I want to join in Neal’s raptures about the satisfaction of forcing power to tell the truth, but I can’t. I can’t even pause to dwell on the fact that the “flu” isn’t a rampaging contagion that’ll kill us all. Because my eyes are on the picture from the press conference that first grabbed my attention. I reach over Neal’s shoulder to take the phone from him, ignoring his protests.
I pinch-zoom in on the picture of De Luca standing behind a podium with the IA seal on it, and my heart sinks. I glance at Mia, debating for a moment whether I should even show her what I’ve seen—but when she sees my face, her own drains of color and she reaches out in wordless demand for me to pass the phone to her.
I hand it over and then rub my thumb and forefinger against my eyelids, trying to dismiss the image from my mind. Among the various officials and nameless civilians gathered behind De Luca in the picture was a young woman. A girl, really. Dressedprofessionally, but the sleek lines of her jacket didn’t hide the fact that she’s younger than the rest by at least a decade.
And though I’ve never met her—I knew her instantly.
She has Mia’s eyes, her chin, even the way her hair parts—she doesn’t have nearly as many freckles, and her face is a little rounder, but the resemblance is unmistakable.
Evie.
I squeeze Mia’s shoulders, but they stay rigid under my hands—and I don’t blame her.
De Luca’s sending us a warning, loud and clear. He’s got someone we care about—someone Mia already volunteered to give her life for, when she went to Gaia. And if we do anything that displeases him, if we threaten to drop a match on his powder keg, well. Then he’s got Evie, and we don’t.
I can’t help but think something must have changed, something to make him think we’re connected with what’s happening. After all our warnings about the end of the world, perhaps he’s starting to look around and wonder.
“Pull up the directions,” Mia says finally, handing the phone back to Neal. “And ditch the SIM card.”
Her voice is thick and heavy, and I want to wrap my arms around her there in the street. The last time she saw her sister’s face, it was on the dying screen of her phone, half a universe away on the surface of an alien planet, when she decided to share the last of our oxygen with me rather than make it to her rendezvous point and her way home. It was when she chose me over her sister.
It wouldn’t matter if I told her that that wasn’t the choice she made—that she chose hope, chose some other answer that we hadn’t found yet. That it was faith, not betrayal. But right now, I know the only thing she’s thinking about is the girl in that picture, standing a few feet away from the man trying to hunt us down.
Half an hour later we’re installed in a small room with white-painted walls and tatty curtains, containing two sets of bunk beds, with thin blankets folded across the foot of each thin mattress. We’ve paid for all four beds, closed the door firmly behind us, and we’re sifting through my vending machine stash in search of the most edible options.
“Okay,” says Neal. “So after that stuff at the border crossing, they’ll have added me to the bulletin about you. If I try to see Uncle Elliott, I’ll just be arrested.”
“Right,” I agree, glad Neal was willing to break the silence. “And there’s no reason to think they’ll listen to us two any more than De Luca did. We might get lucky, but …”
Mia, whose face is still pinched with frustration and worry for her sister, huffs a soft breath of sour laughter. I can’t blame her—it feels like our last shreds of luck ran out long ago.
“We still need to get to Uncle Elliott,” Neal says. “We’ve got the locations of the Undying on this tracker Dex left—and we know the portals are key to their plan. We’ve got to get that info to him so he can shut them all down.”
The silence from Mia is deafening—this is where she’d be in her element, coming up with harebrained schemes and rushing off half-cocked to scare the life out of me with some daring feat or another. But she’s just sitting there, head bowed, elbows on her knees.
We’ve all been thinking of the people we care about. Neal’s parents—my uncle and aunt—are back in England. Our friends are at Oxford. I think my mother’s in Switzerland, and though we haven’t spoken much since she left dad and me, I still love her. She’s my mum, and I can’t even wholly blame her for leaving my dad. His theories made him sound mad—the whole world thought so.
We can’t contact any of them, for fear the IA is listening and will trace the call—and perhaps for fear they wouldn’t believe our warnings if we tried—but I know we’ve all been thinking of thewarning Mia gave to Luisa, and wishing we could do the same for those we love.
But for all those thoughts that have sat with us during long car journeys, and during the night, neither Neal nor I have had a moment like Mia just did. To see Evie there, standing behind De Luca, when she’s devoted her entire life to keeping her sister safe, when she’sriskedher life to keep her sister safe … I can’t imagine.
“So let’s think about what we have on our side,” Neal says, following my gaze to Mia’s slouched form.
“An IA jacket, and an ID we can maybe modify,” I say.
“Languages,” Neal says. “You could pass as being from a lot of different places.”
“Mia’s brain,” I add, and that’s enough to make her lift her head and shoot me a surprised look. “What?” I say. “You’re the quickest person I’ve ever met in a tight spot. You always think of something.”
“We have the people online,” she says slowly. “The #IBelieveIn Addison people. I don’t know what use they can be yet, but Luisa showed us they’re real, and at least some of them will help us.”
“We should decide if we want to participate in that conversation,” Neal says. “You have a lot of pictures you could add.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I can feel myself sitting a little straighter just at the thought of that community out there, refusing to accept what they’re told, asking questions and demanding proof.
Mia lets out her breath slowly. “We’re still going to have to try to get in to see Dr. Addison. We stick to the original plan—it’s just harder, now we can’t use Neal.” Her voice is quiet, her brow furrowed with concentration. “Whole sections of the castle are museum now, right? Open to tourists?”
You wanted a harebrained scheme that would get us all killed, Jules.
