Fearless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  “Oh.”

  I saw real concern cross her face. “. . . Is everything okay?”

  Should I tell her? I couldn’t think of any reason not to. “Your wife told me some things,” I said, staying vague enough to let Dawn speculate on what I might mean.

  But Dawn just sighed. “She’s still mad at me, I assume?”

  “Mad?”

  A look of real sadness crossed Dawn’s face. “She wanted me to come with her to Turkey, and I said I couldn’t. I had things I needed to do for the resistance that I couldn’t do from there. Now she thinks all I care about is my work.”

  I had to admit, that explained a lot. “Was that it?” I asked, suspicious. “Nothing else happened?”

  “Nothing else.” Dawn hesitated, then added, offhand, “Except that I shouldn’t have married her.” So their relationship troubles went deeper than just squabbles over work.

  “Why did you?” I asked, feeling like I’d stumbled into a sinkhole of awkwardness.

  “Because she wanted to marry me, and I knew there was no one alive who would make me happier.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows. “That seems like a good enough reason.”

  “Alive, that was the key word there.” Dawn took a moment to collect herself, then explained, “My first wife, Sonia, she died in the Revelations. Her family had always put a lot of guilt on her, for the way she lived her life. You know, being gay. I thought she’d moved past it, but . . . Anyway, that’s why I never believed the Revelations were real. I knew Sonia was a good person, I knew she’d never done anything wrong. So I started asking questions, and I found someone who, like you, had gotten their hands on some pills. I took them to a chemist, had them analyzed and reproduced, and started my network. Eventually we linked up with a few other networks abroad, and . . . here we are.”

  “How do you know Sonia didn’t do something bad?” I asked, thinking of my mother and Prophet Joshua. “Maybe there were things she hadn’t told you.”

  Dawn shook her head. “I knew her. I’ve never known another human being like that. She was good through and through. And Irene . . . she knows, I think. That I can’t . . . that no matter how much I love her, there’ll always be Sonia. That everything I do, for the resistance, it’s for her.”

  Irene’s evaluation of Dawn was off then—it wasn’t that Dawn was heartlessly slavish to a cause—she was hopelessly devoted to a person who wasn’t Irene. For the first time, Dawn began to shade in as a person for me. She was intensely pragmatic about loss of life because the only human life she valued was already lost.

  But as quickly as Dawn had opened up, she closed off again. “It doesn’t matter what Irene thinks right now. If we don’t act quickly, she’ll be dead right along with us.” I nodded, understanding her focused concern, as we moved toward our gate.

  Once we got on the plane, we couldn’t talk at all, so I was left to stew in my anxiety, infused with the remnants of my mushroom high. For hours, I tried to focus on the saccharinely sweet, Great Spirit–approved onboard entertainment, but I had trouble following it. I kept hallucinating other plotlines, creating imaginary sinister backstories for characters. The plane itself seemed to change shape as we flew, expanding and contracting, and I grew massively nauseated and claustrophobic.

  By the time we landed in South Africa, the shrooms were finally wearing off for real. Dawn had to reexplain our entire plan to me, which she said she’d told me a few times already back in Tel Aviv, and it went something like this:

  My father had already arrived at the spiritual conference in Johannesburg. The biggest draw of this conference was a worship service, held at FNB Stadium. It would be full of music and inspiration, with a sermon given by Prophet Joshua himself, as well as the prophets of other countries. Close to a hundred thousand people would be in attendance.

  “That’s when we have our chance,” she whispered, her voice breathless. “Thanks to you, we succeeded in extracting the code from the source we captured. Now we need to enter it into a specific kind of machine—and one of those machines is hooked up to the ventilation system in FNB Stadium. It’s the same system that was used during the Revelations, to install the nanotech in the first place.”

  I’d always wondered how all these little machines had gotten into our brains, and this made sense. On the day of the Revelations, we’d all been told to go to worship centers—clearly that made it more efficient to infect everyone, by dumping a whole boatload of bugs into the air all at once in one location. The original nanotech had been piped through those stadium vents ten years ago . . . and now, ten years later, we could use the prophets’ own infrastructure against them.

  “The nanotech is like a computer,” Dawn explained. “The bugs you have in your brain are the hardware. But they can be updated with new software. And all those pieces of software are encoded in chemicals that you can inhale. The code you helped us get in Israel-Palestine will create a molecule you can breathe in, which will disable the nanotech in your brain completely. It’s a tiny piece of malicious software that will cause it to turn off and self-destruct, just like it would when you die. A back door in case of malfunction.”

  I spoke slowly, trying to make sure I understood everything. “So you want to disperse this chemical, the software chemical, into a crowd of tens of thousands of random people, to disable the nanotech in their brains?”

  She nodded, continuing at her usual breakneck speed. “Exactly. Once those people have the tech removed, we can tell them the truth—any guilt they feel at doubting their ingrained beliefs won’t kill them. A group that large is dangerous—it doubles the potential size of our fighting force. The prophets of the world will have to deal with it somehow.”

  I was a little skeptical. “Won’t they just kill everyone?”

  Dawn was unmoved. “Assassinate a stadium full of people, at a rally where Prophet Joshua is speaking, and no one gets out alive except the prophets? How would that look?”

  “Not good, I guess.” Though I didn’t think any of the alternatives looked great either.

  Dawn, however, seemed plenty confident in her plan. “We’ll cut off video feeds and cell service right beforehand, creating a ticking time bomb. Joshua can’t let these people back out into the general population, or he risks a chain reaction of deaths—the freed people telling their family and friends the truth.”

  I thought of my father—even with the harshest of warnings, I’d only been able to resist telling him for a few months. No one can keep a secret like that very long from the ones they love. “But we don’t want that either, right? Once they know the truth, we recruit them all into the resistance? Then what?”

  “We ask for a truce.”

  Her words surprised me. “A truce? What about everyone else, the rest of the world that’s still under their control? We just abandon them?” I asked.

  “Not forever,” Dawn promised. “But long enough to save our own skins. We ask the prophets to give us our own country. A piece of land somewhere where we can practice our own religions in peace, cut off from the rest of the world. They have their world, we have ours.”

  That was the grand plan? “You really think Prophet Joshua would give you that?”

  “The resistance has been a thorn in his side for years. We’ve been able to do an enormous amount of damage relative to our size. Our back channels within his office have been whispering that he’s at a breaking point; he’s ready for a ceasefire. The prophets want to maintain their control, even if that means letting a few people live outside it.” For a moment, I saw Dawn’s concern breaking through as she admitted, “And right now, a safe haven is the only thing that can protect the resistance from total annihilation.”

  I thought of the country I’d just come from, Israel-Palestine—a nation created out of the ashes of World War II, intended as a haven for Jews after the Holocaust. I thought of what had happened there between then and the Revelations—the wars, the instability, the oppression. I thought of the armed coup in the bunker, a rem
inder of the past and a harbinger of the future. I thought of the peaceful family breakfasting in Syria, and the terror that had once enveloped their country. Voice shaking, I ventured, “Even if we do it, the plan works, we get a safe haven—how do we know it’ll really stay peaceful? With all those people, all those different religions, won’t we just go back to fighting each other again?”

  “We’ve come too far for that,” Dawn insisted. “After everything this world has gone through—we won’t go back to fighting over petty things. How could we? We’ve learned how to coexist . . . for all the horror the Revelations brought, I believe they did give us that one gift.”

  Based on everything I’d seen in Turkey, I was pretty sure Dawn was wrong, and it was a gift we’d have to return.

  But the future wasn’t the problem right now. Right now, I had to focus on saving our lives. “The only person who can get to this ventilation system is my father?”

  “Any of the clerics backstage could, but he’s the only one we have a connection to. All he has to do is get into the right room and enter a code into a machine.”

  “What if I can’t convince him?”

  “You will,” Dawn said. Insisting on optimism, I knew, because she couldn’t bear to consider that everything she’d worked for might amount to nothing.

  I, however, was consumed by all those negative possibilities. They seemed so much more likely than the remote possibility that this crazy plan would work. “There really isn’t anyone else who can help us . . . ?” I searched through my mind, and then remembered—“What about Zack!”

  I quickly related the story he’d told me, and his interest in helping our side. Dawn’s face grew pitying as I talked, until she finally interrupted me to say, as gently as she could, “Jude told me all this. I looked into him already. Grace, Zack isn’t on our side. He’s the one who turned you in.”

  My heart sank so fast I could almost hear it thudding to the floor. “What?”

  “He reported you to his bosses right after you left. I can show you all the correspondence if you don’t believe me,” she said, her voice still gentle.

  I wasn’t ready to simply accept that explanation. “But someone helped me. Someone got me out of prison in Israel-Palestine.”

  Dawn shook her head. “I don’t know who helped you.”

  “Maybe it was Zack, then. Maybe there’s something we don’t know.”

  Dawn shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. But we don’t have time to find out. Right now, your father’s our best shot.”

  After a moment, I nodded. After my experience with the feuding factions in Turkey, Dawn’s brusque focus was a welcome change.

  Dawn handed me the code to give him, scribbled down on a slip of paper.

  “My dad will help us,” I said softly, trying to reassure her, and myself.

  But I couldn’t shake the question: What would happen if he didn’t?

  Book Six

  1

  Johannesburg was a bright, busy city—a beacon of post-Revelation modernity, safety, and industry. The once stark divide between the rich and the poor had narrowed since the Revelations, and people of all races mingled freely.

  I was antsy as I stepped out in public, remembering stories of the old days during apartheid, when racism had been the law of the land—a time when I wouldn’t have even been allowed to visit white neighborhoods. But as I walked up to my father’s hotel, I felt no animosity from anyone I passed, of any race. In fact, I felt a deep sense of belonging, in this city where so many people looked like me, a belonging I hadn’t even realized I was missing back at home. Though I remembered, Johannesburg’s multiracial paradise had come at a cost—a new kind of legalized apartheid, against Outcasts this time. Indeed, I’d seen many Outcast encampments on my way here—even more ramshackle than the ones at home.

  I waited in the lobby, unobtrusive in a corner, until I finally spotted my father strolling in. He was accompanied by a woman in her forties, a British cleric I recognized who’d begun her career as a New Age mystic. Both here for the conference, I assumed.

  Since I couldn’t find an easy way to signal my father without attracting attention, I followed behind them—as close as I could get without being seen. As they wove through hallways that led into bustling conference rooms, I kept my head down, terrified. Surely there would be someone here who would recognize me as Paul Luther’s daughter—or worse, as Grace, the traitor.

  As the elevator doors closed my father in, I watched the little light above it, blinking yellow as it passed each floor—eventually stopping on the fifteenth.

  I hopped in the next elevator, hitting the button for 15. But just as the doors closed, I noticed a man in a black suit staring at me, speaking into a cell phone. My heart skipped a beat. Was that man working for Joshua, or one of the other prophets? Was I caught? I’d have to do this fast.

  I arrived on the fifteenth floor just in time to see a door closing halfway down the hall. I ran to it and knocked, hoping it was the right one.

  I got lucky. My father opened the door and froze, shocked to see me. “Grace?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, shutting the door behind me, knowing we didn’t have time to waste with pleasantries. “Where’s Samantha, is she here with you?”

  “She’s out sightseeing, giving me time to get ready for my speech. What are you doing here?”

  “I came for the conference.” For a moment, I saw his heart swell—he thought I’d finally given up on my crazy ideas and come here to support him, to cheer him on during his big sermon, to close the distance between us. And now I would have to break his heart all over again. “And no,” I said carefully, “what I believe hasn’t changed.”

  My father’s face fell. “How did you get to South Africa?”

  “I had some help,” I evaded.

  He lowered his voice. “You mean from your . . . ‘friends’? Who are these people? Have you gone to see a psychiatrist yet?”

  “No,” I said, disappointed that my father still trusted me so little.

  “Have you been spouting this nonsense around Prophet Joshua? His office called me with all these questions . . .”

  “What kind of questions?” I asked, heart skipping a beat.

  “When did I last see you, what have you been saying to me . . .”

  My voice shook a little as I asked, “What did you tell them?”

  A strange mix of emotions washed across my father’s face. “Exactly what you told me to say. Nothing.” I’d never loved my father more than in that moment. I hugged him, but he barely returned it; he was busy being full of fatherly concern, intent on questioning me about my whereabouts. “Where have you been?”

  “It’s a long story.” I knew telling him about Turkey wouldn’t win me any brownie points.

  “I’m keeping this quiet for now, but after a certain point, humoring your condition won’t be helpful.” He was still so obstinate, so resolute.

  I tried a new tack: “Are you sure that’s why you lied? Are you sure there isn’t some little part of you that thought I might be right? That I was in danger, and you didn’t want me tortured or killed?”

  He was getting frustrated. “No, Grace, I’m sorry.” He certainly didn’t seem conflicted.

  I pushed harder. “Why not? Leave aside everything you believe about Great Spirit for a second. Everything I’m saying about the way the world works—it could be true, right? Hypothetically?”

  He thought a moment. “I suppose, but you could say the world was . . . run by gremlins from Mars or something, and tell me a story that made sense.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “But if they both make sense, the only difference between my explanation and yours is that yours is the explanation you heard first. And just because you heard it first, just because you’ve decided it’s right—that doesn’t make it true.”

  I could see I’d touched a nerve. “Everyone else in the world believes what I believe, that must count for something.”

  “Plen
ty believe what I believe,” I said. “You just don’t know them. But there are lots, all over the world. And Prophet Joshua is going to kill them all—”

  “Grace . . .”

  “—If you don’t help me.”

  My father was startled. “Help you?”

  That wasn’t the subtle way I’d intended to bring up the plan, but I forged ahead. “Let’s say there was a way to prevent yourself from receiving Punishments and Forgiveness. And Great Spirit’s fine with it, it’s not like you’re making a deal with the devil,” I added in a rush. “If you did that thing, you could decide, without being afraid, if you believed me, or you believed Prophet Joshua. You wouldn’t have to worry about feeling guilty and dying because you doubted Great Spirit. Right?”

  My father was clearly only half following me, but he said, “Okay . . .”

  “Would you be willing to do that? To yourself?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  I was getting riled up. “If I’m crazy, nothing will happen if you help me, right? You have nothing to lose.”

  But my father was barely listening to me. “I can’t say what will happen, because I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  I interrupted him, determined to make him hear me. “There’s a device that releases a gas. You type in a little code, and you breathe in the gas, and then all the little computers in your brain are gone. If I’m right, once that happens, you’ll never be Punished or Forgiven again.” I saw on his face what I thought might be a moment of consideration. A moment of understanding. I carefully suggested, “Would you be willing to do it? Just to humor me?”

  “I guess,” my father said warily, clearly only down for the humoring me part. “Where’s this device?”

  I sighed with relief. For the first time, it finally seemed like this plan was on track. “In the stadium.”

  My father looked at me suspiciously. “Why is it there?”

  “Because it was used to infect a bunch of people with the nanotech in the first place. It’s hooked up to the air ducts, to get to everyone in the stadium.” The moment I’d said it, I realized I’d made a huge mistake.