Into the Shadows (8 page)

“So why not just take my blood and be done with me?”
 

“Because I am not evil, and I don’t wish to hurt you. I would rather cooperate with you.”

“You work with raiders,” I say.
 

“They are some of the best scouts. They know areas without us having to learn them. Never did I employ them to do harm. That was their choice. It was a necessary risk for me to take, and I know that it didn’t turn out well for everyone.”

“You torture Amber every day.”

“Amber is a murderer,” Olivia answers. “She volunteered for this assignment in exchange for clemency. She knew she would face harsh conditions. We do things to her to test your ability because we needed to see how you interpret the future.”

I want to ask if that included rape, but I don’t want to give away something that might impede our escape tonight.

“None of this changes the fact that you attacked Elkhorn,” I say. “I watched as your man, Samuel, shot down innocent people.”

Olivia shakes her head. “Lies. I authorized no such attack. I do not even work with anyone named Samuel.”

I don’t really know how to come back at this. Is she just lying to my face?
Probably.
I can’t really argue with someone like that.

“I have many enemies,” she continues. “Many claim to be working for me, when in fact, they are not. I wouldn’t doubt if the person in charge of the entire attack was Jeremiah himself.”

“Why would Jeremiah attack Elkhorn? For the Starborn blood? He could have just stolen it from me.”

“To gain more allies against me,” she says. “Jeremiah is an evil man with evil intentions. I’m just trying to keep this world together.”

“But what about the fact that you had something to do with the virus?” I ask. I have to be careful here. This woman has all the power in the world. If Remi is still alive, I don’t want to give Olivia a reason to go after her.
 

“Another lie made up by Jeremiah?” Olivia says, shrugging.
 

I shake my head. “I won’t tell you who told me, but I trust this person completely.”

It’s the first time Olivia’s eyes break from mine and I can tell that she’s racking her brain for who it could have been. Finally she shakes her head. “I wish you would tell me. Perhaps it’s just a lie that has spread among the people.”

No.
This isn’t just a lie. My sister wouldn’t just make up the fact that she was hiding in a closet at the University at Elkhorn when she saw this woman. She had been with a man. They talked about the virus and how it was supposed to spread. If this information had come from Jeremiah or anyone else, I might have been able to dismiss it as a lie, but this came from my sister. She would have no reason to make something like this up. I can tell that it’s Olivia’s goal to make me take her side, so I have to use this as my anchor whenever she is being most persuasive. I can’t give in to whatever it is she wants from me.

“My purpose is to create a network,” Olivia says. “This world needs people to strive for a mutual benefit.”

“And you get to lead it,” I say. “I’m sure we’ll all be calling you Queen Olivia someday.”

“Quite the contrary,” Olivia answers. “I want the people to work for themselves. I want the
world
to be free under one umbrella—one network. We are all survivors of the same catastrophe. It’s time to end the suffering and find a means to a better world. And it all starts with people like you.”

“Why have you made yourself into this Shadowface? What’s the point?”

“To protect myself,” she says. “At one time it served to keep me safe. Now I’m getting to a point to where the network can’t grow without people knowing who I am. That’s actually what I called you in here for.”

I shift in my seat a little. “Go on.”

“Next week I’m setting up a meeting with all the settlement leaders who are currently in the network,” she says. “I’m going to tell them my identity. I’m doing it in person to let them know that I’m finally ready to sit down with them and work with them individually. Closely.”

“What does that have to do with me?” I ask.
 

“I want you to see the future,” she says. “I want you to look ahead and tell me how the meeting is going to go. I want to know if there will be any trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The kind where I end up dead,” Olivia says. “As I’ve expressed before, I have enemies, and a meeting to expose myself to the public makes it dangerous for me.”

“And you want me to look into the future?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“So, if I see you dying, you realize that I can lie to you about it, right?”
 

Olivia scowls briefly. “But what would that gain you? I want us to be able to cooperate together. For the betterment of humankind.”

“And what does that gain me?” I ask.
 

Olivia stares at me for a long moment. It’s hard for me to know what she’s thinking. Any expression she releases is so quick, so brief that I barely see it.
 

“Eventually you’ll be allowed to leave here,” she says. “You will go back to your life as it was.”

I’m instantly struck by the coldness in her words. She knows that I have no life to return to. And it doesn’t help that the life I
did
have
is probably gone because of her. But it’s not like I can just say that. She’ll deny that the greyskins were her fault. She’ll deny that the raiders she employed killed Lucas. She’ll deny her part in the fight against Elkhorn that ended with me shooting Ethan in the back. Olivia paints herself as a saint, and there is no one to say differently. Part of me wonders if she truly believes that she isn’t responsible. Another part of me wonders if she is telling the truth and I’ve been lied to or misinformed. What if Jeremiah truly was the one who orchestrated the fight at Elkhorn? What if my sister had been mistaken about the woman she saw? Three years is a long time.
 

But then, why wouldn’t I try to gain Shadowface’s trust? Wouldn’t that put me into a good position? Even if she did use me for her benefit, I could use her too. She doesn’t know what I see when I look into the future. Only I know the images that pass by. I could look at anything. I could discover the answers by looking into her future.
 

“I don’t understand why you trust me,” I say. “The future is limitless.”

“I fully expect you to look into my future and see things that I might like to keep private,” she says. “That is the nature of your ability. But it is also your guarantee that I keep my word. I’m not lying to you.”

“It’s dangerous for you,” I say. “I will see things that you might not have decided to do yet. You may have no plans to kill me, but what if I see a vision of you trying to kill me? Obviously I’m going to try to stop you—to change the future.”

“It benefits you to know, right?” she asks.
 

I sit for a moment, not knowing what to think. Yesterday, I had only ever heard of Shadowface. Today, I’m sitting face-to-face with her while she is ready for me to see into her future. Either she doesn’t know what this truly means, or she’s being completely genuine. That, or she has some plan up her sleeve that I am unable to perceive.
 

I let out a sigh. “Do you want me to look now?”

“Yes,” she says. “I already know that you can look at specific times and events in the future. I already know that it is the
intended
future, therefore whatever you see
can
be changed. I need to know if anything needs to be changed. But I also want you to tell me specifics. I want to know how many leaders are in attendance. I want to know what I say in the meeting.”

Though she wants me to look into the future, she is also testing me. No doubt she has a prepared speech for the meeting. Certainly she knows roughly how many leaders will be in attendance. So, really there isn’t a way out of looking into this particular future.
 

But would I be able to look into several futures at once? Would I be able to switch from the night of the meeting to a night much further without having to break concentration and coming to? I might as well give it a try. First, I’ll look seven days ahead, then if possible, I’ll try to look even farther ahead to see where Olivia’s future lies.
 

As I sit in front of Olivia, I can’t believe how trusting she seems to be. But then I realize that she can be as trusting as she wants. It’s not like she has anything to worry about. Sure, I might see something she would want kept secret, but in reality she’s probably going to kill me at some point anyway. I’m a person whose only interaction is with a weird scientist and an abused prisoner. The only way I can hurt Olivia is if I give her the wrong information.
 

She finally reaches her hand out in the air, palm facing upward. Her blue eyes stare into mine as she waits for me to take it. I hesitate, looking down at her hand. It’s as steady as a rock. Mine start shaking as I reach toward it. Finally, my fingers reach hers and a bright light flashes before my eyes.
 

My mind is set on seeing Olivia’s future seven nights from now, but what I see couldn’t be then. She stands in a room alone. There are no settlement leaders, there is no speech to be made. She holds a gun in one hand and she looks out from a window. Below her, outside the walls are hundreds, maybe a thousand greyskins roving through the city. Olivia isn’t smiling, but she doesn’t seem nervous. Instead, she has a determined look.

The door comes crashing open behind her, but she doesn’t turn around. She can see the reflection in the window.
 

“I had a feeling this had something to do with you, Jeremiah,” she says.
 

Jeremiah stands on the other side of the room, his gun raised into the air, a look of hatred in his eyes.
 

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

“I know you have,” Olivia says. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you would get to me. I’m surprised you waited so long.”

“Put your gun down, Olivia,” he says.
 

“Why?” she asks. “You could have shot me already. You still can.”

“I want to see your eyes.”

“No you don’t. The moment we look at each other, you’ll remember all the sweet times we had.” She says this with an air of sarcasm that seems to make Jeremiah grimace.
 

He curses her and aims his gun directly at her head. But in his anger, he hesitates. She spins around suddenly and lets off a shot from her pistol, hitting him in the chest and throwing him against the back wall. He drops his gun on the ground as he reaches for his chest in pain.
 

Olivia shakes her head as she walks toward him. But her attention is divided when another figure rushes through the door.
 

Waverly—my future self. She storms in, her handgun firing, but Olivia is too quick and hits her in the shoulder, sending her spinning to the ground.
 

Olivia is breathing hard now, but she looks back at Jeremiah.

“Someone is going to kill you before this is over with,” Jeremiah says.
 

“Yes, well that won’t be today. And it won’t be you.” She takes a deep breath and points the gun at his chest again. “I loved you once.” She pulls the trigger. Blood splatters the floor and Olivia turns to Waverly.
 

“And you,” she says. “I truly am surprised to see you here.”

Waverly reaches for her handgun, but Olivia fires a shot into the floor in front of her, making Waverly freeze in place.

“I didn’t really want to kill you, but you have given me no choice.”

“Please,” Waverly says. “I just…I just…” She can’t seem to find the words to say.
 

Olivia lifts the gun, aiming it at Waverly’s head. There’s a sound of a blast, and a white light flashes.

I find myself in front of Olivia, my mouth gaping open. I shut it quickly when I realize that she is staring at me with an eyebrow raised.
 

“Tell me what you saw,” she says.
 

I shake my head. “A meeting.”

“Among the settlement leaders?” she asks.
 

“Yes.”

“Tell me something I said.”

I hesitate another moment, trying to think of something that sounds official. I don’t want to tell her what I really saw because she will become panicked. She would probably try to kill me now and figure out a way to go after Jeremiah so we would never make it so far. She knows that I can change the future. She would do everything in her power to ensure that I can’t this time.

Apart from seeing myself die, what bothers me the most is that a week from now, I’m going to return here. What could possibly bring me back? I would never come back.
 

I rack my brain for words that might sound like a speech. “You said something like ‘the time has come for us to unite under one banner,’ or maybe you said it a different way. I was watching the people more.”

Her furrowed eyebrows tells me that she’s not convinced that I’m telling the truth. “And how many people were in the meeting?”

How many leaders are in Shadowface’s network?
“Twelve maybe?” I shrug, hoping I came even close to the right amount.
 

Olivia sighs and her jaw stiffens. “You’re lying to me,” she says. “That’s not at all what you saw. How can we be in cooperation if you’re just going to lie to me?”

“That’s what I saw, I swear.”

She shakes her head. “No. It isn’t. If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s being able to tell when someone is lying. Besides, nowhere in my planned speech will I say ‘the time has come for us to unite under one banner’ or anything of the sort. And there are thirty settlement leaders that will be attending. If they do not attend, then they will be relieved of my services. I know for a fact that none of them want that.”

“But you don’t know what will happen between now and then,” I say. “That’s what I’m telling you. You have no way of knowing if what I tell you is true or not, because seeing a glimpse into the future hardly tells the entire story.” I shake my head. “I learned that the hard way.”