Chapter 43
chapter
forty-three
Haven
Idris is looking at me with a plea in his eyes. He looks terrible. His face is gaunt, and his eyes are hollow. This isn’t the lively boy who stood beside Prue in the safe house. A few days stuck in this place, and he looks like the softest wind will shatter him into a hundred pieces.
Pity strikes at my chest. I don’t know how I am going to save him. Ender and Knox are watching, and I can’t afford to fail.
“What are you hiding, rebel?” I question.
“I’ll give you the name,” Idris says, slipping easily into the role. “As promised.”
He wants me to stop time. He wants to speak in private.
The thought alone makes my stomach tighten.
We’re in the heart of the Forge, the center of Ender’s twisted world, and just beyond the glass, I know he’s watching my every move.
His eyes were filled with suspicion the second we walked through the door.
My heart aches at Idris’ pleading stare. I can’t deny him. Not even when it puts me at risk.
I raise my fist and punch him. The moment my knuckles brush his cheek, I freeze time, keeping him inside the loop with me. I have to learn a better way of doing this.
“Shit,” he mutters, blood on his lip. “You’ve got a mean right hook.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I couldn’t exactly touch you.”
“It stopped?” he asks.
I lift a finger and crack the door open just enough to confirm. Knox is frozen mid-chew, a chip hovering near his mouth. Ender stands rigidly beside him, arms folded across his broad chest.
“Yes,” I confirm.
“Good,” Idris says. “Uncuff me.”
I shake my head. “No. You’re going to get me killed.”
A prisoner vanishing mid-interrogation would raise alarms immediately. Ender already doubts my loyalty. I can’t give him any more ammunition.
“Come with me,” Idris says urgently. “We could use you out there. Imagine how many of them we could slaughter while you freeze time. You’re one of the most powerful Untamed to exist.”
“My sister—”
“We’ll come back for her,” he promises. “Just untie me. Let’s go.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “I’m in a secret unit. Under Ender’s command. I’m almost finished with my training. Once I’m in, I’ll have access to high-level information. Intel that could boost the odds in our favor. This is how we win, with strategy and planning. Not desperation.”
“Prue says you can do more than freeze time,” Idris says. “She thinks you can alter the timeline.”
My breath stutters. Prue said I couldn’t change the past. She implied that I might be able to alter the future, but she didn’t seem certain.
“How?” I ask curiously.
“There is a rebel who was close to your mother. He confessed it to the committee when he realized you were involved with us,” he explains. “This changes everything.”
“I can’t hold the freeze much longer,” I say.
“We learned th—”
My powers slip, and I subtly shake my head before Idris can finish that sentence.
We’re being watched again.
“I need answers, rebel,” I say.
I raise my fist and punch him again. So, I can buy us some more time.
“Shit,” he groans. “You’re going to knock me unconscious if you keep at it.”
“We have a few more minutes.”
“You changed something,” Idris says. His voice is low. “Something in the future.”
I frown. “What do you mean? All I can do is pause time.”
“I don’t know what the event was,” he says. “But something happened that you’re trying to fix. It’s a paradox, you see, you don’t remember what you did, so you can’t exactly correct it.”
My pulse pounds in my ears.
“You vanish,” he continues. “Every year. May fourth. For one hour. Prue thinks that’s when it happens. That’s when you try again.”
My throat tightens. “Try to fix what?”
Idris shrugs. “Not sure.”
“Do you think it’s my mother’s death?” I ask.
But my mother didn’t die in May. It was April.
“No,” he says. “Prue considered that, but you were too young then. It is something that happens in the future when your powers are stronger, and you understand how to change things. I reckon you didn’t expect to lose the memory every time you came back to change it.”
My mind reels with this information. I will have to think about it. But right now I have to figure out how to protect Idris.
“We have to make a decision,” I say. “I can’t keep punching you to buy time.”
“You’re right about staying here,” Idris says. “A spy close to Ender Vale is a valuable asset.”
His shoulders drop in resignation. I don’t know how to save him.
He’s got a Bind stuck in his neck. There’s a fresh bandage on his throat, which means they tagged him and destabilized his powers for questioning.
He’s a Class One. A Command. He will not be arrested for his treason. He will be killed.
“But what do we do?” I ask frantically. “If I save you, they’ll know.”
I can’t pause time for long. At any moment, this scene will resume, and Ender will be watching.
“There is one other option,” he says. “The rebels have a contingency plan for times like this.”
He points to his tongue. There’s a small pill sitting on his tongue.
“You knocked the tooth out,” he says with a weak smile. “They punched me hard enough to loosen it. I was waiting for this to happen.”
Realization dawns on me.
“No,” I whisper. “We’ll find another way.”
Idris smiles sadly.
“I’m glad I met you, Haven Warrick,” he says. “You will do great things.”
“No—” I lunge for him, but it’s already done.
The capsule cracks between his teeth. Foam gathers at the corner of his mouth as his body starts to seize. I release the freeze and return to where I stood before, watching helplessly as the young boy dies.
Sound crashes into the room as the door is yanked open. Knox and Ender barge inside. They push the red button in the corner, summoning the enforcers and medics. But it is too late.
Idris is gone.
His blank eyes stare ahead, and regret tears through me like a knife. I could have saved him. I could have chosen to run. I stagger back.
Blood trickles down the cut on my knuckles, dripping onto the floor.
Ender turns to look at me. His gaze pins me in place, and I shiver at the hardness in his eyes.
If he suspected my duplicity before, I am certain that now he knows with startling clarity.
Ender is too clever to believe in coincidences.
His prisoner died the moment I took over questioning.
Idris survived days without triggering his failsafe, so the only conclusion Ender can draw is that I knew it was there.
And that I am the traitor he was going to name.
“Come with me,” Ender says coldly.
He grips my elbow and pulls me from the room like a misbehaving child. I’d snap at him if my heart weren’t lodged in my throat.
Idris’s body lies slumped behind us. His eyes haunt me. He knew what was coming. And yet he still did it.
I let Ender drag me down the corridor. For a second, I fear that he’ll toss me into one of those numbered prison cells and leave me there to rot.
My shoulders ease a little when we climb up the stairs to the third level away from the containment cells.
He brings me into an office. One that I’ve never been in before.
A dark mahogany table sits at the center, facing a pair of twin monitors.
Tall shelves are placed in the corner, neatly arranged with heavy war books.
Their spines are cracked and faded. The titles are engraved with pale gold lettering.
Some look decades old, their pages swollen with age; others are new prints, glossy and meticulously aligned.
Looks like some of them are from the Archives, where they keep the prohibited books.
The door shuts behind us, and a click sounds as he engages the lock.
Ender releases my arm and turns slowly.
“Sit,” he says.
I draw out the chair and settle into it. My back is ramrod straight. Ender doesn’t take the seat across from me. Instead, he leans against the desk, arms crossed, studying me with an intensity that frightens me.
“You’re shaking.” He observes.
“I just watched someone die,” I say. “It was horrifying.”
“How do you expect to kill rebels if you can’t handle the death of a single boy?” Ender asks.
I open my mouth to respond, but Ender continues speaking.
“I wonder why he waited till now to trigger his failsafe,” Ender says, slowly. “He had days to do it.”
“Maybe, he was scared you’d come back,” I say. “You’re intimidating.”
His muscles are bulging with his arms folded like that. I can see why someone would rather die than face him. The distance between us alarms me. I don’t want him to think I’m being shady. Even though it’s very obvious that I am hiding something.
I stand and bridge the space between us. In the room, earlier, I got him to let me lead the interrogation by using my feminine wiles to soften him. It’s not a trick I’ve ever used before, but after it worked so successfully, I would be foolish not to use it again.
I don’t remember much from last night, but I remember bits and pieces. There was a heated moment when we kissed in his truck, and when I woke up, his scent was on the pillows.
“Sit, Warrick,” he says, between clenched teeth. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Vale,” I say softly. “I…I haven’t seen someone die so close to me. Not since my mother.”
His shoulders loosen, and I can tell he is struggling to remain indifferent.
“I didn’t mean to behave unprofessionally,” I lie. “Forgive me.”
I’m close to him now. I can count every dark, spidery lash on his eye. His arm unfolds, and I graze my fingers along his knuckles.
Ender steps away from me, walking behind the desk and using it as a shield. He swallows, staring at me heatedly.
“If you are being disloyal, Warrick, I will be forced to put you down,” he says. His voice turns pleading. “Don’t make me do that.”
My spine straightens. His tone surprises me. I don’t know why he is not shoving me into a room and torturing me for answers. Anyone else, and they would be dead by now.
I consider broaching the topic we are dancing around, but there are cameras here.
I want to know if he will join me, if he wants to escape the shackles around him.
The Supreme Director is not just a bad person; he is a terrible father.
I remember that night at the party when he clasped Ender’s back jovially, fingers digging into the fabric of his coat.
Nobody saw Ender wince, but I did. From the looks of it, it wasn’t the first time he had hurt him.
And then, there was the day Ender was implanted. They took away his powers and with it his freedom to escape to his secret world. It must have been bad over there for him to lose himself in an illusion.
“Vale,” I begin.
“I suggest you decide which side you’re on,” Ender cuts me off, “before I decide for you.”
He looks away, silently dismissing me. There is no convincing him. He has been on this path for so long, I don’t think he even knows what he fights for anymore. And the thought saddens me.
I step into the hallway on shaky legs. And one truth settles like a fist in my chest: Ender knows that I am helping the rebels, but he doesn’t know that I am an Untamed. If he learns that I have powers, everything will make sense.
And he will have no choice but to kill me.