Sanderson ignores Nine and Walker. For some reason, maybe because I forced him to keep on living, he appeals directly to me. ‘The wonders they had to offer … can’t you understand? I thought I was ushering in a golden age for humanity. How could I say no to them? To him?’
‘And now you have to keep taking this stuff, is that it?’ I ask, glancing to the syringes that I bet contain something like the unnatural genetic brew the Mogs use to grow their disposable soldiers. ‘If you stop, you’ll break down like one of them.’
‘Old enough to turn to dust, anyway,’ Nine grumbles.
‘It’s been two days, and look at me …’ Sanderson waves a hand at himself, at his body that looks like a slug with salt poured on it. ‘They used me. Kept giving me treatments in exchange for favors. But you freed me. Now I can finally die.’
Nine throws up his hands and looks at me. ‘Dude, screw this. This guy’s a lost cause. We need to figure something else out.’
A sense of desperation begins to sink in now that Walker’s lead on the secretary of defense has turned up only a broken old man and gotten us no closer to thwarting the imminent Mogadorian invasion. But I’m not willing to give up just yet. This lump sitting in front of me used to be a powerful man – hell, the Mogs had a protection detail on him, so he still is. There has to be a way to fix him, to make him willing to fight.
I need him to see the light.
Some combination of desperation and intuition causes me to turn on my Lumen. I don’t crank it up to fire level; instead, I produce just enough juice so that a beam of pure light shoots from my hand. Sanderson’s eyes widen and he inches back on the bed away from me.
‘I already told you, I’m not going to hurt you,’ I say, as I lean in towards him.
I shine my Lumen on the palsied, saggy part of his face, wanting to get a good look at what I’m dealing with. The skin is grayed and almost dead looking, fine, ash-colored veins running through it. The dark particles under Sanderson’s skin actually seem to float away from my Lumen, almost like they’re trying to burrow deeper.
‘I can heal this,’ I say, resolutely. I’m not sure if it’s actually true, but I have to try.
‘You – you can fix what they did?’ Sanderson asks, a note of hope in his gravelly voice.
‘I can make you like you were,’ I reply. ‘Not better, in the way they promised. Not younger. Just … as you should be.’
‘Old people get old,’ Nine puts in. ‘You gotta deal with it.’
Sanderson looks at me skeptically. I must sound just like the Mogadorians did years ago, when they first convinced him to join their side.
‘What do you want in exchange?’ he asks, like a high price is a foregone conclusion.
‘Nothing,’ I reply. ‘You can try killing yourself again for all I care. Or maybe you can find what’s left of your conscience and do what’s right. It’ll be up to you.’
And with that, I press my palm against the side of Sanderson’s face.
Sanderson shudders as the warm healing energy of my Legacy passes into him. Normally, when using my healing powers, I get a sensation that the injury is knitting itself back together, of cells rearranging themselves beneath my fingertips. With Sanderson, it feels as if a force is pushing back against my Legacy, as if there are dark, cellular pits into which my healing light plunges down and gutters out. I still feel Sanderson healing, but it’s slow going, and I have to concentrate much harder than usual. At one point, something actually sizzles and pops beneath his skin, one of his discolored veins burning up. Sanderson flinches away from me.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask, short of breath, my hand still poised next to his face.
He hesitates. ‘No – no, it actually feels better. Somehow … cleaner. Keep going.’
I keep going. I can feel the Mogadorian sludge burrowing deeper into Sanderson, retreating from my Legacy. I intensify my healing, chasing it through his veins. I find that I’m squinting from the exertion and a cold sweat dampens my back. I’m so focused on beating back the darkness I detect inside Sanderson that I must lose track of time or enter some kind of trance state.
When I’m finished at last, I stumble backwards, my legs wobbly, and run right into Sam. I wasn’t even aware he’d come upstairs. He’s holding out a phone – did he steal it from that bystander we knocked over? – and recording my healing of Sanderson. He stops when I bump into him and, for a moment, Sam is the only thing holding me up.
‘That was awesome,’ Sam says. ‘You were, like, glowing. Are you okay?’
I draw myself up with some effort, not wanting to show any sign of weakness in front of Walker or Sanderson, even though I feel drained. ‘Yeah. I’m good.’
I catch Walker staring at me with that same look of awe her driver had after I healed his neck. Sanderson, still sitting in front of me, looks close to tears. The black spiderwebs that crisscrossed beneath his skin have disappeared; his face no longer droops, his muscles aren’t atrophied. He’s still an old man, deep-set wrinkles lining his face, but he looks like a real old man, not one who’s slowly had the life drained out of him.
He looks human.
‘Thank you,’ Sanderson says to me, his words barely above a whisper.
Nine looks at me, checking to see how I’m holding up, then turns to Sanderson and snorts derisively. ‘It’s all for nothing, Grandpa, if you let those pasty-faced asshats land on Earth.’