Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  “I thought they had…elect—electricity?” Nicholas said quietly. The leather satchel at his side bounced between them, but every now and then the back of his hand would brush hers and break the rhythm of her pulse.

  “They do,” Etta whispered back, glancing back at the milky pink of the sunset. Was this part of the “rationing” Alice had mentioned, or was this some kind of power blackout?

  They passed Leicester Square; couples dressed up in furs and hats were loitering outside of the theaters, sharing cigarettes as if it were any other day in any other year.

  Almost there, almost there…

  “May I ask you something?” Nicholas said into the darkness gathering around them. A midnight blue clung to the air, that last gasp of afterlight before nightfall. Without any illumination, Etta’s other senses came into sharp focus. The smell of gasoline and smoke. The sound of their footsteps. The dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.

  “You can ask me anything,” she told him.

  “What will you do when you find the astrolabe,” he asked, his voice reserved, careful, “knowing what it truly does?”

  Etta didn’t want to lie. “Whatever it takes to save my mom. My future.”

  “Are there any circumstances in which you’d give it to the old man?” he continued.

  What a strange question—was that some kind of test?

  She raised an eyebrow. “Would you?”

  His lips parted, but just as quickly, he turned his gaze up toward the sky as it bruised under the night.

  “I can only imagine what he’d do with access to more of the future,” Etta continued. “It’s how badly he wants it, and how far my mom had to go to protect it, that scares me. It definitely makes me second-guess giving it to him. Nothing about the old man makes me want to play nice.”

  “But isn’t it the easier solution—give it to him, and get your life back? Your mother? Perform at your concert?” he asked, his voice strained.

  “What’s left of my life at this point, you mean. Whatever parts of it he hasn’t torpedoed.” Etta didn’t want to continue down this line of conversation, not when her own thoughts were still too frustratingly tangled. Her mom was safe for now, and would be, so long as she could get to the astrolabe before Ironwood’s deadline.

  He gave her a helpless look. “‘Torpedoed’?”

  “An underwater missile that…You know what?” she said with a faint laugh. “I’ll explain later. I’m not so sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to torpedo the stupid astrolabe and just be done with this.”

  “That would be unwise. The whole business of getting home could be made considerably easier by creating a passage, rather than sailing to the one in Nassau,” Nicholas said. “I hope you’ll take this as the compliment it is, but I imagine Ironwood will be eager to see you and your mother as quickly as possible. He might even create one for you.”

  “We are talking about Cyrus Ironwood, right?” Etta said, brows raised at this little fantasy. “The one who told me he was going to leave me so destitute I was going to have to resort to prostitution?”

  Nicholas groaned. “We will create one for you and your mother, then.”

  “If we can figure out how to use it,” she pointed out. The thought made her feel tired all over again. In truth, at that moment, all she really wanted were two things: her mother and a hot shower. And toothpaste. Three things. The last should have been easy enough to find, and maybe it would have been, if every store they passed hadn’t been closed for the day.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said, eyes sliding up his profile.

  He inclined his head, granting permission, but she saw his hands bunch into fists at his side. “I suppose it’s only fair.”

  “What are you going to do with the money you got from Ironwood?” she asked. “The money you got for bringing me and Sophia to New York?”

  His shoulders slumped as he exhaled. “I would dearly love to hear your guess.”

  “You’re going to buy a ship,” she said instantly.

  “Yes—did Chase tell you that as well?” Nicholas’s gaze swung out to take in the sight of St. Paul’s Cathedral, its ornate dome looming between the shadowed buildings surrounding it.

  “No,” she said. “It just seemed right. That’s where I see you.”

  Standing under the blaze of the sun, the wind teasing and pulling at his shirt and jacket, the water rolling out beneath them—him, she corrected, rolling out beneath him—like a sparkling carpet.

  Nicholas stopped, his arm brushing hers again as he stepped in front of her, looking down in what she thought might have been genuine amazement. “You could read me so easily?”

  She smiled, flicking at his chest in a teasing way to keep from doing something else that would embarrass her and likely startle him. “You were so good at it, and you loved it. I could see it in your face—what is it?”

  His gaze was so heavy, it felt like he had dropped his hands onto her shoulders, and was holding on for dear life.

  “Etta…” he began, his voice a rasp. “You…”

  There was a movement just behind him, brown and black and white and gray—three men booking it down the street. The men from before—the one in tweed was pulling something out of his pocket—Thorns—charging directly at them—small, silver—

  Gun.

  Etta shoved Nicholas, hard, into the brick wall beside them. He stared back, dazed, just as a bullet screamed by, slicing the air between them.

  “Run!” Etta said, grabbing his wrist. “Run!”

  He tried to wheel back around, to see, but she dragged him forward, feeling his pulse jump beneath her fingers.

  “Turn here!” he said. “We’ve—”

  The sound was like an inherited memory; she couldn’t remember ever having heard it before, but recognized it instantly for the way it seemed to slice through her, striking the marrow of her bones. The revving wail was spinning out of the silence, louder and louder, as the buildings picked up the sound of the sirens and volleyed it between them.

  “What the devil is that?” Nicholas said, spinning around, trying to locate the source.

  “Air raid sirens,” Etta said, shooting a look back over her shoulder. The men were slowing at the warning of the approaching attack, as if unsure whether or not to keep going. No—Etta’s breath left her in a rush—to aim.

  The man out in front fired; the bullet went wide, striking the brick wall behind them. A splatter of dust and debris exploded into her hair, scratching the back of her neck.

  “Stop, damn you!” one of them called. “Don’t make us shoot you!”

  “Hell and damnation,” Nicholas forced out between gritted teeth. Etta was too furious with herself to speak. Why hadn’t she even thought about this? She should have pushed to leave Alice’s earlier; they should have taken a taxi; anything to get them to the Aldwych station and the passage hidden inside of it as soon as possible. This was the Blitz, for God’s sake. Alice had told her a hundred times growing up that there had been bombings nearly every night.

  “What do we do?” he shouted.

  A distant, loud drone choked the words right out of her, made her look up through the clouds for planes.

  “We have to go underground!” she said. This Alice had said the Underground stations were being used as shelters—if they could get to Aldwych—if they could run ahead of the attack, they could reach the passage tonight—

  But if the bombing began before then, in this area of the city, they’d be dead before they realized what hit them.

  The Thorns seemed to be having a similar debate. She caught fragments of their conversation—“Go back!” “Follow—” “—not dying—”

  They’d passed a shelter in Leicester Square and had seen the tube stop nearby, but Etta didn’t want them to go back, not when they could get out of London tonight. The Thorns seemed to be hoping they would bail, ditch the streets for cover, and Etta had the unsettling feeling of being caught in a deadly game of chicken. Endin
g up in the same shelter as them would only get her and Nicholas caught again in Ironwood’s web. She needed them to take the nearest shelter, and she needed to get her and Nicholas the hell out of London.

  This was war, this was real, and they were going to die if she didn’t make a decision right now.

  “Let’s double back,” Nicholas said. “That square had shelter—”

  “No,” Etta said, “we can make it to the Aldwych station!”

  “No—the other one is closer!” he shouted over the sirens. “We can cut a path around them if we have to!”

  I am getting us out of here.

  I am getting us out of here.

  I am getting myself home.

  She grabbed his hand tightly in hers and dragged him forward. Nicholas tried to pull her back around, but Etta wouldn’t turn. “We can make it! We can’t lead them to the passage—Ironwood can’t know which one we take! We have to lose them!”

  We. They had to do it together, or not at all.

  “Damn you—” he swore, but when she started running, he did too.

  It sounded like thunder from a late summer storm—the kind that used to rattle her and her mom’s apartment windows, a boom that cracked over the city and echoed against the glass-and-steel structures. The whistling alone made her eardrums feel as if they were about to split; the high whines fell eerily silent before each tremendous, deafening crash. Her skin prickled, feeling as if it was about to peel away.

  Etta would never complain about the sound of the passage now, not ever again. Not after hearing this.

  Nicholas craned his neck up to watch the shapes ripping through the night sky. It looked as though a thousand black bugs were being released from each plane, all streaming down to the city around them. The eager curiosity she’d seen earlier on his face had vanished.

  Etta turned—the street was empty behind them. “They’re gone!”

  She pushed her legs harder until she felt her ankle turn on a piece of rubble. But Etta didn’t stop, and neither did Nicholas. He looped her arm around his neck and carried her forward as they turned onto Catherine Street.

  “It’s at the end of the—road—” she gasped out.

  “I see others, they’re going the same way—” he said, the words rumbling in his chest, echoing the planes’ thunder. “We’re almost there.”

  Families, couples, policemen were all converging in front of a building with a redbrick façade. A white banner ran along the top, over the arch of windows: first, PICCADILLY RLY, then the smaller lettering below: ALDWYCH STATION.

  She let out a sharp “Yes!” at the same moment that Nicholas shuddered and said, “Thank God.”

  A man in a dark police uniform stood at the entrance, waving everyone in. They dodged the clothes, bedding, toys, and suitcases that had been dropped in the panicked flight down, and joined the flow of bodies. Just before they were swallowed into the horde, Nicholas shifted her arm, wrapping it around his waist instead. His other arm fixed across her shoulders, drawing her closer, squeezing them between the dozens of people around them who were all quietly trying to fight their way down an endless series of stairs.

  “How far underground are we?” Nicholas asked, eyeing the pale lights running along the ceiling.

  “Very far,” Etta said, hoping the words were more reassuring than they felt. The pounding hadn’t stopped; it was only muffled. The world flickered around them as the electricity was tested by the bombing. Sweat poured down her back, and Etta couldn’t stop shaking, even as they broke off from some of the others and headed for the eastern track, as Alice had instructed.

  Some part of Etta had hoped that they would be able to just walk to the very end of the platform, jump down onto the track, and slip away into the tunnel. No hassle, no fuss, no questions. But as they came down the last steps and rounded the corner, she could see they had a problem.

  That problem being the hundreds of others who had already beaten them down there. Londoners had spread out across the platform, even nestling down on the track. The press of humanity filled the air with a damp, sticky warmth. Many of the men and women had taken off their coats and jackets and hung them up along the walls. Someone had even engineered a kind of clothesline at the entrance to the actual track tunnel.

  They couldn’t spend the night here—they couldn’t lose that bit of time when the old man’s deadline was edging closer by the second.

  Nicholas’s arm tightened around her again as they were gently pushed forward by the people behind them.

  “Damn,” he swore softly. “Which way did we need to go?”

  She pointed to the other end of the track, where rows upon rows of people were curled up on blankets or gathered in circles of friends and families. Many were talking quietly, or trying to entertain the few little kids she saw with toys or books, but most remained close to silent, their faces stoic.

  Etta had to hand it to them; they were calm. They seemed almost resigned to this, like it was one great bother, instead of a terrible way to die.

  “All right, we’ll wait. We can be patient.” If Nicholas was aware of the eyes that were tracking their progress along the platform, he didn’t show it. They navigated through the crowd until they found an empty space near the end of the platform, under a sign advertising the Paramount Theatre’s showing of something called I Was an Adventuress staring someone named Zorina.

  Nicholas took off the bag and his jacket as Etta lowered herself down onto the patch of concrete, leaning back against the curved wall. She drew her legs up to her chest and hugged them there, hard enough for her knees to crack.

  Calm down, she thought, calm down.

  But the bombing hadn’t stopped, and Etta could almost see how, if one was dropped in just the wrong place overhead, it would mean game over. Not just for her and Nicholas, but for the hundreds of people packed around them like sleeves of wafers.

  Nicholas rummaged through the bag, producing their lone apple. Etta wasn’t hungry, though she hadn’t eaten since they’d left New York. Her stomach had turned to stone, throbbing in time with the muscles that still burned from the run.

  Nicholas glanced at her, concern dragging down the corners of his mouth. “I should have found us water. I’m sorry, Etta.”

  “We’ll be fine,” she whispered. They’d find some once they went through the next passage.

  “I have to say,” he muttered, leaning back, “I am harboring some incredible ill will toward this mother of yours.”

  Etta wasn’t feeling so fond of her at that precise moment either, even as she was terrified for her; her mind was constantly looping back to that photograph, the way she’d been tied up, the kind of men that were holding her.

  “Well,” Etta said weakly, “she’s always told me a good challenge builds character.”

  “Then we’ll have an excess of it,” he said dryly.

  Conditions on the platform were so tight that they sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, leg to leg. Etta was glad for the solid presence of him, that she could lean into him, now that her nerves seemed poised to sweep her into a full-blown panic attack. She crossed her legs, letting the cool cement press into the exposed skin. None of Oskar’s breathing tricks seemed to be working, not when all hell was raining down on the street above. The woman to her right quietly prayed.

  How many hours would they have to sit down here, hoping? It was the twenty-second of September. That only left them with eight more days to find the astrolabe and get back, and they still had no idea how to decipher the other clues.

  Her breath hitched as panic began to creep into her system. How was Nicholas so calm—so steady, like he’d been through this all before?

  Maybe he had, in a way. The bombing didn’t sound all that different than the pounding cannonade from the ships, the small explosions of each gun. She wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t speak, afraid that admitting anything might open the floodgates in her. Everyone was holding it together. She could, too.

  I wish I could pl
ay.

  Etta craved the distraction, the absolute focus of playing. If she couldn’t feel the weight of the instrument in her hands, then she could at least imagine; she closed her eyes and called the music to her. The phantom press of strings against her fingers filled her, for the first time since Alice had died, with a sense of familiar joy—not the disgust and humiliation she’d felt when she thought about her performance, or the shattering anger and grief at wondering what had happened to Alice’s body—if she and her mother would even make it in time for the funeral.

  For lack of anything better to use, she took her left forearm into her right hand, closing her eyes. She could pretend, just for a few seconds, that her wrist was the neck, her veins the strings. She imagined the bow gliding across her skin, focused on the movement of it.

  Bach. Bach demanded her concentration. Bach would take her out of this moment.

  “What are you doing?” Nicholas asked.

  “Playing,” she said, not caring how ridiculous it must look and sound to him. “Distracting myself.”

  A man, stretched out on his stomach in front of them, lifted his face up out of his book and glanced their way curiously.

  It was perfectly strange timing that a high, clear note broke the odd spell of calm in the station just then. Down toward the center of the platform, an older man had brought out a violin and was working the instrument in slow, mellow song. She recognized it—it wasn’t a classical composition but something that had come scratching out of Oskar’s old record player.

  The sound bloomed around them, like a flower unfurling one petal at a time, carrying across the walls of white tiles with their patterns of black crosses. A passing police officer tilted his hat toward the man. Etta sat up, straining to see him over the heads between them.

  She had, however, no trouble seeing the young couple that was dancing in their few feet of allotted space. The man’s arm was locked around her waist, and he took her hand in his. The woman laughed, looking around them nervously, but followed his slow, rocking movements, resting her head against his shoulder.

  Nicholas watched them, entranced. Etta thought for sure he’d say something about how scandalous it was for them to be dancing so close together.