Tether (36 page)

“Put your hands up,” Rocko growled. Thomas raised his palms in surrender, and we all followed suit.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. I blinked hard, as if by doing so I could banish the sight of Adele—Thomas’s
friend
—standing before me with a gun pointed at my chest. Her jaw tightened, but Adele said nothing. It didn’t matter. No explanation was going to make this better.

“Her job,” Thomas said, his voice hollow. “That’s right, isn’t it? Cora, Navin, Sergei, Tim, Rocko—they were never my team, were they? They were yours.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Rocko snapped.

“I should’ve known the General was never going to let me take a crew fresh out of the Academy on such an important mission unless he had a ringer or two. Or more. Did they all know who they were really reporting to, or was it just Rocko?”

“Does it matter?” Adele asked with a shrug, her voice steady and calm. That blank KES mask I’d seen Thomas wear so many times had slipped down low over her face; I couldn’t read her at all. “I’ve got my orders. I have to bring you back.”

“No!” Selene cried, surging forward.

“Stop or I’ll shoot you!” Rocko shouted. He knew about our powers, and they frightened him. Thomas pulled Selene back.

“Don’t,” he warned us. “What happened to you owing me one, Adele?”

“What?” I asked, but Adele and Thomas weren’t paying attention to anyone except each other.

“I could’ve stopped them from escaping the Labyrinth, but I didn’t,” Adele replied. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”

“How did you find us?” Thomas asked.

“The KES ring you’re wearing,” Rocko said smugly. “It’s got a tracker in it.”

“So that’s how they found us at Gorman’s Gate,” Thomas said. Every time he thought he’d outsmarted the General, it turned out his father was one step ahead.

We can’t let this happen,
Selene thought frantically, grabbing my hand.
We have to go through the transit while there’s still time!

Thomas will figure this out,
Juliana thought in confident defiance.
He won’t let them get the best of him. He’s too good for that.

We have to help him,
I told my analogs.
We have the power. They can’t stop us if we use it. They’re helpless against it. You’ve seen what it can do.

Can it stop a bullet?
Juliana asked, her end of the tether sticky with sarcasm.

Maybe,
Selene said. Then she fell silent and retreated behind the mental scrim she put up when she needed privacy to think. Juliana and I exchanged a fearful look. As connected as the three of us were, it wasn’t always easy to predict what
Selene was going to do, and the tether was still throbbing from her massive power deluge in the catacombs. She couldn’t withstand another one, not so soon.

“How are you going to bring us back to the Labyrinth? We outnumber you almost two to one,” Callum pointed out, ignoring for a moment the fact that the two of them were holding us at gunpoint.

“I have reinforcements coming,” Adele said. It was so easy to see why the General trusted her—she was so capable, so unflappable, in the face of all of this. I was shocked to discover that her betrayal didn’t actually shock me at all. I should have known. When had anyone in Aurora ever been loyal to us? “We had a contingency plan, in case not everyone made it out of the club. They’ll be here any second.”

“Is the KES really that important to you?” Thomas asked her. He was wearing his KES mask, too, but he had to be devastated, despite his assertions that he’d had a feeling this was coming. It was one thing to believe something to be true, another thing entirely to realize you were right. “You know what the General will do to them. To all of us.”

“It’s the most important thing to me,” Adele said quietly. “You know that.” Then she squared her shoulders, not taking her eyes off us for a second, not lowering her weapon an inch. “Back up, all the way to the rock wall, then turn around and put your hands behind your backs.” When we didn’t move, she raised her voice. “Do it!”

We had no choice; we had to follow her orders. We stood with our faces pressed against the sharp rock embankment, blind now to what was going on around us. I tried to turn my head so that I could see better, but in a second I felt the cold muzzle of Rocko’s gun at my temple. “Don’t even think about it.”

They’re going to tie us up,
Selene said.
I can use the power without my hands, but I don’t think either of you will be able to.

You can’t use the power!
I insisted.
You’re still in too much pain.

The tether contracted as Selene winced. Using it at all, even to talk, was still difficult for her, but she was pushing through the misery.
Then it will have to be you, and it will have to be now. Are you ready, Juliana?

The tether bobbed up and down, a psychic nod.
I can feel it in my fingers,
Juliana thought.

So can I,
I said. The power surged through us like a lightning storm. We could cause a lot of damage with the voltage we were carrying. I hesitated. What would be left of Adele and Rocko when the three of us were done with them?

Who cares?
Juliana hissed. She was itching to release the power. It was awful and uncomfortable, having all that energy writhing within you and having to struggle to contain it. All you wanted to do was to let go, to let it possess you and become you. I was more certain than ever that
this
—the power, and the way it grew stronger and more ferocious when we were together—was the reason why analogs weren’t meant to meet, to touch, to find each other. How long would it be until there was no looking back? And did it even matter? Either way, it was too late now.

On three,
I told Juliana, and though we couldn’t see each other, couldn’t look into each other’s eyes, I knew she’d heard and that she was right there with me.
One
—
two
—
three!

It happened in one achingly slow moment. Juliana and I, turning, raising our hands, our palms and fingertips shining like filaments in the hot, bright heart of a lightbulb—the glow of the power traveling up our arms, our necks and shoulders, down our spines and through our legs, engulfing us in halos of light that burned white at first, then blue as the
power intensified—Thomas shifting, calling out my name in warning—the terrified faces of Adele and Rocko as Juliana and I rushed forward like pillars of fire—Rocko pressing the trigger of his gun, once and then again—the bullets racing toward us, then
bending
as they came close, whispering past our heads as if we were supernovas and they were asteroids that had ventured too close and become trapped into orbit by the pull of our gravity.

Adele was my target, but the power reached her before I did, hitting her squarely in the chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the same happen to Rocko, and in an instant they were in the air, and then in another, as the world sped up again, lying flat on their backs on the hard-packed sand.

I stood paralyzed as the power drained away and left an awful pulsing ache behind. I was trembling down to my very atoms, and the tether swung crazily.

“You did a good job,” Selene said, putting her arms around me. Relief flowed through the tether like water. Juliana kept her distance, and for the first time I wished I could hug her.

When I found the strength to look up, I noticed Thomas and Callum hunched over Adele and Rocko, feeling for pulses that I knew they might not find. I stepped out of Selene’s arms and made my way toward Thomas, but the look in his eyes stopped me. He and Callum wore matching expressions of terror on their faces. I closed my eyes, couldn’t bear to look at them. Were they afraid for us, or
of
us?

“Are they dead?” I asked, terrified that we’d gone too far, that we’d killed them both.

Thomas shook his head. “No, but they’re out cold. No telling for how long, so you have to go
now.
”

Selene was halfway to the water. Juliana looked over at me, and I felt the tether grow bright with the strength of our
connection. Selene was up to her calves in the lake now, the sleeve of her shirt pulled up, her tattoo on full display. I could see it glowing faintly in the distance, the same green color as the aurora overhead.

Juliana and I were only a few feet away from Selene, water licking our ankles, when a loud shout behind us caught my attention. I turned to see Thomas coming for me. He called out my name—once, and then again, an agonized, frantic cry—and then he was pulling me into his arms, crushing me, kissing my cheeks, my forehead, my lips.

“Don’t go,” he whispered, taking my face between his palms and touching his nose to mine. “Don’t go, please, please, please don’t go. Stay with me.” He pressed his lips hard against mine. I felt the fabric of the world slip out from under me. How could I leave him? It seemed more impossible than ever. But there was no looking back. We’d come so far, done so much to get here. Our fate was calling, and we couldn’t turn away.

“Sasha.” Selene’s hand on my arm, calling me back. “We have to go.”

I placed one last kiss in the center of Thomas’s brow. “I love you.”

He sagged, heavy with grief and resignation. He never thought I would stay. He knew me too well to hope. But he had to try. “I love you, Sasha. Promise you’ll come back. Please, please come back.”

“I will,” I said. “I swear I will.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, and I knew that he was seeing me differently now, like someone who would go, not someone who would stay. This was how Thomas got through the bad stuff. He changed his perspective. But he wouldn’t forget me. And he would love me. That knowledge lived within me like
a brilliant star, and I would carry it with me into the next world, and whatever came after that.

“It’s time to go,” Juliana said. “I’ll take good care of her, Thomas.”

“You’d better.” He tightened his grip on me. His words said
I’m letting you go,
but his touch still begged me to stay.

“It’s all right,” Selene said, tugging me free from Thomas’s embrace. He released me, his arms falling limp at his sides. “Everything will be all right.”

Thomas’s hand shot out, but this time he took hold of Selene, his fingers circling her wrist.

“What’s that?” he asked, meaning her tattoo, the two overlapping circles glowing in the night. In the near distance, Thirteen Bells sounded thirteen melancholy chimes.

“This is how our journey begins,” Selene told him, slipping out of his grasp. “This is the key to the door that leads to my world.”

He narrowed his eyes, and I could almost see the tumblers of his brain turning over and over, trying to puzzle something out and failing, to his frustration. Selene touched his shoulder.

“Take care of yourself, traveler,” she said. I’d never heard her call him this, never imagined that she would think of him this way, but of course it was one of the things they had in common: they’d both crossed universes to fetch a girl who would save their world. They
were
travelers, both of them, certainly more than Juliana or even me.

Thomas just stood there, staring at the tattoo and her hand on his arm. Then my analogs and I turned and walked into the water, guided by the light of the traveler’s mark. As we grew closer, the water up to our knees, I began to see it: the transit. It shimmered like the surface of a soap bubble. Selene
stood to one side. After a slight hesitation and a backward glance at Callum, who was standing beside Thomas on the shore, Juliana stepped through and disappeared. The ground rumbled beneath my feet, and then it was my turn. I looked back once more at Thomas, whose face lit up suddenly in understanding.

I thought I heard him cry out,
Sasha, wait!
But the words were washed away by the hush of the waves on the sand, if he even said them at all.

A
NNA
J
ARZAB
is the author of
All Unquiet Things, The Opposite of Hallelujah,
and
Tandem.
She lives in New York City and works in children’s book publishing. Visit her at
annajarzab.com
and follow
@ajarzab
on Twitter.