JEREMY QUESTORM - THREE HOURS AGO

Something stirred in the darkness.

I raised my head. Phillip mirrored my move opposite me. We both heard it - something coming down the corridor towards our cell. Our telepathy link made the footsteps echo in my head, doubling the sound of the coming threat.

Phillip raised a finger to his lips as he rose to his feet. I sat there, unmoving, eyes alert as I looked through the invisible barrier.

The Shadow came into view, just visible outside our cell. She was holding the collar of another person - who was it? - and appeared to be speaking to him in a low, angry tone. I could hear her thoughts, if not her exact words.

Phillip looked at me, his eyes expectant. He could read only her emotions, but I was the one who could read minds.

He is an asset to the Raven, I thought to Phillip. They want him to do something for them, to help them win against Lenore. He refuses.

Listen to the victim, Phillip answered. Glean what you can from him.

I took a breath, then enter the mind of the Shadow's victim. It felt like black tar, full of hatred and confusion, darker than a black hole. I smelled fear, but his guards and shutters were up, forcing me to fight hard to get through. A defiance lay in his defences, an unspoken anger and despair, and something brighter lying in the depths of the core of his mind. I reached in, struggling against the walls that hold me back, trying to reach that blinding white spark in the middle of his mind -

Well? Phillip demanded, impatient.

I'm trying to enter it, keep quiet, I thought back, irritably. The lapse in my attention had caused me to slip. I struggled to reenter the mind, but it was too hard - too strong; I gave a low gasp, I'd found something, something he kept repeating over and over in the deepest depths of his brain. It was a miserable, tired chant, but something that packed immense strength and power - here lay the core of his will -

We grew in age - and love - together -

Roaming the forest, and the wild;

My breast her shield in wintry weather -

And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.

And she would mark the opening skies,

I saw no Heaven - but in her eyes.

I heard the Shadow distinctly in his head. "Give it to me."

His answer was defiant. "I can't."

Perhaps the Shadow thought why; why wouldn't he do it to save his own life? His glare was red and smeared with fire, there was no fear in his face or his mind, only blind, terrible wrath.

Beyond the darkness of his mind was something deeper, closer to the core, that I could not understand. Not yet.

The Shadow smiled, bearing her teeth in the darkness, a glint of snow in the dim light. "No? Is this something you would give your life for, Wolf?"

The man's gaze was unwavering. "For her? Anything."

I sucked in my breath and glanced at Phillip. He was pale as death. In our minds, he spoke one word as he absorbed the information I had gleaned from their conversation.

Fern Crowley, he whispered. The Lone Wolf.

I heard the cell door slam, heard the man's cry of pain in my mind, then footsteps approaching our own door. I raised my head, scrambling to my feet. Phillip stood beside me.

The Shadow stood in the doorway, her hair a waterfall of silver down her back, glinting like cold moonlight. Her gaze passed over my haggard state, Phillip's defensive stance.

"Now," she said to me, "it's your turn."

"No," Phillip said with clenched teeth.

I raised my head to look at the enemy who had captured and tortured my brother. His clothes were torn, his gaze weary. I looked at his jet-black hair, his chestnut eyes that glinted pale gold, the agony in his composure.

"Reality," said the Shadow, "you will come with me."

"I will die before that happens," Phillip said.

"That will not happen in my presence," answered the girl. It was haunting, how gracefully she held herself, the lilt in her voice, the familiarity of her features. She looked so young, so innocent, so like the girl I had once loved and left. "I have served the Raven long. And I have never failed her in all my time of service."

Phillip positioned himself in front of me, in an almost animal-like crouch, defensive, the hackles on the back of his neck raised, his teeth bared in a smile. The Shadow only watched, her smile frighteningly calm and fierce. And I knew, in that moment, she would not hesitate to kill him.

Phillip and I were twins, and for as long as I could remember people thought we were coordinated, that our goals were the same. The truth was, Phillip was my opposite in everything. His talent lay in the physical - the fight, the instinct, the strength. He was fiery and quick to temper where I was calm and calculated. We were the same age, we had fought countless battles side by side. He knew me better than almost anyone else on the planet. But still, he was the first to leave our mother's womb. He was still my big brother. He still riled me, got under my skin a lot, still would give his life to save mine.

Because he was my big brother.

How could I stand here, behind him, while he risked his life to save mine?

A girl's face flashed before my memory. Her hair was a river of shadow, her expression fearless and full of determination. Her face was fair, her jaw sharp but softened by the tender and bruised look in her silver eyes. I could almost hear her lilting voice, the call of a swallow in the trees. A forest of jade waters ran past her face, unclear and blurred, her face was the only thing I could see clearly.

I had already lost her once. I couldn't lose more.

When the Shadow sprang for my brother's throat, I leapt for hers.

The growl in Phillip's throat was surprised as he felt my weight bearing down on the Shadow's. She was fast, faster than Phillip but I was a match for her. My arms seized her around the shoulders and my heel connected with her kneecap, causing her to yelp. I saw a knife flash and threw myself off of her, the blade missing my face by an inch. I ended up braced against the wall, already panting and worn out by the brief struggle that had caused my wounds to open up and bleed again.

When I jerked out of my crouch, I heard a yowl of pain from my brother and launched myself forwards, knocking the blade from the Shadow's hand. I could see Phillip's blood, my blood, soaking through his shirt. The blood splattered everywhere, turning my vision into a world tinted with red. The Shadow had my brother in a headlock, and I stood there, unarmed, defenceless.

Phillip's blue eyes were piercing.

"Take me," I whispered.

"Jem," Phillip growled, and his voice brought back an onslaught of childhood memories, echoing in the endless void of the past, squeezing my heart. My childhood name, floating on the wind as my brother and sister called it, my mother's hand passing through my hair, my father's bad jokes. Ashleigh. Lenore.

"Phillip," I said, my voice cracking, "let me go."

"No," he said, and his snarl broke. "Please."

I stood, straight, already out of my defensive crouch, facing the Shadow. I was as tall as she was, and her silver eyes were narrowed and sinister. I look at them, loathing her, yet unable to hate her completely. She was just another victim of the Raven's rage and control.

I turned around to face the wall and pressed my hands to the back of my head. I knelt on the floor, slippery with my brother's blood, exposing all my vulnerable places.

Handing over my life.

"Jem," Phillip moaned. "Please," he said, and he wasn't talking to me anymore. "Not him. Take me, you can have me."

The Shadow wasn't listening to him. I heard a crash as she threw him aside, and in our connected minds I registered the wound in his stomach. Not serious enough to cause him permanent injury or death, but enough that he wouldn't be able to get up and fight.

"Stand up and face me," she said.

I rose, slowly, to show I was not about to attack. Hands still on the back of my head, doused with blood, I turned to face the Shadow with as much dignity as I could bear. Her eyes were glittering with malice and what looked like some ounce of respect.

"Lower your hands," she said.

Slowly, I removed my hands, wet with warm blood, from my hair and let them drop to my sides, loosely. I held nothing. I had nothing left before me.

"You would have been better off with us," said the Shadow. "You would have wound up in a better place than this cell. Instead, you will die, without mercy, without your brother, without your girl. You have failed, Reality, do you not see? The future belongs to us."

I raised my head.

"If I die, I die with grace," I said.

Her lip curled. She seized me by the back of my neck and dragged me towards the cell door.

"No," Phillip moaned. "Jem, you could never - Lenore -"

I took one last look at my brother, his fiery eyes bruised and bleeding with agony and loss. He would be alright. So would Lenore.

"It's alright," I told him. "It's okay."

Then I turned away without looking back.

~

"I'm sorry."

I groaned as I turned away from Fern Crowley. "Stop saying that."

We'd been sitting in the same weirdly furnished, high-tech room full of bleeping monitors and glowing screens for three hours at least, and all that Crowley, who had for some reason been imprisoned in the same room as me, had said was that he was sorry for what he'd done.

How could I even think about forgiving him for harming the girl I loved?

"Listen," he said.

"I am so not prone to do that now."

Seriously, did he think I would want to spend the last few hours of my life listening to him babble on and on about how he was sorry?

He was blissfully quiet for a few heartbeats. Then, when I finally thought he had shut up, he spoke again. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

I whipped around and bared my teeth at him. Sure, I was injured, but he was no match for me.

He backed away, hands held up, palms turned towards me. "Please," he said, "I never wanted to hurt her. The Raven forced me to."

I pressed my head to a table, trying to breathe normally.

"Solum has always been part of the Raven's bases," Crowley murmured. "We took the cure out of greed for survival."

"Do you think I don't know that?" I snarl. "You took away my father's work, the work he left me, and used it for something that should never have happened. I did it for the greater good and ran away to prevent my greed from continuing the evil side of the human race. I picked the two best candidates for the future of humanity. And then you had to go and ruin it!"

Silence fell, ringing in my ears. I bit down on my lip to stem my tirade.

"I never wanted to," whispered Crowley. "None of us meant for the epidemic to happen. It's just - have you ever felt it? The survival instinct? The urge to live just another day? Haven't you ever felt it, Jeremy Questorm?"

I shook my head wildly. I didn't want to hear anymore. I only knew that Lenore had been my reason to live for so long. She was the reason I lived. And even though she didn't remember me, didn't know me, I knew that she existed because she could love, too.

Only those who love live a human life.

"The Raven placed me under herself," said Crowley. "She told me to do what she said, or she would kill me. She took away my wife and son and threatened to kill them, too."

In spite of myself, I began to listen, turning my head his way. This encouraged him.

"I did what she asked," he whispered. "I found the ones who lived in hiding, waiting for the day they could rejoin their respective tribes. I captured them. Lenore too. I found her the day her mother was killed by the Raven. She had run on ahead of Cecily. I took her, never knowing that you were not so far away.

"I kept her, but I did not tell the Raven I had her. I didn't know what she would do when she found out a Silver had survived the epidemic. But there was something in her... something that reminded me of my son. Her intelligence, her will, her strength, if you will. So I never told the Raven, but she was clever. She had spies, even within Solum. She found out that I was hiding something from her... a Silver..."

I winced. Whatever happened next did not end well.

"She was angry. Very. She sent messengers telling me to hand the girl over. I was afraid... I was going to do what she said. But then I received intelligence from my son telling me that he and his mother had reached safety, and I realised the Raven had been tricking me all along. My wife and son were safe. They always had been. But something more from my son's letter disturbed me. He said that, as he and his mother were crossing the Narrow Sea, a freak storm hit and their boat capsized. His mother swam to shore, but he was thrown out into the waves. He couldn't swim, he was injured in the stomach when the boat was destroyed by the waves. He was drowning - he was certain he was going to die..."

I realised I was holding my breath. I let it out, slowly.

"But then, he felt something tugging at his ankle. A human hand, he felt. He was terrified, thinking it was a mermaid or a siren out of the terrible tales of the past come to drag him down into the deeps and eat him alive, or so the stories say. But that hand dragged him to the surface... whoever that hand belonged to pulled him to shore and to safety. And he said, as he lay there, he opened his eyes in a daze. A face hovered over him, and someone was singing... it was a beautiful voice, softer than the sea waves lapping at his feet, heart-piercing as the lark's song as it rises above the gates of spring, gentle and high and clear, yet as sad as the wind that rushes over the moors. He was enchanted...

"Something was healing the pain in his wound, and his bleeding was ceasing. He could see silver mist in the air, smelling sweeter than nectar as the flowers bloom to the sun. And as he slowly regained consciousness, he saw a face. She had long dark hair that flowed to her waist, soaked from the endless tide. Her skin was white, and her face was fair and gentle. Her eyes were silver."

"But then, as my son awoke, he heard a voice calling - his mother. The maiden who healed him disappeared as quickly as she had appeared, and he thought it was all a dream. But the wound in his abdomen had truly healed... and he wondered why..."

Fern Crowley's gaze swept over me. I felt chilled to the bone.

"When the girl at Solum healed the wound of your brother," he said, "I knew that my son's saviour had come into my keeping. Only then did I know that the girl's name was Lenore... or, as Niro Zechariah called her, Nora."

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My lungs screamed for air, but I couldn't react.

"What else could I do, now that I knew that the girl the Raven wanted to kill was also my son's saviour?" Crowley mused. "I owed her a debt, even if she did not remember it. I am not one to let a debt go unpaid. So I stayed silent to the Raven's demands, until the day Lenore escaped... and the Raven came for me."

The name of the Raven shook me out of my trance. I found my voice.

"And who runs Solum now?" I said.

"I don't know." Crowley looked down at his hands. "I would guess that it has been shut down, especially since so many captives have escaped because of Lenore's breakout."

He was quiet for a moment. I let him have that quiet, even though my mind was going a hundred miles per hour. When a question occurred to me, I couldn't keep it silent.

"Why did the Shadow call you the Wolf?" I asked.

Crowley smiled, showing his teeth. "Did you think I always had such a ridiculous name as Fern Crowley? Ugh."

How could he joke at a time like this? "Tell me the truth. I can pick it out of your mind anyway, but it won't be comfortable. I'm giving you the courtesy of telling me yourself."

He immediately turned serious. "I believe you."

I glared at him. "So?"

"Wolf was the name my wife gave me," he answered. "I liked wolves, always have, even before the epidemic broke out. I admired their beauty, their gracefulness; I yearned for their speed and their freedom; I understood their need to hold on to family." His gaze was hollow and faraway. "My friends, my colleagues, they started calling me the Wolf Nerd. When my son was born, I named him just that..."

The mention of his son made me hesitate. "Where is he now?"

"Somewhere safe." Crowley shrugged. "With his mother. I don't know."

"Are you still afraid of death?"

Crowley looked up at me, and I could see the anguish and terror in his eyes. For the first time, I realised what colour his eyes were. Not inky black, so dark I couldn't see his pupils. Light brown, almost pale gold, with flecks of grey. They looked so human.

"A wolf does not fear death," he said. "When a wolf in a pack fears they are dragging the pack down, they walk on the exterior circle of the group. He doesn't want the pack to be dragged back because of him. So sometimes, when he can't hold on anymore, he lies down and waits for death to come."

"Would you do that?"

"I owe a debt," he said, still staring at me. "I will repay it."

"Good. Then, Crowley -"

"Don't call me that. Not anymore."

His gaze was as haunting as it was eerie, like he really was a lone wolf that howled to the moon.