I shine my Lumen on the palsied, saggy part of his face, wanting to get a good look at what I’m dealing with. The skin is grayed and almost dead looking, fine, ash-colored veins running through it. The dark particles under Sanderson’s skin actually seem to float away from my Lumen, almost like they’re trying to burrow deeper.

“I can heal this,” I say, resolutely. I’m not sure if it’s actually true, but I have to try.

“You—you can fix what they did?” Sanderson asks, a note of hope in his gravelly voice.

“I can make you like you were,” I reply. “Not better, in the way they promised. Not younger. Just . . . as you should be.”

“Old people get old,” Nine puts in. “You gotta deal with it.”

Sanderson looks at me skeptically. I must sound just like the Mogadorians did years ago, when they first convinced him to join their side.

“What do you want in exchange?” he asks, like a high price is a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing,” I reply. “You can try killing yourself again for all I care. Or maybe you can find what’s left of your conscience and do what’s right. It’ll be up to you.”

And with that, I press my palm against the side of Sanderson’s face.

Sanderson shudders as the warm healing energy of my Legacy passes into him. Normally, when using my healing powers, I get a sensation that the injury is knitting itself back together, of cells rearranging themselves beneath my fingertips. With Sanderson, it feels as if a force is pushing back against my Legacy, as if there are dark, cellular pits into which my healing light plunges down and gutters out. I still feel Sanderson healing, but it’s slow going, and I have to concentrate much harder than usual. At one point, something actually sizzles and pops beneath his skin, one of his discolored veins burning up. Sanderson flinches away from me.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, short of breath, my hand still poised next to his face.

He hesitates. “No—no, it actually feels better. Somehow . . . cleaner. Keep going.”

I keep going. I can feel the Mogadorian sludge burrowing deeper into Sanderson, retreating from my Legacy. I intensify my healing, chasing it through his veins. I find that I’m squinting from the exertion and a cold sweat dampens my back. I’m so focused on beating back the darkness I detect inside Sanderson that I must lose track of time or enter some kind of trance state.

When I’m finished at last, I stumble backwards, my legs wobbly, and run right into Sam. I wasn’t even aware he’d come upstairs. He’s holding out a phone—did he steal it from that bystander we knocked over?—and recording my healing of Sanderson. He stops when I bump into him and, for a moment, Sam is the only thing holding me up.

“That was awesome,” Sam says. “You were, like, glowing. Are you okay?”

I draw myself up with some effort, not wanting to show any sign of weakness in front of Walker or Sanderson, even though I feel drained. “Yeah. I’m good.”