I CONCENTRATE ON TRYING NOT to puke, because it’s hard to run while you’re heaving your guts out. But focusing on the side effects of the portal that brought this ship back to Earth also means I don’t have to think about what’s happening.
Yeah, right. If there’s anything I can do while trying not to die, it’s think about how utterly goddamn screwed we are.
All this time. Every puzzle, every step through their carefully laid-out temples. The temples themselves, designed to be tantalizing clues—tantalizing traps. The ship, with its doors, and its hallways, and its controls simple enough that a teenager—albeit an academic genius—figured out how to fly it in a matter of hours. At least—enough to fly it straight back to Earth.
Exactly where the Undying intended it to go.
This is what the secret warning was trying to point us to. The Nautilus spiral in the code, the glyph that warned us about the apocalypse, the unspoken catastrophe that Jules’s dad feared. We’ve helped deliver the end of the world.
The prize was never a lump of Undying tech that would save my sister or exonerate Jules’s dad. The prize was always Earth. We were just wrong about who the raiders were.
The blood pumping through my veins, with its healthy dose of adrenaline and utter panic, is proving to be a potent antidote to the portal hangover. If only Jules had known that all he had to do to get me moving after we came through the portal back at the temple was scare the shit out of me.
I want to laugh, a hysterical reaction, but I just gasp for air. All I can hear is the harshness of our breathing over the hum of the engines, purring gently now that we’re in orbit.
We pass the intersection where Javier knocked out that Alliance soldier, but he’s gone. Either he came to, or one of his comrades got him out.
Jules and I are alone.
I wish I hadn’t left the other rifle at the airlock. Of course, at the time, the ship was empty, evacuated for launch. We had no reason to think we’d need weapons. And, given how I froze during the escape plan with Javier and Hansen, no reason to think I’d be able to use one in a pinch.
I may not be able to shoot a person, but damned if I wouldn’t shoot whatever freakish alien bastard comes squirming through those portals.
We round the corner that opens onto the portal corridor, and Jules has to reach out and haul back on my arm to counteract the momentum that tries to send me plunging onward. I blink sweat and tears from my eyes, dropping into a crouch so I can peer around the corner. The rows of portals are still solid, dark.
“Nothing’s happening.” I’m panting from the run, from fear, from relief. “You were wrong.”
“They only go liquid when something’s coming through,” Jules replies, breathing as hard as I am, but struggling to get it under control. “Remember the temple portal? Looked like stone on the exit side after we came through, but Liz and her gang still came through after us later. Just because it looks solid now doesn’t mean it won’t change in a few seconds.”
I actually don’t remember what the other side of the temple portal looked like at all, being too busy having a seizure on the ice, but in this moment I’m willing to take his word for it. “Then what do we do? We can’t just sit here and wait, what if—”
“The lights.” Jules points, hand outstretched over my shoulder. He’s crouching just behind me, voice in my ear. Any other moment and the sound of it would give me shivers, make me want to lean back a fraction and feel the warmth of his chest on my back. Just now, though, his tone only makes me feel colder. “The lights over the portals. They’re on, and they weren’t before. They’re active.”
He’s right. But before I can reply, the portal at the far end of the corridor ripples with a sound like a distant earthquake, like a shockwave in reverse. It’s so low I feel it in my gut, through the soles of my boots, in the marrow of my bones.
And something steps through.
Jules’s hand on my shoulder tightens, but I don’t need the warning. We both pull back out of sight, taking turns to peek around the corner for a heartbeat here, a breath there.
It’s wearing a suit of some kind, though nothing like what our astronauts wear. Bipedal, like we thought. Tall, taller than Jules. I can’t see if it has arms or a face or anything else. Then, between one glance and the next, a second figure appears, the sound of the portal rebounding against my eardrums and settling into the pit of my stomach.
They’re making noises, harsh, distorted sounds that mean nothing, but do suggest they can hear each other—and us.
I take a careful breath, exhaling the words as softly as I can: “There are only two of them.”
“And only two of us,” Jules replies. His hand on my shoulder is shaking, his whole body is shaking—or mine is, and the tremor I’m feeling is my own terror.
Two unarmed kids, neither of us exactly trained in combat, against two alien members of a species capable of creating the largest-scale hoax in the known galaxy, capable of insane cunning and patience just to find the right kind of life-form, the right kind of planet to take over. We don’t stand a chance. But without us, neither does Earth.
Because Earth doesn’t know what’s up here. If Javier does manage to steal an IA shuttle, it’ll take him time to get it away from the magnetic signal-scrambling effect at Gaia’s pole; it’ll take him time to transmit the message, time for the IA honchos to get it, discuss it, make a decision. And even if he manages all of that, he’s still only warning them that the ship could explode. Now that we’re in orbit, and the ship hasn’t turned into a bomb, his warning will be meaningless except to make the IA all the more cautious about sending an exploratory team up here. They’ll take their time, making sure to get it right. They could spend months developing exactly the right bomb squad team to explore what they think is an empty ship.
By which time the Undying could have a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand troops ready to swarm through, carrying god knows what kind of tech-powered weapons to obliterate us all.
I can feel tears running down my cheeks, as though my body’s already decided that it’s hopeless, that we’ll die, that everyone we love on Earth will die. That I’ll never see Evie again. That I’ll never have the rush of standing atop Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers again. That I’ll never eat lime chicken and porcini wild rice again.
To hell with what my body thinks.
“We’re not letting them take Earth,” I hiss.
“Wait.” Jules’s grip on my arm is still tight, as though he expects me to go barreling into the corridor without a plan. And just now I’m not sure he’s wrong. “Look.”
The two figures seem to be conferring, then one turns and slots something into a groove beside the portal they arrived through. The surface shimmers and turns oily, and then one of the figures casually tosses something through.
“They’re the advance team,” Jules whispers. “Sending back a message that it’s safe.”
The two figures move up the corridor toward us, checking each of the portals, acknowledging the operational lights over the archways, and continuing to speak to each other in those distorted, muffled voices. Without further warning, more Undying start to appear, and not just from the single portal in the back—the whole corridor is filling fast, and the two original scouts are about to reach the end of the portals. And the corner where we’re hiding.
Their heads are bulbous, their featureless faces jet black and almost metallic-looking, like the portals. There’s nothing to distinguish one from the other—they look like clones, like robots, like…aliens.
Then the pair stop, just a few steps from where Jules and I are crouched, holding our breath.
One of them has its head bowed, examining a device on its suit. It gives a little beep, then flashes green. The Undying scout makes one of its garbled sounds, then reaches up—oh god, it has arms…hands?—and unbuckles something with a hiss of released, pressurized gas.
Then it pulls off its helmet.
“At least the air’s safe.” Its voice is heavily accented, but unmistakably speaking English.
Not its voice—her voice. Jules’s grip on my shoulder falls lax. We’re both staring, forgetting for the moment that we’re supposed to be hiding, that we’re only a couple of meters from invaders trying to take our only home from us.
Because the Undying scout standing right there, where I could almost reach out and touch her, is a woman. A tall, golden-skinned woman who could walk down any street on Earth without attracting a second glance.
Because she’s human.
She glances at her partner, who’s in the process of removing his helmet too. “Well?” she says, taking a deep breath and then turning her back to survey the stream of Undying soldiers pouring through the portals behind them. “Ready to take Earth back?”