I lean sideways and see the ticket checker again come through the doorway from the car in front of us, with a few others behind him. “So? We’re not sick.”
“No, but we do have fake passports. And those IA officers with them probably won’t be fooled as easily as the transit officials. Especially if they’ve been circulating your descriptions.”
My heart seizes, and I look again to see that the people filing into the car behind the ticket checker are wearing the uniform of the International Alliance. “Ohshit.”
Jules stuffs the screen into his pocket, his movements jerky with sudden alarm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“And go where?” Neal’s eyes are wild with fear.
“Off the train.” My voice sounds steady and certain—probably a good thing, though I wish I felt the same. “We’re over the border and into Germany, I saw the sign go by half an hour ago.”
Both boys turn to look at me, though only Neal splutters a reply. “You want to jump off a moving train?”
I eye the window. “It’s not movingthatfast.” My voice is running out of steady and certain at an alarming rate.
Jules cuts his cousin short. “We’ve got to hurry.”
As casually as we can, the three of us abandon our dining car seats and head through the door toward the next car. No one stopsus, though that doesn’t mean that the officials didn’t see us leave—it just means they assume they’ll catch up to us in the next car, because where else would we go?
And when I hit the button that sends the exit door whooshing open, I realize why. Standing in the space between cars, we’re jostled all the more as each car sways and bustles independently, and the ground whizzing by is moving so quickly the gravel is just a smooth, gray blur.
It’s not going tofeellike a smooth gray blur when we go skidding across it.
“Hang on.” Jules detaches my hand from his sleeve—when did I grab him?—and, before we can stop him, goes back inside the dining car. He’s only gone long enough for Neal and me to exchange horrified looks before the train decelerates with a lurch and a terrible screeching of brakes, and we both go slamming together against the wall of the car. There’s some kind of alarm blaring, and when Jules returns he’s a bit breathless.
“Emergency stop,” he explains. “But they saw me pull it, we’ve got to jump.”
“Hang on!” I echo Jules’s words with a tiny grin, and head the other direction, into the car behind ours. The place is already in chaos, with people reacting to the emergency alarm and the train’s rapid deceleration, so I have to shout at the top of my lungs to be heard.
“Everyone, listen!” I cry, noting with satisfaction the heads turning toward me. “There’s a fire a few cars ahead and they’ve pulled the emergency stop—everybody get off the train!”
And while the entire car abandons their seats, I duck back out. Now, when we do jump, half the train’s going to jump off right after us, giving us the cover we need to get away unnoticed.
Neal’s got his face pressed to the glass of the dining car door, watching the officials make their way toward us. Jules nods at me, and I nod back, and for a moment we’re on the same team again. He reaches for my hand, tangling his warm fingers through mine and squeezing.
The train’s still moving along at a pretty good pace, but at least I can actually see the gravel now—though damn, that does not make jumping any easier—and we’re out of time. In a moment, the occupants of the car behind us will come spilling out after us, and the officials from the dining car will have gotten here too.
Neal turns away from the door and stops at the sight of us. “For the love of—stop making eyes at each other and just bloodyjumpalready!”
Jules twitches, glances at me—and as one, the three of us throw ourselves from the train.
IN THE INSTANT THATILEAP,ITRY TO REMIND MYSELF TO ROLLwhen I hit the ground, because that’s what they do in movies. But the impact drives the breath from my lungs, sends a wave of pain through me, and then I’m rolling, rolling, with no idea where my limbs are, which way is up, which way is down, the sky flashing past me over and over as I tumble down the embankment.
I only stop when I run out of momentum. I carefully blink my eyes open and look at the sky, my lungs aching as they try helplessly to drag in breath after breath. To one side I can hear a string of broken, breathless curses, so I know where Mia is, and that she’s alive.
Finally I get enough air in my lungs to push myself up onto my elbows, and look around. Farther up the tracks the train has stopped, and passengers are pouring out onto the embankment—among them I see the officials we were trying so hard to avoid. Neal’s on all fours beside me, trying unsuccessfully to climb tohis feet, and Mia’s already sitting up with a grimace. Deus, she’s unstoppable.
That thought pulls me straight back to my disagreement with Mia, of course, but I suck in another breath and force myself to my feet, and Mia pulls Neal to his, despite being half his size. Then, wordlessly, the three of us turn to jog away from the tracks and toward the tree line, to get out of sight as quickly as we can.
Pine needles crunch beneath my feet as we enter the forest, my nose filling with their clean, crisp scent. Straight-backed pines tower above us, and the air grows cooler in their shade.
“What now?” Neal’s the first one to break the silence, and while I’m grateful for that, it still strikes something uncomfortable deep within me that he’s looking tousfor a plan.
“We obviously can’t take the train all the way to Prague,” Mia says, still brushing gravel off her clothes as she walks. “I saw a road from the train just beyond the trees. Maybe we can hitchhike through Germany and across the Czech border.”
“And say what to whoever picks us up?” I ask. “Tell them we came from where, to hitch this lift?”
“From the train,” Mia says beside me. “Where some crazy person screamed that a fire had broken out. Better yet, make it some armed fugitive. We did what any sensible person would do, and ran for it. No need to mess too much with a story when it’s already working.”
