.”

I note the name—the agent GUARD talked to on the phone. Is he the one in charge of everything going on in town?

Sarah continues.

“They wanted to know why John came to see me, and I told them it was because we made out a few times before he went crazy and he probably thought that I’d do it again if he showed up and threw pebbles at my window like we were in some kind of rom-com. I just pretended to be dumb.”

“And they believed that?”

“No, I don’t think so. But they let me go, at least. They have John. I think that’s all they really cared about. They just told me to make sure I didn’t leave town or there’d be trouble.” She shakes her head. “I’m on a freaking no fly list they said, as if I’d try to skip the country or something.”

“Shit.”

“I know.” Sarah pulls the edge of her gray sweater over her fingertips. “I feel so stupid. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. My dad saw the text you sent. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

She looks surprised about this for a second—even happy that what happened last night might not have been her fault. Then her face falls.

“They were probably watching me anyway. I should have told him, but instead I just ran outside. I was so happy to see him.”

“You don’t know that they had eyes on you.”

“I don’t know what they’ve done with him,” she says. Her voice is about to crack. “John . . .”

“I think he’s in Dumont. There’s some kind of FBI facility near the state border.”

“What?!” she practically shouts, jumping in her seat and straining against the seat belt. “We have to go. I have to talk to him. I have to explain to him that I didn’t—”

“No way, Sarah. You were just held and interrogated for being caught with him. You may not realize this now, but they could have arrested you for helping a criminal. The dude is on the most-wanted list, Sarah. I’m not taking you to an FBI prison so you can get yourself in more trouble. It’s not what he would want.”

The words come spilling out of me. Suddenly I’m hearing John’s voice in my head. That I have to make sure she’s kept safe. And right now, that means keeping her as far away from the Loric and the Mogs as I can.

“Besides,” I say, softening up a little. “He has superpowers. Do you really think he’s going to stay locked up for long?”

“I guess you’re right. Sam was with him, but Six wasn’t. She’ll track them down if he’s in trouble, I bet.”

“I’m sure. She’s one girl I’d hate to have mad at me.”

Sarah scowls a little, but I can’t decipher what the expression means.

“I’ve got to buy a new phone,” she says. “Or try to get mine back from the FBI.” She gets quieter. “Like that’ll ever happen.”

“You should buy a burner phone.”

“A what?”

“You know,” I say. “Like they have in shows about drug dealers and stuff. A prepaid cell phone. You know the FBI’s going to be tracking every text message and call you get on your old number.”

“God. Are we like drug dealers now?” she asks, staring out the window of my truck like I’ve watched her do a thousand times. “How is this our lives?”

“Don’t blame me,” I say. “Blame the impending war for our planet between the humanoid aliens and shark-faced bastards with magical swords.”

When I drop her off, her parents are waiting on the front porch. I watch as their expressions run the gamut from worried, to relieved, to furious, then some weird mixture of all of them. I stay in the truck, but her dad makes sure to shoot me a glare that tells me in no subtle way that he’s blaming me for whatever happened to his daughter. After all, I’m the party-loving ex they had to pry her away from over the summer to begin with. My chest falls a little. Maybe dropping her off wasn’t the best idea. Her cell phone’s gone. If I’m lucky, she’ll be able to keep her computer for “study purposes.” Otherwise, there’s no way the Harts are letting me see or talk to their daughter.

It’s late in the afternoon when I finally hear back from Dad, who’s been at work since he caught me in his office. He calls while I’m deep into researching a series of crop circles a few counties west of us, though I’m pretty sure that they’re just hoaxes and have nothing to do with actual aliens.

“Hi,” I say when I answer the phone. I’m not sure whether to expect to be yelled at or apologized to. Probably the first one.

Instead, I hear a long sigh on the other end of the line.

“Oh, thank God,” Dad says.

He sounds so relieved—what did he think had happened to me?

“What is it?” I ask.

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Good. Have you talked to Sarah?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Listen.” He pauses for a moment and then starts talking quieter. “Stay where you are. You can’t leave the house. I assume the agents took Sarah’s phone away from her for evidence, but if you can, get her a message telling her to stay put too. She’s a good girl. I always liked her. She shouldn’t be wrapped up in all this.”

“Dad, what’s going on?” My imagination is suddenly going wild and picturing Mogadorian ships landing all over Paradise—though I have no idea what they would even look like.

“I can’t really say. But something’s happened that’s causing the FBI to go crazy. It’s possible there might be one or two people we recently detained who are now unaccounted for. Seems like some weird stuff is going on over in Dumont where they were taken. I just want to make sure neither of you kids got any bright ideas of running away with your classmates if they wandered back through town.”

John and Sam. They’ve escaped.

That didn’t take long.

“I’ll stay here, Dad.”

Even as I say my good-byes, I’m on my computer, emailing Sarah.

Her response is an entire page of exclamation marks.

GUARD is the next person I contact. I’ve told him that one of my friends was brought in for questioning and that one of the Loric has been taken into custody. He’s happy to hear that John has escaped.

GUARD: AWESOME news. We need more good aliens out there.

JOLLYROGER182: DEF!

GUARD: I guess this means we know who the Feds are working for.

JOLLYROGER182: what do u mean?

GUARD: If the FBI was working with the Loric, he wouldn’t have had to escape, right?

I lean back in my chair. He’s right. Of course he’s right. If the FBI took John into custody and interrogated Sarah after the fact, they definitely aren’t working on our side.

JOLLYROGER182: shit

GUARD: You said it was Agent Purdy who was in on the investigation?

JOLLYROGER182: and some others. a woman named Walker too

GUARD: Sounds like it’s time for me to amp up my investigation into Purdy.

JOLLYROGER182: i thought u said u found everything you could

GUARD: There are other ways.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SARAH AND I GET OUR FIRST CHANCE TO TALK together at school the next day. The FBI—in a rare moment of kindness—didn’t inform Sarah’s parents about the events of Saturday night, so for all they knew, Sarah had just been out way past her curfew and got caught up in the attempt to catch wanted-criminal John Smith. As part of her punishment, she’s on a strict schedule: one that includes bus rides to and from Helena High and no more quality time with me. It’s a bummer, but it’ll pass.

I’m waiting near the entryway of the school pretending to be interested in reading a book for English class when she arrives. We lock eyes, and I motion my head towards the deserted hallway that leads to the back of the school’s auditorium.

“Hey,” she says. She seems in good spirits, which is a vast improvement over the last time we spoke.

“Hey yourself,” I say. “How you holding up?”

“I’m on complete parental lockdown right now, but other than that I’m okay.” She looks away from me. “No word from You Know Who.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. From what I can gather, they made a clean getaway.” And then I realize what she means. John escaped but didn’t contact her. He didn’t come back for her. “Oh, but . . . I’m sure he’s thinking about you?”

It’s by far more of a question than a statement.

“It’s cool. I’ve had a lot of time to think it over while barricaded in my room. Of course he didn’t come for me. It’s not like I can just leave my family and go gallivanting across the world fighting aliens—or whatever it is he’s doing. And dropping by again to see me just puts me in danger. I’m sure when the time is right, he’ll come back for me.”

Great. It’s possible that a part of me was hoping that this whole “questioned by the FBI about my arrested boyfriend” thing would snap some sense into Sarah. Looks like I’ve got more waiting to do.

“I just wish there was some way we could figure out what their next move is.”

Something clicks in the back of my head. I see a way for me and Sarah to spend some time together.

“You’ve got no absences in art after lunch, right?” I ask.

“Right.” Her voice has a hint of suspicion in it. “It’s only our second week here.”

“Good. We’re going to try to gather some intel.” Her face scrunches in confusion. I smirk. “An explosion at the Goodes’ house the same night John’s in town. Can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“Of course not,” she says. Her lips start to morph into a mischievous smile.

“That’s not something you sleep through. I bet Mrs. Goode saw some stuff. Maybe she even got to talk to Sam. I mean, you know she’s been worried about him. Maybe he gave her some idea about where they were going.”

“And what do we do about art class?”

I shrug. “We had a flat tire at lunch. You’re allowed a few unexcused absences. Where’s your sense of adventure, Sarah Bleeding Heart?”

She lets out a laugh.

“Don’t you dare tell me I’m trying to lead a boring life.”

At lunch, we leave hell and travel back to Paradise.

Sam’s house is on the outskirts of town, and I stick to all the back roads I can—the last thing I need right now is to run into my dad when I’m supposed to be lifting weights twenty minutes away.

We ring the doorbell a few times and loiter on the porch, but no one’s around. I peer through the front windows and some lacy curtains, but there don’t appear to be any lights on inside.

After five minutes, we make our way around the back of the house, where I see exactly why the police rushed out to the Goodes’ place. Half the backyard is scorched. It looks like a little well or something has been blasted to pieces. There’s a huge window that’s been blown out and covered with some kind of plastic tarp. It gives me sudden flashbacks of the way campus looked during the Mog attack.

“They were definitely here,” Sarah says, coming up beside me.

“There’s no evidence of this being other than a fire, though. No weapons or anything like that. Everything must have been taken away.”

“The cleanup crew is thorough.”

I nod, and we walk over to the truck, defeated. I’m ready to drive back to Helena when Sarah sees it.

“Mark,” she whispers.

She’s pointing at something in the passenger-side mirror. We turn in tandem, and I immediately see what’s caught her eye. There’s a black car parked in the middle of the road about a football field away. Unmoving. The windshield is so tinted that I can’t even tell if anyone’s inside or not.

“That car . . . ,” I start.

“Doesn’t look friendly.” Sarah finishes my thought.

I put my truck in gear and start driving, my eyes locked on the rearview mirror, hoping that the car will stay put.

It doesn’t.

“Mark,” Sarah says.

“I know.” My foot presses harder on the gas. I tell myself this is just a coincidence, but there’s no way I can talk my brain into believing that.

“It’s gaining on us,” Sarah says. She’s completely twisted around in the seat, her hands gripping the headrest.

I glance down at my speedometer. I’m already going sixty in a thirty, but I speed up even more.

“SHIT!” Sarah shouts, and I look in my rearview mirror again just in time to see the front bumper of the car disappear under my tailgate.

The car gives me a fairly light love tap—probably not enough to cause any damage but enough for me to feel it, and to rattle me pretty hard. It lets up a little, but it’s still trailing me by only a few feet. Instinctively, I speed up. The car does the same.

“Get back under your seat belt,” I yell at Sarah, who’s wiggled out of it to keep her eyes locked on the car.

“What do we do?” she asks.

My mind races. I can’t slow down. Luckily, the street we’re on is fairly straight, but there’s a curve coming up I’ll never be able to take at this speed.

“I don’t know,” I mutter. I’m pushing ninety and rising, but the car’s not letting up. I can barely make out someone behind the wheel—just a big black blob vaguely in the shape of a human. I wonder for a second if it’s a Mog or an FBI agent or some new type of alien we didn’t even know existed, because that’s a very real possibility at this point.

“What do they want?” I ask.

“Obviously to murder us,” Sarah shouts. She grips her seat.

We’re approaching the curve in the road when the car suddenly zips into the oncoming traffic lane and revs up beside me until we’re speeding along parallel to one another. The tinting on the car windows make it impossible to see anything but the reflection of the outside world—like the car is some sort of automated machine out for blood without an actual driver inside.

Sarah gasps. “Crap! Is it going to—”

I see what she’s guessing at a split second before it happens. I slam on my brakes. Sarah screams. The black car whips into my lane, missing the hood of my truck by what looks like inches. I can feel my antilock brakes pumping beneath my foot as the bed of my truck starts to slide to the right.

“HOLD ON!” I shout, bracing myself with one hand on the wheel and one gripping Sarah’s arm—as if I’m going to be able to hold us in place if we start to roll. I can feel the truck start to fall over.

But we don’t roll. The truck tips, then shudders, and finally comes to a stop after spinning a quarter turn. Smoke from my tires drifts through the air around us, filling my nose with the stench of burned rubber. Every muscle in my body is contracted, and I can already tell that I’m going to have some kind of bruise where my body’s been thrown against the seat belt.

There’s no sign of the black car. It’s disappeared around the curve.

“Are you okay?” I ask Sarah, who looks at me and nods. Her hair’s been thrown over her face, and her eyes are wide. She wriggles a little, and I realize I’ve got a viselike grip on her. I let her go. My fingers feel stiff.

I put the truck into park and start to shake a little, adrenaline rushing through me.

Ahead of us, the black car appears, stopped at the head of the curve in the road.

“Mark,” Sarah says. “Get us out of here.”

And then there’s smoke coming from the car’s wheels as it peels out. It careens straight for the passenger side of my truck.

I flip the truck into reverse to try and get us off the road, but I’m too slow. There’s no way we’re getting out of the way in time.

And then, at the last second, the car swerves to the right and misses us completely, then continues to barrel down the deserted road as I stomp on the gas and back up as fast as possible. I end up slamming into a thin, tall tree. It falls over with a crack. Splintering.

We watch as the car disappears from sight again, this time miles and miles away. I’m breathing like I’ve just played the most intense scrimmage of my life. Sarah’s hands are shaking.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask.

“I think that means we were poking around where we weren’t supposed to.”

“That car just tried to kill us.”

“No,” Sarah says, shaking her head. “It was just trying to scare us. To warn us about what would happen if we keep digging. If we get more involved.”

I glance at the clock. The period after lunch is starting in Helena. Shakily, I put the truck in gear and head towards our new school. There’s nothing else for us in Paradise right now.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MY DAD’S ALREADY HOME BY THE TIME I GET back from school that night, which is strange, because he’s recently been getting home about an hour after I do. I back my truck around the side of the house—there’s a good-size dent in my bumper and some scraped paint on my tailgate that I’d like to hide from him as long as possible. Stupid tree.

I can hear fighting when I walk inside. I rush to the dining room, where Nana’s reprimanding Dad about something. There are several cans of beer on the table.

I walk in on him midsentence.

“. . . bastards have no right to kick me out of my own damned office.”

“You may be an adult,” Nana says, “but you won’t use language like that under my roof.”

They notice me at the same time, and Nana moves to usher me out of the dining room while my dad swigs back a beer.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Apparently the FBI has completely taken over your father’s station,” Nana says, pushing me into the kitchen and pointing at a plate of cookies. I shake my head.

“What?”

“He’s less than pleased. Apparently a man named Perty or Purdy or some such kicked him out of his own office.”

Purdy.

“How can they even do that?” I ask.

Nana just shrugs. “I wouldn’t ask him right now if I were you. Let’s give him some space.”

I nod. I’ve seen my dad drink beer all my life, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him day drinking like this. Or even actually drunk. So I head upstairs to put my stuff away and check in on what I’ve missed online during the drive home from Helena while trying to figure out why the FBI might have taken over the police station. The logical part of me says that it’s just because John’s escaped and they’re concerned he’s going to come back here, but there’s also a nagging thought in the back of my mind: Does this have anything to do with the fact that I was digging around at the Goodes’ today? Is this another FBI warning—one more subtle than a car trying to run me off the road but definitely more personal?

I shake my head. This has got to be about the search for John and Six. That’s what I have to believe.

I’m bummed Sarah’s not online to chat with. I want to tell her about these new developments, but now that her cell is gone and her parents are wardens of the landline, the internet’s my only way of communicating with her. When I see she’s not there, I email her, telling her I’ve got some news she’ll want to hear but don’t actually mention anything specific.

Later that night—when my dad has passed out watching reruns in the recliner downstairs—I get a text from a weird number I don’t recognize:

Hi. Have you heard of any sightings of John?

I guess Sarah got a new phone after all. Hopefully a burner. I text her back:

No I think that’s good tho.

A few seconds pass and I get a response:

Yeah, I guess. I just wish we could help more

I sigh and text back.

We’re doing all we can. Can you call me?? I have stuff 2 tell u

And then nothing.

I lie on the foldout couch with my phone on my chest, waiting to feel it vibrate as I stare at the ceiling. I try to work things out in my head. The FBI has basically taken over Paradise. They’re working for the Mogs, or at least aren’t on the Loric’s side of things. And earlier today, some crazy person tried to kill me and Sarah. Or just scare us badly enough that we’d stop poking around.

But I can’t stop digging—can’t just go back to the way things were before everything went nuts at the school. Which means that things could get even more dangerous for me, and for Sarah.

I start to wonder what my family would do if I just disappeared one day. If the FBI or Mogs took me. What would the editors of the blog think?

Would all the research and fact-finding I’ve tried to do have been for nothing?

After a while I pull my computer to the bed and start typing up everything I can remember about the Mogs from the attack on the school. It’s part eyewitness account, part profile on the evil aliens. I don’t want to forget any details, and it may come in handy one day if we ever have to try to explain to people what really happened that night—or how to fight the Mogs. Or if I get in over my head and suddenly disappear.

I leave the document saved as a private draft on the blog, unsure of what to do with it. Posting it will just send the FBI after me—or the Mogs. They’d probably show up in the middle of the night and gut me with their glowing weapons. It’s not a pleasant thought, which is probably why I have a terrible dream once I finally go to bed. It starts off great—one of those dreams where it seems so mundane at first that there’s no question that what you’re seeing is reality. Sarah and I are in an old cabin that my family used to vacation at up in Michigan—one that I don’t think I’ve been to since I was twelve years old. We’re sitting in the room I always used to claim as my own, the one with two twin beds that were covered with these amazing electric blankets that I’d refuse to get out from under on cold mornings. But it’s not cold in the dream. In fact, it feels like spring, everything bathed in this peaceful golden light.

Sarah’s on one of the twin beds and I’m on the other, and we’re just talking. She’s saying something about an upcoming cheerleading competition, and I’m telling her she’ll be perfect. And she’s smiling so much. We’re both so happy. The dream is filled with happiness, like it’s in the air we’re breathing.

And then there’s a noise outside. I look through the window and see a huge beast—one of the creatures that attacked the school. A Mog monster, all yellow eyes and claws and horns. It’s coming right for us.

I turn away and go to grab Sarah, but she’s gone. Mog soldiers have poured into the room, their swords glowing different colors. They’re all grinning this sick grin, showing off their gray teeth.

One of them has Sarah.

She reaches out and calls my name. I step towards her. And then something juts out of her chest, right where her heart is. Something long and sharp and glowing.

Sarah screams. Her eyes go wide, and then her body goes slack. And then she’s gone. Her body turns to ash and blows away as if she were an alien.

It’s my own shout that wakes me up, sweating in the upstairs office. I text Sarah on the new number, but she doesn’t answer.

She must be asleep.

At some point I must pass out again, because the next thing I know, light is filtering in through the windows and I can smell bacon cooking downstairs. I’m a little disoriented but head to the bathroom and brush my teeth and stuff before meeting Nana in the kitchen.

“Your father’s still asleep up in his room,” she says with a bit of an edge to her voice. “Probably will be for a while. And he’ll wake up in a crappy mood.” She smirks a little. “Serves him right.”

I grab a slice of bacon from the ever-growing stack she’s got going beside the stove and devour half of it in one bite.

“He’ll be okay, right?” I ask.

“Oh, of course. The James men have always just been a stubborn brood.” Nana raises a white eyebrow towards me. “You’re no exception.”

I act hurt, as if she’s wounded me with some imaginary bullet. She chuckles to herself. Then there’s a knock on the door. She gives me a questioning look, but I just shake my head. She sighs.

“They’ll be for your father, I bet.” She looks down at her apron, which is smudged with grease.

“I’ll stall them,” I say. “You go get him up. He won’t yell at you as much.”

She pats me on the shoulder and walks away. I shove the rest of the bacon slice into my mouth and head for the front door, expecting to find Todd or one of Dad’s deputies.

Instead, I open the door and see Agent Walker. At the foot of the porch, Agent Noto stands tall, with his hands clasped in front of him.

My face must register my surprise, because Agent Walker raises a hand in front of her chest as if to calm me down.

“What do you want?” I ask, not trying to hide the anger in my voice. For all I know, it was these two who tried to run me and Sarah off the road yesterday.

“Calm down, Mr. James,” Walker says. She frowns. “We’re only here to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Mr. James—Mark—it’s imperative that you tell us anything you know about what Sarah Hart was doing after school yesterday.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” I ask.

“Because Sarah never made it home last night,” Walker says.

There’s a silence that settles over the porch. I can’t tell if I’m imagining it or if it’s just being caused by the sudden pounding in my ears.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I manage to stammer.

“Her parents filed a report last night,” Walker explains. “Since Ms. Hart is a person of interest, we’re bypassing the normal waiting period required to declare someone a missing person and jumping straight into the investigation. So I ask you again, Mark: What did Sarah do after school yesterday?”

I shake my head. None of this makes sense. I talked to her just last night. She texted me. She—

The text. From a number I didn’t recognize. It could have been anyone.

A voice keeps repeating in my head. Sarah’s gone. Sarah’s gone.

“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her since lunch yesterday. She took the bus home.”

Agent Walker nods. She seems satisfied with this answer. For a moment her face changes—like some kind of mask slips away—and she looks at me with concern. Maybe even pity, as if she wished she could do something for me. Maybe even give me a hug. But the moment passes, and her steely expression resurfaces, her mouth with a glued-on smile.

“We’ll be in touch,” she says, turning away from the door. And then she’s gone, into one of the ubiquitous black SUVs that have flooded our town.

Sarah’s gone.

I failed to protect her.

What am I supposed to do now?

No, that’s an easy question to answer. I find her.

But how am I supposed to do that?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT TAKES A WHILE FOR ME TO REALIZE THAT John might have come for her, and so I sit glued to my computer and check my phone every two minutes, hoping that she’ll send me some sort of message telling me she’s all right. She must know that I’m going out of my mind, and she’ll let me know she’s safe.

Days pass without any word from her, and I realize I’m holding on to unfounded hope. If she was with John, she would have found a way to contact me. She wouldn’t have just left me behind.

It’s so easy for me to look at the day she disappeared and see the things I should have done. When she—or whoever it was—texted me from that strange number. I shouldn’t have ever even left her alone after what happened at Sam’s house with the black car. I feel like an idiot. I feel useless.

I have to do something.

I’m practically glued to the blog, but there’s only so much research I can do online. I can’t just sit around and do nothing. I’ll go crazy.

Something dings in the back of my head. Sarah saying that Sam probably knew more about what was happening with the Loric and the Mogs than any of us.

His backyard was a battleground. His mom is probably scared, not staying at the house. The back window has been blown out, covered only by a sheet of plastic.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to climb through it. If Sam had a better idea of what was happening between the Mogs and Loric, maybe he left behind some clues I can use.

It’s almost 2 a.m. when I sneak downstairs dressed in all-black clothes, cringing at every creaking step. No one wakes up to stop me except for the dogs—but I’ve prepared for them. A few pieces of beef jerky, and Abby and Dozer are as quiet as can be.

I keep my headlights off until I’m already on the road. I drive past Sam’s house a few times to see if I can spot anyone around it, but it doesn’t look like someone’s home. I park a few houses away just in case. There’s no car out front, and a quick peek in the garage tells me there’s no car in there either. I knock, just to make sure that no one answers. It’s dead quiet inside.

Bingo. Empty house.

I take a deep breath and psych myself up. I’ve snuck in and out of a few houses in my life, but I’ve never actually done any breaking and entering. I tell myself it’s no big deal. And I need to do this. Any info I get helps us. Any info I get helps me get closer to finding Sarah.

I push in the plastic and climb through the window in the backyard and end up in the dining room. It’s not hard to tell which room is Sam’s: the one with a sign that says ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. I cross the brown carpet covering the hallway and slip inside.

Sam’s room is covered in posters that remind me why we all thought he was a weirdo at school. Star Wars, Alien, Starship Troopers, and at least two different NASA flags. I imagine that wherever he is right now, he’s wearing the same old ratty NASA T-shirt.

After bumping my head against a bunch of painted balls hanging from the middle of his ceiling, I start looking around. I’m not sure where to begin my search, so I just kind of start moving things on his desk. The problem is, I could point anywhere in Sam’s room and my finger would land on something “out of the ordinary.” I sift through action figures, blurry pictures of the sky, and a telescope it looks like he was trying to repair. I accidentally break the arm off a model robot and feel bad for about a split second before I remember that Sam’s off somewhere with John and probably doesn’t even remember that the model exists. Finally, I come across something that gets my attention.

I take a seat in Sam’s desk chair and open up a copy of a little magazine called They Walk Among Us. It looks like a photocopy. It’s full of alien conspiracies, lizard men, and other crazy-sounding articles, like how the Loch Ness monster is really an extraterrestrial sea horse. I thumb through a few issues before I read a headline that causes me to shiver.

THE MOGADORIAN RACE

SEEK TO TAKE OVER EARTH

The article is little more than a teaser of a bigger story that’s going to run the next month, but I can’t find the next issue anywhere. I take a picture of the article and front cover of the magazine and send it in a message to GUARD. He’s going to flip out when he sees it. Maybe he can help me track down the people who wrote it—people who might know more about what’s going on and how I can find Sarah.

GUARD responds quickly.

GUARD: WHOA.

JOLLYROGER182: i know. can u find anything else out about the mag?

I grab a few loose CDs lying around the desk just in case they’ve got files of interest on them. Unfortunately, I don’t see any kind of computer. Either Sam took it with him, or someone else has already made off with it. With a stack of magazines under my arm, I head out of Sam’s room and through his house, glancing at pictures of his family that line the walls. Sam’s dad is in some of them, staring back at me through thick glasses that look a lot like the ones Sam always wears. I barely remember Malcolm Goode from school parties and stuff when I was a kid. I look down at the pile of crap I’m technically stealing from his son’s room.

“Sorry,” I murmur, and then head to the backyard—through the back door this time.

Outside, I freeze: there’s movement in the woods near the end of the yard. I think about running, but if there isn’t anything there, that’ll cause me to look more suspicious. Just as my palms start to sweat nervously, an owl flies out of the woods. I exhale, telling myself that’s what I must have seen.

The side of the house casts a shadow that I disappear into, pressing myself up against the vinyl siding. I stand there for what feels like a long time watching the road, trying to see any movement or lights—anything that might suggest that there’s a black sedan ready to run me down. But there’s only the breeze and the sound of birds and insects somewhere out in the woods. Finally, I start back to my truck. I’m silently congratulating myself on a job well done when I realize the only thing that means is that the crazy person who was after us the other day was in fact after Sarah. That she’s probably being held captive by them right now.

Or worse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I STAY UP MOST OF THE NIGHT SENDING PICTURES and scans of the magazines to GUARD. He works his internet magic and comes back to me with several phone numbers for the people who publish They Walk Among Us. He asks if I want him to call, but I take responsibility for it. I’m the one who’s now pored over every column in every issue Sam had, hoping that something—anything—will give me a clue as to where the people holding Sarah might be. Or if not them, where John and Six and Sam might have escaped to. If I can find them, they can use their superpowers to rescue Sarah, no problem.

No problem. I repeat this over and over in my head, hoping that eventually I’ll believe it.

I buy a burner phone after school the next day and start in on the numbers GUARD came up with as I drive home. The first three I call have all been disconnected—not a good sign. The fourth and final number connects, though. Actually, it rings forever, with no voice mail. After about twenty rings, I hang up and call back. I count twenty more, and then I hang up and call back again.

I’ve never been one for subtlety.

After the third ring, someone hangs up the phone. I can hear the muffled sound of a split second of connection.

So someone’s there.

I take a chance and call back. This time the pickup is immediate.

“What do you want?” The voice on the other end of the line is shaky and high-pitched. It’s a man’s voice. By the rate of his breathing, it sounds like he’s hyperventilating.

“Hi, this is . . .” I fumble for a second before landing on a name. “Roger.”

“Whatever you want, Roger, you’ve got the wrong number. Don’t call back.”

“I’m just trying to get some info on They Walk Among Us. Are you one of the writers or editors or whatever?”

“I said, you have the wrong number.”

Click. The voice on the other end is gone.

I slam my fist on my dashboard and try to figure out what to do next. Then I say, “Screw it,” and dial back. This time the man sounds pissed when he answers.

“Don’t. Call. Again.”

“My friend is in trouble,” I blurt out. There’s silence from the other dude, so I continue. “She’s missing. It has something to do with the Mogadorians. I just want to find her. I just want to know that she’s okay.”

I sink back into the driver’s seat, letting my head hit the rest behind me.

“Please,” I say.

There’s a long sigh on the other end of the line. When the voice comes back, it sounds like the guy is crying.

“We don’t publish the newsletter anymore. They’ve taken everything. What more do you want from us? What more do you want? They’ve taken everything.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask, but I can guess. “The Mogs? Did they get to you?”

There’s no answer on the other end. I take the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a moment before hanging up. I shouldn’t be surprised that this was the fate of the magazine. Hell, I’m surprised anyone was left alive at all.

I message GUARD about the conversation. Then I make a proposal.

JOLLYROGER182: the people who subscribed to They Walk Among Us knew about the Mogs. it was in their mag

GUARD: Right. We know that.

JOLLYROGER182: we should change the name of our blog. make it easier for true believers to find

GUARD: You want us to become the new TWAU?

JOLLYROGER182: i think it might help us find some new recruits. and the more people in on this the more chances I have of figuring out what happened to Sarah

GUARD: It’ll make us even bigger targets if the Mogs shut down the old TWAU.

JOLLYROGER182: but u r a computer whiz. untraceable addresses and IPs. im not worried.

GUARD: Let’s do it. I’m emailing you an encrypted file. Password is a sea monster’s planet.

I know exactly what he’s talking about—this morning before I left for school, we’d made fun of an old article I found in They Walk Among Us about how sea krakens come from the planet Schlongda. It was maybe the first time I’d ever got a hint that GUARD had a not-so-serious side. Now that Sarah’s gone, he’s kind of the only person I can talk to about everything that’s going on. I know I haven’t met him in person or even talked to him on the phone, but he seems like the smartest person I’ve ever met. The things he can do with a laptop and internet connection blow my mind.

And when I get home and open the file he’s sent me on my computer, I am nothing less than astonished.

I’m staring at a text file that lists a ton of information on Agent Purdy. Not things like his bio or what he’s working on, but numbers that hold a much different power. Telephone numbers. Bank accounts. Passwords.

I message GUARD.

JOLLYROGER182: how the hell did you get all this????!

GUARD: I’m an internet wizard.

GUARD: Oh, and I’d print that out and then delete that file. IT WAS NEVER HERE.

JOLLYROGER182: can you get into his email and stuff?

GUARD: I’m trying, but it’s all intranet stuff. Heavy, heavy firewall. Lots of stuff off-line too.

JOLLYROGER182: what if we had his work computer?

JOLLYROGER182: would 1 of these passwords open it?

GUARD: That’s a different story.

GUARD: Wait. Are you about to do something really stupid?

I’ve been dying for a way to take action. I guess I just found it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BEFORE I LEAVE NANA’S I PUT A FEW NOTES ON my desk. If I’m caught, there’s a chance I’ll be shoved into a black van and never see the light of day again. That’s how the FBI and Mogs work, right? If that’s the case, I don’t want my family thinking that I ran away because of them or something. I want them to know that I didn’t just abandon them for no reason.

And if possible, that they should probably get out of Paradise too. This town is getting too dangerous. I leave a separate note addressed to Mom, telling her I’m sorry I haven’t called and that she should bring Dad and Nana up to Cleveland. That way they’ll be together, and out of Mog central.

I hope they don’t have to read the notes.

I set up an automatic blog post too with my draft from earlier on what had really happened at Paradise High. If I don’t log in and adjust the post time—if I get taken away—it will go live in a week. Maybe others can learn from what I knew. Maybe they’ll be able to find Sarah if I can’t.

I park my truck in an alley near the station where I can just see the front doors through a chain-link fence. There are a couple of agents milling about inside, but that’s all I can see. I message GUARD, who is acting as a diversion for me, calling one of the phone lines the FBI has commandeered and reporting to whoever answers that a teenager with glowing hands and the power to move things with his mind just entered a truck stop outside of town. Whatever he says, it must be convincing, because the agents fly out of the station, jumping into their black SUVs and disappearing down the dark streets. I wonder briefly if Dad’s being called in. I hope he’s in good enough shape to put himself together, if he has.

An agent stays at the front desk, but I’ve figured out a way around that already. There’s a window in the men’s bathroom with a latch that’s been broken since I was a kid. I remember once a rookie cop locked himself out of the station and got stuck climbing through it. But I’m more athletic than he was, and after crossing the street and skulking around to the side of the station, I’m bracing my arms against a porcelain sink as I pull the rest of my body inside, careful to close the window as softly as I can with my foot.

I’m in. Now I just have to stay hidden.

I walk out into the hallway where the bathrooms and some closets are and peek around the corner. There are a few rows of desks between me and the agent at the front, who seems glued to a computer screen. Dad’s office is across the station, twenty yards away. Just two first downs, I tell myself. It’s a cakewalk.

I’m halfway across the station when my dad’s office door opens.

It takes half a second for me to slam onto the floor and roll under a desk, where I hold my breath and try to fight off the trembling in my hands. I must have been fast enough, because the two men who walk out of the office don’t stop talking.

“I’m telling you, the situation here is under control,” a man’s voice says with a slight wheeze. “My agents are—”

“If things were really under control, Four couldn’t walk in and out of this backwoods town as if it was his own private warship,” the other man bellows, his voice like a bass drum. “I never should have left Paradise to someone who couldn’t handle it. From now on my soldiers will be taking over here.”

I flatten myself on the floor and press my face up against the bottom of the desk, which offers me an inch or two of room to see through.

“That’s not necessary,” the wheezy man says. His face is pink and piggish, with a big, busted nose that looks like he’s been tackled one too many times. I recognize him from the photo GUARD and I had found online: Purdy. At least that means Dad’s office is empty if they leave. If they stay—well, I’m completely screwed. The other man is a behemoth. He’s at least seven feet tall, with jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail that disappears beneath his black coat. From the back, he’s a wall of a man. A mountain.

“Your usefulness wears thin, Purdy,” he says. “Don’t let it wear out completely.”

The giant of a man takes a step forward, then pauses. He turns his face to the back of the station, towards me, as if he’s heard something. The man’s eyes are almost completely black. They reflect the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.

I’m looking at a Mogadorian. I’d recognize those terrifying black eyes anywhere. I don’t breathe. If I could stop my heartbeat, I would in order to keep him from discovering me.

But he turns away, barking at Purdy.

“Take me to Number Four,” he says.

He means John, I think. I’ve only got a few minutes before they realize the report is a sham.

As soon as the station door shuts, I roll out from under the desk and tiptoe across the room. Fortunately, the agent at the front desk is trying to make himself look as busy as possible, and he types loudly on the keyboard, giving me at least a tiny bit of noise cover.

Luck stays on my side: my dad’s keys still work.

Once I’m standing in Dad’s office, I allow myself a second or two to exhale and get my shit together, though the fact that I almost got caught and probably just saw a high-ranking Mog is hard to get past. The office has changed quite a bit since I was in it last, when Dad was dragging me out the night John was taken in. There are a few big boxes sitting in one corner that look like they’re full of all the files and papers that used to litter the place when it was my dad’s. The desk is tidy now—compulsively so—which is great for me because it means less to sort through.

I take a seat in the chair behind the desk and rifle through some of the papers and files. They don’t tell me anything. It’s all memos and bulletins that are the kinds of things that go up on the FBI website—public information. I’m looking for something a little more secretive than that.

Purdy’s laptop is sleek and black, like something out of a spy movie. I open it up while removing a piece of paper from my pocket that’s got all the things GUARD found written on it. Sure enough, the computer is password protected. I type in the one GUARD pegged as Purdy’s main access code and, just like that, I’m in. I’m on an FBI computer.

“God bless you, GUARD,” I whisper.

The desktop is littered with files. At the bottom of the screen are a few applications. I open up Purdy’s email, figuring if anything, it might be the easiest way of getting info on Sarah. The first password GUARD handed over is a bust, but the second one gets me in.

I type Sarah’s name into the search bar so fast that I misspell it twice. Finally, it goes through, bringing back over fifty emails containing her name. I shudder to think how many times my name might pop up in these emails, but that’s not what I’m here to find out. I sort through the newest ones first until I hit the jackpot.

Detainee Hart has been transferred to the facility at Dulce.

Dulce. I recognize the name immediately from back issues of They Walk Among Us and old posts on the blog. It’s a name that pops up all the time—a secret government base where weird stuff is supposedly always going down. A small-scale Area 51.

Sarah is being held in Dulce. New Mexico. Half a country away.

I have to go to New Mexico.

I start looking through other emails when I hear the station door slam shut, followed by a string of curses from what sounds like Purdy’s voice.

Shit. Sitting in front of me is a wealth of information—maybe enough to change the tide of the battle between the Loric and the Mogs. A battle that will decide what happens to Earth. I was hoping to have more time on the computer, then just to sneak out and let Purdy think I was never there. If I leave now, I can try to find Sarah and figure out what else is going on between the FBI and the Mogs on my own. But if I take the computer, if I steal this FBI laptop, maybe I can be the hero. With GUARD’s help, I can crack everything on the hard drive. Who knows what all we might learn. Sarah can help, once I’ve saved her. If this laptop has good intel on it, maybe I can save everyone.

And wouldn’t Sarah be impressed by that?

“Fuck it,” I say, pulling the power adapter out of the wall and taking the computer under my arm.

As Purdy berates the agent at the front desk, I unlock one of the windows to Dad’s office and slip out. In a flash, I’m in my truck, shooting through the alley. I take one last look at the station as I drive away. Purdy’s still in the front. Good. Maybe I’ll have a while before he realizes what’s happened.

Just enough time to leave Paradise.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I HAVE BREAKFAST IN A DINER A FEW HOURS outside of Paradise: a steaming pile of pancakes and two sides of bacon. I was never a big coffee drinker, but I’m on my third cup. I need to stay alert and awake. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.

Between bites of pancakes, I spin my burner phone on the table. My actual phone is sitting somewhere on the side of the road outside of Paradise, completely wiped clean of all my personal files and run over by my truck. All the info I need is on my burner now. I’m concerned about Sarah not having my number if she tries to contact me, but I can’t risk anyone tracking me. Besides, I still have email, and I plan on emailing her every day until I see her again. I’ll have GUARD figure out how to block my IP address or bounce my emails off a satellite or something.

I’ve already cancelled the automatic blog post. It will remain in my drafts folder for now. I’m not ready to come out with all this information. Something tells me I need to save it for later, when it can be used more strategically.

I thought about calling my family and trying to explain myself further, but I can’t risk it. They won’t understand, and giving them any info about where I’m going or what I’m doing is dangerous for them. I just hope that they aren’t too upset. With any luck, Sarah and I will be back in time for prom. Assuming there is still a prom. Assuming there is still a Paradise.

The diner’s pretty empty—the sun is only just starting to rise in the distance—but I’m still cautious. I wait until the old man in the booth behind me leaves before I pull out the laptop and open it up. I’m not even sure where to begin. Maybe it’d be best if I just mail the damn thing to GUARD. . . .

No. If anything on here will help me find Sarah, I need the info now. More than just the town she’s in. I need to know how I can help her.

I flit through some emails, mostly full of terminology I don’t recognize. I tell myself that over time I’ll analyze every word in these correspondences. There seems to be problems between the FBI and the Department of Defense, and I rack my brain to try and remember anything from my American government class about what it is the Department of Defense does other than something vaguely related to keeping the country safe. There are also a bunch of references to a secretary who’s helping out the Mogs, but I don’t know why Purdy’s so interested in some office assistant.

After a while I take a break from emails and start looking around for information in other places. I start clicking around the computer’s desktop. One folder stands out to me: MogPro.

Mogs.

I double click the folder, but instead of opening up like it should, a password terminal flashes on the screen. No username request, just a password field floating on top of the desktop. I try to escape from it or click on one of the other files, but it blocks me from doing anything else. I pull out the list of passwords GUARD sent me and try out the one that got me into the computer. A small red “X” appears below the password field.

Okay.

I try the next one and end up with another red “X.” As I hit Enter on the third one, it dawns on me what the “X”s probably mean.

“Oh no, no, no, no,” I whisper. But it’s too late. I’ve fucked up. A third “X” appears, and suddenly there’s a whirring from inside the computer as the hard drive spins into overdrive. In the background I see files disappearing from the desktop. Finally, the screen goes black. The power button is unresponsive.

“No!” I shout. “Son of a bitch!”

I slam my fist on the table, rattling my dishes. The sparse customers at the diner all turn to look at me. My waitress hurries over.

“Everything all right over here?” she asks, with a little more annoyance in her voice than worry.

“Yeah,” I say, pulling out my wallet. “I just . . . lost my homework.”

I start to hand her my debit card but pull back before she can take it. I’ve seen enough crime shows to know I shouldn’t be leaving a trail. Instead I hand her a twenty and wonder if it’s already too late for me to hit up an ATM—if doing so will bring a hoard of FBI agents choppering in from the sky.

I’m fuming at myself when I walk outside and think about chucking the laptop in the air and kicking it into the parking lot. But it may be useful still. I’m only just learning about all this computer stuff. Maybe GUARD can still get something off the hard drive. Maybe even info that’ll help the Loric and the rest of the world if the Mogs one day decide to invade on a massive scale.

I get in my truck and pull onto the highway. There are hardly any cars in sight. The sun’s at my back. My eyes are bloodshot from all the coffee, but I’ll be fine. Better that than to be falling asleep on the road. After all, it’s another twenty hours until I’m in New Mexico.

Content

Return to Paradise
Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files - 8
Pittacus Lore

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN