“All right, Adam,” I say, feeling a tightness in my chest at his casual mention of Lorien’s destruction. “We hear you.”

“It might not be smart,” Marina adds. “But it’s what’s right.”

Adam rounds on us, his tone acidic. “In that case, which one of you is going to do it?”

“Do what?” I ask.

“Kill Ella,” he replies. “We all heard what John said. Setrákus Ra has her bound with his own version of your old Loric charm. You can’t hurt him without first hurting her. I’ve never even met the girl and I can tell you right now, I’m not going to do it. So tell me, which one of you is going to kill your friend?”

“No one,” I say resolutely, locking eyes with Adam. “We’re going to figure out a way to stop Setrákus Ra without hurting her.”

Adam glances up at the sun, as if trying to figure out how much daylight we’ve got left.

“Great,” Adam says. “Fantastic. Our resources are some broken-down ships and whatever the hell we can find in the jungle. Tell me how the hell you’re going to stop Setrákus Ra in our situation, Six.”

“John said there’d be backup coming, the military—”

“He said he’d try,” Adam practically shouts at me. “Look, I trust John, but he’s thousands of miles away. Help is thousands of miles away. Right here? It’s just us. We’re it.”

“Help is right behind us,” Marina says. Her voice is still calm, but there’s a strain there. What Adam’s been saying has gotten under her skin. “The Sanctuary will give us a way to fight.”

Adam takes this in for a moment before rolling his eyes. “A miracle. That’s what the two of you are hoping for? A miracle! I get that you woke that thing in there up, and I know it let you talk to your . . . your friend one last time. But that’s all it’s going to do, okay? It is done helping us. Don’t believe me? Maybe we could ask some of the Loric how much that Entity helped during the last Mogadorian invasion. If they weren’t all dead.”

The air around me gets cold. At first, it feels pretty good in this overbearing jungle heat, until I realize that it’s Marina fuming in her own special way. She takes a step towards Adam, her fists clenched, the whole serene-sister-of-the-Sanctuary thing dropped in a hurry.

“Don’t talk about what you don’t know, you monster!” she yells, jabbing her finger in the air at him. An icicle shoots from Marina’s index finger and stabs into the dirt at Adam’s feet. Immediately, it begins to melt. Adam takes a surprised step back, staring at Marina.

“Enough,” I say, stepping in between the two of them. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”