I tapped my fingers against my chest.
She nodded. “Yes, this is where we discovered how to open the tears that turned you into what you are. When we started, the crystals that created the tears were as large as rooms, but now they can be placed inside tiny orbs and set off on demand. You were not the first to be changed, though you were by far the most successful. Some bodies react to source well and others do not—you took to it well. Perhaps that was the big problem, that your body accepted and used it so well. Instead of turning into the tool I’d wanted you to be, you became dangerous.”
She let out a soft laugh that sounded strange from her. “Tools are always a challenge. Make them too weak and they’re useless—too strong and they may turn on you. You were made too strong.”
I crossed my arms. If she wanted an apology, she could go fuck herself.
As if she read that on my face, she smiled. It made her look her age for once, as if she were far more tired than she let on. Still, she nodded at the video. “Out of all the projects in Larkwood, this is my passion. When I first came here, others didn’t understand. They looked at me as if I were crazy, as if my ideas were too outlandish. They didn’t understand, though, and because of that, they lack the stomach to do what needs to be done. They had no idea of the dangers. I know, however.”
As she spoke, the shadows in that tear moved more, each one lumbering and terrifying. Nothing came through, nothing clear enough for me to identify, but it made it clear something existed on the other side.
“I know the truth, though, because I’ve seen it myself.” She didn’t look at me, instead staring at the video. “I was only ten when I found out what was really out there. My parents were nobodies. They ran a small restaurant and lived a simple life. I’d expected to follow them, to take over the restaurant someday, but life doesn’t go the way we think. Perhaps in that, you and I are similar.”
I didn’t care for the idea of the Warden and I having anything in common, but I couldn’t stop myself from admitting she had a point. I recalled how my life had changed entirely upon becoming a shade, how everything I’d expected happening disappeared in that one night.
If the Warden noticed my thoughts, she said nothing about it. She just went on with her story. “I don’t know why the tear happened. Even after all these years, after everything I’ve learned, I don’t know why it appeared there. Perhaps it was just bad luck, but one of the few large tears opened at our home one night. I was eating dinner with my parents when we heard a crack, loud enough for the dishes on the table to shake. My father rushed toward the sound, toward this shimmering space that hung in the middle of the room. As soon as he neared it, this hissing sound left the tear a moment before something came through.”
She spoke with a flat voice, as if she felt nothing from the horrific story. “It was like nothing I had seen before. It was feral, animalistic, completely crazed. It made short work of my parents—I still remember the way they screamed and told me to run. I stood there and stared, too terrified to move. When it finished with my parents, it turned toward me. Blood covered it, all over its teeth, its claws, its entire body. It didn’t charge me like it had with them. It approached me slowly, almost like it was toying with me. That was when I realized that what lives on the other side, the things there, they’re evil. There is nothing good through those tears, and what leaks through, the source that warps our world, it’s just a symptom of that evil.”
A tremble ran through her, the only evidence that her story affected her, though she squeezed her hands into fists, and it disappeared as fast as it had happened.
I swallowed hard as I gazed at the shimmering in the video. While there had been whispers about things on the other side, it sounded as if that wasn’t just rumors. While I didn’t trust the Warden, the truth of her words rang through. It took me back to that flash I’d had from her, the sight of blood, her terrified screams.
They’d been from that night.
I gestured at her, my eyebrow lifted in question.
“Yes, I survived. The creatures that come through seem to be bound to the tears, and the tears never last long. Sometimes they’ll slaughter and go back, sometimes they will take a person with them, but either way, they only remain here so long as the tear exists. As soon as it started to close, just as the thing got right in front of me, it was pulled backward. It swiped out, catching me with its claws, but it was taken back.” She untucked her shirt and lifted it, showing a deep scar on her side that was purple rather than the normal white. “This is its mark. I can still feel it, through what separates our world from its. It stalks me, and this is how it knows where I am. I escaped it—not many do—and it has never forgotten me.”
Suddenly, looking at her, I understood her a little better. I tried to imagine being stalked by something no one else believed existed for years. I pictured how that would change a person, how watching that thing kill my family while knowing it wanted me too might twist a person.
I couldn’t forgive her, and it didn’t excuse it, but I understood it better. Her obsession made more sense.
“I’m not looking for pity,” the Warden said. “I just want you to understand what we are truly up against. I’ve spent my life knowing that hell is so close. We think it’s far away, but itisn’t.The veil between us and destruction is so thin and fragile. I’ve seen what’s there, and if we don’t do something, if we don’t prepare ourselves, it will destroy us all. These tears? They’re getting larger and more common. I am constantly cleaning up after them. They used to happen once a decade, then once a year, and now? There are tears weekly. If we can’t find a way to defend ourselves, to stop this, the barrier will fall and we willalldie. So you can look at me like I’m a monster. Maybe I am, but I’m the only one standing between us and the end.”
Her words sounded pretty, like the sort of excuse a person gave to get themselves off the hook. I wasn’t so quick to forgive and forget.
I walked over to the computer and typed into the keyboard, bringing up a small text window. “It isn’t about saving everyone—it’s about saving yourself.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’ve wondered that before, but the reality is that my survival is the same as the world’s survival. If I can figure this out, my future will be entwined with the rest of the world’s. There is no difference.”
“Of course there is. You’re looking out for yourself, and you don’t care who else you hurt.”
“You get to say that because you haven’t seen what I have. If you did, you’d understand that we can’t always do things the right way here. We can’t take the high road. We have to do whatever we have to or it’s all over. No one is above that. I will torture and kill every shade alive, I will conduct whatever experiments need to happen on any human and I will run down anything that stands in my way. I willnotlet this world fall because I’m too soft, because I won’t make the hard choices. If I have to be a villain to save us all, I’ll do it.”
I shook my head before typing out another response. “If that’s what it takes to save us, we aren’t any better than what you’re afraid of, and we don’t deserve to survive. If we become that, we aren’t worth saving.”
The Warden let out a sigh as if my words weren’t unexpected. “You’re young and naïve still. I wonder, if we’d met another way, if you’d understood back then, would things be different? If you could have grown up more first, if you’d known what we were up against from the start, would things have changed? Who knows—perhaps we could have worked together. You’ve proven yourself troublesome, which tells me you could also be useful. I’ve said it before, but it would be a shame to destroy you. You could have been one of our greatest weapons.”
I didn’t respond because there wasn’t anything to say back. My job was to keep her busy, to keep the guards in the North Tower busy, to cause a problem big enough to give the others time and space to move around.
The Warden sighed, and she actually sounded sad for a moment. “I could just kill you here, but that feels like an odd loss, so I have one more offer for you. I could make you human.”
I frowned, her offer so unexpected that I couldn’t comprehend it at first.
“You know what the Corrander project was, but you haven’t dealt with Lazarus. Aren’t you curious about it? Lazarus, the man brought back from the dead—a fitting name if I do say so myself.” She smiled as if at some private joke. “It’s finished. It’s difficult to produce, so we haven’t made much of it, but I’ll offer it to you. You can have your old life back and pretend as if this last year never happened.”
My knees nearly buckled when reality hit me, at the idea that I could go back. If I said yes, this would all be over. I could return to my life, to the future I’d had planned, to the ease and comforts I’d grown up with.