Nine goes next. Apparently, it was Nine’s fault that everything fell apart in his life. He fell for a human girl who was secretly working for the Mogadorians, and she led him and his Cêpan into a trap. Nine glosses over what happened to them once they were captured. Having some firsthand experience with the horrific things that go down in West Virginia, the dark look in Nine’s eyes when he finishes doesn’t surprise me at all.

“To Sandor,” John says.

“To Sandor and his champagne,” adds Eight, which gets a smile out of Nine.

“I guess you really got lucky,” Five says to John, jerking his thumb in Sarah’s direction. “She could’ve been a Mog spy too.”

“Hey,” Sarah replies. “Not cool.”

“They forced her,” growls Nine, referring to the girl he’d fallen for. “No human in their right mind would willingly work for those sons of bitches.”

“Except the government is . . . ,” I say, remembering the agents that transported me from West Virginia to Dulce.

Nine turns to me. “Well, any human that’d work with those albino ash-monsters can’t be in their right mind.”

“Or maybe they aren’t willing,” John says. “I have to believe that most humans, if they knew the truth, would be on our side.”

“I used to distrust humans,” says Eight. “Reynolds, my Cêpan, was betrayed by a woman he’d fallen in love with. It took me a while to get over that, but eventually I came to believe in the inherent good of humanity.”

Eight goes on to tell us how he learned to control his Legacies, and that he eventually came into contact with the local villagers who believed him to be the Hindu god Vishnu reincarnated. Even though the Mogadorians knew his location, they weren’t able to get to him because of a human army that protected him.

Five studies Eight, nodding, looking like something new and amazing has just occurred to him. “That’s great,” he says. “You tricked them into thinking you were one of their gods.”

“I didn’t mean to trick them, exactly,” says Eight defensively. “I regret not being more honest.”

“You shouldn’t,” continues Five. “I mean, it’s great if you can, like, make friends with the humans like John and Marina did. Otherwise, better to have them fighting for you than plotting against you, right?” He glances over at Nine. “Better to be in control than blindly chasing pretty human girls around.”

Nine leans forward, like he’s about to get out of his seat. “What’re you trying to say?”

“Mistakes have been made,” John interjects carefully, “but we need to remember that the humans are fighting the same enemy we are, even if they don’t all realize it yet. We can’t fight this battle alone.”

“To humanity,” I say jokingly, raising my glass. Everyone looks at me and I put my glass down, feeling a little light-headed.