Anna Jarzab - Tandem

Besides, he didn’t quite consider Grant Davis’s situation to be outside the parameters of his mission. Thomas was the reason Grant was in Aurora in the first place—he’d sent Grant there himself, knowing full well what kinds of trouble there were to get into for someone who looked like them. If there had been any problems for Grant on the other side of the tandem, it was more than a little bit Thomas’s fault. “Did the squad not find him? They were supposed to be waiting.”

“Oh, they found him, all right,” the General said, frowning at the tone in Thomas’s voice, the implication that men under his command had been in any way deficient in fulfilling their duties. “About two minutes after Libertas did.”

“Libertas? On the South End?” Though the Tattered City was very much Libertas’s territory, their security units mostly stuck to the North End and City Center, where the majority of the remaining residents actually lived. The South End had been hemorrhaging its population for years, and these days it was mostly abandoned, so Libertas didn’t waste resources on patrolling it. If there had been a unit down there, it meant one of two things: that Libertas was expanding its reach for some no doubt suspicious reason of its own, or—though Thomas really couldn’t see how this was possible—they knew something was about to go down and they were lying in wait.

The General nodded, but his mind seemed far away. “Seems they’re expanding.”

“Why would they even want him?”

The General turned to him with an odd, inscrutable expression that Thomas had often tried to replicate, with varying degrees of success. “I assume they believed he was you.”

Thomas clenched his jaw. It was unheard of for KES agents to fail in their missions. How was it possible that a team of highly trained operatives had allowed their own assignment to be captured by enemy forces? And here the General was, sedate and resigned, as if nothing could be done about it.

“So now what? We can’t leave him to them.” He was struggling not to raise his voice to the General, who didn’t tolerate insubordination on any level. He was no ordinary KES agent, but on this point the General was as firm with him as with any other.

“They’ll never believe he’s not you, but eventually they’ll see they can’t get anything out of him,” the General said. “And they’ll realize that his only value is financial. I expect a ransom demand any day now.”

“Will you pay it?” When it came to the General, Thomas could be sure of nothing.

“I suppose that depends on what they ask for.” The General jerked his chin in Sasha’s direction. “It’s time.”

“Sir, I—” It was unwise to oppose a direct order, but Thomas wasn’t through talking about Grant. He wanted to know the particulars of what had happened that night on this side of the tandem. He needed to know if there was anything he could have done.

“Agent,” the General said firmly. “It’s time.”

She sat perfectly still on the bed in her tiny room. She didn’t know much about the place they’d brought her, only that it wasn’t large and it wasn’t far away from the Castle, which disturbed her. Two weeks ago she’d met her co-conspirator in a dark, unused corridor that belonged to a part of the Castle currently under construction. She found it satisfying that he needed her help with the actual escape. She’d taken him to the royal chapel, which had been quiet and empty, as it always was. Nobody practiced much religion in the UCC these days. They’d left the Citadel grounds by way of a secret passage that connected a trapdoor behind the altar to an exit built into the face of a large schist boulder outcropping that lined the edge of the Rambles, half a mile from the Castle. From there he’d borne her away in a moto, but not before blindfolding her, for “security purposes.” And so, here she sat now, a different sort of prisoner, with nothing to do but wait for her release. She was starting to wonder if it would ever come.

The door opened, and a young girl—she couldn’t have been older than twelve—entered with a tray. The girl’s face blanched when she set eyes on the person she’d come to serve. Juliana smiled; she was used to this kind of reaction, especially from children. They just couldn’t believe they were in her presence, after seeing her their whole lives as a two-dimensional figure on their home teleboxes or the press boards.

“Hello,” Juliana said pleasantly. She’d resolved to be kind to everyone who wasn’t him, or someone who worked with him. If she’d learned anything these last few weeks, it was that salvation sometimes came from the most unexpected places. Then again, so did damnation.

The girl tried to return the greeting but couldn’t seem to get the words out. She settled for putting the tray down on a little table in the corner. Juliana got up to examine its contents: a turkey sandwich cut diagonally down the middle, a bag of potato munchies bloated with air, an apple, an orange, and a bottle of cold, sweet tea. She picked the sandwich up, a half in each hand, and offered one to the girl. “You hungry?”

The girl shook her head, though she was eyeing the sandwich somewhat keenly. Juliana shrugged and took a bite. The turkey was dry, the bread too soft and spread too thick with mayonnaise, the cheese tasteless and processed. Typical Libertas; they weren’t much for luxury or comfort. After the opulence and overindulgence of Castle life, it was refreshing, but also sort of disappointing. Like it or not, she did have standards.

“Are you really the princess?” the girl asked after a time. Juliana had finished the whole sandwich and had started on the munchies, which were salty and delicious. She rarely ate junk food—she’d been on a strict diet since she was eleven, when her stepmother poked her stomach and told her that nobody wanted to look at a pudgy princess. To think she’d never have to worry about being a proper princess ever again. She could have munchies and chocolates and beer and red meat every day if she wanted to from here forward—assuming she made it out of this dungeon.

“I guess so,” Juliana replied.

“Weird,” the girl said, shaking her head as if to dislodge a bothersome thought.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just … well, some people said they saw you in the Tattered City yesterday,” the girl told her. Juliana abandoned the munchies in her lap and gave the girl her full attention.

“That’s impossible. I’m right here. I’ve been here for weeks and it’s a thousand miles to the Tattered City,” Juliana pointed out. The kid was just playing with her.

“I know,” the girl said, irritated at Juliana’s patronizing tone. “But it was on the box at home, and then I saw it again on the press board over on Water and Broadway.” The girl smiled, a wicked little gleam in her eye. “They say you were at a Libertas rally in Lake Park. There were a bunch of witnesses. Funny, huh?” She reached back to tighten her ponytail and her shirtsleeves rode up, revealing a wide fabric band fastened around her right wrist—an equilateral triangle of ten gold stars on a field of forest green.

Juliana narrowed her eyes at the girl, who seemed neither shy nor sweet anymore. A Libertine through and through, even at her age. She supposed it was to be expected; Libertas had been around for a quarter century, and they were good at planting seeds in people’s heads. Made sense that they’d start with their children. But this news about the Tattered City was not sitting well with Juliana. She was clearly not there, as she’d pointed out to the girl.