Free Five's Betrayal by Pittacus Lore Page B

to.
    Something like going home.
    I float in the air above the front gate and tell myself that it’s not too late. I can turn around and go. But even as I’m thinking this, my shoes are on the ground and my finger is on the doorbell and another voice is in my head, saying, “This is the only way, and when it’s done you will rule this place.”
    A servant answers the door—a maid I don’t recall but who must know me because she gasps when she sees me and then disappears inside. There’s some kind of commotion in the living room, and then Ethan shuffles out.
    He’s changed so much in the tiny window of time since I saw him last.
    His right arm has been amputated above the elbow and is wrapped in white cotton. He has a bandage on the right side of his face. There’s a dark smudge threatening to bleed through from the other side of it. I knew that his eye was bad, but it looks like the green lava must have eaten through half his face. When he sees me and tries to smile, he ends up wincing, and I picture the most grotesque injuries imaginable under all the gauze and cotton.
    Do it, I think. Now is the time. Just get it over with; finish it right here.
    But he speaks. And I can’t.
    “I know I’m not much to look at,” he says.
    “I’m just glad you’re alive,” I say. Even as the words come out of my mouth I know how ridiculous they are, but I can’t stop them. It’s like my mind has slipped into autopilot and is making me say things that I know a normal person would say. I’m just pretending. Just lying.
    “I was worried—I don’t really remember much about everything that happened. When I woke up, I was in a Mog helicopter. They’d treated me with something that had counteracted whatever the green stuff did to me, but . . .” He raises what’s left of his right arm. “As advanced as their medicine is, the damage had already been done. They told me you were fine, though. That you’d saved me from falling into the green lake.”
    I nod.
    “But the attackers escaped, right?” he asks.
    “Yeah. They did.”
    Ethan laughs a little and shakes his head, even though I don’t think anything is actually funny. Then his face gets really serious for a second.
    “That’s a shame,” he says, and his voice is gloomier than I’ve ever heard it before.
    I just nod. He narrows his good eye as he inspects me.
    “You’ve got bug guts on your shoulders, and your hair’s all matted down. Don’t tell me you flew all the way here.”
    “It was good training,” I said.
    “Jesus. Who forced you to do that?”
    “No one. I suggested it.”
    Ethan just nods a little bit.
    “You’ve outgrown all your teachers,” he says quietly.
    “We’re about to start the next phase of my mission,” I say. “The endgame is about to begin. I have about forty-eight hours before I’m needed back. Well, less than that now. About a day.”
    The words keep coming out because part of me wants to stall. Maybe because I know as soon as I finish my mission, everything will happen very quickly. And as ready as I am to take my place at our Beloved Leader’s side, I want to savor my last few hours in the calm before the storm.
    Or maybe—more likely—it’s because Ethan really is my weakness. And seeing him here in the house where he took me in and trained me is too much, and I can’t go through with what I’m supposed to do. Not yet.
    “You look tired.” Ethan smiles as best he can beneath his bandage. “Your old room is empty. How about we catch up over breakfast. I’m sure there’s been a lot going on since the attack. You are staying here, right?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “Only for one night. I just came to say good-bye.”

CHAPTER NINE
    EVEN THOUGH I’M OVERWHELMED BY THE NOSTALGIA of being in my old room, I pass out the moment my head hits the bed, still fully dressed. As good as I am at flying, it’s zapped the energy out of me. But it’s not a restful or deep sleep that I enter. I wake up several times