NONE OF US were ready when Allison announced that it was time to leave. Aaron and Danny stayed silent and calm, probably thinking about the day to come. And it was the first time that I had ever seen Heather act without confidence. But we all felt the same: ill-prepared and worried. Allison seemed poised in spite of the outnumbered fight we were about to wage.
When we went outside, we found a convoy of trucks waiting for us. “These will take us near the prison,” Allison told us. “Martin went ahead of us to spy it out. He’s told me that it’s quiet for now.”
None of us said anything as she briefed us. We all got into separate trucks in groups of two or three. Christopher sat next to me and smiled as he got into the third truck from the front. I knew he was putting up a brave front, but he wasn’t feeling well. Neither was I, but I imagined he was feeling worse.
“How bad is it?” I asked him as several soldiers climbed into the truck with us.
“Not good,” he said. “I know I don’t display physical effects of what is happening, but I think I know what you would be experiencing if you hadn’t used me to help you. Your eyes would be swollen and you would be more congested than you are. You would probably be vomiting too.”
I didn’t want to tell him that I already had. My first thought was that he needed to take a break from helping me, but I shook the thought from my head. That was why he was here instead of at Springhill with his sister, Sadie. He was here to help me. That was his contribution to the mission. I thought about the possibility that I might not actually get to confront Jeremiah. Christopher’s help would have been for nothing and I would be wasting his time. But then again, he wasn’t the one dying. I was.
The convoy began to move and my heart gave a sudden jolt. I couldn’t help but feel an uncertainty that I didn’t usually feel when we were in charge. It always seemed to work out when one of the Starborns was calling the shots. Now everything went through Allison. Maybe I would have felt better about it if I had known Allison, but I knew nothing about her. This plan of hers could be genius or it could be completely reckless. The more I thought about it, however, the more I was reassured by the fact that there actually was a plan.
When I had gone with Aaron to Salem, our plan consisted of little more than to grab the satellite equipment and hope Heinrich would be able to help us. Everything worked out, but it had become so much more complicated. Connor, Danny, and Heather had gone to Garden’s Peak with no idea how they were going to get the satellite dish. But they did it. Perhaps having a plan made this mission more likely to succeed. I hoped so.
As we drove through the streets, I thought about the first time I had come to Screven just days ago. It had seemed completely different. I knew it had been night then, but I remembered seeing markets and entertainment. People seemed happy to be walking the streets. The memory bugged me so much that I leaned forward and asked one of the soldiers about it.
He smiled at me and shook his head. “That’s First Street,” he said. “Jeremiah lets the elite live on First Street while the rest of Screven lives in filth. He keeps First Street clean and nice so when people like you come to meet with him, Screven doesn’t look so depressing. I hope we blow up First Street in the attack on the Center.”
“It wasn’t always that way,” another soldier next to me said. “Back in the day, Screven was nice all around. People wanted to be here. There were jobs. There was an economy. Safety. Food.”
It sounded like something Jeremiah would do. Instead of making the entire city nice, he made one street nice for a small group of people. He simply put all of his resources into feeding and funding his soldiers and the expansion of his power. His leadership just begged for a revolt. I may not have been overly confident in our chances of success, but I was happy to be part of it.
We probably drove for about ten minutes before the trucks came to a stop. The soldiers got out with guns drawn, ready to fire on anything that moved. The street was quiet, however.
“I guess they don’t think I need a gun?” Christopher asked.
I reached for my pistol and handed it to him. “Just make sure I get it back. Or if I get killed out here, shoot me in the head.”
“Will do,” he said as he took the gun from me.
We walked through the empty streets, following Allison’s every move. The feeling that something bad was about to happen seized my insides. I didn’t know what it was. It had to be my Starborn instinct. I never got this feeling when everything was okay.
But we kept walking, and I didn’t say anything. Maybe since someone else was in charge I thought my feelings could have been mixed up. On top of that, this was a war zone. Of course bad things were about to happen. People were going to die.
As we walked, I maintained a view of the other Starborns ahead of me. Aaron walked next to Allison. He held a rifle in his hands as backup. Heather and Danny walked side-by-side, neither with a weapon, but holding each other’s hand with interlocked fingers. It was a rare sight to see them displaying such care for each other. Especially Heather. Evelyn stuck close to Jeffrey as we crept along. It seemed that all of us had a bad feeling about what might lay ahead.
Soldiers behind us carried their own weapons, while a few of them carried loads of extra ammunition. After we walked for several long, eerie minutes, Allison held up a hand to stop us and gestured for us to come near her. She pointed down an alley at the street beyond.
“That’s the road we’re covering,” she said. “I want the Starborns near the prison in case things get bad.” She pointed to the top of the building closest to us. “This building will give us the highest vantage point. We will be able to take out prison guards from here and anyone that might be coming in from behind.”
A question came to me that I had never thought to consider. “Won’t there be a wall around the prison? How exactly do you plan on breeching it?”
“It’s not the most secure prison that has ever existed,” Allison said. “But the simple answer is that’s why we only have thirty charges for the Center. The rest is to blow open an entrance through the wall.” She looked at Heather and Danny. “Once you two are in, you’ll be on your own.”
“Leave the guards to me,” Heather said. “They won’t even know what happened.”
“Well, there are more on the inside,” Allison said. “That’s where you will have the most trouble.” She grabbed for her radio and held it up to her mouth. “Martin, are you ready?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” he answered.
Allison took a deep breath. “Send down the rope ladders.”
In an instant, the climbing mechanisms tumbled down the sides of the buildings. Allison motioned for me, Aaron, and Christopher to follow.
“What about you two?” I asked Evelyn and Jeffrey.
Both of them held up their rifles. “We’ll be further along the road,” Evelyn said. She gave me a wry smile. “We aren’t as important as you, I suppose.”
Normally I would have smiled back, but my face was stern when I looked at Jeffery. “You just make sure if something goes wrong, you get her out of here.”
“I always do,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
I was satisfied with his answer. I don’t know why I all of a sudden felt an urgent need to look out for Evelyn. Coupled with the feeling of uneasiness about what we were doing, and that she was the one that started all this years ago, I felt like she was our general. I almost wanted to say that she didn’t belong there at all. She needed to stay back in case we failed. In case she had to come up with another way to take down Jeremiah.
I remembered from my dream that she had wanted to be there when he died. She had made that declaration when he was about to kill her. I couldn’t believe how much Evelyn had gone through with Jeremiah. The man had affected all of our lives in tragic ways; yet he seemed to have affected her more directly throughout her entire life. Evelyn had, in some way, been there from the beginning of it all. I was sure that she felt some sense of duty to her mother to kill Jeremiah. But that duty extended far past that. There was her friend, Whit. And more heartbreakingly, her love, Mark. Jeremiah had personally taken everything away from Evelyn. No wonder she had orchestrated a revolution. She knew she would never get her chance one-on-one. So, she built an army.
Pockets of her army were fighting all over the region, as far as Jeremiah’s hand of power could reach. I wondered in that moment how many people were rebelling in other colonies just like we were here in Screven. I wondered if Jeremiah was scared. I hoped that he somehow knew it was because of Evelyn. I felt like there would be some justification in that.
Allison hurried me along by whispering my name loudly. I spun on my heels and jogged toward them. Christopher stayed within inches of me at all times. I didn’t know if he understood, but not only was he providing a great service by easing my symptoms, but he also offered me a sense of security. Just knowing that I had a person that wouldn’t let me out of his sight was reassuring. It almost made me feel like I wasn’t going to die in the morning.
Each of us climbed the rope ladders and shimmied to the edge of the rooftop. This was my first time to actually see the prison. It was surrounded by a large, stone wall except for a tall, metal fence for the entrance. Allison had mentioned that it wasn’t the most secure prison ever made, but I had never seen one before and this one looked pretty secure to me. Of course, Danny could break through anything.
“Something isn’t right,” Allison said.
My head turned sharply toward her. “What do you mean?”
“There are no guards,” she said. “Look at the towers. The doors on the other side. No one is guarding anything.”
“Ready to blow the charges,” Martin’s voice came out over the radio.
“Hold on,” Allison told him. “Did you notice there aren’t any guards?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think much of it, but now that you mention it, that is strange.”
Allison shook her head and looked at Aaron. “What do you think we should do?”
I couldn’t figure why she would think Aaron would know.
“Well,” Aaron said, “charges are already set, and we need to get in there. Blow it.”
Allison nodded. “That’s what I think too.” She reached for her radio and called for Martin. “Light it up,” she said.
Within seconds, the sound of dynamite exploding boomed through the streets, crushing the walls into thousands of pieces, and sending shockwaves through my bones. The wall tumbled to the ground and I could see Danny, Heather, and their escape team of five soldiers running into the compound through the newly made holes. The fact that none of us had met any resistance heightened my uneasy feeling. As the others around me scanned the horizon for any sign of a fight, I closed my eyes and focused my attention on Danny.
Smoke and dust filled his vision and it seemed too difficult to breathe, but he kept running next to the Resistance soldiers. Finally they reached the front entrance to the main building. The soldiers had their guns ready for whatever might come out from the other side. One of the soldiers started prying the door open with a crowbar and Heather simply gave Danny a raised eyebrow. Danny nodded and tapped the man on the shoulder.
"I've got this," he said. With his left hand, he grabbed the handle and with his right, he smacked the door at the hinges. It popped off with almost no effort. The soldiers might have been amazed at what they had seen if caution hadn't seized their arms to be ready.
Guns pointed inside the building and all of them stepped in almost like they were avoiding getting their shoes muddy. Danny was the last to step through the broken door, and when he looked around, he saw nothing but emptiness. There were jail cells and guard stations all around, but every one of them was vacant.
“I don’t like this,” said the soldier on the far right.
Danny looked at Heather and she nodded. With barely a thought, she sped past all the soldiers and down one of the long hallways. Half of them hadn’t even noticed what had just happened and the other half pointed their guns in every direction because they had heard something.
“It’s okay,” Danny said. “It was just Heather. She’s going up ahead to check on things.” The soldiers nodded in acknowledgment, but then looked at each other uneasily. They had apparently never seen many Starborns during their time here in Screven.
Danny pulled up his wristband and talked through it. “Evelyn, can you hear me?”
“What’s going on, Danny?”
“There’s no one in here,” he said. “The place is empty. No guards. No prisoners. Nothing.”
I open my eyes, taking my attention off the conversation between Danny and Evelyn. I look to my right at Allison. She’s staring through binoculars. Her soldiers next to Danny are also feeding her updates.
“This is weird,” Aaron said. “There should have been a bloodbath by now.”
I hated the thought, but he was right. What could be going on? I stared down the street and suddenly felt my fingers start to tremble. I looked down at them and my eyebrows furrowed. It wasn’t out of fear. It wasn’t out of anxiousness. Was it the virus?
Christopher must have seen it, too, because he reached out and grabbed my hand. Within a second the shaking stopped and I was able to compose myself. Christopher on the other hand only felt more pain. Whatever it was that he was feeling in that moment, was how I was supposed to be feeling. I said nothing, but I looked into his eyes, hopefully communicating that I was truly thankful. He did his best to smile at me, but it was a short one.
When I turned away, I closed my eyes again and focused on Danny. Heather was now beside him.
“Everywhere,” she said through huffs. It wasn’t like her to be winded, but more than that, she seemed spooked. “Blood on the walls, the floors. Bodies. Guards. Prisoners. It’s like they knew we were coming.”
Danny and the Resistance soldiers took off in a sprint toward the area where Heather had said she saw blood and bodies. The sound of footsteps echoed off the walls as they ran through the barren prison. It seemed that the closer they got to the carnage, the worse I felt about all of it. Why would there be dead bodies? Why would guards and prisoners all be dead?
I held my breath as they ran down the hall and entered a giant open space that must have been a common area. What I saw over Danny’s head made me sick to my stomach. Just as Heather described, there were bodies all over floor. Maybe hundreds of them. Some were dead from bullet wounds. For others it was hard to tell, but each one was bloody.
This was supposed to be our army. These were the ones who were going to help us get into the Center so we could blow it up. Yet somehow, Jeremiah managed to remain a step ahead of us. The prison guards probably lay dead because Jeremiah was sending a message that he has an indispensable amount of men on his side. It was meant as a deterrent. To scare us. To make us stop what we were doing.
My eyes flew open and I looked at Allison. “We’ve got to go in there,” I said.
She looked down at her radio for a moment as a soldier was telling her what he saw. She looked back at me. “It could be a trap. Of course I would want to investigate what happened.”
I thought about what she said for a brief second. She could be right. The prisoners had been our biggest hope. They were all part of Allison’s plan. But now that plan was out the window. Jeremiah would know that she would want to see why everyone was dead. If she did go in, she would be vulnerable. He could stop the rebellion in Screven with her. There would be no more real leadership.
“You’re going to want to see this,” came the voice from the other end of the radio.
“Allison, you should take a team down there and check it out.” This time the voice came from Martin. “The team might need more support down there.”
“You can’t go,” I told her. “I felt that something was wrong with all this and I was right. I don’t feel good about you going down there either. If you think it’s a trap, I would stick with your gut feeling.”
She looked from me to Aaron, and back to me. “What about you two?” she asked.
“What about us?” Aaron said.
“Martin thinks they might need support,” she said. “You two are powerful. Insurance. It might not be a trap, but if it is, I’d rather you be down there than me.”
“Nice,” I said, rolling my eyes at her.
“Sorry, but I can’t exactly stop bullets with my mind like you can,” she said.
She had a point.
“Ask if the electricity is on down there,” Aaron said.
Allison picked up the radio and asked. The soldier on the other end said that lights were flickering on and off. Aaron said that was enough for him.
As I stood, Christopher started to go with us, but I placed a hand on his shoulder. “If it is a trap down there, I sure don’t want you to get in the middle of it. We’ll be back.”
Christopher nodded and got back down on his stomach. I was glad that he accepted what I said. I thought he would try to give me trouble, but there was no way I was going to let him fall into Jeremiah’s hands so easily. We were already taking a huge risk by having him here in the first place.
Aaron went down the rope ladder first, then I followed. We walked through the side street until we came out to the main road in front of the prison. As we approached the blown-open entrance, Aaron looked at me.
“Something isn’t right with you,” he said.
“We’re all under a lot of stress,” I came back. “Sorry if I seem weird.” It was all I could think to say. There was no way I was about to tell him about the virus. I knew that he cared about me and knowing about the infection would only distract him. It would make me distracted. I had no idea how the rest of my twenty-four hours was going to pan out, but I hoped that in the end I would go down with the Center, while Jeremiah was in my sights. That way no one would ever have to know that I had been killed by the infection. That way I would be spared the shame of reanimating and attacking anything around me that was alive. Connor and Aaron wouldn’t have to see me like that.
“It seems like more than that,” he said as we crossed into the prison courtyard. “You’ve been talking to Christopher a lot. You look like you’re sick.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I said. And that was the truth. Every time I had one of those dreams from Evelyn, it felt like I hadn’t really slept at all. It was exhausting. “I brought Christopher along to help me keep up my strength.”
Aaron seemed to accept this, but it didn’t change the look of concern on his face. We soon came up on the entrance to the prison and our conversation changed abruptly.
“What’s with Allison sending us down here?” I asked.
Aaron shook his head and shrugged. “She has a point, I guess. Better us than her.”
I let him think what he wanted, but I didn’t agree. To me, this wasn’t all about Allison staying safe. She may have been the face of the Screven Resistance, but we Starborns were the face of the entire Resistance. I thought we were all supposed to answer to Evelyn.
As we continued through the prison, I couldn’t help but think of Connor. He had been charged with the duty of killing her. If I had a moment, I might have closed my eyes to check on him, but we were moving quickly. Besides, I didn’t think he would be in the prison. They wanted him to be ready to take a shot at her. To do that, he would have to be somewhere high, like the Center. But the Center was too far away for him to get a clear shot of Allison now. I was baffled at the thought. I wondered if he would actually go through with it. Perhaps that was why Jeremiah had tested him with Heinrich this morning. If Connor had been willing to kill Heinrich, he would surely shoot a person he had never met before.
I hoped that it would never come to that. If Connor could stay close to Jeremiah long enough for me to be able to find him, that would be all I needed. I guess that was when I decided that I wasn’t just going to stand around outside the Center and wait for helicopters. No. I was going in with the others. They could plant their bombs, but I knew I was going in after Jeremiah. And I would probably never leave the building. But I was okay with that.
Even though I had seen the mess of mangled bodies and buckets of blood while watching through Danny, I wasn’t ready for the sight. Danny and Heather looked up at us when we entered. The other soldiers pointed their guns at us at first, but quickly lowered them when they saw us.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
Danny shrugged. “No idea.”
“This is our wonderful little army that we were hoping to fight with,” Heather said.
“Hey,” a soldier next to her snapped. “Have some respect. These people weren’t common criminals, you know. These were Jeremiah’s victims.”
Heather just clinched her jaw as the man spoke, then turned her head to hide her red cheeks.
I looked around the room, wondering what could have happened here. Someone outside of the prison must have rounded everybody up, shut the doors and killed them. But what was intriguing was that some of the bodies had bullet holes, and others just seemed smashed. Even more puzzling were those that had burned faces and heads. My first thought was Jeremiah’s ability that he had stolen from Evelyn’s friend, Whit. Whit had discovered the power to heat his hands and burn things. Through a terrible act, Jeremiah had been able to steal that power. These burns were exactly what that looked like, but I didn’t think Jeremiah would have come in here and done that himself. He had hunters to do big jobs like these.
The sound of a door slamming behind us jolted me from my thoughts. Doors banged shut on the top level of the room and on the other side as well.
“They’re locking us in here!” a soldier yelled out, but I placed a hand on his shoulder and told him to calm down.
On the other side of the room, one door was left open, but instead of a walkway beyond, there were two men standing there. As they stepped into the light, my stomach dropped.
Hunters. Specifically, they were the two hunters that had been harassing Connor less than an hour ago. Anthony and Trace. Having faced the particularly deadly Starborn, Commander Green, this morning, I was in no hurry to face two more. I had no idea what these two could do, but having Aaron, Danny, and Heather with me gave me some comfort.
Aaron turned back to the soldiers that were with us and told them to go back and tell the others.
“They can’t go back,” Trace said, still walking toward us. “Screven soldiers have barricaded the room. Your only way out is through us.”
“You’re funny,” Danny said. “There’s four Starborns and five soldiers against the two of you. What makes you think you can win this fight?”
Trace and Anthony stopped walking and stood in the middle of the room among the bodies. Trace looked down and smiled. “Jeremiah won’t be surprised you are already here. Little Connor told us that it was going to be three days, but he was either wrong or lying.” He waved a hand in the air. “No matter.”
“If you don’t want to die,” Aaron said, “then let us out of here.”
“You Starborns are so confident,” Trace said. He looked at Anthony who nodded in agreement. “None of you have any idea what we can do, yet you stand there and pretend that you are unstoppable.”
Heather went at him like a flash. We barely saw the blur as she ran up to Anthony, knife in hand, ready to stab him in the throat. But Anthony moved before she even got there. It was almost as if he had seen her coming before she even went at him. He brought his foot around and tripped Heather to the ground, then pulled her up by her hair. I knew what his gift must be.
I grabbed a rifle from one of the soldiers and pointed it at Anthony, and Trace dove behind a stack of bodies. As I let off a round, Anthony stepped aside, the bullet missing him by inches. It was as if he could sense where the bullet would be just before it got to him. I let off a second round, and just before I pulled the trigger, he moved again and I missed. With my third shot, he pulled Heather in front of him and the bullet grazed her shoulder. She yelled out a curse at me, and I stood there, petrified.
Trace lifted one of the bodies off the ground above his head. It was on fire and his hands were glowing. It looked to be the same power that Jeremiah had stolen. He dropped the flaming body in front of him, his hands as bright as the sun.
He stared us down and snarled. “Let’s see what you can do.”