I can’t believe these are the types of conversations I have with myself on a daily basis now.

EXCERPT FROM I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES: FIVE’S LEGACY

LEARN THE TRUE STORY OF FIVE’S SECRET PAST!

CHAPTER

ONE

“THE MOGS ARE HERE!”

My eyes shoot open as I jerk upright, hoping that sentence was just something from a bad dream.

But it’s not.

“They’re here,” Rey whispers again as he crosses over the floor of our little shack to where I’m sleeping on top of a pallet of blankets.

I’m off the floor in seconds. Rey’s solar-powered lantern swings in front of my face, and it blinds me. I flinch away and then he turns it off, leaving me in complete darkness. As he pushes me towards the back of our home, all I can make out is a sliver of silver light peeking through the window.

“Out the back.” His voice is full of urgency and fear. “I’ll hold them off. Go, go, go.”

I start grabbing at the air where he’d stood moments before but find nothing. I can’t see anything: My eyes still burn from the lantern.

“Rey—”

“No.” He cuts me off from somewhere in the dark. “If you don’t go now, we’re both dead.”

There’s a clattering near the front of the shack, followed by the sound of something—or someone—slamming against the front door. Rey lets out a pained cry but the inside of the shack is still nothing but an abyss of black in my eyes. I know there’s a metal bar over the door that’s not going to hold up against much more than a little force. It’s for show more than anything else. If someone really wanted into our shack, they could just blow through the flimsy wooden walls. And if it’s the Mogs . . .

There’s no time to think, only to react. It’s me they’re after. I’ve got to get to safety.

I rip away the piece of cloth that serves as a makeshift curtain and throw myself through the little window. I land with a plop in a three-inch puddle of mud, slop, and things I don’t even want to imagine—I’m in the hog pen.

A single thought runs through my mind. I’m going to die a thirteen-year-old boy covered in pig shit on an island in the middle of nowhere.

Life is so unfair.

The hogs squeal—I’ve disturbed their sleep—and it snaps me back into the moment. Old training regimens and lectures from years before take over my brain and I’m moving again, checking my flanks to make sure there are no Mogs that have already made their way to the back of the hut. I start to think about what their plan of action might be. If the Mogs actually knew I was on the island, I’d be surrounded already. No, it must be a single scout that stumbled upon us by accident. Maybe he had time to report us to the others, maybe not. Whatever the case, I have to get out of the line of fire. Rey will take out the scout. He’ll be fine. At least that’s what I tell myself, choosing to ignore how frail Rey’s looked lately.