Undying

by Amie Kaufman

  Dex, leading the way, offers me his hand to clamber out of the pipe, followed by Jules and Neal. At our feet is a neat round hole in the ground, its cover already heaved up and out of the way.

  Atlanta.

  “Is there any way she knows we’re coming?” I ask in a whisper.

  “We got no way of tracking you,” Dex replies. “She won’t know. She wouldn’t believe we could have got out of the cell.”

  “And the portal? Could she move it, just in case?”

  “No,” he says, holding out his hand. “The tracker I left you at the hotel, do you still have it?”

  Neal pulls it from his bag, offering it to Dex.

  “Here,” Dex says, tapping the screen, and zooming in. “Look, same place.”

  “We thought that was tracking Undying teams,” I say, leaning in to look at the display, shoulder to shoulder with Jules.

  “Close,” he says. “You remember the cables I pulled out of the shuttle before we blew it?”

  I nod, my mind conjuring up a picture of Dex with a coil of what looked like rope slung across his chest as we rode through France.

  “That’s what we need for the portal construction,” he says. “That’s what it’s tracking. They give off a unique energy signature, even when dormant.”

  We all gather around the uncovered manhole, gazing downward, where a rope has already been anchored to the edge and left to dangle. Twenty or thirty meters below us is an inky expanse. The plink of water drips here and there, echoing in the distance.

  “The old waterway.” Jules sounds breathless, and I know he’d be in scholarly heaven if he allowed himself to be distracted.

  Suddenly, I feel like we’re back on Gaia, surveying that first great room inside the spiral temple. Nothing could ever match the strangeness of that moment, but something about being here with Jules, when his eyes are lit with that inquisitive fire, surrounded by ancient stone, facing a near-impossible task … it feels familiar.

  God, when did this become my normal and familiar?

  I duck my head and ease it into the hole to look at what’s below, keeping my movements slow and steady. Most likely, Atlanta’s already down there, deep in preparation to get her portal up and running. If she sees my face instead of Dex’s, I’m sure she won’t hesitate to shoot.

  I wait, blinking slowly, giving my eyes all the time they want to adjust, but there’s not a trace of light down there. I click on my flashlight, keeping it mostly muffled with my fingers, and ease my way back to take another look. Slowly—keeping it as far from me as I can, in case she aims a shot at the source of the light—I uncover it.

  The expanse of water at the bottom doesn’t look deep—the level isn’t high enough to reach most of the pipes leading away from the reservoir. But one pipe’s bricks have been crumbled away, leaving only the tiniest heap of rubble to dam the water from gushing away.

  “Thatways is where the water’s meant to go, and join up to the city supply,” Dex murmurs, after he and the others have joined me on their bellies around the shaft. “Which means …”

  Slowly, he traces the beam of his own flashlight back along the walkway against the far wall. Then, like some nightmarish creature looming out of the shadows, it’s suddenly there—the portal, squatting in the darkness. Inert for now, but alien nonetheless. In this watery, ancient cathedral of stone, it looks deadly.

  “Why isn’t she here?” Jules whispers, and Dex is silent a long moment.

  “I …” He clears his throat softly, tries again. “I don’t know. I was sure she’d try and start the portal, complete the mission in case we sent anyone after her. I don’t know why she’d set it up and leave it. But maybe it was too much.”

  I can hear the strain in his voice, and I know the others can too. Whatever his moral convictions, this is the person he loves most in the world he’s talking about. And he’s broken her.

  Question is, does that make her more or less dangerous now?

  “Well,” I whisper, “just because she’s not here doesn’t mean she’s not coming. We should try the broadcast from here. There couldn’t be a better backdrop than the portal. That thing would convince me, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re right,” Jules murmurs. “Let’s go.”

  I glance at the others, who look as daunted as I feel. And then, without a word, we begin the long climb down to reach the reservoir, and at its end, the Undying portal.

  DESPITE THE COOL AIR DOWN HERE, MY PALMS ARE SWEATING AS DEX sets up the camera—just one of our new burner phones, mounted on a chunk of rock, with Neal’s backpack underneath it to give it a little grip. Mia stands beside him, studying the image of me over his shoulder, gesturing for me to shuffle a little to one side so I’m framed properly.

  Neal’s sending out the news on all his social networks and urging the forum members to help spread the word—Jules Addison answers his father’s critics with the truth about the ship in orbit, live at the top of the hour, you don’t want to miss this, pass it on.

  Neal finishes his work, flipping his phone around and propping it next to mine, but facing me, so I can see the streaming feed and make sure I stay in shot.

  I want to keep the portal in it, as well. It’s mounted against the high wall behind me, just above the surface of the water. I can see the long, rope-like strings of circuitry Dex rescued from the landing shuttle before he blew it up, fixed into the stone itself. And spreading out from the curve of the rope, glimmering in the beam of our flashlights, is the kind of crystalline rock we saw all over the temple on Gaia. It’s as if the Undying tech is leaching out of the framework Dex and Atlanta brought here, and making itself part of the stone of the waterways.

  The others are talking quietly, but their words are mostly a buzz in the background.

  I’m scared. I’m scared, and I’m so tired. I want to find somewhere dark and safe, and hide there until this is all over. It feels impossible, standing up to speak the truth when I know how many people are out there, just waiting to take apart my every word. To do to me what they did to my father.

  And if they do—if I fail—whole cities will fall.

  “Jules, we’re ready,” Neal says quietly. “And … wow, do we have a lot of viewers. Maybe De Luca came good and told people to watch.”

  They’re coming to see a car crash, my terrified heart insists. They want something new to auto-tune. To mock. It’s going to be just like last time. You’re going to be a joke, and they won’t hear what you need them to hear, and—

  “Hey, Oxford.” It’s Mia’s voice, calm, breaking into the trickle of rising panic.

  And when I look across at her, she’s smiling. A small, private smile, just for me, playing across her lips like we know something the world doesn’t.

  And I know that whatever happens, it’s not going to be like last time. Because she promised we’d stick together.

  “I’m ready,” I say quietly.

  Neal leans down to swipe at the screen and start the broadcast, and nods at me to begin.

  I take a deep breath, and look down the lens of the camera.

  “My name is Jules Addison,” I say. “And I don’t have long, but I want to tell you a story. To find the start of it, we have to go back sixty years. The Earth’s climate was failing. The deserts were growing, the weather becoming more and more unpredictable and violent. The future looked grim, but humankind managed to set aside its differences, and through the formation of the International Alliance we came together to reach further than we ever had before. We founded the Centauri mission. We dreamed of a new world, and a new future.

  “But we all know how that part of the story ends—or at least, we think we do. Their ship failed. They called for help, and we had no second ship with which to answer. And then they vanished, falling silent forever, and we lost more than a colony ship. We lost more than the hundreds of people on it. We lost hope. We lost our future. But though we’ve always ended the story there, it turns out there were many more chapters to come.” />
  My eyes on the camera, I speak about the way the Centauri settlers fought for survival, tossed about through space and time, searching for another planet like Earth. I speak about their failure to find one, no matter how far they traveled, how hard they looked.

  “When I first heard that,” I say, ignoring the viewer count on the phone that’s facing me, though I can tell it’s ticking up and up and up, “I felt small. I felt infinitely small. Our planet is an insignificant speck, when set against the scale of our galaxy. But the fact that we are tiny, and alone, and yet we survive—that does not make us insignificant. It makes us magnificent.

  “That wasn’t the story the Centauri told, though. They only remembered, as centuries passed for them—centuries spent far in our future, far into our past—that they called for help, and we did not come. They remembered that we had a precious planet, and we seemed determined to destroy it. When they hunted for us with their transmission, it never occurred to them that we might offer help. Not a wasteful, heartless people like us. So they called themselves the Undying, and they baited their hook by telling us about our own misdeeds.

  “‘Ours is a story of greed and destruction,’ they said. Those are the words of the Undying transmission my father translated. ‘Of a people not ready for the treasure they guarded. Our end came not from the stars but from within. … We were not, and never had been, worthy of what had been given to us.’ ”

  I let the words echo a moment, let them soak in, before I continue. “They have returned to us now, and they are our enemies. And a part of me isn’t even sure we have the right to protest that. They want to take our planet from us—they started in Lyon, with the outbreak you’ve all seen by now thanks to that video that leaked out.

  “These portals”—I point up over my shoulder now, and one of my companions shines a light onto the glimmering arch—“are like the portal we used to travel to Gaia. Soon, they will open to let through teams of Undying in every major city on the planet, here to spread the toxin that caused the disaster in Lyon. This is their plan, because they never thought it would be worth asking us for help. They didn’t believe we’d answer.

  “We have to stop them, but we don’t have to do it with missiles—in fact, we can’t. We need your help, no matter where you are in the world. We’re putting links up on the screen as I speak. We need you to build these transmitters, to jam the signals they need to operate the portals. We need you to get to work, and to broadcast on this frequency as soon as you can.”

  This was where I planned to end my speech, with a plea to the citizens watching to help fend off the enemy. But I’m not done. Not done talking, not done understanding, and not done fighting. I know that now.

  “We need to stop them from doing this,” I continue. “And then we need to prove ourselves. We can’t strike back against them. We mustn’t. Meeting force with force is not the answer. We have to prove that we’re more than they believe of us—that we are worthy of what has been given to us. They finished their broadcast to us with these words, which were meant to be bait. But I say they are a challenge that we should accept.

  “So choose. Choose the stars or the void; choose hope or despair; choose light or the undying dark of space. Choose—and travel onward, if you dare.”

  Blood’s pounding through my veins as I look down the camera for my final words, but I’m oddly calm. “What if we offer our hands to those who don’t believe in us? What if we travel onward together?”

  As the echoes of my words die away, I finally look away from the screen, to find the others standing behind it. Neal is watching the feed, his face full of hope. Dex’s eyes are shining with tears. Mia’s gaze is waiting to meet mine.

  And then, abruptly, her face is illuminated, a bright light shining from behind me. A cold hand curls around my heart as I slowly turn.

  The portal is powering up, flickers of light running along the arch of it. Then the rock within it shimmers, turning liquid and oily, a rainbow rippling across the surface.

  Atlanta steps out through it, and lifts her hand.

  She’s holding a gun.

  Her eyes meet mine, and we both hold still for an interminable instant.

  And then something strikes me in the shoulder—an odd sensation, like a kick.

  And then the pain comes, burning down my arm, spreading across my chest.

  And then I look down, and see the blood soaking my shirt.

  THE GUNSHOT’S ECHO IN THE CAVERN IS A VISCERAL, GUTTING BLOW. And in its wake I am deafened, numbed, frozen.

  Jules turns slowly toward me as he looks down, blood blossoming against his shirt like a rose pinned to his chest. Behind him the portal ripples, blurry vague shapes coming through to stand with the blurry vague shape that shot Jules. Somewhere nearby someone is shouting, and one of the blurry shapes shouts back. And water drips from the ceiling, ticking like a clock, each droplet falling slower than the last.

  When Jules looks up, his eyes meet mine. His brows are drawn together, lips parted, his expression one of gentle disbelief and confusion—and apology. He tries to speak, and though I can’t hear the shouts erupting all around me, I can hear the sound that gurgles from Jules’s throat.

  He staggers and then crumples to the ground.

  I only become aware I’m moving when a pair of arms wraps around me and drags me backward. Someone’s telling me something, ordering me to do something, a dim, buzzing annoyance in my ear. I struggle against my captor, clawing at the arms, jamming my heels down against their feet, and finally jab my elbow back as hard as I can until I hear a crunch, and the arms loosen—just enough.

  I break free and run. Behind me someone shouts a curse, and footsteps come after me, but I’ve never moved so fast in my life, and I throw myself down just as another shot cracks against the backdrop of noise. Something whizzes past me and bits of stone fall in a shower behind me. I reach Jules’s side on my knees.

  There’s blood everywhere now—the rose is a garden, a sea of red. I rip off my jacket and press it against his chest, pushing as hard as I can to try to stem the flow of blood. Jules moans and coughs, and my heart quakes.

  Still alive.

  Fragments of what’s happening around me reach my brain. Dex’s voice nearby, shouting, pleading. Another voice, inhuman and cold, a monster’s voice, shouting back with tears choking her. Booted feet running, a muffled exclamation of surprise from Neal. More voices, human voices. The click of readied weapons.

  “Look at me,” I beg him, bending low.

  Jules’s wide eyes blink, and shift toward my face. His features, twisted with pain, relax the tiniest bit, and he clutches at my arm with a hand sticky with his own blood. “Did it work?” he whispers.

  A sound, some mix of laugh and agony, escapes my lips. “Yes,” I tell him, gathering him up onto my lap. “Yes, it worked. Millions of people saw. You did it. You saved us.”

  Gunfire erupts in the background, and then more gunfire, the echoes making it impossible to tell its origins. Jules stiffens, his eyes widening in fear. “What’s—”

  “It’s nothing,” I interrupt, cupping my hand against his cheek, trying to keep his focus on me. “It doesn’t matter.”

  His eyes are still rolled sideways, though, and that look of bewilderment is back. “Is that Mink?” he mumbles.

  I don’t want to take my eyes from his face, but I lift my head just a moment. It is Mink, and a handful of others in secret-ops black, already shooting as more of them come rappelling down from the opening overhead. The Undying are shooting back, and stone is flying every which way, and Dex is shouting, and Neal is pressed against the stone, one hand to his face, where his nose is streaming blood.

  “De Luca must have asked her to back us up,” Jules murmurs vaguely. “They ended up on the same side.”

  “Jules—look at me.” I stroke his face, and his eyes swing back toward mine. “Stay with me, okay?”

  His eyelashes dip—and my heart drops too—and then lift in a slow, weary blink. “A
re we on Gaia?” he mumbles, confusion furrowing his brow.

  I gulp back a sob and pull him against me. Something about keeping the wound elevated above his heart. Something about keeping him close to my own heart. “No, we’re home.” I drop my head, pressing my forehead to his. “We’re home now.”

  “My dad’s going to love you.” Jules’s voice is thin and soft.

  I lift my head, and water keeps dripping down, down from the ceiling, down from my face, down from the corners of Jules’s eyes. “I can’t wait to meet him,” I manage, trying to sound happy, trying to sound warm. Trying to sound like I’m not watching Jules die.

  His eyes close again, and I tap at his cheek until they open and fix, with some effort, on me. “Tomorrow we’ll be the first people ever to set foot in this temple. …”

  I try to smile at him. “You picked me up and whirled me around in the air. I had no idea I could feel that way until I met you.” I stroke his cheek, wiping his tears and mine from his skin. “That kind of wonder. That kind of hope.”

  More gunfire, more shouting, more cracking of stone and splashing of water. Battle rages all around. No one’s aiming for me. With one bullet, Atlanta destroyed us both.

  I shift my grip, arm aching from pressing the cloth against his wound. I trail my fingers over his jaw until his eyes soften.

  “I love you,” I tell him.

  His cracked lips curve, and a little glint dances there in his eyes. “I know that.”

  The air in my lungs escapes, laughter and horror, and I give him a little shake. “Don’t try to play it cool. You love me back.”

  The glint softens, and the smile fades, and his brown eyes meet mine with such a sudden clarity, clear of the fog of pain and blood loss, clear of everything but certainty. “I know that too.”

  It’s getting harder to hold him, his body growing limper, his head heavier against my arm.