United as One (lorien Legacies, #7)

The seventh and final installment in the Lorien Legacies series opens in the aftermath of a devastating battle in Mexico. The Garde, young aliens from the destroyed planet Lorien sent to Earth as children to fight the Mogadorians, a warlike race that annihilated their world, have suffered a terrible blow. Sarah Hart, the human girlfriend of John Smith (Number Four), has been killed, and the Mogadorian leader Setrákus Ra, though gravely wounded by Six (Number Six), has survived. While healing in regenerative vats at his mountain base in West Virginia, Setrákus Ra telepathically invades the dreams of vulnerable individuals: Marina (Number Seven), the traitorous Garde known as Five, and Mark James, Sarah's ex-boyfriend. He coaxes Marina toward death by disguising himself as her deceased love Eight, offers Five forgiveness in exchange for the Garde's location, and promises Mark he can resurrect Sarah.

The survivors regroup at Patience Creek, a Cold War-era CIA facility near Lake Erie reopened as humanity's resistance headquarters under retired General Clarence Lawson. John, consumed by grief, practices his Ximic Legacy, a rare ability that lets him copy other Garde's powers. He has already acquired healing, invisibility, and stone-vision, a gaze that turns objects and people to stone, and resolves to learn as many Legacies as possible to destroy every Mogadorian on Earth. Six arrives carrying Sarah's body along with the injured Marina, Ella (Number Ten, who now crackles with Loric energy after bonding with a godlike entity called Legacy at the Sanctuary, a Loric refuge destroyed in the previous battle), Adam (a Mogadorian defector), and several Chimærae, shape-shifting Loric animals. John heals Marina, then boards the ship to say goodbye to Sarah, but his healing Legacy finds nothing left to rekindle. Mark confronts John, accusing him of getting Sarah killed, and punches him. John absorbs the blows and asks Mark to drive Sarah's body home to Paradise, Ohio.

A strategic meeting reveals the global situation: Mogadorian warships hover over more than 20 cities, and Setrákus Ra's surrender deadline has lapsed. Ella telepathically probes Setrákus Ra's mind and discovers he is using stolen Loric energy to create something new in the vats. When Lawson presents Adam in chains, John ejects ammunition from every weapon in the room and melts Adam's shackles, asserting the Garde's independence. The group devises a plan: steal Mogadorian cloaking devices, technology that allows people, vehicles, and missiles to penetrate warship force fields, and distribute them worldwide for a coordinated counterattack. Sam Goode, John's closest human friend, develops a new Legacy that lets him command electronic devices and programs an old cell phone to replicate the cloaking device's signal, a breakthrough that could give humanity unlimited shield-penetrating technology.

Adam sets up a covert listening post on Mogadorian communications and broadcasts a lie claiming he killed Setrákus Ra, sowing dissent among the fleet. John learns to fly through a violent training session with Five. Ella privately confesses she foresaw Sarah's death in a vision but tried and failed to convince the others to run, explaining that knowing the future changes behavior, which changes outcomes. When newly empowered human Garde post a YouTube video revealing their location at Niagara Falls, Six leads a rescue mission. John then launches a covert assault on the warship hovering over the falls. Invisible and armed with Five's wrist blade, he clears the ship using fire, ice, and stone-vision. On the bridge, Adam stops John from killing Rexicus Saturnus, a trueborn, or naturally born elite Mogadorian, who shot his own commander and surrendered. Rex becomes the second known Mogadorian defector. Sam's improvised cloaking device successfully penetrates the captured warship's force field, confirming the technology can be mass-produced. Then Setrákus Ra broadcasts a worldwide ultimatum ordering all warships to open fire, and cities begin to burn.

The crisis deepens when Phiri Dun-Ra, a high-ranking Mogadorian whose arm has been replaced by Setrákus Ra's black ooze, leads Augmented soldiers, ooze-enhanced Mogadorians granted stolen powers, against Patience Creek. She has used the mind-controlled Mark to betray the base's location. Phiri impales John with tentacles that drain his Legacies and binds him with a Voron noose, a razor-sharp Loric material that inflicts wounds his healing cannot close. She kills Mark and two of the human Garde before Sam frees Five to battle her. Sam kills the Thin Mog, an Augmented mind-controller, at point-blank range, then commands the facility's lights on to trap and bisect the Shadow Mog, an Augmented teleporter, mid-transport. Phiri escapes, and the survivors evacuate.

The Garde distribute cloaking devices worldwide using Loralite stones, alien teleportation stones, with Six and Sam delivering programmed electronics to military teams across the globe. John forges a dagger from the Voron noose and charges it with Dreynen, a form of energy that nullifies Legacies. He calls Lawson with two words: "Open fire." Simultaneous counterattacks launch worldwide. Six generates a massive storm that brings down the Anubis, Setrákus Ra's flagship, destroying its main cannon with lightning and ramming the crippled vessel into the mountainside.

The ground team assaults the base. Six and Adam infiltrate the control room and disable the force field, but Phiri ambushes Six, impaling her through the chest. Adam discovers he can pull the ooze toward himself due to his Mogadorian genetics and triggers a seismic tremor that opens a chasm, sending both him and Phiri into the darkness. His Chimæra Dust, mortally wounded, drags himself into the chasm after Adam.

Deep in the mountain, John, Nine (a fellow original Garde), Marina, and Five confront Setrákus Ra, who emerges from the ooze looking younger and more powerful. John's Voron dagger severs Setrákus Ra's connection to his Loric-derived abilities, but Setrákus Ra reveals his "Augmentations," self-designed powers fueled by the ooze, are immune to the blade. He traps Bernie Kosar (BK), John's loyal Chimæra, in an ooze cocoon, drowns Five in the vat, and absorbs Nine's arm when Nine stabs him. Marina accidentally discovers that her healing Legacy burns the ooze away on contact. John wraps himself around Setrákus Ra and channels every ounce of healing energy into him, forcing the ooze out while Setrákus Ra tears into his body. He telepathically asks Sam to bombard the mountain with the warship's cannon, even as he remains inside.

Six, healed by Marina at the cave entrance, sprints back into the collapsing mountain. She finds John's mangled body and Setrákus Ra, now a withered old man, crawling toward the ooze. Six decapitates him with the Voron dagger, and his head disintegrates in her hands. She discovers John is still alive, his injuries slowly mending. BK carries him out in griffin form as dawn breaks.

One year later, John distributes Loralite pendants to his scattered allies. He has spent the year in a Himalayan cave, building a round table without numbered seats to symbolize openness rather than hierarchy. Nine trains orphaned human Garde at an academy near San Francisco. Adam lives voluntarily in a UN prison camp, rehabilitating surrendered Mogadorians. Six and Sam vacation in Europe. Marina watches a skeletal, ooze-scarred Five survive alone on a Pacific island, wrestling with whether to kill him. John brings Marina to the Himalayas, where she sees the table, and envisions the cave as a gathering place where Loric, humans, and even Mogadorians will come together to protect Earth. He declares he is done with numbers.