by Amie Kaufman
“No, really?” His sarcasm would normally make me grin, but I’m too scared.
“No, I mean I have to—”
But one of the men is coming toward us, and I break off. It’s Javier, the one who stopped Hansen from groping me, the one who showed the tiniest flicker of sympathy for our lot.
“We’re stopping here for the night,” he announces. Though there’s no telling what time it actually is, it doesn’t really matter down here in the perpetual darkness. “Gotta get you two settled.”
By settled he means secured.
He crouches beside us and grimaces when he sees the knots Hansen tied earlier. I can’t feel my fingers anymore, and it’s some time before I register the pressure of Javier’s hands as he starts loosening the ropes. “I can give you guys a minute or two to get your circulation going again.”
“I need my journal from my pack,” Jules says, so icily polite that it’s a wonder Javier doesn’t freeze solid on the spot. “I need to keep working on my translations, if you want to make any progress tomorrow.”
Javier considers the question, but apparently he’s willing to risk a weapon as fearsome as a pencil in Jules’s hands, because he hands it over, then turns his attention to my bindings.
The blood comes shooting back into my fingertips, burning and tingling enough to make me bite my lip. But I force myself to massage my hands despite the pain, as Jules does the same. We’re both able to turn a little, and now I can see his face. What I see there makes my heart constrict.
He’s angry. I’ve never seen him like this, and though I’ve only known him a few days, I know him enough to see that this kind of fury is alien to him, too. He’s seen, maybe for the first time, just how mercenary and calculating people can be. For someone like Jules—smart, dedicated, passionate—to realize that nothing he can say will make these people understand him, make them look at the bigger picture he cares about so much, has to be beyond devastating.
I, at least, grew up in a world of smaller, more self-interested views. For him, this kind of betrayal is new.
I’m getting us the hell out of this mess. Me and Jules.
“I’ve gotta pee,” I blurt, plan forming as I go. “Before you tie us up again.”
The rest of the camp overhears, and one of the other men, whose name I don’t know yet—the short, fair-haired guy—sniggers. He tosses an empty plastic bottle our way so that it skitters to a halt against my thigh.
I look down at it, then up again with exaggerated horror. “Are you serious? Girls can’t pee in bottles, you dumbass. Look—your boss can take me. I can go in the hallway we just came from. That’s safe, right?”
That’s for Jules, and he looks at me for a long moment before nodding. I wish I could explain the plan to him, tell him to trust me, but all I can do is gaze at him for half a breath before Liz gets to her feet with a shrug.
“Girl’s got a point, Alex. I can always shoot her if she tries anything.”
I try not to let that hit me, but it does, and my extremities tingle with the desire to run and hide, as I’d do if I were confronted with heavily armed scavver gangs back in Chicago. There, I’d have half a dozen bolt-holes within running distance of wherever I was operating. Here, there’s just fatal traps ahead of me and a sheer cliff behind me.
Liz takes me back the way we came, into the corridor, until we’re out of sight of the rest of the group. My spine tingles, knowing she’s on my heels—though I didn’t see a gun on her, I know she’ll have one. And it’d be just as easy for her to use this opportunity to get rid of the dead weight as to let me do my business.
So I talk fast.
“Look,” I blurt, coming to a halt. I turn, lifting my hands to show my sudden movement isn’t an attempt to overpower her. Still, by the time I can see her, she’s got a weapon trained on my face. I swallow. “I didn’t really need the bathroom, I just wanted a chance to talk to you away from him.” I tilt my head back toward the group, where I can dimly hear Jules asking the rest of the gang about something to eat.
Liz raises an eyebrow, but the gun doesn’t waver. “Then talk. You’ve got ten seconds to get interesting.”
“You know who he is? So do I. He was dumb enough to tell me straight out when we ran into each other.” The lies come easily, quickly. This is what I’m good at. “I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here—and it’s why I’m here too. You’re right that I was supposed to head for the main temple, but when I met Jules, I realized he was heading somewhere else, and he’d know where the good stuff is. So I went with him.”
“I’m getting bored.” Liz is little more than a silhouette in the dark, but I can hear impatience in her voice.
“I’m a scavver, just like you.” I talk faster. “You think I give a crap about this guy’s academic whatever? But thing is, he’s not going to help you. You’ve seen him—sheltered, pampered Oxford life. His head’s full of loyalty and heroism and honor and all that bullshit, and he’s dumb enough to die rather than help scavvers get to the artifacts he’s trying to save.”
“People like to say things like that, but they tend to change their minds when they’re looking down the barrel of a gun.”
“Not this guy. I’ve gotten to know him. He’s the real deal. He’s as crazy as his dad, and Elliott Addison let them dismantle his life’s work and stick him in jail rather than help the IA get here.” I take a deep breath, head spinning with the gamble I’m about to take. “You think I’m worthless to you. Just one of Mink’s backup plans. That dumbass in there is the real prize, and you’re right. But I’m the key to unlocking it.”
Liz shifts her weight from one leg to the other. “The hell you talking about?”
“He’s not gonna help you—but I already got him to help me. Fed him a sob story about a fake illegal sister, a debt that needs paying.” My heart tightens, part of me wanting to burst into tears just saying these words. Evie’s not some sob story. She’s all I have. But I harden my voice. “And you said it yourself when you found us. Lovebirds. He’s smitten, never met a girl like me before. He’s already thinking of a way to escape, I guarantee it. He might be naïve, but you’re trying to hold on to a genius, and it’s not gonna work. He’ll get loose. But if I’m with you—if I join your team—he’ll stay. I can convince him it’s in his best interests to work with you and take you to the loot.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“Well, not getting shot in the face, for one.”
Liz’s mouth twists to something like a smile, and she lowers her gun. “And?”
“Our breathers.” I hear Liz draw breath to argue and I talk over her, quickly. “You’ve still got him tied up, and it’s not like I can go anywhere—I don’t know how to solve these stupid puzzles any more than you do. But having our breathers would go a long way toward convincing him to go along with you.”
Liz arches an eyebrow and cocks the gun, its click echoing around the stone walls like an explosion. “Killing his little friend would go a long way toward convincing him we’re serious.”
It takes every ounce of strength I have not to shatter, to let fear take over and turn me into a blubbering mass of terror. But my mouth knows what to say, even if my brain is begging me to curl into a fetal position and cry. “Kill me and you destroy the only leverage you’ve got over him. First thing he said, when we stopped? That he’ll go headlong into the next bottomless pit before he leads you to the loot.”
Liz’s eyes narrow. “I find that hard to believe.”
I shrug, hoping it looks nonchalant. “Believe what you want. But if he’s the reason Mink sent you here, I find it hard to believe that she’d pay to get you back off Gaia if she knew you’d let him take a swan-dive off a cliff.”
Liz chews on the inside of her cheek for a few seconds, then tucks her gun away. She’s got a holster somewhere under her jacket, but in the gloom I can’t see exactly where. “Fine,” she says, and a tension snaps around my lungs like a rubber band. “But you’ll stay a prisoner for
appearances—better than him thinking you double-crossed him.”
Damn, I was hoping she wouldn’t think of that. I need to be free, even trusted, if I’m going to get us through this. This is what Jules brought me here for, even if he didn’t know it at the time—this is my world, half a universe away from home. “If I’m a prisoner, he’ll be thinking of ways for us to escape. And eventually he’ll come up with something good enough that I can’t say no without it being obvious I don’t want him to escape. No, I’ve got to make him think helping the group is what’ll see him though this, and to do that I’ve got to be one of you. He’ll be pissed, sure. But I know when I’ve got a guy on the hook.” I summon a grin from lord knows where. “He likes me more than he’ll be pissed at me, and I can convince him that I’m just pretending to side with you. Make him think I’m really still on his side.”
Liz is quiet a long time, considering. “All right. But the guys are all going to have their eye on you, and they’re all trained to shoot first so that there aren’t any questions later. Understand?”
I feel like dropping to the ground—the tightrope I’m laying down for myself is exhausting just to contemplate. “Got it.”
“And I’ll be watching you, too.”
Somehow, that’s worse than the rest of her group combined.
We head back down the corridor toward the gang’s camp, my stomach roiling. I can’t help but think how much easier it’d be if I wasn’t lying—if I did switch sides. I’d stand a better chance of keeping Jules alive, not to mention myself. And if I’m a member of their little crew, and Mink really did send them…maybe I’d share in their payday. Jules would probably get his answers, too, even if he’d be a prisoner while getting them.
He lied to me. The words repeat in my mind, resounding with every echoing step as we walk. I don’t owe him anything, especially not loyalty.
When we reach the camp, emerging into the light from their various battery-powered lamps, they all look up.
“Good news,” Liz announces, shoving me forward a few steps. “Came to an understanding with this one—she’s with us.”
Protests rise around the circle, and Javier stares at me intently, but I’m trying so hard not to look at Jules that their voices fade into a blur. After I blurted out his name, he’ll have no problem believing I’ve switched sides. Good, I think vehemently, clinging to that sense of betrayal, the knowledge that he brought me here with a lie. Let him twist. But the thought brings little comfort.
“We’ll keep an eye on her,” Liz continues, “but she’s one of Mink’s scavvers, like us, and smart. Smart enough to have got this far. Another set of eyes and ears in this place can only help.”
In the end they still tie me up. Liz is too cautious to just welcome me into the fold with a word and a handshake. But they only bind my hands, and they bind them loosely in front of me, almost comfortably. Just enough of an inconvenience that I’ll make noise if I try to slip away in the night. But it’s enough that I can hold the breather Liz drops into my lap, enough that I can fit its mask to my face and take a deep breath. Looking over at the camp, I spot Jules’s breather—they haven’t given it back to him yet.
And that’s what brings me up short, my anger and hurt draining away. Because once we get to the center of the temple, once Jules has served his purpose and brought Liz and the others to whatever loot or revelation lies at its heart, they won’t need him anymore. He’ll be one more loose end, a witness to testify against Liz, against her gang, against Mink herself. They won’t just let him go.
They’ll kill him.
I force myself to look at Jules, willing him with everything I have to understand, to trust me, to let me do what I do best. To understand I’ve already won us one small advantage, and it’s the best kind of advantage: one the other side doesn’t know you have. But he gazes at me for a long moment, ice-cold, then closes his eyes. Though I wait and wait, he doesn’t open them again—I can’t imagine he’s asleep, but he refuses to look at me.
I stare hard at the ground as talk eventually drifts away from this change of events. I sit there in silence as the mercs start to relax, to talk about past adventures, to laugh over in-jokes. To enjoy themselves a little, now that they’re on top.
Liz’s voice rises, catching my attention—they’re all laughing over something, loud and coarse. “Sure, Hansen.” She’s snickering, pausing to take a swig from her water bottle. “Your girlfriend back home,” and the way she leans on the word makes it clear said girlfriend is fake, Hansen’s wishful thinking at best, “can hang out with our new friend’s little sister. Imaginary friends always get on like a house on fire.”
There’s more laughter, as the bottom drops out of my stomach.
I turn my head, knowing what I’m going to see. Jules’s eyes are open, and he’s staring straight at me. She just took my lie—my denial of Evie’s existence—and she spoke it out loud. She laughed at it.
And Jules heard her turn Evie into an imaginary girl.
One by one the lanterns start going out, as the tired mercs turn in for the night. It’s not until there’s only one left that I gather up the courage to glance across at Jules, to see where they’ve settled him.
Despite everything, despite the fury still lingering in my core for his lies, I don’t want to pile on the betrayal—he’s just seen how ruthless people can be, and it makes me shrivel inside to be a part of it. My mind is so desperate for him to see, to understand what I’m doing—or at least to trust I’m not turning on him like it seems—that I can imagine his wink, his flicker of a smile, his quick nod of acceptance. They’re so vivid I almost think I’m seeing them for real.
But then my eyes focus, and I see him bound to a boulder twice his size, with scarcely enough give in the rope to let him lie on his side on the bare rock. Someone’s draped a blanket over him, but it’s already falling off.
His journal and pencil lie on the ground next to him now, and though they’ve finally strapped his breather over his nose and mouth, I can still see his eyes, red-rimmed and hard and boring back into mine. And it turns out the anger I saw earlier, the fury and hurt at being followed by Mink’s crew and led into this trap, was nothing.
Because the way he’s looking at me now…
I tear my gaze away and curl up under my blanket, all too aware that Jules has barely anything to warm him in the underground chill of this ancient place. Cold, shivering, I close my eyes and try to sleep. But all I see is Jules’s face, half-hidden behind his breather, and the disgust in his eyes.
BY THE THIRD ROOM THE next morning, I’m stumbling. I barely slept last night, partly because I was so cold I was shaking, and partly because of the pain. My muscles were screaming for a change of position by the end of the first hour. This morning, when I tried to stand, two of them had to hold me up until the feeling rushed back into my legs, agony spearing down to my feet. We’re still behind on time with our breathers, and my limbs are heavy and sluggish as a result.
But most of the reason I couldn’t sleep was because I spent the night rehearsing furious, accusatory conversations with Amelia, in which I threw at her every withering insult my mind could conjure, and she utterly failed to defend herself. I keep hearing her voice, asking me about the Undying, about violence and deception. The irony of that memory is so thick it nearly chokes me. I can’t believe I trusted this girl, this—this criminal.
Perhaps that’s rich, coming from me, but there’s a world of difference between our two deceptions. I needed her help for the sake of our whole world—I had to put the work I’m here to do above anyone’s needs, including my own. And even if that excuse wasn’t enough—and perhaps it wasn’t—I promised myself that despite the lie that brought her to this temple with me, I’d find a way to get her the money she needed.
She, on the other hand, threw me to the wolves the first chance she got, and then did it again.
I can’t believe I made a fool of myself over her. Liking her, admiring her, even—god, I’m such a
n idiot. She threw my name at them like a shield, like a bribe—if Liz hadn’t already known who I was, that would’ve sealed my fate.
I’ve let everyone down. Charlotte, who believed I could do this, who argued on my behalf to convince Global Energy to back me and spend unthinkable amounts of money to smuggle me here, who bet her career that I could bring back enough information to help her keep her job and prove my father right.
My father.
My eyes burn. I went against his wishes in coming here—or what his wishes would have been, if he’d known what I was planning—I’ve helped a looter find her way into the heart of this temple, and I let her distract me enough that I lost sight of what I came here to do.
All I can think of right now is my father, imprisoned as surely as I am. And he’s not some cardboard cutout of an academic, an imaginary man standing up for a highbrow ethical argument.
He’s my dad. He’s my dad, who forgets his coat on the way out the door when he has an idea. Who daydreams until he falls asleep on the couch, his cup of tea cold by his side. Who still turns to talk to my mother, even though she hasn’t been there in over a year.
He’s alone, stubbornly, desperately holding out against pressure from the IA and the world, worrying about me, about what will happen while he’s locked away and powerless. I’m all he has, and I’ve let him down.
But I have to stay alive if I want any chance of rectifying that, so I force my mind back to the hallway in front of me.
So far we haven’t hit another puzzle like the musical bridge, just simple instructions to be decoded in order to avoid traps—keep to the right-hand side of the room, step only on the dark stones, that sort of thing. I’ve spotted the Nautilus symbol tucked away in corners, or up high, scratched as if nobody was meant to see it. Each time it has a line radiating from it on a slightly different angle. Each time I’ve taken a picture. Last night I sat with my journal, drawing the spiral over and over again, and inventing and dismissing ciphers to explain the seemingly random lines radiating outward. I didn’t get anywhere.