“Shit, Marina!” I hiss, but she’s not listening. Instead, she’s lunging through the doors. Considering my hand is numb, it takes all my willpower to keep hold of her. I tug Nine along behind me and his shoulder strikes the steel door, his grunt covered by the echoing metallic rattling.

The hangar is almost completely empty, the Mogadorians having already cleared all their gear out. Large floodlights shine down from the rafters, illuminating the metal table and chair in the center of the room. They’re the only things left in the hangar, and the lights from above cast long shadows across the concrete floor.

Eight’s body is on the table.

He is wrapped in a black body bag, unzipped to the waist. He’s shirtless, the quarter-sized wound where Five stabbed him through the heart plainly visible on his chest. His brown skin is ashen, but Eight still looks very much like himself, like at any moment he’ll teleport off the table and play some annoying joke on me. There are black electrodes with short, fragile-looking antennae attached to Eight’s temples and a few more running down his sternum. The electrodes generate some kind of field that’s barely visible to the eye, like a low and steady current of electricity is passing over Eight’s body. I think it’s something the Mogs attached to Eight to keep his body intact for their experiments. In addition to the electrodes, someone has cleaned the blood off him and, surprisingly, they’ve left his Loric pendant around his neck, the jewel shimmering dully against his chest. It kills me to see him like this, but Eight looks almost peaceful.

Of course, Eight isn’t the reason Marina shoved through the hangar doors, or the reason that she’s currently giving my hand a wicked case of frostbite.

Seated next to Eight, head in his hands, is Five.

Five sits crouched forward, almost like he wishes he could fold in on himself. There’s a thick pad of gauze over the eye Marina stabbed back in the swamp, a very faint pink stain beginning to soak through. His good eye is red-rimmed; it looks as if he’s been crying or hasn’t been sleeping—or both. Five’s head is freshly shaven since we last saw him, and I wonder how far off he is from getting a set of his own Mogadorian tattoos. He’s dressed in Mogadorian formal attire similar to the officer directing traffic at the warship. However, his uniform is severely wrinkled, the buttons around the neck undone, everything looking a little too tight.

There’s no way the one-eyed traitor didn’t hear us enter. Thanks to Marina, we made a ton of noise coming through the door, and the emptiness of the hangar amplifies everything to the point where I’m suddenly extremely conscious of my breathing. Even worse, I can hear a low growl coming from Marina, like she’s fighting back an intense scream, ready to throw herself at Five. Behind me, I can sense Nine basically holding his breath.