Tandem (46 page)

“What the—” I couldn’t even get the entire sentence out.

“The disruption event,” Thomas said gravely. “You remember what I told you?”

It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. The disruption event. The physical event caused by the ripple created when mass traveled between universes. It had knocked the door loose and caused it to close. We were trapped.

“And here I thought I was coming to the rescue,” Thomas said, prodding his jaw tenderly. “I should’ve known he would do that. It’s not the first time.”

“I did tell him about the analog problem,” I said. “Maybe he did it on purpose.”

“I brought this for him,” Thomas said, drawing something out of his pocket. “I was going to send you both back. The ungrateful bastard.”

“The anchors!” I cried triumphantly. “Thomas, we can get out of here. You put on the anchor and we’ll go back to Earth.”

“Bad idea,” Thomas said.

“Why?” My face fell. I was desperate to get out of Farnham, he had a solution in hand, and he was telling me we couldn’t use it?

“I didn’t expect us to stay here,” Thomas explained. “I didn’t map this place. I have no idea what it corresponds to on the other side. We could end up anywhere.”

“But anywhere is better than this,” I protested. Wasn’t it? And if not, then what had happened to Grant? Worry dropped into the pit of my stomach like a stone.

“Oh really? How would you like to land
in the foundation of a house
? Or maybe you’d prefer to end up under the wheels of a moving moto?”

“Okay, you made your point,” I grumbled. I propped myself up against the wall, too tired to stand.

“Sasha, what happened back there?” Thomas asked. “Why did you run?”

“The General tried to force me to poison Callum,” I told Thomas. “He said he was going to keep me in Aurora forever—in a place just like this, I assume—unless I did what he said. He said he’d send me home if I did it, but I couldn’t. I told Callum and he arranged for an extraction. Apparently he had undercover agents in Columbia City the whole time.”

“That was smart of him.” Thomas hung his head. “I’m sorry, Sasha. I didn’t know.”

I shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“No, it isn’t. This is all my fault. I never should’ve brought you here.” He kneaded his brow with his fingertips.

“Stop it, Thomas. Let’s just forget about that, all right?” I leaned my head back against the wall and sighed. “How did you get here?”

“Just because the General cut me off doesn’t mean I don’t still have my own ways of getting things done,” Thomas said. “Dr. Moss was able to get his hands on the remote that controls your anchor, plus an extra, and smuggled me out of the Citadel, then I used my connections to get here. Took me longer than I would like, but I did it.”

“I guess that means you’re officially fired, huh?” I noticed he was no longer wearing his KES ring.

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I told him. I lay my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. He took my hand and squeezed. I shivered; the cell was always cold. Thomas took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. I put it on and snuggled up against him. All the talk of analogs and anchors reminded me of something—I’d never had a chance to tell Thomas about my father and his connection to Aurora.

“I found out something else,” I said. “Back at the Citadel. About the tether.”

“Really? What?”

“Dr. Moss came to see me at the gala. He said he consulted with Dr. March and they think—”

“Hold up. Dr. March?”

“Yeah.” I searched his face. “What? What’s wrong with Dr. March?”

“Oh, nothing,” Thomas said offhandedly. “Except I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exist.”

“What?”

“Mossie is a genius, but he’s also a little, you know.” Thomas whistled and whirled his finger in a circular motion around his temple. “He talks about Dr. March all the time, but I’ve never met the man, and never met anybody else who has. I hate to use the word ‘delusion,’ but …”

That was disturbing, but it didn’t change the fact that Dr. Moss had a genuinely possible hypothesis about why I could see Juliana through the tether. “Dr. March or no Dr. March, he had a breakthrough. He says that I can see through the tandem because I have a connection to Aurora.”

“What kind of connection?”

“My father was born here.”

Thomas’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “He showed me the file. Apparently my father was one of the research fellows in Dr. Moss’s lab at the Citadel a long time ago, before he was drafted into the KES for an assignment. On Earth.”

“What kind of assignment?”

“Do you know anything about Operation Looking Glass?” As soon as I asked the question I knew he did.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it other than that the KES sent a couple of agents to Earth in order to sabotage the efforts of scientists in your world from developing the many-worlds technology.”

“My father was one of those scientists,” I told him. “Until he went AWOL and, I guess, married my mom and had me.”

“Wow. That’s news to me,” Thomas said. I stared him down. He held his hands up in surrender. “Seriously, I didn’t know. I would’ve told you if I did.”

“I believe you.”

“So how are you feeling about all this?”

“Lied to,” I confessed. My whole life I’d had this image of who my father was, and now all of that was gone. I couldn’t even guess at what was real and what had been made up. “But it’s stupid to feel betrayed by someone who’s been dead for almost ten years. Right?”

“I don’t think there’s a statue of limitations on that particular emotion,” Thomas said.

“I keep wondering if my mother knew. Or Granddad. And if they would’ve told me someday.” I paused. “You don’t think Operation Looking Glass had anything to do with their deaths, do you?” I had my own suspicions, but I was desperately hoping Thomas would assure me that my parents’ accident was just that—an accident.

Thomas’s face darkened. “I think anything’s possible when it comes to the General.”

I bit down hard on my lip, drawing blood. Still chilled, I shoved my hands into the pocket of Thomas’s jacket and, to my surprise, found something inside. I pulled out a clump of withered, drying flowers—white roses and a bit of baby’s breath, precariously attached to a white elastic band.

“You have my corsage?” I asked, puzzled. Thomas nodded. “But I threw it away back in the Tattered City.”

“I rescued it,” he said. “It was the only thing I had from … us, in your world. I guess I didn’t want to let it go. I meant what I said to you that night on the beach. It was the best night of my life, being with you; it was the one time I really felt like myself. Ironic, huh?” I nodded, pulling him in for a soft, lingering kiss.

“Thomas,” I whispered. “That’s very romantic, you know?”

“I know,” he said with a wry smile.

Then I remembered something. I pulled the Angel Eyes map out and smoothed it over my knees. Thomas leaned over to get a better look. “What’s that?”

“I’m not sure. I thought you might recognize it.” I told him how Callum and I had found it, and how Juliana had given another copy of the map to Libertas. “Why would the king want Juliana to see a weather map? And what the hell would Libertas need it for?”

“This isn’t a weather map,” Thomas said, examining it closely.

“Really? Then what is it?”

“No idea. I’ve never heard of this Operation before.” He put his arms around me and held me tightly, pressing his lips to my forehead. “I’m glad you ran,” he said into my hair. “Even if it meant we had to end up here. At least we’re together.”

“I am, too,” I said, getting choked up again. “I didn’t want to leave, but I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“I understand.” He pulled back a little to look down at my face. I smiled at him sadly. A great cloud of uncertainty hung over us. Would we ever make it out of here? And even if we did, what then? I would go back home, but would Thomas come with me? Or would he stay in Aurora, his home universe? It didn’t feel like he belonged in Aurora. It felt like he belonged with me, wherever I was. But it wasn’t my choice, and, in a way, it wasn’t his either.

For the moment, though, none of that mattered. He bent his head and kissed me deeply. I kissed him back. We kissed each other, sinking deeper and deeper into an unfathomable ocean, straining toward infinity.

They didn’t have to go to Columbia City, after all, which was just as well. There’d been some problems at the Farnham-UCC border, and not even the Shepherd, who appeared to have more connections than a revolutionary could ever dream of, was able to get clearance to pass into the Commonwealth. There was trouble brewing again. Nobody told her what, exactly, but she had to believe it was the General’s doing.

The Shepherd had told her about the girl, the one who wore her face. Sasha, that was her name. Sasha from Earth. A parallel universe. She’d listened slack jawed as they told her what her “new life” would entail. She’d never in a million years imagined that in order to be free, she’d have to take over someone’s identity, but there was no turning back now. The plan was set. Libertas had no way to transport her through the tandem, so they were going to rely on the universes to do the heavy lifting. All they had to do was bring her to Sasha, and after several days of searching, they’d found her—in Farnham, of all places.

She couldn’t go alone. She needed someone to help her sneak into the Adastra Palace Prison, or, as the locals called it, the Hole. She expected the Shepherd to do the honors, but instead they’d sent him. She supposed it was fitting. He was the one who’d brought her out of the Castle, and he would deliver her, as promised, to her new life.

She knew what she had to do when she arrived on Earth; she had to go to the police and tell them that her name was Sasha Lawson, that she was from Chicago, Illinois, and that she had no memory of the last two weeks. When they asked her about Grant Davis, she was to tell them she didn’t know where he was. And then, after the furor died down, she was to slip quietly into Sasha Lawson’s life until she was eighteen. Only then would she be truly free. But it didn’t seem too bad, considering how many years she’d already waited.

It wouldn’t be long now.

THIRTY-EIGHT

They’re here.

The thought rang through my head as I opened my eyes, waking from a deep sleep. Thomas and I were crammed together on one of the beds; we’d curled up close to each other, my head on his chest, his knees bent and sort of hanging over the edge. In spite of that, I’d slept better than I ever had since I came to Aurora. I’d been shy at first, as we crawled into bed exhausted, wondering what it would feel like to have him that close, but the moment I settled in next to him and his arms wrapped around me, I felt calm and comforted, or at least as calm and comforted as I could feel while I was trapped in a dark, cold dungeon in an alternate universe. I’d drifted off to the sound of Thomas’s light, soft breathing, warmed despite the chill by his nearness. We didn’t speak, letting the silence envelop us, feeling as though we were the only two people in the world and wishing, at least in part, that it could always stay that way.

But we weren’t alone anymore. I knew they were there before I heard them, but as I struggled to sit upright, my limbs still tangled up in Thomas’s, the door to our cell slid open, emitting a loud, animal squeal as it was dragged along its rusty tracks. Footsteps echoed off the stone walls.

“Isn’t that just adorable.”

Thomas’s eyes flew open, and he leapt to his feet while I scrambled after him. He turned in the direction of the voice, his hand darting reflexively to the shoulder holster he wasn’t wearing, to grab a gun that wasn’t there. The lights, which had shut off long ago, snapped on, but not before I realized that there were two people in the cell besides Thomas and me, not just one. It took me a moment to recognize the voice, but when I did, I knew we were in trouble.

Lucas was pointing a gun at us. “Don’t move,” he said. “Stay right where you are.”

“Since when do they let you carry a gun?” Thomas asked. His tone was calm and even, but I could tell from the way he was standing—straight as a pole, shoulders tensed, using his body to shield me—that, unarmed, he was at a terrible disadvantage and he knew it.

“At least I have a gun,” Lucas said.

Thomas jerked his chin toward Lucas’s companion. “Who’s your friend?”

The girl revealed herself, stepping out from behind Lucas and shoving back the hood that covered half her face. “Hey, T,” she said, her mouth curling at the edges in a wry, sad smile. She was blond, but in all other ways, she was me.

You’re never prepared to meet your analog. It’s a situation where knowledge does you absolutely no good. Even if you understand what they are, that they’re not
you
but that they are
real,
it doesn’t stop you from thinking you’re losing your mind. For a second, it’s like you’re floating; you lose all sense of space and time, and everything else disappears except them and you. Your nerves start humming like tuning forks, and your vision goes blurry at the edges. You start to wish you were crazy, because the only alternative is that you’re not.