Page 59 of Sawyer’s Mistake

“Is he going to be okay?”

“I set his shoulder. Now it just needs time to heal. We’ll know more in a couple weeks.”

Saoirse nodded. She reached over the space between them and gently removed his blond hair from his face. Asleep, he looked younger.

He said he wouldn’t let us go, and he didn’t.

“We’ve crossed the border into Belgium. If everything goes well, we’ll be in Brussels in three hours,” Storme said from the driver’s seat. He swerved, swearing softly as they went over a pothole.

“Please drive carefully,” Saoirse asked.

“He’s going to be fine, Saoirse,” Zander repeated.

Meir’s voice came from the shortwave radio. “The message is playing again, frequency eight.”

Storme turned the radio to the correct frequency. The voice speaking sounded vaguely mechanical, as if it were being run through voice distortion software. “… the Atomium. If you make it this far, the code is Pangea. I repeat, the code is Pangea. We wish you the best of luck.”

The message faded into static. Eva reached over from the copilot’s seat and turned it off.

For a long while, the only sound in the vehicle was Sawyer’s gentle snoring.

“What do you think they’ll make of this, when they see it?” Saoirse finally asked, holding in her lap the small black bag which contained the Remur voice box. “Do you think we can trust them?” She hated that her time in Cambrai had made her fearful of other people.

Storme raised his head to look at Eva. He had a lot riding on this working out.

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “But it’s a chance we’ll have to take. Every Sunday, for the last six months, they’ve sent out the same message. If they’re half as organized as the message implies, we need to meet them.”

“We won’t tell them about the artifact until we know more about them,” Eva interjected. “And we’re certainly not going to tell them about your … ability.”

Saoirse cringed. For a moment, she’d managed to forget about it.

She looked up to find Sawyer’s green eyes on her, the pupils slightly constricted from the painkillers he’d been taking.

“I dreamed you were here with me, and here you are,” he said. “In my dream you were wearing less clothes.”

“Jake!” she said, embarrassed. Ahead of her, Storme and Eva laughed.

“We’re getting close to Brussels,” Saoirse supplied, helpfully.

“I’ve never been to Brussels,” he said. “Capital of the European Space. I think I would have liked to visit.”

Eva looked up from behind a yellowing paper map. “Sorry we can’t give you a grand tour, Sawyer, but I think we should avoid the center of town.”

“Fine by me. I don’t think I’m up for the full tourist tour today anyway,” he said. He held his arm stiffly in front of him.

“Okay, take the next exit on the left,” Eva instructed. “We’ll circle and approach from the west.” She left the obvious unsaid: The aliens had taken over and were still carefully monitoring, most cities, so approaching any city was a game of chance.

“I don’t see the Atomium,” Saoirse said.

“You’ve been here before?” Sawyer asked.

“Once, when I was nine years old. I flew over with my family for the hundred year anniversary of the monument. I remember we had lunch at the top.” Tears rose to her eyes as she thought of her parents. The three of them had made one tight nuclear family, the kind who thought they’d never need anybody else. She wiped her cheeks angrily with the back of her hand.

Sawyer reached over, extending his uninjured hand. When she placed her hand in his, he used the momentum to tug her onto his lap.

“Stop,” she complained, “I’ll hurt you.”

“Shh, I’ve got you. Just let me hold you.”