One drone detaches itself from the roof and lands next to me with its package. Inside, I find a children’s tool set with plastic tools, which is really not what I had in mind. But the case is metal. The yard is all fenced; I bash the case against a fence post, and I’m left with a thin but solid piece of metal. Back at the window, I slide that piece in through the bottom and jab it around, peering in to see if maybe I’m hitting the lock.
There’s a hook inside, and it pops open. I gasp, because obviously I had some idea of what I was trying to do, mostly from discussions of Tribulation-period survival tips, but I hadn’t really expected it to work. I quickly slide in and leave the window unlatched.
The basement is dark and quiet. I turn on my flashlight for a minute just to get my bearings. I came in next to a big laundry sink. There are shelves and shelves of canned goods down here and a bunch of large casks and bottles of water scattered around the floor, which I need to take care not to trip over.
Upstairs, I can hear the occasional creak of a footstep, but nothing beyond that.
So now what? Am I going to charge upstairs? Try to lure the adults downstairs one by one and whack them over the head with one of these gallon glass jars of pickles?
Then I hear a car pull up outside and a loud knock at the door, and I know in my gut it’s going to be too late if I wait any longer.
I start up the stairs.
46• Steph •
There’s a loud knock on the door, and my eyes fly open. Ellen is still at the kitchen table, working on her cross-stitch. I hear footsteps as someone else goes to open the front door. It takes some time, because there are about five locks on it—they locked everything back up after they let me in; this house is an absolute nightmare from a fire-safety perspective—and because there’s a set of pass-phrases that get muttered literally through the mail slot, which I’d probably find hilarious if I weren’t sitting in a chair waiting to see if these people decide to kill me.
“So what’s this I hear about a hostage showing up?” asks a male voice I recognize, and my stomach twists. It’s Rajiv.
There’s some low conversation from the front hall, and Rajiv says loudly, “You were supposed to call me, immediately, if something like this happened.” The voices rise, and I catch snatches of the argument but not enough to make sense of it.
The swinging kitchen door bangs open, and Rajiv stands there, staring at me. He looks completely baffled by my presence—whoever he’d expected to find, here, now, it wasn’t me. “Steph?” he says, like he’s not sure. “What are you doing here?”
I need an answer to this question that might plausibly get me out of this room alive. “I was going to ask you that question,” I say angrily, like I think my being here is his fault.
“I didn’t tell them to bring you here. There were specific instructions…” He looks at Ellen, baffled. “Sister Ellen, explain yourself!”
She stands up, her eyes narrowing. “In the end, we don’t answer to you, Brother Malachi,” she says. “We answer to the Elder.”
“I speak for the Elder!”
“The Elder has been speaking directly to both of us for days,” Ellen says.
“Impossible,” Rajiv says, and his voice takes on a dismissive, patronizing tone. “You’re being fooled. Except for limited answers as gifts, the Elder does not speak to anyone other than Brother Daniel and me, and he certainly doesn’t speak to—”
From the kitchen clock comes a loud robotic voice. “Ellen Reinhardt, this is the Elder. Code Alpha Romeo Alpha. Shoot Brother Malachi.”
Ellen snatches up the pencil case and doesn’t even unzip it, she just wraps her hand around the gun inside and fires, but the bullet smashes through the window behind him and doesn’t hit him at all.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rajiv shouts. “Storm, deactivate!”
“Kill Brother Malachi,” the speaker says again. “I’m so sorry, Rajiv. I can’t let you stop me. I can’t let you keep making me do this. Kill Brother Malachi. Kill Brother Malachi…”
They’re wrestling for the gun, and I deeply regret my decision not to spend the last hour trying to work my hands loose from the duct tape—but I can stand and leave the stool behind, even if my hands are stuck behind me. I don’t particularly want to wait to see if “Kill Steph” is the next order.
There might be a door somewhere that isn’t padlocked, but I can’t risk taking the time to hunt for it. There’s a stair to the basement and then a stairway leading up—it’s narrow and steep, either a former servant’s stair or a remnant of this house once being a duplex. There might be no way out of the basement, so I bolt upstairs.
The speaker is still barking orders in code, and I hear more gunshots, as well as a bunch of feet running down the main stairs. The upstairs has a bunch of closed doors, and one of them is opening, so I run up the stairs to the attic.
“Steph, Steph, it’s me, it’s Nell,” I hear behind me.
I whirl. It is, indeed, Nell. I sputter something like “What…?” at her, and she says, “Hold still,” and whips out a pair of scissors to cut the duct tape.
“Why did you go up?” she says, exasperated. “There’s a way out from the basement.”
We’re in a finished attic. It’s empty, fortunately, since it looks like the only thing Nell has to defend herself with is a pair of admittedly very sharp and pointy scissors. I open up a window, kick out the screen, and look out. “Can you climb?” I ask.
“I mean, I … Maybe?” Nell says.
Our options from here are not ideal. Third floors are high. There’s a gutter
