Into the Shadows
Into The Shadows
The Starborn Ascension: Book Three
By
Jason D. Morrow
Edited by Beth Morrow & Emily Simpson Morrow
Cover Art
By
Melchelle Designs
Copyright © 2014 Jason D. Morrow
All rights reserved.
Books by Jason D. Morrow
Prototype
Prototype Exodus (Coming Soon)
The Starborn Ascension
The Starborn Uprising
The Marenon Chronicles
Into The Shadows
is the third and final book in The Starborn Ascension. For a better reading experience, it would be best to start with
Anywhere But Here
(Book One) and then read
Away From The Sun
(Book Two).
The Starborn Ascension is a series set fifty-seven years before the events of The Starborn Uprising, which features the character of Mora and her fight for survival. This series can be read independently but the two are linked considerably.
The man’s eyes dart toward the window. It is the second or third time he’s done it. I suppose he’s scared. He has every right to be. To start with, he’s my prisoner and his life is in my hands. But I imagine that in this moment he is more nervous about what is outside rather than in. His fear is born from ignorance because I control what is outside. I control everything around us.
“Why are they not attacking us?” the man asks. “Why are they just standing there?”
I let him ask questions. For the past month, I’ve been telling people to keep quiet as I command them to do as I say. Here, no one can hear us. Nothing can touch me. I don’t have to glance over my shoulder to see if someone is coming up behind me with a gun or knife. I am safe here. So I let the man talk freely, though I won’t tolerate too many questions for the sake of my own sanity.
“They stand there because that is what I want them to do,” I say, reaching for the steaming mug sitting on the kitchen table in front of me. I take a sip. The coffee is strong and bitter. I like it.
I take the last swallow and stand from my seat. I walk to the counter and pour myself another mug full. My back is to the man. He would try to kill me in any other circumstance, but I know he can’t. He knows he can’t. I have control of his mind—his actions. He will do nothing without my say-so.
As I take another drink, I think about the first day I gained this power. I can still taste the Starborn blood on my lips. That blood now courses through my veins. It was the best and worst day of my life. I lost my only love, Ashley, but I gained a power that will allow me to finish what was started by my father, Jeremiah.
But I have little desire to finish the mission anymore. Not to help my father, anyway. In fact, if it had not been for Ashely, I would have abandoned the fight long ago. But she died to try and stop Shadowface. I can’t let her sacrifice be in vain.
A month ago, I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish this task. I don’t want to work with my father. He cares for nothing but himself and his mission. He doesn’t want to take out Shadowface for the same reasons I do. He wants the power for himself. He told me as much. And that’s not all he told me. He said that Shadowface is a woman and her name is Olivia, and Olivia is my mother.
I take another swig of the coffee and wince at its bitter heat. The man behind me is getting fidgety. I can hear his leg tapping up and down. I close my eyes slowly and I can feel myself enter his consciousness. I can read his thoughts, feel his emotions. If I wanted, I could ease his nerves; make him actually feel calm. But why would I do that? I want him to fear me. Instead, I silently command him to stop moving his leg. When I open my eyes, the sound has stopped.
A month of practice has allowed my power to evolve. When I started, I had to command someone’s mind verbally. But it’s much more than that now. Now, I don’t have to do anything. I can enter into a person’s mind and simply control his will. With Taylor, I have experimented with controlling him from a distance. It started with a
small task that would take him a hundred feet from the shack, and then across the road. I let him go farther and farther until I was controlling him from miles away for long periods of time. I’ve used this power countless times over the past month to get where I am now. I can feel a slight grin form as I think about it, and when I look out the window above the kitchen sink, my grin turns into a full smile.
My face is a foot or so from a greyskin and only a narrow pane of glass separates us. Normally, a greyskin like this would smash through the window and try to grab me, bite me, scratch me—but this one is calm while it still stares at me. It’s black eyes are lifeless, but it sways back and forth as its brain tells the body to keep its balance. Thick, drooling mucus slides down from its eyes, finally slipping into its opened jaw until the mouth becomes so full the mucus starts to drip out the front of its mouth and onto its chest. After a week of being a Starborn, I discovered that my power doesn’t extend to the living only, but to greyskins as well. Though the greyskins are dead, their brains do function to a degree. Some might argue that it is the virus that is actually living, using the body as best it can to prolong its life, and spread to others. In that case, I suppose I am controlling the virus within the person. Either way, the greyskins listen to me. They move when I tell them to move. They attack when I want them to attack.
But controlling the mind of a greyskin is not like controlling the mind of a person that is still alive. It’s much simpler. The commands are straightforward, never complex. I can tell the man sitting at the table to lay down on the floor in exactly five minutes and he will do as I tell him, but such a command cannot be given to a greyskin because it has no concept of time. Really, it has no concept of lying down either. It’s sort of sick, but I have to think like a greyskin when I command it. I can order it to eat, to walk, and to stand still. So far, I have discovered nothing else that works. But I imagine that I need no other commands for a greyskin. And since their minds are so simple, I can command many of them at once.
I am in a small cabin in the middle of a field. The field is perfectly visible to anything or anyone that might pass by on the road not too far from here. I do not fear having a fire. I do not fear making noise. That is because surrounding the house are about a thousand greyskins, walking in circles as if on display. No one in his right mind would try to rob me or kill me with so many greyskins nearby, and when more greyskins come, they tend to do as the herd around them is doing. I can walk out among them right now, and none of them would touch me. They wouldn’t even hiss.
So, yes, the man at the table has every natural right to be scared, but he should fear me far more than the thousand greyskins roaming around the yard.
I bring the mug of coffee with me as I sit at the table across from the man. A drip of sweat falls from his forehead and disappears into his thick, red and white beard even though it is nearly winter and the fire in the wood stove has barely had a chance to warm the room.
“I want to go over everything again,” I tell him. “I have to make sure that I’ve thought of everything. Start at the beginning.”
“My name is Taylor and I’m a guard at Shadowface’s main residence in Anchorage.”
I wave him off. “No, not that beginning,” I say, annoyed. “What is your mission?”
“To help you gain access to Shadowface’s office,” he answers immediately.
“And when does Shadowface plan to reveal her identity to the network?”
“A week from tonight.”
“How do you know this?”
“Samuel said so.”
Every time I hear the name I cringe. Samuel killed Ashley and got away with it. I can’t believe he got away with it. I had him under my control, but I was blind with anger, distracted by my hate. I was too busy making Waverly feel the same pain I felt to pay proper attention to my surroundings.
“So three nights from now, what will you be doing?” I ask.
“Preparing for your arrival,” he says. He looks at me with anger in his eyes. He doesn’t want to be saying this. He doesn’t want to work for me, but he knows he has no other choice.
I close my eyes and this time it’s to access his emotions. I can feel the anger inside him growing with every word that passes by his lips. It’s time to change his way of thinking.
Do not think of me as your enemy. You are doing this for the greater good. What you are doing is noble. You will be rewarded for your actions.
When I open my eyes, I can tell that his face has softened and he no longer looks at me like he wants to cut my head off. Instead, his jaw is set, and he sits a little straighter.
“Who are you going to tell about me?” I ask.
“No one,” he says. “Everything will be like normal. When I arrive, I will tell them that I got separated from the group and have been lost.”
“And you are sure that they will accept you? You will have your normal post back?”
“Yes,” Taylor says. “There would be no reason for them to turn me away.”
His words please me and only make me think of how lucky it was that I came upon Taylor in the first place. The part about him being separated from his group because of me is true.
Ever since that last day in Elkhorn, I have been doing everything I can to track down Shadowface, but I have been smart and methodical. I tracked her to a small town north of where I am now. All I got out of tracking her was a nervous guard, but he is valuable. Since then, I’ve learned a lot more about Shadowface.
I now know that she spends most of her time in the city of Anchorage. I’ve never been there, but apparently she has set up plenty of defenses and remains off the grid, doing much of her work from a massive underground bunker.
I also know that she not only keeps her identity hidden from the rest of her network, but from the guards close to her as well. Not even Taylor who guards her office has ever seen her face. He didn’t even know she was a
she.
When he first told me that Shadowface was going to reveal her identity, I wanted to know why.
“What’s the point?” I asked him.
“Transparency,” Taylor had told me. “The network is getting bigger every day and people will want to know who is providing for them. They will want to know who Shadowface is.”
He said that all of the leaders of networked towns and settlements had been invited to attend a meeting, and that Shadowface wanted to come out to the people face-to-face, and not over phones or the radio.
“Samuel told us about it because there would be heightened security and he wanted us to prepare for it.”
And now I’m confident that the security won’t be enough to stop me. No one has seen her. No one knows who she is. That has been an advantage for Shadowface, but right now it is an advantage for me. The day of her announcement will be utter chaos, and I can’t wait to see the result.
I finish my second cup of coffee and finish drilling Taylor on everything. I have made sure that he will be doing all that we have planned, and nothing else. There will be no talk or mention of me. There will be no worry. I stare at him and he gives the stare right back, blankly. I feel like I am fully prepared, though I am traveling into uncharted territory, literally and metaphorically. I have had Taylor draw me maps from memory and give me instructions on how to get through the underground of Anchorage without being seen, though, if I’m seen, it would hardly be the end of my mission. I worry about these things because even I sometimes forget about the power that flows through me. Theoretically, I could walk right through the streets of Anchorage, shouting to the top of my lungs that I want Shadowface to die and not a soul would touch me if I didn’t want them to. But that’s not how I want things to play out. It isn’t
just
about taking her down.