Tether (34 page)

“What the—?” The third Libertine’s eyes widened in shock, but he didn’t hesitate. “Backup!” he shouted into an invisible mike. “I need backup in the kitchen
now
!” He reared back and slammed the butt of his weapon into Callum’s cheek, sending him flying. I opened my mouth to scream Callum’s name, but no sound came out. Using the power had wearied me, and I wasn’t sure if I could do it again so soon, but there were more of them coming, lots more, streaming through another set of doors and converging on us.

Don’t worry,
Selene said, but the tether shrieked with our combined terror—hers, mine, and Juliana’s.
Just get as far away as you can.

I didn’t want to leave her, but the certainty in her voice convinced me. She was planning something, and I was only going to get in her way. I grabbed Callum and dragged him to the opposite side of the kitchen. We crouched behind a tall metal island, peeking out from behind.

As the Libertines closed in, Selene sank to one knee and placed her palms flat against the linoleum floor, closing her eyes and hanging her head. At first nothing happened, and I was sure she would be killed, but then Selene began to glow, her whole body engulfed by a warm white light, like a small, dense star giving off a last brilliant gasp of fission.

“What’s happening?” Callum asked.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “It’s Selene. She’s …” I looked
over my shoulder. The Libertines had forgotten their guns and were staring at her in awe. They ought to have run, because the glow grew stronger and brighter and larger until it exploded, throwing all the Libertines clear across the kitchen and blinding the rest of us with light. I pressed my face into Callum’s shoulder. What had Selene
done
? And, more important, what had it done to her?

The glow receded, and the kitchen was silent. All I could hear was Callum’s breathing in my ear. I rose to my knees and looked back toward where Selene had been kneeling, not expecting to see her there at all, as if I thought the power would have consumed her like a fire, leaving behind a pile of charred ashes. But she
was
there, whole and alive. The Libertines lay in a circle around her, motionless. I rushed to Selene’s side and put a hand on her back; it rose and fell with the force of her breath, which was coming heavy and fast.

Are you okay?
She winced, and her end of the tether curled up in pain. A sharp ache spread through my body, but I tried to ignore it and focus on Selene.

“Are you okay?” I asked again. She nodded and forced a smile. I put my arm around her. It had cost her so much to do what she’d done. I could
feel
her pain—it was physical and psychic at the same time, and it throbbed through the tether like a deep stab wound. She was trembling, and when she lifted her head I saw tears in her eyes.

“It hurts,” she gasped. I helped her to her feet. Adele, who’d escaped her own Libertas attacker, was sawing through Callum’s cuffs with a knife she’d found on one of the counters. His wrists were covered in chafe marks from where he’d tried to wriggle out of them.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “But Selene …” She was standing off to one side, looking lost.

“We have to find Juliana,” Selene said, staring at the inert bodies on the floor as if she couldn’t believe what she had done. Her voice was hollow and strained.

“We don’t know where she is,” Adele pointed out.

“I
saw her,
” Selene said. “She has to be close. She was with only one man; they couldn’t have gotten far.”

We left the kitchen with Adele once again in the lead. She hadn’t seen much of what happened with Selene, hadn’t seen the power she’d released, and was calmer and more self-assured than I’d ever seen her; clearly, she thought we’d already won, though we had no idea where Juliana was, not to mention Thomas or the other KES agents.

That problem was solved as soon as we stepped into the hall. Thomas stood at one end, and we were at the other; in the middle was Juliana, in the Shepherd’s clutches. Even though I knew his name was Kit, that he was Juliana’s brother and the king’s son, nothing seemed to suit him except his Libertas handle.

The Shepherd had the muzzle of a gun pressed to her forehead, and Thomas had a gun trained on him; they were at a stalemate. Thomas was covered in blood, breathing heavily in anger but apparently fine. Whose blood was he wearing, then?

“Don’t move,” the Shepherd growled. “You move and I shoot her. She’s not important enough to me not to kill her right now, but I can see that’s not the case for you.”

“You’re right,” Thomas said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” At this, his gaze flickered to me, traveling up and down my body to assess whether I was okay. When he was satisfied, he turned his attention back to the Shepherd. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything if you’ll just let her go.”

“I want to get out of here unscathed,” the Shepherd said. “With her.”

“No deal,” Thomas told him. “But I’ll let you walk out of here if you release her. That’s your only choice.”

“Don’t talk to me about
choices
!” the Shepherd shouted. “I’m the one with the leverage here, toy soldier, and don’t you forget it. I don’t take orders from people who work for the General!”

“Then I guess we’re at an impasse,” Thomas said. He was playing it cool, calm, like a man who was holding all the cards. But it was the Shepherd who had the real bargaining piece, the thing we all wanted. Juliana’s eyes were wild, her expression a tumult of fear.

Sasha,
she said. The tether trembled at the sound of my name.
Help me, please.

“Let her go!” Selene commanded, lifting her hands.

“Selene, no!” I cried. I was afraid of what another surge of the power would do to her.

The Shepherd turned his head, distracted by the sound of Selene’s voice echoing through the corridor. When his eyes landed on us, they widened, and his jaw dropped. “What are
you
doing here?”

Thomas raised his gun and pulled the trigger. Three shots rang through the air; one of them landed in the center of the Shepherd’s forehead. His eyes dimmed as the life left them, and then they closed. The Shepherd fell to the ground, pulling Juliana with him. We all raced forward, too late to catch her, but Thomas reached her first. Juliana jerked out of the Shepherd’s grasp and stared into his lifeless face.

“He’s dead!” she cried. A high-pitched, keening noise ripped through the tether. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

“Shhh,” Thomas said, gathering her to his chest. My heart
felt as though it was being shredded to pieces, but I couldn’t decide, in the madness, what hurt more: Juliana’s pain or Thomas’s tone as he soothed her. He still cared about her. Not the way he cared about me, but he couldn’t abandon her. It just wasn’t in his nature. Callum stood to the side, staring at the two of them, looking just as left out as I felt. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“Mayhew,” Adele said in a low voice. She was crouched beside the Shepherd as if feeling for a pulse, but he was clearly dead.

“What?”

“Look.” Adele pulled back the collar of the Shepherd’s shirt so we could all see what she saw: the KES seal, tattooed right over the Shepherd’s heart. “He called you ‘toy soldier.’ He was one of us once.” Thomas swallowed hard but said nothing.

“It’s Kit,” Juliana said. “He’s Kit.”

“Your brother Kit?” Thomas glanced up at me. “Did you know about this?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you decided not to tell me?”

“Would it have made any difference?” I demanded. Why hadn’t I told Thomas about Kit Turner? I should have, but for some reason, I never did. Selene shrugged at me.
Some things just aren’t his to know,
she said.
We’re allowed our secrets.
But that didn’t seem right, either.

“We have to get out of here,” Callum insisted. He crouched down and smoothed the hair back away from Juliana’s face. Her cheeks were starting to show some color, and her presence along the tether was strengthening. She was going to be fine. “He can’t be the last of them.”

“Callum is right,” Thomas said. “We have to go—
now
.”

Adele nodded, getting up. Thomas turned his attention back to Juliana. “Can you stand, Juli?” She shook her head. He stood and hoisted her up, throwing her over his shoulder, then considered his options—left or right?

He muttered under his breath, something that sounded like “Always go right.” And then he charged toward us, choosing left. Not knowing what else to do, we followed him down the hallway, shaking and almost delirious with fatigue. Soon enough, we came to a door that I recognized, with the ten stars of the Libertas symbol emblazoned on it. Adele tried the door, but it was locked.

“One, one, two, three, five, eight,” Thomas said. He looked behind him, as if expecting to see something—or someone—there, but the corridor was empty, except for a large, dark pool of blood on the floor. “Ahead.”

“What?” Callum grabbed my hand in surprise. Those were the king’s numbers, the magic numbers, the first six numbers of the Fibonacci sequence: one, one, two, three, five, eight. He recognized them as well as I did.

“Sasha,” Thomas said. “Come here, please.” I stumbled forward, not entirely in control of my limbs, running on very little fuel and desperate for something—anything—that would allow me to rest.

“What do you need me to do?”

“You can press the stars,” Callum said. “This is the door Juliana and I used the first time.” I saw that he was right—they could be pushed, like typewriter keys.

Thomas looked in my eyes. “One, one, two, three, five, eight. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. Then I reached up and pressed the stars in sequence: one—the top of the pyramid. Then one again, then two—the star right below it, to the left. Then
three—the star next to two. Then five, to the bottom left of three. Then eight, to the bottom left of five. Left, left, left. One, one, two, three, five, eight. Magic numbers.

The door slid open, and we found ourselves facing another tunnel, and at the far end of the tunnel, another door. And beyond that door, a staircase. And at the top of that staircase, freedom.

I barely remembered returning to the safe house. We had to take detours to avoid Libertas patrols, police, and first responders; halfway there, Juliana demanded that Thomas put her down. As soon as he did, she gravitated to Callum’s side; whatever strangeness still existed between them was put aside, and she leaned against him the rest of the way. I expected Thomas to move to the front of the pack, to lead, as was his instinct, but instead he came and put his arm around me; I rested my head on his shoulder and relished the feeling of having him close, knowing that we would be separated sooner than I wanted and longer than I hoped.

Fillmore took one look at our bedraggled state and set to work treating our small wounds, administering a shot of adrenaline to Juliana to chase away the remnants of the sedative and patching cuts and scrapes. Rocko helped, too, making pots of coffee and heating up soup for whoever was hungry; it sat cooling on the table, since none of us could bring ourselves to choke anything down.

Thomas asked after Navin, Sergei, and Tim and got blank looks in return. Silence settled over us. “Maybe they went to
the hospital,” I suggested. The broken look on Thomas’s face was unbearable; I didn’t even know if I believed what I was saying, but I wanted so badly to make him feel better.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We should get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be difficult. We need to get out of the Tattered City, but Libertas will increase security on the city borders.”

“I assume you have a plan,” Adele said.

“I will,” he said. “Just give me a couple of hours.”

“I’ll help you,” she offered. “I’m not tired.”

“Okay,” he said. “Everybody else, head upstairs. We’ve got plenty of empty rooms, Juli. Pick whichever one you want.”

“You can sleep with me,” Callum said. His ears turned pink when he realized how it sounded. “I mean, in my room. I’ll take the floor. Or not. Whatever you want, Juli.”

She smiled and kissed his cheek, which only made his blush deepen. “Thank you,” she said. “But I want to stay with them.” She glanced at Selene and me. “Is that all right with you?”

“Of course,” Selene said. It had been just Selene and me for so long, I wasn’t sure if I could let Juliana in. I was still so angry with her, and even though my mind was attached to hers—even though I’d seen so many things through her eyes—I felt that I barely knew her. But I didn’t want to ruin what was probably our only opportunity to persuade her to come with us to Taiga. My goals had not changed: help Selene, break the tether, be with Thomas. Some part of me would miss the tether when it was gone, but if that was the price I had to pay to live my life the way I wanted to live it, it was a sacrifice worth making. And I needed Juliana for that.

“Sasha?” Juliana knew what was going through my head. It had become impossible to keep my feelings from them. For
better or worse, we were fused together. All I could do was hope that activating the Terminus would cleave the tether and give us our independence back.