I still don’t entirely trust Agent Walker or her people, but the looming war has forced me to take on a lot of strange allies. So far, they’ve panned out. If my luck with trusting old enemies doesn’t hold, well, we’re pretty much all doomed anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

The floorboards creak behind me and I turn around to find Malcolm standing in the doorway leading up from the Mogadorian tunnels. His eyes are droopy with exhaustion and he’s in the process of stifling a yawn.

“Morning,” I say, closing up the folder of Walker’s documents.

“Already?” Malcolm replies, shaking his head in disbelief. “I lost track of time down there. Sam and Adam were helping me earlier. I thought I just forced them to take a break a little while ago.”

“That was hours ago,” I reply. “Did you spend your entire night going through those Mogadorian recordings?”

Malcolm nods his head mutely, and I realize that he’s more than just overtired. He’s got the punch-drunk look of a man who’s just witnessed something shocking.

“What did you find?” I ask.

“Me,” he answers after a moment’s pause. “I found myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you better gather the others” is his only reply before he disappears back into the tunnels.

Marina is asleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms, so I wake her up first. As she heads downstairs, she pauses in front of the master bedroom; once upon a time it was occupied by the General and Adam’s mother, but now it’s the temporary resting place for Eight. Marina lays her hand gently on the doorframe as she passes. I noticed when I woke her that she’s taken to wearing Eight’s pendant. I wish there was more time for me to grieve with her.

Adam is asleep in the remaining upstairs bedroom, his sword propped against the side of the bed within arm’s reach. I hesitate for only a moment before waking him, too. He’s one of us now. He proved that yesterday when he saved my life from the General. Whatever Malcolm’s discovered on those Mogadorian recordings, Adam’s insight could be invaluable.

Sam and the rest of the Garde slept elsewhere in Ashwood Estates, so I dispatch some Chimærae to track them down. Nine shows up after a few minutes, his long hair all unkempt and wild, looking about as fatigued as I feel.

“I slept on the roof,” he explains when I shoot him a weird look.

“Uh, why?”

“Somebody had to keep an eye on those government dorks you’ve got camping out.”

I shake my head and follow him down the steps into the tunnels. Malcolm and the others I’d gotten hold of are already assembled in the Mogadorian archives, silent and uneasy, Marina sitting about as far from Adam as possible.

“Sam and Six?” Malcolm asks me when I enter.

I shrug my shoulders. “The Chimærae are looking for them.”

“I saw them go into one of the abandoned houses,” Nine says, a sly smile on his face. I give him a questioning look and he wiggles his eyebrows at me. “End of the world, you know, Johnny.”