The Power of Six recap

The story splits between two of the nine. John Smith is a fugitive, hunted as a terrorist after the battle in Paradise, moving through the American south with Number Six and Sam Goode while Six trains him. In Spain, Number Seven, called Marina, has spent years in a convent orphanage in Santa Teresa with her Cepan Adelina, who abandoned the mission, became a nun, and will not train her or return her Chest. Marina hunts the news for other Garde, protects a young orphan named Ella, and befriends a local man, Hector Ricardo. John's group returns to Paradise, where John is caught by federal agents and freed by Six, and where Sam's missing father's hidden research points them to a Mogadorian base in West Virginia. Six leaves to find the other Garde while John and Sam go into the mountain. Mogadorians attack Santa Teresa: Hector and Adelina die, Six arrives, Ella is revealed to be Number Ten from a second Loric ship, and her Cepan Crayton collects them. John frees Number Nine from the mountain base, but Sam is captured.

Nine gifted Loric children were evacuated to Earth with adult guardians called Cepans when the Mogadorians destroyed the planet Lorien. A charm placed on the nine means they can be killed only in the order of their numbers, and only while they are apart. Numbers One, Two, and Three were tracked down and killed one by one, the last of them in Kenya. Number Four grew up on the run as John Smith and settled with his guardian Henri in Paradise, Ohio, where he went to high school, fell for Sarah Hart, befriended Sam Goode, and adopted a stray beagle he named Bernie Kosar. His Legacies arrived: light and fire in his hands, then telekinesis, then the ability to reach animals. The Mogadorians traced him to Paradise and attacked the high school. Number Six, the most experienced of the surviving Garde, arrived mid-battle, and Bernie Kosar revealed himself as a Chimaera, a Loric shape-shifter sent to guard John. They destroyed the enemy force, but Henri was killed. John left Paradise with Six, Sam, and Bernie Kosar to find the remaining Garde, leaving Sarah behind. Three of the nine are dead; six are alive and scattered.

John, Six, and Sam are living out of motels in the American south under false names. The destruction of the Paradise high school has been blamed on John, whose face is on the news as a wanted terrorist, and the manhunt makes ordinary movement dangerous. Six trains John hard, pushing him toward control rather than raw force, and pushes the group toward the only strategy she believes in: finding the rest of the nine before the Mogadorians do. In northern Spain, the seventh of the nine has been waiting instead. Known as Marina, she lives in a convent orphanage in the town of Santa Teresa with her Cepan Adelina, who long ago gave up the mission, took vows as a nun, hid Marina's Chest, and refuses to speak about Lorien at all. Marina has taught herself what she can and has already found that she can heal injuries and breathe underwater. She reads every strange story she can reach on the convent's computers, looking for evidence that another of her kind is alive.

Marina's life at the convent narrows to two allies: Ella, a small, sharp orphan girl who follows her everywhere, and Hector Ricardo, a man from the town whom Santa Teresa has written off as a drunk and who turns out to be neither stupid nor a coward. Adelina, meanwhile, treats Marina's insistence on the mission as a danger to them both. Marina finds the American news reports about the school in Ohio and is certain they describe a Garde. In the United States, John's group goes back to Paradise despite the risk: John needs to see Sarah, and Sam wants his father's things. In Sam's house they find a hidden basement full of the research Sam's father assembled before he disappeared, including maps of sites he believed the visitors and their enemies used.

Returning to Paradise costs John. Federal agents are waiting for him and he is taken into custody, and Six gets him out, which leaves him with a doubt about Sarah that he cannot settle and will not say aloud. The research from Sam's father's basement gives them a target: a site in the mountains of West Virginia that his notes mark as important. In Spain, strangers begin appearing in Santa Teresa asking questions that have nothing to do with the town, and Marina, whose Legacies now include seeing in the dark, understands what they are. Adelina refuses to run and refuses to arm her, so Marina prepares alone, trying to get Ella out of danger without explaining what the danger is.

The group splits. Six leaves John and Sam in order to search for the other Garde on her own terms, arguing that spreading out finds them faster. John and Sam head for the West Virginia site with Bernie Kosar, following Sam's father's notes toward a mountain that on paper is nothing at all. In Santa Teresa the strangers stop pretending to be anything else, and the convent stops being a place Marina can hide in. Adelina still refuses to run, to arm her, or to say where she put the Chest, and the nuns are no help. Marina prepares alone, with Hector Ricardo the only adult in the town willing to believe her, and tries to get Ella somewhere safe without being able to explain what the danger actually is.

John and Sam get inside the West Virginia mountain and find a full Mogadorian base cut into the rock, with tunnels, laboratories, beasts, and cells. They learn that the enemy's presence on Earth is far larger and far older than anything Henri described, and that prisoners are being kept alive there for reasons nobody explains. In Spain the Mogadorians attack Santa Teresa openly. Marina, Ella, and Hector are driven out of the convent and through the town in a running fight, Marina finally has her Chest and no time to learn what is in it, and Adelina, cornered with them, has to choose between the life she built as a nun and the one she abandoned. Marina, who spent the whole book asking to be trained, is fighting a war she was never prepared for with a child to protect.

The battle at Santa Teresa costs Marina both of the people who stood with her: Hector Ricardo dies buying her and Ella time to get clear, and Adelina, who spent years insisting the mission was a delusion, is killed defending Marina from the soldiers sent for her. Number Six reaches Spain and turns the fight, and in its aftermath Ella reveals that she is Number Ten: a Garde who came to Earth on a second Loric ship that landed later than the first, a ship the nine were never told about. Her Cepan, Crayton, arrives for her and can explain the rest of Lorien's fall. Marina, Ella, Six, and Crayton leave Spain together. In West Virginia, John and Sam find Number Nine held prisoner in the Mogadorian base and free him, but the escape goes wrong and Sam is captured; John has to leave him behind. John, Nine, and Bernie Kosar get out. The survivors are now in two groups instead of scattered individuals, each hunting for the other, and the Mogadorians hold a hostage John intends to recover.

In West Virginia, John and Sam fight their way into the Mogadorian mountain base and find Number Nine, who has been held prisoner there since his own capture, and free him. Getting out costs them: Sam is taken by the Mogadorians, and John, out of options, has to leave without him. John, Nine, and Bernie Kosar escape, and John's first commitment afterward is to get Sam back. In Spain, the Mogadorians move on Santa Teresa in force. Hector Ricardo dies helping Marina and Ella get clear, and Adelina, who spent years refusing the fight, is killed defending Marina. Number Six arrives in time to turn the battle, and Ella reveals that she is Number Ten, a Garde who came to Earth on a second Loric ship that arrived after the first. Her Cepan, Crayton, comes for her, and he can explain the second ship, the war on Lorien, and how much of the history the nine were never told. Marina, Ella, Six, and Crayton leave Spain together. Two groups of Garde now exist instead of scattered individuals, both of them looking for the others, and the Mogadorians hold Sam as leverage.