I Am Number Four - Pittacus Lore Page 0,38

plaster and brick giving way to concrete and eventually smooth metal walls as I descend. Everything is hard, gray and clinical. The hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle the farther down the steps I go, though I’m not sure if it’s because the air is getting cooler or because terrible things happened to me here, even if I barely remember any of them. Gamera follows close behind me in the form of a dragonfly hovering over my shoulder. I nod to the Chimæra. It’s good to know my son is watching out for me, of course, but at the same time it makes me feel like a failure. I should be the one protecting him.

The underground portion of Ashwood Estates is a labyrinth. A sublevel snaking through the entire community with tunnels that stretch on in twists and turns for what seem like miles. As if that weren’t confusing enough, several of the passageways and rooms are completely caved in—something we have Adam to thank for, that eternity ago when he freed me from captivity here and let loose his newfound earthquake Legacy. Who knows what hides behind the collapsed hallways, what knowledge we lost when equipment was smashed? If we weren’t on the brink of losing the Earth, maybe we’d have time to find out.

There are plenty of rooms still standing, though. Laboratories and detainment cells, for example. I pass them, eyeing strange devices and surgical tools that send shivers down my spine. This place is still dangerous to me. Not just because of the questionable structural integrity, but because of the feeling I get when I walk through its hallways: the faintest wave of recognition followed by a stabbing pain in my head. There is something in the smell of the place—musty, charged with electrical equipment—that is familiar, like all the memories I’ve forgotten are just out of reach, waiting to be reclaimed. These tunnels fill every cell of my body with dread.

Fortunately, most of that subsides when I reach the facility’s archives. I don’t think I ever entered it during my imprisonment, because I can breathe a sigh of relief when I step through the doorway. That’s not to say the room is exactly cozy, nothing like the dusty libraries full of books and overstuffed chairs from my days at the university. This archive is just as uninviting as the rest of the underground level. Monitors and computer terminals line steel tables, their keyboards an unfamiliar shape and covered in markings I don’t understand. Cabinets full of servers and hard drive storage banks line the walls, humming in tune with the fluorescent lights overhead. There’s even a shelf holding a row of blasters on the far side of the room—the Mogs can apparently never be too far away from their weapons.

I stretch, my back cracking, and take a seat at one of the metal chairs in front of a computer terminal. This is the little space I’ve made my own over the last day: a computer, a handheld electronic tablet, a notebook, a small duffel bag full of tools and documents that might prove useful and a graveyard of dirty mugs. I put on a pair of headphones and flit through the list of Mog recordings on the screen until I find where I left off. Then I start watching.

Apart from being ruthless warriors, the Mogadorians also seem to be absurdly thorough when it comes to recording themselves, though I’m not sure whether this is strictly for some kind of historical record or is the by-product of a fascist regime wanting to keep track of its many moving parts. I fast-forward through dozens of videos, almost all of which are in the Mogadorian language and useless to me now that Adam is gone. Occasionally I find one in English, but those are mostly communiqués between human MogPro associates that contain either nothing useful or information we already know. I log anything of the slightest interest in my notebook. The whole process is mind-numbing, and at some point my eyes must start to glaze over, because I don’t realize someone else is in the room with me until there’s a hand on my shoulder.

I spin around, almost falling out of my chair as I try to get to my feet.

The man behind me is an FBI agent wearing a black suit. He’s younger than me, maybe thirty, with olive skin, short dark hair, and several days’ worth of stubble. On the stool beside me,