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.
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.”