by Amie Kaufman
A part of my brain is firing off questions, a hundred a minute. For what purpose did the Undying bring us here, to this ship? Why is this ship so important? What did they intend us to do with it? And the heaviest question of all of them: who left the Nautilus warnings, and what danger were we meant to escape?
What were their intentions, these aliens who knew how to deceive us so perfectly?
And what were the intentions of the ones who left us the warning about this gift? Were they members of the Undying too? What did they know that I can’t guess?
But I can’t focus on my endless questions, because there’s just one that’s living at the forefront of my mind, taking up all available real estate: How do I keep Mia safe? I can still hear Javier’s voice ringing in my ears, talking about how disposable we were, after they killed Liz. They’d need a helluva reason to keep you around, he said. So I need to show them a helluva reason.
I know I should be trying to memorize the ship’s layout. I know I should be doing something. Stalling them. Ingratiating myself. Finding weak points among Charlotte’s soldiers. Doing what Mia would do. What Mia…My ears are ringing, echoing.
My memory won’t let it go. The soft click of the hammer releasing as Charlotte slowly lowered the gun and tucked it into her holster again. As my heart started beating again.
I need her.
The last I saw of Mia was a flash of her white face as they shoved me into the ship. I saw her eyes, large and dark in the low light, saw the faded pink in her hair glinting as the sunrise on the other side of the ship bloomed. Saw her open her mouth to call out for me—and then she was gone.
Charlotte’s voice echoing in my head. Don’t worry, she’ll be alive. Kill her, and we lose our power over you. Hurt her, though… Her face, serene, almost whimsical, as she lifted a shoulder.
I have to focus. I do my job, Mia lives. Right now, that’s all I know. Right now, that’s all that matters.
THE HOURS CREEP BY, AND I’m left cuffed to the scaffolding by the entrance to the ship. I yank at my bindings a few times, and eventually a soldier just points his gun at my face until I stop. Message received.
I’m so used to the commotion passing me by that I don’t notice when one of the uniformed soldiers stops in front of me until he grasps my wrists to untie me from the scaffolding. The motion sends twin jolts of pain up my arms into my shoulders, and I let out a hoarse sound of protest or surprise or exhaustion, I’m not even sure. He ignores it, double-checking that my hands are still tied securely to each other.
The IA soldier says nothing, choosing to give his orders in the form of brute force. He hauls me to my feet by my bound hands, then shoves me through the ship’s entrance and down one of the multiple corridors that branch off just inside.
My mind is blank. All those years, dodging the cops and talking my way out of scrapes, and I’ve got nothing. Any second now I’m going to see Javier and Hansen, dead, stashed wherever they stash the people they don’t need anymore. Any second now I’m going to join them. And I’ve got nothing.
They lead me in a circuitous route that takes me through the long corridors. I lose all track of where we are, though the hallways are far from featureless, marked by the same strange metallic stone and crystalline circuitry we saw in the temple.
I suppose I ought to be glad that they’re leading me into the ship rather than taking me back outside—if they were planning on killing me, surely they’d do it out in the snow, and not where my brains would get splattered all over their precious artifacts.
They bring me to a door not unlike those in the temple, and pry it open with a crowbar and a screech of scraping rock. They cut the ties binding my hands and toss me inside. The door slams closed behind me, the air battering against my ears and making my abused head spin all the more.
“You okay?”
I whirl around at the voice and immediately regret the sudden movement, groaning and trying to feel at the scabbed-over spot where they hit me. My arms are like wet noodles, my hands numb and tingling. I blink and find Javier there, a few steps away. He’s got one hand outstretched, like he’s ready to catch me. Like I look ready to drop where I stand.
I suck in a deep breath and steel myself, blinking again and scanning the room. Both Javier and Hansen are there, unbound but stripped of their gear, like me. Not dead, I think, with a surprising depth of relief, given that a day ago we were running for our lives from these guys. The way our luck’s been going, I was pretty sure they’d been shot the minute they were done telling the camera they were alive.
“I’m okay.” I pause. “Well, I mean, as okay as I can be.”
Our cell is a small, pod-like room as featureless as the snowy plain outside, lit by a simple LED lamp—the one from Javier’s gear. The door has a small indentation next to it—not like the one Jules figured out how to crack, though, even if we did have something conductive. This one’s a bit bigger than a hand, but pushing against it does nothing. If it were some summer sci-fi blockbuster the door would go whooshing open at our touch, but apparently the Undying never watched those movies. Or else the batteries are dead.
“Home sweet home,” Javier says, as I look around. “Your boy Jules came through here early on, apparently said there was nothing worth seeing in here.” His mouth quirks. “Guess they’re counting on the fact that it’d be a lot harder to escape from stone walls than canvas ones.”
I try to pry at the door’s edge, but even after both Javier and Hansen add their strength to mine, the stone doesn’t budge. It’s impossible to get much purchase on it without something to pry with. What I wouldn’t give for my multi-tool right now.
“Well, at least they seem to think your boy is as important as everyone else does.” Javier drops down onto the floor, putting his back against the wall. “Pretty sure we’d be dead if they didn’t.”
“I hope you’re right.” My suspicious mind can come up with half a dozen reasons they might keep us alive that have nothing to do with Jules—bait for more traps, lab rats to send down unexplored corridors. But my money, if I had any, is on Jules.
Hansen’s looking between the two of us, face blank, before he suddenly blurts, “How the hell are you two so freaking calm? I mean, what the hell, guys? We’re screwed. We are so goddamn screwed I can’t even—”
“Well, what do you want?” I snap. My temper is frayed beyond tatters as it is, and he’s not helping by echoing the thoughts I’m not willing to speak aloud. “Us to burst into tears and wail and rend our clothes and beat ourselves to death against the door?”
Hansen scowls at me. At least pissed off is better than panicking. “This is all your fault anyway.”
“My fault?” I sputter. “You’re the ones who ran us ragged—no one made you follow us through that portal!”
“She did. Liz made me.”
“Well, she’s dead!” The words seem to echo despite the confines of the room, spilling into a sudden silence as thick and impenetrable as the stone door entombing us. I’m regretting them already for more than one reason—shouting makes my head throb. I try to take a calming breath. “Look. I’m sorry, I just—”
“She’s right.” Javier stays on the floor, though he lifts his head to glance between me and Hansen. “Liz is dead. She’s gone. We have to assume that Jules is too, as far as we’re concerned. Whatever they’re using him for, it doesn’t involve us. His identity may have kept us alive this far, but it’s on us to get out of here on our own.”
“I’m not going anywhere without Jules.” The words come out automatically, before I even register the thought. I ought to be surprised at the steel in my voice—and Liz’s remaining men clearly are—but I remember that drawing, and I remember that little smile when I wrote me too, and I’m not surprised at all. I clear my throat. “I’m not leaving him here.”
Javier’s brows lift, but he doesn’t protest. “One step at a time,” he says instead. “We’re not going anywhere inside this room. But they’ll have to open it eventually.
There’s no food slot or anything—this wasn’t built as a prison. They’ll have to open it to feed us, take us to the bathroom, that sort of thing. Now, when they brought me and Hansen to this cell, they had six guys on us. But I noticed only one with you.”
His eyes are on me, and I glance away at Hansen, who’s suddenly watching me with renewed interest.
“Yeah, but one guy with an automatic rifle and body armor and a crapload of training.” I take a step back. “I climb, I sneak, I scramble…I don’t fight. Besides, I’m like half their size. I wouldn’t stand a chance. You’d do better against six dudes.”
Javier grins, shaking his head. “You’re quick, and that counts for a lot more than size or strength. I noticed you had a gun on them before they had one on you, when they took us at camp.”
“Yeah, with the stupid safety on,” I mutter.
“Well, I doubt these guys leave their safeties on.”
“Is that supposed to be a comfort to me?”
Javier gets slowly to his feet. “You’re right that these guys are well trained. But I don’t think their training really involved what to do with prisoners. One of the ones guarding me actually had his gun pressed against my back while we were walking—a dumb mistake. I can show you what to do, how to get the jump on them.” “Yeah, and send me home sporting some lovely new piercings in the shape of bullet holes.”
“Me and Hansen, we’re pros, clearly trained. They watch us too carefully, put too many guys on us. But you…you’re small, you’re quick, and most importantly, they’re underestimating you just as much as Liz did.”
I can feel my stomach shriveling. “Wait, you’re serious? You want me to overpower a fully armed, fully trained guard twice my size without so much as a freaking spoon for a weapon?”
Javier beckons to Hansen, who groans as though he knows what’s coming. “Watch me,” Javier says. “And pretend Hansen here’s your guard.”
“I’m out.” Hansen’s on the floor, and rolls over until he’s facedown on the stone. “Somebody else be the guard for a while.”
Javier ignores him, grinning at me. “Not bad. You’re getting faster.”
I’m gazing down at Hansen, but more because I don’t want to look at Javier, and the hope and desperation there in his face. He’s so certain I’m our best chance of getting out of here. I wish I could feel so sure. “Yeah, but we’re pretending his arm’s a gun. Arms don’t shoot very fast. Pretty sure a real gun’s gonna go off before I’m out of the way.”
Javier shrugs. “Maybe.”
I stare at him. “Okay, dude, you’ve got to get better at lying.”
“There’s no point in lying.” He’s somber now, grin fading away. “But I also wouldn’t be suggesting this if I didn’t think it stood a good chance of working. If one of us tries something and fails, it’ll be the only excuse they need to shoot the rest of us to avoid any more trouble. We’re in this together now.” His eyes soften a bit, and I remember what he let slip before we were captured—he’s got kids of his own, somewhere back on Earth. “You can do this.”
We’ve been through the movements so many times it’s like instant replay in my mind. With the guard close enough for the barrel of his gun to press into my back, I can twist, sending the gun to the right as I dodge left, which throws the guard off-balance and lets me charge my shoulder into his rib cage and knock him down. Then I can get my foot on the gun barrel, pressing it down against the guard with all my weight so he can’t possibly lift it up to aim it at me again.
But all of that—that’s just step one.
We let Hansen have a rest so he can sit at the far edge of the room and nurse his bruises and glare at me. My heart’s pounding from the exercise, and from the adrenaline. I lean back against the wall, letting it take my weight.
“You can do it,” Javier repeats quietly. “The only question is…will you?”
I swallow, lifting my head from the stone wall behind me so I can look at him. “What?”
“It’s one thing to hold a gun, even aim it at someone. It’s something else to pull the trigger. Especially when you’re standing so close.”
Each one of our practice sessions with Hansen has ended with my foot on his arm, pressing his outstretched finger against his throat, and Javier saying, “Bang! Okay, good job. Now, next time…”
But it won’t be Javier saying Bang. It won’t be someone’s arm, and it won’t be Hansen getting back up afterward, groaning about his bruises and rubbing his chest. It won’t be me grinning and breathing hard and high-fiving my coach.
It’ll be an ear-shattering explosion, and a jolt that makes my leg go numb, and the top of a guy’s skull splattered against the floor. It’ll be me killing someone.
I haven’t stopped feeling nauseous since I woke up, since I saw Mink standing in front of us in an IA black-ops uniform, but I’m not so sure it’s the concussion anymore. I shut my eyes, hoping that it’ll cut the dizziness, but instead it leaves me feeling like I’m in a dense fog that only grows thicker with every passing moment.
Before I can answer, before I even know what the answer is, a sound outside makes all three of our heads snap toward the exit. Footsteps, the clang of metal on metal, then the faint creak of a crowbar settling into the seam of the door. I tear my eyes away to find Javier looking at me.
I exhale, long and slow. “I guess we’ll find out,” I whisper, and turn toward the door.
I’VE BEEN CLIMBING STAIRS FOR hours. The inside of this place is a maze the size of our biggest skyscrapers back home, and without any power for transport between levels, I’m reduced to climbing up and down what I assume are emergency stairways. I have two guards trailing after me, and we’re not the only team exploring. We cross paths with half a dozen other groups, the corridors echoing with booted footsteps and the occasional burst of static from comms radios.
Twice I catch a glimpse of Charlotte, heading up one of the exploratory teams, and her gaze swings over toward me, eyes narrowed, speculative. This must be the first time she’s personally entered an Undying structure. Does she find it as unnerving as we did, our first day in the temple, when Mia asked me why it seemed so like our own ruins? And what would she think if she knew what we’d seen before we jumped through the portal? The languages of Earth’s past and present. The Nautilus warnings.
Pergite si audetis.
Onward, if you dare. But onward to what?
I force my thoughts back to the hallway ahead of me. I don’t know how much time I have to come up with something she deems useful before she starts making good on her threats against Mia.
I’m following my instincts, absorbing what I can from the glyphs—though there are dozens I’ve never seen before. It’s like one giant puzzle to solve, and it turns out I was training for it by surviving the temple.
My legs are groaning and protesting as I force myself up yet another staircase, trying not to think about the descent that’s yet to come. I pause on the landing to brace my hands on my knees, casting a resentful look at the closed doors of what I’m pretty sure is a powerless elevator, then straighten to force myself onward.
“Where are we going?” The soldier behind me is as sick of climbing as I am.
“That way,” I say, trying to make my tone confident, to make up for the lack of specificity. I don’t want him reporting back that I seem unsure.
“And what’s that way?” the other asks, taking a swallow from her canteen, then handing it across to the first guy, who follows suit, and then hands it to me.
“Maybe the ship’s bridge, or something like a control room,” I say. “Maybe something else to do with the ship’s hierarchy. It’s important, that’s all I can tell you.”
I trace a line of silvery glyphs. They indicate power and control, and the concept of change, which I speculate might mean something to do with making adjustments, perhaps to the engines or the power source of the ship. That power source has to be what the IA’s after—they want the tech that could power a ship this big,
and damn the lessons that could be learned by exploring it properly.
They couldn’t create a future for humanity with their mission to Alpha Centauri. Now they’re hoping this ship, and the tech it holds, will be Earth’s salvation. That it will do for the world what the first power cell did for Los Angeles.
The IA wants this to be the treasure the Undying promised us in their broadcast. They need it to be the answer. But the words in that broadcast echo over and over in my mind, sounding so changed now that I know what I know: Unlocking the door may lead to salvation or doom…
Whatever the Undying’s ultimate plan, at least one of them took great risk in trying to warn the target of their deceptions. To warn us. And I’m not about to ignore that warning—not anymore.
The corridor leads to a small room, and the beam of my head torch swings across its interior. On the far side is what I think must be a control panel, backed by a reflective wall. My escort checks there’s no other way out of the room, and then settles down in the hallway outside to wait. The controls sit at about waist height, a long bench covered in carved grooves and depressions. Perhaps if it were powered, you could drag your fingertips along it like a sensor pad. I already know from the temple that this strange, stone-like material can sense changes in pressure.
I glance at my reflection in the reflective wall—my curls are wilder than usual, I look wrecked—then realize a moment later I can see through the wall. It’s a window, but the dark and my head torch transformed it into a mirror. I risk a quick glance over my shoulder to check I’m unobserved—one of the guards has vanished, but the other is in the doorway, murmuring into his radio. I lean in to press the torch against the glass, blinking to focus on what’s on the other side.
It’s a dull gray wall a couple of meters away from the glass, gleaming with circuitry that crawls over every square centimeter of it. It’s Undying tech. I tilt my head up, then down, studying it by torchlight. It goes as far as I can see in either direction. Mehercule.