Anna Jarzab - Tandem

“I liked her better when she was unconscious,” Fillmore said.

“Fillmore!” Thomas snapped, throwing a glare over his shoulder at the older man. His jaw tensed as he gritted his teeth. He turned back to me with barely contained exasperation.

“My name is Thomas,” he said. “I know I look like Grant. I know I sound like Grant. I know that, briefly, I pretended to be Grant, but I’m not him. Grant is from your world. Earth. I’m not. I’m from here.”

“Aurora.”

“That’s right.”

I shook my head, drowning in disbelief. The insanity of this conversation had even managed to distract me from how badly I still wanted to throw up.

“Okay, well, if we’re in some parallel universe, Thomas, then how exactly did we get here? Even if parallel universes exist, there’s no way to move between them.”

“We found a way.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re wearing it.” He pointed at the bracelet on my wrist. “It’s called an anchor; it helped transport you to Aurora and, as long as you have it on, it’ll keep you here.”

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.