Tandem (12 page)

“I do know that,” the General said. They stood side by side, watching Sasha’s inert form on the cot in the mission room through large monitors. How many times had Thomas slept on that same cot after hours and hours of meetings and briefings and research and planning sessions? Too many to count. The walls were covered with his notes, maps and photographs, charts and stratagems so calculated they were like equations. It was strange to see her there now, the centerpiece of Operation Starling, just an average girl from Earth.

Well, perhaps
average
was the wrong word. In fact, he knew it was.
Extraordinary
was more like it.
Amazing
. An analog. She had no idea how significant she was, what her presence here
meant
. She’d gone sixteen years—almost seventeen—thinking she was just a regular girl. It was remarkable how important people could be without even knowing.

“When will she come around?” the General asked.

Thomas shrugged. “That’s up to you. Mo—Dr. Moss said we could wake her any time now.”

He had to stop himself from using Mossie’s nickname. The General disapproved of Thomas’s friendship with the eccentric scientist, though the man’s contribution to Operation Starling couldn’t be denied. Mossie was the only reason they were able to retrieve Sasha. He’d invented the technology that allowed them to pass through the tandem, created the anchors for exclusive use by the KES. Whether he liked it or not, the General couldn’t get rid of him—and he didn’t like it at all. He didn’t trust Mossie, and Thomas didn’t blame him. Mossie was the only person in the Tower who spoke out against him, though even then it was only when he thought the General would not overhear. But the General had spies everywhere, and word had gotten out. Mossie was a liability, but he was also an asset—an asset that couldn’t be wasted.

Thomas expected the General to command him to wake Sasha up immediately, but he didn’t. After all the insanity surrounding Operation Starling, all the rush and the talk of running out of time, the General seemed to be relishing these last few moments of relative normalcy before everything changed forever.

“Did she give you any trouble?” he asked. Thomas always had a difficult time telling what the General was thinking, and now was no different. Only a man like the General could stand before an analog with no expression on his face. He was above it all, even this.

“Not much,” Thomas said. It would be worse for Sasha if the General knew how much of a fight she’d put up, so it was best not to mention it.

The General looked over at him, but Thomas didn’t turn to meet his eyes. It had taken him a long time to learn how not to squirm under the weight of the General’s gaze, but he was older now, tall and broad and covered in lean muscle, not the small, fidgety boy he’d once been. He didn’t scare so easily anymore. He could handle the General.

“How much?” The General’s voice was dark and low.

“None,” Thomas lied. “She was perfectly behaved.” He didn’t know what he would do if Sasha decided to become a problem in front of the General. He made a silent wish that she would sense her place and submit to him. Otherwise, they would both be in a lot of trouble.

“And if I called Agent Fillmore, he’d tell me the same thing?” The General was testing him, seeing if he’d break like metal rusted through.

“Of course.” Thomas nodded, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly, the widest smile he’d ever given the man. “Sir—” Then he stopped himself.

“Ask your question, Agent,” the General commanded.

“Where is he?”

“Who?” The General turned to look at him, his gaze piercing behind the rimless glasses he wore on his nose. “Your analog, you mean?”

“Yes, sir. Did the squad pick him up?”

“There was an issue with the retrieval of your analog on this side of the tandem.”

“An issue? What kind of an issue?” Thomas knew he should be disinterested in Grant Davis’s fate; indifference to aspects outside the parameters of his mission had been a fundamental part of his training, had practically been grafted into his DNA during his time at the Academy. And yet, he couldn’t help wondering. It was a strange relationship, the one between analogs. There was a natural sympathy that rose unbidden; he’d felt it when he’d met Grant Davis face to face, in the empty park back on Earth. It was a cold-hearted bastard who didn’t find it in him to care about another human being who wore his face.

Besides, he didn’t quite consider Grant Davis’s situation to be outside the parameters of his mission. Thomas was the reason Grant was in Aurora in the first place—he’d sent Grant there himself, knowing full well what kinds of trouble there were to get into for someone who looked like them. If there had been any problems for Grant on the other side of the tandem, it was more than a little bit Thomas’s fault. “Did the squad not find him? They were supposed to be waiting.”

“Oh, they found him, all right,” the General said, frowning at the tone in Thomas’s voice, the implication that men under his command had been in any way deficient in fulfilling their duties. “About two minutes after Libertas did.”

“Libertas? On the South End?” Though the Tattered City was very much Libertas’s territory, their security units mostly stuck to the North End and City Center, where the majority of the remaining residents actually lived. The South End had been hemorrhaging its population for years, and these days it was mostly abandoned, so Libertas didn’t waste resources on patrolling it. If there had been a unit down there, it meant one of two things: that Libertas was expanding its reach for some no doubt suspicious reason of its own, or—though Thomas really couldn’t see how this was possible—they knew something was about to go down and they were lying in wait.

The General nodded, but his mind seemed far away. “Seems they’re expanding.”

“Why would they even want him?”

The General turned to him with an odd, inscrutable expression that Thomas had often tried to replicate, with varying degrees of success. “I assume they believed he was you.”

Thomas clenched his jaw. It was unheard of for KES agents to fail in their missions. How was it possible that a team of highly trained operatives had allowed their own assignment to be captured by enemy forces? And here the General was, sedate and resigned, as if nothing could be done about it.

“So now what? We can’t leave him to them.” He was struggling not to raise his voice to the General, who didn’t tolerate insubordination on any level. He was no ordinary KES agent, but on this point the General was as firm with him as with any other.

“They’ll never believe he’s not you, but eventually they’ll see they can’t get anything out of him,” the General said. “And they’ll realize that his only value is financial. I expect a ransom demand any day now.”

“Will you pay it?” When it came to the General, Thomas could be sure of nothing.

“I suppose that depends on what they ask for.” The General jerked his chin in Sasha’s direction. “It’s time.”

“Sir, I—” It was unwise to oppose a direct order, but Thomas wasn’t through talking about Grant. He wanted to know the particulars of what had happened that night on this side of the tandem. He needed to know if there was anything he could have done.

“Agent,” the General said firmly. “It’s time.”

She sat perfectly still on the bed in her tiny room. She didn’t know much about the place they’d brought her, only that it wasn’t large and it wasn’t far away from the Castle, which disturbed her. Two weeks ago she’d met her co-conspirator in a dark, unused corridor that belonged to a part of the Castle currently under construction. She found it satisfying that he needed her help with the actual escape. She’d taken him to the royal chapel, which had been quiet and empty, as it always was. Nobody practiced much religion in the UCC these days. They’d left the Citadel grounds by way of a secret passage that connected a trapdoor behind the altar to an exit built into the face of a large schist boulder outcropping that lined the edge of the Rambles, half a mile from the Castle. From there he’d borne her away in a moto, but not before blindfolding her, for “security purposes.” And so, here she sat now, a different sort of prisoner, with nothing to do but wait for her release. She was starting to wonder if it would ever come.

The door opened, and a young girl—she couldn’t have been older than twelve—entered with a tray. The girl’s face blanched when she set eyes on the person she’d come to serve. Juliana smiled; she was used to this kind of reaction, especially from children. They just couldn’t believe they were in her presence, after seeing her their whole lives as a two-dimensional figure on their home teleboxes or the press boards.

“Hello,” Juliana said pleasantly. She’d resolved to be kind to everyone who wasn’t him, or someone who worked with him. If she’d learned anything these last few weeks, it was that salvation sometimes came from the most unexpected places. Then again, so did damnation.

The girl tried to return the greeting but couldn’t seem to get the words out. She settled for putting the tray down on a little table in the corner. Juliana got up to examine its contents: a turkey sandwich cut diagonally down the middle, a bag of potato munchies bloated with air, an apple, an orange, and a bottle of cold, sweet tea. She picked the sandwich up, a half in each hand, and offered one to the girl. “You hungry?”

The girl shook her head, though she was eyeing the sandwich somewhat keenly. Juliana shrugged and took a bite. The turkey was dry, the bread too soft and spread too thick with mayonnaise, the cheese tasteless and processed. Typical Libertas; they weren’t much for luxury or comfort. After the opulence and overindulgence of Castle life, it was refreshing, but also sort of disappointing. Like it or not, she did have standards.

“Are you really the princess?” the girl asked after a time. Juliana had finished the whole sandwich and had started on the munchies, which were salty and delicious. She rarely ate junk food—she’d been on a strict diet since she was eleven, when her stepmother poked her stomach and told her that nobody wanted to look at a pudgy princess. To think she’d never have to worry about being a proper princess ever again. She could have munchies and chocolates and beer and red meat every day if she wanted to from here forward—assuming she made it out of this dungeon.

“I guess so,” Juliana replied.

“Weird,” the girl said, shaking her head as if to dislodge a bothersome thought.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just … well, some people said they saw you in the Tattered City yesterday,” the girl told her. Juliana abandoned the munchies in her lap and gave the girl her full attention.

“That’s impossible. I’m right here. I’ve been here for weeks and it’s a thousand miles to the Tattered City,” Juliana pointed out. The kid was just playing with her.

“I know,” the girl said, irritated at Juliana’s patronizing tone. “But it was on the box at home, and then I saw it again on the press board over on Water and Broadway.” The girl smiled, a wicked little gleam in her eye. “They say you were at a Libertas rally in Lake Park. There were a bunch of witnesses. Funny, huh?” She reached back to tighten her ponytail and her shirtsleeves rode up, revealing a wide fabric band fastened around her right wrist—an equilateral triangle of ten gold stars on a field of forest green.

Juliana narrowed her eyes at the girl, who seemed neither shy nor sweet anymore. A Libertine through and through, even at her age. She supposed it was to be expected; Libertas had been around for a quarter century, and they were good at planting seeds in people’s heads. Made sense that they’d start with their children. But this news about the Tattered City was not sitting well with Juliana. She was clearly not there, as she’d pointed out to the girl.

So if it wasn’t her they’d seen, who was it?

TEN

I woke up with a gasp and sat up like a jack-in-the-box. Adrenaline surged through my veins; beads of sweat gathered at my hairline, but other than that I felt … fine. Perfectly fine. I remembered the pain from before, the heavy sickness that had tugged me into darkness, but it was gone, all of it—all except for a tiny prick on my right pointer finger, which I could barely feel anyway. It was as if everything that had come before had been a dream. I didn’t remember dreaming while I was asleep—unconscious—whatever—but a doomed feeling had crawled out of the darkness with me, settling like a black cloud in my chest; my mind was sticky with foreboding.

I heard a door slide closed behind me and turned toward the sound. The fluorescent lights were so intense that I had to hold my hand up to shield them; I could see at once that I was lying on a long cot in a large empty room. There was only one other piece of furniture, a wide table in the center of the floor with chairs surrounding it, but even it was dwarfed by the size of the space. The concrete walls were nearly invisible under layers of paper; the only section not plastered with maps or photographs or sheaves of precise, typewritten notes was the wall just opposite me, the entire width of which was spanned by an enormous black shade.