Ella and Crayton stand with Six on the shore. I drop the Chest and slap my wet hands on Héctor’s shin, arm, neck, all around his crushed back, hoping and praying the icy feeling will arrive in my fingers.

“He’s dead,” Crayton says, pulling on my shoulders.

I don’t give up. Hating myself for not trying the same thing on Adelina, I touch Héctor’s face. I run my hand through his gray hair. I even levitate him a few centimeters off the sand and try it all over again, but it’s true. He’s gone.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

I’M HOVERING OVER GRASS. I’M FLOATING OVER a river. I feel wretched and stiff, and every time I dare to open my eyes, I’m either bouncing over a log or gliding up a rocky hill. There’s a constant noise, and it takes me several minutes to realize it’s the sound of Bernie Kosar’s hooves. I’m draped over his back and we’re moving quickly through the mountains.

“You awake?” Nine asks. I raise my head to see him sitting behind me, both of our Chests under his arms.

“I don’t know what I am,” I say, closing my eyes. “What . . . what happened?”

“You ran right into the blue stuff. That’s the last thing on Earth, or Lorien, or anywhere, you want to do.” He sounds pissed, like I just tore him away from his own birthday party.

“What about Setrákus Ra?” I ask.

“Somewhere in the mountain, the coward. I couldn’t find another way in. And I looked.”

I push myself up BK’s hide in a panic. “Where’s Sam?”

“Not a chance, Four. Your buddy is either long gone, or he’s hanging upside down staring at the wrong end of a knife.”

I vomit. Bernie Kosar quickly lowers himself so I can slide off his back, and then I vomit some more. Nine tries to explain the sickness will go away soon, that he’s gone through it several times when he tried to escape his cell, that the healing stone seems to be powerless against the force field’s effects, but I’m too dizzy with visions of Sam being tortured to listen. My sickness is from my betrayal, not from some Mogadorian force field. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself. It’s my fault he went in there, and it’s my fault he was left behind. I turned my back on my best friend.

“We have to go back,” I say. “Sam would go back for me.”

“Not a chance. Not yet. You’re too much of a mess and like you said before, we need numbers.”

I pull myself to my feet but fall onto my hands and knees almost immediately. “You don’t even know where we are.”