“Except this.” Jules pulls out Dex’s tracker from his pocket. “But given that they didn’t believe us when we were standing next to an Undying landing craft, I doubt anyone’s going to think this is strange.”
Neal draws in a breath, brows furrowed. “Then we act like everything’s normal, and hope we don’t get stopped.”
The line drags itself forward, and with each shuffling step my heart rate speeds up, and we come closer to the IA officers ahead. I put myself in between Jules and Neal, so that we’re clearly a group—if one of us gets stopped, we might be able to pull thebut I’ve got to stick with my boyfriendtrick and follow—because I bluff better than either of them.
We make sure we’ve all got our passports ready and our bags open, so that we’ll spend as little time in front of the officers as possible. And I murmur to them not to try to avert their faces, to meet the eyes of the inspection crew for a second, smile faintly, and then break eye contact—not enough for them to really remember us, but enough that it doesn’t seem like we’re avoiding them.
Jules’s backpack is mostly vending machine junk food and dirty laundry, and he gets a little eyebrow lift from the officer inspecting it once we reach the front of the line. He shrugs—I told him tospeak as little as possible, just in case the British accent somehow cues them to his identity—and smiles at her, and she hands it back with a roll of her eyes.
“Wait until you’re in your thirties,” she murmurs wistfully. She speaks English with only the slightest trace of an accent. The IA trains their agents well. “You won’t be able to eat like this, that’s for sure. Now, I’ve just got another couple of questions. First, can you count down from one hundred for me, in increments of seven?”
Jules blinks at her, but after an encouraging nod from the official, he begins.
“One hundred, ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine, seventy-two …”
“Thank you,” she says, glancing down at her screen and hitting a button.
Neal leans down so he can speak to me in a whisper. “That’s a question from the Mini-Mental State Exam, I did it in a psychology class at uni. They’re checking for deterioration in cognitive function.”
“Lyon,” I murmur, as the woman lets Jules through. They’re looking for people in the early stages of infection.
Another of the IA officials finishes with his traveler, but I’m quick to head for the woman who let Jules through. She was friendly, at least, and that might be helpful. Let Neal—with his valid passport and lack of criminal record—head for the unknown quantity.
“I keep telling him the same thing about eating all that crap in his backpack,” I say conspiratorially to the IA officer when I hand over my bag. My heart is going a thousand beats per second, and my palms are sweaty, but I summon an air of bored patience, the exact sort of stereotypical teenaged apathy that makes most people not bother thinking twice about me.
The guard smiles briefly at me, and looks through the odds and ends in my bag, which aren’t much better than Jules’s. “Kids,” shesays dismissively, but with a bit of humor in her gaze. She reaches under her table, pulling out a protein bar and set of headphones, holding both up for me to see. “Can you name these, please?”
“That’s a protein bar, and those are headphones,” I say, making sure I look baffled. “Um, do I need to know about those in the Czech Republic?”
She offers a quick, reassuring smile. “Just a new procedure from International Alliance HQ, nothing to worry about. Enjoy your time in the Czech Republic.”
Relief sweeps across me, making me dizzy as I grope for my bag, mumble a thank-you, and hurry my steps toward where Jules waits with an exaggerated air of nonchalance that would make me laugh, if I weren’t so unraveled myself.
The other officer hands Neal his bag and his papers, and he turns toward us with an inimitable grin, slinging it back over his shoulder.
But he doesn’t get two steps before the officer he’d been speaking to calls, “Hang on a second.”
Neal stops, flashing us a brief look of panic, before turning back to the officer. The man scans his features with a frown. “You look familiar. Step this way, please.”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Of course, Neal isn’t wanted for anything—not as far as we know. But the last name on his passportisAddison, and while that’s not exactly a unique name, it wouldn’t be hard to make a case that he’d know something about one of the fugitives from IA custody.
The officer brings Neal over to the booth, tapping at the window and asking some question of someone inside. Neal flashes us another look, this one far more grave and fearful—and then I realize why. The official’s given a printout by someone inside the little office, and though I can’t see what it is from here, I do see a pair of photos at the top.
It’s a wanted bulletin.
“He looks like me,” Jules whispers. “Maybe our official hadn’t seen the bulletin or something—but Neal’s getting stopped because we look alike.”
I bite at my lip, my thoughts paralyzed. “We’ve got to just go. They’ll see he’s not you, and they’ll let him go, but we can’t be around for them to—”
“Excuse me, would you two please come this way?” One of the regular immigration officials gestures us over. “You’re traveling together, right?”
Two more IA officers have joined the one detaining Neal.
“No,” I lie, “we just met in line. We’ve got to go if we’re going to stick to our hiking schedule. …”
The first officer glances our way, and then his puzzled expression vanishes, replaced with surprise and a hint of grim satisfaction. “That’s them. This one—maybe he’s related, I don’t know, but look, isn’t that them?”
