Which means there’s no reasontheycan’t beme.
My throat’s tight, and my hands are tingling as I make my way past the scrambling soldiers, practicing my first words in my head. I speak nine languages and a further six dialects. I’ve been listening to the Undying for days. If anyone can imitate their accents and their lexicon, it’s me.
If only telling myself that would stop me feeling like I’m about to throw up in my helmet.
My legs are moving anyway, and I stride up to the pair like I mean business, causing both their heads to turn my way.
“Atlanta?” I ask, pointing a finger at her, leaning back from my vowels to keep them sharp, making it a question. “Dex?”
“Yeh?” Atlanta says, speaking slowly.
I throw my hands up like I’m praising the lord that I’ve found them. “Talk about hassle. My partner’ll be thisways any minute.”
Neither of them immediately expresses the relief and understanding I’m fishing for. Dex remains in the doorway, watching me, and Atlanta blinks slowly.
“Who are you?”
I know what Mia would do. She’d lean in, she’d completely commit.Deus, I wish I was Mia right now.
“I’m Jules,” I say, contriving to sound like this is just a little bit obvious, and I’m surprised they haven’t already been briefed. I think I’m better sticking to my own name—from what I’ve observed, theirs are mainly traditional human names, but shortened, as in Dex’s case, or things or places, as in Atlanta’s.
“We’re not waiting on you,” says Atlanta, with her customary bluntness. She’ll be the harder sell, I know that.
“I compren,” I agree. “But it’s all shuffled now, yeh? I was told to meet up with Prime-One.” I’m praying that Atlanta got her way, and that she and Dex got thebeno destinshe’d been hoping for.
Atlanta’s still squinting at me. I know I’m close enough for her to see through my faceplate, so I keep my expression serious. “What destin you got?”
“Prime-Two,” I answer, wishing I had Mia’s glibness.
Atlanta’s squint turns to a frown. “Prime-Two’s on the flipside of the planet down there, Jules, why you landing on Europe with us?”
Europe, I think, my heart throwing in an extra beat. Where home is. Where Neal is.Where my father is.I scramble for words. “WewerePrime-Two, but in the shuffle someone else got it.” I throw every ounce of irritation and frustration I have into my voice, channeling the tutors back at Oxford when forced to deal with undergrads—the ultimate indignity. “Now we’re support for Prime-One, like they think we can’t all handle the destin we got first time round.”
But before she can interrogate me further, Dex peers down from his place above us in the doorway to the shuttle. “I don’t seeus,” he points out, though he sounds slightly more friendly. “Where’s your partner?”
I roll my eyes. “She’s coming. I pledge, I told her to check her suit again, but no, and now the piece-of-lixo seal …” I wave one hand in a what-can-you-do type gesture, because while I’m fairlysure a seal would be part of even an alien spacesuit, I certainly don’t know what would go wrong with it.
Atlanta shakes her head. “We’re shifting with Keats and Nakry,” she insists.
I shrug. “I’m pretty sure they’re already mostways to planetside, they got shuffled too—they’re the ones that got Prime-Two.”
Exactly what I’m going to do if Keats and Nakry show up before Mia does, I have no idea.
The pair of them exchange a long look, and some kind of unspoken communication—he tilts his head slightly, she lifts her brow. For all Atlanta’s outward bluster, they’re deciding together whether they need to go seek clarification from someone higher up the tree.
“Sirsly,” I say, wishing I were half as good at bluffing as I am at getting these sharp vowel sounds and truncated words right. “It’s beno. You’re Dex”—I point first at him, then swing my finger across—“and you’re Atlanta. Those are the names I got. It’s all hassle, all day long without the—” I’m about to say “headsets,” when I realize I have no idea what the Undying call them. So I tap my finger to the temple where the glass would rest instead. “I pledge, you’re my new destin.”
They exchange another long look, as I wonder how much slang is too much. My chest is still tight, and I know my words are tumbling out too fast, and my palms are sweating, and I still have no idea where Mia is, or how long she’ll be. But I can’t push the two of them—even I, in all my inexperience, can sense that. If I press too hard, the bluff will fail.
I have their names. Double-checking the instructions would mean trekking around the ship in search of an authority figure, without their headsets. I just need to wait this out.
Dex speaks casually, tucking a stray strand of hair back into place. “You from the Cortes squadron, Jules?”
One heartbeat stretches to an eternity. Is he trying to figure out why he doesn’t know my face, or is this a trap? Does the Cortes squadron exist?
“Yeh,” I say, pushing all my metaphorical chips to the center of the table. Betting on Cortes existing at all. On it being a place I might have trained without meeting them.
Atlanta huffs. “Well, your training better match up with ours,” she says, frustration evident. “If this goes to lixo because—”
