Ruthless Read online

  The more I thought about my mother’s explanation, the more skeptical I became. “If what I’m doing is helping, why are you here? Why try to stop me?”

  “I’m not trying to stop you. Far from it, I want you to speak more. Correct your followers . . . I’m sure you’ve seen the trash people have been preaching in your name?” It was like she’d read my mind. “I want you to use your newfound influence for good. But right now you’re just taking random shots in the dark. It’s the same thing you just criticized me for—experimenting with your words on a global scale. You’ve had some successes, I can’t deny you that. But you’ve had some misfires, too. Which is why I think I can help you. We can shape your message together. Stop this silly war with the other prophets and focus on helping Outcasts.”

  “You want me to be your little puppet?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Not a puppet, a partner. We want the same things, Grace. I know you think I’m some evil monster, but at the very least you know we’re fighting for the same future. For peace. We’ve both made sacrifices in service of reaching that goal. But you and me, working together, instead of fighting against each other . . . together I think we could actually make it happen.” She was so earnest, I wanted to believe her. But I couldn’t. Even if her words were genuine, I’d never trust her. I knew what it would mean to give my power over to someone like her.

  “You know I won’t say yes to that, right?” I said quietly.

  “I don’t know that. I don’t know you well enough to say anything for sure, and that’s my own fault, I know it is.”

  I felt the gulf between us, an impassable ocean, and it swallowed me up. That loneliness reminded me of the only person who might be able to cure it. “Do you know where Dad is?” I asked tentatively. “You’re tracking everyone, you must be watching him.”

  “You haven’t heard from him?” Esther sounded surprised.

  “No,” I replied, hiding my disappointment.

  “Last I heard, before you arrested me, he was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, deep in prayer and meditation.”

  I was relieved that the news reports were right for once. “So he’s safe?”

  “Samantha’s never left his side,” my mother promised. My mother, manipulating her ex-husband by providing him a girlfriend to protect him—it made the contents of my stomach curdle.

  “Why were you ever together, you and Dad?” I asked. “What did you see in each other?” It was a personal question, one that served no part of my mission, save my own curiosity. And yet I was more eager for that answer than any other.

  “Opposites attract, doesn’t everyone say that?” my mother said with a rueful smile.

  I pressed on. “Back when I thought you ran a battered women’s shelter, it made sense. You were both pious, do-goodery people. But now that I know you were working for the CIA, keeping all these secrets . . .”

  “I can’t have been a do-gooder, too?” Esther challenged.

  “You aren’t one,” I told her.

  “I’m not,” she admitted. “But I wanted to be. That’s what I loved about your father. I saw in him the kind of person I aspired to be. But then I watched how hard he worked, and I saw how little it mattered. How I could devote my whole life to canned food drives, to helping the poor, and it was just a tiny dent in a world full of insurmountable problems. And then I found a job where I could change the world. I saw a way to do what your father was doing but on a global scale. His goodness inspired me to be great.”

  “And his religiosity made you think, people are dumb, this is a good way to manipulate them?” I asked, prodding.

  “Not his. It was my own faith,” she admitted. “Maybe I framed it as your father’s, when I described it to people, but it was my own. The way the god I believed in influenced my life. I still pray, do you know that? You must think I’m a monster, praying to the very god I worked so hard to kill.”

  I thought of how I’d failed to connect with Great Spirit in the way I used to, before I became a fake prophet. “Does God answer?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “No more than He did before,” my mother said with a shrug. “But for what it’s worth, I do feel like I’ve made Him proud.”

  “I don’t,” I told her.

  “Well, Prophet Grace, I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you? You think God’s on your side, really? The God I created for you?”

  If I was honest, I wasn’t sure, but I kept up a brave face. “He’s gotten us this far. Me a prophet, you in a cell.”

  My mother snorted. “You’re a prophet, hell, you’re alive, because I protected you. That’s not some higher power, that’s the privilege of being the daughter of one of the most powerful people on earth.” For the first time, I could see a hint of disgust peeking through in her expression. “Your whole life, even back before you knew the truth, I was watching. You were so smug. You thought that everything you had was because you’d earned it, by being perfect, and pious. You had no idea, you still have no idea, how much work went into giving you that world.”

  “That’s what you wanted me to think,” I said, face getting hot.

  “Sure, the way a parent wants their kid to think Santa gave them their Christmas presents. Then they’re supposed to grow up and realize all the hard work and sacrifice that went into that experience. There is no ‘Great Spirit’ watching your back, sweetheart. Trust me, I made it up. And the sooner you realize that this world runs on the blood and sweat of people like me, that you aren’t magically protected or privileged because you believe in the right god, the better off you’ll be.”

  Her words left me reeling, and I realized we’d talked this whole time without me getting in a single word I’d come here to say. I steeled myself and began, “You wanted me to listen. You wanted me to consider that I might be wrong. I did that, I did what you wanted. Now I want the same thing in return. I want you to hear me out. I want you to think about those numbers on that spreadsheet, and think of all the people who aren’t on there. All the Outcasts. All the people who died in the Revelations. Maybe there aren’t as many, but they’re dead all the same, and that blood is on your hands whether you admit it or not. The trolley ran over those people, and you have to account for it. The blood of every Outcast who dies from a Punishment until the end of time will be on your hands, too, unless you help me. Because you’re the only one who can stop this. You turn double agent, you help us find a safe way to tell everyone the truth, and this war is over.”

  “It’s too late,” Esther said, shaking her head. “Maybe we could have turned back a month, six months after the Revelations, but after ten years? It’ll be chaos.”

  “Maybe it has to be chaos, for a while . . .” I pointed out.

  “That’s what I said about the Revelations themselves, and you called me a mass murderer,” Esther retorted. “We are where we are now, and we have to do the best with what we have.”

  “No, we don’t,” I insisted. “We can push for something better.”

  Esther nodded to the door of her cell. “And all those people out there, they’d think your world is better? Right now, most people get to live every day thinking they’re doing everything right, that bad things don’t happen to good people. That all they have to do is live justly, and Great Spirit will magically make everything work out for them. They don’t have to face any of the hard truths you and I have to deal with. They’re happy. Like you were, until recently. And you want to take that away from them?”

  My heart ached for that simpler time, when that had been me. But I shook my head. “That’s not real happiness and you know it.”

  She smiled sadly. “The younger generation, you always want what’s different. What hasn’t been done before. You want to remake the world in your own image, and you know what? Sometimes the young people succeed. I certainly made my mark, once upon a time. But once you change things, you can never change them back. You, my darling, will never be anything other than Prophet Grace. Whatever future you imagined for yourself before, it’
s gone . . . you only have this one now. You can never take back the deaths you caused. And you have quite a bit of power now, so take it from someone who has just a little more experience with that than you do. Be careful, sweetie, be very, very careful.”

  My insides boiled as she spoke. I wanted to tear her apart, rip out her condescending tongue, but I stayed calm. “I’ll give you one last chance to help us, and then I’m not coming back.”

  Esther paused, considering. “Okay.”

  I was startled by the response. “Okay?”

  “Sure, I’ll do it.” Her smile was bitter, ironic.

  “You’re lying,” I said, frustrated.

  My mother’s eyes bore into mine. “You never would have gotten a yes that wasn’t a lie, and you knew it before you stepped through that door. The same way I knew I’d never get one out of you.”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked her, begging, “Please, just tell me.”

  My mother sat down on her cot, looking at me sadly. “Thank you for visiting. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but I’m glad I got the chance to talk to you again.”

  I felt numb. Empty. “So that’s it, nothing? Goodbye forever?”

  “I hope not,” Esther said. She looked at me with love and pity, and I discovered all the hope I hadn’t realized was still living inside of me. My desperate, impossible, secret wish that I’d get something from her I’d always wanted . . . That I’d get my mother back. And in that moment, I finally realized that I never would.

  Holding back tears, I pressed the buzzer, signaling to the guard I was ready to go. “Goodbye, Mom.”

  Esther’s eyes were wet, too. “Goodbye, Grace. I never wanted to hurt you. It kills me to know that I have, and I will.” It felt like less of an apology than a threat. But I let it hang there—I wasn’t going to stoop to her level.

  The guard opened the door for me, and as I stepped outside, it closed behind me. My heart clenched, as I fought the urge to turn around, open that door again, go back in, hug her one last time. Ask her to say something mothering, something real.

  But the hollowness in my bones told me that was it. That was the last time I would visit her cell.

  5

  “You went to see her? Alone?” Dawn was beside herself, as Irene gripped her hand, trying to calm her. When I’d arrived home in the early morning, I found my friends already assembled in our meeting room, a larger crowd this time, including Layla and a few other rescued members of the resistance. They’d heard about my late-night jaunt to the prison, and they were not happy about it. I was certainly not going to get any sympathy for my mommy issues from this group.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?” Zack asked, pacing the room. His tone was colder and more condescending than ever.

  Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, judging, I got defensive. “Because I knew you’d react this way. I knew I’d get more out of her if I saw her one-on-one, if she felt like I was coming to her as a daughter, not an interrogator.”

  “And what did you get from her?” Layla challenged.

  I struggled to think of something that would seem worthwhile. “She won’t turn. We all knew that. But I think she’d believe me if we fed her false information. If we allowed her to communicate with the outside, maybe we could mislead the prophets.”

  Dawn shook her head. “She knows too much about our position in Redenção. We can’t risk her being in contact with her home base.”

  “We should just kill her,” Layla muttered.

  “Kill my mother?” I asked her, pointedly.

  Layla stared daggers at me, not backing down. The unspoken: You killed my father.

  Irene stepped in, playing moderator, “No one wants to kill anyone. But I think we can all agree, Esther is the enemy. We shouldn’t trust her.”

  I stepped in, defensive. “I never said we should trust her. I’m saying she’s valuable, there must be some way we can use her.”

  “Torture her for information?” Zack suggested in a casual way that made me want to strangle him.

  “My mother?” I asked again, incredulous.

  “You’re the one who said she was valuable,” he reminded me.

  Before I could answer, Dr. Marko entered, face grim. “Dr. Smith is dead.”

  The room fell into a devastated silence. Dawn put a comforting arm around him, as tears ran down his face.

  He stammered out, “Someone knew we were sending the serum and spiked it with cyanide. She tried to fake her death and . . . well, she never left the morgue.”

  Dr. Marko’s oldest friend, and our one chance at fixing that machine, was gone. My mind reeled. I wondered, was there some way I could have saved her? I knew Dawn was right, that one life wasn’t worth compromising our position, but still, after the fact . . .

  “How did they know we were sending the serum?” Irene asked. “If they’d just wanted her dead, they could have killed her a million other ways, but to intercept a package and contaminate it . . .”

  “We have a mole,” Dawn said, definitively. Instinctively, eyes shot around the room, inspecting the faces it contained.

  “It’s not anyone here,” Zack insisted.

  “Who else knew?” Dawn asked.

  Dr. Marko shook his head. “I sent the package from Redenção, and no one knew what was in it except the people in this room.”

  “There are a million other explanations,” I dismissed. “They might have tested the serum, seen what it was, and spiked it to make a point. Or even seen the label and gotten suspicious that it came from an Outcast city.”

  “Someone’s acting a little defensive,” Layla grumbled.

  Was she really accusing me? “Me?” I blurted out, offended. “You think it’s me?”

  “You’re the one who snuck out in the middle of the night to talk to the enemy,” she argued.

  “Hey, let’s not attack each other,” Jude said, stepping in.

  “If Dr. Marko’s right, we need to attack someone,” Zack pointed out. “There are so few of us left, we can’t afford to have anyone working against us.”

  Suspicious looks went around the table again. Finally, Dawn said, “I trust all of you. You wouldn’t be sitting in this room if I didn’t. There must be some other explanation.” Her surety gave me comfort, even though I guessed it might be a simple ploy to put her secretly distrusted culprit at ease.

  Irene glanced around. “There could be a recording device in here somewhere.” My heart sunk imagining that the mayor might have betrayed us like that, but admittedly it felt preferable to thinking one of my own friends might have done the same.

  Dawn shook her head. “We checked when we first arrived.” But, seeing the tension in the room, she added, “We’ll look again. If there is one, we’ll find it.”

  Dr. Marko turned to me. “Your mother didn’t say anything about Dr. Smith, did she?”

  “Nothing at all,” I assured him.

  “We could ask,” Zack suggested. “Throw her off guard, see if she gives anything away in her reaction.”

  I nodded. “We have her here, we should use her.”

  The others seemed less enthused, wary of any new idea now, not knowing if they could trust its source. I felt more than one set of suspecting eyes tracking me in their periphery, and I found myself casting my own doubting looks. Layla had been so distraught since she arrived, and so eager to cast blame on me. After the trauma she’d endured, had she buckled and cast in her lot with the other side? I saw Zack, hunched and imperious . . . he’d been growing colder and colder, the more he disagreed with my tactics. He’d once worked for Esther . . . could he have turned back toward his colleagues at the CIA? Maybe his time with us, our whole relationship, had simply been a long con?

  As my eyes flicked around the table, I realized I could formulate a story about any person sitting here. They were all equally plausible and impossible, and I agreed with Dawn—doubting one another was getting us nowhere other than fractured. Maybe that was all our enemies had intended any
way . . . to manufacture a situation in which we doubted our allies.

  I slipped away from all these suddenly wary eyes, escaping to my room, trying to decide what to ask my mother, how to trap her. She wasn’t likely to give away much even if we did manage to catch her off guard, and if she did know anything about Dr. Smith’s death, our line of questioning wouldn’t have the element of surprise anyway.

  Before I’d settled on a plan, Zack interrupted me, opening the door with a hollow look on his face. “I have bad news.”

  “What is it?” I asked, nervous.

  He finally said, stunned, “Your mother’s gone.”

  6

  “Gone?” I asked, not sure how it could be possible.

  “Her cell’s empty, so yeah, gone, I’d call that gone,” Zack said, getting hot.

  “How?” I asked. “I just saw her, she was surrounded by a million guards . . .”

  Zack paced, furious. “The soldier I talked to said he reported for duty, and the room was empty. The other guards hadn’t seen anything and had assumed she was there the whole time.”

  “So let’s interrogate those guards then!” I insisted. “Clearly someone is lying.”

  “We’ve isolated everyone who had access to the cell. They’ll be questioned thoroughly,” Zack said.

  “Whoever told the prophets about the plan to save Dr. Smith must have freed Esther, too,” I guessed.

  “Yeah, I’m with you,” Zack said, mulling this over.

  “Who could it be?” I asked, trying to hide any hints that I might suspect him.

  But Zack was much more expert in this kind of deception, and his CIA training left him uninterested in playing my games. “Any of us,” he replied bluntly.

  We gathered around the conference table again, but this time all eyes were on me. Layla was the first to come out and say it, not hiding one speck of her ire. “Grace was the last one who saw Esther. You didn’t see anything, any clue she was about to escape?”