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tuck them into my back pocket. My hands are the same as before. Truth be told, only half of me is thrilled that my first Legacy has finally arrived after so many years of impatiently waiting. The other half of me is crushed. Our constant moving has worn me down, and now it’ll be impossible to blend in or to stay in one place for any period of time. It’ll be impossible to make friends or feel like I fit in. I’m sick of the fake names and the lies. I’m sick of always looking over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed.
    I reach down and feel the three scars on my rightankle. Three circles that represent the three dead. We are bound to each other by more than mere race. As I feel the scars I try to imagine who they were, whether they were boys or girls, where they were living, how old they were when they died. I try to remember the other kids on the ship with me and give each of them numbers. I think about what it would be like to meet them, hang out with them. What it might have been like if we were still on Lorien. What it might be like if the fate of our entire race wasn’t dependent on the survival of so few of us. What it might be like if we weren’t all facing death at the hands of our enemies.
    It’s terrifying to know that I’m next. But we’ve stayed ahead of them by moving, running. Even though I’m sick of the running I know it’s the only reason we’re still alive. If we stop, they will find us. And now that I’m next in line, they have undoubtedly stepped up the search. Surely they must know we are growing stronger, coming into our Legacies.
    And then there is the other ankle and the scar to be found there, formed when the Loric charm was cast in those precious moments before leaving Lorien. It’s the brand that binds us all together.

CHAPTER SIX
    I WALK INSIDE AND LIE ON THE BARE MATTRESS in my room. The morning has worn me out and I let my eyes close. When I reopen them the sun is lifted over the tops of the trees. I walk out of the room. Henri is at the kitchen table with his laptop open and I know he’s been scanning the news, as he always does, searching for information or stories that might tell us where the others are.
    “Did you sleep?” I ask.
    “Not much. We have internet now and I haven’t checked the news since Florida. It was gnawing at me.”
    “Anything to report?” I ask.
    He shrugs. “A fourteen-year-old in Africa fell from a fourth-story window and walked away without a scratch. There is a fifteen-year-old in Bangladesh claiming to be the Messiah.”
    I laugh. “I know the fifteen-year-old isn’t us. Anychance of the other?”
    “Nah. Surviving a four-story drop is no great feat, and besides, if it was one of us they wouldn’t have been that careless in the first place,” he says, and winks.
    I smile and sit across from him. He closes his computer and places his hands on the table. His watch reads 11:36. We’ve been in Ohio for slightly over half a day and already this much has happened. I hold my palms up. They’ve dimmed since the last time I looked.
    “Do you know what you have?” he asks.
    “Lights in my hands.”
    He chuckles. “It’s called Lumen. You’ll be able to control the light in time.”
    “I sure hope so, because our cover is blown if they don’t turn off soon. I still don’t see what the point is, though.”
    “There’s more to Lumen than mere lights. I promise you.”
    “What’s the rest?”
    He walks into his bedroom and returns with a lighter in his hand.
    “Do you remember much of your grandparents?” he asks. Our grandparents are the ones who raise us. We see little of our parents until we reach the age of twenty-five, when we have children of our own. The life expectancy for the Loric is around two hundred years, much longer than that of humans, and when children are born, between the parents’ ages of twenty-fiveand thirty-five, the elders are the ones who raise them while the parents continue honing their Legacies.
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