What was it like with him—with us? How did I ever manage any kind of relationship, let alone one with a hunter while chasing my mother across Europe—and how did he? I strain to remember anything about him, but he is gone. Like so many faces and details of a life that had no doubt once been full, a shell now in the absence of those who filled it.

Eventually, I must have slept, because the next thing I know Luka is gently shaking my shoulder.

“Audra, wake up.” I open my eyes as he retrieves an envelope from the glove compartment. “Time to go.”

14

“What about the car?” I say, glancing back at it. Even in the forgiving light of dawn it looks like junk.

“We leave it,” he says, shoving the envelope in his pocket.

It’s nearly half a mile to the closest Walgreens. My hands are freezing, and my mouth tastes gross. My head feels worse. The hour’s sleep I got wasn’t nearly enough, and my new passport photo shows it. Luka prints our itineraries while I buy toiletries, and puts in a call to the passport agency for an appointment. And then we’re out the door and hurrying to the Red Line station. Luka dismantles his phone as he goes, breaking the SIM card in two. He tosses half into a sewer, the other half in an open cup of stale soda sitting in a trash bin. He hurls the phone itself into the back of a beeping garbage truck.

We take the Red Line of the L into the city, get off at Jackson station. By the time we wait an hour for the passport agency to open, my hands are shaking from the chill as much as from nerves.

Luka takes them between his own and rubs them. His fingers are warm. He’s been talking in low tones the last five minutes, though I couldn’t repeat a word of what he just said. I hate to say it, but I miss my meds.

“Just focus,” he says, low near my ear. I close my eyes. “It’s a Progeny thing, the jitters. You always had to work them off somehow—running, swimming, working some poor souvenir guy over for a deal. Just to get it out.”

“I feel like I’m going to climb out of my skin.”

“That’s good.”

“No. It’s not.”

He bows his head against mine. “You can do this. You have to. Or you’ll never get out of the country. You don’t have any contacts here, and the underground here is an inch deep. You’ll die if you stay. We both will.”

“You’re not helping,” I say. All I can think is that I’m going to be picked up for having an identity that doesn’t exist. Maybe, at least, I’ll be safe in jail.