MY HEAD IS SPINNING, ACHING. The ground feels uneven, not just because of the crunch of old snow beneath my boots, but because it keeps tilting crazily, my vision and inner ears fighting a doomed battle whose first casualty is my stomach. I don’t know if it’d be more humiliating or satisfying to turn and hurl all over Mink’s sleek uniform.
I stay close to Jules, and every now and then he puts a hand out to steady me. They still haven’t untied me, but even if I could use my hands for balance, I think I’d choose holding on to Jules instead. I’m not sure it was smart of him to demand I go with him—I’m not sure it was wise to let them know there’s any connection between us at all besides coincidence.
I’m not sure it was the best idea. But god, I’m so glad he did it I could weep.
The ship looms above us, even from a distance. It’s more massive than I’d realized, with only the IA shuttles to use as reference. It could house hundreds—thousands of people. Or Undying. Or…I don’t even know anymore. It’s sized for us the same way the temple was. The fifty-thousand-year-old temple that had English engraved on it.
I’ve never been what anyone could call honest—I dropped out of school illegally, I worked jobs that paid under the table, I outright stole once I made it to Chicago. But the depth, the complexity, of the tangle of deceit binding us to Gaia makes my body start to shake. The Undying, posing as a race who couldn’t have known about humanity, creating an elaborate set-up to get us to this spot—they knew us well, to know that a race for treasure would make us ignore our instincts, ignore our better natures, ignore any warnings just to get to it first and claim it for our own.
Mink—or Charlotte, or whoever she is—letting me believe I was chosen to go to Gaia because of my skills, my quick thinking, my drive. The gut-wrenching blow of learning I was sent simply because the only person who’d notice I’d disappeared was a child in illegal bondage with no means of getting me back. God, Evie, I’m sorry.
Even Jules. Jules, who lied to get me to help him. Jules, who told me the spiral-shaped temple being ignored by the other scavvers would contain wealth beyond my wildest dreams. Jules, who let me follow him, knowing that it meant I was abandoning my sister.
My eyes burn, and for a moment I want to tear myself away from Jules’s supportive arm—I want to run, anywhere, into the snow and ice, not caring if the soldiers shoot me in the back.
Jules, who told me the truth as soon as he realized his lie was putting my life in danger. Jules, who gave up the chance to find his answers so that I wouldn’t jump through that portal alone. Jules, who’s lying even now to keep me alive, keep me safe, knowing that if he’s found out he’ll likely be killed.
I draw a quaking breath and blink back my tears, pressing my body close against Jules at my side. I feel his eyes on me, just for a second.
This, at least, is true.
The suns are just breaching the horizon, somewhere beyond the mountains. Their light paints a distant streak of clouds peach, and for a moment it’s so much like being home—despite the alien ship, despite the zip ties cutting into my wrists, despite the frigid air burning the insides of my nose and steaming my breath—I want to stop and stare at it, gaze at this sight one last time. In case it is the last time.
And then we’re in the shadow of the ship, and it’s twilight once more.
“There’s a door.” After so long with only the background noises of the base being set up all around the ship, Mink’s voice sounds like the crack of a whip. “We’ve done a sonar sweep, but without knowing how stable the ship is, we’re hesitant to use a larger charge. We do know there’s a chamber beyond the door—most likely some form of airlock.”
“Great,” replies Jules, voice flat. A few days ago he’d have given his left arm to get even the tiniest scrap of information on a find like this. It’s how much his priorities have changed, more than the tone in his voice, that leaves me shaken. “I don’t need to know any of this to translate your glyphs.”
Mink lets out a snort that puffs into the cold, then streams away behind us as we keep trudging toward the ship. “You think it’s just about translation? You and your dad don’t have that skill cornered anymore, Mr. Addison. Hell, I can translate them myself reasonably accurately, given enough time. But whatever this locking mechanism is, there’s more to it than the glyphs. Which is where you come in.” I catch, out of the corner of my eye, her head turning a little to look at me. “Both of you.”
“Fine.” Jules reaches out to take my arm, almost absently tugging me upright—I hadn’t noticed I’d begun to tilt. “But I want to see a vid on someone’s phone of Javier and Hansen saying they’re alive and not being mistreated. I want proof of life, if you want us to keep working.”
Mink’s laugh is soft, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was genuinely touched by his concern for them. “Whatever you wish,” she says, spreading her hands in an expansive gesture.
“In that case, I need my pack. Our packs.” Jules’s fingers tighten around my arm a little. I’m trying to think, remember what’s still in there after Liz’s gang got through ransacking them.
“Tell me what you need from your pack and I’ll have it brought to you,” Mink counters, cutting my ties so I can climb. With a squeak of her boots on the icy slush, she comes to a halt at the base of some scaffolding. When I look up, I see only the ship, rising like a wall before us. Despite the dark I find myself squinting, trying to focus. The hastily erected prefab scaffolding blocks end at a sleek round panel—the door, I’m guessing.
It isn’t that high off the ground, though my dizziness makes it seem like a climb twice as treacherous as the pit we scaled in the temple. Jules reaches the top first and then reaches down to grab my hand and pull me up after him. He hesitates there, my hand in his, as though he’d like to pull me in against him. I wish we could stop, breathe, figure out what it means that the woman who hired him and the one who hired me are the same person, figure out what the languages we saw in the temple meant, what it means that this ship is here at all, how it connects to the Nautilus warnings.
I wish we could be alone again. But Mink—Charlotte—whoever she is—is standing at the base of the scaffold, watching us.
So when Jules tightens his hand around mine, I shake my head, ignoring the way my concussion makes my vision dance in response. Not here. Not when it’s ammunition for them. Don’t show them your cards.
Jules understands. He lets go of my hand with a shaky breath out and turns his attention to Mink, listing what we need from our packs—he tries for as many of our possessions as he can. I lean my head against the pole beside me while they fetch our gear, along with a video of a wary Javier and Hansen telling the camera they’re still alive.
And then, Jules and I both look up at the doorway.
It’s a large round thing with glyphs circling it and minute cracks radiating outward from its center. For half a second I wonder if the IA actually did try to blast their way in, when I realize they’re not cracks—they’re seams. The door’s meant to iris outward, like the door we short-circuited in the temple with my phone.
As one, Jules and I both glance down and to the right—and there it is. A small, barely noticeable indentation at chest level, gleaming with crystalline circuitry.
I have to fight the insane urge to laugh, hysteria trying to bubble up inside me. All this buildup—all the drama of Mink’s strong-arming, all the posturing and the threats, spoken and unspoken—and it’s not even a puzzle. It’s a simple lock, one we’ve known how to pick since before we even discovered the ship.
It makes perfect sense—if the Undying wanted to be sure that whoever found this ship was “worthy” of their prize, then they’d use a puzzle said worthy ones had already solved when we were approaching the portal through their temple, passing their tests.
I draw breath, but Jules lifts a hand abruptly, gesturing above us. I pause.
“There are glyphs here,” he says, conversational, gesturing to the glyphs circling the doorway. Mink’s close enough that she’ll hear every word, and we can’t risk whispering to each other. “I’ll need to translate them, and compare them against the notes I have from the carvings in the temple.”
“Right.” My poor brain is struggling to keep up, but whatever he’s doing, I’m in. “I’ll get your journal.” It’s among the things he asked for, to help with deciphering the way through the door. I crouch down to retrieve it from the bag, and find my multi-tool in there as well. He must have put it on the list he gave them while I was zoned out. No need for Mink to find out about the modifications I made to it—she’d never have handed it over if she’d known how truly useful it is. I settle it in my hand for a moment, the grip blessedly familiar, but when I look down, Mink’s staring straight at me. I can’t slide it into my pocket while she’s watching, so I reluctantly leave it where it is.
“Okay.” Jules takes a long breath, a dramatically weary sigh. Easy there, Macbeth, we’re not onstage. “So this one here…”
He’s dictating slowly, translating them one by one, taking his sweet time and double-checking what I’m writing. Jules, who I’ve seen read the Undying script like it’s English, like he grew up reading it—which, come to think of it, he did. Then my struggling brain catches up.
He’s stalling for time.
Mink—or Charlotte, or whoever the hell she is—doesn’t know how easily he can read the glyphs, and she doesn’t know we already have the answer to opening this door. But the moment we do open it, Jules and I become just that much less important, less useful.
Less worth carrying.
Fighting the urge to look down and see if Mink’s watching, I flip back to some of his earlier translations, where hopefully they won’t look if they decide to double-check his work here.
We can’t stall forever, I write, trying to stop my hand shaking through sheer willpower.
Jules is still “translating,” droning on in a voice that makes me want to tear my hair out—good lord, he must have had some boring-ass teachers in his life, to learn that. He glances down. “Yes, good, that looks right. This next one…”
Way too many of them to fight. I’m cramming the words in the margins of a sketch of the Nautilus, some unreadable glyphs copied down next to it. And we can’t run—even if we get away we’ll die with no food/water/O2.
Jules nods, looking down at the page, his eyes grim. But there’s hope there too. We’re still together, and right now, in this moment, they need Jules. Which gives us power. However tiny. I feel that hope kindle a spark somewhere inside me, too.
“This grouping of glyphs here has something to do with an exchange, I think. A trade, a deal? Of course, that’s if you trust the glyphs…There were plenty fake messages in that temple that were just there to trick us.”
None of the glyphed instructions in the temple were false—we survived their traps. And though we don’t know which faction to trust, the Undying who made the broadcast to get us here, or the Undying who left the Fibonacci spirals to warn us away, Jules isn’t talking about the Undying right now, not really.
Definitely not, I write, flipping a page and turning the journal sideways so I can write along the border of a sketch of one of the puzzles. I wouldn’t trust these ppl as far as I could throw this ship.
Jules snorts, and turns it into a cough, and when I look down Mink’s frowning up at us.
“Can we get some water?” I call down. It’s a long shot, and I’m not surprised when instead of leaving her post at the foot of the scaffold, she just talks into a communications unit tucked into her collar.
“Hmm.” Jules scrubs his hand over his face, resolutely keeping his eyes on the glyphs. I’m pretty sure they say something like Please use caution when opening the doors, but he’s not budging. “This one’s new, I’m stuck.”
I make a show of looking up, staring in the direction he’s staring, though my mind’s racing, as I’m sure his is too. There has to be a way out of this. There’s always a way out. But sitting on a rickety scaffold at the south pole of a planet on the opposite side of the universe from home, surrounded by some of the best-trained soldiers in the world, for once I’m drawing a complete blank.
I’ve accidentally kept the pen pressed to the journal page, and there’s a blot of ink there when I finally twitch my hand away. I turn the page.
Jules, I write, letting the pen dwell on the curves and lines of the letters. Letting my hand memorize the pattern of his name, letting my eyes drink it in. I’m scared.
When I look up, his eyes are on mine and not the journal, and he swallows hard, the hand resting against the side of the ship curling until it’s a fist. He nods, wordless, and his eyes say, Me too.
I turn another page and find a sketch there, but it’s not of a series of glyphs, or an architectural anomaly, or a diagram mapping the floor tiles. It’s me.
The face is stylized, not quite realistic, but precise and instantly recognizable. I’m looking down, in profile, my hair falling forward, and I look sad—so sad I almost feel it for real. The pen strokes emphasize and darken certain parts of my face: the angularity of my jaw, like I’m clenching it, determined; my eyes, large, reflecting the light he must have drawn this by; the freckles on my cheek, in a pattern I didn’t know I recognized from the mirror until now, seeing it here, captured in perfect detail. And my lips—his pen lingered there. He turned the slight blot of ink into a shadow, smoothed it out, went over them again and again.
The drawing is beautiful. I’ve never been beautiful before—but I am, here, on this page. In this picture that looks exactly like me.
I look up to find Jules’s eyes on the journal, fixed there, not meeting mine. His lips are tight, and I know under any other circumstances this moment would be a violation. I’ve never tried to sneak a peek at his journal—not least because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t understand half the stuff in there—and that must be why he felt it was safe to draw this…this declaration.
I swallow hard, and fight against the tears burning my eyes.
I grip the pen again, and as a drop patters against the page, blurring part of my hair, I write:
me too
There’s just enough time to look up again, for him to look at the journal and then at me, a universe in those eyes, a language that doesn’t need translating. There’s just enough time to remember the moment before I leapt through the portal, when his arms tightened around me, when I forgot where I was and what I was doing and who I was and what I was. There’s just enough time for the corner of his mouth, his perfect mouth, to lift.
There’s not enough time at all.
The scaffold gives a sudden jerk and I gasp as I reach out for one of the supports. Mink’s on her way up, the added weight making the whole thing groan and sway. Without thinking I scrub my sleeve across my eyes and flip pages with my other hand, back to the end of the journal, writing down the few glyphs I have learned over the past few days, the few I can recognize from up there, so it looks like we’ve done something.
I stop just as she reaches the top. “Water?” I ask, my voice sounding remarkably bright and normal, for feeling like there’s a howling gale inside my chest.
Mink’s frowning. She unslings a canteen from over her shoulder and tosses it at Jules, then reaches down to pull the journal from my hands. I cast a brief, panicked look at Jules, whose own visible panic is enough to bring me back to myself. I gesture at him to drink—who knows when we’ll get water again—and rise up on my knees.
“This is all super weird, Mink,” I say, trying to emulate Jules’s tone when he’s lost in thought, danger forgotten in favor of academic zeal. “We can’t make sense of these phrases, they’re all—”
“Bullshit.” Mink’s voice is hard.
“Uh, well—”
“You haven’t done anything.” She looks up from the journal page, eyes going from my face to Jules’s, and back again. “You honestly think, after all of this, that I’m stupid? Ordinarily I’d point out that we’ve got all the time in the universe, that you can stall as long as you like but there’s no cavalry coming and you’re going to get pretty cold eventually. But I’m getting impatient. Open the door, Mr. Addison.”
Jules swallows his mouthful of water and steels himself. “I’m trying, Charlotte, I just haven’t seen—”
“Try harder.”
“Look, I’m doing my best!” Jules’s voice cracks, despite the water, and my heart gives a little aching ping in response.
Mink watches him for a moment, lips together, eyes thoughtful. Then, before either of us can react, she reaches down and grabs my upper arm and drags me to my feet. She’s absurdly strong for someone her size—like her whole body is muscle. I reach out for one of the scaffold supports out of instinct, though even if she shoved me off, it’s not high enough that the fall would kill me. Maybe break something, if I landed funny, but probably not. I’ve got practice falling, I know how to land.
My mind’s calculating all of this in a fraction of a second, because in the next second, it all drains away.
Her gun’s out, and she’s pressing it to my temple.
“Open the door, Mr. Addison.”
Jules’s face goes ashen. He’s staring at me, and his heart’s in his eyes, and even if it hadn’t been on that page I’d see it now as clearly as the sunrise I didn’t want to leave behind, as clearly as the unfamiliar stars overhead the last time he had his arms around me.
Mink smiles, and cocks the gun.
“Open the door.”