Connor shakes his head. He feels like he will throw up. He’s not even sure if he can live with himself if he does such a thing. He almost feels like he should kiˀ he shoull Jeremiah and then turn the gun on himself. But no. This could be a trick. A true test. What if Jeremiah has some ability to avoid gunfire or something?
With a determined look on his face, Connor holds the gun up between Heinrich’s eyes. Heinrich takes in a deep breath and can barely keep himself from shaking.
“I’m sorry, Heinrich,” Connor says. He pulls the trigger, but the only sound is a loud click. The gun isn’t loaded. At first he feels relief, but then jumps when he hears Jeremiah burst out in laughter.
“There you have it,” Jeremiah says. “Loyalty. It’s what I demand!” He pulls out a gun from his boot, points it at the side of Heinrich’s head and pulls the trigger. This time it’s loaded.
Connor falls backward onto the floor as blood sprays all over the front of him. He is petrified from shock with no words to say. The sick feeling in his stomach is worse than he has ever felt. He feels anger, and hatred, but he must maintain his composure.
“Connor knows a lot about each of you,” Jeremiah continues. “He knows your strengths, your weaknesses. And that means I do to.” He takes in a deep breath and moves closer to the microphone. “I know what you’re trying to do Evelyn. I know this is your attempt to bring me down. It hasn’t worked before. It won’t work this time either. It’s time for you to give up. Mark is never coming back to you. He never will. Deal with it.”
I open my eyes and look around the room. Everyone looks as sick as a greyskin.
“I’m going to kill Connor,” Aaron says almost to himself.
The radio feed cuts out and the others just stand there. We all feel defeated. Broken. As the others start to leave the Tower, Evelyn walks up to me.
“Did everything happen just as it sounded?” she asks.
I don’t have it in me to say yes. I wish it had all been faked. I wish Connor and Heinrich didn’t have to go through Jeremiah’s psychological horrors. I wish Heinrich didn’t have to die. I wish I could tell the others that Connor isn’t really a traitor. I want them to know that he’s doing this to help us. He’s allowing me to see Jeremiah’s movements.
I nod to her, confirming the truth. She stares off past me, and I walk away from her. Aaron calls out my name, but I ignore him. Pain shoots around my side, and it hits me that all of this may not matter to me soon anyway.
I walk away from the Tower and past the crowds of people. At first, I think about going to my house, but I don’t want to be there right now. I make my way to the tree houses. I pass the first few and I follow the path until I reach the one I had been in six years ago when my father had told me to stay with my family. I didn’t listen to him then. I wonder what would be different today if I had.
I climb up the ladder and set myself up against the back wall of the tree house. I close my eyes for a moment, thinking of Connor again. Tears fill my eyes as I see him in a room alone. He sits with his back against a single bed in the corner. He feels despair, but he’s not thinking about Jeremiah or the battles we have to take on. As tears stream down his face, I can hear his thoughts as plain as if he were speaking.
Mora. I know you’re watching me right now. I hope you didn’t have to see any of that. I miss you. I’m doing this because I believe in you. If there’s anyone that can fight this monster, it’s you. His thoughts pause for a moment as he looks up and wipes away one of his tears.
“I love you,” he says out loud.
His words wrench my insides as the tears comeˀhe tears to my eyes more freely. “I love you,” I say. “I’m scared for you.”
I know he can sense me. He can feel what I’m saying to him because a smile spreads across his face and he lets out
a tear-filled laugh. I laugh too, but it only reminds me of the pain in my side.
My shirt is stuck
to my skin and I can’t help but wince when I pull it up to look at the wound. What I see makes me breathe out hard. The gash is fairly deep, and it doesn’t look good.
I reach into my back pocket and feel for the small, metal cylinder until two of my fingers are able to slip it out. I unscrew the top and pull out the syringe. I screw the soft top onto the cylinder just as I saw the doctor do in the Vault at Salem. I take a deep breath as I finally stick the needle into my arm and draw out as much blood as the vial will hold. With shaky hands, I stick the needle into the soft top of the cylinder and fill it with my blood.
Now I wait. Green, you’re clean. Red, you’re dead.
This is the feeling that I’ve feared so much. It’s a mix of despair and hopefulness, as if the two are battling each other in my mind. I can’t help but think about the man in Salem who watched his cylinder turn red. How life was stripped of him in a matter of seconds.
I’ve got so much left to do. There is so much left to accomplish. It’s never a surprise when someone is killed in this world. It’s the reality we’ve all grown accustomed to. I don’t fear death itself. My only fear is not finishing what I set out to do before death takes me away.
But death doesn’t wait for our approval. Death takes when it is ready.
My mind drifts to Jake and Grandma. All of this started because I wanted them to be protected. They are still alive. The wall here is almost finished and they are surrounded by Starborns who can help take care of them. Perhaps Evelyn will find her way to take down Jeremiah. Maybe when all of this is finished, they can begin building a normal life like the one my grandma had when she was a child. Maybe Jake will be able to grow up through his teenage years without having to fear greyskins.
The thought makes me smile.
My smile fades quickly, however, as the light on the cylinder flashes bright.
Red. I’m dead.
Part Three
Even In Death
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I wish I could find my pistol so I could put a bullet in my brain. Rubble and debris are scattered all around me from the remains of the Center in Screven. Fire threatens to burn me, but I don’t care. In the distance I can see several people running toward me. Are they allies? Enemies? At this point, it doesn’t matter.
My pistol must have been flung from my belt in the explosions. I need it. Death will take me any second now and I can’t wake up as a greyskin. I can’t imagine myself as a greyskin. What kind of monster would I be?
My stomach wrenches and I dry-heave, trying to throw up onto the road in front of me. I haven’t seen a mirror since yesterday, but I imagine my eyes have darkened. I remember they had been bloodshot. Mucus drips down the front of my face and I know what comes next is death and a desire to eat flesh.
The people running toward me look like they are a mile away, though it’s probably only a hundred yards or so. I rʀn>
The past twenty-four hours have been nothing but a blur. As I lay on my back, echoes of my last day whiz by. It’s like when a person sees her life flash before her eyes before she has a close call or is in a terrible accident. That’s kind of what this feels like; my brain is trying to reflect on how I came to be lying in the middle of the street in Screven with destruction all around me. My brain takes me to the moment I saw the blinking red light. The sinking feeling of defeat was like none I had ever felt.
I was numb. I don’t know how long it took before I tossed the cylinder to the side and set my head against the tree house wall. I closed my eyes and just thought about my parents and what they must have felt when they knew they had the virus. Was I going to be shot like they were? Was this how it was supposed to end? My life was over. My body was going to be nothing more than a pile of ashes soon. I wondered how big the pile would be by the end of the night. How many people in Springhill were facing infection like I was?
After about twenty minutes, I decided that I couldn’t just stay in the tree house. I didn’t know what I was going to tell the others, though. First, I didn’t want all the attention. I kn
ew the moment I told my grandma that I had been infected, she would scream and moan for the entire village to hear. The village didn’t need that. Especially not my little brother, Jake.
That’s when a thought hit me. I didn’t have to tell anyone. Not yet, anyway. On average, I still had about twenty-four hours until the virus killed me. Wouldn’t that be enough time to gain an audience with Jeremiah and do everything in my power to just kill him? Honestly, it would even be better if I died with him. I would need to be shot in the head or something so I wouldn’t reanimate, but it was a great idea. An act of terrorism as my last act of defiance. I knew I was dead anyway. Why not entertain the thought of going out with a bang?
The thought left me about as quickly as it had come. It would take hours for me to travel all the way to Screven. Once I got there, it might be even more hours before they would consider granting me an audience with Jeremiah. It was a foolish thought. Then and there I simply decided to spend my last little bit of time with my family. Then I would die.
Someone else would have to carry on the mission. That wouldn’t be a problem considering Evelyn was Jeremiah’s sworn enemy. She had promised him long ago that she was going to kill him. I didn’t doubt that she would. I may have started the recent little uprising of Starborns, but someone else could finish it. Someone else would have to.
Eventually I mustered the courage to get out of the tree house and climb my way down into the muddy village street. I could hear a lot of commotion down toward the Tower. Many people had come in from Sudyka, though I never really took notice of the number. All I really remembered was that Jeffrey, the man that I had only seen in my dreams, was among them.
I first considered walking to the Tower to see what I could do to help, but quickly changed my mind. I still wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the scratch. I knew my limitations. I knew I would need to be shot before it was too late, but that didn’t mean it had to be done right now.
On the rain-drenched road, I changed my course to the left and made my way toward my house. The door was barely hanging on by the hinges. Windows weӀs. Windore shattered. My family had come so close to being overtaken by the greyskins it was scary. Of course, this is where I was scratched. This was the place I began to die.
I went inside the house and walked to my room in the back. I peeled my bloody shirt off and tossed it to the floor. I grabbed a small hand mirror off the dresser so I could get a better look at the cut. The blood had done more than clot. It had turned black. It actually didn’t look all that bad, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t infected.
I did what I could to bandage it up in case for some reason it started to bleed again. Though I was infected, I was surprised by how I didn’t feel any different. I thought surely by now I would be feeling some effects of the grey virus. Perhaps the cylinder had misread my blood. Maybe I wasn’t infected at all. Technology wasn’t perfect. I took a deep breath and shook my head. It was wishful thinking. There was no reason for me to feel the effects yet. I was sure it would take hours. From what I had seen in other people, it was a slow, gradual process. In the last hours of life, I knew that many just wanted to die. I hoped that I didn’t make it that far. I planned to be dead long before then.
When the wound was fully bandaged, I pulled out a dry shirt and put it on. Looking out the window, I was glad to see that the rain had stopped, though the clouds were still dreary and dark. I walked out of my room and was about to leave the house when Grandma and Jake walked through the front door. One look showed that she had just been crying. Without a word, the two of them walked up to me with open arms and held to me tightly. It felt good to see them alive. I really thought I was going to lose them.
“Mora,” Grandma said, pulling away but holding my shoulders at arm’s length. “Austin has died. Knife wound.” Another tear slipped down her cheek when she told me this.
I pulled in closer and hugged her even tighter. I knew how much Austin had meant to her. I never knew the extent of their relationship, but it was apparent that the two had been close over the years.
In this tight embrace, I couldn’t help but hope that Springhill had seen the last of these devastating attacks for a while. Now that I knew Jeremiah was the one sending the greyskins the whole time, it made me want to do something about it even more. The longer I held on to Grandma and Jake, the more I wanted to take the fight directly to Jeremiah. The more I wanted to kill him.
We finally let go of each other and Grandma told Jake to go change his clothes while she sat at the kitchen table. She wiped her nose with the bottom of her shirt and then set her cheek in her palm. Her tears didn’t cease because the pain was too fresh.
“I haven’t felt this way since your parents died,” she said to me.
The mention of my parents struck a chord with me and it was everything I could do not to break down right in front of her. She wouldn’t be able to handle the news that I had been infected by a greyskin. I sat down at the table and placed my hand in hers and she rubbed my knuckles with her thumb affectionately.
“At least we still have each other,” she said almost as if she were trying to add to my misery.
This time, I was the one who wiped away a tear. “You know we aren’t finished fighting,” I said. “We have to take Jeremiah down or this is all going to keep happening.”
She nodded quickly, swallowing more tears. “I know,” she said. “And I know you will lead them well.” She sat up straight, letting go of my hand. “It’s your duty to lead them well, Mora. Your father always said you were born to be a leader. We all saw it in you ever since you were a little girl.”
“What if I can’t do it?” I asked her.
She just shook her head. “Nonsense. I’ve seen the power you have. Not just with your Starborn stuff, but everything else as well. You command respect. People look to you for help. Your enemies fear you. I think it’s your determination. Our village now has a secure wall. We’ve got food, medicine. We’ve got all of this because you decided to go out one day and get help.”
“That helped turned on us,” I said.
“That help was never truly with us from what I understand,” she came back. “But you fought them off and we were left with the things we needed.”
“And with more bodies to throw on the fire,” I said, looking away.
“Mora, I will not hear you talk like that.” Her sudden change in tone was unnerving for a moment. She was rarely stern with anyone. “The point is, it’s a terrible world out there and you are clearly making it a better place. Any thoughts of you quitting or staying behind just so you can be with Jake and me ought to be thrown out the window until all your work is finished.”
I was stunned by her words. All this came out of the same mouth that had nearly begged me not to leave when I had to return to Salem and pick up the healer, Christopher.
“It may have taken me a bit,” she continued, “but over the past day or so, I’ve seen what you can truly do now. I had no idea the world needed you so much. You’ve got to finish what you’ve started.”
I was silent through the entire exchange. It was almost as if she had been reading my mind. That, for some reason, she knew that I had been infected and that I was running out of time. I wondered if it would have been a different conversation if she had seen the cylinder blinking red when I did. In any case, what she told me was true. I had less than twenty-four hours to live. There was no time to waste.
“The other Starborns are meeting with the new man,” Grandma said. “I think his name is Jeffrey. They were asking where you were and I told them I would send you their way if I saw you.”
“Sorry I was gone for a little bit,” I told her. “I needed to be alone for a few minutes.”
“I understand, sweetheart.”
I stood from the table and gave Grandma a tight squeeze on the shoulder as I passed to go out into the street toward the Tower. I wasn’t ready for what I saw there. As I passed through the village, I saw bodies on the ground everywhere. Greyskins.
Villagers. Screven soldiers. It was all too devastating. There were too many. I tried not to hold eye contact with the two remaining village elders, Bill and Linda, as I walked by. Their bewildered expressions were unnerving at best. Then there were the people who had landed in the helicopters from Sudyka - survivors from some kind of attack it seemed. I had still yet to learn of why they had been under attack, but I was sure to find out soon enough.
I walked through the entrance of the Tower and up the stairs until I finally made it to the top. All eyes fell on me as I walked through the door. I gave a halfhearted smile and the others did the same. Heather and Danny sat in a couple of chairs near the back wall while Christopher leaned against the doorframe next to me. Aaron sat next to the screen that showed the satellite activity. Evelyn stood farthest from the door next to Jeffrey. The man was tall. His black hair was beginning to turn grey and his salt and pepper stubble gave him the look of one who hadn’t slept in days.
“So, you’re Mora?” Jeffrey asked.
I nodded.
He cleared his throat and then looked at each of the others in the eyes, then back to me. “The time to go Ӏe time tafter Jeremiah is coming soon,” he said.
“It’s now, actually,” I said.
He wasn’t ready for such a quick interruption. Everyone looked at me with furrowed eyebrows.
“There’s no time to wait,” I continued. “If we could attack him today, he would never know what hit him.”
Jeffrey held up a hand. “I couldn’t agree with you more, but you should hear what I have to say first.”
I held my tongue, although I felt every second we stalled was a waste of precious time. I was dying. There was no time for talk.
“First of all,” Jeffrey said, “just to clarify, for those of you that don’t know, Jeremiah created the greyskins. Jeremiah controls the greyskins. Jeremiah is a greyskin himself. He was once bitten by a Starborn-turned greyskin. That Starborn just so happened to possess the gift of long life. Somehow, the gift transferred over to him.” Jeffrey pointed at Christopher. “The man has been searching for a healer for the past sixty years. Someone that can take away his greyskin flesh and make him a whole person again.”
The Starborn Saga (Books 1, 2, & 3) Page 45
