Beyond the Gates

by Jason D. Morrow

  There are only about two seconds to process everything I need to see. Holbrook to the left, Skylar directly in front of me, Black behind his desk, and Skylar’s cellmate to the right. Holbrook immediately reaches for Skylar and holds a knife to her throat.

  “Drop the gun, or your daughter dies,” Holbrook says. “I look from left to right, then back.”

  “Papa, you’re shot!” Skylar says.

  I can feel blood trickling from my wounds, but I don’t feel the pain.

  “Drop the gun, or she dies,” Holbrook says again.

  I have no choice. I drop the gun to the floor, staring Holbrook in the eyes. Smoke begins to waft into the room from down the hall.

  “The entire building is on fire,” I say. “It won’t be long, and we’ll all have to get out of here. That or we all die.”

  “Therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?” Holbrook says. “We’re blocked by fire on all sides. We would have to escape through the windows, and I suppose prisoners are waiting to kill us out there, too.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. “The greyskins have been released. People are trying to get out of here.”

  I can hear the fire now. It won’t be long, and the whole place will be ashes.

  “Let my daughter go,” I say. “She has nothing to do with this. She may have my blood, but she doesn’t have any powers. She’s of no use to you.”

  “I can get the power out of her,” Holbrook says.

  “I can give you something better than that,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow, his knife relaxing against Skylar’s neck.

  I swallow, hoping he will believe me.

  “If you let her go, I can give you the cure to the greyskin virus.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Skylar

  “WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” Black orders from behind his desk.

  Holbrook’s arm around my chest is too tight. I think I might suffocate. I can feel how sharp the knife is. Just a flick of the wrist and my throat will be cut open. I try to think of something to do, but I feel powerless.

  “I created the cure a year ago after a lot of research and testing,” Papa says. “Skylar has two bites on her. One from a year ago. One since she’s been here. She should be dead, but she’s standing right here.”

  “Natasha wasn’t lying,” Black says, his eyes falling on me. “You let her die.”

  “Is that your Starborn power?” Holbrook hisses. “You can cure the virus?”

  Papa shakes his head. “No. I’m just smart. And I’m the only one who knows where it is. I think your boss would be interested in knowing about it.”

  “You’re a liar!” Black screams, though I think he’s talking to me about Natasha and not about the cure.

  It’s difficult for me to keep my balance the way Holbrook is holding me. I have a feeling either he’s going to believe Papa or he’s going to kill us all. My eyes travel from Papa to Waverly, and she stands in the corner of the room calm and collected. She can see the future. She has seen this from the beginning. She’s put everything together almost as if she’s in control of the situation. She looks at me in the eyes and nods slowly.

  Trust your gift, she had told me.

  I close my eyes and touch Holbrook’s wrist gently. Another flash of white.

  This vision is different. There are flashes upon flashes with different scenes taking place in front of my eyes. Some of them are barely long enough to know what I’m even seeing. A few, however, stick around longer.

  There’s a girl…a woman, maybe. She holds a gun and stands behind a small boy. She looks like she’s about to kill him. She raises her gun to fire it into the back of his head.

  Another flash.

  Holbrook is being accepted as an officer in the Screven military. A man in a large hat and sunglasses stands in front of him.

  “You will do great things with us,” the man says.

  Holbrook bows his head slightly and closes his eyes.

  Another flash.

  Holbrook has just woken, and he’s putting on his uniform. He buttons his jacket, rolls his sleeves, ties his shoes. Then, he puts on his belt. On one side, he holsters a long knife, the one he would later use to put to my throat. He then holsters a pistol in his boot, one I wouldn’t be able to reach when he later holds a knife to my neck.

  Then, he slides another, smaller knife into a small sheath between his belt and his pants. It’s a tiny hidden compartment on his left side, an extra weapon in case he loses his main ones and needs it for a fight.

  My eyes open and I feel a surge of energy run through me. Holbrook questions my father about the cure, clearly not convinced. My father takes a step closer and Holbrook shouts, pressing the blade close to my skin. Waverly waits in the corner. Black stands behind his desk, muttering to himself, his sharp eyebrows turned downward.

  “She lied, she lied, I can’t believe she lied,” he says over and over.

  The room is getting hot now, and the smoke is starting to choke us.

  Calmly and slowly, my right hand leaves Holbrook’s wrist, and it travels to his belt. He’s moving so much, he doesn’t notice when my tiny fingers reach under his belt. He doesn’t feel the tug of his hidden knife as I pull it from its sheath. He doesn’t see my hand grip it tightly, or my arm rise into the air.

  But he does feel it when I stab the knife into the side of his leg.

  He drops down with a scream, his knife falling away from my throat. Yanking the knife from his leg, I turn around and stab downward into his chest, but I miss and the knife jabs into his shoulder.

  There are flames in the room now, and we’ll all burn if we don’t get out of here in just a few seconds. A loud crash sounds behind me, and it’s Warden Black trying to break through the window with a chair. He looks back at all of us in the room, his face full of fear.

  Holbrook wrenches the small knife from his shoulder, but freezes when he sees Papa pointing the rifle at his head.

  “You move and I’ll split your head open through the middle,” he says.

  He motions for Waverly to stand next to him. When she reaches him, he hands her the rifle. “Keep it on him. Don’t let him move.”

  Papa then reaches for the bigger knife Holbrook had held to my throat then turns toward Black on the other side of the room. Papa charges through the smoke, leaping over Black’s desk and grabs another chair, launching it at the man before he can get through the broken window.

  “No!” Black screams as the chair crashes into him, knocking him to the floor. He tries to reach for a weapon, but Papa is on top of him. He grabs the warden by the shirt and throws him back onto his desk.

  “Sky look away,” Papa says through his teeth.

  He’s going to kill the man!

  “Papa, we have to go.”

  “Skylar look away!”

  He holds the knife out in front of Black, the murder in his eyes glowing red with hatred.

  I turn my head toward the window, but I can’t see anything because the smoke is so thick.

  “You’ve taken the lives of innocent people,” Papa says. “You deserve nothing more than to become one with the ashes of this place.”

  “Please,” Black says.

  I can’t keep my eyes away. I watch as he pulls Black’s arm to the side and pins it to his desk. Papa looks skinnier than he ever has, but he still has more power in him that the bird-thin Warden Black.

  With a violent swing, Papa brings the large knife down on Black’s wrist, severing the hand from the arm.

  Black lets out a scream with a pitch I wouldn’t have thought him capable. Blood squirts onto his desk as he rolls off it and crawls on the floor, cradling his mangled stump.

  A shot rings out behind me and I turn quickly to see Holbrook with the barrel of the rifle in his hands, Waverly fighting to keep control of the gun.

  The young man’s strength is too much for the old woman and he jerks the gun away. He must have caught her in a moment of surprise or distraction, but wouldn’t
she have seen it coming? Wouldn’t she have been able to prevent the attack with her Starborn ability?

  Papa rushes Holbrook, slamming his bloodied shoulder into the Screven officer. They both clamber to the floor. Papa tries to stab the knife into Holbrook, but Holbrook lands a solid punch and Papa drops the knife.

  I scream and jump after the gun on the ground, but a set of hands grab me by the shoulders. I look up and see Waverly. She shakes her head at me.

  I’m left staring at the two men on the floor grappling for the knife. I want to jump in and help Papa, but I have to trust Waverly, don’t I? She said we would escape this. But she never told me what it would take for the escape to happen. She didn’t tell me the cost because she didn’t want me to try and change anything about the future.

  When Holbrook gets the knife in his hands, an electric shock jolts through my body and Waverly is forced to tighten her grip on me to hold me back.

  Holbrook dives at Papa, slicing his chest, his arms, his hands. Each swipe sprays blood, but Papa concentrates on the pain, keeping himself composed. He reaches out a hand as Holbrook stabs downward and the knife goes straight through his palm.

  A scream escapes my lips and I realize for the first time that I’m shaking, tears falling down the sides of my face. Am I about to lose the only person in this world that I care about? Am I really going to stand back and watch my father die?

  Papa closes his hand around Holbrook’s, the knife’s blade jagged and red between his knuckles.

  There is pain in Papa’s eyes, but in a flash, the pain is gone and a strength surges through him as though he had no injuries.

  He shoves his fist toward Holbrook’s chest, the blade an extension of Papa’s knuckles. The knife goes in, but on the right side, missing his heart.

  The man lets out a scream, but is silenced when Papa pulls the knife out of his hand, grabs the gun. He then slams the butt of the rifle into Holbrook’s head over and over.

  Holbrook is either unconscious or dead.

  The fire is burning the floor around us and the room is stifling. I look up at Waverly, and she eases her grip on my shoulders.

  “To the window,” Papa says, pointing to the opposite side where Black had been trying to break out.

  Papa uses the gun to break it open the rest of the way, and thankfully no greyskins wait for us.

  The smoke is so heavy I can hardly breathe. I’m choking in it. Papa stops us just before exiting.

  “I have to get the Pass Card,” he says.

  He rushes to the desk where he’d severed Black’s hand, grabs it and wraps it in his already blood-soaked shirt. He stumbles over to Black who is oblivious to my father at this point, still screaming and crying from the pain in his arm. Papa reaches down and grabs Black by the back of the neck.

  “I won’t kill you if you give me your Pass Card,” he says.

  Black barely seems to acknowledge him other than a small gesture with his good hand, indicating the card is in his right pocket. Papa reaches down, pulls the card out and backs away quickly.

  It’s hard to tell whose blood is whose. Papa seems to be bleeding from every part of his body. I don’t even know if he can stop the pain right now. His concentration has to be entirely on getting out of here.

  Remembering my earlier vision, I race to the spot behind Black’s desk and grab the messenger bag with the ten Pass Cards in it. I give the bag to Papa who places the dismembered hand in it along with Black’s Pass Card.

  The two of us race to the window. When I start to climb out, I notice Waverly staring at Holbrook.

  “Waverly, come on!”

  She looks at the man, but I don’t have a clue what she’s thinking. I know the two have some sort of past that she hasn’t told me about, but that shouldn’t matter at this moment. There’s no more time.

  “Are you coming, or are you going to burn up in here?” Papa asks.

  Waverly looks up and nods. “Let’s go.”

  Vulture hill is still chaos when the three of us make it past the gate. I know it’s not over. We have only entered a much larger prison, and we have to figure out a way to escape the Containment Zone. But that’s not our problem at the moment.

  “We need to climb the hill,” Papa says. “Get a better vantage point.”

  “You need to take care of your wounds,” I say. “You will bleed to death.”

  “At the top of the hill.”

  It’s only at the top that I realize we have climbed the hill that this place is named after. This is Vulture Hill. Black wasn’t lying. There are bones all around us. Small ones. Large ones. Decaying bodies lie scattered on the grass and rocks.

  Waverly and I rip up pieces of cloth we find on the ground from prisoners long ago executed. With some of the fabric, we wrap Warden Black’s hand, knowing his Pass Card would be useless without the handprint.

  The rest of the cloth we use to bandage Papa’s wounds and try to stop the bleeding. It may not be the most sanitary method, but it beats bleeding to death. It will have to do until we can find a better place to fix him.

  Looking down at the burning prison, I already know he will refuse going back to look for medical supplies. Besides, there are too many greyskins roaming the prison camp now.

  I wonder if Katherine and Janet made it out okay. I wonder if we will even make it a day out in this dusty, desolate land. I look at Waverly. Her eyes betray her, displaying a lack of confidence that I have never seen from her.

  These have been the hardest days of my existence, but I am alive. Papa is alive. Now we have to get to safety and survive long enough to learn how to escape the Containment Zone.

  “I love you, Papa,” I say.

  He winces at the pain, and I can tell it takes everything in him to concentrate on each place that hurts him. His eyes find mine in the darkness and he smiles. “We made it, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” I say.

  Waverly rests a hand on my shoulder. “You did well.”

  “Is the worst part over?” I ask, hopeful but expecting the worst.

  Waverly looks away from me when I ask this and takes a deep breath. I can tell she’s debating whether to tell me the truth or not. Finally, she looks back at me and shakes her head.

  “No,” she says. “The worst is yet to come, but so is the best.”

  I look back at the prison of death and I wonder if Warden Black and Holbrook will die from breathing in too much smoke or if they will just burn up in the fire.

  As the main building burns to the ground, I can’t help but think about Black’s body burning to ashes.

  My eyes travel to the ground in front of me. We are among the bones of those who didn’t survive this place—those people who became Warden Black’s fulfilled promise. At the time, they might have considered themselves the lucky ones—the ones who no longer had to suffer through the horrors of Vulture Hill. But they aren’t the lucky ones.

  We are.

  The bones at the top of Vulture Hill are not our bones. And they never will be.

  For now, that’s good enough.

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  Books by Jason D. Morrow

  The Starborn Redemption

  Beyond the Gates

  Prison of Solitude (April 2019)

  A Forsaken Destiny (July 2019)

  The Starborn Ascension

  Anywhere But Here

  Away From The Sun

  Into The Shadows

  The Starborn Uprising

  Out Of Darkness

  If It Kills Me

  Even In Death

  Prototype D

  Prototype D

  Prototype Exodus

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jason D. Morrow is the author of The Starborn Uprising, The Starborn Ascension, and the Prototype D series. He enjoys playing guitar, making fun videos, and spending time with his lovely wife, Emily, their son, Silas, and their dog, Winnie.

  For more books or updates from Jason, check out his web
site and be sure to subscribe to his updates.