Beyond the Gates

by Jason D. Morrow

  Her words brought tears to my eyes. When I tried to ask her for more details of the days ahead, she made her position clear.

  “You are not to ask me about the future,” she said. “I will tell you what I think is safe to tell you. Otherwise, you have to pretend you know nothing about what I can do.”

  “But what about my own ability that I will get? What good is seeing the past?”

  “A lot of good if you can learn how to use it right,” she answered. “But I don’t want you worrying about that either. The gift will present itself to you when the time is right. Not before.”

  “I just…” I shook my head. “I just wish I knew what to do next.”

  “Same as you would if you and I never talked,” Waverly said. “Plan for your escape. If you’re not trying to escape, you’re suicidal.”

  Waverly and I spent the next three days in our cell. She dressed my wound and made sure it didn’t get infected as best she could. The cure continued to work, and I had my father to thank for that. I could feel the virus trying to work its way through my body at times, but then I would feel better. Sometimes I would feel a surge of energy, and I could only guess that this was the cure doing its work inside me. Other times I felt completely drained and would sleep for hours-on-end.

  I am thankful Waverly got to spend time with me for those several days. It was time away from other prisoners. Time away from work. Time away from Natasha. I wonder if she thinks I’m dead and that Waverly was killed for trying to lie about me. The only prisoners we have seen are the ones who pass by to their cells, none of which I know. Thankfully, the guards showed mercy on us once they realized I wasn’t carrying the virus, and gave us food to eat during those few days.

  Questions burn inside me with every passing moment. I want to know how we’re going to get out of here. I want to know how the cure will be mass produced. Was Papa going to be a worldwide sensation? Was he going to be the next president? The new Jeremiah, only not evil? Waverly spoke of hard times ahead, but she was only warning me about the ordinary life of living in a greyskin world, right? Of course it’s lonely. Of course it’s difficult. I’ve already felt the depths of sorrow. How much more could I really feel?

  Regardless of what I’m allowed to ask her or not ask her, there is nothing that can change the renewed hope within me. That is until a guard comes to my cell and says Warden Black wants to speak with me.

  “And you, Nine,” she says.

  We look at each other and I don’t know what to say. She had explained it to me several times. Waverly doesn’t see the future in every single situation. She told me she’s generally looking at the big picture. Many of the details get lost in her mind and she can’t keep up with them all. If she tried, she would go crazy, she said. So, even if I could ask her what this is about, she might not even know. Still, knowing that doesn’t keep me from looking at her, hoping for a nod of assurance that everything is going to be okay.

  She nods and I feel better.

  I don’t like going into Warden Black’s office. The man creeps me out. I would almost rather be working. But when the guards open the door, my shock replaces my revulsion. Standing next to Warden Black is Natasha.

  “If it isn’t the two most interesting people in the camp,” Warden Black says.

  Waverly and I stand in front of his desk. Two guards stand behind us, but Warden Black nods his okay for them to take their place at the back of the room. I glare at Natasha, not caring that she could utterly destroy me if she wanted. I know why she’s here.

  Warden Black shakes his head and shrugs twice. “I don’t know what to do here. I’ve got Natasha who has always been truthful with me. She’s saying a greyskin bit you and somehow you’re immune.”

  “I fell on a spear,” I say. “It was muddy. Raining.”

  “Because you’re here and not dead, it would seem that you are the one to be believed. However, Natasha has never let me down, and you are an unknown to me.”

  “Excuse me, Warden, but what is Natasha claiming exactly?” Waverly asks.

  “Simply that our little one here was bitten and claimed to be immune. We all know that’s impossible unless a cure has been made or unless she’s a Starborn who can heal herself. You know, if she’s a Starborn, she will be of great value to us, and if she’s immune because of medicine, she is of value to us.”

  “And what of the more obvious choice?” Waverly asks. “You know, the one that dispenses with nonsense and accepts the fact that there is no greyskin virus within this girl. She fell. It was an accident.”

  “You’re telling me that’s what you saw, Nine?” Warden Black asks.

  Waverly looks at Natasha, then back at Warden Black. “Yes.”

  Natasha swears. “You lying filth. You know the girl was bitten. Just look at the wound!”

  “Natasha,” Warden Black says, his head shaking. Without warning, he pulls a gun from his belt, points it at Natasha’s head and pulls the trigger.

  The loud burst from the gun covers the noise of my scream, but not the thump of her body hitting the floor, nor the blood pooling around her head.

  “We don’t have time for liars in Vulture Hill,” Black says coldly. He looks down at her body and winces. “Maybe we should have had this meeting outside.”

  I can’t stop staring at Natasha on the floor. Two guards come from behind and pick up her limp body and carry it out of the room leaving a red pool where her head had been.

  “There are people you can trust and people who are just looking to get ahead,” Warden Black says. “I have no time for people who are just trying to get on my good side.”

  Waverly and I don’t say anything. I wonder if she had seen this coming.

  “I understand a fib to try and save your own skin,” he says, looking at me, “but to lie in order to gain my favor…” He winces again. “That really gets to me.”

  Sure, Natasha was trying to get on Warden Black’s good side, but she hadn’t been lying. She’d seen the greyskin sink its teeth into me. The bite wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it would have been enough to infect anyone without an immunity.

  “So,” Black says, walking around the side of his desk, making sure to step over the pool of blood. He leans against the desk, sets the gun down and crosses his arms like it is just a normal morning. “Are you two getting along as cellmates?”

  I don’t say anything. I’m not sure I can say anything. I have never been more terrified of a person in all my life. To know that he could kill with such cold passivity, without it affecting him in the least, is just too much for me to bear. My limbs shake. My heart pounds. My shoulder throbs.

  “We are doing just fine,” Waverly says.

  He nods at me. “Is your shoulder all right?”

  I nod slowly.

  “Let me look at it.”

  My eyes travel to Waverly, hoping for a nod of assurance or some word of whether she had seen this coming. She stares straight ahead.

  I pull the sleeve of my shirt up as best I can and start to unwrap the bandages. Every movement sends a shock to my nerves, and I have to clench my teeth to keep from groaning.

  “Ah, yes,” he says, leaning in to get a good look at the wound. “That is a nasty accident you have. I can see why it would look like a bite. But you’re not dead. So, it couldn’t be a bite.”

  I nod slowly.

  “That is…” He leans back against the desk and folds his arms again. “Unless you’re hiding something.”

  “I’m not hiding anything,” I say a little too quickly.

  “If you’re some Starborn, it would be wise to tell me now before Holbrook comes back with a report,” he says. “Bad things will happen to you if I find out you’ve been lying to me.”

  “Before I came here I didn’t even know what a Starborn was,” I say.

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have special powers,” he answers. “Have you ever experienced special abilities?”

  “No.”

  This part was t
rue. But now that I know that I will experience special powers, according to Waverly, it feels like I’m lying. I’m afraid he can see right through me.

  “I have no love for Holbrook,” Warden Black says as he walks back to the other side of his desk. “In fact, I hate the man. He is a Starborn hunter who happened to cross paths with Jeremiah. Jeremiah hired him and now he hunts Starborns for our leadership. He doesn’t care how or why the Starborns are destroyed, he just wants them gone. But I see them differently.” His eyes travel to Waverly. “I love them. I believe they are the evolution of our species. I believe they will make the world better and should be preserved.”

  He sighs and turns his gaze to the window.

  “I’m a prisoner here too, you know. I am forced to sit through the torture sessions to try and bring Starborn powers out of people. It isn’t how I would do things. But I am in the position to either run this prison and force Jeremiah’s policies or become one of you and die.”

  He pauses as if to wait for a response. When he doesn’t get one, his eyes shift and he continues.

  “Soon, this prison won’t even be here. The Containment Zone will become such a place overrun with greyskins that there won’t be a need for our services. Jeremiah’s trucks will be able just to come in, gather them up, and ship them out. But once we finish our job, people like me will be called back to Screven to serve in some other way.”

  He stares hard at me, that icy stare that makes my stomach churn—a stare I might see in my nightmares.

  “I’ve earned a place among Jeremiah’s council,” he says. “They may not know it yet, but I deserve to be there. Not someone like Holbrook.”

  Warden Black’s entire motivation is jealousy. He’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, watching over a death camp, and all he wants is to be a leader among the Screven soldiers. It is this jealousy that keeps Waverly alive—the fact that he has a gem that Holbrook will never find. Waverly understands that feeling within him and uses it to stay alive. Smart.

  “But if you had a power within you that resists the virus,” he says, “I would be Jeremiah’s right-hand man. I would become a savior.”

  “It was the spear,” I say. “Nothing more.”

  He nods. A knock at the door makes me jump and two more guards walk into the room. “Sir,” one of the guards says, “Prisoner 3,333 is here to meet with you.”

  “Good,” Black says. “Bring him in.”

  I glance toward the back of the room and feel as though someone has slapped me across the face. When Papa walks through the doorway and sees me, he stops in his tracks. It takes everything in me not to call out to him, but I quickly turn away, trying not to let my expression betray me. The bruises on his face. The scrapes and cuts. His time here must be so much worse than mine.

  Warden Black doesn’t seem to notice the look on my face. “How are you feeling?” he asks Papa.

  “Okay,” Papa says.

  He’s trying to keep his eyes off me, to make it as clear as possible that I don’t matter to him—that I mean nothing. I’m just another girl.

  Warden Black looks at me and then at Waverly, then nods. “This is the man, Nine. This is the man we talked about.”

  Waverly turns to look at him and nods, and immediately questions start to burn into my mind. Why would she be talking to Warden Black about Papa?

  Black seems to be fighting a smile. “Okay,” he says to Waverly and me. “You may go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Liam

  I CAN BARELY breathe. Seeing Skylar in here is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. My daughter. The woman. The blood on the floor. What had Skylar just witnessed? She was as pale as I had ever seen her, and there was a wound on her shoulder. It feels like someone has just hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer.

  To think that she goes through things—terrible things—and I have no idea what those things are is enough to make me panic. My heart races and I almost feel like I need to chase after her, to hold her close and tell her it will be all right. But the guards would take me down in a second.

  I don’t know what is planned for me now. At the time, my defense against the twins seemed like the right thing to do, but since I am responsible for the death of one of them, my fate could be that of the man in the cage. I might be the next person to be publicly executed. This meeting might just be Warden Black’s way of telling me because he wants to see the fear in my eyes when I find out that I will die.

  I am fully prepared to use the cure as my final playing card. It may work. It may not. But all I can do is try.

  “Sorting hasn’t been treating you well since you’ve been here,” Black says, pointing to my face. “You’ve got bruises all over you, you know.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Still, I haven’t found too many people stand up to the twins and live to tell the tale,” he says. “I don’t condone fighting in my prison, but I consider what you did to be self-defense.”

  It’s the first time I’ve felt relief in a while, though it’s short-lived by another glance at the bloody floor.

  “What’s wrong? Oh, that?” he says, following my eyes. He waves it off. “It’s nothing. Prisoner was making up stories. I don’t have time for them. Claims the girl that was in here was bitten by a greyskin.”

  I am having to learn how to hide my horror more and more. Sky was bitten?

  Rage. Longing. Sadness. They all find a place in my heart, but I can do nothing with them but stare ahead at the man who holds everyone’s life within these fences by a thread.

  Black shakes his head. “She was in her cell for two days and she didn’t turn. Said she fell on one of those spears they use in disposal. I don’t know what to think, other than the prisoner that lied about her was wasting my time.” Black scratches the top of his head and leans back in his chair. “Do you want a drink?”

  My eyes travel slowly from the desk to the man’s sunken eyes. “A drink?”

  “Whiskey,” he says. “We don’t get a lot of it around the Containment Zone, but a few of us officials get some perks every now and again.” He points to a chair in front of the desk. The puddle of blood has oozed to the front left leg. “Have a seat.”

  I pull the chair back slowly and sit on the cushioned surface, trying to keep my left foot drawn in so it doesn’t rest in the blood.

  A woman was killed in here right in front of my daughter. My daughter has been bitten by a greyskin and was with someone I had never seen before. And now I’m about to have a drink with the man who stands between me and the outside world.

  He pulls out two glasses and sets one of them in front of me. He then uncorks a bottle with his yellow teeth and pours half a glass each. He raises his glass in the air, waiting for me to do the same.

  “A toast,” he says.

  “What are we toasting?” I ask, reaching for the glass.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Surviving a month?” He lets out a wheezing laugh and I hold the glass in front of me, refusing to raise it up, but he doesn’t notice. He throws back the drink and pours another.

  A take a small sip, fearing if I drink even half the glass, with my weight down and lack of nutrition, I would become slobbering drunk before I set it down.

  Drinking with the man who is starving me leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Or maybe that’s just the whiskey.

  “You and I are a lot alike,” he says. “I just happen to be sitting on this side of the desk, and you’re on that side of the desk.” He knocks back another drink and pours another glass. “We’re just trying to figure out this mess of a life, aren’t we? Where do we go from here? What’s after all this? You know?”

  “I thought only death awaited prisoners here,” I say. Perhaps it’s too bold, I’m not sure.

  His upper lip curls on one side as if I had just ruined his dinner by telling an unsavory joke. “That’s true,” he finally says. “But it wasn’t always true for you. I bet before you were caught, you thought about the future. Where you wou
ld go. What you would do. You wanted to know what was next for you outside the Containment Zone.” He leans forward, a sudden energy bursting from him. “Do prisoners still think that way after being here a long time? Is there still hope out there?” His index finger taps against the top of his desk

  “Do you want me to speak honestly?” I ask.

  “Your name is Liam, right?”

  I nod.

  “Liam, look at the blood on the floor.”

  I look down and find that the blood has reached my shoe.

  “Lying to me is a waste of my time. I obviously don’t like it when people waste my time. Honesty is…encouraged.”

  “All right,” I say. “Yes, there is still hope out there.”

  He leans forward and slides the bottle of whiskey out of his way.

  “What kind of hope, though? Are there some on the brink of escape? Are there some who know something I don’t?”

  “No one wants to die,” I say. “Especially in a place like this. Especially when some of us think we didn’t actually commit a crime—that our only crime was living within the Containment Zone when it was created.”

  Black waves a finger at me. “Ah, don’t give me that, Liam. You were trying to escape the Containment Zone. That’s an illegal act.”

  “Punishable by death, apparently.”

  “No one is disputing that,” he says.

  “And you think the punishment fits the crime?”

  “It’s not for me to decide what is fitting and what is not,” Black says. “It’s my job to enforce the punishment.”

  “Your opinion still matters, doesn’t it?”

  Black doesn’t answer.

  “So, what of the girl that was in here?” I continue. “Does a girl that age deserve to be in a place like this?”

  “I’ve given it some thought,” he says. “She was caught trying to break into a home to steal food. So, she was picked up.” He shrugs.

  “Everyone here knows what you’re doing,” I say. “They know that they will all die in the end, but some are holding out for something to happen from the outside. Perhaps a law is changed. Maybe the prison is no longer needed.”