“They’d never let us see him.” Mia’s voice is cautious, but there’s an energy in it she’s lacked for days. And despite the hollowness in my own chest, I feel a flicker of warmth trying to respond. “We’re fugitives—they’d ID us on the way in.”
“I’m not a fugitive,” Neal points out. “And when Jules vanished—buggered off to Gaia—I got visitation rights. They’ll have to at least tell us why he’s not making phone calls anymore.”
The flicker of warmth comes again, stronger this time. “And Prague is where the Undying want us to go anyway—if we can get to my dad and he can figure out how to turn off the portals …”
Mia finishes for me when I trail off. “Then the only Undying forces here will be the ones who came in that first wave. Hundreds, rather than thousands, or however many are ready to come pouring through to take over our planet.”
For a moment, the three of us just look at each other, all wondering the same thing:Is it even possible for a couple of fugitives and an engineering student to make their way across Europe without being caught?
But it’s a plan. It’s more than we had an hour ago.
Abruptly, the water shuts off, and I remember the aliens in the bathroom.
Mehercule, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say to myself.
With a start, I recall the pictures I took on my phone of the results of the cheek swab. If the IA hasn’t thought to look at them, I can at least try to gather some proof of my own. “Neal,” I whisper, leaning close so that my voice won’t carry, “do you know anyone back home studying genetics? Anyone you trust, who could look at some data for us?”
Neal reaches into his back pocket to pull out his phone. “Transfer it to me,” he says. “I’ve got a contact back at Oxford. A postdoctoral student.”
I cock a brow.
“Yes,” he says, unapologetically. “An ex. But we’re on excellent terms. Pun intended.” I smile, in spite of myself, and he manages one in return. “Veronica will help us, if she can.”
As I finish transferring the pics, the bathroom door opens, steam billowing out.
Without missing a beat, Neal rises smoothly to his feet. “I’m going out to get food,” he tells a slightly damp and newly clean Dex and Atlanta. “This hotel isn’t large enough to provide room service.”
Though it isn’t clear either of them understand whatroom serviceis, they understandoutandfood. Atlanta nods, and Dex offers a soft, “Beno, thank you.”
He’s cut his hair with the nail scissors from the bathroom, or Atlanta has cut it for him. Now it curls close against his head, like mine and Neal’s, his braid gone. So far he’s only seen Neal and me, who keep our hair short because we spend so much time in the pool, and the IA, who all sport military haircuts. So he’s gone short, to blend in with what he’s observed.
Neal takes his leave, and then it’s the four of us again, just like old times.
“What did you tell him?” Atlanta asks, studying my face.
I feel like she could quite possibly count my pulse rate from watching a vein in my temple, and expertly calculate whether I’m telling the truth. “I told him that I need him to trust me,” I say.
After a long moment, she nods.
Mia and I take it in turns to shower. I let her go first, and when she comes out wrapped in a towel and an air of utter bliss, for a long moment I can only stare at her. Her cheeks are rosy from the heat, and her lips are curved in the most satisfied smile I’ve ever seen. Water droplets flick down her thighs as she makes room forme to move past her into the bathroom. Her wet hair falls over her shoulders and water trails down the slope of her chest toward the towel knotted just over her—I jerk my eyes away, and for a few moments I’m focusing so hard onnotthinking about Mia about to get dressed in the next room that I barely take any notice of getting into the shower myself.
Until the hot water hits me, at which point I forget everything else and stay there until the water turns cold.
After I’ve dried off and pulled on some of the fresh clothes from the backpacks Neal brought for us, he returns with a large haul from the supermarket. I can’t help but notice how interested the Undying are in every kind of food. I’m thrown back for a moment to their wonder as they felt the breeze, and saw the grass for the first time.
All this must be so new, so overwhelming to them. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the strangeness of being on Gaia, and I’d brought all my own clothes and food—and there wasn’t anyone else there. The culture shock—species shock?—for them must be staggering. I’d admire their ability to remain efficiently on-mission if it weren’t that same ability that’s going to get us killed, unless we’re very lucky.
It’s late afternoon by the time we’ve eaten, and though the sun’s not down yet, the four of us are nodding. Dex and Atlanta curl up together on one bed, and Mia and I take the other. Neal, insisting it’s no discomfort at all, settles himself down in the small armchair, pulling up a book to read on his phone, apparently settling in to read while we sleep.
When I wake, it’s dark. I roll over, disoriented. Beside me, Mia makes a sleepy noise, but she’s already struggling to sit up, in response to whatever woke me.
“What the hell?” That’s Neal, and I know where I am.
I hear him cross the room in three quick strides, and my eyessting as he flicks on the light. Another two steps, and he’s through the open bathroom door.
When he reemerges, his mouth is tight, face grim. “They’re not here,” he says. “I don’t even remember falling asleep, but I locked the door, and I kept the chair by the window. I don’t know how they didn’t wake me.”
That’s when I look across at the other bed.
