“Jules.” Mia looks up, her eyes as wide as I’ve ever seen them. My lurching heart lurches harder, some nameless apprehension seizing me—but then I see her eyes are more awed than afraid. “Jules, you aren’t going to believe this. The video Neal posted—it’s got over half a million views already.”
“What?” Stunned, I start to reach out for the phone, but Mia shakes her head.
“That’s not even the best part. There’s a whole group of people here on our side. They’re commenting on the video, sharing the info they’ve seen, linking back to forums … Jules, there’s an entire website devoted to people who believe your dad is right about the Undying.”
The words flit about my ears without really sinking in, leaving me staring at the two of them. Mia’s face has hope in it for what feels like the first time in weeks, and Neal’s solemn expression is cracking around the edges, pleasure in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth as he tries not to smile.
Mia hands me Neal’s phone. “That’s the video. Then look at the other tab he’s got open.”
I switch between the video player and the browser, still feeling as opaque and numb as a block of ice—and it’s true.
#IBelieveInAddison, the website reads at the top. There are articles—painstakingly sourced, from reputable newspapers and magazines—and forums and even a bloodyresourcespage. When I tap on that, there are links to different translations of the Undying broadcast, transcripts of interviews my father gave leading up to his “freak-out” on TV, and—my heart seizes.
Are the undying already here? Only credible accounts please—check your sources! Baseless speculation willNOTbe tolerated, and your posts will be removed!
The link goes to another page under the same domain. And on that page …
My poor heart gives up on calm entirely, and I swipe through the feed with shaking fingers. This is no crazy conspiracy-theory group—everything is meticulously researched, and as a scholar I don’t use that phrase lightly. And they know, collectively,almostas much as we do. More, in some cases.
There’s a section devoted to the “UFO” crash De Luca mentioned back at IA Headquarters, the Undying shuttle that was never recovered and dismissed as a hoax. There’s a section in which experts—real experts, names I evenrecognizefrom the field, names I thought had abandoned my father after his televised outburst—try to construct theories about a potential invasion.
There’s even one article that comes alarmingly close to the truth, put together by someone whose name I don’t even recognize—a teenager, it turns out, younger even than Mia and me. The article suggests that the Undying wouldn’t try to take Earth in an all-out war, but that the evidence so far—and this kid has gathered an unbelievable amount of evidence, gleaned from article after article, all listed at the end—suggests a stealth operation of some kind.
These people are organized and determined. There’s a section indicating the site has been shut down several times already—by the IA, they claim, and I doubt they’re wrong—and assuring forum participants that all data has been saved, and will be re-uploaded in under an hour at a new location.
The harder they try to stamp us out, it says,the louder we’ll shout our truth.
And beneath all these stories, all this news, there’s an addition with today’s date to the end of the article: a link to Neal’s video, and a single sentence: If mankind is reduced to mindless beasts concerned only with survival, the Undying won’t need an army.
I look up to meet Mia’s gaze. She’s been watching my face rather than my hands as I navigate the site, and her eyes are red-rimmed with emotion. “You and your dad aren’t alone,” she whispers, eyes glimmering with unshed tears. “You never were. Theybelievehim.”
She’s crying because she knows how much it means to me, I realize, an instant before my own eyes spill over and I have to set the phone down and swipe at my cheeks.
There are thousands of members in the #IBelieveInAddison forum. Hundreds of articles and links posted. There’s nothing official about any of it—from the Harvard head of xenobiology we used to host for dinner, right on down to the teenager gathering news articles after school, they’re just people. No one gave them permission to do this. No one asked it of them. They’re just people who saw an educator, a scientist, a father, speaking with the voice of knowledge and passion, be silenced—and they decided not to let that voice disappear. People who decided truth was more important than power.
I never forgave the world after it ruined my father. Before that, I’d always believed that right would prevail, that fear and hatred weren’t powerful enough to stop the spread of understanding, and that ignorance would always,always, fall before truth.
That one open mind could change the world.
And then I saw my father, a gentle, kind man who wears moth-eaten sweaters and never remembers to finish his tea before it goes cold, dragged off a news set by men holding guns. And not only did the world I thought I knew let it happen, they went on to humiliate him over and over on the internet, turning a photo of him being dragged away into a meme sayingGTFO, auto-tuning his impassioned speech over a beat, and holding him up as an example of why “intellectuals” ought to be ridiculed.
Some part of me saw the world I’d believed in destroyed, and replaced with this mistrustful, apathetic, ignorant planet that made iteasyto strike out for a new one.
The articles on this site aren’t enough to free my father. They’reprobably not even enough to convince the IA to listen to us if—when,I correct myself—we get to Prague. But there are thousands of people out there, probably tens of thousands if you take into account those who read but don’t post, who are our allies, even though they don’t know it yet.
We’re not alone.
A touch on my palm draws me back to myself, and I realize Mia’s wrapped both her hands around mine. Either she’s forgotten about Neal—who’s watching with the widest grin I’ve ever seen—or she doesn’t care. In that moment none of the fights we’ve had or hurts we’ve caused each other exist. She’s just holding my hand while my world shudders and quakes and slips along its fault lines and forms something new. Something stronger.
That phone, resting quietly on the table between us, has just shown me the one thing I’ve wanted most, wanted so badly I could feel it in my bones, ever since the IA took my father from me. I’d believed that if I could find something he missed, even the tiniest scrap of proof, it’d be enough to convince them that my father was right. That he’d be released and come home to me.
But I’m realizing now that it wasn’t just about bringing him home—it was about saving the world.Myworld, the one I wanted to live in. It’s why I went to Gaia, it’s the whole reason I abandoned my academic future to become a criminal, it’s what I was willing to sacrifice everything for.
This is what I was willing to die for.
Maybe my revelation on the train was true. Maybe I can’t go home, back to how it was before. But maybe wherever we’re headed can be better.
THE SOUNDS OF WHEELS CRUNCHING ON GRAVEL WAKES ME. DISORIENTED,all my senses grope for something recognizable—the only thing they come up with is a scent I’d recognize anywhere, more familiar to me than the desert winds of Chicago. I lift my head from Jules’s chest to find him sitting next to me, head flung back over the edge of the backseat, totally passed out. I have to fight the urge to laugh, before I remember where we are.
