The Starborn Saga (Books 1, 2, & 3) (65 page)

“These people are nuts,” Heather said. “Do you realize how much of their plan relies on us to be some kind of unstoppable force? That whole meeting in there was about how Danny and I are supposed to kill every guard in the compound while the team goes in and opens the cell blocks.”

I smiled. “Well, I’m expected to be able to take out helicopters, so I guess we’re even.”

“You don’t think you can do that?” Danny asked.

“I have no idea. Never tried.”

“He okay?” Heather asked, nodding at Christopher. 

“He’s tired,” I answer. “Let him sleep.”

“I still can’t figure why Evelyn wanted to bring him along,” Heather said. “Talk about a casualty. If Jeremiah gets him, it’s all over.”

“Well,” I said, “Jeremiah may catch Christopher and be healed and all that, but that doesn’t mean Jeremiah can’t be killed. Obviously we don’t want anything to happen to Christopher, but Jeremiah is not invincible. He can still be
conquered.”

Heather perked up when she saw Evelyn, Jeffrey, and Aaron walking down the hall. She called them over and the three of them sat in the middle of the hallway. 

“Talking about the mission ahead?” Evelyn asked. 

“What do you think about all this?” Heather said. “Allison doesn’t even think this is going to work. Why don’t the seven of us just try some covert operations? Sneak in, sneak out and we’re done. All this stuff is too big. Too easy for Jeremiah to fight.”

“There is some covert aspect to it,” Jeffrey said. “The dynamite charges are covert, masked by the fighting on the floor above.”

“You know Jeremiah is going to escape,” Heather said. “He sees them fighting at the Center, he’ll be out of there in a second. Mora doesn’t even think she can take down a helicopter.”

“I didn’t exactly say that. I just said that I’ve never done it before.”

Heather shrugged. “That’s not my point.”

Evelyn broke in. “I have been preparing all of you for a day like today.” She looked at Heather, Danny, and Aaron. Some of you for the past six years,” she nodded at me, “and you for the past few days. This isn’t the time to have doubts. Most of us here have been committed to taking Jeremiah down for a long time. All of you were a part of a much bigger plan that you see unfolding into a battle that will happen this afternoon and hopefully tomorrow morning. It’s difficult to finally come to this. It’s hard to know exactly how to approach it. But you must do as you have been trained. You must do this with all of the passion that has been within you for a long time.” She looked at me again. “This passion to s passiodefeat Jeremiah has been inside you for a long time too. Though you may have never had a target, you have always wanted to take down the greyskins for good. You have always wanted to protect your family. This is our chance to finally take down the man who created all this strife.”

Her eyes went to Heather. “You may not be facing the best odds or even have a good plan, but since when have you
not
been the underdog? Today we turn the tables. Today we show Jeremiah that he can’t keep us down.”

Her eyes fell on me again. There was a hint of sadness in her voice as she uttered the last few words because she knew that they weren’t truly meant for me. 

“Today, we will win.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

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. Afthe 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. she s“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.