The Fall of Five recap

The Garde are living together in Number Nine's fortified Chicago penthouse: John, Six, Nine, Marina, Eight, and Ella, with Sam Goode, his father Malcolm, Sarah Hart, and the Chimaera Bernie Kosar. Malcolm, recovered from the Mogadorians with his memory in pieces, slowly recalls that he was one of a group of humans who met the Loric ships when they landed and hid the children, and what the Loric left on Earth besides them. Ella begins having visions in which Setrakus Ra speaks to her directly. A signal reaches the group indicating that another of the nine is alive, and the search leads them south to Florida, where they find Number Five, raised in isolation by his Cepan, able to fly and to take on the properties of whatever he touches. He never settles among them. In the Everglades he reveals that he has already made terms with the Mogadorians, and he kills Number Eight. Marina, in grief, manifests a Legacy of lethal cold and blinds Five in one eye. Setrakus Ra takes Ella captive. The survivors scatter, one Garde dead and one turned.

Nine Loric children were sent to Earth with guardians called Cepans after the Mogadorians destroyed Lorien; a charm let them be killed only in order and only while apart. Numbers One, Two, and Three died before Number Four, John Smith, was found in Paradise, Ohio, in a battle that killed his guardian Henri and brought him Number Six. Number Seven, called Marina, was found in Spain, where her own Cepan died; the orphan girl she protected turned out to be Number Ten, called Ella, who came on a second Loric ship with her Cepan Crayton. John and his human friend Sam Goode freed Number Nine from a Mogadorian mountain base, and Sam was captured doing it. In India the group found Number Eight, who can teleport and shape-shift, in a cave whose paintings appear to show the Garde's future. Crayton was killed there and Six was taken, and the survivors converged on a Mogadorian base in New Mexico, freed Sam, and faced the Mogadorian leader Setrakus Ra together for the first time, forcing him off. All of their Cepans are dead and the charm no longer protects them. Six of the nine are alive, together, and based in Chicago.

The Garde are living together for the first time, in the fortified Chicago penthouse Nine's Cepan built, and using its training hall daily. John, Six, Nine, Marina, Eight, and Ella train; Sam Goode and Sarah Hart are with them, along with Bernie Kosar. Sam's father Malcolm, recovered from Mogadorian hands, is also there, and large parts of his memory are simply gone. John is trying to turn the household into a unit while Nine pushes for attacks and Six pushes for reconnaissance. The problem nobody can drill away is Ella, who has begun having dreams she will not describe, waking exhausted and frightened. What comes to her in them is not a nightmare but a conversation, and the person on the other end of it knows exactly who she is.

Malcolm Goode's memory returns in pieces, and what surfaces changes the group's picture of their own history. Before he disappeared he had been one of a small number of humans who met the Loric ships when they arrived on Earth and helped hide the children who came on them, and the Loric left more behind than nine children and their Chests. Ella's visions become explicit: Setrakus Ra is speaking to her directly and is not simply threatening her. Meanwhile the group's search for any sign of the missing Garde produces something concrete for the first time, a signal that indicates one of the nine is still alive and trying to be found. John treats it as an opportunity; Six and Nine treat it as an obvious trap, and both positions have merit.

The Garde split up to follow the lead, some staying in Chicago and some travelling south toward the Florida coast where the signal originates. Splitting is exactly what the enemy has always wanted from them, and everyone involved knows it. On the way, the group works on what Malcolm has remembered about the Loric arrangements on Earth, and Ella's condition worsens: her dream contact with Setrakus Ra is now regular, and she can no longer treat it as something to hide from the others. Marina and Eight have grown close, and Marina is more confident in a fight than at any point since Spain.

The lead is genuine: the Garde find Number Five, alive, raised in isolation by a Cepan who is now dead and never trained alongside anyone. He can fly, and he can turn his body to the substance of anything he touches, stone or metal or glass, which makes him formidable and almost impossible to hurt. Bringing him in should complete the group, and it does not. Five is awkward, resentful, and used to a life with no rules but his own, and he clashes with Nine immediately and with the others soon after. The Garde now number seven and have never been less united, and the household's attention is split between integrating Five and dealing with what Setrakus Ra is doing to Ella.

Ella's visions harden into something the group cannot ignore: Setrakus Ra wants her personally and has been preparing her rather than hunting her. The Mogadorians move, and the Garde are drawn into the Everglades, following both the enemy and the Loric traces Malcolm has recovered. Five's behaviour becomes harder to explain away. He asks the wrong questions, disappears at the wrong times, and gives answers about his years alone that do not fit together, but the group is short of time and short of Garde and takes him at his word. When the fighting starts in Florida, they are separated, exposed, and relying on someone none of them actually know.

In the Everglades Five reveals that he has already come to terms with the Mogadorians, and he fights the others. In the middle of it he kills Number Eight, whose death Marina cannot heal. Marina's grief brings out a new Legacy, a lethal cold, and she uses it on Five and destroys one of his eyes before he escapes to the enemy. Setrakus Ra takes Ella alive and carries her off, which makes it plain that he wants her for a purpose rather than dead. The survivors scatter, beaten, with one of the nine dead and another gone over to the other side. Marina will not leave Eight's body and comes away a colder person than she went in. The group that started the book as a household in Chicago ends it broken apart, with two objectives it cannot pursue at once: getting Ella back, and Five.

Number Five is not what the Garde took him for. He has already made an arrangement with the Mogadorians, and in Florida he turns on the others in the middle of a fight. Number Eight is killed by Five's blade, dying in front of Marina, who cannot heal him. Marina's grief brings out a new Legacy, a killing cold, and she turns it on Five and takes one of his eyes before he escapes to the Mogadorian side he had already chosen. Ella is taken by Setrakus Ra, carried off alive rather than killed, which confirms that he wants her for something specific. The survivors are left scattered, badly beaten, and short two of their number for the first time since they gathered. Marina refuses to leave Eight's body, and her willingness to be talked out of anything is gone with him. The group that ends the book is smaller, angrier, and split between recovering Ella and settling with Five, and it now knows that its enemy can turn one of the nine.