Ruthless Read online

  So instead I simmered in my anger and signed off to my followers with a polite wave, gesturing for Dawn and Zack to join me. As soon as we were out of earshot, I pulled Dawn aside.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Dawn showed no remorse. “The more people who know our location, the sooner the prophets will find us. The clock is ticking now. I was doing what I could to slow it down, keep us safe.”

  “You didn’t make anyone safer, you turned me into some kind of fire and brimstone prophet, just like all the others.”

  “To a few dozen people. It’s fine.” I hated how Dawn refused to listen, how she spoke with the air of someone who was always right. Though she’d been our leader for so long, and had years of additional wisdom and experience, the religious stuff wasn’t her wheelhouse. For once, all my time spent immersed in the culture of worship was finally useful for something.

  “What if it isn’t?” I pushed back, frustrated.

  “You can’t be so focused on saving every single life, you have to remember the big picture. All those people out there, all the Outcasts you’ve never met who are counting on you.”

  “If they die, do you think Sousa will keep helping us?” I shot back. “My message has to be consistent, and it has to be different from the other prophets’ . . .”

  Zack put a hand on my shoulder, and it calmed me instantly. “Look, what’s done is done. Grace, I get it, Dawn and I won’t make any more Proclamations without consulting with you. Right?” he warned Dawn. She nodded grudgingly. “And let’s all agree to let this one go. There’s nothing we can do about it now. If you take it back, you make it more likely that someone thinks it’s okay to compromise our location.”

  “I know,” I muttered through gritted teeth, then took a deep breath. “We’ll let it go.”

  Zack saw tensions were still simmering, and he tugged on my arm. “Let’s go for a walk.” I nodded, glad to leave Dawn behind. The way he spoke with confidence put me at ease. I felt like I could handle anything with him by my side.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked as we stepped away.

  He gestured to the package from Julianna the designer that I still held in my hands, a sly glint in his eye. “I want to see you try on whatever’s in that box.”

  The way he said it sent a little thrill through my body. And what he wanted . . . I wanted it, too.

  7

  Back in my room, I tore open Julianna’s gift, unboxing a lacy, embroidered dress, which I discovered was nearly twice my size. “This Julianna is quite the designer,” Zack said, laughing.

  “She said she’d adjust it to fit my measurements!” I said, defensive of this stranger who’d been so kind to me.

  Zack grinned, playing with the masses of fabric around my waist. “Maybe she can make you two dresses. Or better than that, zero.” He kissed me again, and this time the kiss was a suggestion, an offer. I knew where it led—across that room, to that bed beneath the mosquito netting. I was drawn in, I wanted to follow, but . . .

  Don’t trust him. That stupid voice. I almost shouted back at it—I was certain by now that I could trust Zack, that he was staunchly in my corner in every possible way. But still, I was left on edge.

  After all these weeks together, on the boat and out in the rainforest, we still hadn’t gone much further than a kiss. Zack had wanted to, that was plenty obvious, but each time we got to that point, I hesitated. Even though I knew it was all fake, that Great Spirit wasn’t going to Punish me for having sex, wasn’t going to Punish me for anything, since Punishments were just brain chemistry . . . it didn’t matter. That long-ago instilled fear still held me back.

  It tried its hardest, at least. Zack kissed me again, and as his hand moved from my waist up to my breast, I found myself regretting being covered head to toe in this tent of lacy embroidery. I wanted to be closer to him, to feel his skin on mine. That aching, yearning feeling . . . I wanted to let it take over, to give in to it.

  But something inside me wouldn’t budge. Maybe it was that stupid voice in my head, whispering and manipulating my thoughts. Or . . . maybe it was just me. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe it was some responsibility I felt as prophet, not to get too attached to anyone. Maybe it was all those things, mixed together in a toxic stew of maybes.

  But as that kiss bellowed Zack’s offer louder and louder, I pulled away, whispering, “What will those people down there think? You know, that you’re in my room.”

  “That you’re a person?” he said softly, brushing aside my concerns. “You’re their prophet, you can proclaim whatever rules you want about sex. The male prophets have plenty of sex; you think the rules are different because you’re a girl?”

  I only knew what I’d been taught growing up, through a thousand silent cultural clues—that the rules on paper for men and women might be the same, but the unwritten rules, the ones people judged you on . . . those were still different. I forced a smile, knowing it was impossible to explain any of this to Zack, who’d never been in my shoes as a woman, much less a prophet. “You’re right, I’m a prophet now. If I want to change the rules, I’ll change them.”

  But now, the spell we’d been under was broken. We regarded each other carefully, trying to find a way forward. Before we could, a knock at the door interrupted us. We separated, and Zack opened it to reveal Dawn.

  “We have a visitor,” she said with a knowing smile.

  My heart soared—could it be Jude? Had they finally gotten word from Turkey? But instead, a different familiar face walked through my door: Dr. Marko, the scientist who’d first told me the true cause of Punishments—the nanotech residing in our brains. Since I’d had some part in both his capture and subsequent rescue from Prophet Joshua’s hands, and also because he was a genuinely delightful human being, I was deeply relieved to see he was still alive and well.

  Marko smiled when he spotted me, bowing with a regal flourish and putting on a fake southern accent. “Prophet Grace, as I live and breathe.”

  I hugged him. “What are you doing here? Are you in danger?”

  “My safe house was raided not long after you gave your sermon in South Africa. Only two of us made it out. I had a satphone, but I couldn’t get in touch with my usual contacts in the resistance once our networks went down. Thankfully I saw the coded SOS Dawn sent once you made landfall in Brazil, so I came here to help.”

  “Help?” I asked, hopeful.

  “You know, chop some wood, catch some fish, what else do you do in the rainforest?” he joked. I was relieved to see that his time in hiding hadn’t dulled his sense of humor.

  “Or maybe, you could make more pills, to save more people?” I asked hopefully. If he could do that, we could restart the resistance.

  I was disheartened when he shook his head. “I’m not sure we have the supplies here to do that. Most of the resistance’s drug manufacturing resources got taken out when our safe houses did. But I did learn one piece of information, which I traveled across two continents to bring you.”

  “What?” I asked, breathless.

  “Last year, I know you traveled to Israel-Palestine to help the resistance acquire a code that would help us remove the nanotech in our brains for good.” He held out a slip of paper with that familiar code.

  “It’s no good without the machine to input that code into,” I reminded him, shaking my head. “And the last one we found, in that stadium in South Africa, wasn’t operational.”

  He flipped over the slip of paper to show me another set of numbers. “GPS coordinates.”

  I took the slip of paper, heart beating wildly. “To a new machine?”

  He nodded. “An even better one.” Now we just had to get it.

  8

  It wasn’t going to be an easy feat. For one thing, the new nanofabricator device was almost twenty-five hundred miles away, in Rio de Janeiro. For another, the facility it was housed in was incredibly well protected, owned and secured by Prophet Daniel himself.

  “Why there?” I a
sked. “If one of these things was hooked up to the stadium in South Africa, maybe there are others in other stadiums. Those must be easier to get to than this one.”

  Marko nodded. “You’re absolutely right. The problem is, any device that big is going to be impossible to transport. You want to get one into rebel hands, you need a smaller one, a newer one. The device at this facility is only five pounds, and a fraction of the size.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked, nervous.

  “Back when we were hacked into the prophets’ computers, before they discovered us, we were able to access all their confidential files. Locations of important items. Even a few hints about some of the technology they’ve been developing.” Despite himself, Marko lit up when he talked about this new tech—though he’d discovered weapons to be used against us, the science geek in him still found them incredibly cool. But cool meant dangerous. My stomach flip-flopped, thinking about what the prophets might yet have in store.

  Dawn pulled up a map of the location, a massive military compound just outside the city. “I wish we had blueprints of the facility.”

  “It’s silly to think we could sneak in and get it, right?” I asked.

  “There’s no way,” Zack muttered. “This is going to have to be an all-out assault.”

  “An assault?” I asked, voice quavering. “If this place is really so well protected, wouldn’t that just be a slaughter?”

  “Waiting around is its own kind of slaughter,” Dawn said pointedly.

  “Would we even have the numbers to mount an assault?” Dr. Marko asked bluntly. “We still haven’t heard from Turkey, have we?” My insides felt hollow, reminded of Jude, and Dawn turned her head away from us, hiding tears. It shook me to watch that strong woman overcome with such grief and fear. I knew she must be thinking about her wife, Irene, who was still missing along with all the others. My heart went out to her, knowing she had just as much at stake as I did; more even.

  I tried to find a solution. “Couldn’t we plant someone on the inside, a spy who could get past all that security?”

  “That would take months, to place a double agent with the right clearances,” Dawn said.

  “So we turn someone who’s already working there,” I insisted.

  “That’s too risky . . .” Zack said dismissively.

  Dawn nodded in agreement. “Even if we could figure out who to target . . .”

  “One of my followers,” I interrupted. “Someone working there must trust me. There are some non-Outcasts who liked my message, too. If you still have that satphone, we can use it to get on the internet, do some research, and then call them up.”

  The others looked at one another skeptically. Zack was the first to speak, hesitantly. “I thought you didn’t want to use your influence that way.”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “But with just one person, in a situation this important . . . of course I’ll do it.”

  “We’d be risking our location by reaching out right now . . .” Dawn said, considering.

  I nodded, validating her concerns. “You said yourself, every moment Sousa’s friends are here, we run that risk. ‘Waiting around is its own kind of slaughter,’ right?” Dawn tensed a little, hearing her own words repeated back to her, but I knew she was listening now, as I continued, “We can’t hide in the jungle forever, we have to make a move at some point. We just need to pick our moment. And I think this is our moment.”

  Marko nodded, seemingly in agreement with me. “I can get us a call out that’ll be encrypted. I think the risk is worth it.”

  Zack shook his head, staunchly defensive, arguing only to Dawn. “There’s too much danger it’ll backfire. We have to protect our position here.” His dissension irked me; I’d been so reassured by his support before, which made it more frustrating that he wasn’t taking my side now. Some paranoid part of me worried this might be a sign of Zack’s wavering affections. But I put those fears away. This was a tactical decision, which of course he’d have his own opinions about, and I appreciated that Zack wasn’t blindly agreeing with me just because we were romantically involved.

  Everyone looked at Dawn—though it was unofficial, all power still rested with her. After a moment of consideration, she nodded, too. “If Grace is willing to take this risk, we should do it.”

  My heart raced with excitement, then skidded to a stop with dread. Dawn was putting her trust in me, and I wasn’t sure I’d earned it. Judging by the skeptical look on Zack’s face, I could tell he had his own doubts. As he sullenly left the room, I wondered if a rift was forming between us.

  I had moral concerns as well. I was already a false prophet. Was I really willing to abuse the trust of the people who believed in me most, for my own selfish needs?

  Not my needs, I reminded myself. I was doing this for Jude. For Irene. For Layla and Mohammed and everyone we’d left behind in Turkey. For them, I’d cross this line. I’d have to.

  It didn’t take us long to find our mark. Using Dr. Marko’s satphone connection, Dawn accessed the internet and hacked a list of the facility’s personnel. A cursory sweep of their social media profiles quickly pulled up an engineer with the right clearances: a Rio native named Paulina, whose beloved sister was an Outcast. Paulina had eagerly embraced my message, posting video after video of people preaching in my name.

  “And I thought I was obsessed with you,” Zack teased, and I was flattered to hear him use such complimentary language.

  “Looks like Paulina’s single, you better watch out,” I joked back.

  I took the computer from Dawn, under the guise of researching Paulina, but was quickly drawn in to the videos Paulina was posting: tons of real-life clerics, all preaching my fake truth. The religion I’d created wasn’t just me now; a thousand strangers had taken my one tiny speech and extrapolated a million unrelated ideas. Whatever they wanted to see in my sermon, they’d found a way to see it—found ways to make my words fit their agendas.

  As had my opponents—loyalists to the original prophets dissected my phrases in their own videos and articles, trying to prove that I couldn’t be communicating any kind of divine truth. The more I watched and read, the more I wondered if anyone had listened to my actual speech, or whether they’d just taken my words and rearranged them to form new sentences with completely different meanings. Though all these misinterpretations made me sick, this access to the world outside was a drug, and after so many weeks without it, I wanted to drink it all in at once.

  While I’d gone silent, in my little bubble, everyone else I knew was speaking for me. Back home, half my former classmates had somehow found their way to news cameras or selfie confessionals to relate stories about me, most of which I didn’t even remember. The time I’d given someone half my dessert in fourth grade, the time I’d worn my shirt inside out. I cringed as they said embarrassing and unkind things, and I glowed with pride as they heaped praise. Now that I was religious royalty, everyone wanted to associate themselves with me—for better or worse.

  There was one notable exception, one person whose absence from the spotlight made my heart heavy: my own father. According to the news, he’d taken a sabbatical from our worship center, become a recluse; no one could find him to comment on my prophetship. What they didn’t say, but I knew, was that he was still furious; he believed I was undermining real divine leadership, that I was worshipping the devil.

  “Is there any way to find my dad?” I asked Dr. Marko.

  “Did you put a GPS chip in him?” Marko joked.

  “Didn’t think of it,” I muttered back.

  “I’m sure he’s okay,” he said, trying to reassure me.

  The thought gave me only a little relief. “I’m sure he is, too. Alive, he just hates me.”

  “No parent hates their child. Ever,” Dr. Marko promised.

  “You haven’t met my parents,” I grumbled.

  He softened, putting on the kind of fatherly tone I’d sorely missed. “We may not see eye to eye with our parents—I
never saw eye to eye with my dad—but they love us, in whatever ways they can. He’ll come around, eventually,” he promised. Though I wanted to believe him, I was afraid of getting my hopes up. As long as I challenged his deeply held beliefs, my father would only see me as a threat, not a daughter.

  While I might not have converted my father, it seemed I’d made a disciple out of my oldest friend; Macy was making the rounds preaching in my name. From what I could glean online, she was giving a sermon a day, traveling all over the world. “She’s been my best friend forever,” Macy gushed into a microphone at a podium, explaining her devotion. “Grace was always so pious, I knew if someone was going to be the next prophet, it’d be her.” It was strange and twisted, seeing how I’d manipulated even the people closest to me.

  “What are you watching?” Zack asked, curious, as he entered my room.

  I showed him. “Your sister’s a guru now. She’s going to hate me when she finds out the truth, isn’t she?”

  Zack smiled widely. “You can ask her yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s here. With us. In the rainforest.”

  9

  “What do you mean, she’s here?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Macy was being targeted by the prophets, for speaking out on your behalf. A lot of people were. The resistance rescued a few of them, got them to safe houses . . . before the last of our safe houses were raided. Like Dr. Marko said, only two people made it out—him and Macy. So when he got our SOS, he figured he’d bring her along. She was pretty sick when she first got here. We didn’t want to worry you. After a couple good meals, she’s doing much better.” The way he said “we” irked me, like he and Dawn were talking behind my back, making decisions on my behalf about what was best for me.

  “She’s my best friend, you should have told me,” I said, annoyed. And hurt to be excluded from his circle of confidence. Once again, I doubted the depth of his feelings for me.