“Yes, and I still think—” I get no further, because his point strikes home with all the chilling force of a winter wind across the desert.
What if the Undyingweren’tin Lyon by accident? What if they never planned on needing tanks at all?
“There are no bombs in Lyon,” Jules says, almost inaudible.
“What if …” My throat tries to close around the words, and I’m forced to stop, then try again. “What if Lyon was just the beginning?”
The boys sit opposite each other across the table, heads bent over the Undying tracker that Jules thinks Dex left for us to find. With the realization that the horror we witnessed in Lyon might be part of the Undying’s plan to destroy us, Jules is all the more desperate to decipher the tracking device, and he watches with single-minded intensity as Neal tries to figure it out and expand its radius.
I’m sitting next to Jules, but I might as well be on the other side of the ocean for all the attention he pays to me. And I can’t blame him—even without what we’ve seen in Lyon, what I said to him about everything he’s doing making things worse for his father …
I long for something familiar, lost in this blurry green sea of the German countryside. The urge to pull out my phone and call Evie, to see her face and hear her voice, is so strong I can almost feel the shape of the phone in my pocket, like a phantom limb. Looking at the screen the boys are examining only makes it worse, like I’m an addict watching someone light up a cigarette a few feet away.
Abruptly I get to my feet, making the boys look up at me with twin expressions of expectant surprise. They’re so similar in this moment that whatever I’d been about to say vanishes, and I’m left looking between them, bemused.
“Are you okay?” Neal asks, brows lifting.
“I … I’m going to see if they’ve got water or something to drink.”
Neal slides out of his seat. “I’ll go, I need to stretch my legs anyway. Sit, you guys need the rest.” I don’t miss the little look Neal shoots Jules as he departs. Some things are universal, I suppose, including thattalk to her, dumbasslook.
Neal tucks his hands into his pockets and wanders on up the aisle toward the front of the dining car and the snack counter while I reluctantly slide into his seat, across from Jules.
He’s got his eyes on the screen again, though the ease with which he’d been chatting with his cousin has vanished.
I watch the blurry landscape whizzing by outside the window until I can’t stand the silence anymore. Letting my breath out, head dropping, I whisper, “I’m sorry I said that about your dad.”
Jules is still for a moment before he sets the tracker aside, screen down. He looks up, and his gaze is as troubled as it’s ever been. “You’re right, though.”
I blink at him. “I’m what?”
“The IA is going to be in chaos trying to solve what’s happening in Lyon, which to them is a medical problem, an issue for disease control rather than planetary defense. If we go in there talking about alien invasions, they’re going to think we’re crazy, and when they find out who I am, it’s just going to make them even more sure that my dad’s crazy. You’re right.”
His voice is soft, but there’s such a heavy sadness in it that my heart lurches in sympathy, my eyes prickling. I’ve never heard him sound so utterly defeated.
“Jules—”
“What are we even doing?” Jules grips the edge of the table between us, his knuckles whitening. “I had this vision of getting through to the IA, of telling my dad about the portals, and that he’d handle everything and in the process all our crimes—going to Gaia, stowing away on the ship, escaping IA custody, stealing that car, forging these papers—I imagined everything would just be forgiven, because what’s happening with the Undying is so much bigger than us.”
I watch him mutely, because though I long to talk him out of this—though hearing him speak this way frightens me more than I’d have imagined—he’s not wrong.
“Because itisso much bigger than us.” Jules lets go of the table and lowers his head into his hands instead. “Maybe it’s the end of the world. Maybe it’s not. But either way, we’re criminals.I’ma criminal. And I can’t go home again, can I?”
My throat is thick and my eyes are burning. I ought to criticize him for not having thought about that before now, before even going to Gaia in the first place. But he’s never broken the law before, not like this. He hasn’t led the life I have, where homeisalways being slightly on the wrong side of the rules. And all I can think about is how lost he must feel.
“I’m here.” My voice is quiet, as if I’m afraid of anyone else overhearing the promise I’m about to make. “I’m with you. And I’m not leaving you. Wherever we go, we’ll go together.”
Jules lifts his head to meet my eyes, his own reddened and weary. For a long time we sit that way, in silence—then his lips tremble briefly before he opens his mouth to speak, one of his hands moving toward mine.
But before his fingertips do more than graze my palm, Neal is back, and ungently nudging me sideways so he can join us.Irritation flares through me at the interruption, but one look at Neal’s face flushes all the annoyance out of my system.
“What is it?”
Neal lowers his voice, making an effort to sound normal, though it’s thick with tension. “They’re coming through the cars testing people for that flu.”
Jules frowns. “But no one would show symptoms that fast even if it somehow did get on the train.”
“I think they’re worried people might have brought it on board somewhere else in France, and I’m guessing Germany doesn’t want that happening. They say it’s just a precaution.” But his face is grim, eyes a bit wild.
