Tandem (9 page)

I stared at the bracelet. That awful, stomach-turning sense of doom I’d felt earlier came rushing in again. I put my hand to my forehead. I still felt faint, and was glad to be sitting.

“Are you okay?” Thomas asked.

“I feel sick,” I said softly, finding it difficult to draw breath. My chest was tight and my heart was racing; the sound of blood pumping through my temples exacerbated the pain that flashed behind my eyes. All my muscles had tightened to the point where I almost felt frozen, like I’d smash into pieces if I fell to the floor.

“That’s the tandem,” Thomas said by way of explanation, as if I had any idea what that meant. He hovered near me, even going so far as to reach out to steady my shoulders, which were shaking. I stiffened. “Going through is difficult the first few times. It puts a lot of stress on the body. You need to relax.”

“How am I supposed to relax?” I demanded. “I’m being held against my will in a dark basement by my
prom date
. What about this situation is supposed to be relaxing?”

Thomas had nothing to say to that. “Just keep breathing.”

“What the hell is the tandem?” I massaged my temples, but the headache just kept getting worse.

“It’s the veil that separates the universes.” I stared at him blankly. “Like a membrane, sort of, that you can pass through.” Thomas sighed. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Clearly,” I managed to choke out. My mouth filled with bitter saliva, and I knew what was going to happen next. I leaned forward and vomited all over the cement floor, barely missing Thomas’s shiny black boots.

“Okay,” Thomas said, lifting me to my feet by my arm as if I weighed nothing. “Up.”

“If you think I’m cleaning that, Mayhew, you’re out of your mind,” Fillmore said from his corner. “I’m not a janitor!”

Thomas towed me to the bathroom; I tried to resist him, but I didn’t have the strength. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and threw up again, wiping my face afterward with a towel he handed me. My skin was hot and clammy, but I was shivering all over; it felt like I had the flu. When I was ready, he helped me to stand again, stepping aside as I washed my mouth out with handfuls of tap water and handing me another towel that I wet and pressed against my face. He bent to retrieve something, but I didn’t see what it was; he slipped it into his pocket with a carnival magician’s deft sleight of hand.

I hunched over the sink, gripping the porcelain rim as the nausea ebbed. Thomas stood behind me, and I stared at his reflection in the mirror. I was starting to see the ways in which he wasn’t like the Grant I remembered. The way he carried his body, for one thing. Grant was a sloucher, an ambler, but this boy—Thomas—stood tall and walked with purpose. Did that mean I was actually starting to believe that he was a totally different
person
than Grant? I still couldn’t bring myself to accept that possibility.

“Come on,” he urged. “We have to go.”

“Prove it,” I said, pushing a few wet strands of hair back from my face.

“Prove … that we have to go?” Confusion passed over his face, but only for a brief second before it was replaced by the inscrutable expression I was coming to think of as his perpetual look.

“No,” I said. “Prove that you are who you say you are.” He hesitated, and I kept talking, the words spilling out of my mouth before my brain had any time to filter them. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you obviously need me or you wouldn’t have gone through so much trouble to bring me here—wherever
here
is. I get that you’re a big tough guy, and you can threaten me all you want, but you’re not going to hurt me—if you were, you already would’ve done it. I don’t have to make things easy, and I don’t plan on it, unless I get some answers.”

Thomas pressed his lips together and drew a deep breath in through his nose. He appeared to be considering my proposal.
Finally,
I thought. I was starting to feel a little bit better, too, which was an encouraging sign. If I was sick, I couldn’t run.

Wordlessly, Thomas turned and left the bathroom. I followed him out on wobbly legs and leaned against a wall while he dug in the pockets of a jacket that hung on the back of a chair.

“Here.” He thrust a piece of hard, folded leather into my hands.

At first I thought it was a wallet, but when I flipped it open I saw that it was a badge—gold, shaped like a shield and crested with a golden sun. The badge read:

KING’S ELITE SERVICE

SECURITY DEPARTMENT

DIVISION OF DEFENSE

I was about to hand it back and tell him that some little prop badge wasn’t going to convince me of anything when I noticed that the other half of the fold held a small, rectangular certificate sheathed in plastic.

UNITED COMMONWEALTH OF COLUMBIA

KING’S ELITE SERVICE

AGENT: THOMAS W. MAYHEW

AGENT CLASS: SECURITY (S)

AGENT ID: UCC-KES-1321345589

The picture in the upper left-hand corner was Grant’s.

I handed the credentials back, trying not to betray how unsettled they made me. “Fake.”

“They’re not fake,” he insisted. “Look here, at the holographic imprint. You can’t counterfeit that.”

“The United Commonwealth of Columbia? The King’s Elite Service? Those things don’t even
exist,
Grant!”

“Not in your world, they don’t. But I told you—we’re not
in
your world anymore. In this one the UCC and the KES are very, very real.” He stepped forward. “Now, for the last time: my name is Thomas Mayhew. You can call me Agent Mayhew, or you can call me Thomas, but I really don’t care whether or not you believe me. We’re leaving. Now.”

I swallowed hard. “Where are you taking me?”

“Where you need to be,” he said, flipping up the hood of his sweatshirt. “Fillmore, get rid of that.” He gestured to my dress, which was dangerously close to the puddle of vomit. “And clean up. We’re going.”

“She needs to cover her face,” Fillmore warned. “People will recognize her.”

“Put your hood up,” Thomas instructed.

“Okay, okay,” I said, following orders. I slipped my arms through the straps of the backpack and walked toward Thomas and the door. “Why would people recognize me? I thought you said we weren’t in my world anymore.”

“In Aurora, your face is a little bit more … familiar to the average person,” Thomas said.

“What does
that
mean?”

“Exactly what he said,” Fillmore responded. Thomas shook his head and Fillmore backed down, once again in deference to Thomas’s rank. “Good luck, my boy.” Fillmore offered his hand for Thomas to shake, and Thomas took it. In spite of all their bickering, there seemed to be some genuine affection—or, at the very least, respect—deep down.

It sank in then, as I watched the two of them part ways. Thomas wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t insane. Everything he had told me was true as far as he knew it. I was trapped in another world with no idea how to get back home.

EIGHT

It was too hot outside for all the clothes I was wearing. I started to unzip the hoodie, but Thomas stopped me.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Taking off some of these layers. I’m baking.”

“Keep it on,” he said. He glanced up and down the street, which was mostly empty except for a few people wandering by.
What is he so worried about?
I wondered. The street was practically deserted, and anyway I was dressed like the Unabomber—surely that was much more noticeable than just showing my face.

Since he was looking around, I did, too. It was difficult to describe the Chicago of Aurora. If someone had insisted that I was standing in the city I’d grown up in, it would have been hard to point to anything definitive that would prove them wrong, but I knew instinctively that this wasn’t my home.

There were some things, though, that were obviously unusual. I squinted to read a nearby street sign: West Eugenie Street. We were in Lincoln Park—or we would’ve been, if we were on Earth—but the neighborhood, which I knew, was unrecognizable. The surrounding buildings were taller than I would’ve expected, given that we weren’t downtown; there should’ve been houses and apartments no taller than four stories, but there were towering high-rises in their place, as far as the eye could see. The basement we’d emerged from belonged to one of three side-by-side redbrick row houses that sat in the center of the block, overshadowed by their larger neighbors, remnants of a bygone era. I wondered at their even being there; it was as if someone had forgotten about them, or they were being protected, although they were so run-down that it seemed unlikely.

The rest of the buildings were more modern-looking than they would’ve been in my Chicago, as if they’d just been built. They were mostly glass, with elegantly curved edges and tinted windows that reflected the light from the sun in a rainbow of colors like pools of oil. But they were more dilapidated, too, as if they’d been around for ages and not well kept up. The awning that protruded from the entrance of a nearby condominium was torn, the shreds of what remained fluttering half-heartedly in the breeze. There were no trees—I looked up and down the street for blocks without seeing one—and more trash in the gutters. It was as if I’d been transported to a slightly distant future where nobody took care of anything. Cars lined the edges of the street, but they were models I didn’t quite recognize. They were sleeker, and more compact, all except a large, intimidating, black SUV parked a few doors down. Thomas headed in that direction and motioned for me to follow him.

“Stay close,” he said in a low tone. “If anyone passes by, don’t look at them.”
Who is this person that I look like?
I asked myself. She had to be someone important, otherwise Thomas wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.

When we reached the SUV, Thomas went around to the trunk and pressed his thumb against a small LCD pad the size of a Post-it note near the handle.

“Yeah, this vehicle isn’t at all conspicuous,” I said.

Thomas didn’t rise to the bait. He simply opened the cargo door and said, “Climb in.”

“Absolutely not.” I stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not
getting into the trunk,
are you serious?”

“I’m serious. I don’t want anybody to see you, even through the window. You don’t know how recognizable your face is here. If someone sees you and reports it, it’ll be all over the press boards in fifteen minutes and we’ll never get out of here undetected.”

I waited for him to explain further; when he didn’t, I sighed and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been to Times Square?” Thomas asked. “On Earth, I mean.”

“No.” Granddad wasn’t big on vacations. He’d taken me to Lake Okobogee a handful of times, and Florida once, because he liked to fish, but that was about it. “I’ve seen pictures.”

“Well, you know the big screens?” I nodded. “The press boards are like that, but they’re everywhere, and there are people in this city that I’d prefer had no idea you were here.”

“Like the authorities?” I asked sharply.

“I
am
the authorities.”

“ ‘Here’ as in Chicago, or ‘here’ as in …
Aurora
?” I whispered the last word, afraid of being overheard, though there was nobody within earshot.

“Both,” he said. “Now get in.”

I was curled in a ball in the mostly empty cargo area of Thomas’s SUV. He’d draped a blanket over me, and my back was pressed against a long chrome box; God knew what he was keeping in there, but it wasn’t like he was going to tell me.

We cruised along for about ten minutes before we hit traffic. From my place in the back, I could hear Thomas’s muffled swearing. In the dim quiet, I began to formulate a plan.

First things first: I had to get the anchor off. If it was the thing tying me to Aurora, then it had to go as soon as possible. I shifted to face the metal box. If Thomas really was some sort of CIA-style government agent, then I figured it was at least possible the box contained weapons and other gear—guns, night-vision goggles, a couple of hand grenades … knives, maybe. I was hoping to find something I could saw through the anchor with, since there was no way I was going to be able to slip out of it; it was fastened too tightly around my wrist.

But the box was locked. There was a small LCD panel on the front; it glowed blue, staining my skin with cerulean light. I’d just seen Thomas use a similar panel to unlock the car door. He’d pressed his thumb against it, so the technology was probably biometric. Was it set only to recognize his print, or would mine open the box as well? It seemed unlikely, but at the very least I had to
try
.

When I touched the panel, it changed to the red color of burning coals. I jerked back instinctively as an alarm sounded.

“What’s going on back there?” Thomas called out.

“Nothing,” I told him. “I just accidentally hit this … whatever it is, with my shoulder.”

There was a pause, like he was deciding whether to believe me. “Be careful with that,” he said finally. The alarm quieted and the panel turned blue again. “It’s dangerous.”

I’m sure,
I thought. I couldn’t pry it open with my fingertips and Thomas would notice if I tried to break the lock. Whatever the box contained, it was no longer an option. But I wasn’t beaten yet. If there was a way into Aurora, there was a way out. I just had to find it.

I lifted the blanket and crept up to the edge of the window, peering out. We were no longer on the sleepy side street in Lincoln Park—or whatever it was called in this universe. Thomas had navigated us onto a broad avenue; there was a line of cars behind us, horns blaring. Pedestrians gazed at the backup with mild interest. It was all so
normal,
which I found upsetting, even more than I probably would have if everything had been completely different. My mind wandered again to the goofy worlds Granddad and I had invented once upon a time.
Anything you can think of probably exists somewhere,
Granddad had said. My ears caught the drone of an airplane soaring overhead. Maybe all this would be easier if there were no reminders of home.