Ruthless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  Tears rolled down my cheeks—he might have been talking about falsified transgressions, but I knew all the real crimes I’d committed. Ones far worse than he could imagine. Again, it was the truth in his words, not the falsehoods, that pierced to my core.

  I glanced behind me to see that my tail was grinning ear to ear, as patrons filmed every word of our fight on their cell-phone cameras. Being berated by my own father at an Outcast dive bar? This was playing perfectly into my mother’s narrative. At the very least, I knew I had a moment of reprieve, here with my father. “Dad, I need your help,” I begged him, eyes still wet with tears.

  He shook his head futilely. “How can I help you? With what you’ve become?” His voice cracked as he said, “My little girl . . .”

  “Dad . . .”

  But he wouldn’t let me finish, too busy drowning himself in nostalgia. “It feels like just yesterday that I was taking you to ballet, watching you help your mother in the garden.”

  My mother, I could tell him about my mother. “Mom, she’s not . . .”

  But again, he interrupted me. “Do you remember, after she died, how we tried to keep her garden going?”

  I did, and it was one of my more bitter memories, especially now that I knew she hadn’t died at all. After my mother’s supposed death, seeing her flowers withering in the backyard had been a constant reminder of her absence. Even though I had no skills, no experience, nine-year-old me had set about trying to make them grow again. “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  “And the hydrangeas, you kept replanting, and replanting, but they kept dying. And you were just inconsolable, like if you could make those hydrangeas grow, you could bring your mother back. I kept telling you, plant them a little deeper. Dig deeper. We tried so hard, we almost dug up the whole backyard. But we were never going to make those hydrangeas grow. And I realized, sometimes we have to accept defeat. I’ve accepted defeat, now. I thought I could bring you back into the fold, help you purge your sinful ways, but . . .”

  I grabbed him by the arms, interrupting his frustrating ramblings about flowers. “Dad. I need your help. Please. You don’t understand; Mom is alive . . .”

  My father pulled away before I could finish. “I can’t hear another one of your crazy stories. I’m sorry.”

  “Dad! Listen to me.” I remembered how I was dressed, how I must appear to him, and shame overtook me. He was never going to listen.

  My father finally looked up and noticed all the cameras filming us. “I can’t be here,” he stuttered, backing away from me. Of course, even in a moment like this, he had to think of his reputation. I followed him out the door of the bar, only to be greeted by flashbulbs; a mob of paparazzi, as promised. Startled, I took a step back, and in that moment my father disappeared into the crowd. Reporters were bearing down on me, laughing at my tearstained face.

  I ducked back inside, trying to compose myself. Though my dad had been dismissive before, it had never been like this. He’d just given up on me when I needed it most. I knew he thought this was tough love, letting me hit rock bottom, but it didn’t feel like love at all. I’d been on this side of his concern, his judgment, his pity . . . but never his disdain. I was wrecked. Both my parents had abandoned me in the span of just a few days. I’d lost touch with my friends, alienated my allies, and ruined my reputation. I had nothing left and nowhere to turn.

  Except back to my tail, the smirking CIA agent. He walked up to meet me, flanked by two more men in matching black suits. I was surrounded by enemies. “Let’s get you home,” my tail said, wrapping his arm around me like a friend.

  I pushed him away; I wasn’t going to let this man touch me.

  My captor was undeterred. “You’ve got two options. You walk out with me now, we ride in the back seat of that limo. Or you stay here, and leave in the trunk.” Play nice or die, his message came in loud and clear.

  Seeing no way out, I reluctantly walked alongside him, keeping as much distance as I could, heading toward a back door. I looked for an escape route—was there anywhere else I could turn? Could the paparazzi help me maybe?

  “Don’t even try it,” my guard whispered to me, and I remembered that he seemed to have a real-time feed of my thoughts in his ear. “You’re right, I do,” he said, in answer to the question I hadn’t asked out loud. “So do what I tell you to, okay?”

  I nodded, feeling sick. I hated being penned in like this . . . the claustrophobia of all these people mocking me, watching me march to my death . . . it made my stomach swirl with nausea. Or . . . maybe that was just actual nausea. I stooped, gasping for breath, and then hurled my guts out onto the shiny loafers of a waitress carrying a tray of drinks.

  “Prophet Grace just barfed on my shoes!” she cried out, like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

  “Maybe they’re a holy relic now,” a bartender joked.

  As they walked off laughing, I continued retching bile. When I finally stabilized, the agent put an arm around me, helping me up, as I cringed. “Let’s get you somewhere you can sleep this off,” he said, loud enough for everyone around me to hear.

  I wiped my mouth with my arm and adjusted my dress again, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. But there was nothing I could do to quiet the jeers of the crowd or the sarcastic chants of, “Pro-phet Grace! Pro-phet Grace!” It was even worse than my mother had predicted—I wasn’t a footnote, I was a laughingstock.

  I couldn’t wait to be forgotten.

  As we exited the building, I put my head down, trying to ignore the flashbulbs, knowing there was nothing I could do to avoid further humiliation. A limo approached, furthering my mother’s claims that I was living the self-absorbed high life, out of touch. But I didn’t hesitate as I got inside. My enemies had won, and now I just wanted to be alone, to stop giving people more ammunition to shame me with.

  The guard closed the door behind us, and the limo drove off. I turned to him. “Where are you taking me?”

  He smiled, seemingly friendly. “You’re going to get a good night’s sleep. Long time coming.” Though the words were comforting, there was something menacing about them. If I wasn’t going to a prison cell, I had a feeling there was only one other place Esther’s colleagues would tolerate keeping me—and it was also six feet underground.

  As we drove, I examined my captor—I wondered if they’d picked him because of how much he looked like Zack. From the public’s perspective, he was the perfect choice to play my fake “rebound guy.” I wondered how much like Zack he really was. Beneath his gruff exterior, could there be a good person, capable of empathy and independent thought? I tested him, “You know what Esther’s really like, right? What the truth is?”

  “I know everything you know,” he reminded me. So yes, he knew the truth.

  “Then why are you doing this? Working for them?” I asked.

  This stranger looked at me with venom. “To make sure people like you don’t destroy what we’ve built.”

  I missed the days when my words were magic, when they got me whatever I wanted. It had given me this bluffing confidence that I could talk my way out of anything, anywhere. I felt so powerless now that those same words got me nothing. And I felt hollow, knowing that without my silver tongue, I was defenseless, helpless, hopeless . . . soon to be lifeless.

  We settled into silence as I watched the lights of Rome whizz by outside. How much I would have loved to explore this city as a normal teenager: to visit the Coliseum, to down absurd quantities of pasta and gelato. I’d been blessed to get to see so many things in my travels with the resistance, but my heart still ached thinking of everything I wouldn’t get to do. Of a whole lifetime, which had disappeared the moment I stepped on that plane with my mother. This car ride had a kind of finality to it; I was en route to my final destination, and there was nothing I could do but accept it, say my final prayers.

  So I did. I wasn’t sure whether to say them to Great Spirit . . . after prophesizing so many false things in His name, I felt
uncomfortable asking for anything else. So I didn’t. In my head, I just prayed, Great Spirit, God, Allah, whatever you want me to call you . . . If I’m on my way out of this world, please take care of it. Like my father and those stupid hydrangeas, I finally accepted there was nothing I could do and put my faith in a higher power I wasn’t even sure was listening, if only to ease my troubled mind. Everyone else’s fate was out of my hands now, so I tried to put it in the best care I could find.

  I’d spent so much time worrying about what this deity might want from me, how to please it . . . but in the end, the god I had left wasn’t a taskmaster or an overlord, but a gift. A gift of peace, in the midst of a time of turmoil. And maybe that was all that faith in a god, real or imagined, was ever supposed to be.

  Our limo pulled up outside a ritzy hotel, and I warily followed my guard inside. I glanced at the patrons filling the lobby’s lavish chairs and wondered which of them worked for the prophets. Which of them were here to take me down if I tried to run. “Not telling you.” The guard smirked, and I cringed, hating him more and more with each forced step I took. Where else could this night end except with my demise, in some deeply humiliating fashion? The final straw, to cement my disgrace.

  But still, I followed him into the elevator, to the top floor: the penthouse. The luxury accommodations of Redenção had nothing on the ritziest parts of Rome, with all the wealth and glamour that came from living at the feet of the prophets. Every bit of furnishing looked priceless and fragile. As we entered our suite, my guard plopped himself on the king-size bed and gestured to the two glasses of champagne that had been left on the bedside table. “Drink?”

  I shook my head, still feeling a little woozy from whatever they’d pumped in me earlier. And I certainly wasn’t going to voluntarily eat or drink anything this man had to offer, for fear of whatever he might have drugged it with.

  I shrank into a corner, as far as I could get from my captor. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised, but I didn’t believe him. “Go to the bathroom, I know you need to.”

  I blushed, realizing he knew everything—every sensation I was feeling, every urge, every fear. I tentatively opened the door, expecting it to contain something fatal, but it was just a normal, opulent bathroom. I locked the door behind me, afraid to touch anything. Had they planted some transdermal drug on the toilet seat? The sink handles?

  I pulled off a roll of toilet paper and began to obsessively clean everything, embarrassed to realize that my every action was being monitored by multiple people. Finally, I sat down to use the toilet, and think. There had to be some way out of here, besides in a body bag.

  As I exited the bathroom, my guard turned on loud music. “What’s that for?” I asked, nervous.

  He shrugged. “Privacy.”

  The room felt hot, and my heart beat wildly. I tried to find a way to stall. “Can you give me a minute?” I asked, pointing to the balcony.

  He shrugged. Sure.”

  As I stepped into the chilly night outside, I realized why he’d been so blasé—at fifty stories up, there was nowhere for me to go. He would have loved it if I’d tried to escape, jumped to my death . . . it’d make his job much easier. Maybe that was his plan all along, to stage exactly that scene. I stared out at the city lights. Was this it? My final moments?

  And then something caught my eye on the corner of the balcony. Hydrangeas. Poetic. Or . . . perhaps something else. I saw a thin piece of wire, running from the pot, along the edge of the roof. My heart stopped for a second as I moved over to it. Could it be some kind of explosive? Had they planned for me to go out a different way, in a terrorist attack of some sort?

  But no . . . this wasn’t my mother’s doing. It was my father’s. My breath caught in my throat, remembering my father’s instructions: “Dig deeper.”

  So I dug, frantic, disbelieving. And indeed, as my fingernails tore through the loose dirt, they ran into something hard. I yanked out this mystery object and brushed off the soil: it was a harness, attached to that wire I’d seen.

  I could hear my tail running toward the balcony, his footsteps urgent; he’d heard every one of my thoughts and figured out what was happening. I hurriedly wrapped the straps of the harness around my chest, locking myself in. And just as I closed the final carabiner, as the guard was moments away from tackling me, something thrust me skyward.

  The force of the tug knocked the wind out of me, and I screamed—I was suddenly hanging in midair, as if from nothing. The guard reached to grab me, but I was already above him, flying inexplicably up, up into the sky, whipping through the icy night breeze.

  My hotel balcony was just a dot now as my high heels fell off, one by one, tiny little projectiles headed to the earth far below. I gripped onto the harness, terrified that it would come loose. But for once I didn’t care that I was flashing my underwear to the whole world. I was free!

  But free how, and where? I glanced up; the wire extended above me to something that looked almost like a missile. Whatever was propelling me upward must have been planted on the roof, disguised somehow. Set off at the perfect moment to send me into the sky.

  I could barely catch my breath as I flew up and up, over the Tiber. Amid the terror that was beating my heart wildly, there was a little bit of joy at the absurdity of what was happening. Though my bare skin shook fiercely against the cold winds, adrenaline kept me vigilant: I was flying up above Rome, toward the Italian countryside. It was impossibly, terrifyingly magical.

  And then, almost imperceptibly at first, I felt myself starting to slow down. The rocket, whatever it was, was losing acceleration. For a moment, it felt like I was hovering in midair. Until . . . my stomach lurched, and I began to fall.

  And fall fast.

  5

  My mind raced in terror as I desperately examined the harness. I must have missed some instruction that showed me how to release the parachute. Had there been a note buried in the flowerpot that I’d failed to find? I saw no tab to pull, nothing that signaled how to stop my sudden acceleration toward the earth. I’d never been skydiving, but I had a feeling it was more fun when it didn’t end in death.

  I spread my limbs and leaned forward, hoping that I could slow myself a little at least by increasing the wind resistance. But I kept falling, faster and faster. Panic surged through me like a storm, engulfing everything.

  It was over. My life was over. I closed my eyes, bracing for the worst . . .

  And then I felt myself being jerked upward again, and sideways this time. It hurt like heck, knocking the breath out of me and rattling my brain in its cage. What on earth was happening? When I managed to orient myself and get my bearings, I looked up to see that a small plane had caught onto the wire and was now towing me, high above the city of Rome. My friends had staged the strangest, most impossible rescue.

  I breathed half a sigh of relief. The other half would have to wait until I was safely in that plane.

  I saw a familiar face lean out of the plane, pulling up on the wire attached to my harness: Jude. He shouted something to me, which I assumed was, “Are you okay down there?” I didn’t respond; I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me, and I definitely didn’t feel okay. He reeled me in slowly. It felt like ages until I was finally gripping on to his hand, then on to the side of the plane. I could hear him now, loud and clear. “I’ve got you, just hold on.”

  One final jolt of terror, as I let him pull me up and in, and then Dawn shut the side of the plane door. Collapsed on the floor of the plane, I gulped in air, letting the fear spill out of me. I was, somehow, alive.

  “Don’t move,” Dr. Marko said, and I realized he was here, too, walking into my peripheral vision. I was still disoriented from flying through the air and the residual doping, so I barely noticed as he placed a gas mask over my face. I recognized the sound of the whirring machine immediately: he was removing my nanotech, the new nanotech that recorded all my thoughts. Finally, my brain’s connection to my mother’s computer was being severed.


  After a moment, he removed the gas mask, and I looked around. Jude, Dr. Marko, and Dawn were all clustered around me. “Are you okay?” Jude asked, concerned, and I nodded.

  “Your thoughts are off the grid again,” Dr. Marko reassured me. “Speaking of . . .” Marko looked to the pilot, an Outcast with a cheery disposition. A nod from the cockpit, and suddenly the plane tilted, changing course, evading my mother.

  I breathed a sigh of relief—I was starting to like these sighs of relief. “How did you guys find me?”

  “Your mother let us stay hacked into her system, so we could see all your thoughts.” Dawn explained, as she covered me with a blanket—I was still shivering from the cold air outside. “I think she expected us to fold, to see that our plan had failed and find a way to pull the plug on the video.”

  “But instead we used it to track your location,” Jude said proudly. “The hard part was figuring out how to rescue you without letting you and your mother know what was happening.”

  “My dad,” I said, remembering who had given me the key clue. “How did you find him? And, you know, convince him I wasn’t the devil . . .”

  Dawn smiled. “We didn’t. He found us in Redenção after you disappeared. He knew the pictures he was seeing on the news weren’t you. Even if you’d gone crazy, he was sure you were still a good person underneath, that you wouldn’t be doing things that hurt people, no matter what. So we removed his nanotech, told him the truth, and he joined up with us.”

  I could barely believe it. “My dad. He’s on our side?”

  “Waiting to meet us outside Vatican City.”

  “Vatican City?” I asked, confused. “Shouldn’t we be getting the heck away from there?”

  Dawn shook her head. “The video is still set to go live in four days. Which means our plan has to go forward, and we need your help.”

  Every inch of my body was still searing with pain from my trip into the sky, and my head ached from all the substances that had been in it recently. The last thing I wanted to do was put myself in the middle of another high-stress, life-or-death mission. But I could tell by their faces, this wasn’t something that could wait.