My attention’s yanked back to the door when a series of piercing beeps emanates from some kind of machine. I hear the man’s voice again.
“This identification has been suspended.”
Mink’s voice is rich with scorn. “Bullshit, it was working just fine when Director De Luca sent me to pick them up.”
De Luca. Have they made their peace, or is she just throwing his name around for authority?
“Nevertheless,” the man insists. “We can’t just hand them over to you.”
“You were going to send them to Prague anyway, weren’t you?” she asks, frosty now. “That’s exactly where I’m going.”
“And yet I still cannot simply give you the prisoners.”
I ease away from the door to speak to Mia and Neal in a low voice. “They’re fighting over who takes us to IA Headquarters in Prague,” I report. “It’s about an hour’s drive. We might have a chance to get away during the trip, or when we arrive.”
“If we don’t, then we’re locked up for good,” Mia says, grim. “With Dex and Atlanta already arrived, or on their way.”
Neal digs around in his bag until he can pull out the Undying device. It’s silent now, and he fiddles with it while Mia finishes stuffing her bag full of whatever she can find that might be useful.
Then Neal lets out a startled oath. From where I stand, all I can see is the back of the device, emblazoned with the arcing meteorite that is the Undying’s symbol for themselves.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“It zooms out.” Neal crosses toward us so that we can all bend our heads over the little screen. “If you touch here like this, and then tilt the whole thing up and down …” He demonstrates, and the display’s grid lines and terrain map jump and wobble dizzyingly. A little blip flashes by—the Undying in Dresden that we drove past.
As Neal starts to get the hang of navigating the thing, another little blip shows up near the first. For a moment I think it must be Lyon, except that when he zooms out further, I can see the sharp shift in terrain that marks the Alps. This dot is much closer—in Nuremburg, perhaps, or Stuttgart.
Another dot joins the first two. And another, and another. Munich. Berlin. Paris. London.
The terrain lines vanish into the sea as Neal’s shaking hands tilt the screen all the way back.
New York City. Bogotá. Nairobi. Sydney. Hong Kong. Mumbai. And at least a hundred other dots in between, until the entire world is freckled with green.
I can hear Mia’s breathing next to me, quickening, her voice coming out ragged and frightened. “They’re already everywhere.”
I take the device from Neal’s unresisting hands and tilt it back in. My heart sinks, even though I already knew what I was going to see. “They’re in Prague.”
“Do you think it’s Dex and Atlanta?” Mia’s face is white.
“I don’t know. Probably.” My head’s spinning. They’ll be able to spread the Lyon disease everywhere, and the Undying will have the ability to transport troops instantly between cities—they could destroy St. Petersburg one day and invade Los Angeles the next. They’d have a way to bring instant reinforcements, no matter what damage our armies could do—assuming the world’s governments could even muster an army quickly enough to counter the Undying’s movements.
“We’ve got to try and convince someone you guys are telling the truth.” Neal’s voice is soft. “They’re taking us right to where Uncle Elliott is being held, and if he’s figured out how to shut down the portals, maybe we’ll all still have a chance. But only if we can get in to see him.”
My reply is cut off when the door swings open to reveal Mink, and a sweaty man standing behind her. Neal casually takes the device back and tucks it into his pocket, like it’s just his phone and not a forecast of the end of humanity.
Mink glances at him and then actually snaps her fingers at us. “Let’s go.”
“Weare transporting you to Prague,” the man says. “The agent here will travel with us.”
So the answer to the question of which one of them is ourcaptor has been answered: both of them, but perhaps him slightly more than her.
There’s nothing to do but acquiesce, especially since they’re taking us where we want to go—so long as we can convince someone of the truth before we’re dumped in a cell and forgotten. We let them bind our wrists with bright blue zip ties, and with our bags clutched in our bound hands, we file out of the room under armed guard.
The vehicle that’s waiting is a small truck with a covered back, two benches facing each other in its rear. The driver climbs into the cabin, and the three of us climb into the back, along with Mink and an IA soldier.
All five of us sit in silence as the dark green countryside slips by, and we hum along with the flow of traffic. I know we should try and convince Mink we’re right about the Undying, but I can’t even think where to begin. What argument can we make that we haven’t already tried?
Is she our ally, because she helped Mia and me out of detention the first time? Though now I can’t help but wonder if we were never meant to escape at all the first time, but just escape De Luca, and run straight into her arms instead.
