Tether (10 page)

It’s almost nightfall,
she said.
Stay awake while everyone sleeps, and I’ll come for you. Trust me, Sasha. It’s the only way you’re going to get out of here. You’re not alone anymore. Together we’re going to do incredible things.

“So?” the General said. His gaze fell on me like a spotlight.

“Her name is Selene,” I told him. I was really not in the mood to be interrogated. I wanted out of there as fast as possible. “Her world is called Taiga, but I couldn’t get her to tell me how she managed to pass through the tandem. All she would say was that she means Aurora no harm.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked, do you believe her?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Call it curiosity,” he said, narrowing his eyes. No wonder Thomas was always so restless—I could barely handle five minutes under the General’s scrutiny, and Thomas had lived most of his life that way.

“Yes. I do.”

“Then you’re just as big a fool as you always were,” the General said. “I thought your experiences here would have taught you that to trust other people is to surrender yourself to their will.

“That’s all for now. The guards will take you to your cell.”

I did my best to get my bearings as the guards led me through the building, thinking it would be useful, if Selene really was going to get us both out, to know where I was going. But I kept getting distracted by what the General had said. What did he know about trust? And yet … Thomas had gotten me to trust him so that I’d perform my Juliana pantomime as instructed. I’d almost poisoned Callum, who had
trusted
me,
in order to get back home. Maybe the General was right. But I really hoped he wasn’t.

“Here,” a guard said. He opened a door and shoved me into a room. It was exactly the same as Selene’s—identical cells for identical girls. The door slid shut, and then I was alone.

Or at least I thought I was. I hadn’t taken two steps into the room before a hand shot out and pulled me into a darkened corner.

Thomas crushed me against his chest, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. He took my face in his hands and pressed his mouth to mine. I closed my eyes and sank into the kiss, letting it tell me, in a way that was impossible with words, exactly how he felt. It was all there—how happy he was to see me, how much he’d missed me, and how deeply he cared. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on as tight as I could, afraid that if I didn’t, he would slip away. His mouth was warm, and he tasted like sugar. I almost laughed, remembering the toggles, that candy he liked. My heart was pounding—it had been an act after all. He hadn’t forgotten me. He ran his hand down my spine and let it rest at the small of my back as his lips met mine once again.

“Hi,” he murmured, smiling. He let out a shaky breath.

“Hi,” I whispered, taking his hand. It was trembling.

“I’m sorry about before,” he said, gently tracing my jaw with his fingertips. “The General hasn’t asked how I feel about you, but I doubt he’s forgotten what happened. Acting like I still … it would only make things harder for you. I have to be careful how much I let it show, to everyone.”

“I understand. You scared me for a minute, though. I was afraid I’d made it all up.” I choked out a laugh, though it wasn’t even close to funny, the idea that I’d invented us.
It was real.

“No,” he said, kissing me as if to prove it. “Never.” He stared at me as if he was afraid I might disappear, as if he could keep me there if he didn’t look away.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in disbelief.

“I came for you, dummy.” As if it weren’t totally obvious. After that kiss, it was hard to focus on anything but his lips, the feeling of his skin against mine, and the way he smelled, like warm cotton and juniper berry soap. His breath was soft on my cheek. It felt so familiar, so right, the way nothing else had since before we separated. Destiny or no destiny, I was home.

“How did you know I wasn’t …?”

“Dr. Moss sent me a message,” I told him. “Through Dr. March.”

“Dr. March isn’t—”

“He’s real,” I said. “He’s Dr. Moss’s Earth analog, Thomas. They can talk to each other through their tether. He put this in my mailbox.” I took the star out of my pocket and pressed it into his palm. “I tracked him down and persuaded him to help me get back here through the portal.”

“I feel so stupid,” he said, wincing in embarrassment.

“Why?”

“I should’ve known Dr. Moss and Dr. March were analogs. If I’d figured it out on my own, you wouldn’t have had to go for weeks thinking I was dead.” He had to force the last word out. His saying it made me imagine it, and my heart crumpled at the thought of what could have been.

“I never did,” I lied, laying my head on his chest. His heart was beating so fast. It killed me to remember how close it had
come to not beating at all. “I knew you’d find a way out of there.”

“I almost didn’t. They were going to execute me.”

I looked at him more closely and started to see what happiness had managed to hide: bruises and cuts all over his face, in various stages of healing. My stomach clenched in horror. I was afraid to ask what else they had done to him. All I kept thinking was that maybe if he hadn’t sent me back, I could’ve helped him.

“Don’t,” he said, reading my face. “It’s not your fault.” But it
was,
at least partially. I was the reason he had been in Adastra Prison in the first place. He’d gotten shot protecting
me.
No matter what he said, I couldn’t forget that.

“What happened?” If he needed to talk, I was going to listen, even though it scared me. I owed him that. He’d always listened to me.

“They wanted information.” He stroked my hair, wrapping a small piece of it around his finger as his mind traveled miles away and days into the past. “About Juliana. I didn’t tell them anything—I would never—but they were … persistent.”

“They tortured you, didn’t they?” I put a hand to his jaw and drew my thumb across his cheekbone. I didn’t understand how anyone could want to hurt him. The thought of Thomas suffering broke my heart, but I swallowed the impulse to cry, wanting to be brave.

He looked past me, over my shoulder into the empty room, and retreated further as I stood there, watching. I waited for him to surface from his thoughts.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, clearing his throat and giving me a reassuring smile. “It’s over. I’m here. You’re here. We’re both alive. I think that means we won.”

It was nice of him to try, but he didn’t fool me. “How did you get away?”

“The General sent a squad to extract me.” He kept his voice calm and steady, as if he were talking about someone else. He was a trained soldier who faced death every day; he could compartmentalize with the best of them. But beneath it all, he was rattled and confused. I could sense it. Something terrible had happened to him, and for the first time since I’d met him, he seemed truly lost. “They brought me back here.”

“Where
is
‘here’?” We were in a KES facility of some kind, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the Tower in Columbia City.

“The Labyrinth,” he explained. “A fortress that houses the KES Academy. The General moved his headquarters here after he invaded Farnham.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s completely remote,” he said. “Not in the middle of a major city, like the Citadel. From what I can tell from the rumors I hear and the news reports on the box, Columbia City is scary right now. There have been violent protests against the war with Farnham. It’s not as bad as the Tattered City, but it’s getting there. The royal family fled to Bethlehem House, and the General came up here.”

“So the queen is safe? And Simon and Lillian?” The queen hadn’t always been kind to me, but I didn’t want anything to happen to her. And Juliana’s brother and sister—they were little children. They needed to be protected.

“Yes,” Thomas said. “They left the king at the Citadel. He’s too fragile to be moved.”

“But he’s—?”

“He’s still alive.” Thomas kissed my forehead. “It’s nice of you to care.”

“Of course I care.” I frowned. “So you’re KES again? After everything that happened?”

“In a way,” he said evasively. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure where I stand. The General acts like nothing
has changed, like I never disobeyed orders, but we both know I did.”

“Why would he trust you again?”
To trust other people is to surrender yourself to their will.
Why was Thomas the exception?

“I keep asking myself that same question,” Thomas admitted. “Dr. Moss once told me that the General needed me, because he knew the day would come when there would be war with other worlds. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then I found out about the unauthorized disruptions, and your analog, and it all started to make some kind of sense.”

“What do you think he plans to do about it?”

“I don’t know, but invading Farnham was only the first step,” Thomas said. “He claims he did it because we needed to be a united front against our new enemies, but the General never has only one motive for doing something. He’s been waiting a long time for this.”

I ran my thumb over his KES ring. “What about this?” It was a symbol of belonging, the closest the KES could get to branding him. Was he wearing it for show, or was he really one of them again?

“It was in my room when I got here. Sitting on the dresser, like some kind of test. So I put it on.” It wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for, not an answer at all. I wished I could read his mind as Selene could read mine. Thomas was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

He sounded so despondent; I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to erase the bad feelings and replace them with good. I pulled him in for a kiss. For a few seconds, all that had gone before, and all that was sure to come, vanished, and we sank into that bright, safe universe that only existed when we were together. Then reality rushed back in.

“You’re in so much danger, Sasha,” Thomas murmured.
The sound of him saying my name warmed me to my core, as it always had, since the very beginning. “I’m afraid for you.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“Aren’t you?”

“We’re together,” I reminded him. I was scared, of course I was, more for him than for myself. But I didn’t want him to know that. I wanted him to believe that I could withstand anything, that I was his equal in courage. I wanted to deserve him. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

“Lots of things.” His hand drifted down my neck. I leaned in and closed my eyes. I was trapped, but when he held me I felt free. “The General, for one. He’s not going to cut you a deal this time. In his mind, you’re his indefinitely. You and your analog.”

“Selene. Her name is Selene.”

“Selene,” Thomas repeated. “I don’t trust her, Sasha. She knew you were coming. She told me you were on your way. How could she possibly have known that?”

“The tether,” I told him. “She’s been using it to contact me. She says she needs my help.”

“With what?”

“To save her world. Whatever that means.” I grabbed him by the fabric of his shirt and drew him to me, so close that our noses were touching. “I don’t want to talk right now. I just want to do this.” I brushed his lips with mine. He caught my mouth and pressed his palm against the nape of my neck, burying his fingers in my hair.

“We have to get you out of here.” He took a deep, steadying breath and sagged against the wall. I traced the arc of a long, angry scar across his temple with my fingertips. I’d known he was strong, but to survive torture without breaking took a different kind of strength, one most people didn’t have. What
had it been like for him, alone in that cell, waiting for death? What had it done to him?

“I’m not going back to Earth,” I insisted. “I came here to find you, and I’m not leaving without you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think Earth is even an option right now. If you run, that’s the first place they’ll look.”

“I know.” Guilt over leaving Granddad behind again—this time on purpose—gnawed at me constantly. The least I could do was not draw danger to his doorstep. “Selene’s got a plan. She wants me to escape with her tonight.”

Thomas laughed. “This is a high-security military compound. There’s only one person I know of who managed to escape the Labyrinth since it was built. How does she think she’s going to get out of that cell, let alone the building?”

“I have no idea. But I believe she can do it. She seems capable of pretty much anything.”

“Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

“Come with us,” I implored. “We can leave together. I know you don’t want to stay here.”

Thomas raised his eyes to meet mine, and I realized I didn’t know that at all. But I wanted so badly to believe it. “I have to. For a little while, at least. To distract them and give you time to get away.”

“So you think I should go with her?”

“I think you already know what you need to do,” Thomas said. “But first things first.” I was wearing a bobby pin to keep my bangs out of my eyes, and he plucked it out. My hair fell in my face, and I gave him a curious look—what the hell was he doing? Then he took my wrist and did something to the anchor; it fell open on its hinges and dropped into his palm.