“But they’re alone!” I say. The words come out before I have a chance to think what I’m saying.
I don’t know how I know this. It’s just a hunch I have. If this member of the Garde has been desperate enough to reach out on the internet, looking for others, his or her Cêpan must have been killed. I imagine my fellow Garde’s panic, her fear. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my Katarina, to be alone. To consider all I deal with . . . without Katarina? It’s unimaginable.
“What if it’s Two? What if she’s in England, and the Mogs are after her, and she’s reaching out for help?”
A second ago I was scoffing at Katarina’s absorption in the news. But this is different. This is a link to someone like me. Now I am desperate to help them, to answer their call.
“Maybe it’s time,” I say, balling my fist.
“Time?” Katarina is scared, wearing a baffled expression.
“Time to fight!”
Katarina’s head falls into her hands and she laughs into her palms.
In moments of high stress, Katarina sometimes reacts this way: she laughs when she should be stern, gets serious when she should laugh.
Katarina looks up and I realize she is not laughing at me. She is just nervous, and confused.
“Your Legacies haven’t even developed!” she cries. “How could we possibly start the war now?”
She gets up from the desk, shaking her head.
“No. We are not ready to fight. Until your powers are manifest, we will not start this battle. Until the Garde is ready, we must hide.”
“Then we have to send her a message.”
“Her? You don’t know it’s a she! For all we know, it’s no one. Just some random person using language that accidentally tripped my alert.”
“I know it’s one of us,” I say, fixing Katarina with my eyes. “And you do too.”
Katarina nods, admitting defeat.
“Just one message. To let them know they’re not alone. To give her hope.”
“‘Her’ again,” laughs Katarina, almost sadly.
I think it’s a girl because I imagine whoever wrote the message to be like me. A more scared and more alone version of me—one who’s been deprived of her Cêpan.
“Okay,” she says. I step between her and the monitor, my fingers hovering over the keys. I decide the message I’ve already typed—“We are here”—will suffice.
I hit Enter.
Katarina shakes her head, ashamed to have indulged me so recklessly. Within moments she is at the computer, scrubbing any trace of our location from the transmission.
“Feel better?” she asks, turning off the monitor.
I do, a little. To think I’ve given a bit of solace and comfort to one of the Garde makes me feel good, connected to the larger struggle.
Before I can respond I’m electrified by a pain, the likes of which I’ve only known once before; a lava-hot lancet digging through the flesh of my right ankle. My leg shoots out from beneath me, and I scream, attempting to distance myself from the pain by holding my ankle as far from the rest of me as I can. Then I see it: the flesh on my ankle sizzling, popping with smoke. A new scar, my second, snakes its way across my skin.
“Katarina!” I scream, punching the floor with my fists, desperate with pain.
Katarina is frozen in horror, unable to help.
“The second,” she says. “Number Two is dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
Katarina rushes to the tap, fills a pitcher, and dumps it across my leg. I am nearly catatonic from the pain, biting my lip so hard it bleeds. I watch the water sizzle as it hits my burned flesh, then it floods the game board, washing the army pieces off onto the floor.
“You win,” I say, making a feeble joke.
Katarina doesn’t acknowledge my attempt at wit. My protector, she has gone into full-on Cêpan mode: pulling first-aid supplies out from every corner of our shack. Before I know it she’s applied a cooling salve to my scar and wrapped and taped it with gauze.
“Six,” she says, her eyes moist with fear and pity. I’m taken aback—she only uses my real name in moments of extreme crisis.