Ruthless Page 11

  “Of course,” I said, putting on my wise prophet’s smile. “I don’t believe in violence.”

  I moved to sit next to Zack, who looked around the plane with concern. “I thought you were rescuing more people than this.”

  “So did I,” I murmured.

  As the plane lifted off, I felt my stomach tighten. We’d made it this far. I hoped we could get this plane back to Brazil in one piece.

  8

  As the plane reached altitude, I hazarded a glance at Layla, sitting across from me. Her eyes were red from crying, but she stiffened as she caught my eye. Staring daggers at the friend who’d failed to keep her promise, the friend who’d let her father die, who’d left his body behind while she ran to save herself. I looked away, but I still felt her eyes boring into me, as though trying to drill a hole through the side of the plane and send me thirty thousand feet down into the Atlantic Ocean.

  “You should talk to her,” Zack said softly and encouragingly.

  Hesitantly, I got up and sat down next to her, trying to find the words. “I’m sorry,” was all I could think of.

  But she wasn’t interested in my apologies. “It should have been you,” she spat back. “Why couldn’t you have been the one to stay behind?”

  “I tried to,” I told her. “I begged him to let me stay, too . . .”

  “You don’t deserve to be the one to live,” she said through her tears.

  “I’m sorry it had to be me,” I said. “I really am.” I wanted to shake her, to remind her that I’d saved her life, that I’d saved the rest of her family. But I knew right now, she needed someone to hate. So I stepped away, finding a seat on the opposite end of the plane, alone. I wasn’t the person she wanted consoling her, and I didn’t blame her for that.

  I’d saved my friends. But I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with the price I’d paid. I was still stewing in my regret, staring idly at the blue water below, as Jude moved to sit next to me. “I won’t touch you, I promise. Dawn told me you have lethal cooties.”

  I smiled, just glad someone wasn’t angry at me. “Thanks. How’s Layla?”

  His expression darkened. “You know.” I did.

  “I tried everything . . .” I swore.

  “I know. And Layla probably does, too. It doesn’t mean she isn’t mad, doesn’t mean she won’t hate you forever.”

  “You won’t though, right?” I asked him.

  “Never,” he vowed.

  In that moment, I so badly wanted to wrap my murderous arms around him. “I was so worried about you,” I said softly.

  “Same,” he admitted. “Little did I know you were living the high life while I was eating scraps.”

  “I would have traded with you in a nanosecond,” I said honestly, feeling guilty for all the days he’d sat in a cell. “I think you would have done all this prophet stuff a million times better than me.”

  “Are you kidding?” He laughed. “Me? Public speaking?”

  I remembered the speech he’d tried to give in sophomore history class, stumbling over the names of ancient gods and goddesses. “Aphromighty!” I teased him.

  He laughed along. “I would have been outed immediately. Or lost my nerve, or something. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re doing great.” I hadn’t realized how desperate I was to hear someone say that.

  “Yeah, well, you might be the only person who thinks that.”

  “I guess everyone else is an idiot, then.” I held his admiring gaze, and it filled up a part of me I hadn’t known was empty. Jude was the only person in my life who always saw the best in me, no matter the circumstances.

  “Thanks.”

  “When you have to make tough decisions, not everyone will agree with your choices. You’ve always been someone who likes having people agree with you, so I get it, this isn’t easy for you. But maybe you’ll learn to be okay with pissing people off sometimes. Maybe you’ll learn that being the one to make the tough calls is worth it, if they’re the right ones.”

  I knew he was trying to cheer me up, to cheer me on, but his words still cut like a knife, reminding me of all the pain I’d caused. “What if you’re the one I end up hurting next?” I asked tentatively. “Would you forgive me then?”

  “Try not to hurt me,” he said with a laugh.

  Though Jude’s words reassured me a little, I still stewed in my fears. How many enemies was I willing to make? How much guilt was I willing to shoulder, in exchange for how much good? Only time would tell.

  I saw Zack watching our conversation from across the plane, and a strange feeling came over me. Did I feel guilty for talking like this with Jude? Why would I feel guilty, just for chatting with an old friend? Was I worried Zack might be jealous? Should he be jealous?

  I moved to sit next to Zack again, deciding all that was in my head. “We’re almost there,” he said, looking out the window nervously.

  Our landing in Redenção was bumpy, but the moment the wheels hit the ground, the plane erupted into cheers. We’d made it home to Brazil. What remained of the resistance was safe. But as I looked around the plane, I remembered—what remained of the resistance was barely anything: just a few scraggly, underfed former prisoners. A young woman and her two children; an old man with a limp. These weren’t fighters, they were refugees. We’d saved a handful of lives, but we hadn’t gained any strategic advantage.

  We still hadn’t heard from Dr. Smith. Our radios had been silent for days. We’d been holding out hope that there was some secret enclave of rebels left out there, but more likely, this was it. Everyone who hadn’t been slaughtered by the prophets was right here in Redenção. As much as I wanted to celebrate this victory, I knew how precarious our position was. If we failed, if I failed, the prophets would win.

  As we exited the plane, Macy was the first to greet us, running up to hug Jude. “You’re alive!”

  He seemed genuinely happy to see her. It had been years since he’d seen any of his old friends from high school, since he went into hiding. “Hey. Yeah, alive, who would have guessed, right?”

  She gave him a deadly serious stare. “If anyone else needs to fake their death from now on, I want in on it. I can keep a secret, I promise.”

  “Same,” I told him with a smile.

  “I promise,” he said.

  The general moved to escort our allies to their own apartments in the city. They weren’t going to be of much use to us militarily, especially Layla’s family, who were furious with me for what had happened to Mohammed. All the rescued resistance members were under strict orders not to speak the truth to anyone they knew. Right now, we were still relying on the goodwill of General Feliciano, and telling her the truth seemed like a risky play.

  Even if everyone kept perfect secrecy, I wasn’t sure how much longer this safe haven would remain safe. Especially once we deplaned to see Dr. Marko waiting on the tarmac, grim. “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “There’s someone else here to see you.”

  For a moment, hope stirred inside of me. Maybe there were others left out there after all. “Who is it?”

  He hesitated. “She’s outside the city limits. The army wasn’t sure if they should let her in. I said you’d go and meet her if you wanted to see her.”

  My heart stopped cold. I knew exactly who it was. I looked at Zack, knowing he was the only person here who would understand. “Come with me?” I asked. He nodded.

  As we drove to the edge of town, I went over all the things I wanted to say to her, tried to figure out what on earth she might want with me now. I had it all rehearsed, but the moment I saw her, everything slipped out of my head.

  There she was, standing next to her car, parked in the middle of an empty street. My army creating a human wall, protecting me from this innocent-looking middle-aged woman. “I can go with you,” Zack offered, but I shook my head. This part, I had to do alone.

  I walked across our defensive line, and there she was, waiting patiently. No longer wearing her bu
rqa, her dark features watched me curiously. Valerie, Esther, Mom, her name as scrambled and confusing as her motives. The curves of her mouth, her expressions even, felt like looking in a fun house mirror—seeing my own face reflected back in a twisted, unpleasant way. I didn’t want to see myself in this woman, especially not now.

  “What do you want?” I asked, glad to be the first to speak, to set the tone.

  My mother matched my gaze, defiant. “Believe it or not, I’m here to help you.”

  Book Four

  1

  Believe it or not, I didn’t believe her. “Why would you want to help me?” I asked.

  She didn’t blink. “We might disagree on the hows and the whys, but at the end of the day, we want the same thing. A world at peace. You’ve put that in jeopardy.”

  “I don’t see how,” I said, holding my ground.

  “Then you haven’t been paying attention. Fatal Punishments are on the upswing since your speech, did you know that? You’re fomenting doubt. Tearing apart the very fabric that holds our world together. By contradicting the other prophets, you put everything I’ve worked for in jeopardy.”

  “Maybe everything you worked for is terrible,” I retorted.

  “I know you believe that, but I’ve come here to show you that isn’t true. You’re my daughter; I know that if you see the facts, you’ll see things my way. Give me a chance to state my case, to show you what a big mistake you’re making.”

  Though that old childhood hope surged inside of me, that maybe my mother was finally on my side, I forced myself to say what I knew I had to. “No.”

  She smiled, a challenge. “You said it yourself, being wrong is okay.” My face flushed, thinking of her watching the videos of my “sermons.” I’d imagined thumbing my nose at the prophets, I’d imagined inspiring strangers who didn’t know better . . . but I hadn’t considered the shame of my mother knowing I was lying through my teeth. “I’m giving you the chance to live up to your own words,” she continued. “Make things better.”

  As she spoke, I wanted to believe her, wanted to find common ground. I’d inherited my mother’s silver tongue, an ability to make lies sound better than the truth. But remembering that she was trying to con me made me want to tear her apart. I steadied my stance, reminded myself of her strategic value. Having Esther in our hands might be an advantage. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll listen. But we do it on my terms.”

  “Of course.” She raised her hands in surrender, looking to the soldiers standing behind me. “I assume this is what you want me to do next?” she asked wryly.

  I nodded to the general, and two soldiers stepped forward to take her into custody. As they handcuffed her, I asked, “What’s your real reason for coming here?”

  “You mean besides saving the world?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, besides that.”

  Her eyes grew sad, and I wondered if it was another ploy. “You’re still my daughter. You think I have anything other than your best interests at heart?”

  In a strange way, I knew that was almost the truth. Whatever her ulterior motives might be, I knew that protecting her daughter was probably part of it. She’d saved my life, after all. But what she wanted for me, and what I wanted for me . . . those were two very different things.

  As the soldiers led her off, she gave me a little wave—a slow, rhythmic, bobbling of her fingers that gave me chills. I remembered the last time I’d seen her do that, the morning of the Revelations, walking away from me. The tiniest little gesture that connected me to who my mother used to be. Who I used to think she was.

  I felt myself holding back tears at that memory, as Zack reached out to take my hand. “You did great,” he said, reassuring, and as he wrapped his arms around me, those tears came loose. Came pouring out, unhinged, as Zack pulled me tighter.

  “I’m still her daughter,” I whispered to him. “And she’s still my mom.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered back. No one but Zack had witnessed the full extent of her cruelty, and it helped to know someone else understood.

  I tried to find my resilience again, to put aside these overwhelming emotions. “I hate that she’s here. But she might be the best lead we have right now.”

  “Or she might be leading us into a trap,” he warned, articulating a note of disapproval. While I was annoyed by his tone, I couldn’t help but feel like this time, he might be right. Though that little voice had been out of my head for a long time now, my own intuition whispered nearly as loudly, as I watched my mother march toward a prison cell in Redenção: This will end in heartbreak.

  2

  Redenção’s prison was a dank affair, smelling of mildew and sulfur and worse. I wondered if it had received a proper cleaning in years, if ever. Two soldiers led us down halls full of prisoners crowded into musty cells. I worried for their health—these were some of the most sickly-looking Outcasts I’d ever seen. As I passed, they looked at me with sad and hollow eyes, more confused by my presence than anything.

  “Prophet Grace?” one called out hopefully. They’d seen my sermons, urging spiritual clemency for past crimes. Perhaps they wondered if I was there to help them. I kept my eyes fixed ahead, afraid to raise expectations.

  The soldiers led my mother into a high-tech cell, with Plexiglas walls and an elaborate additional security system on the door. Zack squeezed my hand while they handcuffed my mother to a table and chained her legs to the floor. “She looks so much like you,” he said in hushed tones. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”

  My skin crawled, hating that comparison, but I had to admit, he was right. As I entered my mother’s cell, she looked down at her garish orange jumpsuit. “This is all a little overkill, don’t you think?”

  I ignored her attempts at casual banter. “Tell me what you need to tell me.”

  She sighed, relenting. “When they took my real clothes, I told them they’d find a flash drive in the pocket of my blazer. They left it over there.” I followed her gaze to a table in the corner and walked to pick it up. “I also told them to bring a computer so you could read it, doesn’t look like they did.”

  “You really think we’re going to let you plug some random flash drive into our computers? No way,” I told her flatly.

  Zack nudged me. “It’s okay. They can air gap a laptop, keep it off any server, so even if she has the nastiest virus on that thing, she can’t hack into the prison’s system, no matter what.”

  He was speaking so confidently, I wanted to trust him, even though this whole thing still made me uneasy. “Sure, fine,” I said, and one of the soldiers left to go track down an air-gapped laptop.

  My mother nodded to Zack, a playful smile on her face. “So you two are still . . . ?”

  I stayed defiant, not willing to engage with her lighthearted and belated attempts at parenting. “Still trying to save the world from you, that’s right.”

  She saw I wasn’t willing to play along, so she turned to Zack. “You’re taking good care of her?”

  Zack nodded, instinctively playing the good boyfriend for his girlfriend’s mother. “Trying, at least.”

  In that moment I hated them both for acting like this was some normal meet-the-parents conversation. But my annoyance was thankfully short-lived, as the soldier returned with the laptop.

  When I popped in the drive, it brought up just one Excel document. “What is this?” I asked my mother.

  “Statistics. I know, who wants to sit and read a bunch of statistics. But they’ve saved a hell of a lot more lives than you know. Take a look.”

  I started reading. Projected versus actual deaths by year, stretching out a century into the future, from causes like war, famine, water shortages. “This was what you came here to show me?” I asked, a little miffed.

  “This is what the world would have looked like without me, without what we did. Those numbers have faces and names. Billions of them, people who haven’t even been born yet. And I saved them. I am saving them. I know what
you’re going to say; what about everyone else who died in the Revelations, everyone who died in the resistance.”

  “Friends of mine,” I retorted, Mohammed’s death still fresh in my mind. “Friends you slaughtered.”

  “To save billions more.”

  “You’ve made this argument before, and I don’t buy it,” I protested. “You can’t say for certain that all these people would have died. But I know of actual people you actually killed, a billion of them.”

  “And I know that without our intervention, sea levels would have risen an extra inch. Hurricanes would be 4 percent stronger on average, resulting in billions of dollars’ worth of damage and even more lives lost. That’s not just one year, that’s every year humans exist on this planet, and it would only be getting worse. You can fault me all you want for the crimes I’ve committed, I know I deserve plenty of blame. But you have to give me credit for saving those lives. Just because I can’t put names to them doesn’t make them any less human. Being passive and watching the world go by, leaving fate in God’s hands . . . that doesn’t make you pious, that makes you weak, that makes you cowardly. A brave, moral person steps forward and does the right thing. Even when it’s hard, even when they get no credit, even when everyone hates them for it.” Her words felt familiar, the same sentiments Jude had used to reassure me mere hours ago.

  “The trolley problem, we get it,” Zack muttered, then quickly explained to me, “There’s an old thought experiment. If you saw a train about to hit five people, and you could divert it to hit only one person, would you do it? She’s saying you should, that letting those five people die is worse than killing the one.”

  It was the same logic I’d used to justify saving everyone in Turkey, the logic I’d been using since I joined the resistance. “When you pull the lever, when you divert the train, you’re taking responsibility,” I finally said. “Maybe you’re right, maybe it is the moral choice. But you still have to answer for what you did.” I turned to my mother. “You’re hiding in the shadows, deciding this for everyone without telling us that’s what you’re doing. How angry do you think people would be if they found out the truth?”