I Am Number Four - Pittacus Lore Page 0,11
friends or family of the owners hiding out in the big house—evacuees from the city who figured they could lay low for a while farther away from the warships. They go down just as easily as the first woman did, most too shocked to react to the sight of our faces. Our weapons. I wonder if their brains even process what’s happening before they fall silent.
The humans are like the Loric in some ways. Anatomically, for instance. Their bodies don’t disintegrate and disappear, becoming one with the universe. With Beloved Leader. Instead, they lie there. Dead. Bleeding. A reminder to everyone who sees them that they were unable to survive. They rot if left in the open, at a far slower pace than our trueborn—the best parts of our leaders disappear just like the vatborn do. A human’s end is disgraceful. There’s no honor in a death like that.
The acrid scent of blaster fire fills the air, mixing with the smoke rising from the flames, which continue to spread across the table. I inhale deeply. For the first time in a long while, I feel satisfied. I feel like I’m doing what I was born to do.
The boy we’re after makes a brief appearance before turning tail and fleeing. Running up a set of stairs. Coward. We chase after him, leaping over bodies. Our boots stomping on cold, shiny tile floors in the home’s entryway. Before we get to the first steps, a shot rings out. A human holding a double-barreled shotgun starts to reload. One of my men is down. It’s his own fault—it was his duty to be watching our left flank. He’s not dead, but injured. His left arm is gone, along with his blaster. Fortunately, he still has a dagger. He draws it from his belt and leaps. His shouts are pure rage as he lands on the human, taking him down. The man’s head hits the tile floor with a crack. That alone probably killed him. But just in case it didn’t, there’s the blade. Blood pools on the floor. I leave my trooper to his work and head upstairs with the other three squad members.
We find our target in a bedroom, hiding under a desk. I drag him out and lift him in the air with one hand, holding up the electronic tablet next to his head with the other. It’s him.
“Stop, please,” he says, beginning to beg. “I’ll do anything. We’ve got money. Is that what you want? If you let me go to my parents’ room, there’s a—”
I jab a syringe into his arm. He goes limp. I let his body hit the floor and motion to one of my men, who picks up the boy and throws him over his shoulder.
“Move out,” I say.
Downstairs, my one-armed soldier stands over a mangled mess that was once a body. He appears to have used the hot barrel of his blaster to cauterize the stump where his arm used to be. Human blood drips from his uniform.
“Piece of shit,” he says, kicking the lifeless corpse. “That was my good hand.”
We leave the way we came, stepping over the fallen. The flames from the overturned candles have spread to the carpet but are threatening to die out. I spot a large cabinet full of bottles nearby. Alcohol. I pull the whole thing down. Glass shatters. The alcohol spreads across the floor. As we step through the space where the sliding door had been, the liquid ignites behind us with a satisfying whoosh.
Technically, the fire will make it harder for anyone to determine what really happened here. But honestly, that wasn’t what I had in mind when I pulled down the cabinet. I just wanted to watch the place burn from the sky once we made it back to the Skimmer. To see the night lit up in flames.
And just as I expected, the sight of it as we shoot into the sky is glorious.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WE DROP OFF THE SEDATED CAPTIVE AT THE warship. Our injured man is replaced with a new soldier. He curses under his breath, insisting he can still fight, but I need everyone on my team operating at one hundred percent. Then we head for our next targets. Two more teenagers, this time in Wisconsin, where we don’t have any warships located.
Our first stop is outside of Milwaukee. A house, much smaller than the one we’d found in Chicago. It wouldn’t take but a few minutes for this one to burn to