Ruthless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked.

  Dawn took a deep breath. “We need you to be your mother.”

  6

  Before I could ask for more details, Dawn handed me a parachute pack. “Put this on.”

  I stared at her, incredulous. “You want me to go skydiving again? No way. I didn’t love it the first time.” Every cell in my body rebelled at the idea of leaving this plane.

  “Sorry, but the prophets will be tracking the airfields near here. If we want to get out alive, this is our only option.” I glanced over at the Outcast pilot, horrified. If this plane was going down, was he going down with it?

  Dr. Marko followed my gaze and said softly, “He agreed to this going in. We needed someone willing to accept whatever consequences arose, and . . . he’s still willing to do anything for you. One of the few left.” I felt ill at the thought of yet another human being sacrificing their life for me, dying for a lie.

  I’d done enough lying. “I’m not willing to let him do that.”

  Dawn stepped in this time, trying to reassure me, “He’ll take the plane as far as he can and then jump himself. Hopefully the prophets won’t find him. But if they do, maybe it’ll be before they find us. Give us a bit of a head start.”

  Her words, careful as they were, still twisted my stomach with guilt. But as I looked down at the rolling green hills below us, I realized Dawn was right—if we wanted to have any chance at finishing our mission, this was our only way out. “Okay,” I relented, taking the harness from Dawn. What was one more life on a conscience that already bore the burden of so many lost lives?

  “You’ve come this far,” Jude said, reassuring. “We’ll get you to safety.”

  Thankfully I wouldn’t be alone in the air this time—Jude strapped himself into the two-person harness with me and showed me how to work the parachute, which thankfully existed this time. “Don’t worry, I’ll be the one to pull it,” he promised. My heart fluttered a little to be this close to him. And I was relieved that finally, my thoughts and feelings were mine alone.

  My heart fluttered much more wildly as we stepped to the edge of the plane, looking down at the ground so far below us. “Ready?” Jude asked me.

  “You’ve done this before, right?” I asked him.

  “At least once more than you,” he joked, trying to be reassuring. I’d been so grateful to have two feet perched on something solid again; everything inside of me resisted going back to free fall. But I knew I had two choices—jumping now, or jumping when our plane was under fire from the prophets.

  I tried to exterminate my fears. “Ready,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  I wasn’t sure if I could will my feet forward, but then I heard Jude’s steady, “One, two, three,” and suddenly we were jumping.

  I closed my eyes as we hurtled toward the earth, my stomach flip-flopping, the wind whipping my hair everywhere. My body ached—I just wanted it to be over, to be safely back on the warm ground again. But then, Jude pulled the parachute, yanking us out of free fall, and suddenly the wind slowed.

  I opened my eyes to see the Tuscan landscape below us. On the edge of the horizon, the first few rays of sunrise were beginning to peek through, and I watched as the pink light slowly crept up the edges of the sky below us. “It’s beautiful,” I said. Jude squeezed my hand, and for a moment I forgot how cold I was, forgot how scared I was, how much my body was hurting. For a moment, up here, I was safe, with someone I loved. I had no idea when or how that might happen again, so I decided to enjoy this brief moment of peace. In truth, there was nowhere else in the world I would have wanted to be.

  We slowly floated down to a field crisscrossed with dark lines, a vineyard, I discovered as we grew closer. “Brace yourself,” Jude told me, but I still wasn’t ready for the force of the earth moving up to meet us—a heavy smack against the soles of my bare feet. I clung to Jude, trying to keep from losing my balance, and he steadied us. As our motion stilled, I took a deep breath. “I guess we’re alive,” he said with a grin.

  My heart was still pounding, but I felt a sense of deep relief. “That was easier than last time,” I muttered, removing my harness and readjusting my sequined dress.

  “You’ve had a busy day,” he joked, gathering up our parachute.

  I scanned the horizon and saw an unfamiliar car driving toward us with its lights off. An instinctive shot of dread whipped through me. Had the prophets found us already? I prodded Jude’s arm, alerting him, and we ducked behind the grapevines—not much cover, but better than nothing, in case it was an enemy.

  The car stopped near us, engine still running, and I heard a car door slam. I looked at Jude—should we run? But then I saw the familiar figure walking toward us—it was Zack. Our getaway vehicle. Energized, I stood up straighter, limping toward the car with aching limbs that felt like they’d aged decades in a matter of hours.

  Jude put an arm around me to help me move, as Zack ran to meet us, putting an arm around my other side. “Have they spotted us?” Jude asked Zack.

  Zack’s face remained expressionless. “Hard to tell. We seem to be in the clear, but we’ve been outplayed before.”

  As we approached the car, I saw a second figure in the driver’s seat—my father. I broke away from Jude and Zack, ignoring the pain, limp-running toward the car. “Dad!” He opened the door and hopped out to hug me. As he wrapped his arms around me, I started crying. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been missing my father’s love and approval.

  “Grace. I’m so glad you’re okay . . .”

  “Thank you for believing me,” I said, choking up.

  “Took me long enough,” he said, and in that moment all my anger at him was erased. I had my father back, finally.

  “We need to move,” Jude said as politely as he could. We loaded ourselves into the car, as my dad took the wheel again, hurtling off down this winding rural road.

  “Where are Dawn and Dr. Marko?” I asked.

  “Macy spotted them in the air not far from here,” Jude said. “She’s on her way to pick them up now. We’re reconvening at a castle nearby.”

  “A castle?” Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any weirder.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking,” Jude said.

  When we arrived, I discovered it was indeed a castle only in a manner of speaking. The roof had long ago collapsed, and it was covered by a tarp to keep out the rain, which was only sort of working; the floor was sticky with mud. “I feel like a princess,” I joked as we entered.

  “Sorry this isn’t up to the luxury of your private jets,” my father ribbed me back.

  Thinking of that jet reminded me: “Dad, did they tell you who took me on it?”

  My dad’s face grew dark. “I still don’t quite believe it. I wouldn’t have, but they showed me a picture they took of her in captivity in Redenção.”

  “I wanted to tell you so badly,” I told him. “Back in Johannesburg.”

  My father admitted, “I wouldn’t have believed you. I was so angry at you, for making fools of everyone, pretending to be a prophet. I couldn’t face the fact that I was the fool.”

  “No more a fool than the rest of us,” I reassured him.

  My father nodded. “I decided the only way to stop being one was to admit that I was one.” Before he could say anything else, we heard another car drive up—it was Macy, with Dawn and Dr. Marko in tow.

  “We did it!” Macy crowed excitedly.

  As they entered, Dr. Marko’s hair was wild and askew, and he seemed overwhelmed. “I never want to do that again,” he said.

  “Try doing it without a parachute,” I said bitterly.

  Dawn, however, was already back to business. “Are we all here? Let’s get started.” Our little castle went silent, as Dawn unfurled blueprints of St. Peter’s Tower. “We need to get in here.”

  “How?” I asked, skeptical. “That place is crazy secure. Guards on every level.”

  “That’s why we need your mother
’s help to get in. That is, you, posing as your mother.”

  I considered it. “I don’t know if I can pull it off. Even under a burqa, won’t they be able to tell I’m someone else?”

  “Maybe they won’t look too closely,” Jude suggested.

  “I’ll try,” I said unconvincingly.

  “What are we searching for once Grace gets inside?” my father asked.

  Dr. Marko chimed in, “Well, one of the things Grace wasn’t privy to, when she was the mole and we were keeping information from her, is I’ve spent the past few weeks developing a virus that will rewrite the code of the nanotech in our heads. The problem is, I don’t have the source code for the bugs themselves. I need that to implement the virus.”

  “How do we know the source code is at St. Peter’s Tower?” I asked.

  “Your mother let us see through your eyes when you were inside,” Zack explained. “And in the process, we figured out where we can access the source code, on an advanced nanofabricator. We need you to use it to create Dr. Marko’s virus, then smuggle it back out.” I remembered the heavily guarded hallway my mother had whisked me past—I had a hunch that was the location my friends were referring to.

  I considered . . . could my mother have given us that lead as bait? “And what if they’re ready for us?”

  Dr. Marko stared at me soberly. “Then you’ll have to move quickly. The moment you rewrite the code, you’ll have only a short window to get outside.”

  This was it, our last chance, and it rested entirely on me. I hoped that this time I wouldn’t let everyone down.

  7

  We drove back into Rome in the middle of rush hour, camouflaging ourselves among the thousands of other commuting cars. The closer we got to Vatican City, the more my stomach filled with dread. I ducked down in the back seat, worried the prophets might be searching for anyone who matched the description of the disgraced missing prophet. Or for any of us, really. My father turned on the car radio, and we listened for news reports of my startling escape. Surely a teenage girl shooting into the sky would make headlines? But somehow my mother had kept a lid on mainstream Italian media sources at least. I guessed those drones in her office had something to do with that.

  My father parked the car a half mile from the gates of Vatican City. “You’ll need to go by foot from here,” Zack told me.

  “Where is Esther right now?” I wondered. This plan wouldn’t work if I crossed paths with her.

  I could hear the fear in Jude’s voice. “We aren’t sure. Maybe in Vatican City somewhere. Maybe in Timbuktu.”

  “So luck, we’re betting on luck here,” I said darkly.

  Zack handed me a small comms device, which I placed inside my ear. “So we can communicate while you’re in the field.”

  I looked at these three men, who all meant so much to me, and felt them giving me strength. “Get back safe,” my father told me. Worry was etched deep into his voice; this was his first resistance mission after all. And his first time watching his daughter walk into mortal danger.

  “I’ll get back with what we need,” I promised him.

  I left Zack and my father behind as Jude walked with me toward an alley, handing me a burqa. “Layla’s parting gift. She sewed it herself.”

  I’d been wondering where Layla was but hadn’t found an appropriate moment to ask. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

  Jude hesitated, and I saw the answer on his face. “She wanted to stay behind with her family. She felt like we had enough help here. And . . . well, because of the fallout, after what she saw in your mother’s files, that you were thinking . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “No,” he admitted. “It wasn’t just you. She didn’t leave because of you, I mean. She left because of me.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Oh.”

  He seemed almost bashful, nervously gauging my expression as he spoke. “She knew how I felt about you. I think she always knew, hoped it would fade. I hoped it would fade. But after all this time . . . Ten years from now, twenty years from now . . . I guess some part of me will always love you.”

  I couldn’t quite believe those words had just escaped his mouth. I wanted to grab him, hug him. “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  He took my hand, face pained. “Right now, all that matters is you get back to us, safe.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised him. A part of me wished I didn’t know what he’d just told me, that I didn’t have a reason to want to survive this mission. Because the truth was, there was a decent chance that the fate of the world rested on me making a sacrifice that would keep me from Jude forever.

  With an encouraging brush of my arm, he was off, retreating back to the car, and I ached, watching him go. But I knew, nothing I felt for him mattered unless our plan succeeded. I steadied myself, slipping the burqa over my head. It matched my mother’s exactly—Layla had done a great job replicating it. I felt a pang of guilt and gratitude for my friend, whom I’d unwittingly hurt, wondering if I’d ever see her again.

  As I walked toward the Vatican, the thick black fabric blocked the sun’s rays. After being so cold flying through the air, it was a welcome change to overheat. I pushed through the throngs of tourists to the entrance of Vatican City. Gripping my fake key card with sweaty fingers, I approached the gate, nodding to the guard with an imitation of my mother’s melodic, authoritative tone. “Morning, Tomas.” I wondered if he remembered me walking through this door with my mother only days earlier. If he did, he didn’t recognize me—my performance was fooling him so far.

  I did my best to mimic my mother’s crisp, efficient gait as I moved to the door and swiped my key card, which obviously didn’t work. Pretended to be startled when the knob didn’t turn. Glanced back at Tomas, letting him look into my eyes; I knew I had my mother’s eyes, and filling them with her cold annoyance completed the picture. Without looking at me too closely, Tomas nervously pressed a button. I heard the door unlatch. “Morning, Esther.”

  He couldn’t see my victorious smile beneath the burqa as I stepped inside. So far, as long as I acted like I belonged, I looked enough like I did to pass through without being hassled. Thankfully, the most important people in the prophets’ organization weren’t subject to the same levels of scrutiny as mere mortals.

  But as I stepped inside the gates, my insides twisted up as I saw her: Esther, across the square, walking toward me. The moment I’d most feared was happening already. Our plan was about to fail.

  8

  “She’s here,” I whispered into my comms.

  “Already?” Zack asked, distressed. None of us had expected to encounter Esther so soon.

  My voice shook as I confirmed, “Walking across the square toward me.”

  “Hang by the doors, we’ll need you to let in backup.”

  “Copy,” I said, hoping that loitering near the entrance wouldn’t attract too much attention. Would Esther spot me as easily as I’d spotted her? In our all-black attire, we stuck out like sore thumbs.

  “Now,” I heard Zack’s voice say a few moments later, and I opened the door I’d just walked through to see my father heading toward the entrance, eyed suspiciously by the guard.

  “Peter!” I said brightly, thinking of the first fake name that popped into my brain. I wished I’d thought of one that wasn’t also the name of the building we were about to break into.

  “Esther!” he said, and we shook hands like old colleagues as I held the door open for him. The guard’s suspicions seemed assuaged, and I let my father inside the gates.

  “Go get her,” I whispered, hanging back behind a nearby building, watching from out of Esther’s sight.

  My father was still a few yards away when Esther spotted him and stopped in her tracks. “Valerie!” he called out, anger in his voice. She immediately turned tail, walking in the opposite direction, as he stalked her across the square. “Valerie, I know that’s you!”

  As
much as I wanted to watch my parents’ long overdue confrontation, I knew my father’s presence here would raise suspicions all on its own. My father’s job was to distract Esther, play on her emotions. To keep her from turning him in, and from thinking about why he might be here, besides to witness the aliveness of the wife who’d faked her death.

  My job was to get into St. Peter’s Tower. There would be no guard to social engineer at its entrance, and my key card wouldn’t get me to where I needed to go. Panic bloomed inside me. What if I couldn’t do this? But as I waited for the elevators, I noticed the respectful looks of other employees standing next to me. They bought my disguise completely. Why wouldn’t they? Who’d expect an impostor beneath her uniform, especially one whose eyes looked like hers?

  I remembered to act important as I strode onto the elevator, taking a spot in the back. “Which floor?” someone asked, and I gestured to the top, giving a slow little wave like the one I always remembered my mother making. Without even saying the number, I’d gotten a drone to swipe me onto the top floor.

  When I emerged onto the mezzanine, I moved quickly. Ignoring the mass of drones at their monitors below, I swung by my mother’s office, grabbing a set of keys from her desk drawer.

  Then I headed straight for the heavily guarded hallway I’d noted the first time I was here, moving toward the room where Dr. Marko had said I’d be able to clone the tech. My disguise as Esther allowed me to move unfettered past the rows and rows of doors that lined the hall. According to their intel, I was looking for a green one.

  But when I approached that door, I found an armed guard waiting, eyeing me suspiciously. My breath caught in my throat; this man wasn’t simply going to step aside. The tech controlling his brain would force him to follow instructions to a letter. “What are you doing here?”