The Rise of Nine recap

The surviving Garde spend the book converging. John and Number Nine hole up in Nine's fortified Chicago penthouse, argue about tactics, and then set out for a Mogadorian installation in New Mexico to free Sam Goode, hunted the whole way by federal agents. Six, Marina, Ella, and Ella's guardian Crayton follow reports of a boy in the Himalayas who performs miracles and find Number Eight, who can teleport and change shape and who has been guarding a cave whose paintings appear to show the Garde's own future. The Mogadorians attack them in the mountains: Crayton is killed and Six is taken prisoner. Marina, Ella, and Eight escape and go after her. All of the survivors meet at the New Mexico base, where they free Sam and face Setrakus Ra, the Mogadorian leader, in person for the first time. Fighting together they force him to withdraw. The Garde leave for Chicago as a single group of six, having lost the last of their Cepans and the protection of the charm that once made them killable only in order.

Nine Loric children were sent to Earth with adult guardians called Cepans when the Mogadorians destroyed Lorien, protected by a charm that let them be killed only in the order of their numbers. Numbers One, Two, and Three are dead. Number Four grew up as John Smith, settled in Paradise, Ohio, and was found there; the battle that followed killed his guardian Henri but brought him Number Six, the most experienced of the survivors, and revealed that his dog Bernie Kosar is a Chimaera, a Loric shape-shifter. John left Ohio with Six and his human friend Sam Goode, and Sarah Hart behind. In Spain, Number Seven, called Marina, had spent years in a convent orphanage with a Cepan who had abandoned the mission; when the Mogadorians attacked Santa Teresa, that guardian and a local friend were killed, Six arrived, and the orphan girl Ella turned out to be Number Ten, from a second Loric ship, collected by her Cepan Crayton. John and Sam meanwhile broke into a Mogadorian mountain base in West Virginia and freed Number Nine, but Sam was captured. Six survivors are alive in two groups, each looking for the other, and the Mogadorians hold Sam.

John and Nine, with Bernie Kosar, go to ground in Chicago in the penthouse Nine's Cepan Sandor built and equipped: fortified, stocked, and fitted with a training hall. Sandor died when Nine was captured, and Nine has come back to an empty version of his old life. The two of them train and clash constantly. Nine wants to take the war to the Mogadorians immediately; John wants to find Sam Goode, who was captured covering their escape from West Virginia, and refuses to move on to anything else first. Meanwhile Six, Marina, Ella, and Ella's Cepan Crayton are out of Spain and moving. Crayton begins filling in what the nine were never told about Lorien's last days and the second ship that carried Ella. Six is running their half of the group, and the news reports Crayton is tracking point them toward the mountains of India.

John and Nine leave Chicago for the American southwest, following what they can piece together about where Sam is being held. The manhunt for John is now a national one, and federal agents are as much of a problem as Mogadorians. The tension between the two Garde is constant: Nine is faster, stronger, and openly contemptuous of John's attachments, while John will not be talked out of the rescue. In India, Six's group reaches the foothills and starts asking about the stories that brought them there: villagers speak of a boy who has lived in a mountain cave for years and who can do things nobody can explain, and who is treated locally as a god. Crayton believes the stories describe one of the nine.

In the mountains Six, Marina, Ella, and Crayton find Number Eight. He can teleport himself and other people and can change his shape at will, and his first instinct on being found is to test the strangers rather than trust them, which makes the meeting an ugly one. Once he accepts who they are, he shows them what he has been living beside: a cave whose walls carry paintings that seem to record events the Garde have not lived through yet, including images of the survivors themselves. The find suggests the Loric left more behind on Earth than nine children and their Chests, and that someone expected them to come here. John and Nine, still travelling, close on the site in New Mexico where they believe Sam is held.

The Mogadorians attack in the Himalayas, in strength and with the clear intention of taking the Garde alive rather than killing them. The fight in the mountains costs the group badly: Crayton is killed, and with him goes the last adult who remembered Lorien first-hand. Number Six is captured and carried off. Marina, Ella, and Eight escape and immediately set out to get her back, with Eight's teleporting the only reason they can move fast enough to try. Marina, who spent years being told she would never need to fight, is now doing nothing else. In America, John and Nine reach the Mogadorian installation in New Mexico and begin working out how to get inside.

John and Nine get into the New Mexico base, a large underground Mogadorian facility, and fight their way toward the cells. Marina, Ella, and Eight are converging on the same place, and Six, held prisoner there, is being kept alive deliberately. What the Garde find inside makes the scale of the Mogadorian presence on Earth undeniable: this is not a hunting party but an established operation with laboratories, garrisons, and prisoners. Sam Goode is found alive. As the fighting spreads through the base, the separate groups of Garde reach each other, and it becomes clear that the Mogadorian leadership has arranged the confrontation as much as they have.

All of the surviving Garde stand together for the first time: John, Six, Marina, Eight, Nine, and Ella, with Sam freed and Bernie Kosar with them. Setrakus Ra, the Mogadorian leader, faces them in person, and he is far beyond the soldiers they have fought so far. Individually none of them can stand against him; together they hold him long enough to force him to break off, which is the first real evidence that Six's argument was right and that gathering was worth what it cost. They get out and leave for Chicago and Nine's penthouse, which becomes their base of operations. The cost of the book is heavy: Crayton is dead, the last of their Cepans, and the charm that once made the nine killable only in order no longer protects anyone. From here every one of them is vulnerable at any moment, and staying together is the only defence they have found.

The two halves of the group converge on the Mogadorian installation in New Mexico. John and Nine break in to free Sam Goode, and Six, Marina, Ella, and Eight reach them, so that for the first time since Lorien the surviving Garde stand together in one place: Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, with Sam and Bernie Kosar. Setrakus Ra confronts them in person and proves to be something far worse than the soldiers they have been fighting, but united they are able to hold him and force him to withdraw rather than being picked off individually, which is the first thing that has ever worked. Sam is freed. The victory is partial and expensive: Crayton, Ella's guardian, was killed in the mountains of India, and the Garde have now lost every adult who came with them from Lorien except the knowledge those adults passed on. The survivors leave together for Chicago and Nine's fortified penthouse, which becomes their base. The charm that protected them by number is gone, so from this point any of them can be killed at any time, and the only defence they have is the one that just worked: staying together.