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Will tensed beside me. I felt it like a vibration under my ribs.
“I’ll manage,” I said.
Sparrow’s gaze flicked to Will, then back to me. “It’s not about managing. You’re burning up. You stumbled three times today, and I caught Egret watching you limp.”
“I wasn’t limping.”
“You were,” Egret added, without opening his eyes. “It was either a limp or interpretive dance.”
Will’s voice came low, tight. “He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”
Sparrow didn’t argue, but her face softened. “I’m not accusing. I’m trying to plan.”
Plan. That word used to mean logistics or maps, radio codes or rendezvous points.
Now it meant: How do we smuggle a brilliant little girl, a limping scientist, and a half-conscious operative across a Soviet-occupied country without getting everyone shot?
“Shadowfox and Eszter can’t walk all night,” Sparrow said. “If we break at sunset, we need to be off the roads before dawn. We’ll need to hide somewhere.”
“There’s an abandoned mill,” Egret said, sitting up. “I saw it on the map back in Paris. It’s about eight kilometers southwest of the river, might still have a roof.”
I nodded. “We make it there first. Rest. Then deal with the crossing.”
Will leaned forward. “I’ll find us a shallow point, something the Soviets don’t think is worth watching.”
We were so deep in it—ticking steps off like a list, organizing our escape like a rehearsal dinner with explosives.
Then Egret stilled.
He wasn’t shifting or sighing. He just stilled, as though some fictitious monster had just stepped into the doorway, and he didn’t have words to describe the horror.
“What?” I asked.
He blinked once.
Then looked at me with that rare expression—the one that meant he wasactuallyafraid. Coming from him, that look alone sent a chill across my body that chased the heat away.
I leaned forward, immediately regretting the motion. “What is it?”
“We forgot something,” he said. “Something kind of important.”
Sparrow tilted her head. “What?”
He leaned in. “The machine.Hiswork. That’s why we were sent in the first place, right? We weren’t just supposed to extract him; we were supposed to stopour unclefrom getting the magic box. I believe the phrase our people used was, ‘At any cost.’”
The cry of wind slipping through the crack beneath the door and the light breathing of the closest pilgrims were the only sounds for more heartbeats than I could count. The four of us stared at one another, eyes wide, hearts racing.
How the hell could we have failed to destroy the damned machine? It was the entire point of our mission. It was what could change the world as we knew it, put America—and every free nation—under Stalin’s boot.
I saw it ripple across their faces—the realization that in the weeks of planning and panic and pain, in the escape and the trek and the dressing of wounds, we’d left something behind, something vital.
In all our efforts at saving two lives, we’d left everything behind.
Sparrow exhaled through her nose. “Oh, God. I might be sick.”
Will rubbed his temples.
I sat back, my chest suddenly hollow.