The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, page 12
The glass doors opened.
The same lady who exited earlier popped her head in now. “One of our correspondents is on his way to Stevens Square.”
Dayne came forward in his chair. “You were able to get a hold of him?”
“On the first try.”
And just like that, her hope popped like the delicate soap bubble it was.
Eden knocked on the closed door of the boardroom, her blood zinging with adrenaline. Whatever meeting they’d been having was well underway.
The door swung open.
A familiar face stood on the other side. A petite woman in a tailored, black business suit with a lily-white, lace-trimmed camisole visible beneath her jacket. Lark Shangguan. Not the avatar. Not a hologram. But real and in the flesh, standing in the boardroom of the IDA’s east tower.
“How did you get here?” Eden asked
Ignoring the question, Lark looked past her, out into the hallway. “Where’s Dayne?”
“In the newsroom. Something’s happening in—”
“Minneapolis. We know.” Surprisingly, Lark didn’t slam the door in her face. She walked away. She took a seat at the long conference table where nine pairs of eyes beheld Eden as she stood in the doorway. Every person was an original member of the Resistance. Francesca. Jericho. The six survivors from Bunker Three. And Asher, with his eyebrow cocked. “Can we help you?”
“Dayne is stuck in the newsroom. He asked me to come on his behalf.”
“How very thoughtful. And unnecessary. We’re perfectly capable of filling Dayne in when he’s no longer stuck. Which means you can scurry yourself along.” He twiddled his fingers like they were tiny feet scampering away.
The air in Eden’s lungs went hot. She squared her shoulders and glared. If he wanted her to scurry along, he would have to get off his butt and make her. He made no move to do so.
Lark plucked a piece of paper from the table and slipped on a pair of black-framed readers. Beside her, Francesca frowned at the opened door. Her short hair was clean but un-styled. She and the six survivors wore the same basic outfit as Eden—sweatpants and crewneck sweatshirts—as though they’d been mass produced in an assembly line. Meanwhile, Jericho sat at the head of the table looking much more original in a ribbed, mustard turtleneck and a pair of black slacks.
A spread of food had been arranged in the center of the table—bagels, half sandwiches, fruits, and vegetables. Along with a white porcelain carafe, a pitcher of water, and a stack of cups, beside which lay a copy of Concordia Times and a scattered pile of papers. The television was on mute as it covered the situation in Minneapolis. Ticker tape scrolled across the bottom of the screen, calling it a terrorist attack. The unidentified toxin seemed to be isolated to the central business district but the entire metropolis was on lockdown as the death toll continued to mount.
“Is Brahm behind this?” Eden asked.
“His name is written all over it,” Lark replied.
Eden took a tentative step inside. “What’s he trying to accomplish?”
“The same thing he’s always trying to accomplish. Create catastrophe and spread fear. Give it a day or two, and he will undoubtedly step in as the hero.”
Eden glanced at the television. “Why Minneapolis?”
To this, Lark had no answer.
Nor did anybody else.
Francesca drummed the table with two fingers. “Do we think this is it—the Great Winnowing Brahm’s been prophesying about?”
“The Great Winnowing?” Eden asked. She licked her bottom lip and darted a glance at Asher. So far, he hadn’t grabbed her by the hair and tossed her out into the hallway. Instead, he sat with his elbow propped on an armrest, rubbing his chin like he found her continued presence puzzling.
“It’s one of Brahm’s more prevalent prophecies,” Lark said. “The last step before he can usher in his utopia. We’re not clear on the how or the when. But we are fairly certain it will involve a lot of death.”
Francesca scrubbed her face. “We need to get our hands on that stupid book.”
Eden took another step, close enough now to set her tablet on the table. “What book?”
“Sanctus Liber,” Lark said.
Eden’s brow furrowed. That was Latin for Holy Book.
“The Monarch’s sacred writings.” Lark rolled her eyes. “It contains every prophecy penned by Brahm throughout the years. He wrote about The Attack when we were in boarding school. The moment that first nuclear slug hit, his followers became that much more fanatic.”
Eden frowned. “Why?”
“They saw it as proof that he was, indeed, prophetic.”
“But they were his own predictions. He was making them come true.”
“We didn’t know that at the time.” Lark looked up from her paper and pulled off her reading glasses. “Oswin believes in a hierarchy of knowledge. The more loyal you prove yourself to be, the more privy you become to the darker aspects of his ideology. As well as the lengths to which he will go to carry out that ideology. The problem is, by the time you get to that point, you’re so indoctrinated you don’t realize how extreme your beliefs have become.”
“It’s like boiling a frog,” Jericho said.
“You can’t actually do that,” Eden replied.
Everyone looked at her. She could feel their attention, Asher’s most acutely.
“They’ll jump out of the pot once the water reaches a certain point.” Erik had told her so, along with several other popularly held but false beliefs. He loved debunking a good myth.
Asher snorted. “Well then. I guess frogs are more intelligent than his followers.”
Eden shifted. “Why do you want this book?”
“It contains his prophecies,” Francesca said.
“Which he makes come true,” Asher added.
They both looked at her like she was dumb.
“So this book will tell you what he plans to do next.”
“Your skills of deduction are unparalleled.”
The heat in her lungs intensified, but she lifted her chin and ignored Asher’s mockery. Instead, she addressed her question to Lark, who had yet to look at her like she was soap scum on grout. “Where does he keep it?”
“We’re not sure, but we suspect his catacombs.”
“His catacombs?” Her mind went immediately to the empire of death, the catacombs in Paris. Surely these weren’t the same ones.
“It’s where the Great Mothers are entombed.”
Eden pulled out the chair in front of her tablet and took a tentative seat, like the slower she moved, the less likely anyone would be to make her leave.
Lark selected half a blueberry bagel from the tray. “Before we captured the asset, he would stand in the catacombs and read from Sanctus Liber every Thursday night. These recitations would be broadcasted live at Swarm’s weekly meetings.”
Eden recalled the gatherings the Brysons had hosted. Along with the first time Amir Kashif went off script—on a Thursday evening, visiting the Aigners in Baltimore. She pictured brainwashed groups of people staring at a hologram of the asset standing in some consecrated crypt as he read from Oswin Brahm’s sacred writings. It gave her massive heebie-jeebies. “Is this where the soldiers live—in Brahm’s catacombs?”
Asher leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “We don’t think they live in them. But we do believe they were raised in the general vicinity.”
“Which is where?” Eden asked.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Francesca said.
“Amir doesn’t know?”
Lark tore off a bite-sized chunk of her bagel. “Brahm keeps everything to do with the Electus incredibly close to his chest. He hasn’t fully trusted his followers since the destruction of his test group.”
The heat in Eden’s lungs zipped into her ears. So blatantly, she wished she hadn’t pulled her hair back. What if Asher noticed the incriminating blush? She swallowed nervously and, with her elbow on the table, casually covered her left ear from his view.
“Only his innermost circle is privy to their location,” Lark continued. “Amir has never been part of that circle. He has to keep his ear to the ground. Anytime he gets wind of a potential location, I do recon. So far, I’ve completed nine missions. Each one has been a bust.”
“And now we have to pause our work in order to do this.” Francesca held up her tablet with a sneer.
Eden’s ears went hotter.
“I found another one.” A highlighter squeaked against a printed sheet. A survivor from Bunker Three—a tall Black woman named Nairobi—capped the yellow marker.
At Eden’s look of confusion, Jericho explained, “We’re cross-referencing names from the database Amir gave us with our list of known Swarm Members.”
“These are all of his followers?” Eden asked.
He plucked a grape from the cluster cupped in his palm. “The ones we know of.”
“Can I have a look?”
“Be our guest,” Lark said.
Eden gathered the sheets into a stack and began scanning the names, her attention snagging on several she recognized. Nicholas Marks, deceased. Isabella, Gage, and Clay Bryson. Also deceased. She came across individuals with last names that matched the ones on the back of the pamphlet. She came across people in government, like the Police Chief of Chicago. She came across celebrities, like Star—the A-list pop-artist with millions of rabid fans. Eden and Cassian had shared an elevator with her on their way to the Prosperity Ball.
The list was disturbingly long.
The name Nairobi had just highlighted was a guard at the decommissioned military prison in which Cassian was being held. It made the sparse contents in Eden’s stomach churn. “What’s stopping Oswin Brahm from killing them in prison?”
“His pride,” Francesca spat.
“If the man has a weakness,” Lark said, “it’s his proclivity for a good show. He’s been hunting Pru for years. He’s not going to put all that time and energy to waste by having her and her followers killed in the dark. That’s never been his style.”
“Dear old Ozzy won’t be satisfied with merely killing his enemies,” Asher said, his sneer matching Francesca’s. “He’ll want people to cheer while he kills them.”
The sentiment put a chill in Eden’s bones. She’d seen it before. Footage of the global celebration that broke out after Karik Volkova’s public execution. There had been spontaneous parades. Dancing in the streets. Restaurants uncorking their best bottles of champagne and serving glasses on the house. All for a man who was one of Oswin’s disciples. How much more would he want to see the death of his enemies celebrated?
On the television, Chuck Perez continued to cover the unfolding story as the ticker tape scrolled. Surprise, surprise. Interitus had officially taken credit for the toxin. Eden’s lip curled. Frame a thing the right way and no matter how egregious, onlookers wouldn’t object. Onlookers might even cheer. Brahm had proven himself to be an expert framer. He had his hand on the control button of information. He was shaping the narrative, and the public was buying it—hook, line, and sinker.
Just like she had for so long.
But now her eyes were open and she could never unsee the things she’d seen these last few months. She could never go back to the old paradigm, where illegal was bad and Oswin Brahm was good. Her understanding of the world had been irrevocably altered the moment Dr. Norton told her the truth in his basement kitchenette, and ever since, she’d been thrust deeper and deeper into a world with infinitely expanding shades of gray.
As if to prove the point, two of the survivors from Bunker Three excused themselves. It was time to administer another dose.
With a shiver, Eden did her best to push the memory of the asset’s tortured screams out of her mind. She despised what they were doing to him, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Her concern for Cassian and her parents and Barrett and Violet were so all-consuming, this stranger of a boy and his maltreatment would have to wait.
She picked up her tablet. She moved through the names—frustrated that she had to check her speed so as not to rouse suspicion. Annoyed every time she pretended to cross-reference names on the list of known Swarm members as if the whole thing wasn’t already imprinted in her mind. She offered an advantage, but she had to hide it lest she ended up on the receiving end of those doses.
She swiped to the next person on her list.
Manuel Van Cooper, a naval construction mechanic stationed in Annapolis. The only construction mechanic stationed in Annapolis. She ran him through the plug-in and feigned a quick look through the stack of papers, already knowing he wasn’t there. Once his information loaded, she began wading through it. When she reached the third screen of intel, she saw something she had yet to see.
A flag.
“I’ve got one,” she said, coming forward in her chair. She turned the tablet around to show Asher.
He snatched it from her hands.
Francesca pointed. “Those links are yours.”
His eyes remained fixed on the screen as he tapped and typed. Then he stopped and grinned. “He’s a gambler.”
Eden’s thoughts flitted to Mordecai. “On the Underground?”
“Illegal gambling dens. They’re popular on the Highway.”
The Highway.
His precious.
Asher went back to work, clicking and tapping and swiping while Francesca watched over his shoulder. Then she jabbed her finger at the screen. “Look right there,” she said.
Asher turned the tablet around so the others could see.
He’d hacked inside a password protected hospital database. A photograph of Manuel Van Cooper’s elderly mother filled the screen. Beneath it, a long list of diagnoses, prescriptions, and some pretty astronomical medical bills. “Looks like his job as a naval construction mechanic isn’t cutting it. So Mr. Van Cooper has taken to gambling. He doesn’t have a single checkmark by his name.”
“What does that mean?” Eden asked.
“Our guy, Van Cooper, is a man of integrity.”
“He honors his bets,” Lark clarified.
“How is this supposed to help us?” Jericho asked. It was a reasonable question. Manuel Van Cooper was a construction mechanic in Annapolis. How would they use his penchant for gambling to help them pull off a prison break?
“He has access to military vehicles,” Asher said.
“Transfer vehicles,” Lark added.
They all looked at one another.
“We’re going to blackmail him,” Eden finally said. Issue an ultimatum. Help them with the prison break and his illegal activities would remain under wraps. Refuse, and he would have to add an arrest and lawyer fees to the astronomical medical bills.
Asher took a deep breath, as though considering. “I don’t think blackmail is the right approach for a guy like Manny.” He turned his queen over, running her up and down his knuckles. “I think this calls for an old-fashioned hustle.”
21
They crouched on the outskirts of Stevens Square with eyes on the place Eden had told them to go—an abandoned hospital where a community of illegal residents lived.
But the hospital wasn’t abandoned.
Big, scary vehicles were everywhere. Men and women in uniform swarmed the grounds, dragging people toward the trucks, shoving them inside. A girl twisted free. She ran toward her mother, who was being dragged in the opposite direction. A man in uniform pulled out his gun and shot her in the back.
She fell to the ground and didn’t move.
The mother screamed and screamed, and Violet felt a scream, too. It was growing in size, hurling up her throat. Barrett must have sensed it, because he cupped his hand over her mouth and pulled her down into the tall weeds.
Her heart punched her sternum—wild, hysteric thumps.
Barrett put his finger to his lips, urging her with his warm brown eyes to stay quiet. But another gunshot exploded and a flock of birds flew and more people screamed.
Violet clapped her palms over her ears. Barrett’s hand shifted like he was going to move it away, but she grabbed hold of it and held on tight with her eyes squeezed shut. They stayed that way until the big scary vehicles drove away. Every single one.
Barrett peeked over the weeds to watch them go. When they were gone, he looked at the abandoned hospital, where five bodies lay on the ground. He seemed to wrestle with something inside. An internal battle Violet couldn’t see or hear as seconds stretched into minutes. Until finally, his expression hardened with resolve and he whispered determinedly, “I have to check on them.”
Violet’s pounding heart lurched into her throat. What if the vehicles came back? What if officers were hiding inside? What if they took Barrett? But she couldn’t get the words out and he was already gone, scurrying like a mouse with his eyes on the sky.
Violet didn’t exhale until he returned, looking sadder than she’d ever seen him. “They’re dead,” he said, shaking his head, fisting his hair. “I don’t think that girl was older than twelve.”
Two squirrels scrabbled up a tree.
Barrett jumped at the sound, then shook his head harder and plopped his rear in the dirt. “Those vehicles belonged to the RRA.”
Violet didn’t know what that meant.
Barrett set his elbows on his knees. “The country’s Resident Registration Agency. They’re in charge of governing citizenship, registration, and documentation.” He huffed, his mouth grim. “And now, I guess, raiding illegal communities and shooting runners in the back. Even when those runners are kids.”
Violet stared at the tire grooves they’d left behind. This was supposed to be a safe space, a place to hide until they could escape Minneapolis.
Barrett rubbed the back of his head and spoke Violet’s mind. “What in the world are we supposed to do now?”
Cleo hobbled inside their suite on a pair of crutches, looking more like herself with her snakebite lip piercings returned to her bottom lip. Now that they weren’t out in public trying to hide their identity, there was no reason for her not to wear them. She stopped with a huff, one of her long braids caught between her armpit and the crutch pad. She disentangled it—looking as annoyed with her impediment as Eden’s father had been with his. She released a low, impressed whistle as she took in their new living quarters.
