Free Five's Betrayal by Pittacus Lore Page A

to Canada. I want to be the right hand of our leader. I want to rule. I don’t want to go back into hiding, where I never feel safe and can’t show off my power. Especially now that the charm seems to be broken.
    I’m mortal. I can be hurt and killed. Even if I wanted to betray the Mogs, there’s no way they’d let me live.
    The route I take to Miami is close to the one I took through the Appalachian Trail with Rey when I was just a kid, when his cough started getting bad and we moved down through the states and to the islands. I probably wouldn’t have realized this if Ethan hadn’t shown me a map of that journey recently. But when I was a kid on those trails, we were moving slowly, and I was scared the whole time that at any moment the Mogs might show up and take me away. It’s almost funny looking at it from where I am now, flying like a jet, not from the Mogs but for them.
    I think of Rey in earnest for the first time in what seems like weeks. Already that part of my life feels so distant and far away, like it was a weird dream I suddenly woke up from one day. I wonder what he would say if he knew what I was doing. It’s not like Rey wasn’t a murderer. I think about all the animals he slaughtered for us to eat and survive on when we lived on the island, or even the snakes that he beheaded just to make sure they didn’t attack us. And I realize for the first time that Rey killed other things too. People. Mogadorians. When the Mogs came for me in Canada—when I’d hidden in a tree scared out of my mind that the boogeymen Rey always talked about had come to take me away—he killed them. Turned them to ash right in front of me. And I’d never thought about it as being anything bad because he’d always told me they were evil. He killed them without a second thought because he thought they were a threat.
    That’s sort of what I’m doing, right? Maybe Rey would completely understand the mission I’m on. I wonder if he might even have seen reason if he hadn’t gotten sick and had actually sat down and talked with the Mogs instead of just blindly follow the Loric orders to destroy them.
    I stop somewhere in Georgia to rest and refuel myself with a couple of burgers. The Mogs gave me a fat stack of cash to use in case I needed shelter for the night, but my adrenaline is pumping. So I take to the sky again.
    I have to focus.
    How am I even going to do what I have to do?
    The easiest thing would be to use my telekinesis, I guess. I could just snap Ethan’s neck the moment I see him. We wouldn’t even have to talk. He’d never see it coming. Or I could send him sailing through the sky and into the sea. Or I could use my Externa and become a walking blade. I realize that there are a million different ways that this could play out—a million different ways to kill—and I wonder how I’m supposed to decide on one perfect end that is humane and painless and honorable. How am I ever supposed to do this?
    I wonder if Ethan really was involved in the attack on the base. I don’t want to think it’s possible, but it could be. And I guess that’s all that matters. That tiny sliver of doubt is the kind of thing that has to be eliminated. Just like the rest of Mogadore’s enemies. Just like it says in the Great Book.
    It’s not like this is my decision. Setrákus Ra has determined Ethan’s fate. He is going to die whether I kill him or not. If I don’t do this, who will? Would they throw him in a cell for a while? Torture him? I don’t want him to have to go through that.
    I am doing the right thing.
    It’s almost midnight by the time I reach the beach house, and by that point I’m completely exhausted. The place is just as nice as I remember it. How long ago was it that I first saw it? A year and a half? Two years? I guess I wasn’t keeping track of time for a while there. But seeing the house again for the first time in months makes my stomach jump. It’s a weird sensation, one I’m not used