I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Search for Sam by Pittacus Lore

Author:Pittacus Lore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

I’m back in the chair.

Zakos has convinced my father to allow him to perform an accelerated mind transfer between me and One. The process will be so intense it will kill me, literally frying my brain. But Zakos has guaranteed the General that he will be able to download the contents of One’s transferred memories from my brain after my death. “If your son has been such a disappointment in life, at least allow him to be of service in death.”

Zakos assured the General that even if the intelligence he extracts from my brain is of little consequence, the results of the experiment will represent a tremendous leap forward for Mogadorian technology.

“You don’t need to make a hard sell, Zakos,” I said, still trapped in the guards’ grip. I turned to my father, an impudent smile on my lips. “Isn’t that right, Pops? He had you on board at ‘Kill Adamus,’ didn’t he?”

The General didn’t even look at me. He nodded at his guards, who released me, then turned to the doctor. “Have the results on my desk by tomorrow morning,” he said.

I’ve been in the lab since.

Guards monitor the door, but I’m not bound or watched by anyone but Zakos. Where am I going to go? How can I possibly escape? As my little demonstration in the hallway proved, I’m no match against Mogadorian soldiers.

Neither my father nor my sister has seen fit to visit me in my final hours. But my mother ventured down to deliver me a last meal. She entered the lab a few hours ago, carrying a couple slices of fresh-baked bread wrapped in a napkin and a plastic container filled with soup. She hesitated for a moment, looking for a suitable place to lay the meal. Then, realizing there was no good place for it, she wordlessly put the bread and soup on a laboratory counter. Then she turned her back to me, her hand on the door.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“Is what true?” I asked, a bit spitefully. I wanted to make her spell it out.

“That you’ve betrayed the Mogadorian cause.”

I guess my father figured we were past sugarcoating things and had told her everything.

“Yes,” I said.

Without another word, she left.

Moments later, as I held the still-warm bread in my hand, I realized that final home-cooked meal would be the last kind and motherly thing she would ever do for me.

I threw it in the trash.

Now Zakos is prepping me for the procedure. He’s filled a syringe with some kind of anesthetic, explaining that this time he will render me unconscious before the procedure begins, which should give him greater precision over the neurological mapping. Soon I will be put under, then I will join One in her memories, and then I will be dead.

Zakos opens One’s pod, to make a couple of adjustments before the procedure begins. I think of One and all the Greeters in their pods.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“Excuse me?” He’s absorbed in his preparations.

“What you did to all the Greeters, keeping them alive, raking their brains for intel all those years.

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