“I lost my cool, okay?” Five anxiously rubs his hand across the stubble on top of his head. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re almost there.”

I stare at this unhinged monster standing in front of me. He gulps down a few deep breaths, his shoulders shaking, fists balled from the excitement. Minutes ago, he sounded almost fragile, rambling in the darkness of my room. He’s broken, a total mess—I have to remind myself that he murdered Eight in order to squelch the swelling of sympathy I feel for him. Sympathy, yes, but also fear. He flew off the handle with zero provocation, and almost seemed happy killing those Mogs.

This screwed-up, violent, cowardly traitor is my only real hope of getting off the Anubis.

I shake my head. “Let’s go,” I sigh.

Five nods and we jog on, tossing out the whole hand-holding thing, and just careening towards our destination. As we run, I notice Five clenching and unclenching his hands. They’re both empty.

“How’d you do that with your arm?” I ask him, thinking about those rubber and steel balls he used to change his skin in the Lecture Hall. “I thought you needed to be touching something . . .”

Five turns his head so his good eye is on me. He touches the fresh bandage over his face.

“Losing an eye gave me some new, uh . . . storage possibilities,” he says.

“Ugh,” I reply, grossed out as I picture the rubber ball shoved into Five’s eye socket. “How’d you lose it, anyway?”

“Marina,” he answers, simply, no malice in his voice. “I had it coming.”

“I’m sure.”

We round the next corner, and the hallway opens up, the ceiling rising as we enter the huge docking bay. I can see crisp, blue sky through the portholes, sunlight pouring across the dozens of docked Mogadorian scout vessels. Other than the ships, the docking bay is empty. The mechanics and crew must be on the observatory deck, gazing out upon the world they plan to conquer.

We’re so close.

“Hold on,” I say. “If we open the airlock, are we going to be sucked out right away?”

“We’re in the atmosphere now, not space,” Five says impatiently. He leans over a nearby console, studying the interface. “It’ll be windy. You’re not going to chicken out, are you?”

“No,” I say, looking around the docking bay. “Do you think we could blow some of this stuff up? Maybe bring down the Anubis before it has a chance to do anything?”

Five turns to me, looking slightly impressed. “You have any explosive Legacies?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Know how to make a bomb?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then we’re going to have to settle for escaping,” Five says. Five hits a button on the console and a thick metal door thuds into place behind us. It’s the airlock—sturdy enough to keep the ship safe from the vacuum of space. It effectively seals us off from the rest of the ship.

“That’ll slow them down,” Five says, referring to pursuers we don’t yet have.