Ruthless Page 12

  “How angry do you think people would be if they found out your miracles weren’t so miraculous?” my mother retorted without losing a beat.

  I shook my head, undeterred. “I’m just trying to fix the world you messed up.”

  “You think I created a world full of violence and death? This planet has been hell since human beings showed up on it. I’m just doing my best to save us from ourselves. The secrets we keep, we keep because we have to. Because to tell the truth is to kill innocents. And neither of us is willing to do that, are we?” I hated the way my mother got in my head like this . . . hated it more because some little part of me wondered if she was right.

  Zack saw me floundering and stepped in. “Grace will take responsibility when this is all over, we all will. Including you.”

  I nodded, taking comfort in that thought. “And you’ll sit here in this cell until then,” I added.

  Esther nodded, resigned. “I figured you’d say that. But Grace, I hope I won’t be sitting here alone. It breaks my heart how little time I’ve gotten to spend with you, while you’ve been growing up. It may not be the ideal situation, but I hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity, however long it lasts, to finally get to know me.”

  Zack shot me a warning look. He knew she still thought she could convince me. But I knew exactly what my mother was capable of; I didn’t need any warnings. “I’ll visit if I can,” I told her.

  She smiled, as though she’d gotten the upper hand. This was a woman who’d spent years building her inner resolve, inoculating herself against the worst kinds of torture. But I had a feeling that the aching guilt of motherhood might be a type of leverage she wasn’t prepared for.

  As we exited the prison, Zack grew anxious. “Don’t visit her again,” he warned.

  “What does it matter?” I asked, chafing at the imperative way Zack was talking to me. “She’s locked up, she can’t do anything to us.”

  His voice went cold. “There wasn’t enough on that flash drive to justify her coming here, getting herself locked up like that. And she knows she won’t convince you of anything. There’s something else she wants, but I have no idea what it is.”

  I had no idea either. But whatever it was, we needed to find out, and fast.

  3

  When we arrived back home, we found Jude, Dawn, and Dr. Marko holding an anxious summit at the dining room table. At first I assumed they were discussing my mother, but the look on Dr. Marko’s face told me it must be something even more urgent. “What’s happening?” Zack asked, as I sat down next to Jude.

  “We finally got a message from Dr. Smith,” Marko said, voice a little unsteady, and I remembered that Dr. Smith had once been Marko’s beloved business partner. Though I didn’t know him well, it pained me to see him so worried. “The resistance cell she was working with in South Asia was wiped out by the prophets last month. She managed to escape, and she’s hiding out in a monastery in Thailand.”

  “We’re trying to find a way to extract her and bring her here,” Dawn explained, and I felt the tiniest bit of hope sparking in my chest. If we saved Dr. Smith, she could help Dr. Marko repair the broken device and get us back on track to strengthen the resistance and end the prophets’ reign for good.

  “What can I do?” I asked. “I could ask my supporters for help again, or maybe there’s someone inside the prison . . . ?”

  “We’re worried about exposing ourselves too much,” Dawn said gently. “You have the trust of the Brazilian military for now, and we need that to survive. If you start allying yourself with random insurgents abroad, people might ask questions. Well, more questions.”

  “Protecting Redenção is the priority,” Zack agreed, with a calculating tone that reminded me of the calculating mother we’d just left.

  Jude looked at me. “If Grace thinks she could make it work . . .”

  As antagonistic looks passed between Zack and Jude, I stepped in, eager to diffuse the tension. “What’s the plan, without me?”

  Dr. Marko explained, “We think we can send her a serum that will mimic the effects of death.”

  Jude chuckled. “I think I saw that play. Romeo and Juliet, right?”

  Dr. Marko continued, voice hopeful, “Something like that. When they take her to the morgue, she pops up, alive, and manages to escape.”

  “And with any luck, she makes it here to us,” Dawn finished.

  I nodded, shooting an olive branch look around the table. “Sounds like you don’t need me after all.”

  I stepped out with a polite smile, hoping to give the rebel decision-makers space to make their decisions. But as I was heading up the stairs, trying to find privacy, I heard Jude’s voice behind me.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I turned and hugged him, happy to finally be able to.

  “I should be asking you that question,” I said.

  “I’ll be fine after a few more good meals and hot showers.” His easy way of brushing off trauma worried me. I wondered what other horrors he might have seen that he wasn’t sharing. “I heard your mom’s . . . well, I’ve heard a lot of things about your mom.”

  “She’s alive, she’s here, she’s evil?” I guessed.

  “Yeah, those were the things.” His smile once again gave me that reassurance I hadn’t realized I’d needed.

  I hesitantly told him, “She asked me to keep visiting her in prison. Zack doesn’t think I should, but . . .”

  “But she’s your mom,” Jude finished for me. He’d known her as a little kid, and he’d witnessed everything I’d sacrificed trying to find her just months earlier. If anyone would understand what I was feeling right now, it was him.

  “She thinks that I’m just her without all the wisdom and experience, and if she keeps arguing her case, eventually I’ll see things her way. But . . . I keep using that same logic. I keep thinking that she just hasn’t seen what I’ve seen, and if I can show her . . . maybe I’ll be the one to convince her.”

  Jude took that in. “Well, you’ve staked your reputation on knowing how to convince people of things.”

  “So has she.”

  “I’m not worried about her changing your mind,” he encouraged me. “You know who you are, and you think for yourself. You’re Grace.” It had been so long since someone I actually knew had said my name with such warmth and affection. “But if she’s like you, I bet she’s just as stubbornly devoted to her values. Even if she does love you, even if she does listen, I don’t know that changing her mind is necessarily in the cards.”

  I nodded, acknowledging, “You’re probably right. I just wish I knew what the right move was.”

  “Tactics were never your thing.” He caught himself and explained, “I mean that in a good way. Your strength is connecting, communicating, thinking on your feet. Leave the battle plans to Dawn. You just keep being the prophet that people can relate to. That’s the big picture anyway. You were smart enough to make yourself a prophet, to get all these people on our side. You’ll figure out what to do next, I know it.”

  “Thanks.” His words felt so precious, like little jewels I had to hoard where I could. Because though he was my dearest friend, we both knew we had to maintain a certain amount of distance. He wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t his. Hoping to create a little of that distance, I tentatively added, “How’s Layla doing?” I hadn’t seen her in the conference room, and I knew she must still be reeling after her father’s death.

  Jude’s expression darkened. “She hasn’t gotten out of bed since we got here. I should probably check in on her.”

  “Tell her I’m thinking about her,” I said, knowing I was probably the last person she wanted to be reminded of right now.

  Jude hesitated, then said, “If she stops being angry at you, she has to be angry at herself. Because she knows, deep down, her father sacrificed himself for her and her family.”

  I remembered the deep, painful place I’d spiraled into as a small child, when I’d thought my mom was gone forever. I wanted to help Layla
out of it however I could. “Let her stay angry at me. As long as she needs.”

  A smile passed between us. Even with the overt romance stripped away, talking to Jude still felt deeper, more meaningful, than talking to anyone else I knew. He’d seen me becoming who I was from start to finish, understood every facet of my personality in a way no one else could.

  And maybe some piece of that was outwardly visible, because when Zack exited the conference room and saw us talking together, I saw a flash of jealousy cross his face. Jude must have seen it, too, because he took that moment to nod his goodbye. “I’ll see you later.”

  Before he could go, I couldn’t help but wrap him up in one more hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  Watching him walk away left me with a kind of loneliness I’d forgotten about. There was something simple and pure about the love I’d had for Jude, about the love he’d given me back. There had been no expectations, no fear. I knew he’d always be there, as a friend even when he couldn’t be more than that. With Zack, since the beginning, I’d always felt unsteady, unsure . . . both of my feelings for him and his for me. And being reminded of how simple and perfect love had once felt made my love for Zack feel even more precarious.

  As Zack came up to me, kissed me, something nagged at my gut, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Or maybe I knew exactly what it was and just didn’t want to admit it. No matter how close I’d gotten to Zack, no matter what I felt for him, I’d never stopped loving Jude. Never stopped hoping that maybe things could work out between us. I clutched Zack more tightly, trying to banish those feelings from my heart. Here was someone who loved me right now, in the best way he could.

  But that night, as I lay in bed next to Zack, I found my mind wandering. Pretending it was Jude next to me, wondering what his body would feel like if he were in Zack’s place. We’d never had sex before, but I’d spent plenty of time imagining it. And I couldn’t stop myself from picturing it now. The guilt flowed through me, but nothing could stop the thoughts. The fantasies, flooding my brain.

  You’re involved with someone else, I reminded myself. Someone handsome, and kind, and funny. Someone who loves you, who would do anything for you. But for all the times Zack had said he loved me, I still knew, deep down, he didn’t have faith in me the way Jude did. Unlike Jude, he didn’t trust me to know what to do next—in fact, in that boardroom, Zack had spent every breath he could spare arguing against my ideas, questioning my judgment.

  Being with Zack reminded me that I was a fraud. Every insecurity I felt about myself was magnified back through his eyes tenfold. At times, I couldn’t help but feel like Zack was right when he pointed out my errors in judgment. Maybe Jude was too blinded by his childhood friendship with me to see the truth. That I was in over my head. That I was going to mess something up again, sooner or later.

  The more my anxieties piled up, the more I wanted to seek out the people who couldn’t see any of my flaws, the ones who only knew my lies. The love of my followers was like a drug, one that soothed my deepest fears. And slowly but surely, I was becoming addicted.

  As Zack snored softly beside me, I pulled out a laptop and started searching my name. Before becoming a prophet, googling myself had brought up only a few academic awards and a middle-school soccer league. Now, there were countless news articles, videos, fan pages.

  I’d gotten good at brushing past the sites that seemed like they might be critical, or skeptical—it was easy enough to tell what their tone would be from only a sentence or so. Instead, I focused on the self-proclaimed gurus of Prophet Grace, who were seeking meaning in my words; their unwavering praise filled me with purpose.

  But once again, watching my words becoming twisted in strangers’ mouths left me feeling twisted as well. Even though my whole prophetship was a sham, there was a part of me that still cared about my message. My purpose might have been a lie, but my missives could still be the truth, could still be meaningful, useful. My speeches had been an attempt to put good into the world, and hearing people distort those words into something hateful filled me with an obsessive revulsion.

  I found myself creating fake online personas, commenting on the videos, trying to set people straight. I wished I could decry these false gurus without putting our position at risk. Unfortunately, I knew my job was to lie low, not to defend my reputation.

  When I started to feel overwhelmed, I did what I’d done so many times—instinctively, I prayed to Great Spirit, hoping for some kind of guidance, tranquility. But this time, rather than the usual sense of calm that came over me during prayer, I felt a jolt of guilt. How could I expect my god to listen when I’d devoted myself to blaspheming in His name? The uneasy feeling in my gut just sent me deeper into the internet, looking for some kind of salve—hoping others’ kind words would help me feel better about myself.

  As I clicked around, I found a new adherent to my faith who was gaining popularity—a so-called Guru Sousa . . . our friend from the Amazon. He’d begun exploiting our personal relationship to build a hugely successful platform overnight. I was horrified to hear him repeating my sad little platitudes like they were real wisdom. He’d have done better to find a good greeting card and claim that as gospel. The way he described me, I sounded like a clichéd hack . . . because I was one.

  In one video, I saw his mother standing next to him; apparently his newfound spiritual fame had helped them reconcile. So something good had come out of my deception, at least. I wondered whether their bond would survive once she knew he was preaching in the name of a false prophet . . . that he was just another Outcast after all, and a foolish one at that.

  The more I read, the more the hollow feeling in my stomach grew. Not just because the words themselves were lies, told by people I’d tricked into speaking them, but because there was one glaring absence. My father was still missing in action. News reports assumed he was deep in contemplation somewhere in the woods—no one had seen him in months. I’d secretly hoped that once I showed my face to the outside world, he would have been the parent who showed up in Redenção. That he’d send me a message, at the very least. But wherever my father was, he was still too angry to speak to me, and that thought hurt more and more every day that went by.

  Maybe it was that particular pain that drove me over the edge, that compelled me out of bed, toward the door. At least one parent wanted to see me, and the truth was, right now I needed a mother more than ever. I grabbed my shoes, quietly as I could, trying not to wake Zack. I knew what he’d say if I told him where I was going, and I knew I wouldn’t go if I heard it. I was heading back to prison.

  4

  One of the soldiers standing guard outside our apartment accompanied me to the prison. Though visiting hours were long over, I knew they’d make an exception for me.

  My mother’s cell was coolly lit only by the fluorescent bulbs above us, and as I stepped inside I saw she was unrestrained—unprepared for my visit. “You want to call that guard back, tie me up?” she asked dryly.

  “You won’t hurt me,” I told her. “If you wanted to, you would have already.”

  She nodded, somber. “You’re right about that.”

  I stepped closer. We were alone in this cell, and with her CIA training she should have been able to overpower me. But I knew I was in control. “You didn’t come here to show me statistics. And you’ve had ten years to find me and chat; I was your daughter for every one of those ten years you spent ‘dead.’ Tell me why you’re really here.”

  Esther considered, weighed her options. I knew not to trust whatever might come out of her mouth next. “I told you already, I’m here to recruit you.”

  The same thing I was trying to do to her. “You won’t succeed,” I promised her.

  “So you’re not a numbers girl. I get it. I wasn’t either, at first. You think with your heart, I always loved that about you. That’s what makes you so believable, as a prophet, it’s the same thing that makes your father good at what he does. You connect with p
eople, you empathize with them . . .”

  “I’m glad at least one of my parents knows how to do that,” I shot back.

  Esther ignored me. “You have your father’s good soul and your mother’s brains, and that makes you the most formidable young woman I’ve ever met. It’s also what makes you the solution we’ve been looking for.”

  “Solution?”

  “To save the world, we needed a mechanism, a way to keep people in line. Punishments. We figured people would feel guilty, sure, but they’d learn from their mistakes, and they’d recover. We figured some people might stay Punished, but the number of Outcasts in the world now is far, far greater than we ever would have projected.”

  “Maybe you should have run the numbers one more time before you used mankind as the testing ground for your cosmic war,” I grumbled.

  My mother continued, undeterred. “But you, Grace, you’re the answer. You did something we never figured out how to do. You spoke directly to the Outcasts. And it’s working. The healing rates in Outcast Wards have more than quadrupled since you gave your speech in South Africa. You gave people hope. Tens of thousands of people around the world would have been dead, or still gravely sick, without your intervention.”

  I couldn’t help but be moved by my mother’s words. For all the pain and suffering I knew I’d caused, I hadn’t really grappled with the breadth of the good I might have done, too. But I was afraid to show any weakness, so I stayed defiant. “They all would have survived, decades of dead Outcasts, if you’d bothered to intervene. If you’d given them drugs to stay alive, anything.”

  My mother nodded. “We considered that. But ultimately, secrecy remained the priority. Casualties were inevitable, but we knew they’d only increase if too much information ended up in the wrong hands.”