Mission Possible contained heroic accounts of Witness work, with glossy photos of teams setting up aid centers and conducting services for grateful Tribal refugees. The back pages of the magazine hawked the highest quality equipment and supplies for Witnesses. Each team member was issued the basics, but most Witnesses elected to upgrade in exchange for a portion of their pay rations. Even with state-of-the-art gear, Witnessing was dangerous work. Only the Apostles could buy guns directly, though. Under every image of a pistol, hunting rifle, or semiautomatic weapon was small print stating that every customer must provide an Apostolic passcode at the time of purchase.
Kenny’s dad had a gun. More than one, actually, but Mathew had only ever seen the old revolver Burton Ames kept in his bedside table in a hollowed-out book of psalms. Mathew had shown Gabi its likeness in the back pages of Mission Possible, and it was enough like the one in the black box before her that the sight of it set off alarm bells in Gabi’s head. The menace radiating from those magazine images and the weapon in Luke’s black box screamed one truth. Guns were for killing.
“What do you want us to do?” Gabi asked, knowing that whatever it was, she had to find a way to take the worst of it. Troy had obviously never seen a gun or what it was capable of. In his altered state, he would agree to just about anything, with absolutely no sense of the consequences. At Luke’s encouragement, Troy lifted the gun out of the box and ran his hands over it clumsily.
“Careful, buddy,” Luke cautioned. “That’s not a toy. Do you know what a gun is?” Troy jerked as though electrocuted and dropped it with a yelp. He may not have known the gun by look, but he knew it by name. The four of them leaped back, falling flat to the ground and covering their heads, but the gun only landed on the rocks with a harmless clatter.
“Jesus!” Ursula shrieked, then clapped a hand over her mouth and shot a horrified look at Luke.
“S-s-sorry,” Troy stuttered, wiping his hands on his pants as though to rid himself of the imprint of cold metal. Color seeped back into Luke’s face as he bent to pick up the gun.
“To answer your question, Gabi,” Luke said quietly, laying the gun across his palm with a reverence she found ghoulish. “There is one bullet in this gun. I will spin the chamber, then hand the gun to one of you. That person will place the barrel—that’s this part”—Luke pointed to the hollow metal tube extending from the handle—“to your partner’s head, like so.” He raised the gun and nestled the barrel of it against Ursula’s temple. As he did so, Ursula folded her hands in prayer and closed her eyes, her face a study in calm surrender. “You will each say, ‘Thy will be done,’ to signify that you are placing yourselves in God’s hands, and then whichever one of you is holding the gun will pull the trigger.”
Gabi waited for Luke to crack a smile or for a peal of giggles from Ursula, signaling that this was all, as it must be, a really bad joke. But their faces were fixed and solemn. Luke raised the gun and spun the chamber. “Thy will be done,” he said, lifting his eyes to the sky, then lowering them to Gabi and Troy in pointed expectation. An ammonia smell filled the glade as a wet stain spread across the crotch of Troy’s pants. The boy’s eyes were spilling liquid down his face, but he didn’t take notice of that, or the urine soaking his pants. He had gone away, Gabi saw, ushered by the drugged lemonade and the bleak horror of the moment. Gabi wanted to scream for help and run all the way back to Alder, but it wouldn’t do any good. All camp activities had to be approved by the council in a lengthy, bureaucratic process Mathew griped about during his years as a counselor. Luke couldn’t have gotten ahold of that gun without a high-ranking official pulling the strings. She and Troy were exactly where Unitas wanted them to be.
Gabi closed the distance between her and Luke and took the gun. It was heavier than it looked and scarred along the handle. This gun had stories, none of which Gabi wanted to hear. She wrapped her fingers around the barrel, careful to keep it aiming toward the ground, and offered the handle to Troy. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”
Beyond doing more than following orders, Troy accepted the gun. His fingers brushed Gabi’s as she released the barrel, transmitting a chill up her arm. She turned her body away from him to present her profile, which gave her an unobstructed view of the forest as Troy raised the gun to her head. The blunt, hollow circle of the barrel tip nudged her temple.
“No fear, buddy,” Luke soothed. “You’re both in God’s hands. If you have faith, no harm can come to you.”
“Trust in him, brother,” Ursula added, her voice a bad imitation of Ruth’s hypnotic croon.
“I’m so sorry,” Troy slurred to Gabi.
“It’s okay, Troy,” Gabi whispered back, then folded her hands in front of her heart and closed her eyes, wondering if they would ever open again. She believed in God, but Gabi knew God didn’t always let people live. The world, as little as she’d seen of it, was more complicated than death being only for bad guys. But she trusted that stepping in front of the gun was the right thing to do. If Troy died, it would be like killing a small child. He was completely powerless in his drugged state. If she refused to participate, Troy might get paired with someone who wouldn’t be so eager to stand on her side of the gun. Hopefully the drugs would cloud the memory for Troy, easing his burden of guilt
