Suddenly, in my hands, the book begins to glow red, just like the piece of debris I picked up back at Dulce Base. I don’t know exactly how I’m doing it, or even what I’m doing.

“Ah,” Setrákus Ra says, watching with a raised eyebrow. “Very good.”

“Go to hell!” I scream, and fling the glowing book at him.

Before it’s even halfway to him, Setrákus Ra raises one huge hand and the book stops in midair. I watch as the glow I’d infused it with slowly fades.

“Now, now,” he chides me. “Enough of that.”

“What do you want from me?” I shout, frustrated tears filling my eyes.

“You already know that,” he replies. “I showed you what’s to come. Just as I once showed Pittacus Lore.”

Setrákus Ra hits a few buttons on the control panel in front of him and the ship begins to move. Gradually, the Earth, seeming both impossibly far and also like it’s so close I could reach out and grab it, drifts across my view. We aren’t moving towards it; we’re turning in place.

“You are aboard the Anubis,” Setrákus Ra intones, a note of pride in his gravelly voice. “The flagship of the Mogadorian fleet.”

When the ship completes its turn, I gasp. I reach out and press my hand against the glass for support, knees suddenly weak.

Outside, in orbit around the Earth, is the Mogadorian fleet. Hundreds of ships—most of them long and silver, about the size of small airplanes, just like the ones the Garde have described fighting before. But among them are at least twenty enormous warships that dwarf the rest—looming and menacing, mounted cannons jutting off their angular frames, aimed right at the unsuspecting planet below.

“No,” I whisper. “This can’t be happening.”

Setrákus Ra walks towards me, and I’m too shocked by the hopeless sight before me to even move. Gently, he drapes his hand on my shoulder. I can feel the coldness of his pale fingers through my gown.

“The time has come,” he says, gazing at the fleet with me. “The Great Expansion has come to Earth at last. We will celebrate Mogadorian Progress together, granddaughter.”

CHAPTER

TWO

FROM THE CRACKED SECOND-FLOOR WINDOW OF an abandoned textile factory, I watch an old man in a ragged trench coat and filthy jeans crouch down in the doorway of the boarded-up building across the street. Once he’s settled, the man pulls a brown-bagged bottle from his coat and starts drinking. It’s the middle of the afternoon—I’m on watch—and he’s the only living soul I’ve seen in this abandoned part of Baltimore since we got here yesterday. It’s a quiet, deserted place, and yet it’s still preferable to the version of Washington, D.C., I saw in Ella’s vision. For now at least, it doesn’t look like the Mogadorians have pursued us from Chicago.

Although technically, they wouldn’t have to. There’s already a Mogadorian among us.

Behind me, Sarah stomps her foot. We’re in what used to be the foreman’s office, dust everywhere, the floorboards swollen and mildewed. I turn around just in time to see her frowning at the remains of a cockroach on the bottom of her sneaker.