Fearless Read online

  Dedication

  For Ari

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Intro Note from Grace

  Book One 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Book Two 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Book Three 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Book Four 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Book Five 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Book Six 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Sarah Tarkoff

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Intro Note from Grace

  I want to start by saying thank you. I know my words chronicle a painful time for many of you, and I will be forever grateful for your willingness to read.

  Up until this point, I’ve put off recounting many of the events that might seem mandatory material for an autobiography about Grace Luther. I wanted to take the time to set the stage, to help you understand how I got to where I am now. Luckily, I can reassure you, this next chapter will include many of the moments you’ve all been waiting for: the true, untold story of the fateful night that started it all, for better or worse.

  I’m sure that some of you disagree with me politically, religiously, morally—and there is nothing I could say to convince you that I’m not evil, that I’m not a heretic, that the consequences of what I did were worth it in the end. All I can offer you is a promise that whatever viciousness you might level at me, I will never return it in kind. I aspire to forgive the way Great Spirit forgives—completely and unconditionally. To forgive my enemies, and to forgive myself.

  Thank you all over again for lending me your ears and your hearts.

  With all the love of Great Spirit,

  Grace Luther

  c/o Arlington Federal Prison

  Book One

  1

  This time, it was my hair running a dangerous mission.

  The sparkly clip restraining my kinky, curly locks held a powerful recording device, one sensitive enough to pick up the sound of keys clacking on a keyboard, to see fingers typing from across the room. All our previous attempts to hack into Prophet Joshua’s server had failed, and this was our last, best chance to infiltrate his computer network. If we succeeded, we might finally create some chink in Joshua’s otherwise impenetrable armor and get some idea of how to take him down for good.

  Dawn had been quite clear about what to expect if the recording device was discovered and my cover within Joshua’s organization was blown—interrogation, torture, death. Joshua and the other prophets knew a worldwide resistance was out there—and they were desperate to stop us however they could.

  With that weighing on my mind, I pasted on an innocent smile for the benefit of Guru Samuel Jenkins, the prophet’s right-hand man. He’d never particularly liked me, and his words always seemed laced with a hint of suspicion. “Tell me what you’ve been up to lately, Grace.”

  His coy smirk made my stomach flip-flop. And I began to lie my ass off.

  2

  I won’t lie to you. I was not born to be a double agent. After getting Punished for the first lie I attempted post-Revelation (telling the babysitter I was allowed to stay up past 9:00), I’d never told another. That is, until I stumbled upon the truth at the age of seventeen, the truth about what was really happening in our world, and my whole life became a house of cards poised to fall at any moment.

  And indeed, during the six months I’d spent as a double agent for Dawn, the precariousness of our situation was driving me toward paranoia. The prophets held all the power, while we were struggling just to survive, to avoid being discovered, captured, killed. Though we tried to keep hope alive, the futility of our situation was obvious. Even if we managed to reveal the truth, the simple act of revealing that truth would likely cause the death of anyone who heard it. Guilt at questioning the word of the prophets . . . that was all it took to cause a lethal Punishment. Just about every human being on Earth believed these people were direct mouthpieces to Great Spirit, believed that mankind’s very survival relied on following their Proclamations.

  And to a certain extent, weren’t they right? Mankind was thriving under their leadership. With the world united under one ideology, we’d finally been able to put aside our differences and live in peace. Now that crime itself carried a swift and sometimes deadly Punishment, the world had not witnessed war, or large-scale violence of any kind, in a decade.

  But unlike the rest of the world, most of whom still believed what they were told about the origins of this phenomenon, I’d eventually learned it wasn’t judgment from on high causing our Punishments—it was the chemicals in our brains associated with guilt. I’d learned that there was a network of tiny machines whirring beneath my skull—nanotech. These machines monitored everything we felt, and when they sensed guilt, they caused the physical changes we referred to as Punishment—making their host uglier, sicklier, sometimes even monstrous-looking.

  Our seeming utopia wasn’t the work of Great Spirit, but the sinister creation of humans.

  I never would have believed any of this until I saw it with my own eyes. And once that happened, and especially once I started working with the resistance movement trying to expose the truth, lies became my daily means of survival, a routine I fell into: eating breakfast with my dad every morning, walking to class with my best friend, Macy, chattering away as if nothing had changed.

  But it had, everything had. And the strain of it all was changing me, sometimes in ways I didn’t like. By the time I made it to my high school graduation, I already felt like an impostor in my own life. These kids I’d once thought were my best friends were already strangers, their happiness so alien to me. My goal to take down the prophets filled every fiber of my being, consumed my thoughts, but I still felt lost, adrift somehow. Back when I’d believed my sole purpose on this planet was to glorify Great Spirit, my task seemed simple enough. All I had to do was live my own life with courage and conscience.

  But what I was doing now? The sheer size of our undertaking overwhelmed me. I couldn’t imagine my actions making a dent in the problem at hand. As important as I knew our goal was, it felt impossible. Doomed.

  Maybe if we’d had leadership I trusted more, things would have been better . . . but ever since the disastrous op in West Virginia, one that had left dozens of innocent scientists dead, I was wary of Dawn’s motives, wary of her methods. As if I needed any more people to be wary of.

  She’d promised to keep me in the loop about our strategy if I helped her, and at first she made good on that promise. But after I graduated from high school and started at NYU, Dawn went radio silent. Based
on the messages she sent through intermediaries, I got the sense that she was in some kind of trouble. While I worried for her, I also felt stranded . . . and more and more like I’d made a terrible mistake signing up for all this.

  The only person I knew for sure I could trust was Jude, my childhood next-door neighbor and first love. Dawn had saved his life after a nearly fatal Punishment, and in return, he’d given up his identity to help her cause, to help her save others. I hadn’t seen him since we’d made our plan to run away together six months ago . . . because rather than running away, I decided to stay and help the resistance. It was a decision I questioned every single day, every time I wondered what he was doing, what he thought of me.

  Did he hate me for abandoning him, for choosing to stay behind and help Dawn instead of escaping into a life of safety and happiness together? Or was he proud that I was taking up the mantle of his cause?

  Against my will, as the months wore on, my time with Jude began to feel more and more like a dream. Because no matter what we’d experienced, our romance had been brief, and in the same way that time dulls pain, it dulls happiness, too. I tried to remember, tried to keep the details of his face in mind when I closed my eyes. But the vast sea of weeks during which I’d thought him dead, and the ocean of days that followed after, when I wasn’t allowed to see him—all that time began to dwarf the little island of lovely hours we’d shared. The kisses goodbye, our work for the resistance, even the night he’d saved my life. It was all getting further and further away, no matter how I tried to hold those moments in my mind; tried to keep him with me, even if only in my memory.

  I certainly wished Jude could have been with me when I was sitting across from Samuel Jenkins, whose discerning eyes took note of my every movement.

  “I’ve been doing as you and the prophet instruct me,” I told him obediently. Six months of experience had made me more confident in my deception at Walden Manor, though no less terrified of failure.

  “Have you encountered any heretics?” he asked casually.

  “Heretics?” I feigned innocence, letting a horrified expression fall over my face.

  “Those who worship in the old ways, who defile the name of Great Spirit?”

  “I don’t think so . . .” Well, unless you counted every member of Dawn’s organization . . .

  He leaned very close to me, conspiratorial. “Because we’ve heard rumors. It’s been a decade since the Revelations, and the sad truth is, people tend to get complacent as tragedies become more remote.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone getting complacent,” I said honestly. I tried to stay focused on my mission—I needed to convince Samuel to log on to his computer, so that the camera in my hair clip could record his password. “But there is one thing I saw the other day. A video that was a little offensive.”

  Samuel’s ears perked up. “Where?”

  “It’s on YouTube. I can show you.” I gestured to his computer, and he obliged, signing on with a flurry of keystrokes. Instinctively I grabbed at the hair clip, hoping it was positioned correctly to see what Samuel had typed. I directed him to a video of a worship center play filled with silly jokes that only the most conservative folks at Walden Manor might find scandalous. He nodded politely, turning it off before it was over—clearly not interested in seeing the rest. “Thank you for showing that to me.”

  “You’re welcome.” I smiled piously.

  His fierce gaze drifted away from me as he busied himself with files on his desk, and I hoped that meant I’d fooled him. “Well, I think we’re going to give you something a little more interesting to do,” he said so offhandedly, it took me a moment to realize . . . Had I finally managed to earn Samuel’s trust?

  I remembered to beam proudly, though my stomach flip-flopped again. I had no desire to do anything remotely interesting for him. “Whatever the prophet requires of me.”

  He handed me a green metal square, a little thicker than a credit card. It had my name and picture on one side, and the prophet’s symbol on the back—a bald eagle entwined with a dove. “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Something to identify you’re with us,” he said. “We may put you in touch with other friends of Great Spirit in New York, so don’t lose it.” I tried to read into his intonation, his expressions, but I couldn’t get a sense of whether this was a test, so I simply nodded as he handed me a thick folder. “It might be helpful for this.”

  I opened the folder to discover a dossier: background information on a theology professor at NYU, Irene Hernandez. “You want me to investigate her?” I asked, and Samuel nodded.

  “We don’t want to make our inquiries too public, and worry the general populace. So Joshua occasionally asks trusted representatives to observe and report back on those who might be spiritually endangering our world.”

  As I scanned the file, I felt sick. Snapshots clipped to her bio showed a lively woman walking her dog around the city, laughing with friends. I hated that to help the resistance, I had to play my part by helping Samuel, too. If this woman’s actions were deemed a threat to our peaceful utopia, she might be imprisoned—put away with everyone else whose work questioned the word of the prophets. Even if I managed to protect her from Joshua’s reach, the resistance would still have to whisk her away from her life and family and force her to live in hiding like Dr. Marko.

  But Samuel showed no concern, no remorse. “I’ve taken the liberty of changing your schedule at NYU. Her class will count toward your major, don’t worry.”

  I’d decided to major in theology when I was nine, and unfortunately, changing that plan now might endanger my cover. Which meant I was in for four torturous years of lectures extolling the many fictional victories of Great Spirit.

  “It’s already a couple weeks into the semester . . .” I said, trying to find an excuse to let this probably innocent woman off the hook. Though, I remembered, Samuel must have a million other bright-eyed recruits like me. Even if I didn’t investigate Professor Hernandez, someone else would.

  But Samuel didn’t bite. “You’re smart, I’m sure you’ll catch up.” He never let his eyes stray from my face, ever watchful for any twinge, psychological or spiritual. But I remained calm, stone-faced. Until I knew more about this woman, all I could do was keep my cover and agree to investigate her. I thanked him and exited his office as quickly as I could.

  Adrenaline pumping, I was on a high. I’d survived. But little did I know, this one small task was about to set off the chain of events that would change everything, forever.

  3

  As soon as I was outside, well away from the prying eyes around Walden Manor, I took a deep breath. As far as I knew, my cover was safe. As long as the recording device inside my hair clip had worked properly, my mission for the resistance had gone off without a hitch. And Dr. Hernandez . . . I’d have to handle that when the time came. Maybe I could even help—better me looking into her than one of Joshua’s true believers, right?

  And if I couldn’t help? That was the anxiety I couldn’t shake. I could accept risking my own life; that was the choice I’d made, to stay behind and work with Dawn. But the thought that at any moment, with one wrong move, I could ruin someone else’s life—that was harder to grapple with. Over the course of six months, that constant fear had started to wear on me. I wanted to shrug it off, let it go, but I couldn’t. Part of me knew that as overwhelming as the fear was, to some extent, it was helping to keep me and my friends safe: if I was always on high alert, I knew I could fool Samuel, at least.

  I headed around the corner, where an identical hair clip was hidden within a false brick in the alley. I quickly pulled out the brick and exchanged the clip, glad to be clear of the incriminating evidence, and hoped that whoever came to retrieve it would be able to pass it to Dawn safely.

  My relief was short-lived. I had barely taken two steps out of the alley when I heard a deep voice that made me jump.

  “Grace?”

  Zack. Macy’s brother. My childhood crush turned
. . . I wasn’t sure what.

  Dawn had told me Zack was monitoring me on Joshua’s behalf, and I’d pieced together a bit more from the few details Zack had inadvertently revealed. He seemed to be employed by some larger organization, maybe government run. After we’d worked together to save his sister six months ago, he’d promised to protect me as much as he could . . . but he was still so secretive, and he still hadn’t come clean about the simple fact that he’d been asked to watch me. Bottom line, I knew he wasn’t someone I wanted to trust.

  I put on another big smile, trying not to show that his presence was sending my adrenaline rushing. “Zack! I can’t believe you’re here.”

  I could, obviously.

  “Yeah, I stop by for work sometimes.” His tone was casual, friendly.

  “That’s right! I forgot.” It was a game of chicken, same as always. Neither one of us wanted to be the one to break the spell, to give up the lie. “It’s almost like you’re following me,” I couldn’t help but joke. I desperately hoped he hadn’t seen my accessories swap in the alley.

  If he had, he was playing it perfectly cool. “Are you heading back to New York? I’ll take the train with you.”

  I pretended to be thrilled by the idea. “Sounds great!” Inside, the dread began to build. One interrogation down, one to go.

  So this was my life. Instead of relaxing with Jude at some picturesque hideaway in Nova Scotia, I was a prisoner on a train to Penn Station, enduring Zack’s endless stream of probing questions about my day. “What were you doing at Walden Manor?” “How are your classes going?” It was a dance we both knew well, and the steps never changed.

  The one person who wasn’t playing our game was Zack’s sister, Macy. After my first week at NYU, she’d called me; no pleasantries, no “How’s college?,” just straight to the accusatory, “What’s going on with you and my brother?”