by Amie Kaufman
The solar cell that revolutionized the Los Angeles water purification plant was about the size of my head. As best I can tell, this goes hundreds of meters up and down, and in both directions. This could power a continent.
“Anything in there?” A voice rings out from the hall, and I snap back from the glass, startled, fumbling for words.
“I, uh, I don’t think so. Nothing of interest.”
“You sure about that?”
That voice cuts through the thrill of discovery and I turn, going cold. Charlotte’s standing there, the guard that had been on his radio a few paces behind her.
Perfututi. I’m an idiot—it doesn’t take a genius to see that this room is important. I should’ve been listening to my guard, keeping track of what he was saying. He was calling Charlotte. Telling her I’d found something.
“I—” My mind’s blank. I keep seeing Charlotte on the scaffolding with her gun to Mia’s temple. I can’t lie. I have to lie. Give them what they want and eventually I stop being useful—eventually their reason for keeping Mia alive vanishes. But give them nothing, and I’m already of no use.
Charlotte’s expression is unreadable, not flinching even when I look over at her. Her pupils dilate in the beam of my torch, but she doesn’t move. “Yes?”
“See for yourself,” I say finally, feeling like the centuries-old chill of the ship around me has settled into my bones. “I think this is what you’ve been looking for.”
She moves into the room, keeping her distance from me, one hand at her side—resting on her weapon, I’ve no doubt. I back up, making it clear I have no intention of trying to get a jump on her. She peers at the panel full of glyphs and then the glass—and then she stops. Her eyes sweep across the massive structure beyond the room, hungry.
“How do you turn it on?” Her voice comes whip-like through the quiet.
“Turn it—” I’m left staring at her, aghast. “Turn it on? This has been here for centuries, for millennia. The probability that it’d be operational is—”
“The Los Angeles cell was.” Charlotte tears her eyes from the ship’s power core to fix on me. “How do we turn it on?”
“I swear to you that I’m not stalling—trying to start this up after so long, such a complicated piece of technology…the amount of power involved, it’s as likely the whole thing’ll just explode, and take us all with it.”
“Your warnings have been taken under advisement.” Charlotte shifts her weight, jaw hardening as she lifts an eyebrow. “Think about where you are, Mr. Addison. Think about everything we’ve done, all the pieces I had to set up and execute in order to retrieve this single artifact. I’ve fought for this chance, I’ve pleaded and begged and killed for it—this is our salvation, and when the rest of the world sees it, they’ll know I was right to do everything I did to find it. When I bring this ship back, I’ll be saving the human race. Would you like to tell me again to give up and go home?”
Her face all but gleams, the singularity of her purpose sending a shiver down my already chilled spine. When I decided to come to Gaia, I believed I was giving everything, sacrificing all I had and all I’d ever be, for the good of my planet. No one could possibly be sacrificing more. But this woman, this Charlotte—Mink—whoever she is—there’s a light behind her eyes that I recognize, that makes my heart sink. Because I’ve seen that look in the mirror.
Would I have let anyone stop me?
I swallow, taking a breath, trying not to think of Mia, somewhere back in those tents, or on the ship herself by now, being used to test for traps, or even dead, for all I know, though my gut refuses to accept that as a possibility.
I lean down to brace myself against the control panel. There’s no guarantee that I can power the ship from here, but the importance indicated by the glyphs leading to this room, and the view from its window, make me think I can.
Pergite si audetis.
Charlotte’s waiting.
“Listen,” I say, desperate, my words tumbling over one another. “There’s more to the Undying than you know, Charlotte. Only a few people in the IA know that my father found a second message, a warning, hidden in the broadcast—this ship could be dangerous, catastrophically so. We can’t just…” But there is no we. Charlotte was never interested in those questions like I was. She was never the person I thought she was. She’s not going to listen.
“You’re stalling.” Her voice is grim.
“No, I promise—there were warnings all through the temple, warnings I should’ve…Even if you can’t accept that we were being warned, at the heart of the temple we found messages in Latin, Charlotte. In Greek, in English and Chinese and Italian and Malaysian, and—”
“In a temple that predates humanity.” Not grim, anymore—disbelieving.
“Yes!” I hold up my wrist unit. “I have pictures, I can show you. We have to understand why, before we turn it on. The hidden message, it was a coded spiral, and there was a glyph with it, it was warning us about the end of the world, and—”
“It was some sort of technology that created your Latin, your Malaysian,” she says, dismissive. “Pulling from the languages the temple heard us speak, translating.”
“But nobody in there spoke—”
“Enough!”
I meet her gaze, and though her expression is as grim as ever, there’s a fire in her gaze that frightens me. I always saw the International Alliance as a bunch of politicians, arguing with one another. I never understood that behind the scenes were people like Charlotte. Driven. Committed to their cause, whatever the cost.
“I don’t know if I can start it,” I try.
“Lives depend on your success,” she says quietly. And I know she’s not talking about the people back on Earth this tech might save. She means Javier, and Hansen, and most of all, she means Mia.
I can’t do as they ask, and I can’t refuse.
As long as I stand here, unmoving—as long as I say nothing, I don’t have to choose between my planet and Mia.
Then Charlotte’s radio gives a little pop as she presses the transmit button. I look up to see her head tilting down toward the receiver clipped to her collar—as she speaks, though, she’s watching me. “Alpha-oh-four to prisoner lockdown. Status report?”
The response is immediate, and Charlotte’s adjusting the volume up so I can hear it. “Secure and stable. About to take the prisoners to be fed.”
Prisoners, plural? Javier and Hansen, my mind supplies, with a surprising gust of relief. They’re alive, too.
“Leave the men,” says Charlotte, her eyes on me. “Take the girl—bring her to Benson.”
My heart stops. Fear slashes at my chest, as sharp as a blade, cutting my lungs to ribbons as I try to breathe. Dimly, I can hear the soldier’s response on the walkie, but my thoughts are too consumed with imagining ways they could hurt Mia to force me into compliance. I should’ve hidden it better, how much I… I swallow hard and taste bile at the back of my throat.
Charlotte lifts her head again and leans back against the wall, one hand on her gun, the other falling from the radio control. Her gaze is ice. “Well?” she says.
I clear my throat, trying to keep my words even, trying not to let the fury making my vision spark show in my voice. “You’ll have to give me some time.”
THE JOLT OF FEAR WHEN the guards haul the door of our cell open is nothing compared to the icy fingers that wrap around my throat when they single me out to go with them, alone. I want to glance at Javier, to get a nod or a wink or some last bit of reassurance, but I can’t do anything that might arouse suspicions, so I trudge out the door like my spirit’s broken.
My two guards are both bigger than me—one’s a woman, about a head taller, and the other’s a lanky guy with quick, darting eyes. My heart’s sinking, because there’s no way I can take out two on my own—but part of me tingles with relief, too. Because there’s no way I could be expected to deal with them both. I won’t have to risk getting shot. I won’t have to risk shooti
ng someone.
I’ve seen no sign of Jules. I have to assume he’s okay, though, and that he’s still insisting I be kept alive in exchange for his cooperation. Otherwise the manpower they’re wasting keeping an eye on a bunch of useless prisoners makes no sense.
They bring me back outside, down a long, enclosed ramp they’ve erected to make accessing the airlock door easier. The IA camp is still being erected around us, but I guess the soldiers are at least human enough that they’re worried about lunch, because the kitchens are up and working. We walk to the tent serving as a mess hall, where a skinny military chef called Benson gives me a bowl of tasteless protein mush.
I’m about halfway through the meal when an electronic crackle sounds from the guards’ earpieces. The guy rolls his eyes over toward his partner. “No way—I’m calling in that favor. I heard it’s twenty-five flights of stairs, maybe thirty.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Yeah? You want to take this one to the ladies’ room, then?”
The male guard’s eyes flick back toward me, and he groans. “Cheater,” he accuses.
The woman shrugs. “Up to you. If you’ve got a handle on her feminine needs, then I’m happy to go up there instead.”
The guy mutters something uncomplimentary under his breath and gets up, presumably to answer the summons from his earpiece. The female guard grins at his retreating shoulders, then leans back, watching me finish my breakfast.
“Feminine stuff,” she comments. “Gets ’em every time. Guys are such idiots.”
I’m inclined to agree with her, but the tasteless mush of a meal is suddenly sticking in my throat. I’m down to one guard.
“Done?” she asks, after a few long moments of me staring into my bowl.
I probably should finish the meal, but I’m not hungry anymore. I nod wordlessly.
“Then it’s to the latrines, then back to the cell. C’mon, on your feet.” She approaches, grasping at my arm to help me up from the bench. Her other hand’s gripping her gun—she might sound casual, but she’s on the alert. These soldiers aren’t stupid, that’s for sure.
I tell myself I’m going to wait until after the bathroom visit because she might have relaxed by then; that there might be fewer guards patrolling that section of the base; that it’s nearer the ship, so easier to get back to the cell undetected. But in my heart of hearts I’m stalling for time.
The bathrooms, also still being set up, are little more than tents with holes dug down into the ice, are small and stark and smell overpoweringly of disinfectant. But we find one that’s ready to use, and there’s even lukewarm running water hooked up to a washbasin, so I spend some time splashing my face.
You can do this, I tell myself as firmly as I can.
Yeah, comes the answering thought before I can stop it. Sure you can, in bizarre upside-down world where you’re a freaking superhero and not some high school dropout who specializes in running the frak away when things get dangerous.
My hands are shaking as I dry them on the damp rag hanging as a towel next to the basin. My legs feel rubbery as I step toward the door. My guard’s waiting for me, and she falls into step behind me. She’s not close enough, though. She needs to be right on my heels for me to execute Javier’s plan.
I slow my steps. “I don’t want to go back,” I hear myself saying as we reach the umbilical-like tunnel leading up into the Undying ship.
“Orders,” replies my guard. “Sorry.”
“What is all this, anyway?” I’m talking just as much to distract myself from what I have to do as anything else. My steps echo on the ramp as we ascend into the dark, icy ship once more.
“Confidential.”
“Come on,” I reply over my shoulder. “No games. We’re all dead anyway, me and the guys—once you’ve got what you need from Jules, you’re gonna kill us, right? What harm is there in telling a dead girl?”
My guard hesitates—or, at the very least, doesn’t answer right away. “I don’t even really know,” she says finally. “I’m not high on the list of need-to-know personnel. But this mission—we’re saving the human race. This tech, this is how the International Alliance fulfills its promise to the world. It was created for projects bigger than all of us, like Alpha Centauri. And this is even bigger than that. Not just a new colony. A cure for our whole world. We’re doing the right thing.”
“And yet you’re planning to kill us eventually.”
Her silence is answer enough, though she doesn’t exactly look happy about it. I keep my steps slow, hoping she’ll prod me along with the barrel of her gun, giving me my opening. But she doesn’t, hanging back and letting me dawdle. Despite my best efforts to stall, we’re turning the corner into the hall that houses our makeshift cell before I can come up with another plan.
There’s a crowbar leaning against the wall outside our door, the tool they use to pry our cell open. My guard gestures with her gun for me to pick it up and open the door myself. I heft the tool in my hands, toying for an insane moment with the idea of turning and swinging it at her head—but she’s far enough back, too canny to get within range. She’d shoot me before I got anywhere close.
So I fit the edge of the crowbar into the groove along the door and haul with all my weight. I wiggle it into the widening crack bit by bit, until the curved end is well inside the cell—then I let go with a gasp, grabbing at my wrist. The door goes slamming back on the crowbar, wedged in firmly now.
“I think I pulled something,” I groan.
My guard mutters something, shifting her weight. “No dramatics, please.” She sounds tired. I guess I would be too, having to be on the alert all day like her. “If you think you’re getting me close enough to take me out with a crowbar, take another look at this and think again.” She hefts her weapon, a rifle as long as my arm.
“The crowbar’s stuck,” I point out, lifting my arms and taking a step back. “See for yourself.”
The guard scowls at me, but after a few breaths steps closer, then closer still. After a brief inspection, she puts her attention back on me. “Well, try again.”
“Give me just a sec,” I mutter, panting. “Catch my breath.”
“No, now.” The woman’s on edge, suspicious. But the flare in temper is all I needed; she gestures with the barrel of her gun, just centimeters from my chest.
The move Javier taught me used contact between my back and the gun—had me spinning so the barrel went one way while I went the other.
But this is as close as I’m gonna get.
For the briefest instant, I look up to meet the guard’s eyes. And in a heartbeat I know it’s a mistake. She reads my intention there, in my face, and suddenly I’m committed. I’m moving, slamming my arm up against the barrel so that when she pulls the trigger it fires up into the ceiling with a deafening crack. My head’s spinning from the noise, but my body knows what to do next. I lower my shoulder and slam into her, my momentum combined with the recoil from the rifle knocking her flat onto her back. And just like in our practices, I’m wresting the butt of the gun from her lax hand and pulling it so the strap around her shoulder is taut, and my boot is pressing the barrel into the underside of her chin.
But then my finger touches the trigger and I freeze.
Sorry, she’d said. And guys are idiots. And she’d grinned when she got her way and sent the guard off to answer the summons, like she’d drawn the longer straw, like escorting me was the better assignment. She waited for me to finish my breakfast. She let me take my time walking back to the cell. We’re saving the world.
And now she’s looking up at me, still half-dazed. The impact with the floor knocked the wind out of her and her eyes are watering as her lungs try to reboot.
I can hear the guys on the other side of the door, the scrabbling of the crowbar against stone, someone shouting something through the crack. But it all fades to a dull buzzing as I stare down at the woman.
It’s not like we practiced.
Then a body barrels into mine, coming out o
f nowhere and knocking me aside. I slam into the wall opposite the cell door, and an instant later there’s a second gunshot. Shaking, I blink and blink again until I can see properly. Hansen’s propping the door open with the crowbar and Javier’s standing where I was a second before, the rifle in his hand. The guard isn’t staring at me anymore—she’s staring at the ceiling, still looking surprised. There’s blood on the floor beneath her, and as it spreads it finds a crack in the stone floor and slithers toward me like it’s a live thing.
I stumble away until a hand grasps at my shoulder.
“You okay?” Javier’s face is close to mine. I can smell the tiniest hint of something acrid in the air. Smoke. Gunfire. “Sorry I knocked you aside so hard.”
“I was gonna do it.” I swallow, unable to take my eyes from the dead guard. “I was.”
Javier’s hand squeezes. “I know. But you don’t need to become a murderer, kid. Not today.”
Then I’m retching, whirling around and ducking back inside the cell so I can puke in the corner, my mushy breakfast just as vile coming back up as it was going down. I end up with my head in between my knees, forehead resting on my balled fists.
By the time I can stand back up, Hansen and Javier have dragged the body into our cell and wiped up most of the blood in the hallway with the guard’s jacket. Hansen’s looking a bit white in the face, as I can only imagine I am too, but at least he’s not hurling his guts up.
“We should go,” he’s saying, reaching out to touch my elbow, hesitant.
I nod. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”
“Follow me,” Javier orders. “If anyone heard those shots, they’re already on their way to investigate. If we get separated, try to get outside to the shuttles.”
“Shuttles?” That word cuts through my fog like a welding torch through copper.
“Hansen’s a pilot, remember?” Javier waits until I’m out of the cell before yanking the crowbar free, then tossing it to Hansen as the door slams shut. “If we can get one of those shuttles working, we’ve got transportation.”