WAVERLY AND I talked through the rest of the day and on into the night, though we had to keep our voices down. We were hungry, but I was too excited to think about my hunger or the pain in my shoulder.
She told me about how she had discovered her ability almost forty years ago after the start of the greyskin outbreak when she was seventeen.
“I had a sister named Remi with a different Starborn power,” she told me. “She could hear things no one else could.”
She then told me an almost unbelievable story about how she had known the real Jeremiah of Screven before he became the leader he is today. She told me things that scared me—that Jeremiah had Starborn blood in him, but it was not his own…that he was partially a greyskin and was being kept alive by the power running through his veins…that he would live forever until someone stopped him.
“I, for some reason or another, have been given the task to facilitate the rescue of the world,” she said at the end of one of her stories. “With an ability like mine, it was almost impossible to determine what was real and what wasn't in the beginning. Then, once I got used to the power, I started seeing things much farther into the future. I have seen the rise of Jeremiah, and I have seen how he will fall. And now,” she said, her eyes piercing me to the soul, “I have seen how humanity is rescued. With you and your father.”
“So, it’s going to happen?” I asked. “We’re going to get out of here?”
“That’s the problem with seeing the future,” she said. “When you get good at it, you can see multiple futures. Being the one who knows the future, I am the only one who can change it. And the more I tell you about the future, the more you will be able to change it. That’s why every action I have with you, everything I ever say to you, has to be taken with caution. I am only telling you all of this because I know it will not affect the outcome.”
“Except, now I can change it. I can decide not to help get the cure to the world, right?”
“You could decide that with or without me,” she said.
“So, how did telling Warden Black about your power make him keep you a secret from Holbrook?”
“Every month I meet with Warden Black. It’s like I’m his personal fortune teller. I tell him some vague truths that actually will come to place. I am sure to tell him about every good thing that will happen to him, as well as a few bad things so that he doesn’t get surprised too much. It’s all mundane, really, but it keeps me alive. I knew that telling him about myself would keep me safe from the start. No one in the prison but you and he knows about what I can do. I’m sure some of the prisoners have rumors going around about me, but what do I care? I’m the one in good standing. A guard could kill them at any moment.”
“And the guards would think twice before hurting you,” I said.
“My arrangement with Warden Black is the only reason we’re not still out in the fields, and the reason Natasha didn’t drive a stake through your brain.”
Her words were true and I knew it. My mind was reeling. I couldn’t believe that she had foreseen meeting Papa and me, learning about us and our potential, then putting her own life on the line so that she could help us.
“I have a great responsibility with my gift,” she said. “A responsibility others may not have. I also have to live with the fact that I can be wrong sometimes. Even in my clearest visions, I have been wrong. I have seen a future where you bring the cure to the world, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. That also doesn’t mean that it’s the best possible future for you. The road to getting the cure to humanity is a long one and full of pain. There is no easy way to tell you this, but you will feel sorrow. At times, you will feel more alone than you have ever felt in your life. But in those moments, you will have to remain strong, and know that the race is not finished yet.”
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 true. 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.”