Tandem: The Many-Worlds Trilogy

by Anna Jarzab

  “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 ou
t 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.

  I stared at Juliana. She stared back. Neither of us was willing to speak, or capable of doing so. The silence in the room was so oppressive that I sagged in relief when Thomas finally said something.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Juli, for God’s sake, where have you been?”

  “Didn’t you get my note?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Thomas snapped. “It was … concise.”

  “I meant it,” she told him, with a hint of desperation. Juliana was disheveled, her eyes wild, and in her normal-person clothes, with that hideous bleached hair, she looked nothing like the princess from the photos and paintings that covered the Castle walls, nothing like the image I’d seen in the mirror when I was pretending to be her. But my soul recognized her even as my eyes did not. Did she even know or understand just how much we were connected?

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your lofty expectations,” she bit back, her voice trembling. “I couldn’t stay there. He would’ve killed me. You know he would.”

  Thomas’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t bother asking who she meant by “he.” We all knew who she was talking about. “I asked why you were here.”

  Juliana glanced at Lucas, so we turned our eyes on him as well. He affected surprise. “Oh, is it my turn to talk?” He nodded at me. “We’re here for her.”

  Thomas used his arm to block me. “I’m not going to let you lay a hand on her.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll leave her intact,” Lucas said. “All Juli’s got to do is touch her and my work here is done.”

  “Touch me?” A horrible realization struck me. She’s going to use me to pass through the tandem. I glanced down at the anchor around my wrist. As long as it was activated, I was stuck fast to Aurora and nothing could dislodge me. If Juliana touched me now, she would be sent to Earth, not me.

  She’s going to steal my life.

  “You can’t do that!” I cried. “You can’t take my place!”

  “Why not?” Juliana snapped. “You took mine.”

  “Because I was forced to! You can have it back, I don’t want it. I want to go home.”

  Juliana hesitated, and I could see that she was conflicted. “Please,” I begged. “Don’t.”

  “I won’t let her get close enough,” Thomas assured me. There was a pause as he and Lucas sized each other up; then Thomas darted forward like he was going to try to take the gun from his brother, but even I could tell they were too far apart for that to actually work.

  I shouted at Thomas in warning, but it was too late. A shot cried out in the cell as Lucas pressed the trigger of his gun. Juliana and I both shrieked, identical sounds from identical mouths that lingered in the air long after the ring of the bullet bursting from the chamber had lost its echo. Thomas clutched his right shoulder and stumbled backward, narrowly missing me as he fell to the ground and cracked his head against the wall.

  “Thomas!” I screamed, dropping to my knees. My hands shook as I pressed them against his wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He winced, sucking air through his teeth in pain. I followed Thomas’s hateful gaze to his brother; Lucas’s face was white as paper and he was breathing heavily. Juliana stood immobile with shock.

  “Touch her,” Lucas commanded, his voice shaking, but Juliana didn’t move. He swung around and pointed the gun at her, only inches from her temple. “Do it now, Juliana!”

  She stumbled forward, and I was sure that she would collapse, but she didn’t. She crouched down in front of me, and I shrank back until I hit the wall. With Lucas training a gun on me there was nowhere to go.

  “I’m sorry it has to be this way,” Juliana said, her eyes meeting mine. I stared unfeelingly back at her, bracing myself for what was about to come. I felt weightless and numb as she closed in on me, reaching out to touch my face, tentatively, as if she still didn’t believe, after all she’d seen, that I was even real. My fingertips itched with adrenaline. The air crackled with electricity and smelled like an approaching storm. I wondered just how much this was going to hurt.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thomas reach into his pocket.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I told Juliana. She hesitated. For a split second I thought she might reconsider.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. She sounded like her heart was shattering, but I felt no sympathy. She was a coward and a traitor, if not to her country, then to Thomas, and through him to me. I had no pity for traitors. “I can’t. I wish I was better, but I’m not.”

  I glanced down and saw that in his hand Thomas held a small black rectangular device. As Juliana extended her hand to make contact with my skin, Thomas’s finger hovered over the remote’s solitary button. Our eyes found each other and I knew what he was going to do.

  “Get your own life, Juli,” he said with great effort. Then he pushed the button and deactivated my anchor.

  The space around me expanded and contracted, stretching out infinitely in an infinite number of directions. Time no longer seemed to exist. The scene in the cell receded from me at an extremely high velocity, and I felt as if I was being pulled apart atom by atom.

  Then, like the flame of a candle, I was snuffed out.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I was awake, but I couldn’t move. My body felt like one giant bruise. At least I was breathing. The air was sweet and clean, and smelled like … home. This will pass, I told myself, to keep from panicking. It was just the kickback from going through the tandem.

  I waited for it all to drain away, and while I did I thought of Thomas. I’d known, in those last few seconds, what he was about to do. He’d decided that whatever unknown fate awaited me back on Earth, it was better than having Juliana steal my life. My life. The one I’d been born into. The one I missed so much I ached for it. But I ached for Thomas, too. I didn’t want to imagine what was going to happen to him, but I couldn’t help it. If Juliana and Lucas didn’t kill him, they would certainly leave him in that Farnham jail cell to rot. And what then? What would Queen Marian do with the spy she’d caught, especially when she saw that the princess she thought she had in custody had magically disappeared? Nothing good, I was sure of that.

  Oh, Thomas, I thought. Tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping off my face and soaking my hair.

  And what about Callum? What would become of him now that the wedding was off, the treaty broken, and the Juliana he knew nowhere to be found? And the war that was sure to come. How much of Aurora would be left standing once it was over?

  Eventually I found that I could move my left hand, then my right. I rested until I had enough strength to open my eyes, to sit up and look around. I was in a vast field filled with the shoots of some kind of grain—corn, maybe? So I hadn’t landed in the foundation of a house after all. I wished I could let Thomas know I was all right, but that was impossible. He would have to live without knowing what happened to me, and I’d have to live without knowing what happened to him. This was the part of love I hated, the pain of losing the person you wanted to keep more than anything in the whole world. All the worlds.

  I sat there for a long time, too weak to stand, too turned around to know where to go when I did manage to move. My hands were crusted with dried blood from Thomas’s arm; the anchor I’d worn aro
und my wrist now lay scattered in pieces close by. Not knowing what else to do, I drew my knees up to my chest, buried my face in them, and wept. Like a child I wept.

  As the sun rose over the horizon, I saw a figure coming toward me, one that I would recognize anywhere. Except it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. It would never be him. But it was someone. Someone I knew. Someone who understood at least a small portion of what I’d been through, because he’d been through it, too.

  “Grant,” I said as he approached. My voice was hoarse, my throat as raw and sore as the rest of me. I wanted to cry at the sight of him, but I’d shed all the tears I had.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here,” he said, helping me stand. “I knew it was a long shot, but I thought, maybe … I don’t know.”

  “I’m glad you came,” I said. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I didn’t think I’d ever be all right. Not in a million years, not in an infinite number of lifetimes. But I had to go on. I couldn’t give up. Thomas had risked his life to return me to mine, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

  Grant nodded. He got it. I was grateful for that, at least. “What do we do now?”

  I gazed out at the horizon, at the sun climbing in the sky. “Let’s go home,” I said.

  So we did.

  NOT THE END; ONLY THE BEGINNING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my family, my friends, and everyone who has dedicated time and energy to making this book the best it can be, particularly my agent, Joanna MacKenzie, and my editor, Françoise Bui. I’m incredibly grateful for the advice and/or enthusiasm offered by Emilie Bandy, Alex Bracken, Mary Dubbs, Kendra Levin, Ari Lewin, Eesha Pandit, Nicole Rodney, and Kim Stokely, all of whom read drafts along the way. Special thanks go out to Cambria Rowland, who styled Sasha like a boss, and Sarah Hoy, who designed Tandem’s beautiful cover.