“All it’d take is one phone call from your parents or your school and the police could spot your precise position from the GPS unit in your deck. This car is a deadzone, so you’re safe inside it. But as soon you exit you’ll be back on the map. So we need to remove your deck before that happens.”

“Will it hurt?” Sasha remembered how it’d felt when they’d first implanted her deck, like having a new tooth forcibly inserted into her jaw. She’d been four or five at the time. Her head had hurt for days.

Brother Brian didn’t look up from his briefcase as he answered her. “Yes. I’ve got a topical anesthetic, but nothing stronger. It’ll hurt.”

Sasha nodded gravely. She had anticipated this. A little pain was a small price to pay to become one of God’s elect few. She thought of Paul and Silas, stripped and beaten with clubs on the orders of a heathen magistrate.

God shows his love through salvation. We show ours through sacrifice.

The memory of Pastor Mike’s words helped to ease her fears. She’d miss her deck. But Alexander had said there’d be replacements in the Heavenly Kingdom. In another minute Brother Brian had finished assembling the tool. It looked like a cross between a syringe and a handheld shopvac. At Brother Andrew’s urging, she moved over to sit on the bench seat next to him.

“Now lay across my lap, and angle your temple toward Brother Brian.”

A pang of fear flitted across her heart. These were men of God…but they were also men she didn’t know, who were both much older and larger than her. She had to fight down the urge to panic and flee. You’re trusting these men to smuggle you across a border, dummy.

She hesitated for a few sweaty seconds, but eventually Sasha nodded and lay down in Brother Andrew’s lap. Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it crashing in her skull like ocean waves. Brother Andrew put his strong hands on her. He tightened his grip. He’s holding me down, she realized. And although he tried to restrain her in a comforting way, the liquid mass of panic in her chest almost boiled over.

There was a sudden, sharp pain as Brother Brian plunged the needle in through her temple and then a dull, throbbing feeling like a migraine. Sasha felt dizzy, disoriented, and then nauseous in turns. She blacked out for a few seconds. When she came back to herself she realized she’d been vomiting. The floor of the car was coated in the remains of her lunch. Some of it had gotten on Brother Andrew’s pants leg.