I stifle that thought. “They’d catch us before we got halfway to him.”
“Maybe.” Mia’s still thinking. “Probably. But what else have we got left to try? At least if we’re arrested and questioned, we canwarn them that Atlanta and Dex are here—if we can’t convince them that they’re aliens, maybe we can convince them that they’re bioterrorists or something. That they’re connected to the Lyon disease. If nothing else, maybe we can stop them taking over IA Headquarters. Or whatever they’re doing here.”
My heartbeat’s starting to quicken, the thought of trying to infiltrate the IA—once the world’s most sophisticated government headquarters—nearly as frightening as being caught by Mink on the streets of Prague. But Mia’s sitting up, talking, beingherselfagain for the first time since seeing Evie on Neal’s phone, and I can’t help but be carried along with her. “We do have the ID badge and the IA uniform jacket,” I say.
“And we have an advantage they’re not prepared for,” Mia adds. When I raise an eyebrow in query, she flickers a tiny smile at us. “We’re just a handful of kids. What trouble could we possibly be?”
Neal’s been quiet a while, his head bent over his phone. Without the SIM card, he’s limited to using the hostel Wi-Fi, so it’s been taking him a while to look up whatever he’s searching for. But just then, he lets out a muffled exclamation.
He looks up, wild-eyed, to find Mia and me looking at him, and even as I watch, his face goes a bit ashen.
“What is it?” My stomach’s sinking—I don’t think I’ve ever seen Neal look so scared.
“Veronica replied,” he whispers. “My geneticist friend at Oxford. She answered us about the samples we sent.”
My heart leaps. With hard proof that Atlanta and Dex are some unknown alien species, we won’thaveto sneak into the IA. We could walk straight in, announcing our identities, andhandthem proof that the invasion of Earth is happening right now.
I cross to my cousin’s side and take the phone from his unresisting hand. I’m reading the email, my eyes taking in phrases likehighly unusual microarrayandlong strings of homozygositywithout digesting them. Because at the bottom of each result is a standard label in bold.
“Human DNA Microarray,” I whisper.
Mia lurches to her feet. “Human? But they bleed blue!”
Neal’s pallor makes sense now. He’d expected to open an email full of exclamations of wonder and amazement, disbelief from the first geneticist to analyze the DNA of an alien race.
Instead he found a mildly intrigued old friend talking about various random genetic markers—buthumangenetic markers.
“They’re humans.” My voice sounds like poured concrete, thick and slow. “Whatever we saw, whatever wethoughtwe saw … it’s not just a mask on the surface. They’rehumans.”
“IT DOESN’T REALLY LOOK LIKE A CASTLE,” IMUTTER, NOTbothering to hide the disappointment in my voice. Prague “Castle,” home of the International Alliance, is more like a collection of vaguely old stone buildings than the soaring structure I’d imagined. The first floor of the main building is a museum, with a little bit of history of the castle and the city, and alotof the history of the IA.
Jules eyes me sidelong, a smile hovering about his lips. “Were you imagining something out of a fairy tale?”
“Shut up. If you can’t trust Hollywood, who can you trust?” Getting into this part of the castle was easy—cursory bag checks at the entrance, not even any ID required. The rent-a-guards at the door barely gave our faces a second glance.
Life is just continuing here as normal, and despite our attempts at jokes, it feels like the three of us are just swimming through it. The Undying are here in Prague. The Undying are … My mindstill shies away from the word, too bewildered to know how to respond.Human?
Last night, while Neal went out to source us food and buy a couple of burner phones with almost the last of our cash, Jules helped me change my hair. Pink and blue streaks are not exactly low profile, after all. We’ve been through so much—so close to certain death for so long—that dyeing and cutting off my hair ought to have barely registered. And yet as Jules snipped away, I found to my horror that there were tears falling among the locks of damp hair littering the porcelain of the bathtub.
Somehow, it was like seeing the last little piece of myself, of who I was before all of this, cut away.
Jules tossed the scissors aside once he’d finished the task and leaned forward to wrap his arms around me from behind, pulling me in against his chest and pressing his lips to my temple. He didn’t speak, but then, neither did I. He just held me until Neal came back, and we could come out of the bathroom dry-eyed.
Now, I’m sporting a short red bob and fringe that makes me look startlingly different, and I have to admit I don’t entirely hate the effect.
There’s nothing we can do about Jules and Neal and their distinctive height, but there’s so many people that no one looks at them twice. Tourists are everywhere. Crowds aren’t usually my thing, but today they’re a comfort—in the press of bodies, there’s no possible way for us to stand out.
After reading Veronica’s email, we’re back to trying to find a way to reach Dr. Addison. We have no idea what to make of her results, no idea how to begin to grapple with what they might mean, but it doesn’t change our mission. The Undying are still here. They’re still building portals. And Jules’s dad is the only one who’ll know how to shut them down.
IA Headquarters, aside from its museum exhibits, is an administrative building, not a prison. Addison was kept here largely toquiet the human rights activists claiming you couldn’t imprison him indefinitely without a trial—here, they can claim he’s simply beingdetained. There are parts of the castle off-limits to the public, offices and whatnot—and a large underground security complex.
That’s where we have to go. Through the exhibits, and down through the secured part of the building. Without getting caught. The thought makes evenmequail, and we all slow down once we’re inside. It’ll take us a while to get the lay of the area, see if there’s any pattern to the guards’ movements, figure out which doors are least heavily monitored.
So when Jules’s steps veer toward one of the exhibits, I don’t protest. This might be our last real moment of freedom. Of peace, before we’re arrested. And here, surrounded by other teens, and families, and tourists of all descriptions, life almost feels normal.
At the nearest exhibit, a kid is pressing a button over and over that triggers an audio recording. There’s not much to hear, just oddly rhythmic static, but Jules veers over toward it like it’s a dog whistle and he’s an obedient Labrador.
“It’s the broadcast,” Jules explains under his breath. “The original Undying broadcast.”
