Jack was beside me, his arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed. I couldn’t tell whether he was actually asleep. Across the aisle, Elodie was on her phone, working on the program to get us across the border.
If we got caught, Stellan and I would probably get a trial, as Circle family members. Jack and Elodie—
My chest got tighter. I closed my eyes again.
This time, I actually did drift off, because suddenly, I woke with a start. I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in gasp after gasped breath. I was drowning. I was—
I was on a bus. It was dark and bumpy and dry. I could breathe fine. It didn’t make the tightness in my chest subside. It didn’t make the images in my head—the blood, the screams, the Circle with guns to our heads—go away. Jack opened one eye and looked at me, and I hugged my arms around myself and shivered. Outside, the bus’s headlights illuminated a warning sign. I squinted. It had Hebrew, Arabic, and at the bottom, English: Beware of camels near the road.
The bus came to a sudden stop. Jack sat up straight and peered over the seats. Ahead of us, Stellan did, too. Two soldiers with guns and sniffing dogs got on. My whole body went cold.
Jack put a stiff arm around me. “They’re not looking for us,” he murmured into my ear. “They’re checking for bombs, but we don’t want them to see your face anyway. Pretend to be asleep.”
I leaned my head on his chest, letting Elodie’s blond wig hide my face, and he pulled his cap lower and leaned on my head.
The soldiers went past us to the back of the bus, then through to the front again. I opened one eye. They hadn’t so much as looked at us. I relaxed, and felt Jack’s arm tighten around my shoulders with the same relief. For just a second, I accidentally leaned into it.
“You okay?” he murmured. It was not a Keeper asking his charge whether she was safe.
I nodded.
“I don’t mean just that little scare. You’ve been—”
I sat up. “I’m fine.”
“Are you—”
“I said fine.”
Across the aisle, Elodie peered after the soldiers. Stellan glanced back at us, and I saw his eyes flick to Jack’s arm still resting around my shoulders.
The second the soldiers stepped off the bus, I scooted away from Jack, and he folded his hands in his lap.
The bus started back up and rattled on. My chest didn’t feel any less tight.
“If you’re not fine, it’s understandable,” Jack said quietly. “You’re allowed to be sad. You don’t have to pretend you feel nothing. I know you don’t want to talk to me about it, but keep it in mind.”
I wasn’t pretending. I was doing it on purpose, and this was exactly why. In the past couple of days a few emotions had snuck in, and now they were all rushing back at once. That was probably why kissing Stellan at the party had triggered those flashbacks, too, and all of it together meant I was having a really hard time functioning as well as I should. Hence turning it off.
It wasn’t cold at all in here—in fact, it was stuffy—but I couldn’t stop shivering.
When Jack realized I wasn’t going to answer, he began thumbing through his phone. He cursed under his breath.
“What?”
He handed me his phone.
Rome. The Vatican. At the head of the story was a photo of dozens of emergency vehicles assembled in the iconic columned square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, their blue lights garishly illuminating the church’s façade. The same mystery virus had struck there just hours after it had hit in Jerusalem, killing half a dozen priests.
Stellan turned, and I handed him the phone. This was just what we’d talked about as we hurried through the streets in Jerusalem. His bet on exactly where the Saxons would hit next was wrong, but the sentiment was right.
“Religious extremism,” he said. “So that’s their strategy. Two of the world’s most important religious cities hit. Get ready for a lot more chaos in the world.”
I felt sick.
Elodie crossed the aisle and sat next to Stellan, who scowled at her. She snatched the phone.
“And we’ve just been at the Vatican retrieving the Alexander relic,” Jack said. “It’ll be easy to blame this on us within the Circle, as if they needed more evidence. How long do we think before the Circle go to desperate measures to stop it?”
“Because being out to kill us isn’t desperate enough?” Stellan retorted.
Jack frowned. “That’s not what—”
“Desperate measures like uniting behind a dictator,” Elodie said. The two of them ignored her, scowling at each other.
“They had almost none of our blood left,” I said, changing the subject. “They must have found a way to use just a tiny bit when they aerosolized it, which means they could do it again.”
I flipped through more news on Jack’s phone.
He was right. With the virus now showing up halfway around the world, no one knew who and what to be afraid of, so they were afraid of everything. It was a disease, brought in by foreigners, some were saying. The “biological weapon” theory was still popular. It really didn’t help that the virus killed in such quick and spectacular fashion, or that grisly cell phone videos of it happening had showed up on social media after every attack. In some countries people were fleeing the big cities, causing hours of gridlock on the freeways. In others, there were lines outside hospitals—like they could really do anything.
“Is it really just about power?” I couldn’t stop thinking it. “Lydia keeps saying it’s about how much they love their family, but I don’t think she really knows what love means.”
Jack sat back in his seat. “I don’t know. Love can cause people to do some pretty ugly things.”