Into the Shadows

by Jason D. Morrow

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “You will do as I’ve planned. Just another week and my mother, my father, Waverly, myself, and you, Ethan, will all be dead.” I turn back and stare into the fire. The coals are starting to burn my face. “It will be a good day.”

  Chapter 2 - Waverly

  The light above my bed turns on as it does every morning when they want me to wake up. Most of the time I’m already awake, counting the seconds before the light finally shines onto my face, inevitably causing me to squint. But this morning I was in a deep sleep and I wish I could turn off the light. If I don’t get out of bed, an alarm will start buzzing right next to my ear and I definitely don’t want to start my day off with a headache. Not again.

  I sit up straight on the bed and stretch, then my toes hit the cold floor. It isn’t cold because it’s almost winter—the rooms are usually very warm down here—it’s cold because it’s polished metal. Everything in the room is polished metal, though most of it has been painted a glossy white color so I don’t have to stare at my reflection every time I open my eyes.

  I walk from the bed to the other side of the room where there is a faucet and sink. To my left there is a toilet. And right in front of me is a small mirror. I turn on the faucet and let the warm water pool into my hands. I splash some of it on my face, but it does little to wake me. I don’t know why I’m still tired. I slept well last night, though I’m not sure how. Maybe I’m starting to get used to this place. I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want to be here. Every day is the same. I wake up. I get ready. I eat breakfast with Amber. I meet with Peter.

  Normally, this place would feel safe and secure. With all the guards, I know there isn’t a greyskin that can get near me. I have a comfortable bed, clean clothes, and everyone treats me nicely which feels strange considering that I’m being held here against my will. But my sense of safety vanishes every time I’m with Amber. The things they do to her…it makes me angry, and I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.

  Our meetings have been strange, but the two of us are forced to eat breakfast together every morning. Today we will be at a table in a white room and we will talk while people observe us through a two-sided mirror to our side. The conversation won’t be as forced as it used to be.

  There are always suggestion cards next to our plates at the breakfast table. When we started meeting, both of us were told to talk about what was on the card. The first morning, the cards instructed us to introduce ourselves—names, age, where we were from.

  That first day felt so awkward. Neither one of us knew what was going on. Neither of us knew why we were there, or what the purpose of our meeting was. The conversation was simple and straightforward.

  “My name is Waverly,” I said when Amber asked.

  “How old are you?” Amber said, her fingers gripping the card tightly with a slight shake, her eyes not leaving it until she finished reading.

  “Seventeen,” I said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “A place called Oakridge,” I said.

  She looked up at me. She had bags under her eyes, and scrapes up and down her arms. I couldn’t tell if her pale skin was from lack of sun exposure or if it was her natural complexion. She was obviously malnourished, but weren’t we all?

  “The card says that it’s your turn to ask me,” she said.

  I swallowed and looked at my card, holding it in front of my face. “What’s your name?”

  “Amber.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Salem.”

  I remember looking up from the card. “Where’s that?”

  “Is that a question from the card?”

  I was surprised by her coldness, but when I looked down at the card, I read a short paragraph explaining what I was supposed to do next.

  It read: Explain to Amber that you are supposed to shake hands with her. Tell her that the purpose of this meeting is so you can assess her future, and see what will happen during her day.

  I told Amber what the card instructed and she didn’t act surprised as I probably would have. Perhaps her card had already briefed her on what was supposed to happen. Or maybe someone told her about me and what I could do before she came in for breakfast that morning.

  Amber slowly held out her hand for me to grab it. I had been through enough of this already. It was only a few days after Mitch had forced me to shoot Ethan and leave him for dead. I had seen firsthand how devastating misinterpreting the future could be. I had messed up everything and others had to pay for it.

  At first, I didn’t reach out for her hand. I let it hang in the air as Amber waited for me. A few seconds, maybe a minute went by before a voice called out over the intercom.

  “Waverly,” the voice said, “you need to do as the card has instructed.”

  I knew there was no room to argue. I would be forced to do it sooner or later, so I decided to just get it over with.

  The vision was perplexing, but in another way it was so clear. I didn’t know how far into the future it could have been, but I saw Amber and my future self running through some tunnel with water rushing at their feet. Was it a sewer? It looked like they were being chased by something. Then Waverly saw the greyskins coming in their direction. I watched as the vision revealed that they would come to the end of the tunnel and push their way through a large, metal grate with spaces between the bars just big enough for them to squeeze through. They fell into a pool of water below and began swimming as hard and fast as their bodies would allow. Then, there were shots from above them. I saw Waverly dive under the water, but Amber didn’t have enough time. Bullets passed through her and she started sinking to the bottom. Then, the vision ended.

  When I opened my eyes, I looked at Amber with bewilderment.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  Then the voice over the intercom blared out again, chastising Amber for asking a question that wasn’t on the card. Amber wasn’t meant to know what I saw.

  We ate breakfast in silence, and were ushered back to our rooms. A few minutes later, a man came into the room with two armed guards at his side.

  “Hello Waverly,” he said. “My name is Peter. I have a few questions for you.”

  Peter’s voice matched the one Amber and I heard over the intercom at breakfast. He seemed nice. His hair was well-kept and his clothes looked brand new. He appeared as though he had never experienced the hardships this new world had to offer. His face was clean-shaven and he wore thin rimmed reading glasses on the end of his nose. We sat in chairs across from each other as he took notes when I explained my vision to him. Of course, I didn’t tell him what I actually saw, because I think I saw an escape attempt. So, I made something up. I told Peter that I saw Amber getting into bed some night and that she forgot to brush her teeth, so she got up, brushed them, and went back to bed.

  I didn’t know if the lie was good enough, but I simply shrugged at Peter and told him that sometimes the visions are completely useless. He explained to me that that was perfectly fine because we were working on developing my skill.

  And that’s when I finally understood what I was doing there.

  I remember the look on Peter’s face when I asked him the question I knew he wouldn’t answer.

  “Does Shadowface plan to use me?”

  Peter looked from me to his notes, avoiding my eyes. “I’m not at liberty to comment on that. I have a job to do and that’s to assess you and your ability as a Starborn.”

  “Why doesn’t Shadowface just take my blood and kill me?”

  Peter jotted down the last of his notes and looked up at me and smiled. “I would say we’ve had a good first day. Just remember to stick to the card tomorrow. In the future we may grant more loose conversation between the two of you but not until we’ve observed you more.”

  He left me with no chance to ask more questions. Not that it would have been useful to try anyway.
/>   But now, standing in front of the mirror a month later, I’ve come to understand what Peter is trying to do. Rather, I understand what Shadowface has ordered Peter to do. They are assessing me, sure, but they are developing me too. For the past month, they have forced me to hone my skill so that now I can pick an exact moment in the future to see. For the first few days, I simply lied to Peter about the visions because I kept seeing Amber getting shot in the pool of water as we tried to swim away, but the more I concentrated, the more I was able to veer away from that, and the less I had to lie. I was soon able to view what I wanted to see.

  But that wasn’t a good thing.

  At every breakfast, I would see Amber with a new bruise or a cut that hadn’t been there previously. I never understood what was happening to her, and there was no way for me to find out because the cards would never allow me to ask her. On several occasions, Amber would burst into tears at the breakfast table as we read each other the questions, and the next day there would be more cuts and bruises.

  The cards kept changing. They became more specific. Sometimes I was instructed to look into her future at 3:00 PM that day or at 1:00 AM the next. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. When it worked, I wouldn’t lie to Peter. I would tell him what I saw.

  “At 2:30 this afternoon,” I said one day, “a guard is going to tie Amber up and beat her with a whip.”

  “How many times will she be hit?” he asked.

  “Seventeen,” I said. I could feel tears stinging my eyes, especially when a smile formed at the corner of Peter’s mouth. I no longer thought of him as a nice guy. I saw him as cold and callous. He didn’t care about Amber or me. He looked at us as little more than lab rats. It was unbridled science to him. The experiments were endless.

  I look at the mirror in front of the faucet and I feel shame. There are no bruises on my face—no lashes on my body. I don’t feel pain. My brown hair falls neatly into place because none of the guards have shaved my head like they did Amber’s—just so they could observe me trying to see it in her future. Shadowface must be an animal.

  Every day, they plan to do something torturous to Amber just to see if I can predict it. Sometimes they will let her rest, but that is seldom.

  Lately the testing I undergo has become more than just predicting the future, but also changing it. Peter will often bring me into a room and set up several scenarios. There will be people in the room that I have never seen before who have a plan of action. Yesterday it was a man and a woman. I was instructed to see into the woman’s future just a few seconds ahead and try to change what was supposed to happen.

  When I touched her, of course I tried to see a future that might benefit me and my eventual escape attempt, but Peter had been smart. He brought these people in because they had nothing to do with me and would have no effect on my future specifically. Not to mention, I had no idea when my escape attempt was supposed to happen so it was impossible for me to see the woman’s response to the situation. So, I changed my thinking and viewed only a short time into the future. The man was going to come up to her and slap her across the face. It was my job to make sure that didn’t happen. I was to quietly tell Peter what I saw, and then tell him how I was going to stop it.

  The man walked up to the woman, brought his hand up in the air to slap her, but I shoved her out of the way in the last second. Peter stared at the scenario for a long moment without saying anything, and then began to write vigorously.

  “I don’t understand,” I said as the two of us and two guards walked together back to my room.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I understand that I can change what I see, but why don’t I see the change in the first place?”

  The look he gave me begged an explanation.

  “I mean, if I really saw into the future, wouldn’t I have seen myself getting in the way rather than the man slapping her? Because the true future was where I stopped him, but that’s not the vision I saw.”

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that what you see isn’t the true future, Waverly,” he said as we neared my door. “I think your gift as a Starborn reveals the intended future rather than the actual future. Left unchanged by you, the future will play out as you saw it. The moment you decide to interfere, is the moment it changes.” He sighed as one of the guards opened the door for me to enter my room. “I really shouldn’t be talking to you about this, but I just find it so fascinating.”

  Try living it, I thought.

  But as I stand in front of the mirror now, I start to feel that the power I have isn’t so bad if I can control it. Now that I understand that I’m seeing the intended future, and all I have to do is figure out a way to change it if I desire, then the concept is much more clear. Of course, real situations are not so easy. My thoughts go back to when I had first seen a vision of Ethan getting shot in the street. Because of Mitch’s control over me, I was unable to change the vision. Situations do not always present a way to change something. Knowing the future so I can be prepared is a blessing. Not knowing how to change what needs to be changed is a curse. Today, as I get ready for breakfast and another meeting with Amber, I feel cursed.

  A guard takes me to the room where we have breakfast as he has every morning for the past month. When the monotony of each day gets to me, I sometimes try to make conversation with him, asking him personal questions that would make no difference to me, but he never answers. He doesn’t even look at me. He just walks behind me with a hand rested on his pistol in case I ever try to make a move.

  When the exact same scenario happens every single morning, it’s easy to spot what is different today. Today, he’s not resting a hand on his pistol. I’m not sure if that means he is becoming more relaxed with me, or if he is getting lazy, but it tells me that he doesn’t see me as a potential threat. Nor should he. I don’t plan to do anything. I don’t even plan to try and escape even though I know at some point I’m going to find myself in the sewers of this place, guards shooting at Amber and me.

  The hallways we walk through are dark but for a few soft lights that illuminate our path. It gives me the feeling of being on the inside of a Navy boat or submarine, but I know that isn’t the case because I’ve never felt any swaying. I always look at the doors we pass, wondering what might be behind them. It makes me wonder what else goes on around here. Are there others being held against their will? Are they Starborns? Am I Peter’s only subject? I’ve already decided that these observations are coming close to an end. I might have a couple of more weeks left, but soon they will discover that my power will go only so far. Then they will kill me. They’ve already taken my blood. I suppose Shadowface is waiting to see if my blood is worth injecting. Jeremiah had told us that taking the blood of a Starborn is potentially dangerous. The effects cannot be measured.

  The guard and I finally make it to the end of a long hallway where I always have breakfast. There is another guard waiting outside the door and he opens it for me to enter.

  Just like my bedroom, and in stark contrast to the hallways, the breakfast room is a brilliant, polished white. The floors, the walls, everything shines like someone waxes every inch daily. The lights in here are not soft, rather a bright florescent white that shows every detail of the person that sits across from me. As I sit across from Amber, I can see the red rope burn around her neck where the guards hung her in her room for about thirty seconds. There are a few spots on her face where blood vessels popped from the pressure. The sight of her brings tears to my eyes almost daily, and this morning is no different. But I don’t let them fall down my cheeks. The feeling of guilt I have outweighs the feeling of sympathy. It’s because of me that she’s being tortured. She and I both know it. But Amber knows that I have no way to stop it, doesn’t she? I hope she doesn’t blame me for this.

  When she looks at me, she doesn’t usually seem angry, just scared. My coming to breakfast means another round of torture that she doesn’t deserve. I don’t know why Shadowface or Peter have dec
ided to do it this way. I don’t know why they can’t just ask me to predict what kind of food she’s going to get for dinner. It’s sick what they are doing to us and it makes me hate Shadowface all the more.

  But today, Amber looks neither angry nor scared. In a stranger twist, she actually grins at me slightly, though it’s only for a brief second. Her eyes leave my face and we look down at the plate of food in front of us. Like every day there is a single fried egg, a piece of toast, and water. It isn’t much, but both of us eat it gladly each morning. My eyes move from the plate to the card. Peter has told us both that conversation is more freely allowed now that we understand our boundaries better. The cards are meant for suggested conversation unless there is something typed out in bold. Today there is no bold, but the conversation pieces include: What is your favorite animal? Why is it your favorite animal? If you could be any animal, what would you choose? Shake Amber’s hand and see into her future for 10:00 PM.

  “I don’t want to talk about these things,” Amber says to me. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Her desire to talk at all comes as a shock to me. Just because Peter said we could talk more freely didn’t mean that we ever did. I don’t even know what to talk about.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “What are some of your goals? Your ambitions?” Her voice cracks a little when she speaks, no doubt an effect from her punishment yesterday.

  It’s an odd question, especially given the world we live in today. I would think that the answer is obvious. “To survive,” I say.

  Amber shakes her head at me. “That’s not what I mean. One day we’re going to live in a world where the greyskins don’t exist. What do you want to be doing when this is all over?”