Free Into the Shadows by Jason D. Morrow

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.