“As far as I know, the secret to creating them would die with Setrákus Ra.” Adam sees my smile and holds up a cautioning hand. “You need to realize a few things about my people, John. First, the vast majority completely buy in to Setrákus Ra’s twisted idea of Mogadorian Progress, and all of them believe that Setrákus Ra is unkillable. That’s the only thing that’s kept them in line all these centuries. When you kill him, you’ll cut off the vatborn and maybe get a few of the Mogs like me to lay down their weapons—”

“You think there could be others like you?” I ask, interrupting. I always thought of Adam as unique and considered his seeing the light a side effect of his brush with Number One.

He looks away. “I . . . don’t know. I’ve met others who I thought . . . maybe . . . I’m not even sure they’re alive at this point.” Adam waves this off. “The point is, even without Setrákus Ra, you’ll still have a heavily armed race of zealots who believe might makes right. How I imagine it going down? First, the trueborn decide who’s strongest by blowing each other up with Earth as their battlefield. Then whoever survives tries to pick up where Setrákus Ra left off. There are a lot of generals, like my father, who would think they’re next in line.”

“They won’t succeed,” I say absently. In truth, I’m thinking about the idea of Mogs blowing themselves up. If only we could speed that part of the process along.

“In the long term, no. That’s still years of conflict, John. Here on Earth.”

“Humanity would be collateral damage,” I say, considering the effects of a Mogadorian civil war. The loss of life would be like New York City all over again. Unless the Mogs did their fighting over cities that were already evacuated . . .

“Anyway, first we’ve got to actually kill Setrákus Ra, right?” Adam says, patting me on the back. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I’m going to throw everything I’ve got at him,” I say. “And then some.”

“We’ll help, too, you know. You’ve got friends in this.”

I nod. “Yeah. Of course. I know that.”

Adam starts walking towards the elevator and motions for me to follow. “You got another few minutes? There’s something else I want to show you.”

I raise my eyebrows and follow after him. The military types coming and going down the brightly lit halls give the two of us a wide berth. I wonder which one of us they’re more afraid of.

I did a cursory exploration of the Patience Creek facility when I first arrived, familiarizing myself with the important areas—the officer sleeping quarters where we’re staying, the barracks, the holding cells, the gym, the garage—and glossing over the areas where the military are doing their thing. I’m not sure what Adam could’ve discovered in the brief time he was being held prisoner that I haven’t already seen. Then again, a place built as a hideaway for spies would have a lot of secrets.

“After they interrogated me, they took me down here,” Adam explains as we ride the elevator down two levels. “I guess they didn’t have much hope of this project paying off, so they stuck it out of the way.”

The level that we exit onto is mostly storage. I passed it over pretty quickly during my walk through. Half the lightbulbs in the hallway need changing. Adam brings me by a few rooms completely filled with dusty crates of dry rations and boxes of Tang, plus a storage space cluttered with seventies-style beach chairs and a moth-eaten volleyball net. Finally, we turn a corner, and Adam opens a door into a room cluttered with stacks of books. A library. At a glance, I realize that most of these yellowed hardbacks are dedicated to topics a spy might find useful in a post-apocalyptic pinch: volumes on gardening, electronics repair and medical treatment.

I flinch. The small room is filled with the harsh and guttural sounds of Mogadorians barking at each other.

On a desk in the middle of the room, there’s a wide piece of electronic equipment that looks vaguely familiar. The Mog voices emanate from that. It’s about the size of a car dashboard and covered with strange knobs and gauges. The thing looks like someone recently set fire to it and then dropped it off the side of a building. It’s hooked up to a tangled mess of wires and batteries, apparently drawing a lot of power.

Then it hits me. What I’m looking at is the control console of a Mogadorian Skimmer, ripped out from the rest of the ship. The console is powered on, thanks to some complex wiring, and that means the communicator is active.