The rumpled sheets are flat.
Dex and Atlanta are gone.
“GOOD,I’M GLAD THEY’RE GONE!” MY VOICE IS LOUDER THANIintended. Despite my exhaustion, I only slept an hour or two last night. Long enough for Dex and Atlanta to slip away, but not long enough to refresh my tired brain. I couldn’t stop my mind turning over, couldn’t stop thinking. Every turn we make, our options just get narrower and narrower—and in the darkness, making it to Prague seemed impossible. I told myself that everything would look simpler in the light of morning, but now, staring at the empty bed the Undying teens had occupied, I just want to give up.
Jules stares at me. “How can you say that?”
“We can move that much faster without them, and also not have to worry about getting shot or, you know, being killed in our sleep with a freaking Swiss Army knife! We have a million other things to worry about—I don’t think losing the homicidal aliens hounding us should be one of them.”
It’s just us in the hotel room—Neal’s gone out to try and find us some breakfast, since the Undying took the remains of the foodhe bought last night. That leaves me and Jules to figure out what to do about the missing aliens. I admit that knowing they’re out there somewhere instead of where we can keep an eye on them is terrifying—but not nearly as terrifying as having them sleeping a few feet away.
“We need them.” Jules expression is rather stony, and I can hear in his voice how thin his patience has gotten. “Even if my dad can neutralize the portals they’re setting up—maybe they’ve got some fallback if they can’t land more troops through the portals. We have to learn what the rest of their plan is.”
“Screw their plan!” My voice cracks, and I shore it up with an effort. “This is so beyond us it’s not even … A few weeks ago I was standing on an alien planetcertainthat I was in the middle of the worst, most terrible thing I was ever going to have to go through in my life.”
His brown eyes, narrowed with irritation, soften a fraction. I don’t know what he felt the first few steps he took on Gaia, but I had plenty of opportunity to see how frightened he was in the days that followed. Because I was frightened too, and that shared experience was beyond anything that could’ve brought us together here on Earth.
Maybe that means we never should’ve been together in the first place. And shouldn’t be now.My heart quails from that thought almost as much as the thought of trekking across Europe as a wanted fugitive.
He doesn’t speak, and the silence keeps pulling words from my mouth, my mind too exhausted to stop them.
“But I did it anyway, going to Gaia. Because it’d be worth it, because I’d be saving my sister, and we’d be together. But they’ve got Evie, Jules, or they’re threatening to take her, or she’s missing, or—or something. We’re rapidly on our way to being labeled international terrorists. And we can’t even rent a hotel room for fear we’ll be arrested. It feels like years, Jules—it feels likeyearssince I’ve had even amomentof feeling safe, like disaster wasn’t right around the corner. And it was one thing when we were in anancient temple on another world, and even in the walls of an alien spaceship—but we’re home. We’re here, against all odds. We got home despiteknowingwe were going to die. And I just—I can’t keepdoingthis, and neither can you. So screw the Undying plan, Jules. I’m done. I’m going to find Evie, and make sure she’s safe—it’s all Icando.”
I don’t even have the energy to care that there are tears spilling down my cheeks. He’s seen me raw before, and I don’t have anything left to prove to him anyway.
Let him see me cry. I’m done.
His arm moves, like the tears trigger some automatic response—but he doesn’t reach for me. His voice is hoarse when he speaks, his own eyes red-rimmed. “What about Earth?”
“What about it?” The words are callous, but in my current state I can’t help the wobble in my voice. “I don’t mean—it’s just, what can we possibly do? This is a problem for world leaders, and armies, and … and tanks, and missiles, and bombs the size of houses, Jules. What are we meant to do to help in all of that? Two kids in the middle of a world war to end all wars?”
Jules passes a hand over his eyes, clearing his throat. “But we have to—”
“Have to what?” I interrupt him, wishing an instant later that I hadn’t. “Bust into the IA with a list of insane criminal charges behind us both, claiming with no proof that aliens are invading the planet, and we need to see their most notorious prisoner at once?” My heart shrivels, but the words are already there, and I listen to them come out with something almost like horror. “All you’re doing now is making things worse for your dad.”
In the silence that follows, I can hear the distant sounds of traffic a few blocks away. The thumping bass line from someone’s car radio rises and falls. A bird gives a raucous cry as it swoops past the window.
Jules’s lips were still parted to speak when I interrupted him—now he closes his mouth, gazing at me from across the doublebeds. It’s not the anger that strikes me, though he is mad, fists clenched at his sides and lips tight. What strikes me, whatgutsme, is the pain there—full of betrayal, disappointment, shock.
Like I’m not who he thought I was.
A tap at the door, followed by the rattle of a keycard, makes me swipe my sleeve across my face and look away. The door opens to admit Neal, like a near-copy of Jules himself, his arms full of cellophane-wrapped vending machine food.
“Bad news, team, we need to …” He trails off, glancing between us. Then he clears his throat, moving to dump his armload of junk food on the bed. “Look, normally I’d say I forgot the Doritos and give you guys a sec, but we don’t have time.”
Jules frowns. “Why? What’s going on?”
Neal shrugs as he rummages through the pile of salt and sugar until he comes up with some Kinder chocolate. Not real chocolate, of course—that’s been an embargoed luxury for at least a decade. And the chocolate “flavored” substitute is nothing like the real thing. “Some flu or something in Lyon, they’re recommending tourists stay away. The news was on the TV in the snack room. Roads and trains are gonna be jammed in just a few hours with people overreacting and changing their travel plans, and we’ve got to get across the border before then.”
Jules glances at me. I meet his eye with an effort, fighting the urge to look away in guilt and shame. Because he’s got no right to make me feel this way—to think a few teenagers could somehow do more than an entire international coalition of experts is beyond arrogance, it’s downright reckless and irresponsible and dangerous, and not just for us.
We tried. And now we’ve got to do what we both set out to do: save our families.
“Either way,” I say wearily, “we have to get out of France. We don’t have time to argue right now.”
“Did you bring papers?” Jules turns to Neal, barely acknowledging me.
“Yeah, though I don’t have a picture for Mia.” Neal goes over to rummage through his backpack and pull out two passports, one of which he hands to his cousin.
