“You don’t grasp it because you aren’t helping us,” he says, still smiling. “But that is completely understandable. You are recuperating. Or, at least, I hope you are.”
It feels weird to think that I’m recuperating. I have been through much worse trauma than what I have experienced over the past month. “When I came here, I didn’t expect there to be anyone left. I figured Remi might have been looking for me here, but I thought it was a long shot.”
Jeremiah shakes his head. “Ever since Shadowface’s attack, we’ve been in revenge mode.”
“But where have all these people come from? When you were here the first time, there were only three of you.”
Jeremiah lets out a sharp chuckle as he looks around the room. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it? I’ve been gathering allies for the past three years. It has been my mission to turn people against Shadowface because of everything she represents—because she only wants power. It’s because of my planning and research that we learned Shadowface is in the town of Anchorage, and roughly how many men she has. It will be a great day when we take over.”
“And what will happen when you’ve accomplished that goal?” I ask.
“I will help people rebuild their world,” he says. “I can give people a chance to make their lives normal again.”
“Normal?”
“Well,” Jeremiah says, “as normal as it can be. I’m going to supply villages with weapons, and food, and the ability to sustain themselves.”
“But isn’t that what Shadowface is doing?” I say.
“Well, yes,” Jeremiah says. “But I know her. Olivia is seeking power by making people love her.”
“But no one knows who she is,” I say. “Except…”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrow. “Except what?”
“She plans to tell the world,” I say.
“I know this plan of hers,” he says, sighing and turning to look at one of the monitors on the wall. “And I know it will be soon. I have a few people who work closely with some of the settlement leaders. They are supposed to inform me when they learn of it, but that is unreliable at best.”
“Four days,” I say.
Jeremiah turns his head at me sharply. “Excuse me?”
“Olivia had me see into her future,” I say.
Jeremiah looks all around us for a moment, and then stands. “Walk with me. Let’s talk outside.”
I don’t know if he wants to talk outside because it’s more private or so we can talk with less distraction, but in either case I feel more relaxed away from the crowd of people. We walk outside the building where the air is cold, and the wind bites at my ears and nose, but I prefer it. I tuck my jacket around me tightly.
“Why haven’t you said anything about this before?” Jeremiah asks. He seems almost angry, but he keeps a civil tone.
“Everyone around here seems so busy,” I say. “The way you and your people have been acting, I thought you already knew.”
“We don’t know. Not yet. You say four days?”
“Sometime in the evening,” I say. “That’s when she plans to reveal her identity.” I shake my head at him. “I don’t really understand why this is so significant. Doesn’t that just make her an easier target?”
“It’s complicated,” Jeremiah says. “But it is important for us to take her out before she shows herself.”
“Yeah, but I want to know your motivation. I want to hear it from you.”
Jeremiah sighs, clearly not wanting to explain anything to me, but he composes himself quickly. “The moment she reveals herself to the settlements, she will put a face to the person that has provided for them. Right now, the leaders won’t put up much of a fuss about losing someone they have never seen.”
“Except they won’t enjoy the benefits she’s provided,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says, “but the moment she shows her identity, the moment she starts meeting with leaders and putting on her charm, she will be likable. People will want to follow her. Then, she will want to move forward.”
“What do you mean?”
“Domination,” he says. “She will start taking over the settlements that have refused her help. If they are not willing, she will take them by force. She wants to be a dictator, Waverly.”
“So, why Shadowface? Why did she keep her identity a secret?”
“In the beginning, it worked. Now, her network is getting too big. People are starting to ask too many questions. So, naturally, she will give them what they want. This has been her plan from the beginning.”
“She told you of this plan?” I ask.
He seems to hesitate for a moment, but finally he says, “Yes.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigar and a lighter. He bends his neck down, and covers the flame of the lighter with his palm. He sucks on the cigar until the end glows orange, and a white cloud of air blows out as he breathes heavily. “Once upon a time, I shared her ambition. I thought what she planned was genius. But when she told me about it, she never mentioned taking over settlements. In the beginning, it was about helping people survive. Once I found out it was more about her lust for power, I left her, never thinking she would be successful.” He hangs his head until his chin rests on his chest. “To my utter shame, I didn’t kill her when I had the chance. I started going after her when it was too late.”
“But it’s not too late,” I say. “You’ve got four days.”
Jeremiah looks up at me and smiles. “Waverly, you will never know the good you did today by telling me this.”
I can feel my face turn red as he looks at me. His stare seems to linger for a long moment…too long. I turn from him and look out into the parking lot.
“Can you tell me what you saw in Olivia’s future?” he asks.
In this moment, I’m not so sure I want to tell him. No doubt he expects to hear about his army moving in and destroying Olivia, giving him the chance to take over. Telling him about his death and my death will not help me change the future yet. It has to be in the moment when we are there. I don’t know how to do it, but I know it must be done.
I look up at Jeremiah and shrug. “I just saw the meeting,” I say. “She was giving a speech about unification and there were about thirty people there with her. That’s it.”
“So according to the vision, she reveals herself?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. I hate lying, but I just can’t bring myself to tell him the truth—that I really don’t know if the meeting takes place or not. “But you told me yourself, Jeremiah, that a glimpse of the future is like only looking at the corner of a painting. It’s hardly the whole picture.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” He brings his cigar to his mouth and takes another long draw. “It bothers me that you saw her meeting with the leaders, however.”
“But when I saw that future, it was before I planned to tell you about it,” I say. “We might have already changed it. That’s why you can’t rely on me to make your plan. It’s not enough information to go on.”
“I know,” he says. “I suppose we will need to leave soon. Four days hardly gives me enough time, but I think we can be ready.”
“I’m not sure I will be going with you,” I say.
“Waverly, we can use all the help we can get,” he says. “We know very little about Anchorage. We need you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t really want to go back.”
Even though I’ve seen the future, and I’ve seen myself back in Anchorage, that doesn’t mean I can’t go ahead and change it now. If I decide not to go, then that is simply that. Perhaps Jeremiah would even have a higher chance of success if I didn’t go.
“Waverly, I understand,” he says, “but you know the place better than anyone.”
“I hardly know it at all,” I say. “It’s only been a couple of days and I’m already forgetting it.”
“It will come back to you,” he says.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say.
“Ethan is going,” Jeremi
ah says.
“What? How do you know?”
“I assume he is, anyway. He has been very helpful to me ever since he got here. He seems very motivated to help us take down Shadowface.”
“I haven’t really talked to him,” I say. “I don’t think he wants to talk to me. Anyway, right now, telling me that doesn’t make me want to go any more than before.”
“I hope you will reconsider,” he says as he starts to walk back toward the office. He tosses whatever is left of the cigar on the ground.
My feet are planted to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, I’m just through with all of this.”
He places a hand on the door but pauses. “You may be finished with the world, but that doesn’t mean it stops spinning.” He looks at the ground as if he’s thinking about saying something else, but instead he just opens the door and walks back into the office, leaving me out in the cold.
Hot beef broth with rice noodles is what’s on the menu for lunch today. At least, that’s what Remi and I found in the cabinet in one of the office lunchrooms. I slurp up a noodle and grimace when it burns my chin, and for some reason it makes Evie laugh hysterically.
“She really likes to see physical pain,” Remi says. “I stubbed my toe on the sidewalk earlier today and she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.”
“How has it been?” I ask. “The two of you hanging out together.”
Remi looks down at the blonde little three-year-old blowing at the steam above her bowl. “Really,” Remi says, “it’s been fun. I didn’t really expect it, but it has. Maybe she’s a great distraction from all the crap that happens in the world.”
“How’s Gabe?” I ask.
“You talk like we don’t live in the same building,” Remi says. “You’ve seen him about as much as I have.”
“No, I mean, you and Gabe,” I say.
Remi shakes her head. “There is no me and Gabe.”
“Really? I thought there would be. You two seem to hit it off well.”
Remi stares down at the table, and I’m not sure if I said the wrong thing or not. I forget that there is so much that we don’t know about each other yet. There is still an entire three year gap where we didn’t even know the other was alive. She could never know how much Lucas meant to me. She could never know the pain I felt. Unless, that is, she has felt the same pain, and just hasn’t told me yet.
“We hit it off because we are good friends,” Remi says. “I just don’t want to pursue any relationship. I hate the thought.”
“Why?” I ask.
She shakes her head and looks down at Evie. “You like the soup?”
Evie nods her head up and down, making sure to flash me a grin before looking back down at her bowl.
“Personally, I’m curious about your life over the past three years,” I say. “You seem like you’re holding a lot back.”
“Aren’t we all?” Remi says. “Life for the past three years hasn’t been life. It’s as if we only get small glimpses of happiness, but then they are crushed by a herd of greyskins or raiders.” She points to the door. “Or attacks by people like Shadowface.”
“So, you don’t want anything to do with Gabe because of the world we live in?” I ask.
“That’s part of it,” she says. She looks down at the table and I can tell her eyes are starting to get watery.
“Who was it?” I ask.
“You knew him,” Remi says, looking up at me. A single tear falls down the side of her cheek and the sight nearly makes me start crying. “His name was Gilbert.”
My mouth falls open and I’m not sure what to say, so I don’t say anything.
“He and I were together for a very long time,” she says. “Almost immediately after the outbreak. Then, about a year ago, we got separated. I assumed he was dead, but it appears that you met him. And then he actually did die to save you.”
“Remi, I’m so sorry,” I say. I feel dumb. I feel shocked. I had no idea they were together. It seems strange, but in a way, it fits.
A few more tears fall down Remi’s face, but she doesn’t attempt to wipe them away. Evie gets on her knees in the chair beside her and reaches out to grab Remi’s face. With both hands on either of her cheeks, Evie stares at Remi.
“Don’t cry,” Evie says. “It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
I wonder how many times someone has had to tell Evie not to cry. How much sadness has she felt already? How much more sadness will she feel for the rest of her life? She repeats the words over and over, probably like Lydia had to do for her whenever Evie was scared.
“I’m okay, Evie,” Remi says. She pulls Evie from her chair and hugs her tightly. She shakes her head for a brief second when she looks at me. “Kids always need coddling,” she says, rolling her wet eyes.
Of course, Remi is the one that needs coddling, and she knows it. Having Evie in her arms might be the best thing in the world for her.
Once Evie is back in her chair, eating her soup, Remi wipes her cheeks and starts slurping her own noodles. “Will you tell me about Gilbert?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
I tell her everything, though I leave out the fact that Gilbert was difficult to be around most of the time. But now I suppose I get it. It was possible he had grown bitter ever since losing Remi. I told her about how he was the one that found the vial of Starborn blood, all the way up to the point where he sacrificed his life for ours. I told her the truth about it too—that he knew I had seen his future and that he had a chance to change it and didn’t.
“He said that he didn’t make that choice before,” I tell her. “He said that he loved you so much. He missed you.”
“He mentioned me?” she asks.
“Just before he died,” I say. “Though he didn’t say your name. I would have never assumed it was you.”
More tears fall as we talk. She tells me about her life with him and how he was so hopeful for the future. He had even given her so much hope, but she too often brought him down. She then told me about the last time she saw him. She had assumed that he eventually died, otherwise they would have found each other.
“And we would have found each other if it hadn’t been for Scarecrow,” she says.
“There’s no point in thinking like that,” I tell her. “We are where we are.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Gabe says he loves me.”
“Do you feel anything for him?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she answers. “But I don’t want to. I’m afraid to feel.”
“I know what you mean,” I say. “Sometimes it’s easier to just stay numb. I’m afraid that’s what Ethan is trying to do. He probably thought I was dead, and now that he knows I’m alive, he doesn’t know what to feel. Really, I don’t know what to feel either. When I first saw him, I was happy…shocked, but happy. But that doesn’t change the fact that I shot him.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But something has changed in him. Something weird is going on. He’s never acted like this before.”
“To be honest, Waverly, you haven’t known him all that long. Maybe a few weeks? A month before the attack, and then you didn’t see him for a month.”
“A month in this world feels like a lifetime,” I say. “People can become really close, quickly.”
“Yeah,” Remi says. “I suppose you’re right.”
We sit in silence for a few seconds, our thoughts taking us to different places. But we are startled when we hear yells from inside the office. Remi grabs Evie and rests her on her hip, while I open the door to the office to see what the commotion is all about.
We see Jeremiah at his desk in the center of the room barking orders to people. On the screen I see a truck approaching our perimeter. I’m guessing that from the look on his face, Jeremiah wasn’t expecting visitors.
Chapter 12 - Remi
Evie clings to me tightly, probably because the commotion of the office is too much for her. People are yelling at each other, a
group of men charge out with their guns ready, and I hold Evie a little too close. I’m not afraid. Anxious, really.
When I look at the screens on the wall, I see one vehicle approaching. It’s a pickup truck. I close my eyes, knowing that it is coming from the east. It only takes me a second before I’m inside the truck, hearing conversation. From the sounds of their voices, there are just two people—a man and a woman.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” the woman says.
The man doesn’t heed her apprehension. “We’ve got to get help from somebody. From the looks of it, there is a settlement here.” The man pauses for a second. “At least, there used to be.”
“What if they are raiders?” she asks. “They’ll kill us.”
“If we don’t stop, we’ll run out of gas,” he says. “If we run out of gas, we’ll die. Do you want that to happen?”
I open my eyes and I find Waverly staring at me.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
“They just want to get gas,” I tell her. “There are two of them.”
Waverly looks away from me and at the screens. Jeremiah’s men walk out to meet the vehicle with their guns in front of them.
“They aren’t hostile,” I say, holding Evie even tighter to me. We watch the screen as the truck comes to a stop, the guards closing in. My feet move forward. “Jeremiah, you can’t hurt them.”
He looks at me sharply and shakes his head almost as if to shake off an annoyance. He doesn’t care about my opinion. He just wants to know why people are here. But I haven’t told him about my Starborn ability. I’m not sure I want him to know. The only ones that know are Waverly and Gabe…maybe Ethan, but no one else. I’d like to keep it that way.
Jeremiah lifts a radio to his mouth and I turn my head just a little to pick up what he’s saying. “If I don’t recognize them, be ready to take them out on my orders,” he says.
“Jeremiah, no,” I say, taking another step forward. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears.
He looks at me again and squints his eyes. “What is it with you? I’m trying to take care of a situation here. If I don’t know who they are, then they are considered enemy combatants.”
The Starborn Ascension: Books 1, 2, and 3 (The Starborn Saga) Page 58