“Six . . . ,” I mumbled, and regretted it. I needed to keep my mouth shut.

The questions kept coming. After Spain it was India, and then questions about the locations of Loralite stones, which I’d never even heard of. Eventually, he asked me about “the tenth,” something that Setrákus seemed particularly invested in. I remembered Henri writing about a tenth in his letter to John and how that last Garde didn’t make it off Lorien. When I told Setrákus that—information I hoped wouldn’t somehow hurt the remaining Garde—he was infuriated.

“You’re lying to me, Samuel. I know she’s here. Tell me where.”

“I don’t know,” I kept repeating, my voice shaking more and more. With every answer, or lack thereof, Setrákus pulled back his staff and let me feel the searing pain again.

Eventually, Setrákus gave up and just stared at me, disgusted. I was delirious at this point. As if with a mind of its own, the dark ooze slowly crawled back up the chain, disappearing into the dark recess it’d come from.

“You’re useless, Samuel,” he’d said, dismissively. “It appears the Loric only value you as a sacrificial lamb, a diversion to be left behind when they’re in need of a hasty escape.”

Setrákus swept out of the room and later, after I’d hung there for a while slipping in and out of consciousness, some of his soldiers came to retrieve me. They dumped me in a dark cell where I was sure they’d leave me to die.

Days later the Mogadorians dragged me out of my cell and handed me over to a pair of guys with buzz cuts and dark suits, and guns holstered beneath their coats. Humans. They looked like FBI or CIA or something. I don’t know why any human would want to work with the Mogs. It makes my blood boil just to think about it, these agents selling out humanity. Even so, the agents were gentler than the Mogadorians, one of them even mumbling an apology as he clasped a pair of manacles over my burned wrists. Then, they pulled a hood over my head, and that was the last I saw of them.

I was driven nonstop for at least two days, chained in the back of a van. After that, I was shoved into another cell—this cell, my new home—an entire block in some big base where I was the only prisoner.