When he comes here, can I kill him? That has been my plan for the past month, but can I really bring myself to do it?
The man had a huge part in bringing the world to its knees. He is quite possibly the greatest and most terrible person that has ever lived. Three years ago, he let out a virus that destroyed the world. And today, he wants to take over that world. I can’t sit back and let him do it.
These three years have defined me. I am a man with few loyalties. Love has escaped me but for Ashley. I miss her so.
I am a man filled with hatred toward those that took whatever happiness I had in my life. My eyes travel to the floor where Samuel’s body lies. He killed my Ashley. I hope that I made him feel the fear that she felt. I hope he felt desperation.
I close my eyes and let my consciousness enter Ethan’s. I can feel the resistance—the need to push me out. Through his eyes, I see the one that sent Ashley’s death spiraling into motion. Waverly. She is with Ethan. Stephen sits a few paces away. Each of them stares blankly at the floor.
“I tried to kill him,” Waverly says. “I can’t believe he got away from me. I was supposed to kill him.”
“What do you mean?” Ethan asks.
“I’ve seen the future of Jeremiah,” I say. “I know what kind of man he is. He is pure evil. He’s going to take control of this place. He’s going to build a society with his own rules. So many people are going to die because of him.”
Hearing her voice makes me sick. Waverly no more understands the future than she did when she saw Ashley’s. If she were really able to see with clarity, Ashley would be next to me. Instead, she’s gone forever.
Don’t listen to her, Ethan. In fact, forget what she is saying. Grab a weapon and kill her.
Chapter 25 - Waverly
Ethan stands in the hallway and makes his way toward the room where I killed Olivia and tried to kill Jeremiah.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“What I’m ordered to do,” he shouts. He grabs a wooden chair by the back, raises it above his head and slams it into the ground, breaking it into pieces. “His focus is on something else, so I’ve got limited freedom. Enough to give you a fair chance.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, starting to feel nervous.
“You better go ahead and hit that elevator button,” he says.
My head turns toward the elevator and I can’t understand why he’s acting so strange. It’s enough to make me feel angry inside. I turn back to him, red-faced and ready for a fight, but not the kind of fight Ethan seems ready for.
“What do you mean ordered to do? For the entire past week you haven’t made any sense. From the way you’ve been silent, to the note you gave me earlier today telling me that I should kill you? I think you’ve gone mad!”
“I wish you would have listened to me,” Ethan says. “I wish you would have shot me through the head then and there.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew this was coming,” he says. He tosses a leg of the chair in my direction and it lands at my feet. In his hands he holds another chair leg like a baseball bat.
Stephen stands from his crouch to get between me and Ethan. “Take it easy,” he says. But Ethan swings the chair leg and hits him in the head. Stephen falls unconscious.
“What are you doing?”
“Please forgive me,” he says. His eyes start to water.
I want to ask him more about what is troubling him, but I don’t get a chance. Before I can blink twice, Ethan is charging after me, swinging the chair leg like he’s trying to take my head off.
I duck under the first swing. It isn’t like him to act this way. On the backswing, the leg hits me hard against the shoulder. I fall to the floor, the other chair leg within my grasp. Before Ethan can get a chance to bring the wooden club down on me again, I reach for the other and swing it at his knee. He lets out a yell and I swing again, this time knocking him to the floor.
This is my chance to run to the elevator. Chair leg in hand, I rush to it as quickly as possible, fully knowing that I’m going to have to defend myself as I wait for the elevator to come up.
What has come over Ethan? What happened to the guy that I was falling for? One of our last memories together was lying on a roof in each others’ arms, kissing with feelings of hope for a future.
But the very last memory I have of us is what changed everything. If it hadn’t been for Mitch…
Mitch!
He’s still in control of Ethan! That’s why he’s been acting so strange. That’s why he’s trying to kill me right now. That’s what Ethan meant when he said his focus is on something else. He was talking about Mitch. Somehow he’s figured out a way to control Ethan from so far away. It all makes sense.
He pulls himself up off the ground, club in hand. As he starts walking toward me, hot tears begin to sting my eyes.
“Ethan, I understand now! I get it! Mitch is controlling your mind. He’s trying to use you to kill me.”
“I know!” Ethan yells. He’s crying but he can’t keep himself from moving. “There’s nothing I can do. He can’t make me feel anger towards you, but he controls my actions. I have to obey his orders!”
“Just don’t!” I scream. “Just stop. Listen to me! To me! Don’t hurt me! Give in to your feelings of love. Let go of Mitch. Just let go of him!”
Ethan brakes in the middle of the hallway. The club is still in his hands, but his feet have stopped. What does this mean? Does he have a strong enough will to withstand Mitch?
Tears stream down my face as I fall to my knees, letting go of the stick in my hands. He takes a step forward.
“There is another way. He has a strong power, but we have something stronger, Ethan.”
“What?” he asks. He’s a foot from me now and one stiff swing away from bashing my brains out.
“Love,” I say. “I love you. And you love me.”
His grip eases.
“I haven’t seen our future, but I don’t have to to know that we care about each other. That is far more powerful than any grip Mitch can hold us with.”
Ethan swallows hard and drops the chair leg, letting it clank on the floor. He falls to his knees in front of me, crying. “I never meant to hurt you, Waverly. I would have rather died than been rescued by Mitch and turned against you.”
“But you didn’t die. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stop myself from shooting you.”
“Never be sorry,” Ethan says. “That was a terrible day that none of us could have fixed. I love you, Waverly.” He reaches for me, grabbing me behind the neck. Our lips meet, and the feeling is a shock to my heart. After the week we’ve had, I surely didn’t expect to ever be kissing Ethan again. But I know what he has been through. I know the power of Mitch’s ability. To be told to kill the one you love, and not have any control over it is a horror.
It’s a horror Ethan and I will never face again.
Chapter 26 - Mitch
My eyes feel like they are in a daze as I stare at the door across the office. I wait for them to open, revealing my father. I have rehearsed what I would say a thousand times, yet I still don’t know what will come out of my mouth when he arrives. I want him to see me in a position of power. I want him to know that he has lost. I want him to feel helpless. I want him to feel the lack of love that I have too often experienced from him. I want him to know what it feels like for someone that is supposed to love you acts callously. Most of all, I want him to feel defeated.
I hold Samuel’s gun in my hand. Killing him didn’t come with the sense of justice I thought it would. I half-expected to feel elation when the bullet passed through his head, but instead I only felt emptiness. The same emptiness that was there when Ashley was taken from me.
None of this feels right. I feel like I’m losing my edge. I move into Ethan’s head and see him kissing Waverly. What is going on? I gave an order. Why isn’t he obeying it? Forget it. I’ve got more important things to focus on. Jeremiah.
; The door to the office opens quickly and Jeremiah steps in. He tries to cover his eyes when the light hits him and I point the pistol at him. When his eyes finally adjust to the light, he starts looking around the room. He has a painful smile on his face until his eyes find Samuel on the ground, and then they fall on me. His expression darkens, and he flinches to bolt for the door, but I command him with my voice.
“Stop!” I set the pistol down on the desk, knowing that I won’t need it. “I want you to drop whatever weapon you have.”
My father doesn’t move.
“Okay,” I say. I motion in front of me. “Come closer.”
He walks toward me, a scowl on his face. His chest is bleeding from a gunshot wound that would have killed any other man. He limps from another wound at his leg as he speaks. “I should have guessed you would be here. I gambled and I lost.” He stops just on the other side of the desk. His eyes glance over the documents in front of me. “I suppose you’re here to kill me.”
“For the past month, I’ve thought about nothing but this moment,” I say, shaking my head. “But now I don’t know what to think.”
“Feeling a bit of compassion for your old man?”
“I just want you to talk to me,” I say. “I want you to tell me everything without me having to coerce it from you.”
Jeremiah shakes his head. “So, you command me to talk without coercion?” He lets out a short laugh followed by a cough. “It’s a command that serves no other purpose but to make you feel better. It’s like telling me to kill a man without murdering him. To kill him is murder.”
“At least I can make you tell me the truth,” I argue.
“You’ve done it before. What more do you need to know?”
“Is all this what you planned all along?”
“It has all happened differently than I expected, but basically, yes.”
“You feel no remorse for my mother’s death?”
“Olivia and I have been enemies for a long time. We have been planning each other’s death for years. I just happened to come out on top.”
“Thanks to me,” I declare. “You wouldn’t have survived this if I hadn’t brought the greyskins for you.”
“What do you want, a pat on the back?”
“A simple thanks would be nice.”
“Thanks,” he says sarcastically.
My eyes travel to his wounds. “Are you in pain?”
“I was shot in the chest and leg, of course I’m in pain.”
I shake my head at him in wonder. The virus of the greyskin prevents him from dying in a natural way, but the immortal Starborn blood keeps him from turning into a greyskin completely. My father is a marvel to look upon.
“Do you really think people are going to follow you?” I ask. “Look at you. You’re rotting. You’re a decrepit creature who covers up his smell with cigar smoke.”
“Are you finished?”
“There is one more thing,” I say. Water comes to my eyes and I want to curse myself for letting my emotions get the best of me. “I want to know if you actually ever loved me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question. Have you ever loved me as your son?”
He stares at me, almost as if he’s searching for the correct answer that will help him the most.
I shake my head and clench my jaw. “Just tell me the truth!”
“Yes! I did love you as a son, but I didn’t know how to show it. You were never supposed to be part of the picture. You were an accident—a drunken accident. But when your mother gave you up, I didn’t want to see you killed or given away to some halfwit. So, I took you in. I provided for you the best I knew how.”
The tears stream down my face now. It’s the most compassion I have ever felt coming from my father. These parts I knew already, but to hear him say it…
“We can still work together,” he says to me.
“Is that what you really want?” I ask. “Tell me the truth.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“What?”
“That you love me.”
“You want me to tell you that I love you? Haven’t I shown it throughout your life?”
“Yes, but you have never told me.”
Jeremiah looks deep into my eyes. I can’t tell if he’s angry or he’s starting to get emotional. “Son,” he says. “I love you with all of my being. I am sorry that I haven’t expressed it to you. I’ve spent more of my life in a lab that at home. My life has been work and it should have involved you more.”
A tear trickles down the side of his cheek, and for a moment I believe him. But there is one final test to see if he is being genuine. My fingers touch the gun on the desk and I scoot it toward the edge where Jeremiah stands.
“If what you say is true,” I tell him, “then I want you to do exactly as your heart desires.”
He looks at me and then at the gun. Slowly, he reaches for the gun, feeling the weight in his hands. He pulls out the clip to check for bullets and he finds that it’s loaded. His eyes travel to mine again and another tear streaks past his nose.
“Son, I really do love you.”
I don’t stop him from pointing the gun at my chest and pulling the trigger three times. The pain is unbearable and my mouth hangs open, blood dribbling out. I look down and know that I will be dead in seconds. When I look back at my father, I don’t see a man who is glad that he has killed his son, but a man full of remorse, but also a man that will not let anything stand between him and his mission.
I helped make everything possible for Jeremiah to take over Shadowface’s position. Part of me never meant for it to happen, but another part of me is glad. I’m happy that I was able to do something for my father. I never meant for the day to end like this, but I suspected this would happen. I haven’t stopped him from gaining power, but perhaps it isn’t my place.
I suppose now it isn’t.
Jeremiah stands in front of me, watching as I gasp for air, though my lungs fill with blood. Here I am drowning and all I can think about is what my father is thinking. Does he hate what he has done? Does he feel sadness?
As I slump in the chair, I think about what I have planned all along—to make my final command. I am supposed to order him to take the gun and shoot himself in the head so we can die together as father and son.
But the command will never reach my lips. I take my last gargled breath.
The bright room suddenly goes dark.
Chapter 27 - Remi
Evie rests on my hip as I stumble forward down the street. It’s mostly empty but for a few greyskins lurking after something else behind us. The sounds of gunfire and screams haven’t stopped, nor will they for some time, I suppose.
For what feels like hours, I’ve done everything I can to try and get Evie out of here, but everywhere we turn there are either more greyskins or soldiers fighting greyskins. For the longest time, she and I hid inside the building where I shot Paxton, but I knew if we were going to get out, we needed to find a vehicle.
My leg feels like it might fall off if I go any further, however. I set Evie on the ground next to a dumpster, the two of us temporarily hidden from the action in the streets a block or so away. I rest my head against the wall and wish I could just fall asleep.
Evie crawls up next to me and hugs me tightly. I rub her soft hair with my fingers. I think for a second that she actually falls asleep amid all the chaos around us, but she stirs a little when a blast goes off just down the street. She doesn’t cry. It’s almost as if she has seen this so much that she’s getting used to it. It breaks my heart because this is nothing for a three year old to get used to. What kind of person will this make her later in life?
What kind of person has it made me? This storm of greyskins has changed us all—made us all do things that we thought we would never do, good or bad. Events shape people and our actions make us who we are. I think about my actions over the past three years. My actio
ns have made me a survivor.
A loud screeching echoes through the city streets causing me to reach for Evie’s ears to cover them. It sounds like feedback from a microphone, and I discover that I’m right when a voice follows.
“Attention. Attention. I sit here gathered with the surviving settlement leaders,” the voice says. I’d recognize the voice anywhere. Jeremiah. The realization sends a shock to my heart. That means Waverly wasn’t able to kill him. And if he isn’t dead, he might have killed her! I lower my head and close my eyes, hoping, praying that Waverly is all right.
“This is Shadowface. But that name no longer means anything, for I am lifting the veil that has concealed my identity for so long. It was necessary for my protection. But as you can see from tonight’s events, not even secrecy will stop my enemies from trying to kill me.”
I wish I was there. I wish I could stop him right now. I look down at Evie. If He’s alive, then that means Evie will be…
Her survival now is more important than anything.
“My name is Jeremiah. I started this network for the betterment of mankind, and will continue to grow it in order to maintain a peaceful existence. Enemies, such as the ones who have attacked us today, cannot be allowed to prosper, for they impede the search for a cure, and prolong the life of the virus that plagues humanity.”
“Who is that?” Evie asks me.
I shake my head at her. “Just some jerk, kid.”
I start to listen to the rest of the speech, but something else grabs my attention. I can hear my name. Someone is yelling it out.
“Remi! Remi!”
I close my eyes, scanning the entire city for the location of the voice. The more I search, the further away it seems, but finally, I can hear it clearly.
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