I steadied myself. “Can you give me a moment?” I asked politely, trying to give my voice the same melodic, officious timbre my mother’s possessed, as I jingled the keys in my hand so he’d know I was allowed to be here.
His eyes narrowed. “Do you have global approvals?”
“Did you see what happened last night?” I snapped back at him. For a moment, it was as though my mother was speaking through me, as I told him, voice cracking, “My daughter was shot into the sky last night. Someone kidnapped her, out of our clutches. We have a rogue prophet out there somewhere, and we don’t have time to sit around and get Denmark to approve fixing the problem. I gave them a chance to deal with this the way they wanted to, and now look where we are. I’m going to fix this myself, and you are going to let me. Now, move.”
The guard cowered, overwhelmed. “I can’t . . .”
“Go, make the call, tell everyone what I’m doing. I’ll live with the consequences. What I won’t live with is my daughter hiding out in some hole somewhere, sending messages that undermine the fabric of the world we live in. That will get millions, maybe billions of innocent people killed. Not again.”
I could see the anger rising in him, but he didn’t lift his gun. He strode off past me in a huff, presumably to make that call. I inhaled deeply, shaking from the effort, and fumbled until I found the key that fit this lock. I entered, relocking the door behind me, adrenaline rushing as I tried to avert pure panic.
I’d solved one problem but created another. I now had very limited time in this room to follow Dr. Marko’s instructions. And then, I knew there was only one way I could transport the nanotech out of here: in my own body.
9
This machine was the most complex thing I’d ever seen—a thousand times more powerful than the device we’d stolen in Rio. It was an advanced 3-D nanofabricator, which could combine atoms into molecules at a higher rate than any other machine on the planet. Its precision and dexterity could produce just about any substance, and soon, it would spit out the one Dr. Marko had concocted. My fingers fumbled as I typed in the series of letters and numbers that he’d made me memorize: the formula he’d concocted that, when combined with the source code in this machine, would create a virus that could rewrite the nanotech in our brains.
I braced myself, overcome with doubt and trepidation. I’d had so many different pieces of machinery inside my head over the years—changing my body, changing my thoughts, reading them and broadcasting them. Did I really want to put something else in there? Especially some new experimental bug that had never been tried on a human being before? Dr. Marko thought this would work on paper, sure, but no one had ever tested out the real thing. I’d agreed to be not just the carrier pigeon, but the guinea pig.
But that was it: I’d already agreed to it. As the printer finished its job, I regarded its contents with wariness. The vial that emerged contained a dense, sticky fluid. Dr. Marko had explained that just one drop contained enough of the nanotech to infect me in a few minutes—its replication rate was a thousand times faster than any previous form of the bugs. I opened the vial and dipped my finger into the liquid—it was still warm. I exhaled, knowing I didn’t have much time, and then inhaled the liquid off my finger.
It felt strange as it made its way through my nostrils, into my sinuses. It would be in my bloodstream soon, reproducing by feeding off the sugars in my blood, then invading my lungs. I sat and waited, tried to see if I could feel the tech moving through me, but its presence was just as invisible as every previous generation of the technology.
The first time I’d been infected, I’d thought it was a gift from a god, as I sat in my father’s worship center waiting for Great Spirit to judge me. Had I been good or bad? Though I’d recalled a thousand little sins, they were the sins of a child. Nothing compared to all my new adult sins.
I wondered how I might fare now, with this new invasive weapon inside of me. Would my guilt kill me? I’d taken uppers before I left, just in case, but I still worried—what if they didn’t work the way we expected with this new tech? What if my crimes as a false prophet were enough to take me out for good?
But as the nanotech took hold, my appearance never changed. Instead, I felt the tickle in the back of my throat that Dr. Marko had said would signal that the tech was working as expected. “My throat feels scratchy,” I said into my comms.
I heard Dr. Marko’s voice echoing back to me. “Good. Now get out of there.” Hoping I hadn’t missed some other vital step, I dropped the rest of the vial into an incinerator in the corner of the room, then reached beneath my burqa into my pocket for the small electromagnetic pulse device I’d brought with me—a weapon that delivered a small but powerful burst that would destroy all electronics in the immediate vicinity. We could leave behind no evidence of what we’d just built. I set off the weapon; the lights above my head flickered off, and the screen on the monitor went dark. The most powerful machine in the world for creating new nanotech was now destroyed. Permanently. “The virus is deployed, and the EMP destroyed the nanofabricator,” I said quietly into comms.
“Good,” Dawn said. “Esther’s gotten away from your father, and she’s headed for the building. You’re running out of time.”
I peeked out into the hall, where the lights had gone dark, too. By now, the guards were onto me. As I attempted to make my escape, heading into the hallway, two of them quickly cornered me, pulling off my veil, revealing my face. “The real Esther wants to know what you’re up to,” one sneered.
The tickle in my throat moved up to my nose, and I sneezed—right in his face. “Sorry,” I said, unable to hide my victorious smile. “Got a little cold.”
While one of the guards held on to me, the other stepped inside the machine room to see what I’d been doing in there. When he emerged, a few moments later, he was livid. “What did you do to that machine?”
“Oh, is something wrong?” I asked, taunting him a little. “It looked fine when I left.”
He nodded to his comrade, cold. “Lock her in a cell. See if she’ll talk in a few days.” But the guard who was holding on to me didn’t move; he was rubbing his throat, eyebrows furrowed. The other guard glared at him. “What’s going on?”
But the guard holding me didn’t respond, just stared into space, as though trying to get his bearings. “Give me a minute.”
The first guard rolled his eyes and grabbed my arm. “Fine, I’ll take her.”
But as he walked me toward the elevator, his gait slowed, as he moved to touch his own throat. He looked at me quizzically, as though seeing me for the first time. Our plan was working.
There was a reason I had to be the one to carry out the tech—it wasn’t just a computer virus. It was a literal virus, transmitted from person to person. But this one, once caught, disabled any nanotech in a person’s brain. And it spread the way any other virus did—by replicating in its victims’ lungs, overproducing mucus, and causing them to sneeze. My every breath carried the disease of truth. We weren’t just stealing a piece of tech—we were striking a deathblow into the heart of Vatican City along with it. My mother thought that by brainwashing her security force, she’d keep herself safer; in actuality, she’d given me one simple way to disable all of them at once.
As the guard wheezed into the crowd of office drones, some of whom were already grabbing at their throats, sniffling, I walked past him. No one stopped me—the tech in their heads no longer demanded they blindly obey the prophets.
I stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed in front of me. Now alone, I tossed off the burqa, and instead covered my head with a large hat I’d kept in my pocket. I made sure to cover every shred of my hair—my wild mane would be the most obvious giveaway.
When the elevator doors opened, I saw a phalanx of armed guards waiting to meet me. I smiled at them, trying to exit, but they pushed me back in. “Prophet Grace?” So much for the hat as a disguise.
I reluctantly stepped back, as they all piled in with me. A
nd then I sneezed. “Bless you,” one of them said.
“Thanks,” I said.
By the time our elevator reached the bottom floor, and the elevator doors opened up to a dank stone basement that looked like a prison, I saw hands moving to throats. In the small space of that elevator, the tech had dispersed quickly, filling all the available air. The guards seemed confused about what to do with me, what to do with themselves. I reached over to hit the button for lobby, and the elevator quickly rocketed back to the main level.
Back on the ground floor, I pushed past the confused guards and out onto the main square of Vatican City, where I broke into a run. My lungs were filled with mucus, the results of my sudden onset cold, and every part of my body still ached from my various trips through the sky. But I saw freedom now—it was so close. Just on the other side of that gate.
But as I was about to open the door, escape back into the expanse of Rome, an arm grabbed me. Esther, with no nanotech for the virus to destroy. My mother, furious. “What the hell did you do?” Her voice was brittle, hollow. A woman who had lost everything.
“What’s done is done,” I told her with a kind of finality, and I twisted from her grip, running out of the gates, past a confused Tomas, and onto the streets of Rome. I ran and ran, pushing past pedestrians, and hopped onto a crowded bus. The digital letters on its front broadcast its final destination: Aeroporto. As I looked around at the other passengers, noses already starting to run, I felt a smile come across my face. There was nothing that could stop us now.
When we arrived at the airport, sneezing passengers spilled out ahead of me into the terminal. I saw Jude waiting on the curb and walked to meet him. “Your mom is coming,” he warned me. “You have to do this fast.”
I nodded, pulling off my hat, as Jude pointed his phone at me, starting to roll. For a second I wondered how I looked, thought to reach for some makeup to be on-camera . . . before I remembered that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered besides what I had to say. “The second Revelation is coming,” I said into the lens. “It’s already on its way to you. You’ll see for yourselves, soon enough. And in four days, I’ll tell you everything.”
Jude ended the recording and hit a few strokes on his phone. “It’s out there.” The video was in the wind, and so was the virus that would destroy everyone’s nanotech. It was spreading like wildfire, and there was nothing the prophets could do to stop it.
I hugged Jude with relief. “Where do you want to go now?” he asked.
I knew what he meant. We’d always talked about where we’d want to go when we got our real lives back. Nova Scotia, Tokyo. “Tutelo. I want to go home.”
“Me, too.” I knew he hadn’t seen his parents in years. Soon he’d be able to.
Or maybe not. In the distance, we saw a convoy of military vehicles, sirens blaring.
“Run,” I said, but there was nowhere to go. My mother had surrounded us from every angle. We weren’t going anywhere but prison.
10
As Jude and I sat in the back of a military vehicle, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid. Esther could do what she wanted with us—in a matter of days, that virus would spread around the world, and we could finally tell people the truth, without risking their lives. It was over, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Jude stared at me with a mixture of awe and apprehension. “You really think your mom’s out of tricks up her sleeve?”
“I don’t know,” I said, fear rising inside of me. My mother had surprised us so many times before.
“Whatever’s ahead, we’ll face it together,” he promised me. His smile was so genuine, so kind as always. I wondered, with a shot of embarrassment: How many details did he know about my fantasies of him?
“I’m not sure if you read . . .” I began.
“Your thoughts?” he interrupted.
“Yeah,” I said, relieved not to have to finish that sentence.
“No way in hell,” he promised.
“Really?” I asked, surprised by his definitive tone.
He shook his head. “Layla tried to tell me a couple things, but I told her to stop. That was messed up, what your mom did. I get that they had to keep reading, you know, to save you. But I didn’t want to be involved.”
Despite everything he’d been through, he was still the sweet young man I’d fallen in love with. More than that, because tragedy had carved him into someone more resilient. “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a good person.”
“So are you. And I don’t have to read what’s inside your head to know that,” he joked.
“I don’t know if I’m so good anymore,” I muttered.
“You’re less perfect, that’s true,” he admitted. “But to be good I think you have to stop being perfect.”
“You sure about that?” I asked, skeptical.
“You’re braver. And you accept people on their terms, instead of trying to enforce your own. You’re kinder, even if it doesn’t feel like it.” His words knocked down a wall inside of me I hadn’t even realized I’d built. The idea that there might still be good in me, despite everything I’d done, filled me with hope. That whatever I’d sacrificed to get us here, it hadn’t been my soul.
For so long, I’d been holding my feelings for Jude in a box deep inside my heart, and now that Layla was gone, I felt them pouring out. “If we get out of here,” I began, and instead of letting me finish, he squeezed my hand. Looked into my eyes.
“Yeah,” he answered. “If we get out of here.”
It was at once the realization of a long-held dream, and a wish that would remain unfulfilled. My hopes were dwindling that we would find a way out of my mother’s clutches.
The van stopped, and two agents opened the back doors and grabbed me, pulling me out of the van, away from Jude. I reached for him, to hold his hand one last time, but our fingers just barely missed each other. “Grace!” he called out, but then I was out of the van, as the agents hauled me into an imposing stone building: a women’s prison.
After a brief intake exam, a guard led me onto the dank and crowded main floor, and the room tittered with excitement—a hundred heads turned to watch my every move. I could hear the victorious murmurs of those who hated me, the ones who thought I deserved my place here. More quietly, too, I heard the reverent whispers of those few devotees who might still believe in me.
But I didn’t care about any of it. In a few days, it would all be over. The people who loved me would hate me for lying, and the ones who hated me might have a little more sympathy now that I was finally telling the truth. I barely ate; every spare moment I had, I huddled around the TV in the common room, making sure it was tuned to the news and fighting off anyone who wanted to change the channel.
On the fourth day, a few hours before I knew my announcement would be going live, the other prisoners overpowered me, putting on some soccer game. I still hovered, anxious, looking for any opportunity to change it back, as my fellow prisoners cheered with hoarse voices—they, too, of course, had fallen victim to the virus I’d carried in here with me.
“Prophet Grace, I still believe in you,” one sniffling young woman whispered to me as I fumed in the corner.
“You won’t soon,” I told her.
But as soccer transitioned to car racing, a news broadcast interrupted it all. “Breaking news. The strange virus that’s raced around the world, causing mild coldlike symptoms, might finally have an explanation. A scientist claims it’s part of ending a decades-long conspiracy, and a video from the disgraced Prophet Grace, recorded last week, seems to back up that theory.” The whole room went silent, looking at me, as the television played my speech, the one that had been set to automatically upload.
My face was from only a week ago, but it seemed so innocent. I felt like I was watching a stranger, who intoned with gravity, “My friends, I have an apology to make. What I’m about to tell you won’t be easy for me to say, or easy for you to hear. But it has to be said, and heard. You’ve p
ut your trust in me, and I abused that trust. Because I knew something you didn’t. That this world we live in, it’s a lie. Punishments and Forgiveness aren’t the work of Great Spirit, but of mere mortals. The prophets around the world have worked together to conceal that fact. My own prophetship was meant to challenge their power, to give me the chance to do what I’m doing now—to reveal the truth to you. While I wish I could have done it sooner, I’m just grateful I could do it at all. Know that Great Spirit will not Punish you for doubting Him, for questioning His power, His existence. You’re all safe now, I promise. I hope we can all find a way to move forward together, peacefully, without leaning on the crutch of an imaginary religion to save us.”
I drank in every word, the broadcast warming my cold soul. We’d finally done it—we’d gotten the truth out there. When the video finished, an interviewer turned to Dr. Marko, who’d found his way to media outlets to explain the science behind what had happened to all of us—nanotechnology, serotonin receptors, everything I’d learned last year. The other inmates lingered around me in a strange kind of silence, watching with apprehension and confusion.
It was only a matter of time now. They’d arrest Esther, and the rest of the prophets, and I’d be exonerated. I took a deep breath, and I waited.
11
But as the days passed, I started to worry. Why was I still in here? Weren’t my friends passionately working on my case? Days turned into weeks, and the agony of not knowing gnawed at me. Why wasn’t anyone coming to see me? I felt like I was back in Redenção—isolated, with no idea what the resistance was planning. Once again, unsure if my friends had even survived.
My eyes stayed glued to the TV, desperate for any clues about what was happening in the outside world. I saw my mother and the other prophets being led away in handcuffs, as the talking heads decried the depth of their crimes. It took nearly a week before I saw any mention of my friends: the first footage of Dawn at a bail hearing. The news described her as “an accomplice of Prophet Grace,” a phrase that both made me laugh and made my stomach turn.
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