“Waverly,” she says, turning from the window. She carries a silver-handled pistol in her right hand, but she doesn’t raise it.
“Drop your weapon,” I say.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says, ignoring my command. “I’m disappointed by you. You lied to me about what you saw of the future. I suppose
this
is what you saw, but you didn’t want to tell me. I suppose you knew I would kill you if you told me the future.”
But this isn’t what I saw. I saw her in a firefight with Jeremiah that ended with him and me dead on the ground. But all I have to do is pull the trigger. What am I waiting for? Why haven’t I already killed her? This could be over right now!
“What do you plan to do once my brains are splattered against the back of this window?” she asks. “Do you plan to take my place?”
“Never,” I say. “I just want to stop corrupt people like you from ruling the world.”
“You speak from ignorance,” she says. “I suppose your dear Lucas felt the same way.”
“Don’t talk about him.”
“And who do you think should take over?” she asks. “Jeremiah?”
“Jeremiah is dead,” I say.
“You think so?” she asks, a smile forming at the side of her mouth.
“I just killed him, yes.”
“You might want to make sure,” she says nodding at the door behind me.
It feels like a trick to make me look behind me, but I can see him in the reflection of the window. A figure stands in the doorway, his gun gripped tightly in his hands. I spin around to look at him. The bullet should have passed through his heart. There is no reason Jeremiah should still be alive!
He holds his gun up, but not at me. He points it at Olivia. “There’s something you don’t know about me, Waverly,” Jeremiah says, not moving his eyes from Olivia. “You’ve got to shoot me in the head for me to die.”
“What?”
“Well, that makes sense,” Olivia says with a smirk. “He’s more greyskin than man, anyway. An infection he’s been fighting for more than three years now.” She shakes her head, sticking out her lower lip. “So pitiful the way you live, Jeremiah. Still haven’t found a Starborn healer yet?”
“Shut up,” he says.
Olivia notices the look of confusion on my face. “Oh yes,” she says. “Waverly, you are standing in a room with the two most evil people in the world. First, the man who created the virus, and was foolish enough to let it pass on to him, and of course the one who uses the virus to her advantage.”
“How are you not dead?” I ask Jeremiah in horror.
“Long story,” Olivia says, “but he’s lucky enough to have the blood of a Starborn inside him that lets him live through it. Frankly, I would rather be dead than live the way he does.”
“Shut up!” Jeremiah screams. He lets off a shot, missing Olivia by a foot and the window behind her shatters into a million pieces. I watch as she dives for cover behind a desk and Jeremiah fires again and again until his gun is empty. Olivia hears the clicking and raises to point her gun at Jeremiah, but I don’t give her the chance. I bring my pistol up and close one eye as I aim for her chest.
One shot does it.
Blood squirts from her shoulder and she spins through the air, landing next to the shattered window as her gun falls stories below. With Jeremiah out of bullets and Olivia on the floor, I can safely say I made the right call.
I point the gun at her head as she composes herself and gets to her knees, her feet dangling over the side of the building. She looks behind her briefly, seeing a mass of greyskins under her. If the fall wouldn’t kill her, the hungry greyskins would.
“You don’t want to kill me,” she says. She winces in pain and points at Jeremiah. “He’s the one you should kill.”
“Both of you should die,” I say. “The world didn’t deserve what you did to it. How many innocent people died because of you?” I take a step forward. Olivia dips her head and closes her eyes, scared of the bullet that’s about to go through her brain. “Look at the greyskins below you!” I yell. “Do it!” Olivia turns her head slowly, staring down at the greyskins. I take a deep breath. “Those people are like that because of you, Olivia, and now, you’re going to join them.”
She turns and looks at me, terror in her eyes. I clench my jaw, lift my boot, and kick Shadowface in the chest. Her screams can be heard throughout the entire compound as she falls to her death. In the darkness, I can’t see if she’s dead on impact or not, but either way, the greyskins converge on her as if they are starving.
I turn quickly to find Jeremiah staring at me from the other side of the room. His gun is empty, his chest drooling dark blood. I have changed the future. Now it’s time to make that future secure. One where Evie won’t have to worry about Jeremiah. She can live her life without fear of him.
“So this is it?” he asks calmly.
“I knew there was something different about you,” I say. “Your obsession with Starborns. I only recently figured out that you made the virus in the first place. But here you are, suffering from the infection.”
“It’s a horrible life,” he says.
“Immortality?” I ask. “Is that the blood you stole from some innocent Starborn?”
Jeremiah nods.
“And to sustain yourself, you eat people? You lust after flesh just like a greyskin?”
He nods again. The more I learn the sicker I feel. Part of me just wants to run out of this room and never look back. But I can do that when I’m finished with my job here.
But before I pull the trigger, a thought enters my head. I’m about to kill the man that created this virus. Might that mean he knows the cure? Or at least he could find one?
“Just kill me,” Jeremiah says. “I will never find a healer.”
“I just have one question for you,” I say. “Can you find a cure? Do you know how to stop the virus?”
He looks at me for a long moment. At first, I think he’s going to lie to me to try and stay alive longer, but he just shakes his head. “There is no cure. There will never be a cure.”
Though my hands are shaking, I have confidence in my aim. I point the gun at his head, already feeling relieved that both Olivia and Jeremiah will become forgotten history. I pull the trigger.
Click.
No!
A curse passes by my lips, and Jeremiah’s features soften. He takes a deep breath and takes a step back.
I pull the trigger three more times, hoping the gun was just jammed or something, but there’s only a clicking noise. I spent my last bullet on Olivia.
“Another day then, perhaps,” Jeremiah says as he turns around quickly.
I want to chase after him, but there’s nothing I can do. I rush out into the hallway and I look at Ethan, tears falling down my face. He looks angry. He looks like he wants to go after Jeremiah, but he’s fixed to the floor like some invisible weight is holding him down.
“Give me a gun!” I shout at him, but his stare remains fixed ahead. I look at Stephen. “Please!”
“You made us toss our weapons!” he says angrily.
I watch Jeremiah as he gets to the elevator and pushes the button to go down. He takes one last look at me, and our eyes meet as the doors open. I don’t have time to go for a gun. What could I have done differently? I didn’t know a shot to the chest wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t know he was a greyskin!
The elevator door closes, and I fall to my knees, weeping.
Taylor stabs himself through the heart with a long knife, just like I told him to. When I came up on him inside Shadowface’s building, he meant to grab for his gun and shoot at me, but a simple thought stayed his hand.
The long dark hallway felt foreboding when I first walked through it, and it was difficult to see very far ahead, though whatever guards that were left were killed easily enough. All I had to do was take control of the first guard I saw and command him to protect me and kill anyone that came within view. There were one or two that showed some resistance, but my man proved a valuable asset before I ordered him to shoot himself in the head.
Taylor is the last guard between me and Olivia’s office in the basement of the building. Though I already know that my mother isn’t here, this is where Samuel is and I care more about confronting him than Olivia.
I never knew my mother, and I never cared to face her. I always knew it would be my father’s actions that would end her. It was his right. She was his rival after all. However, it seems that Waverly stuck her nose where it didn’t belong and took that joy away from my father. I don’t care. All I wanted was for Olivia to die, and that is what happened.
I didn’t really see what happened, but by possessing Ethan’s mind, I know that my father is coming here. I know his plans. He’s going to sit at Shadowface’s desk, declare himself the one whose face no other has ever seen, and try to rule the world. I’m sure his plans are to eventually find me and eliminate me, but he has no idea that I am already here. I know he suspects I have my hand in today’s events, but he won’t expect me to be here waiting for him.
Taylor struggles to breathe as he pulls the knife from his heart. I feel sorry for him. He is a good man serving a bad person. He should have never put himself in this position. He closes his eyes and takes his final breath, allowing me the opportunity to walk through a set of double doors. I close them behind me and find myself in front of another set. The light around the edges tells me that the room will be very bright. I smile at the cleverness of my mother—making the journey to her office dark so that one will be blinded upon entering. I squint my eyes in preparation and step into the office.
Regardless of my knowledge of the light, it is still disorienting.
“Stop what you’re doing!” I shout at Samuel, unable to see him but assuming he’s reaching for a gun.
“All this commotion is because of you?” Samuel spits. “I knew you had a terrible power, but I didn’t know you could command greyskins.”
“A terrible power?” I say.
I take a moment to let my eyes adjust, and in a minute, I’m able to see the room my mother has occupied for so long. It is a spotless white as if no one has ever lived in it—all except for her desk to the right. Samuel had been shuffling through papers, trying his best to gather documents.
Papers, folders, and maps litter the desk.
“What are you doing?” I ask, taking control of his inhibition.
“Shadowface has requested that I gather all the important documents and burn them.”
“Why?”
“She said that if the takeover is successful, she doesn’t want the person in charge to use her plans. I had no idea you were the one in charge of this operation.”
“Hardly,” I say. “I’m more of a spectator than an orchestrator.”
“I suppose you’re going to kill me,” Samuel says, wiping his forehead.
“Yes. But first I want to know something.”
Samuel stares at me blankly.
“Why did my mother wait to reveal her identity? The moment the attack happened, why didn’t she show herself to the settlement leaders?”
“The attack came suddenly,” Samuel says. “The settlement leaders were in a building that was attacked first. We truly never got the chance. I had to take her to the safest place possible.”
“Isn’t this room the safest place? A bunker?”
“Clearly not,” Samuel says, his hands shaking.
I smile, nodding at his observation.
“Hand me your gun,” I order him.
Samuel takes a deep breath and walks away from the desk. He pulls a pistol from under his belt and hands it to me.
“This is the coward’s way to kill someone,” Samuel says.
“You mean the way you killed Ashley?”
“That’s different,” Samuel says. “She was working both sides. She was a traitor.”
“All the same, I loved her.” I point the gun at his head. “Get down on your knees.”
Samuel does as I tell him. He has no option to do otherwise.
“I want you to beg,” I say. “Beg for your life. Apologize to me profusely.”
Samuel clasps his hands together in front of me as if he’s about to begin a prayer. “Please, please don’t kill me,” he says. Tears start to drip down his cheeks. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I planned to kill her all along,” he says through sobs. “I was going to kill her even if she wasn’t working for both sides. I thought it would be better for Shadowface if I did it. Please forgive me. Please don’t kill me. Will you forgive me?”
“No,” I say. I fire the bullet between his eyes and his body falls limp to the ground. I feel disgusted by him.
I step over his body and walk to the desk where I see drawings and blueprints. These look like plans. I sit behind the desk, sifting through the papers, trying to ignore the bloody pool forming on the white carpet around Samuel’s head.
I see plans to build a city called Screven. The blueprints for a structure she has labeled simply as
The Tower,
shows that it will be giant. From the looks of it, she was at the beginning of developing more than just a network, but an entire society—a colony system. Money would be called credits according to one document. Screven would be the center of this new world. Colonies would be forced to give up a large percentage of their goods in exchange for protection.
The very first step in all of this was to get the small settlement leaders to trust her. My father’s timing could not have been worse for her. Now, none of this is going to happen. Because of me, the world will remain as it is.
I think about what it took to get here. The pain…the hardships. Part of me still wants to praise my father for creating the greyskin virus, though I want to curse him for seeking power. I cannot let him have it.