Page 50 of The Hollowed
“Maybe they stayed behind?” Cipher asked, noticing the shift in her demeanor.
It was a more comforting theory, but it was based on no logic. Myra knew better. If Luci and Alex had chosen to keep going without them, the others would have found a way back, and theyhadn’t, which could only mean one thing.
Her lips parted, ready to refuse the comfort of false hope, but then her gaze found Jace in the mirror again. His small hands twisted nervously, and his eyes were wide with fear. Myra’s throat tightened. He didn’t need to know, not yet. The world would try to break him soon enough without her help.
So she swallowed the truth, buried it deep, blinked away the tears in her eyes.
“Yeah,” she said, managing a smile even though every part of her wanted to collapse. “Maybe.”
She held that smile long enough to be sure Jace saw it.
“Is there any way to catch up to Luci and Alex faster? Maybe there’s a shortcut we can take?” Myra asked.
Cipher chewed at his lip in contemplation. He’d already severed Prometheus’s tracking on the both of them and Jace, but their momentary safety meant nothing if they couldn’t intercept Luci and Alex before they reached AZ-7.
“It’s risky,” Cipher finally said. “If we follow their exact path, at least we know we’re going the right way. But if we try cutting across another route, who knows what we’ll run into. Our best bet is to minimize our stops and trade off driving through the night. It’ll be close, but it’s the best chance we’ve got.”
Myra leaned back in her seat and absorbed his words. A part of her was impressed and almost in awe at the fact that Alex, Luci, and Luna had made it that far on their own. But another part of her wished that fate had tripped them up long enough for her to close the distance. Because if Luci and Alex crossed into Arizona before she reached them, she had no idea what she’d do.
Could she be heartless enough to turn toward Sonora without them? She wasn’t sure. And maybe that was a good thing, maybe it meant some part of her was still good beneath all the blood she’d spilled.
Before she could spiral further into more what ifs, Jace’s small voice rose from the backseat. “Will you tell me where we’re going now?” he asked.
Myra kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead. “We’re picking up some friends, and then we’re headed to Sonora,” she explained. “It’s a place in Mexico. There’s a facility there that’s safer than anywhere else we can be right now.”
Jace frowned, and his eyebrows knitted together as he leaned against the window. “Mexico? Why can’t we stay here?”
Myra hesitated, and her throat tightened with all the answers she couldn’t give him. She didn’t want him to know about the danger, the fact that nowhere was really safe anymore. “Because Doc said there’s doctors there who can treat you.”
Jace was quiet for a moment before perking up again. “Don’t they speak Spanish in Mexico?”
“Yes,” she responded.
“We don’t speak Spanish,” he pointed out in a matter of fact tone.
Cipher finally glanced up from his computer. “I do actually,” he said.
Wellthatwas news to Myra.
“You’ll pick up what you need fast enough. Trust me, kid. Humans are good at adapting when we don’t have much of a choice,” Cipher added.
Jace tilted his head, still looking unconvinced. “What if I’m bad at it?”
Myra turned slightly in her seat. “Then we learn together. Nobody’s expecting us to be perfect, Jace. We just have to be brave enough to keep trying.”
After a moment his small shoulders relaxed just a little before he turned back toward the window. Myra exhaled slowly, feelinggrateful for Cipher’s backup.
“Since when do you speak Spanish?” she asked Cipher playfully.
“I had to learn for my Foreign Affairs certification,” he replied casually. Then, with a curious tilt of his head, he asked, “You didn’t learn Spanish at home?”
Myra shook her head. It didn’t surprise her that he’d been given the opportunity to learn, not when there had always been a different set of rules for people like him. “My parents and siblings didn’t speak it either.”
“Why not?” Cipher pressed, his question so straightforward that it almost sounded innocent.
“We just didn’t,” she said simply.
She thought that would be the end of it, but Cipher spoke again, trying to get at the question from another angle. “But…wouldn’t it have been easier? More natural even?”