34. Res
34
Res
I t takes me all of ten minutes to unlock both the bolt and the handle. I start with the bolt since it’s the hardest. Once the bolt is open, it takes less than half the time to unlock the handle. I tentatively open the door, just in case there’s someone guarding it. To my relief, there’s no one there. The only thing that was stopping me from getting out was a locked door from the outside that I broke out of in ten minutes.
The hallway is dark, but not at all what I expected. I expected I would open this door and find myself in some rundown house or old building, but if I didn’t know any better, it looks like a functioning apartment or hotel building. Most notably, it reminds me of the apartments in downtown Macon where the old and disabled on social security lived, where I used to go to pass out meals on weekends with one of the members from Loving Eden. My door isn’t the only door in the hall. There are several others, closed and presumably bolted shut, but there’s no telling who is in them, and I’m not taking the chance .
With the long piece of metal in my hand, compromised from using it to unlock the bolt, but still a viable weapon if I were to shove it into someone’s neck, I go out into the hall.
There are no signs of any cameras that I can see. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. So I hurry down the hall looking for the stairs. I check the shortest end of the hall first, don’t find the stairs, but do find that outside the window at the end of the hall is a fire escape that looks like it extends all the way down the side of the building. I keep that in mind and then go searching for the stairs at the other end of the hall. I pass an actual functioning elevator along the way, but skip it, still in search of the stairs.
I find the stairs and poke my head inside first. There’s a big sign on the wall that tells me that I’m on the fifth floor. Since I don’t hear anyone coming or going, I enter the stairwell and begin to make my way down as quickly and silently as possible.
Once I’m at the bottom, I have the choice of exiting into what I presume is the first floor or going directly outside. I weigh the pros and cons. If there’s some type of alarm on the door, I risk alerting my captors. If there are cameras outside, I risk them seeing me. And although this place looks like some apartment or hotel that’s being used to hide the fact that they’re bringing in trafficked women and girls, there’s no telling where I actually am. I could be in the middle of nowhere. There could be huge locked gates and fences to keep me inside.
Also, if Samson or the S-Team or any of the rest of his men go upstairs and find me gone, their first assumption is going to be that I somehow escaped outside without their notice .
So to the first floor it is.
I slowly open the door, careful not to make a sound. I’m at the end of a hall again, but it’s shorter, with fewer doors, and leads out to a small lobby with a snack and coffee bar on the direct opposite side. And on the same side as me, right in front of the foyer, is a reception desk cubicle.
The man responsible for manning it and looking at two computer monitors with cameras watching the outside has his back turned to me and his gun hanging in a holster on his hip. I silently creep up behind him, praying that if there is some kind of supreme being that controls the universe, it aids me in keeping the man from noticing me as I creep up on him. As I continue to creep, I mentally weigh what I’m going to do. Grab the gun, obviously, but if these men are even half as loyal to Jaxson’s father and Samson as Jaxson’s men are to him, they’d gladly meet death before betraying them. Taking the gun and using it as a threat would be a complete waste of time and would only give them time to sound some secret alarm that I don’t know anything about.
It leaves me with one option.
I don’t even dare to breathe once I’m behind the man as I grab the gun on his hip and put it in my pocket before taking a small breath, leaping up, and getting the man in a chokehold. He immediately begins to thrash under me, grabbing at my arms, trying to leverage his weight against mine to dislodge me. But I hold on, and I hold on tight, refusing to budge as adrenaline courses through me and gives me multiple times the strength that I’d normally have. I don’t even have to hold on that long. Out of curiosity, I looked up years ago how long it would take to kill a person in a chokehold. The average is nine seconds, so I count by the second to fifteen in my head. He’s gone limp and starting to turn blue at twelve seconds. I decide to be safe and hold on until twenty, at which point he’s almost purple.
When I let go, he falls limp out of the chair, hitting his head on the way down. By some miracle, he’s started breathing short, shallow breaths by the time he’s on the ground, but hopefully, I damaged his airway so badly that he’s not getting up any time soon. If ever.
This wouldn’t be the first time that I’m responsible for someone’s death. I burned Loving Eden with the entire Deacon Board and my family in it, after all. But even then, Jaxson’s men pulled the triggers on the bullets that killed them all. They were dead before we lit the match to burn the evidence of what had happened. But this would be the first time I killed someone with my own hands. The only reaction I allow my body to have is a shudder at the thought before pushing it into some dark corner of my brain. That’s something I’ll process later. Right now, I need to get a move on.
I grab the man’s phone first and check the date and time.
It’s Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon, to be exact. It’s only been three days. Samson and the long hours of isolation have made it seem so much longer.
I find that the phone is fingerprint activated and use his thumb to open it. I go into the settings to turn off the fingerprint lock, using his thumb one more time to confirm. I continue to pat him down and find his wallet but no cash. That’s not surprising. A lot of people don’t carry cash nowadays. However, he does have a credit card that I take .
Phone, money, and a weapon secured, I go over my options. Of course, the first is calling Jaxson and getting him to track me to this location. But what to do after that, I’m less certain.
There’s no time to sit and try to figure it all out step by step. So I take the only step I can take.
I call Jaxson.
Not many people have Jaxson’s private number. He’s notoriously stingy about who gets it. He keeps it offline, away from data brokers and any other company or entity that might spam call it. I didn’t get his actual private number until his father called me in Chicago and Jaxson gave it to me to memorize. He was just a contact in my phone without a number until then. If anyone else wants to contact him and he doesn’t consider them worth caring about, they call his public number that goes directly to an assistant. So when I dial the number into the stolen phone, I know with certainty that he’s going to answer, even if he doesn’t recognize the number.
“Who is this?” he says, abrupt as always.
“Jaxson!”
“Lauressa! Where are you?”
Someone in the background says, “Is that Lauressa? Is she okay?”
I ignore the noise in the background and answer, “I don’t know where I am. I stole this phone. I’m at some kind of… some kind of old apartment building.”
“Are you safe?”
“I broke out of my room. They haven’t noticed. I’m at the reception desk. But there are cameras outside. I don’t know that I could get away before you get here. ”
“Then don’t try. Can you get back to your room?”
“I think so,” I mutter, looking around. There’s still no one here, and there were no cameras in the hall. If I needed to, I could get back up the stairs, back to my room with the doors locked, and they wouldn’t be any the wiser.
“Go. Wait. I’m on the way. I’ll be there within the hour. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I nod my head even though he can't see me.
"Stay on the line. I'll be on mute."
I nod and let out a grunt of acknowledgement as I haul the man on the ground into an unlocked door that turns out to be a storage room. Hopefully, Samson, or anyone that comes through, will assume that he just went to the bathroom or something for long enough not to think anything happened before Jaxson arrives. Then, with the stolen gun, the phone, and the metal I used to break out in the first place, I make my way back up to the fifth floor, the adrenaline running through my blood preventing me from feeling tired going up the stairs, even though my heart is racing.
When I get back to my room, I first silence the phone and all alerts so it won’t go off and give me away, like the phone that got me into this mess. Then I hide both the gun and phone under the mattress.
After that, I spend the next few minutes using the metal piece to lock both locks on the door. Then, I go to the bathroom, remove the top from the toilet, and hook the metal piece back onto the flusher and chain.
Once all is said and done, I take the gun from under the mattress and put it under my pillow. The phone goes in my pocket, and I lay back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, Jaxson’s father’s voice lecturing loudly still in the background as though I never left.
I fall asleep, even with his father’s slimy voice playing in the background. I don’t know where I am or how far away Jaxson is. But hopefully, the next time I awake, it will be to Jaxson bursting into the room and sweeping me into his arms.
I do wake up to the door bursting open.
But it’s not Jaxson.
It’s Samson.
With Jaxson’s father standing next to him.
That can’t bode well for me. There’s no reason for him to be here that I know of. There’s no way he locked me in here for three days to torment me only to let me out. He has to know I’m made from tougher stuff than what they’ve already put me through. That they haven’t in any way reprogrammed me to the point that as soon as I get out of here, I won’t go running to tell Jaxson exactly what I saw and what I experienced.
“Lauressa,” Jaxson’s father says.
“Oracle,” I say, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I keep my hand next to my pillow, ready at any minute to grab my stolen gun and run.
“You don’t have to pretend to be humbled, Lauressa. You will be. But we both know that moment isn’t today,” he states. “You still have quite a bit of studying to go before that.”
“Is that what we’re calling psychological torture now? Studying?” I ask .
“Psychological torture,” the man repeats with a chuckle. “It would seem that way to someone who doesn’t accept the absolute truth of the Sovereignty.”
“The only absolute truth that I don’t accept about the Sovereignty is that you’re the true anointed Oracle,” I say because I still have to play the game.
“Oh, aren’t I aware of that, Dr. Cult,” the man says.
I don’t miss a beat, feigning surprise as I say, “Dr. Cult? I’m not… I don’t know what Samson or anyone has been telling you. But I’m loyal to the Sovereignty. I’d never risk it by giving a heretic ammunition to destroy it.”
“You can stop the act, sweetheart. We found all the administrative logs on your phone and went through your little office at the store,” Samson says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insist, even though it’s clear they aren’t going to believe me. But that’s the name of the game with cults. Lie until you’re so convinced of your own lie that you start to believe it’s the truth.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Samson continues, ignoring me. “You’re going to confess. You’re going to confess that you gathered false witnesses to slander the good name of our Oracle to take down the Sovereignty.”
“Excuse me if I’m not so sure about the good name of a man who rapes women and then kills them.”
Samson continues to ignore me. “And then, you’re going to atone. ”
“Atone,” I repeat, knowing very well that Samson’s definition of atonement is certainly the same as Jaxson’s.
“Yes. And I’ve got a lot of ideas. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be kneeling at the Oracle’s feet, begging him to forgive you your sins and make you the good conduit he’s envisioned you to be.”
I slide my hand more under my pillow, finding the gun there.
“I’m not Dr. Cult,” I insist. It’s not even technically a lie anymore. Abigail is more Dr. Cult than I am now.
“Ah, Lauressa,” the Oracle says, coming up to me and placing a hand on my cheek. “I don’t want to harm you. Despite your transgression against me, I still intend to follow the Supreme Force’s order of making you my conduit. Just admit what you’ve done. And we can all move on.”
Yeah, right.
I grab the gun from under the pillow and hit Abdiel in the head as hard as I can. When he stumbles backward, I waste no time pointing the gun at Samson and pulling the trigger. I’m not picky about where the bullet strikes, just that it does. Samson groans and grabs his side, forced to double over to manage the pain. I don’t hesitate. I snatch the door that Samson didn’t bother to relock open and then run.
I don’t bother with the stairs. If Samson calls people to come after me, I’ll be cornered there. So I go in the opposite direction to the window from before. It’s locked, making me wish I had the forethought to pick it earlier for a possible escape. But it won’t stop me. It just means I have to waste another bullet to break the lock .
As soon as the window is open, I launch myself out of it onto the fire escape and run down the stairs as fast as I can. I jump from the last level into an alley on hard concrete, my shoulder aching from rolling into the fall. There’s a brick wall to my left and an opening to the street to my right. The only choice I have is to run to the street and hope that Jaxson is nearby or that he’s close enough that I can stall before Jaxson’s father cuts his losses and kills me or takes me to some other location that’s much harder to hide than wherever they dragged me to this time.
I make it to the street at the same time as the front glass doors swings open. I was right that it was some kind of repurposed apartment building or home. If I had time, I’d appreciate the cleverness of the guise. Making it look like a regular home for people allows the men who are probably in and out to do so without suspicion. As it is, I don’t have time to appreciate the cunning because I’m running down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, making as much noise as possible.
But no matter how much noise I make, it’s not going to help. Not only is the building itself a clever ruse, it’s tucked away down a street among a bunch of condemned and empty warehouse-style buildings. There’s no one around to hear me scream.
It’s only been a few days, but I’ve barely had anything to eat or drink, and there’s only so far adrenaline can take me against men who train in the gym way more than I do, which is hardly at all.
I barely get a block before a huge body tackles me to the ground. On instinct, I drop the gun I stole to catch myself on my hands. It skitters away from me, and my left wrist throbs painfully. The body lifts off me, but two sets of hands pick me up off the ground and drag me back down the block to where Jaxson’s father is standing in front of the building I just escaped.
“Confess your sin, Lauressa,” Jaxson’s father insists.
“Why do you even care about me admitting it, even if I was Dr. Cult?” I snap, desperate for something, anything to stall. “You’re supposedly the one true Oracle. If you’re the one true Oracle, what does it matter that I admit anything? The Supreme Force is going to vindicate you in the end, won’t it?” I ask.
I expect the man to laugh. I expect him to berate me, to tell me that I don’t understand. He does neither. Instead, he’s silent, and that genuinely takes me by surprise.
“The Supreme Force is going to vindicate you in the end, right?” I ask.
He still doesn’t answer. The lack of a convicted answer means one thing. That the man isn’t sure he can be vindicated. Which only means one thing.
“You killed Raphael,” I state. I suspected he had. But there was no evidence that he actually had. Just eyewitnesses who said he was the last one to talk to Raphael and then he was dead.
“If it had been the will of the Supreme Force for him to live and be the Oracle, he would have, even after I switched out his migraine medication. The true Oracle would not have been killed so easily.”
In all the time I’ve been positioning Jaxson’s father as an enemy to the Sovereignty and positioning Jaxson as the true Oracle, never did I imagine that the man would actually admit to his alleged crimes. Then again, the first thing Jaxson did when we met was admit that the entire religion was a scam, with a shrug, a smirk, and a promise to torment me until I ceded to being his. The difference back then, though, was that I didn’t have the tools or support to take him down.
I can take Jaxson’s father down… if only I can get away first.
A black, nondescript car pulls up, and the men holding me start to drag me toward it. I renew my efforts to get away.
“No! Stop! You can’t… You don’t have to do this,” I say, fighting so hard that I’m genuinely slowing down our progress. So much so, they stop to get a better grip on me. “He just admitted he’s not the one true Oracle. He admitted that he killed Raphael.”
But these are the Oracle’s most loyal men. Even though they heard the same admission that I did, as far as they’re concerned, they either didn’t hear it or they didn’t hear what they thought they did. Without some kind of recording, no one is ever going to believe this admission. I’d be labeled as a liar. Crazy. Jaxson would be dragged into it even. They’d say I was just saying this to delegitimize his claim over me because I wanted to defy the will of the Supreme Force to marry my lover.
“You won’t—” I pause to kick out against the third man that approaches to help subdue me. My foot gets him right in the face. “You won’t get away with—”
A fist knocks me across the face, dazing me for a few seconds. But before I can get any of my wits back, blood splatters, and the man who punched me crumbles to the ground.
There’s a commotion around me as the men drop me to the ground and pull guns to protect Jaxson’s father .
I don’t know what’s going on, but I want no part in it, so I start trying to drag myself to my feet. I end up crawling at first, but eventually, I’m able to pull myself to my feet only to fall to the ground. Or I would fall to the ground if someone didn’t catch me.
“Lauressa.”
When I first met him, Jaxson’s insistence on calling me by my full name grated my nerves. It didn’t sound like my name anymore. It was a name I hadn’t gone by in years. Since I finally started to realize how wrong Loving Eden was, not just about me but about everything, and decided halfway through my undergrad degree to rename myself as Res. My full name represented everything that I wanted to separate myself from.
Now? Hearing him say my full name is like stepping into a building during the blistering Chicago winter and feeling the heat immediately chase away the chill.
“Lauressa. Snow White. You with me?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I finally say.
Jaxson hugs me to him as he mutters, "Good. I swear after all this is over I'm getting a tracker put in your nail bed."
We'll definitely be seeing about that. But I just huff as I find my balance and gain my bearings to take in the scene around me.
We're surrounded by Jaxson’s men, with guns pointed at his father while Lilah shouts tearfully at him and Adah tries to hold her back.
“You lying scam artist. Did you feel any remorse all these years for what you’ve done? Do you care about the lives you’ve ruined with your false visions and prophecies?” Lilah yells .
“You speak blasphemy,” Jaxson’s father says. “And the Supreme Force—”
“We heard you over the phone and saw you on a livestream. Right here. From Jaxson’s men. Admitting that you killed Raphael! And all this time you pretended to mourn him. All this time, you spoke about how much you loved his father, Zachariah, like your own father. Or did you kill him too? Who else have you killed, coveting a place that wasn’t yours?” Lilah demands.
“Lilah,” I say.
Lilah turns her attention to me and gasps, pulling me from Jaxson’s arms into a hug.
“Sweetheart! I’m so glad you’re safe. I was so scared that—” Lilah breaks off into a sob.
While I helplessly hold onto Lilah, Jaxson makes his way forward to confront his father.
“You dare turn against me? Your father?” the man asks. “If it weren’t for me being Oracle, you wouldn’t be alive. You are everything you are because of me. You owe your entire life, everything to me. You—”
“I owe everything I am to the Supreme Force,” Jaxson states playing the part of devout Sovereign as always. “And I am everything I am despite you. Now here’s what you’re going to do, Dad. You’re going to come with us. You’re going to get in front of all the priests and priestesses to confess your sins. And then? You’re going to atone for what you’ve done to Lauressa.”
“I don’t think so, Nephew,” comes Samson’s voice, and then gunshots fly .
One of Jaxson’s men grabs me and pulls me behind a car for cover. Since I’m still holding Lilah, she’s dragged with me. For what feels like hours, but are probably only minutes, Jaxson’s men and the S-Team exchange fire.
It’s only when it’s over and I’m allowed to look again that I realize that Jaxson’s men weren’t the only ones who shot at the S-Team.
“Landon,” Lilah scolds. “You were supposed to stay behind.”
Whatever Landon’s response is, I don’t hear it, more focused on Jaxson on the ground, leaning against the side of the building, holding his side, while one of his men tries to pry his hand away so he can inspect it.
“Jaxson,” I call, rushing over.
“It’s just a graze,” he assures, waving me off. But based on the tightness in his voice and the blood seeping from him, I know it’s much more than a graze. When I say as much, he just says through gritted teeth as he stands, “I’ve been through worse.”
There’s a story there, but now’s not the time for it as I look around to see where Jaxson’s father is being held down and subdued by Jaxson’s men, with members of the S-Team either scattered around him dead, injured, or otherwise subdued. He sounds like the delusional madman that he is as he spits over and over again, “How dare you? I’m the Oracle. Only through me will you and your bloodline achieve salvation.”
Meanwhile, everyone simply watches.
In my studies of cults over the years, I came across spiritualists and theologians who said that a god’s real power was not his own. It was the belief that others had in him that gave him his power. Without that belief, the god is just a mortal.
Sitting here, watching as some of the same faces that only a few months ago were completely enamored with and devoted to every word that came out of Abdiel’s mouth like they were under a hypnotic spell? Watching faces that a few months ago listened with bated breath to delusional ramblings that were dressed as wisdom that would save their lives? Seeing these faces look on with disgust, disbelief, and anger? I realize I have witnessed a god become a mortal. A cult leader is only as powerful as the people who believe him, after all.