WHEN NATASHA AND Nine pull the greyskin off of me, both of their mouths fall open. I lay in the mud as rain pelts my face and my shoulder throbs in pain. In a flash, Natasha reaches for her spear and stabs the nearly dead greyskin through what’s left of its brain.
I look down at my shoulder and can see a small chunk torn out by the creature. My fingers and hands start shaking, and I can barely comprehend the pain I feel.
Nine kneels next to me and starts to help me to my feet, but Natasha holds out her spear to stop her. “No,” she says. “She’s infected.” She nods at my shoulder and holds her spear with both hands.
“No!” I say.
“You can’t kill her,” Nine says. “She’s a child.”
“An infected child.”
I can barely hear them as the rain splashes all around me and blood throbs in my ears. The bite feels deep, and there will be no hiding it even if I want to. Blood will soak through bandages.
“You don’t touch her!” Nine yells.
Natasha turns toward Nine, her eyes narrowing as rain drips off the end of her nose. “I’ll kill you along with her.”
“You really think you can do that?” Nine says. “You would kill me? I don’t think Warden Black would like that, do you?”
Natasha hesitates, then looks down at me. In a quick motion, she swings her spear and hits Nine in the cheek with the handle, then spins around and rears back to send the spear through my skull.
It’s my last chance. If I don’t say it now, I’m dead.
“I’m immune to the virus!”
Natasha stops. The grip on her spear remains tight, but she considers my words for a moment.
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m immune to the virus.”
“How do you know that?”
Despite the pain in my shoulder, I reach down for my pant leg and pull it up past my knee, revealing a scar—old teeth marks left by a greyskin from about a year ago.
“Because I’ve been bitten before,” I say.
“That could be anything,” Natasha says.
“Why would she lie to you?” Nine asks, rubbing the side of her face. “To live for the next miserable twelve hours before passing out?”
“It’s a secret, though,” I say, all the while knowing Natasha isn’t the secret-keeping type. “Can you imagine what they will do to me if they find out?”
Natasha lowers her spear and bites her lower lip. I can only believe she’s thinking: can you imagine what they will do for me if I tell them?
“I will do anything to keep it a secret,” I offer. “I don’t know what you might want, but I can give you some of my meal portions. I can do tasks for you. Anything.”
Natasha seems to consider my offer as the grip on her spear loosens just a little. “I’m not sure I believe you,” she says. “You’re the first person in the fields to beg for her life this way. Usually, they just say they aren’t ready to die and crap like that. Immune, though?” She shakes her head.
I am not unfamiliar with Natasha’s reputation for killing victims of bites and scratches in the fields. She has embraced the task as if it were her duty. I just think she wants a way to kill people without getting into trouble. Still, I’m surprised she accepts what I’m saying.
“We need to get you patched up,” Nine says.
“And what are you going to tell them?” Natasha demands, still holding her sharp spear in front of my face. “That she fell and scraped her shoulder? Look at it! It’s gaping!” She pulls back just a little, ready to shove the stake through my eyes socket.
“If you touch that girl, I’ll make sure you burn,” Nine says. “You don’t know the influence I have in this camp.”
Natasha’s eyes stab into Nine. Everything in her wants to turn the spear around and stick it through Nine’s heart, and part of me thinks she just might. Instead, however, she throws her spear into the back of the cart and swears.
Nine immediately helps me to my feet. “Let’s go,” she says. She turns her head toward Natasha. “I’ll get a few more to help you.”
The pain in my shoulder throbs and I think I might pass out. Each step sends a shockwave of screaming nerve endings splitting through my body. I haven’t felt this kind of pain since the last time this happened on my leg. Only, last time I got so sick I wanted to die.
The guards stop us at the gate and inspect my wound. It looks like a bite, but Nine insists that I fell against a spear and it ripped through my shoulder. It is a far-fetched lie, and the guards know something doesn’t seem right, but they call our cell block leader, Marta, on the radio anyway.
The two of us are led back to our cell, and we’re provided a washcloth and a small bucket of cold water. We are pelted with questions about how the accident happened. Really, they just want to know if I’ve been bitten. Nine explains the situation the same way over and over, but any guard with half a brain can tell that it is a bite if they look close enough. None of them do, though. But that doesn’t mean they won’t later. Someone is going to get curious.
Nine thanks the guards and they leave us.
“I guess we do get a rest day,” I tell her.
“We’ll miss lunch and dinner,” she says.
“Is there much of a difference?”
She smiles at my comment, but her face sobers quickly. “I suppose you and I have some talking to do,” she says.
I swallow, not knowing what I should do. Should I lie? Should I tell her everything I know? Papa had told me not to trust anyone with our secret. If I did, I would be putting us both in danger. If people find out about the cure, there goes any leverage we have. But if they look closely enough and ask enough questions, they are going to find out anyway.
With a deep sigh, I close my eyes and nod. “Okay,” I tell her. “Let’s talk.”
I tell Nine almost everything I know. I tell her about Papa’s quest for the cure. I tell her that Mama was killed two years ago and that the cure didn’t work for her. But, a year later, it worked for me. Not only is it a cure, but it’s an immunization for the rest of my life.
“Papa is brilliant,” I say. “It’s been forty years and no one has created a cure.”
“But he wants to keep it quiet,” she says.
“Of course. Can you imagine someone like Warden Black or Holbrook getting ahold of it?”
“It would reach the hands of Jeremiah,” she says. “The world would never see it. Not in the way it needs to be seen.”
“So, it’s our only leverage for getting out of here if things get bad,” I say. “I’m afraid I just blew it, though.”
“Natasha would have put that stick through your brain in a second,” Nine says. “You did what you needed to do.”
“But what if she tells?” I ask.
“I don’t think that’s your biggest worry,” Nine says. “I don’t think the guards are done asking questions, and it might even reach Warden Black. If they look at you closely, they are going to figure out it’s a bite. But it’s possible they won’t look close enough to tell.”
“We just have to make sure Natasha doesn’t say anything. If she does, it’s over.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Nine says. “Things work differently than how we plan in our head. Whether Natasha says something or she doesn’t, everything is going to be different from this night on.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because tonight is the night of truth. A night I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”
“What are you talking about?”
Nine sighs. “When Holbrook comes back, having drawn blood and analyzed it, what do you think he’s going to find?”
“The cure?” I ask, truly not knowing where Nine is going with all this.
“Holbrook isn’t just looking for the cure,” she says. “What is he looking for?”
“Starborns,” I say.
“That’s right. When he draws someone’s blood, he takes it to a lab, analyzes it, and finds out whether or not someone within the prison has the blood of a Starborn.”
She lets the words sink into my brain. My heart starts a tempo that throws off my breathing. “Papa,” I say. “He’s going to find out about Papa.”
Nine leans forward. “He’s going to find out about you too, sweetheart.”
“Me? I’m not a Starborn.”
“But you’ve got the blood, don’t you?”
“How do you know all this? I didn’t tell you Papa was a Starborn. All I told you about was the cure. And he did that himself.” I can feel my face getting red with the exposure of all my secrets. I feel ashamed, like I have failed Papa somehow.
“Have you ever wondered what my name is?” she asks.
“I guess.”
“They call me Nine because that is my prisoner number. That is my prisoner number because I was the ninth prisoner to enter here. The ninth prisoner to have her head shaved. The ninth prisoner to be hosed down like an animal.”
“When was this?”
“When the prison camp started five years ago,” she answers. “They didn’t test for Starborns back then. That’s only been around for the last year. Holbrook’s division, really. He thought up the technology to determine who had Starborn blood and who didn’t. He gets his kicks from torturing all the prisoners to see if any of them will show some supernatural power, even though he would be able to tell with a blood test. He’s an evil man.”
She seems to stare into the distance when she says this, as if there is more to the story that she isn’t telling me. I’m sure there is, but I don’t press it.
“How did you get caught?”
“I came voluntarily,” she says.
“What? I don’t believe you.”
“I let myself get caught,” she says. “I knew by where I was I would be captured and brought here. It was a raid on a settlement.”
“But how did you know you wouldn’t have been sent to the other place? Concord? The place where they actually turn people into greyskins?”
“Because I knew.”
It’s not much of an answer. “But why would you want to come here?”
“Because I knew I would eventually meet you,” she says. “And I needed to prepare for your arrival.”
The cell goes quiet. There is no sound in the entire cell block but the constant thumping in my ears from my heart pumping blood.
“Your father is a Starborn,” she says. “He can control the pain he feels. That means you have the same blood flowing through you, which means you have the potential to become a Starborn, too.”
“Would my ability be the same as his?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “At least, it’s not going to be. Yours is going to be entirely different. Soon, you’re going to learn how to look into the past and see it in vivid detail.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would I be able to do that?”
“Because that’s the ability you’re going to need when the time comes for you to have it. That’s how all Starborn powers begin.”
“Please,” I say. “You can’t keep me in the dark. You have to tell me how you know all this.”
“I know all this because I am a Starborn.”
I don’t know how to respond to her. I rack my brain trying to think of times she may have used her powers and I just didn’t notice, but nothing comes to mind. Except…
“Do you have mind control?” I ask. “The way you convinced Natasha to let me go. Natasha would have never let someone go, but she listened to you!”
Nine shakes her head. “Natasha listened to me because I intimidate her. She knows I have Warden Black’s ear.”
“About that…” I start, but she holds up a hand.
“You don’t have to know everything right now,” she says. “But I have protection from Holbrook because of Warden Black. That’s how I haven’t been discovered. Holbrook doesn’t even know I’m here. He has no idea that he’s never interviewed prisoner number nine.”
“Because you and Warden Black are lovers?”
Nine’s face turns angry. “To think you might even consider that to be the truth makes me sick.”
“Then what is it?”
“I have Warden Black’s protection because I’ve been here from the beginning. In the beginning, I told him about myself and what I can do.”
“And what is that?” I ask, getting impatient.
Nine looks away from me and through the cell bars, perhaps as unsure of herself as I have been for the last month. “I can see the future,” she says. “And for the first time in five years, I can now introduce myself for who I am. Around other prisoners, you need to call me Nine. But my real name is Waverly.”