Undying Read online

  A sound interrupts my thoughts, and I jolt awake without even realizing that memory had started to become dream. My heart pounding, I wait until my mind identifies the sound as a distant fan turning on somewhere. I check the wrist unit. Twenty-two minutes since we stopped.

  Jules’s body gives a jerk, sending my heart rate skyward again. I squeeze his shoulder, and his eyes flash at me in the dark. Hurriedly he pulls himself away from my legs, but when he speaks it’s not an apology. “The headset buzzed me,” he whispers hoarsely.

  I want to tell him to ignore it. They know we’re here now, so any message they send through the headset is one they don’t mind us intercepting. They could even be sending false messages, bait to lure us out from the walls. But it’s also the only window we have through to the Undying’s network of communication, and if they’ve turned the system back on … we need to know what they’re saying.

  I squeeze his shoulder again, and he settles the headset into place.

  I’m bracing myself for a long silence while he’s gone, gone even more than he is when he’s asleep—but he pulls the headset off after only a few moments, looking at it with confusion.

  “What happened?” I whisper.

  “Just one sentence,” he replies. “ ‘Abandon departure schedule, all surface teams to shift immediately.’ And that’s it—it’s still not responding to me at all, and the screen’s still dead.”

  I’m so tired my mind is sluggish. “The ones like Atlanta and Dex, the soldiers—they’re all going down to Earth now?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “They’ve been chasing us for days—why are they just now moving up the schedule?”

  Without warning the duct stretching out before us comes to life with bright red lines. I grab for Jules, but he’s seen them too, and with a jerk he pulls his long legs back out of the way, shoving in close against me. There’s only a few centimeters between him and the edge of the laser grid, but it’s enough. We wait, hearts pounding, as silent as if the lasers might somehow hear us if we moved—until the place goes dark again.

  I squeeze Jules’s shoulder, and when I creep ahead along the horizontal shaft, he follows me silently, no questions. If he’s the master of the headset, I’m the one keeping us alive and on the move in these tunnels.

  The shaft we’re in runs at floor level along one of the upper decks of the ship, and we’ve gotten no more than a few meters before running footsteps make us freeze. Too often, that sound has meant a hasty retreat for us, and another mad scramble for a hiding place. But this time, the boots go racing past, followed and joined by more and more, until there’s a veritable stampede.

  Once the crowd has passed, I whisper, “We’ve got to get to one of those shuttles if we’re going to get off this ship.”

  “And what, ask if we can hitchhike?” I catch the glitter of his eyes in the gloom, and I want to smile—he sounds like me, burying his exhaustion and fear under sarcasm. But we’re both too tired to smile. “Even if we could get aboard one unseen, we’ve got no hope of learning to pilot an alien landing craft made by a species tens of thousands of years ahead of us.”

  “We have to try!” I stop at an intersection, and grab Jules’s ankle to tell him to do the same. There’s just enough room for him to ease to one side and rest for a moment. “Maybe we can find a pair of suits as a disguise, like we talked about.”

  Jules’s eyes fall, and I know he’s looking at my legs, outstretched and interlocking with his—and ending a good foot shorter than his do. I’d look like a child in one of their suits. It might fool them for a moment or two, but not long enough to locate the shuttle bay from the memory of our map, find a shuttle, and sneak—or talk—our way on board.

  I force myself to let go of the tension holding me upright and just lie down where I am, forehead pillowed on my crossed arms. Think, Mia. You’ve done this before. How do you steal something from a group with vastly superior numbers and organization?

  Chicago. The tape recorder.

  “We need a diversion.” I’m speaking slowly, not bothering to think first—at this point, any idea is better than nothing. “A way to lure some of them away, get their suits, and then take their places on the shuttle. Do you think you can talk like them? Imitate the way we’ve heard Dex and Atlanta talking?”

  Jules is eyeing me askance, an expression I recognize as a dim relative of the surprise and skepticism he displayed when I first proposed stealing one of our rival scavver gang’s skimmer bikes back on Gaia when we first met. “I think so. As long as I don’t have to make any fancy speeches. But we don’t know enough about them to blend in for long.”

  I’ve got my mouth open to go on, but I’m saved from trying to plan any further by a clang and a narrow, bright beam of light several meters ahead of us. A voice, distorted by echoes, rises in query, answered by a second, more muffled voice. They’re at the far end of our shaft. They’ve found us.

  Jules mutters one of his Latin oaths and ducks down the other branch of the intersection, with me on his heels. Literally—I almost get a boot to the face in my haste to follow him.

  “How do they keep finding us?” he puffs, but I’m so winded I can’t reply in anything more than a gasp for breath.

  It’s a few more minutes before he stops abruptly, body stiffening. Quickly, he wedges himself in sideways and pulls the headset off his neck. “God, we’re such idiots—the headset, Mia.”

  “Shit.” My heart’s sinking. How did I miss that? I guess two days of sleep deprivation slows me down. “They must be like cell phones, they’ve got some kind of tracker or positioning chip. And since they know someone’s been accessing their database …”

  Grimly, Jules draws his arm back, hurling the thing as far from him as he can. It skitters along the vent as we head in the opposite direction.

  “What now?” he murmurs, looking across at me by the dim light of his wrist unit. “I know that look on your face. What terrible idea am I going to go along with now?”

  “We keep on with the plan. We catch a couple of these surface operatives on the way to the launch bay, pull them off to investigate, and then get their suits.”

  Jules’s face is grave, eyes going distant as he summons up the image of that scrawled map. This time, he doesn’t bother arguing the hopelessness of the situation. Either he’s finally convinced it’s worth a try, or he just thinks we’re so screwed that we might as well go down swinging. “The best place will be somewhere near the bay itself, to make sure we get foot soldiers with suits, and not ship staff.”

  I take a breath, thanking whatever gods or universal forces might be listening that Jules has that freakish memory. “I’ll follow you.”

  We refine the plan, such as it is, on the move. We leave the headset behind—the fact that they came after us even after the network was turned off tells us that the positioning chip must still be functional. And we don’t want a welcoming committee when we reach our destination.

  We’re sidling through the wall cavities again until we reach a small chamber off one of the main corridors that houses a bunch of unidentifiable equipment. To me, it looks for all the world like a water heater closet.

  We’re forced to wait there for the right opportunity. Pairs of Undying rush past at irregular intervals, but we need a single pair alone, and ones who haven’t started putting on their suits yet. Half those running past have them tied round their waists like mechanics’ jumpsuits.

  Jules and I are both starting to fidget restlessly when two sets of footsteps prick my ear after a long silence. I touch Jules’s arm, and we ease the door open a crack in time to see two forms eclipse the light from the corridor as they pass.

  I’m shifting my weight to move when Jules’s hand comes to rest against my back. The sudden warmth of the touch is what halts me—we’ve been communicating by a squeeze here, a nudge there, for so long now that I ought to be used to it, but this touch lingers.

  I glance over my shoulder to find Jules close, his brows drawn
in and his lips set. “Are you sure about this? Couldn’t we both—”

  “I’m faster than you are.” It’s not a boast—it’s simple truth, and something Jules has had plenty of opportunity to observe over the past weeks. “I can lose them again—I swear to you I can.”

  And in that moment, I am sure. I’m not lying, and I’m not exaggerating—I’m quick and I’m small, and I’ve been training for this my whole career as a scavenger. I turn the rest of the way around and take Jules by the arms, trying to look as stern as I can when tilting my head back to look up at him.

  “We’ll only be split up for a few minutes. Stash one of the suits here, put on the other, and find us a ride out of here. I’ll be back before you’re done sweet-talking the Undying into letting us stow away. You’ve got the more dangerous task than me—you have to make them think you’re one of them. I just have to run.”

  Jules scans my face for a heartbeat, then draws me in. I’d forgotten how different his arms feel this way, as opposed to when he’s just got one around me for warmth as we huddle in our hiding places.

  No, that’s a lie—I haven’t forgotten at all. I’ve been trying not to think about it.

  “I don’t like this,” he says quietly.

  I try out a smile, my heart racing a little more quickly. “Me neither. But it’s either this or keep running and hiding until—until this is over, one way or another.” I don’t want to say the words. I can’t say the words. But they’re there in my mind, as real and vivid as if I had said them: Until Earth falls.

  Jules drops his head, forehead touching mine. I long to tip my face up, seek out his lips just a breath away from mine. For a moment I nearly do, and my head must have moved a fraction in the darkness, because I feel his hands slide farther along my back in response.

  Suddenly all the time we’ve spent together on this ship feels like such a waste. I could’ve asked for more—I could’ve taken advantage of that time, of our closeness, to explore this fragile connection between us. Odds are we’re not both going to make it off this ship, and when Jules goes back to his real life on Earth, I want him to remember … I want him to remember how I felt about him. Not what I thought of his crackpot ideas, or how I teased him for his optimism, or how I shot down his well-meaning—but naïve—attempts to make room for me in his life.

  I want him to remember how I felt. And I don’t know how to show him that. A kiss could never be enough.

  “I have to go now.” I draw back, forcing myself to concentrate. “This might be our best chance, and they’re nearly at the end of the …”

  “Be careful.” Jules lets go of my hand, flexing his now-empty fingers in the space between us.

  “You too.” I ease the door open again, just enough to lean out and check on the progress of our targets. Then I pause, in spite of myself and my urgency. “If I’m not—stall them, but don’t blow your cover if … One of us has to make it to Earth.”

  This time, Jules doesn’t try to fight me. His mouth tightens, and he says nothing, but he gives a tiny nod.

  If I had time, I’d tell him I’m not being noble and brave about anything—if I had time, I’d tell him I’m terrified at the thought of being left behind. Instead, I sacrifice one more second to look at him, and then slip out into the corridor.

  I take a few quick, sharp breaths to get my blood pumping, and then break into a run. Hearing my footsteps, the Undying pair ahead of me pause, their flight suits draped over their arms and flopping as they go. When one of them looks back, I stop short as if surprised to see them there in my path.

  For a long moment, we stare at each other along the length of the corridor.

  They’re male and female, each as tall as Atlanta and Dex, though aside from their height they couldn’t be more different. The young woman’s hair is shaved close to her head, exactly the same light brown as her skin, while the boy’s reddish-brown curls are gathered into a knot at the crown of his skull, thick and coarse.

  The boy’s mouth falls open. “Is that—is that a proto?”

  The girl’s eyes widen. “She’s the one they’re after!”

  In a split second, they both drop their suits and break into a sprint. They’re faster than I expected, freakishly fast, and a curse tumbles out of my mouth as I nearly slip in my haste to turn back and run the other way. I can’t spare a glance for the utility closet where Jules stands concealed, and race past it, blood singing in my ears.

  When I reach the opposite end of the hall, I ricochet off the wall as I make a ninety-degree turn. I catch a flash out of my peripheral vision, beyond my pursuers, and get the briefest glimpse of a figure stooping to carefully retrieve the fallen suits, then vanishing again into the shadows.

  Heart surging with triumph, I pour all my focus into running.

  I planned my path the best I could ahead of time, with information from Jules’s nearly photographic memory of the maps the headset revealed, and with what we’ve cobbled together on our expeditions through the walls and ventilation systems. Another right will bring me back toward the shuttle bay, and then a left will take me back toward the living quarters. Where there’s a knee-high vent standing open and ready for me to slide in, grab the hatch cover, and pull it shut before my pursuers have rounded the corner.

  I skid around, eyes already dropped for the hatch—and then all the air goes out of my chest as I slam face-first into a dead-end wall. Reeling back, gasping for air, I stare at the blank wall for half a second too long before I realize: I’m not where I thought I was. The path was wrong, or I miscalculated—either way, the result is the same.

  I’m lost.

  Blindly—the sound of quick, efficient breath and pounding boots just around the corner—I choose a direction and take off.

  I’m sorry, Jules. Please, please, be strong enough to leave without me.

  THE SHUTTLE BAY IS BUZZING WITH ACTIVITY, UNDYING WORKERS AND soldiers striding across the open spaces, readying shuttles, calling orders, and hauling gear. The room is massive, on a scale that makes my head spin. It’s a feeling almost like vertigo after spending the last week crammed inside a long series of too-small spaces. The bay’s large size requires support, and ribs of that metallic stone curve upward to meet in the ceiling like buttresses supporting the weight of a cathedral. If cathedrals shimmered with iridescent power, and looked down over an alien invasion force.

  From above, this place would look like a sprawling ants’ nest, with suited soldiers scurrying in every direction. Everyone’s moving with purpose, and my steps falter for a moment on the threshold.

  I’m in one of those suits too—like Earth’s astronauts, the Undying wear them in transit down to the surface, in case of hull breach, I guess. They’re jet-black, the helmets strangely bulbous, the faceplates opaque unless you’re up close. The last time I saw someone dressed like this, Mia and I were hiding, watching the first of the Undying step through the portals, minutes after launch. Last time, we were braced to see the helmets come off and reveal some nightmarish alien creature, with tentacles for a face or teeth like knives.

  Somehow, seeing them reveal human faces was even worse.

  There’s comfortable padding inside my helmet, cradling my head like Neal’s motorcycle helmets do, and I’m glad it conceals my features, because I know I’m gawking. There are just so many of them. At least half aren’t in their helmets yet, and with a slow blink, I realize that every single one of them looks to be around my age.

  The Undying invasion forces, whatever they’ve done to camouflage themselves as human, are all masquerading as teenagers. Why?

  Is this their first mistake, a misunderstanding about humans, or are they hoping to be underestimated, to go unnoticed?

  I’m forced to sidestep a group hurrying in through the door, and try to quell the rising panic constricting my chest.

  I’m about the right height, I tell myself. There’s no reason I won’t blend in. I’m glad I told Mia to wear her helmet, though—of all the sea of faces I can see
surrounding me, I’m realizing abruptly that not one of them is as pale as hers. They range from the darkest of browns to a light tan, but she’s unquestionably the whitest girl on the ship, as well as the shortest.

  The second suit and helmet are waiting back in the utility room where Mia will—I hope against hope—collect them, but in the meantime her absence means I’m the only one in this huge, highceilinged hangar without a partner by my side. I’m desperately hoping the crowd of bodies around me will conceal the fact that I’m alone.

  As if I wasn’t feeling her absence keenly enough already.

  And that’s when I see them. Atlanta and Dex, our unwitting neighbors, walking together across the middle of the hangar, helmets under their arms, steps in unison. I’ve never gotten to see them like this, only in glimpses and flashes from behind the ventilation cover in their room. They’ve both got their hair pinned up to fit underneath their helmets, and they’re deep in conversation about something. Debating about their destin? Perhaps. I lift my chin a little to keep track of them, and a few moments later, they come to a halt beside a shuttle that’s about ten back in the queue for launch. Dex climbs up the step to the entryway, hanging on to the door frame as he scans the surrounding area.

  I realize what he’s doing in the same instant my feet start moving. He’s looking for the rest of their crew. Some of the shuttles hold two, but most hold four, and the one he’s hanging off is definitely one of the latter. Without working earpieces, he and Atlanta have no way to check in to find out where the other half of their crew is. Or perhaps even who they are.

  Which means there’s no reason they can’t be me.

  My throat’s tight, and my hands are tingling as I make my way past the scrambling soldiers, practicing my first words in my head. I speak nine languages and a further six dialects. I’ve been listening to the Undying for days. If anyone can imitate their accents and their lexicon, it’s me.