Departure(35)

Nick glances at Yul and Sabrina suspiciously, then presses his own thumb to the panel.

NICHOLAS STONE. ENTER YOUR DESTINATION.

“So the three of us”—Nick motions to Yul, Sabrina, and himself—“can use the Podway, but neither of them?”

“It seems so,” Yul says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Speculate.”

Yul shakes his head. “Where do you want me to start? It could be any of a number of reasons.”

“Give me a few, just for kicks.”

“Okay, then: when this transit network was created, Harper and Grayson could have been living outside London and not been registered.”

“Or we could have died long before this was even invented.” Grayson sounds mildly amused. “We’d all be dead by 2147.”

“True,” says Yul. “The most likely scenario is that Harper and Grayson used alternative forms of transportation in the future. An automobile, an airship, or a teleportation booth. Who knows? Satisfied? Can we go?”

“Not satisfied at all, but we should definitely go,” Nick says. “Since only three of us can activate this thing, we’ll split up: Grayson and Sabrina in the first car, Yul in the second, and Harper and me in the third.”

Yul smiles. “You’re splitting us up to keep an eye on us.”

“That’s right. Because we don’t trust you. Because you’ve been keeping secrets from us. Because you were going to leave us. How’s that for full disclosure? Get used to it, because you’re going to do a lot of it when we get to London, no matter what we find.”

Grayson moves closer to Nick, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. He stares at Yul, silently communicating our numbers and firepower advantage.

Yul mutters to himself, but grabs his bag. He glances at the rifle but decides to leave it, which is a relief.

Sabrina works the computerized panel, entering the destination, and then she and Grayson climb into the first car and pull the door shut. It descends into the floor with a barely audible hum, and two minutes later an identical car rises into the alcove. Yul loads up and leaves without another glance at us, and Nick and I slip into a third car.

Inside, it’s more like a train compartment than a cab. We sit on the brown leather couches across from each other, the glossy wood table between us. The imitation windows on each side simulate an idyllic English countryside flowing by peacefully. In fact, this is the first moment since the crash that Nick and I have had together without the immediate threat of death, starvation, or mutilation—either to ourselves or others.

Nick speaks before I get a chance. “I heard you and Grayson talking in the cellar. What’s up with you two?”

“He hates me.”

“And you hate him?”

“Not really. I don’t know him. His father is Oliver Norton Shaw.”

“The billionaire.”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I’ve met him.”

“Me too, only once, a few days ago in New York. He flew me out—that’s actually the only reason I was in first class. It was a perk, a gift to try to convince me to write his officially authorized biography.”

“And Grayson’s upset about that?”

“Not per se. His father is planning something big. Shaw wants to give his fortune away in grand style, establishing a new kind of charity. He’s calling it the Titan Foundation. He wants the book to detail his life and his journey to a series of revelations about the human race, lay out his vision for the role his fortune and foundation will play in the future of humanity.”

“Certainly thinks a lot of himself.”

“He does. And not much of his son. Grayson will get nothing when the foundation is established. Shaw sees it as a way to force Grayson to finally forge his own path in the world. When I was waiting to meet with Shaw, Grayson was in with him. He was furious, shouting that he was being cheated out of his inheritance. Called his father a glory whore reaching for the spotlight one last time after his business career was over, among other even worse things. He stormed out, and that’s the first time I saw him. Shaw told me Grayson was threatening to sell his own tell-all book to a publisher in London. If he didn’t get the inheritance promised to him, he’d air the dirty laundry as they say.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s funny, I’ve barely thought about my dilemma since the crash, but it was all I could think about on the flight.”

“Dilemma?”

“Whether to write Shaw’s biography.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem, more or less, is that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

“Who does, these days?” Nick laughs quietly.

“I was a journalist for a few years, then a ghostwriter, but Shaw’s biography would be my first chance to have something published with my name on it.”

“Sounds great.”

“It does. It’s what I thought I wanted. But I’ve also been working on a novel, a series. That’s my real love, and I’m afraid that if I write Shaw’s biography, I’ll never finish it. My whole life will change. I just want to know if I could make it writing fiction. If I knew that, the decision would be so much easier.”