“I don’t know how many people you will be able to recruit here,” Ray said.
“Our visit is less about recruiting than it is tactical planning,” Jeremiah answered. “From here, we can judge the weather conditions, the right hour to approach, everything. And I also want to talk to someone here that knows the area best. Someone around here knows Anchorage well, right?”
“That would be Ross,” Nancy said. “He use to be a building planner in Anchorage. He knows the area better than anyone.”
Jeremiah’s eyes lit up at the possibility.
“But he’s not an easy one to convince,” Ray said. “He’s happy staying here.”
“I will speak with him in the morning,” Jeremiah said. “Now, tell me about this greyskin attack.”
Ray just shook his head. “It was the strangest thing I have ever seen. They approached by the thousands. I even got up near one and shot it through the head, but none of the others came after me like I thought they would. They all just kept walking as if they had another target they were drawn to. It was so uncharacteristic of the greyskins.”
“I thought we were all going to die,” Nancy said.
Jeremiah sat and pondered the story for a while, but said nothing. I couldn’t figure out what it meant either, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it. My thoughts were all over the place. Evie, Jeremiah, Shadowface…There was so much going on, and there was so little for me to do.
Now that dinner is over, Nancy and Ray seem content to stay with Jeremiah in the dining room and talk to him more and more about the greyskins and Shadowface. He answers their questions like he has nothing else in this world to worry about. Waverly quietly leaves the house, stepping outside into the cold. Gabe and I sit in front of the fireplace, warming our hands.
“I feel stuck,” I eventually say, barely above a whisper.
“Between a rock and hard place?” Gabe asks.
“Something like that. I don’t know. It’s weird. I feel like what we’re doing is right, but we have no plan. We don’t know how any of this is supposed to go down. We don’t know how we’re going to kill either enemy.” I look all around me, making sure no one is within earshot. I’m safe.
“It will come to us when we get there,” he says.
I look at Evie as she sleeps on her pallet. Her blanket has slipped off of her and she is curled up into a little ball, shivering slightly. I reach over to her and tuck the blanket around her and the shakes stop. “I’m not afraid to give her to someone else,” I say. “But I just want to make sure she’s in good hands.”
“Jenna seems nice enough,” Gabe says.
“Yeah, but what if Evie is the same girl Waverly saw in the vision? That means giving her up to Jenna gets her shot.”
“Someday,” Gabe says. “But not any time soon.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” he answers.
I sit down next to him again, letting the fire warm my front. Gabe inches closer to me until he finally reaches an arm around me, warming my back.
“You still love me, don’t you?” I ask. It’s a bold question that seems to catch him off guard, though asking it catches me off guard too.
He stares into the fire for a few seconds before answering. “I do,” he says.
“Well, you didn’t have to think about it for so long.”
The comment makes him smile, a dimple forming on his cheek. “No, it’s not that. It’s just, I feel like you want me to love you, but you just don’t want to feel the same way.”
It’s my turn to stare at the fire and think for a few seconds. He’s right. I’ve done so little to reciprocate any feelings that he has for me. I mean, it’s not easy for me to feel any romance for him. Losing Gilbert was hard for me. I felt betrayed—and I guess I was betrayed, but I already know that Gabe would never leave me like Gilbert did. He has already proven himself. He could have left me to die in the barn a month ago when Paxton and his men were trying to kill me. All he would have had to do was drive away and he would have been safe. But instead, he drove the truck into the barn, killing some greyskins and risking his own neck to get me out of there. Gabe loved me then, and he hasn’t stopped.
“What do you think a future together would look like?” I ask.
Gabe shrugs. “I suppose we would live together forever, fighting off greyskins till the day we die.”
“That’s a grim outlook,” I say.
“Or, we can finish what we plan to do here,” he says, “and help the world start to heal. Once that happens, I imagine we’ll find a nice place far away from the greyskins where we won’t be bothered by them.”
“Does such a place exist?”
“Somewhere it does. Somewhere, somebody is already living in it, waiting to have some neighbors.” He holds me even tighter. “You and me.”
“You’re right,” I say.
“About what?”
I take a deep breath and turn my head to meet his eyes. My heart is pounding in my chest. I truly don’t want to feel this way, but what is the point of keeping it to myself? If someone like this comes along, why would I give him up?
“I don’t
want
to love you,” I say, “but sometimes we don’t get what we want.”
He starts to say something, but I don’t let him. Instead, I pull him closer to me and kiss him on the lips. We hold the kiss for several seconds, the warm embrace making me feel safe. I finally let go of him, but my eyes never leave his. “This is stupid of us.”
“I know,” he says. “I love it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
Gabe and I sit and talk for a long time. Jeremiah has left, and Nancy and Ray have already gone to bed. I start to wonder where Waverly is. I think about going outside, but I don’t really feel like braving the cold, and I’m sure she’s fine. Our conversation eventually goes back to Evie. I worry so much that she was the one in Waverly’s vision of Jeremiah.
“Well, there is a way to find out,” Gabe finally says.
“What’s that?”
“Waverly could look into Evie’s future,” he says. “She can look at the exact same time to confirm it. It might even ease your concerns about Jenna and Mike.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” I say. I get up from the floor and start to make my way to the front door.
“Where are you going?” Gabe asks.
“To find my sister.”
The cold bites at my nose and fingers as I pull my coat tight against me. There are about seven barrel fires lining the street, and each of Jeremiah’s men stand huddled around them. I make my way toward the car where Jenna and Mike sit next to each other, cold and alone. Jenna rolls down the window as I approach.
“Any chance of us getting out of here?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’m hoping that Jeremiah will let the two of you leave before he decides to go into Anchorage.”
“What reason would he have for us to go there?” Mike says. “We just want to get back home.”
“I understand,” I say. “I wish I had some pull, but right now I don’t. I will try to talk to him tomorrow.”
I think about the vision I had of Remi. I remember that the sun was orange and purple as if it was setting. But could it have been the rising sun instead? Perhaps I can talk to Jeremiah about letting Jenna and Mike leave, and then they could take Evie tomorrow morning.
“I wanted to ask you something,” I say.
Jenna looks at me intently, but doesn’t say anything.
I clear my throat. “The little girl, Evie, she’s lost her mother. Remi is just taking care of her until we can find a suitable place for her to stay. Where you’re from, do you have a place for a child? Do you know anyone that would be able to take care of her?”
Jenna and Mike look at each other. Jenna shakes her head. “We can’t take care of a little girl,” she says. “We have enough problems.”
“But what is your village like?” I ask. “Are there a lot of people?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean we have enough to feed extra mouths,” Mike says.
I nod, understanding. But that doesn’t mean they won’t take her. It just means they don’t know they
will
take her eventually. “It’s just, we don’t have a permanent home like you do. We think Evie would benefit from having a stable place to live again. Her mother died when she was born. The woman taking care of her, Lydia, was killed about a month ago. It’s been so hard for her.”
“It’s difficult for us all,” Jenna says.
Her words don’t feel cold, but she is right. No one really has room to take care of an extra mouth to feed. Life is bad enough as it is without adding more responsibility.
“I know,” I say. I want to ask them where they are from again, but out of the corner of my eye, I spot Ethan standing with one other person at a barrel fire. Upon closer inspection, I can see that he’s talking to Jeremiah. I would give anything to trade powers with Remi right now—to be able to hear what the two of them are talking about.
I’ve wanted nothing more than to figure out why he is acting so differently, but there doesn’t seem to be an answer. Every conversation seems forced. Every interaction feels awkward. I miss him. I wish we could be there for each other like we were starting to be only a month ago.
It seems that time cannot heal all wounds. Some wounds continue to fester and rot until the relationship is gone forever. If Ethan doesn’t come around, I fear that is what will happen. I’m already to a point where I can’t trust him. I’ve already kept from him the most devastating revelation of our time—that the man he talks to at the barrel fire, is none other than the man that created the virus that brought the world to its knees. Jeremiah made it, and Olivia sanctioned it. To bring down Shadowface alone would be to pass the torch on to someone that is just as, if not more so, evil as Olivia. We would be fooling ourselves.
I suppose that the task of killing Jeremiah will be placed on me. I don’t know how or where. But if he wants me to lead him to Olivia through the sewers, then that means I will be the one near him. I don’t want to go in there alone. I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life either, but I could use the help of my sister. Her hearing ability would do wonders in the sewers. Then, when we get to Olivia’s office, she and I can finish this together. Shadowface will be dead, and Jeremiah will have no empire to take over. He won’t eat people. He won’t try to kill Evelyn.
I watch Ethan and Jeremiah talk until Jeremiah finally walks away from the fire, leaving Ethan alone. I don’t know why, but I feel compelled to talk to him—to reach out. I take a step forward, and he looks at me. At first, I think I see the hint of a smile, but when he turns back to the flame, I see that there is no sense of happiness in his face.
I approach the barrel, palms out, hoping to talk to him without shivering violently from the cold. “What are you and Jeremiah talking about?”
Ethan shrugs. “I just told him that I want to go with you tomorrow night. Into the sewers. You will need my help.”
“What exactly is the plan?” I ask.
“Well,” Ethan says, “Jeremiah will explain it better tomorrow, but essentially most of the men here are going to attack the front gate of the compound, while a small group sneaks in through the sewers. Led by you, of course.”
“But that doesn’t explain how we get to the sewers,” I say. “The entrance is still on the inside of the walls.”
“Jeremiah has sent a couple of scouts ahead to look for a potential weakness. Otherwise, I think the plan mostly relies on the diversion. If we make enough of a commotion, then
someone
will be able to slip by.”
“Sounds like a foolish plan,” I say. “I think Jeremiah is too focused on attacking before Olivia reveals her identity. He should wait until he has a better scheme.”
“This isn’t his first fight,” Ethan says.
“Is Olivia still alive?” I ask snidely. Ethan doesn’t answer. It is obvious that Jeremiah has not been successful in his attempts on Olivia’s life in the past. “I just hope his past failures aren’t a representation of what will happen tomorrow.”
“He has learned from his past failures,” Ethan says. “He knows what he’s doing. The importance is not in the battle itself, but in the covert mission you will be leading.”
“Yeah, I got that already,” I say. “That’s what I don’t like.”
“If we die, it will be worth it.”
His words are passionate, but his delivery is passionless. He doesn’t sound like he means them at all. I wish I could bring it out of him. I wish I knew what was troubling him so deeply. I have asked him already, but he never gives me a straight answer. I decide to try again.
“Ethan, I wish you would tell me what’s troubling you.”
His eyes don’t leave the flames in front of us, but his jaw clenches over and over like he’s trying to keep himself from saying something—or perhaps that he wants to say something but can’t.
“Do you ever feel like you’re not your own?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
He shuts his eyes tightly, his hands ball into fists, and he lets out a short groan. “Forget it,” he says. With that, he turns and storms away.
I felt like he was so close to telling me. For a moment, I thought we were about to get to the bottom of what was eating away at him. But something took over him. For some reason, he can’t let himself say what he truly wants to say. But I saw a glimmer of hope. Perhaps there is still some of the old Ethan left.
After about an hour of standing in front of the barrel fire all by myself, I hear someone approaching me from behind. When I turn my head to look, I find Remi standing next to me.
“You’re awake,” I say.
“Obviously.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Gabe and I have been talking. I came out here because I was worried about you.”