Into the Shadows

by Jason D. Morrow

  Of course, who was innocent these days? No one.

  This was the first time my power gave me full control. I liked it, but the thought almost scared me. What if this Starborn blood would have made it into my mother’s hands? What if my father had taken it before me? No doubt his plan included obtaining it from Waverly. I’m sure he was going about it in a diplomatic way, as was his custom. He had always been that way. Knowing him, he was trying to become friends with Waverly. He would want her to come to him with the blood, not the other way around. His belief is that if a person asks him to be in control, then he or she has no right to take it back from him later.

  Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. In this case, it didn’t. He had taken too long, and Shadowface had attacked. And I got the blood. And with it, Ethan became my unwilling sidekick.

  I took him with me on fact-finding missions. I was looking for Shadowface, but I had to be discrete. Finally, I found out that some of her guards were in one of the towns just miles from my cabin.

  “Watch for guards and greyskins,” I told Ethan. “If you see any, I want you to warn me by tapping on my shoulder. Otherwise, you cannot make a sound.”

  This gave me a silent companion as we creeped to the edge of the town. One of the guards had been walking the perimeter when he found me. Without a word I had him drop his weapon to the ground.

  “When are you supposed to check in?” I asked the nervous guard.

  “Every fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “Make sure you don’t miss one,” I said. “When it comes time, you will check in as you normally would, declaring that everything is normal.”

  The guard nodded.

  It was dark, and we sat far enough away from the town that no one would see us unless they had a good reason to look. I drilled the guard with questions until it came time for him to check in.

  “Eight-four-two, checking in,” he said, pressing the button on his radio. “Everything is normal.”

  “Copy that, eight-four-two,” said the voice from the other end.

  I asked him about the location of Shadowface’s main residence, and where the best secret entrances would be. He told me as much as he knew before I realized that I needed to talk to someone higher up than this guard.

  “Is there any guard here that works with Shadowface directly?” I asked.

  The guard shook his head and wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead. “No guard has direct contact with Shadowface,” he said. “There is a guard here that is in charge of monitoring the main corridor where Shadowface’s office is located, but that’s about it.”

  It would have to do. My mother wasn’t going to show her face to any common guard. That was why she had Samuel in the first place. He was the only one allowed to see her face. He was the only one she could trust to keep quiet about her identity.

  “What’s the guard’s name?” I asked.

  “Taylor,” the man said.

  “Why is he here?”

  “We sometimes rotate duty,” he said. “Taylor and the rest of our unit are scheduled to go back to our posts in Anchorage within the week. We will be there for the remainder of the month.”

  I nodded. This was perfect. All I had to do was get Taylor to meet me. I would then find out all I needed to know about my mother’s compound. There were only a couple of more weeks of planning, and then it would all be finished.

  I looked at Ethan who sat behind me, using the moonlight to search in every direction for guards or greyskins. “Can you get Taylor to meet you out here?” I asked, turning back to the guard.

  “It would be a strange request,” he said, “but yes, I can get him out here.”

  It took a few moments of persuasion when the guard called for Taylor. He was sure to tell him that he didn’t need any backup, but just needed his opinion on something. Finally, Taylor agreed, but I was cautious. There was little doubt in my mind that Taylor was going to bring backup. But he was either too stupid to do so, or he really trusted this guard. In either case, Taylor came alone and I had what I needed. I asked him a few questions to make sure he would be useful to me, and I learned that he came with a fountain of knowledge.

  Lastly, I commanded him to pull out his knife, and cut the other guard’s throat. The guard started to resist, but I didn’t let him. Ethan and I turned away and started walking for the truck, knowing Taylor would be following closely behind.

  The plan was in motion, and Shadowface was going to die.

  Chapter 15 - Waverly

  I’m not sure what to do. Jeremiah is getting ready to leave Elkhorn and set out for Anchorage, but I don’t want to go anymore. Part of me feels like I need to stop him. But who needs to be stopped more? Olivia or Jeremiah?

  “Both of them,” Gabe says when we are sitting at the lunch table.

  I don’t know how many times I stand from my chair to peek through the crack in the door, making sure no one is coming into the room or listening from the other side.

  “I would be able to hear it, Waverly,” Remi assures me for the third time. “Take it easy.”

  I nod at her and take my seat back at the head of the table. It feels weird meeting with just the three of us. Knowing that Ethan is alive and that he isn’t in here with us feels out of place. He has been busy, pledging himself to helping Jeremiah get in to Anchorage and destroy Shadowface. Jeremiah has called a meeting for everyone to attend, so that we can all be on the same page. Assuming that we are going to help him, that is.

  “I feel like I should tell Ethan,” I say.

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Remi answers. “You said he’s been acting strange? And for the past couple of days, we’ve seen how adamant he is about helping Jeremiah kill Olivia.”

  Gabe nods his agreement. “Best just to keep it among us.”

  “What about Stephen?” I ask.

  Remi shakes her head. “I don’t trust him anymore. I would have about a month ago, but he’s lost it. He’s got no drive. If he even helps Jeremiah, it would be a surprise to me. There’s no point in telling him.”

  “So, it’s just the three of us,” I say, staring down at the table. Even though my sister and Gabe are right here with me, I’ve never felt so alone.

  “We don’t have to take part in any of this,” Remi says. “We can leave. Jeremiah has no rule over us.”

  Gabe leans forward, his arms on the table. His voice is low as he talks in a whisper. “How certain are we that Jeremiah created the greyskin virus?”

  “Almost completely,” I say. “Remi and I just realized it a few hours ago. It all fits into place.”

  “But it’s not a hundred percent?”

  “Someone is coming,” Remi says as she straightens in her seat.

  A few seconds later, the door opens and my heart sinks when I see Ethan walk into the room. He pauses for a moment, surprised to see us. He looks from Remi to Gabe, and lastly his eyes fall on me where they stay for a long moment. He looks like he wants to say something, but he closes his mouth quickly. He looks back at Remi. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Sort of,” Remi says.

  “No, you’re not,” I say, glaring at her.

  “Waverly,” Ethan says, “I was hoping I could speak with you alone.”

  Remi clears her throat and stands from the table. “I need to check on Evie, anyway.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Gabe says.

  The two of them leave the room quickly, but I remain in my seat, my eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. I can feel my heart pounding. I’ve wanted to sit down and talk with Ethan for days, but he hasn’t given me a thought, it seems. When he sits next to me at the table, my eyes begin to sting with fresh tears, though they don’t fall.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “What do you mean what’s wrong?” I ask angrily. “I found out that you were alive and for a moment became the happiest person in the world. But when you didn’t want to see me it felt like you died all over again
.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not easy.”

  “Do you think it’s easy for me?” I ask. “Did you think it was easy when Mitch made me pull the trigger?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Mitch is not the enemy.”

  “He’s one of them,” I say.

  “No,” Ethan says. “Shadowface is the enemy. Always has been. We shouldn’t lose focus of that.”

  “I haven’t,” I say. “But I’m starting to think it’s not worth it. I can’t understand why I keep sticking around, waiting for something to happen. Why haven’t we left yet? Why haven’t we gone away?”

  “Because we have key roles in taking Shadowface down,” he answers. “And if we don’t, then we will see Shadowface again when her power extends beyond here and into new territories.”

  “Then we keep moving,” I say.

  He purses his lips and shakes his head at me. “We have a job to do. We’ve had one from the beginning. The moment Scarecrow and his raiders crossed paths with us, we were part of this.”

  “Jeremiah seems to have it under control,” I say. Part of me wants to tell him what I think about Jeremiah—that we’ve pieced the puzzle together and that he is more than likely the creator of the greyskin virus. But I don’t tell him. For some reason, I don’t trust Ethan anymore. I don’t know what it is, but he doesn’t sound like the same guy that talked to me at the campfire, comforting me during my loss of Lucas. He doesn’t sound like the same guy who told me about his family’s death. It’s something in the way he looks at me like he wants to tell me something else, but some invisible force won’t allow it.

  I decide to test the waters. “What if Jeremiah isn’t any better than Shadowface?”

  “I never claimed that he was,” Ethan says. “But Jeremiah isn’t looking for power. He just wants to take her out.”

  “What if he is looking for power?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if he wants to attack Olivia before she makes her big reveal so he can be the one to reveal who Shadowface is?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He has openly admitted that he wants to take Olivia’s place,” I tell him. “No one else will know any different if he goes to the meeting of settlement leaders and declares that he is Shadowface. He claims that he wants to use the position for good, but you and I both know that won’t be the case.”

  Ethan looks down at the table as if to think about what I’ve said. “If that’s the case, then wouldn’t Jeremiah be a better alternative?”

  This is where I could tell him my thoughts on who Jeremiah really is, but I decide to hold my tongue. I have missed Ethan. When I thought he was dead, I felt heartbroken. But a month is a long time in this world. I can’t truly know where his allegiance lies until he can prove it to me. It will take some time for me to be able to trust him again. Maybe if he hadn’t been so cold to me when I first saw him a couple of days ago… It was enough to make me think that something was wrong, and that he had changed somehow. I’ve got to figure out how he truly feels before I let him in with us—before I tell him our plans.

  Our plans… We have no plans. Gabe, Remi, and I have no more idea what we are going to do than we did before we came to Elkhorn.

  “I don’t think he would be a better alternative,” I say. “Mostly because we don’t know him. He seems nice, but that’s not enough for me.”

  I think about how ready Jeremiah was to simply dispose of Jenna and Mike when they drove up to Elkhorn just because he didn’t know them. What kind of man was so ready to kill?

  Jenna and Mike. How do they figure into all of this? They are still being questioned by someone in Jeremiah’s camp. I hope they are being treated well. I’ll have to look into that, I think.

  “Where did all of Jeremiah’s men come from?” I ask Ethan. “Where were these soldiers before the attack on Elkhorn?”

  “Listen,” Ethan says, “I’m not going to say he’s perfect, but I think he’s a better alternative. At least for the time being. Let’s help him take down Shadowface, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  “This is what you came in here to talk to me about?” I ask. I feel like I’m getting hot. “You act like you want nothing to do with me, and the one time you actually want to talk, you want to talk about helping Jeremiah?” The chair makes a loud scraping noise against the floor as I scoot it away from the table, ready to stand.

  Ethan reaches out for me, his fingers resting just in front of mine. “Please,” he says. “Don’t go. That’s not all I wanted to talk about.”

  I don’t take his hand. I don’t move at all.

  Ethan swallows. “I just…I just don’t know what to think about all this. It has been a really hard month for me.”

  “Join the club,” I say.

  “Seeing you again is weird.”

  “Why, because I shot you?” I ask.

  He nods. “Yeah, a little.”

  “Haven’t you ever thought that it was really Mitch that shot you? He just used me to do it?”

  Ethan sits silently and sets his hands in front of him.

  “I have thought about that moment every single day since it happened,” I say. “I’ve wanted to kill Mitch for what he made me do.” The tears start to come back, and this time they don’t stay in my eyes. “You don’t know how much I wanted to turn the gun on him instead. When he told me to shoot you, I tried as hard as I could to stop myself, but couldn’t. It was as if he was inside my body, doing whatever he wanted. I felt like a puppet. Ethan, you remember how it feels, don’t you?”

  “More than you know,” he whispers.

  This time, I’m about to reach my hand out to touch his, but he stands suddenly. “Think about what I said. We should help Jeremiah.”

  He turns away from me and walks out of the room, leaving me sitting at the table with my mouth hanging open in disbelief.

  What is wrong with him? Why would he just leave like that? It doesn’t make any sense. Ethan is not himself, and I don’t know why. But I’m not just going to ignore it. I’m going to figure out what it is if it’s the last thing I do.

  When I walk out into the main room, Jeremiah flags me down. My heart jumps when he does this. I hope that he doesn’t have the lunchroom bugged with microphones or something.

  When he gets near me, he sighs and scratches the back of his neck. “Strange situation with your friends, Jenna and Mike,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Neither of them claim to have ever met you,” he says. “Now, you wouldn’t have just said that you knew them in order to save their lives would you?”

  “How do you think I knew that her name was Jenna?” I ask.

  He opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, but then realizes that I made a good point. “Then I guess you know them better than they know you.” He sighs. “You can go in and see them if you want.”

  “Are you providing them with fuel?” I ask.

  “I’m not letting them leave,” Jeremiah says. “Not until I know they aren’t spies.”

  “They aren’t spies, Jeremiah,” I say.

  “Forgive me,” he replies, “but the three of you don’t seem to know each other that well, so I’m going to play it safe and keep them nearby until this operation is over. I can’t risk everything because you think you recognize her.”

  I don’t appreciate Jeremiah’s reasoning, but I don’t say anything about it. In fact, I won’t be worried if they are forced to leave now. I have seen a glimpse of the future and I will see them again if I don’t try to change anything. So, in this case I’m just going with it.

  One of the guards lets me into the room where they are being held. I’m immediately bombarded with questions by Mike as if I am someone important here. When I close the door behind me, I put a hand out in front of me as if to calm him down.

  His face is long and peppered with stubble. His black hair has a few grey streaks through it, though he looks very young. J
enna has her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, though strands have strayed and are floating in every direction. Both of them are sweating like they are in a sauna.

  “I’m just here to help you,” I say.

  “Are you the one that said you know us?” Jenna asks.

  “I am.”

  “But we don’t know you,” Mike says.

  “I said that just to keep you safe,” I tell them. “You two have stumbled upon a dangerous place.”

  “Raiders?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. “This used to be a settlement, but there was a battle here about a month ago. Most of the people were killed. The ones here now are getting ready to make a massive assault on the attacker. You were identified as enemies, but I could tell that you had nothing to do with them.”

  “How?” Mike asks.

  I shake my head. “I could just tell. They were going to kill you, but I stopped them. You are safe now.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Jenna says.

  “May I ask what you’re doing here?” I say.

  Mike and Jenna look at each other for a brief second. “We’re scouts,” he says. “For our own settlement. We didn’t tell your guards where we’re from because we don’t trust them. No offense, but we’re not going to tell you either.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I understand. Really, I do. What kind of supplies are you looking for?”

  “The usual,” Jenna says. “Weapons. Food. Anything useful.”

  “And you ran out of fuel?”

  “We are very far from home,” Mike says. “We used our reserves and held out hope that we would find some on the way back.”

  “Have you ever heard of someone called Shadowface?” I ask.

  Mike and Jenna look at each other. At first I think they do so out of recognition of the name, but they both turn to me and shake their heads. “Never,” Mike says. “Who is it? The person you’re group is going after?”