“Well then, I guess this is just for fun.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “Your friend Aviva’s cute.”
In a weird way, Aviva seemed perfect for Zack—pious and employed by a prophet, just like him. I hated how unhappy their potential happiness made me. “She’s not my friend, just a girl I met in class,” I insisted.
“Well, maybe Friday night she’ll be my friend.” He winked, clearly enjoying himself. I wondered if he was trying to make me jealous or, worse somehow, not trying at all.
Either way, I wasn’t going to let him get to me. “Good luck with that,” I said.
A silence settled in, and I couldn’t help but imagine how that date with Aviva might go. I knew I’d lived a somewhat sheltered life, even by the standards of our pious, buttoned-up society, but I did have a sense of what people did on dates. I found myself wondering—had Zack had sex before? The moment I thought it, I kicked myself . . . of course he had. He was twenty-three, good-looking, plenty charming. Before, I might have judged him—though Prophet Joshua had explicitly sanctioned premarital sex, I’d still grown up in a community that looked down on promiscuity.
But now that I knew none of that really mattered, that Great Spirit wasn’t going to judge me the way I expected? I’d started allowing myself to think about those things. Started pushing past the shame and embarrassment I felt, and imagining, wondering what it might be like to experience them myself. But Jude was no longer in my life, and as cute as Zack was, I couldn’t bring myself to think about him like that.
But someone new? The possibility was intriguing. That is, if I could figure out how to get close enough to anyone new, to form any kind of a relationship when I held all these secrets.
As if he was reading my mind, Zack started goading me on. “So come on, where are we going? You’ve got a whole city full of people to meet.”
Was he really just trying to hang out with me? The prospect seemed impossible, and even if I’d wanted to, I had an appointment to get to. “I’m going to bed,” I said politely.
“You’re no fun.”
“Bed sounds plenty fun to me,” I said, then felt my face run hot when I saw his smirk. “That wasn’t an invitation,” I added quickly.
My embarrassment seemed to deeply amuse him. “Noted,” he replied.
When we arrived at my dorm, I made a show of heading upstairs, watching from the window to make sure he was gone. As authentic as our conversation in the diner had seemed, I had to stay vigilant. Zack was not my friend. I left my cell phone in my room, just in case he was tracking my location. Checking again to make sure he wasn’t anywhere outside, I quickly slipped out of the dorm.
When I arrived on the appointed street corner, I eyed all the passersby, looking for whomever I might be meeting. I couldn’t believe how many people were out on the street so late at night. As I examined my options, the answer became obvious: that same woman in the wheelchair was headed straight for me, rolling down the sidewalk with a bit of momentum. Apparently, my meeting was with her.
I was about to say hello, when BAM—without a word, she slammed right into me, the wheel of her chair connecting hard against my shin and bumping me backward into the street, into traffic.
I heard the squeal of tires as I stumbled onto the asphalt, off-balance, trying to regain my footing. But not fast enough.
I spun around to see a taxi coming straight for me, its brakes screeching wildly. I had only a split second to realize what was happening, before the taxi’s bumper made contact; pain shot through my legs, and I found my feet flying out from under me. As my skull slammed into the cold pavement, the world went dark.
9
From the darkness behind my eyelids, I heard voices heading toward me. Felt a hand grab my wrist, take my pulse. In the distance, one car horn, then two, then six.
As I opened my eyes, the outside world seemed black, too, until my vision started to focus, and I saw the half-dozen faces crowding around me. “Are you okay?” “Move your eyes back and forth.”
Was I okay? Though my bruised limbs ached against the rough asphalt, I couldn’t find any other injuries. I was shaking something fierce, but I’d miraculously avoided serious damage or death.
A few feet away, I could hear the taxi driver screaming into a phone. “She just stepped in front of my car!”
I craned my neck, trying to find the woman who’d pushed me into the street—who was she? Who would want me dead? And then I saw her, a few feet away, tears streaming down her face, being comforted by another pedestrian. “You didn’t see her, you couldn’t have stopped it.”
She knew I hadn’t died. And if she’d tried to kill me once, she probably would again. I needed to get away from here, get to safety somewhere.
I tried to stand up, but those Good Samaritans swarmed me, gently pushing me back to the ground. “Just wait here, an ambulance is on the way,” a friendly-looking man said. All these annoyingly pious people, hoping Great Spirit would reward them for doing a good deed I didn’t want done . . .
“I feel fine,” I said, trying to escape, but I couldn’t overpower all of them. I waited helplessly, watching the woman in the wheelchair out of the corner of my eye, terrified of what she might do next. I tried to calm myself: She can’t hurt you while you’re surrounded by all these people. Sirens wailed closer to us, and I breathed a sigh of relief—the EMTs would keep me safe.
I hadn’t been near an ambulance since Jude’s accident, almost three years ago. I’d held Jude dying in my arms, and the same loud wail had burned my eardrums as the EMTs pulled me away from him. As Dawn pulled me away from him, I remembered, letting her cohorts drive him to safety—not to the hospital, but to a new life. That was how she’d built her resistance network, by rescuing people and recruiting them to her cause.
As an EMT loaded me onto a stretcher, it suddenly hit me what was really happening. They rolled me inside the ambulance, and I almost said her name before I saw her, standing with an IV in hand, staring back at me with her familiar, stoic gaze. Dawn.
10
It had been so long since I’d seen Dawn in the flesh, I almost didn’t believe it, even when she was standing right in front of me. She was wearing an EMT uniform, just as she had been when I first met her at the site of Jude’s accident. She didn’t acknowledge she knew me, just continued with her duties, shining a light in my eyes. “Pupils look okay,” she said to her colleagues.
“A few scrapes and bruises, nothing serious,” another EMT told her.
As the ambulance doors closed, her demeanor changed, loosened. “Good. Grace, do you feel okay?”
I sat up. “What on earth is going on?” I demanded. The shock of being hit by a taxi overwhelmed any relief I had at finally seeing her face-to-face again.
“As you might have guessed, I’m under some scrutiny right now, because of Irene. This was the best way to talk to you,” she said unapologetically.
“To throw me into the street and run me over with a car?” I asked, incredulous.
Dawn remained unfazed. “The taxi driver was one of ours, we had people monitoring from every angle to make sure you were okay.” All those Good Samaritans who’d surrounded me, preventing me from leaving—they all worked for Dawn.
“Is Irene okay?” I remembered to ask.
“Yes. I’ve arranged for her to get on a plane overseas tonight—she should be safely out of harm’s way even if Aviva does make her report.”
This was all good news, but I could hear the anxiety in her voice. There was something she wasn’t saying. “You didn’t run me over just to let me know Irene’s safe, did you?”
Dawn sat next to me, putting her words together carefully. “Remember the nanotechnology Dr. Marko told you about?” she asked. “The new technology that was being developed in West Virginia before we stepped in?”
“Right. The research you killed a bunch of scientists to prevent from being finished, how could I forget?” I didn’t hide my contempt about that particular incident.
Dawn’s voice was tense. “Not prevent, delay. Dr. Marko said our actions delayed development by about six months.”
“That’s it?” I asked, incredulous. All those lives lost, and we had only bought ourselves six months. And then I realized: “It’s been more than six months already.”
Dawn nodded. “Once we gained access to the prophet’s computer system with your help—thanks, by the way—we were able to find the blueprints and confirm that the tech is already in production. And now we know exactly what the little bots do.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but Dawn was going to tell me anyway. “The nanotech that’s running through your head right now, it senses your natural feelings of guilt, and in response, it changes physical features of your body—disincentivizing you from taking the action that caused the guilt.”
“Right . . .”
“Well, what if I told you Prophet Joshua could go one step further and actually put new thoughts into your brain?”
The very idea sent a chill through me. “What kind of thoughts?”
“For a start, he could change your motivations, the things you think and feel. Change your perception of reality. These little bugs are so advanced, they can read your thoughts and respond with whatever fits Joshua’s agenda at the moment.”
“Well, that would be bad,” I quipped, grappling with the possibility. It was terrifying to imagine what Joshua might do with that kind of power.
“Yeah, it would be. It would destroy everything we’ve been working for; it would crush every last bit of rebellion and give the prophets complete and total power over all of us. Joshua’s already got a test batch, ready to target people he knows are members of the resistance. A trial run, before releasing it on the public. On the whole world. Airborne, the way we were all infected the first time during the Revelations. You’d never know anything was different.”
Punishments were enough mental manipulation for me, thank you very much. “We have to destroy the new technology, before he can use it—that’s what you’re saying, right?” She nodded. “Where is it?”
“A research facility attached to Regent’s Hospital.”
I noticed one of the other EMTs entering my information into a computer—except that it wasn’t my information at all. Dawn had made me a fake ID, with a fake name. This whole ambulance ride would be nearly impossible to trace back to me. Which was good, since I imagined Zack would be on high alert if “Grace Luther” checked herself into the ER.
“You have a choice,” Dawn said. “Where we go next is entirely up to you. The tech is hidden in a walled-off area below the ER—originally it was a Cold War–era bomb shelter, but it’s been closed up for decades, purchased by the government for storage. Top secret, very difficult to access. I tried getting in there myself, but I couldn’t get past security,” she explained. “I’ve sent in dozens of people since, but no one’s been able to get close enough.”
“But you think I can?” Why on earth did Dawn think I could pull off this mission when she herself hadn’t been able to?
“You have one thing no one else on my team has,” she said.
It took me a moment to realize what she meant. “The ID I got from the prophet,” I said slowly.
“It’s our last shot. Flash it, and there’s a good chance they’ll let you in—that card proves you report directly to the prophet himself, and people are afraid to contradict his orders.”
“Cool,” I said, surprised to hear I wielded so much power.
Dawn was not so enthused. “There’s one problem with this plan. Joshua hasn’t authorized you to enter the storage facility.”
I read between the lines. “You’re saying they’ll let me in, because they’re afraid of Prophet Joshua. But when they check on me later, they’ll know I was lying, and my cover’s blown.” The prospect left me shaking with fear.
“Most likely, yes. Now, I know you were a somewhat reluctant participant in this whole movement to begin with. So maybe this plan kills two birds with one stone for you. This is the most important mission we could possibly task you with. Complete it, and you’re done. We’ll try our best to move you underground before Joshua realizes what’s happened. As long as you make it out of the hospital without being detected, you should be able to leave the country tonight, on the same plane as Irene. But it’s up to you. I won’t force you to put yourself in danger like that.”
I could tell from her voice just how much Dawn, and all of us, had riding on me saying yes. Which is why I felt selfish that I hadn’t said yes yet. As much as I wanted to help, as much as I’d sworn I was willing to risk my life . . . now that it was time to take that risk, I found myself hesitating. “There’s no one else who can do it?”
“No one,” Dawn said, voice hoarse.
My head spun. How could I possibly make a decision this huge so quickly? To never see my father, my friends, ever again. But Dawn’s expectant gaze left me searching for a way to accept, a way to convince myself to do it. “If I agree, it’s the last mission I ever have to go on?”
“That’s right.”
If I did this, I could finally stop living this horrible double agent life. Maybe I could even carry out my plan from six months ago—living a simple life in some idyllic small town. Only . . . the person I’d wanted to live that simple life with was gone. “Where’s Jude?” I asked hesitantly.
“He’s out of the country right now,” she said, a little evasive, “working with some of our international partners.”
“How is he doing? Is he . . .” Safe? Healthy? Furious at me for abandoning him?
“He’s doing just fine,” she said. “I’m sure he’d be glad to hear you’re doing well, too.”
I wanted to ask if Jude could join me when I defected from Joshua’s army, but I was too ashamed. Who knew if Jude would even want that after the way I’d treated him? And I didn’t want Dawn to think my willingness to help depended on a boy. In truth, it didn’t. I might not fully trust Dawn, but I was committed enough to her cause to risk just about anything. I worked up my courage and finally spat out, “I’ll do it.”
She watched me for a moment. “Before you go in there, I need you to know—once your cover’s blown, your life will change completely. Joshua will be gunning for you like never before. You’ll be subject to extreme scrutiny at every border crossing. Even if you leave the country, there’s nowhere on Earth you’ll ever truly be out of his reach.”
“So you’re saying this is dangerous?” I deadpanned, even as my fear threatened to choke me.
Dawn nodded, not in a joking mood. “I won’t think less of you if you choose not to go through with it. Neither would anyone else.”
A thousand thoughts rattled around in my mind. Would this be a repeat of West Virginia, where there was a secret cost to our mission, innocent lives lost because of Dawn’s dishonesty? Or might this be the rare opportunity to shift the tide of this war? I couldn’t reconcile all my doubts, but I knew what my answer had to be.
“Tell me what I have to do.”
11
The plan was relatively simple: I had to gain access to the underground shelter and destroy Joshua’s stockpile of nanotechnology.
I stared at the ceiling warily as the EMTs wheeled me into the hospital, counting the fluorescent lights as they whipped by above me, trying to calm myself. One last mission, one last big risk, and then I could be done. I repeated it to myself like a mantra, hoping that if I thought it enough, it would come true.
The EMTs met with a nurse at the ER entrance, who jotted down facts about my incident. “Hit by a car, potential concussion . . .” It all passed in a blur until the nurse leaned down and touched my hands, which I realized were shaking wildly with fear.
“Potential tremor,” the nurse said as she scribbled on her pad. “Should run some neurological tests.”
The EMTs bumpily settled my stretcher behind a set of rolling blue curtains, nodding a farewell. And the unspoken: Good luck.
I eyed the nurse as she took my vitals. I’d
have to wait for her to walk off, so I could slip away. From here, I’d have to navigate the winding hospital halls to the shelter entrance deep within the building, relying on only my memories of a map Dawn had shown me for five minutes during the ambulance ride. Meanwhile, Dawn’s allies would launch a coordinated cyberattack on the prophet’s online files, destroying every copy of the technology’s blueprints that existed in digital form. If everything went according to plan, we would destroy every hard copy of the tech as well as every offline copy of the instructions needed to create it. Joshua would lose everything and be forced to start over from scratch. If everything went according to plan.
While the nurse was distracted at her station, I hopped off the stretcher and tiptoed behind the blue curtain, slipping through double doors into the main part of the hospital. I wove through hallway after hallway with my practiced look of innocence. No one stopped me; everyone assumed that with my pious face I couldn’t be up to anything nefarious.
Finally, in a secluded area, I slipped into a seldom-used janitor’s closet, and deep within it I found a giant silver door. Well, I knew it was a door. From the point of view of a doctor walking these halls, it looked more like decoration, an odd and dated bit of wallpaper or something. It had no handles, no way of getting inside. This was the secret entrance that hid the modified bomb shelter beneath. I retrieved a silver key card Dawn had given me, which had been stolen from some high-up person at this hospital, or maybe a government official even. All I knew was that more than one person had died so that the resistance could get their hands on it—the weight of that not lost on me.
Once I made sure the coast was clear, I brushed the key card along the edges of the door until I heard a click, and it opened, revealing a staircase. So far, so good. I stepped in and quickly closed the door behind me. The others who had tried this before had also managed this part easily. From here it was uncharted territory—my stomach flip-flopped at the thought.
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