Undying

by Amie Kaufman

  “We let them think we’re doing as they ask, for now. We don’t fight, we don’t argue—they already think we’re weaker than they are just because they’re some superior alien race. We let them think they’ve won.”

  “And if we get to Prague and still don’t know how to stop them, then what?”

  Jules hesitates. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But it’s going to take us a while to get there. We’ll figure it out as we go.” A flicker of a smile appears on his face. “Now, where have I heard that before?”

  I wish I could find it funny, him using my own style of planning—or lack thereof—against me. But my fear is too heavy.

  “How do we even get there? There’s what, like, four, five border crossings between here and there?”

  Weariness sharpens my voice. Escaping IA custody ought to have been the biggest, most daring, most insane thing we’d have to do to warn our home that it’s in danger. Hell, making it to IA custody should have been enough. Now, with Jules’s half-formed plan stretching out in front of me, the idea that our escape was just the beginning makes me want to lie down in the gravel beneath me and give up.

  “Only three, if we go through Germany.” Jules shifts his weight like he might reach for my hand, but he stops, his arm dangling awkwardly at his side instead. “I can call my cousin. We know a guy who makes fake IDs for the private school kids—he might be able to make us some passports that would at least hold up for sleepy border guards at quiet crossings. He could bring us some money, maybe a phone.”

  “You make your cousin sound like some sort of spy.”

  “I’d bet my life on the fact that he’ll know a guy who knows a guy. Don’t underestimate the Addison gene pool.” He smiles at me, that smile he must know is devastating to my attempts to remain unmoved.

  I close my eyes so it can’t sway me, drawing a deep breath and trying to focus past my exhaustion. “We can’t wait here for him, the IA’s bound to catch up to us. We’ll have to sneak across the border into France on foot. Keep our heads down, maybe change our appearance in case they put out a BOLO.”

  Jules’s teeth flash in the dark, a quick grin that he stifles immediately. “You sound like an American cop show.”

  “More like a spy thriller.” I eye him sidelong, realizing after a moment that I’m chewing on my lip.

  “What is it?” Jules asks, making me curse the fact that we’ve spent so much time together. I don’t like it when anyone can read me, and he doesn’t even make it look hard.

  “Do you really think I give you orders all the time?” The words tumble out before I can stop them, my voice betraying me with its wistful lift at the end.

  His eyebrows go up again, and then he smiles again, softer this time. “My word, yes. You don’t?” But before I can object, this time he does stretch his hand out, fingertips brushing mine before he gives them a tentative squeeze. “But I’d be dead if you hadn’t started ordering me around. I think you missed the more important part of what I said.”

  Part of me wants to pull my hand away. He’s calling me bossy and overbearing—worse than that—and damned if I’ll let him hold my hand while he does. But my skin tingles where it touches his, and it turns out I’m not too tired for my heart to start racing. I stare hard at the gravel at my feet.

  When I don’t respond, he tilts his head as if to try to catch my downward gaze. “The whole partner part?”

  In spite of myself, I glance at him. His face looks like it always does, but for some reason looking at him while he’s holding my hand is ten times harder than looking at him while curled up together in an alien ship. There, it was life and death. No time for self-doubt or confusion, and certainly no time to examine our feelings. Here, with the crickets singing and the gentle breeze across the Catalonian countryside, it couldn’t be more different. My face heats, and my mind empties of any possible reply.

  A distant laugh reminds me that we’re not alone, that even aside from Dex and Atlanta—holding their own intense, whispered conversation by the tree—there are other cars parked all around us.

  I blink, staring again at the camper van laden with outdoorsy gear. I let go of Jules’s hand and straighten, all too glad—and maybe a little disappointed—to have a way out of the conversation. “I’ve got an idea.”

  On our stolen bicycles, it doesn’t take long to get far enough from the border crossing station to cut across the grassy valley and into France.

  I could’ve laughed—if I wasn’t so freaking terrified—watching Dex and Atlanta try to stay upright on the bicycles, following us in wobbly, faltering, winding zigzags. Of course, their clumsiness only lasted for maybe half an hour before they started to get the hang of riding, and now they’re every bit as confident on the bikes as Jules and I.

  Damn alien reflexes. They look more at home on the bikes than we do.

  Sometimes they look more human than we do.

  On the ship it was easy to notice the differences between us and the tall, blue-blooded Undying—the fact that we were on their star-ship was one major difference—but when it’s just two of them they don’t look nearly so alien.

  Dex has slung over his shoulders the rope-like thing he retrieved from the shuttle before setting it to self-destruct. “Rope” isn’t really the right word—it has that strange, semi-metallic, semi-crystalline structure that the portal ship had. It’s some piece of Undying technology, that’s for sure. Just the sight of it makes me uneasy, but Dex looks so human pedaling in a zigzag that I don’t know what to think. And while I watch, Dex gives a little whistle and veers left, as if to hit Atlanta, who gives an amused yelp and squeezes the brakes so that he shoots off into the grass, laughing.

  They tease each other like friends do.

  A glint in the starlight catches my eye. It’s the grip of Dex’s gun peeking out of his waistband. My throat closes, and I concentrate on pedaling.

  Jules was able to wheedle the use of a cell phone out of one of the other travelers stopped by the border, while I went and picked the lock chaining the bicycles to the camper. He didn’t get hold of his cousin—not surprising, given it was well past midnight in England and even later here—but he left a message. With no choice but to keep moving, we’ve just got to hope that the cousin, Neal, checks his messages regularly.

  The second call he made was to the club that holds Evie’s contract. His face, when he came back to me, was grim—and my heart sank. “They said she didn’t show up for work today,” he said softly, eyes shadowed. “And she’s not in her bunkhouse.”

  Now, I can’t dismiss the idea of my sister in IA custody somewhere, scared and alone, with no idea why she’s being held. No idea that she’s been taken to use as leverage against her fugitive big sister.

  I try to focus on the ground in front of me. The task in front of me. Save the world first, I tell myself. You’ll be saving Evie too.

  Eventually we come across a dirt trail, and follow that to a one-lane road that passes a number of dark enclosures. Jules says they’re vineyards, but all I see are rows of gnarled wooden roots. It takes us a bit of backtracking to find our way to a larger road, but once we reach it it’s only a few minutes before we see lights in the distance. There’s a little motel, a few shops with dark windows, and a gas station. They’re all closed, even the gas station, but there’s a map pasted up on the inside of its doors and a sign that says ENTRER Ç’EST ACHETER.

  “ ‘To enter is to buy,’ ” Jules translates, looking amused. “I guess they got sick of people coming in for directions.”

  Since we’re not exactly sure where we are, it takes a while to locate the town we’re in on the map. I leave Jules to it, and with Atlanta’s sharp eyes monitoring my every movement, I wander over toward an ancient-looking pay phone. I’ve only ever seen them in movies, and I reach for the receiver with the oddest feeling—like I’ve gone back in time, somehow, or like all of this is some strange dream I might wake from at any moment. Though I know the phone’s a long shot, and I don’t even
have any French coins to use, I want to call Evie, to try her cell phone—even though that’d be the first thing the IA would confiscate—and find out if she’s okay. I wish I could make sure she’s not scared, wherever she is—I’ll lie if I have to, if it means she can rest easier for even a few days. Before her big sister gets arrested and thrown into IA detention for the rest of her life.

  I can’t resist putting the phone to my ear, but there’s nothing to hear. Even when I jiggle the metal thing that it hangs on, there’s not so much as a click. Clearly, even in this tiny town, no one’s got any use for public phones anymore.

  Except for a bunch of wanted criminals who don’t have cell phones.

  Sighing, I hang up the phone and head back toward the others. Atlanta and Dex are still astride their bicycles, and Atlanta’s eyes follow me as I pass them.

  “I think we’re here,” Jules murmurs, tapping the glass as I approach. “And we need to head up this road until we can go east, and eventually we’ll hit the coast. If we follow the coastline north, we’ll reach Montpellier sometime tomorrow morning. I said in my message to Neal that I’d try him again tomorrow, so hopefully he’ll have a plan by then.”

  “You want to bike all night?” I don’t add the second half of that thought: My ass is already killing me.

  “Do we have any choice?” Jules glances over his shoulder. “They don’t seem tired at all, and while I’m pretty sure Dex can keep Atlanta from murdering us, I don’t know that he can keep her from insisting we keep moving.”

  “Pretty sure?” I eye him sidelong. “Earlier, you were definitely sure.”

  “Slip of the tongue.”

  “Which time, the first time or this time?”

  Jules grins at me, then turns to retrieve his bike from the bench it’s leaning on. “Let’s go.”

  WE’RE FINALLY ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF MONTPELLIER. WE THOUGHT WE’D be here by early morning, but it’s after lunch now—not that we’ve eaten.

  We hit a point just before dawn when we simply had to rest, so we wheeled our bikes off the road and stretched out in the dew-damp grass behind a row of trees planted long ago as a windbreak. Overhead the stars were fading into the pale gray of the pre-dawn sky, and we watched as a handful seemed to fall from their place in the heavens, streaking across the sky.

  “That’s a lot of shooting stars,” Mia murmured. “I had a good view out in Chicago, but there was never that much.”

  “They’re satellites,” Dex supplied, around a yawn, earning himself a sharp nudge from Atlanta, who seems to object to sharing even basic information, on principle as far as I can tell. Good thing she doesn’t know we used to eavesdrop on the pair of them, back up on the ship.

  “Whole satellites?” Mia asked, lifting her head to look across at them.

  I glanced over at Dex, who had the gun from his waistband resting on his stomach, his hand curled loosely around it. For all our voices were quiet, the scene almost idyllic, we were still prisoners—and the Undying team weren’t about to let us forget it. Atlanta was the only one not lying down—she kept her eyes on us, not on the sky.

  When Dex didn’t answer, I drew a slow breath. “Something just showed up where their orbital paths used to be.” Mia’s head tipped toward me, and though she didn’t say anything, I could guess what she was thinking. Just days ago we were on that ship that came through the portal and inserted itself into orbit around Earth.

  We were up there, looking down at our home, listening to the impacts of communications satellites and research probes against the hull of the alien ship that had disrupted the delicate dance of tiny manmade moons around our planet. Now, they’re being knocked from the sky one by one, Earth’s creations falling as the Undying monolith overtakes them.

  It feels uncomfortably prophetic.

  “We thought you’d come ourways, take a look at the ship,” Atlanta said, finally glancing up toward the night sky. “Launch something fast as you could.”

  The truth is, we probably are launching something as fast as we can. But it’s not so long ago in our history that we had to use fossil fuels to claw our way up into space, and even now with nuclear reactors powering our shuttles, it takes months to build and ready a space-worthy craft. I have no doubt IA teams are working around the clock to get scouting probes and shuttles ready to head up to the ship, but I’m equally sure it’ll be too late by the time they do.

  The IA isn’t what it once was, in terms of might, or heft, or funding. Their support started to fade away the moment the Centauri mission was lost, and though Gaia was meant to be their triumphant comeback, I suspect this tightened border security in Europe is one of the ways individual countries are asserting their own power once again. Now is the time we should be supporting the IA, coming together. Instead, according to De Luca, we’re turning on each other.

  I didn’t say any of this to Atlanta. There’s no need for her to know we’re further behind, and more divided than she thinks.

  We half dozed for a little before we continued on our way. Mia and I were desperately in need of the rest—I didn’t so much lie down on the ground as experience an uncontrolled descent—and even Dex and Atlanta looked willing to sit down on the grass for a while.

  The enormity of the journey ahead is beginning to sink in. My thighs are aching, my hands are blistered from the bike’s handlebars, and I’m walking like a bowlegged cowboy as I dismount my bike in front of a small café in the outer suburbs of Montpellier. It’s isolated—I’d guess that it mostly does lunches for the locals—and it’s a good place to check in with Neal again, and pray that he got my message.

  I lean my bike against the wall, and I’m about to turn and walk in when Mia reaches out to grab my arm.

  “Wait,” she says. “You look like …” Her lips curve into a small, tired smile. “Well, you look like you’ve been through what you’ve been through.”

  Her hands brush the travel dust from my sleeves and straighten my clothes, and I try not to notice how close she is.

  I run a hand over my hopelessly messy curls, and as Dex steps closer to Mia, his hand resting casually near the place his gun is hidden, I take my cue and walk toward the café. I could never leave her anyway, but the unspoken threat—if you run, we’ve got a weapon on her—leaves me shaking. It’s smart, that’s for certain. We don’t want anyone reporting there were four of us, if they’re asked. Alone, I can blend in. But I don’t have to like it.

  The man behind the counter looks up as the little bell over the door rings. “You look like you’re having a bad day,” he offers, after just one glance at me.

  I remind myself to slip into French, to lean on the o sounds, to make my voice a little more musical so I sound like a local speaker, less memorable. “Monsieur, you have no idea. The most recent part of my bad day is that I have a flat tire. Could I please use your phone to call a friend? I’m afraid I don’t have any money.”

  He looks me up and down again, and then he nods, digging in his back pocket to offer it to me.

  My hands are shaking as I walk out of earshot, then dial Neal’s number and listen to the phone start to ring. Come on, I urge him silently. Come on, Neal, come on.

  And then the ringing stops.

  “Neal Addison speaking.” His familiar voice crackles down the line, and unbearable pressure wells up behind my eyes.

  “Neal, it’s me.”

  “Oh, thank God.” I can hear the relief in his voice.

  “Where are you?” I ask, too eager to remember to be discreet.

  “I’m …” He hesitates. “You were circumspect, in your phone call, yesterday. I think I understood the place you were talking about. If I got it right, I’m about an hour away.”

  I hadn’t dared tell him yesterday that if we made it across the border we would be heading for Montpellier. I have no idea if anyone’s listening to his phone, but I need to assume the worst, because we can’t afford to be caught—the fate of the world may well hang on us making it to Prague. So I made a joke a
bout wading into a pond while on holiday—something that really happened when my family and Neal’s once visited Montpellier, on our way to Ambrussum, to study the Gallo-Roman ruins there.

  We’d diverted for a picnic lunch in the park, and an eight-year-old Neal convinced a four-year-old me that there were undiscovered ruins hidden at the bottom of the pond in question. So in I went to discover them. It was a soggy—and disappointing—experience, and one I’m fairly sure he won’t have forgotten.

  “Look,” I say. “This might be for nothing, but it might not. There’s a chance that you’ll be tracked. You should draw cash out of the bank and swap your phone for a new one, before you … go to that place.”

  Neal doesn’t even know I’ve been to Gaia, unless my father told him. All he knows is that I’ve been out of contact for weeks, and now I’ve surfaced in France, talking like an international spy. Luckily for me, he doesn’t seem to think I’ve lost my mind. “I’ll be there,” he says simply.

  “And Neal?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’ll be other people with me. One’s a girl, Mia, you can trust her. The other two, don’t say anything in front of them. I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

  An hour later, we’re wheeling our bikes through the Parc Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle, approaching a small pond in the middle of the green space—the site of my long-ago and ill-fated exploration.

  I can see Neal’s familiar figure as soon as we come around the bend in the path. We look fairly similar—the Addison genes are strong in both of us, and we play on the same water polo team, so we share the same build. He’s a little taller, a little more broad-shouldered, his skin a little deeper brown, but we look more like brothers than cousins. We are more like brothers than cousins.

  He’s clad in his usual leather jacket and he’s got a motorbike, but it’s not his—it’s the wrong color, navy blue, with a white stripe down the side. It’s … mehercule, it’s a gendarme’s bike.