Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

Alexis said, ‘You lay a finger on her and I’ll blow your brains out.’

He stopped in his tracks.

He was angry, confused, destroyed … but that didn’t mean he wanted to die.

He turned back to Alexis, his bottom lip quivering. ‘Who … who killed her?’

‘My friends.’

Brandon’s eyes went wide. ‘The woman! Violetta! The one with the baby. You know what this means? She’s the chosen one. No one but her and her unborn child could kill our messiah. Don’t you see? She can lead us into a new futu—’

‘Brandon,’ Alexis interrupted. ‘Shut up.’

His face fell.

She could see him trying so hard to keep the dream alive, to keep the illusion believable.

If he twisted the facts hard enough, it could all make sense…

Alexis said, ‘Nothing you were told is real. They enslaved you.’

Brandon scoffed, like she’d said something so ridiculous it couldn’t be taken seriously. But behind the curtain, everything was unscrambling. Internally he was holding on for dear life. He turned to his sister and saw her staring up at him with something close to contempt.

That made him pause. ‘Addison? You don’t really believe this shit she’s spewing, do you?’

Addison said, ‘I knew it was all lies before we even killed Karlie.’

That’s what broke him.

He’d been using Maeve’s creed and mantras to justify all the terrible things he’d done. It was the only way he could stay sane — continuing to deny the truth so he didn’t have to accept he’d dug himself a grave he could never climb out of. But here was his beloved sister, the person who meant the most to him out of anyone in the commune, accepting guilt for what she’d done, taking the blame off the conditioning of Mother Libertas and placing it squarely on her own shoulders.

Which must have felt horrible, but what’s right often feels the worst.

Now Alexis could see Brandon’s face quivering, but she needed Addison to keep going.

Alexis said, ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

She met Addison’s eyes and a deep understanding passed between them. Addison got the message. If she wanted to bring her brother back, she had to be ruthless on herself. It was the only way to save him.

If she led by example.

Addison looked up at Brandon and said, ‘It was always a cult. I beat that girl to death knowing full well none of it was real. I was too scared, too weak, to protest. That’s what this place does to us. That’s what it’s doing to you, Brandon. But you know what would make me weaker? You know what would make me even more pathetic? If I pretended I believed it so I didn’t have to feel shame about what I’d done.’

Brandon stood in thunderous silence.

Addison said, ‘Don’t be weak, Brandon. Don’t be pathetic. You took care of me when our parents walked out. I don’t even want to call them “parents” — they were adults who never wanted us. But you were strong then. You gave us a future and it took all of your willpower and then you had nothing left when this place got into your mind. It got into mine, too.’

He lowered his gaze and stared at the floor.

Too ashamed to look at his sister, let alone respond.

Addison said, ‘Let it out, Brandon. Let this place out of your head. Come back.’

Brandon sat down on the bench, put his head in his hands and, for the first time since he’d joined the cult, he cried.

109

Slater reunited with Alexis, and together they went up to the farmhouse.

They left Brandon and Addison in the mess hall, locked in an endless embrace, going through every emotion together.

They met King and Violetta on the front porch of the farmhouse.

There were still a few disciples scattered across the hillside, but none of them were aware of their surroundings. They were grappling with existential dread, much like Slater’s experience the previous night. But there was no Bodhi in their systems, just an overwhelming confusion at what they’d spent the last few months of their lives doing. What they’d believed. How deeply they’d become entrenched in Maeve’s web.

They’d figure it out eventually.

Or not.

Slater knew some wouldn’t. It would simply be too hard, and they’d return to civilisation rambling to themselves, lost to mental illness as the burden of facing their demons proved too much. There was nothing he could do for them.

He looked at King. ‘What the hell do we do now? There’s two hundred people here.’

‘Where’s Dane?’ King said.

Slater shook his head.

King said, ‘Then there’s nothing left to do.’

‘I—’

‘What?’ King said. ‘What do you think we can do? Hold a service of our own in the church? Speak the truth to them? We’re not prophets. We don’t have all the answers. We just know lies when we see them.’

Slater said, ‘Some of them will break.’

King said, ‘I know. But you know why we can’t stay. Our names…’

Slater understood.

Dredging their pasts up from the files wouldn’t go unnoticed. Whoever had done it for Dane, he was deep in government black-ops. He’d trigger alerts. For all they knew, half the secret world would descend on Thunder Basin if they got a whiff that Jason King and Will Slater were out there.

King said, ‘We can’t leave them here without resources.’

Slater said, ‘There’s only one resource they need.’

He left the group, went into the farmhouse, and down to the basement. It used to be an intelligence centre. A technological workstation. Now it was nothing. Slater gazed out at rows of torched hardware, drenched in lighter fluid and set alight. Whatever information had existed in the cloud was no doubt wiped.

Maeve had known it was the end of the road.

All her plans, all her contacts, all those people out in the real world that she’d sunk her hooks into, fed Bodhi, brainwashed…

No evidence.

No proof.

Slater had to hope that the decapitated Mother Libertas wouldn’t regrow its head. With the Riordans gone, the Bodhi would stop flowing, and at least half of the disciples here in the commune were already