When we got close to Mohammed’s suite, our leader nodded to me. Is this the place? I nodded back.
We took a collective inhale of anticipation. I could see in my compatriots’ eyes that this wasn’t a new experience for just me. None of these people looked battle tested. Unlike Max’s army, we hadn’t trained together, hadn’t prepared for this. Our odds seemed slimmer and slimmer with every step we took.
But it was too late to back out now. Our leader threw his weight against the door, and as it fell down, a hail of gunfire rang out. From my spot at the back of the pack, I could see bright muzzle flashes, I could smell the smoke wafting out of that room.
The screams were loud, but the gunshots were louder, rattling my eardrums with an endless fury. On my tiptoes, peering over the heads of the people in front of me, I could see hostages fleeing for cover, Originalist gunmen falling.
But Jude. Where was Jude? I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him, or Layla either. My finger tightened around the trigger as I imagined the worst. Tried to stay focused. If I wanted to see Jude again, I needed to stay alive, too.
As the group in front of me moved into the room, I took cover at the doorframe and peered in, gun up, prepared to shoot. Eyes peeled for Originalist gunmen in their tactical gear, for anyone who might be targeting me.
But the battle was already over, before I’d even crossed the threshold. My breath caught in my throat as I took in the slaughter splayed out around me. Our leader, that bald, burly guy, lay dead on the ground—but so did all the masked men. We’d won.
I picked my way into the room, surveying the scene. Jude. Where was Jude? In all the chaos, the crying, I didn’t see him. I still couldn’t find him.
My eyes roved across each of the dead and wounded bodies, feeling a sick kind of relief with each face that wasn’t Jude’s. The atheist army moved from hostage to hostage, freeing them from their bonds . . . the ones who were alive, anyway. The Sikh man who’d handed me a glass of champagne earlier was unmoving at my feet. The secularist leader, Ariana Dupont, lay still against the wall, a bullet drilled through her forehead, execution style. I wondered if that was the shot I’d heard right before I ran for help. I saw Layla’s brothers—one applying pressure to the other’s wounded stomach. Mohammed, hugging a sobbing Layla, whose face was beaten and bruised.
But no Jude. I could feel my chin begin to quiver as tears fell. Where was he? Was he dead, caught in the cross fire? Had we just killed my best friend?
“Grace?” I turned to find the voice . . . but it was Max, on the ground a few feet from me, his eyes boring into me with the deepest hatred. A pool of blood spilled out of his stomach. Someone had confiscated his gun, but I was certain his glare was enough to kill me outright.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say to the man who’d freed me. Who’d saved my life, even while trying to harm so many others. I was afraid of whatever he might say next . . . but nothing came next. He was dead.
11
I stared in horror at Max’s lifeless eyes. Wishing desperately that they’d fill up with that hatred again, be full of anything again. But Max was gone.
I tore myself away. Jude. I still hadn’t found Jude. He could still be alive, somewhere in this carnage.
I picked my way through the bodies, glancing at each face with apprehension. Would this one be Jude? That one? But the faces I saw went with hands that held guns—soldiers, not hostages.
As medics streamed in, doctors who’d been called for help, I was close to giving up the search, when I heard a voice.
“Over here!” Jude’s voice. I turned to see him, covered in blood, calling to a medic . . . As I followed the medic over, I saw Jude stooped behind an overturned table where he’d been caring for a fallen hostage, one of Mohammed’s political allies. “She’s unconscious, but she’s breathing,” Jude told the medic. “I used a piece of my shirt to tie a tourniquet, but she’s lost a lot of blood . . .”
As the medic went to work, Jude finally looked up and saw me. I ran to him, as he turned to meet me. The slow, stilted way he was moving worried me. “Are you okay?” I asked him.
He nodded. “A couple bruises, nothing too bad.” I saw relief in his eyes now, too, and gratitude. “Your friend wouldn’t let them shoot me.” He nodded to Max’s body, and I felt a new wave of conflicted guilt.
“I asked him not to,” I admitted. Jude hugged me, as the shock and horror of it hit me all at once. I whispered, rambling, “I know he was awful, but I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want any of these people to die . . .”
Jude shook his head, not willing to let me wallow in my misery. “If your rescuers hadn’t come when they did, Layla would have been next.”
I nodded as I looked to Layla’s shaking form, now huddled with her mother, watching one of the doctors carry away her brother. “Is he going to be okay?” I asked Jude.
“I think so. There are others wounded much worse.”
Across the room, I saw Mohammed conferring with one of his advisers. He looked up, and they both briefly made eye contact with me—then quickly looked away.
Jude tugged on my sleeve. “We should go. Let the medics do their job.” I nodded—I didn’t want to be in this room one second longer.
But as we moved for the exit, the room went silent, as we saw Mohammed, standing solemnly, as though preparing to give a speech. But he didn’t . . . he just uttered a few, quiet words. “Call everyone to the meeting room.” He paused, his eyes full of fury. “Everyone.”
12
As Jude and I followed the hushed crowd back to the meeting hall, my anxiety brewed. I’d seen death, I’d been trapped in a carton full of dead scientists, I’d taken the life of that guard. But I’d never held a gun in my hands, prepared to kill another human being, and that unnerved me like nothing else. I felt like I was tumbling off a cliff, falling deeper and deeper into a kind of evil and sinfulness I’d never thought I was capable of.
I’d always known I lived in a utopia, a world stripped of the violence and misery people once assumed was inevitable. When I’d promised to help Dawn restore things to the way they used to be, I knew I was dooming all of us to return to that same violence and misery. But now that I was actually faced with it, I wasn’t at all sure our goal was worth fighting for.
When we arrived in the meeting hall, Jude warily eyed the crowd. “Will there be more violence?” I asked. “Will Mohammed retaliate?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and I could tell he had no clearer idea than I did what might come next.
The room buzzed as Mohammed walked in, his family following somberly behind him. His voice was steady, containing his anger. “Tonight, an army tried to overthrow me, by taking my family hostage. Those men are now dead. The man who incited them, Reverend Graham, is under arrest, as are his accomplices. We do not have time to fight among ourselves. The people who live above us are not free. It is our responsibility to help them. And we must work together.
“I know some of you are waiting to see what I will do, how I will take my revenge. But I’m not going to do that. I will not ask for penance. We must move forward, to survive. We must defeat the prophets, because I can see as well as you can that this alliance we have, it’s not going to last forever.
“This is why winning this war as soon as possible, before we tear ourselves apart, must be our highest priority. And I have a plan.”
He was all politician now as he walked toward Jude and me. “The answer has been standing among us all along, someone with the tools to help us take down the prophets for good.” Mohammed stopped a few feet from me and looked me in the eye. “Grace Luther, will you step forward?”
I froze, as everyone in the room looked around, confused. Most people had no idea who Grace Luther was. I turned to Jude, desperate for help, but he reluctantly nodded his head from me toward Mohammed, a gesture that meant, Go on.
I nervously took a step or two forward. “Where are you from, Grace?” Mohammed asked.
“Tutelo,�
�� I said by rote. Then remembered to say, “In Virginia, America.”
“And which god do you believe in, Grace?”
I hesitated before admitting, “Great Spirit.” I could tell Layla had told him to expect that answer, because his face showed no surprise, unlike the rest of the crowd.
“You worked for the American prophet, Joshua, no?”
The crowd’s interest in me grew even more intense. “I was undercover,” I explained, “but my cover is blown.” Many seemed not to know that particular English idiom, so I explained, “Joshua knows I’m working with you guys. Or he will soon.”
“We can help with that,” he reassured me.
I looked back at Jude, a little desperate. “I thought I was supposed to lie low.” Looking back to Mohammed, I translated, “I’m supposed to hide, so I don’t implicate anyone else. If they catch me, it could be bad for everybody.”
Mohammed seemed confused. “You would turn in your friends?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I stammered.
Mohammed seemed tired of my wavering. “Are you willing to help us, to follow the orders you’re given, or not?” he asked.
“I . . . Okay,” I said timidly, not sure how I felt about wading into the mess of politics down here. “What do you want me to do?”
But Mohammed returned his focus to his assembled followers. “You will help Grace with her mission. All of you. We have one enemy. Anyone who forgets that is no longer welcome in this refuge.”
And with that, he exited the room, leaving a crowd of people staring at me warily. I looked to Jude, terrified. “What am I going to have to do?”
Jude’s trembling voice did nothing to ease my fears. “I have no idea.”
13
I could tell Jude was keeping something from me, some piece of knowledge about what Mohammed’s strange declaration might mean. I tried to find a moment to corner him privately, but as soon as the meeting ended, Layla arrived by his side. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Jude asked, stroking her cheek. They were in their own little world, completely focused on each other, and suddenly I felt invisible.
I excused myself, trying to be polite—Layla had just gone through something traumatic, and I didn’t want to keep Jude from her. As I walked back to my room, I was inclined to listen to that voice constantly tugging at me to bolt from this place . . . but I didn’t know where I’d even go, what I’d do, so far from everyone I knew.
I thought Jude would come and find me later, but he didn’t. I tried not to be angry—going to comfort his ex couldn’t be high on his to-do list after everything that had happened. I tried to sleep, but failed miserably. How could I stop my brain from agonizing after everything that had just happened?
I couldn’t get Max’s lifeless eyes out of my head. Not because I’d felt some great bond with that violent man, but because I felt like whatever kindness had existed between us, I’d betrayed it. He was dead because of me, because I’d lied and exploited his feelings of connection toward me and used what I knew to arm his killers.
I tried to shake off the guilt. Max was dead for one reason: because he’d threatened my best friend. He’d made the decision to be part of a violent uprising, and the consequences fell on him, and him alone.
But as I tried to force out Max’s visage, it morphed—Max’s lifeless eyes became the lifeless eyes of the guard in the bunker. Had his face held that same empty stare? Or, I shuddered to think, maybe there hadn’t been any face left intact after the explosion. I wondered what his final moments must have been like . . . the frantic searching through boxes, interrupted by the sudden heat, the noise, and then . . . whatever it is that comes next. The Universal Theology had taught me of so many possibilities that might come after death, but it gave me no comfort to imagine the guard living in any of them.
And ironically, his death might have been the thing that saved my life. He couldn’t identify me, couldn’t speak my name to Joshua, and that had given me time to leave the country, even with the delay I’d taken to search for my mom. The relief I felt, thinking of how lucky I’d gotten, made the guilt sting even worse.
As I lay awake, tossing and turning with my own inner torment, the halls around me began to quiet, until eventually, everything was silent. Restless, I tiptoed out of my room and moved through the compound, wandering until my heart stopped at the sight of a familiar door—I’d ended up back in the Muslim quarter, at the scene of the crime. But now, its wailing terror had faded into an eerie silence. Everyone seemed to be sleeping, or hiding.
Except, apparently, one person, a voice behind me. “Grace?”
I jumped, startled, then turned, relieved to see it was Jude, padding toward me in his pajamas. “I didn’t think you’d be awake.”
“The time change is still killing me, too,” he said. “Hard to adjust when there’s so little natural light coming in.”
“The time change, the constant state of panic. Yeah, I’m with you,” I said. Had he come looking for me? What other reason could there be for him to be roaming around the women’s side of the Muslim quarter . . . no, I knew the explanation. He was coming from Layla’s room—no wonder he was eager to blame his presence on jet lag. I tried to push that thought from my mind, not imagine what they might have been doing in there.
He eyed me with concern. “You ran off, right after the meeting. I was worried about you. Are you okay?”
Not wanting to vent my feelings about his new relationship, I dove into the larger problem that was consuming me. “What was that back there? Why would Mohammed pick me out of all the people here?”
“You did work for Prophet Joshua . . . maybe it’s just strategic.” But I could tell Jude didn’t really believe what he was saying—he was holding something back for my sake.
“Or . . . what?” I asked, nervous about what the answer might be.
He tried to speak as delicately as he could, but I could hear his worry building. “Well, you’ve seen the kind of conflict we have here. It’s tough to balance all these different points of view. Make people think they’re being treated fairly. Sometimes people from opposing parties think Mohammed’s protecting his base, the people who vote for him, at their expense. And right now, after everything that happened . . . maybe Mohammed wants to make sure everyone knows he’s not going to do that. You know, to protect his family, he has to make a show of being fair, of not retaliating against his enemies.”
I said what Jude was afraid to say. “So if someone has to die, better that it’s someone neutral.”
“Basically.”
My voice quaked. “Whatever my mission is—you think it’s a suicide mission?” Panic surged through me—maybe I should have run when I had the chance.
Jude saw how freaked out I was and walked his statement back. “Maybe. There’s no way to know. I already sent a message to Dawn. If you’re in danger, she can help you. I don’t have much power here, especially since . . .”
“Layla,” I filled in for him.
“Yeah, like I said, I’m not Mohammed’s favorite. But Dawn has some sway. If you need to be protected, she’ll do everything she can to help.”
“Thanks.” But though he spoke in smooth, calming tones, his words did nothing to calm the new fear brewing inside me.
I could tell he felt bad about upsetting me. “And I’ll do everything I can to help. You know that, right?”
“You’ve saved me enough times, I’ve gotten the hint,” I said, jabbing him in the arm playfully.
“Good,” he said, suddenly serious. He took my hand, and my heart fluttered in spite of myself. “I don’t want you to think I stopped caring about you or something,” he said quietly.
“I know you didn’t,” I said, breathless.
His voice stayed quiet, measured. “I didn’t want to lead you on, I didn’t want to be unfair to Layla, but I don’t want to do the opposite either. I don’t want to shut you out. I don’t want you to think that what we had meant nothing to me.”
I could feel the tears gathering behind my eyes, eager to spill out. “It meant something to me, too,” I whispered.
“That night . . .” He paused, composed himself, and then continued, “The night you didn’t show up . . . Look, I’ve had a lot of bad nights. Tonight was one of them. But that night back in Tutelo . . . it was hard.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, my heart breaking.
“Dawn told me why you stayed, and I got it. I get it. I’m glad you did that. But I’d spent so much time alone, away from everyone I loved, and I just had this moment where I thought, maybe things could be different. Anyway, I’ve been trying not to think about it, I’ve been trying not to lay that on you, but . . . if I’ve seemed rude, or cold . . . I don’t want you to think I’m mad, or that I forgot, you know . . . everything great about you.”
“Thank you,” I said, moved. Then, I wondered aloud, “This isn’t just because I’m gonna die, is it?”
“Grace . . .” Jude warned.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, it’s not.” He squeezed my hand tighter. “You’ll be okay. You’ll survive this. And then I’ll see you back in Tutelo, or New York, or D.C., or I don’t know . . . Tokyo, who knows.”
I smiled. “And everything will be better.”
“Yeah,” he said, enjoying our little fantasy.
“Back to normal. Simple again.” Back to the way things were before the crash.
He nodded. “Don’t lose hope, okay?”
I fixed him in the eye. “How could I stop hoping for that?”
He held my gaze, not breaking away, and my heart ached, as I imagined three years ago, his truck rounding the corner . . . but instead of crashing into that sedan, missing it. The two of us continuing on to that prayer rally. Jude finishing whatever it was he was going to say—telling me how he felt, maybe. Me telling him what I’d been feeling. Prom. Spending the summer in love. And then . . .
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