Anna Jarzab - Tandem

I smiled into his shoulder. My parents would’ve loved Grant, I was sure of it. They wouldn’t have had a choice. There was no way they could’ve disliked anyone who made me this happy. “Something like that, yeah.”

Grant looked directly at me for the first time since we’d stepped foot on the beach, and a sudden bolt of sadness flickered across his face, so quickly that I thought I might’ve imagined it.

“Sasha,” he said, with an intensity that nearly swept me off my feet. I loved the way he said my name, like an incantation, like a magic word. I’m falling for him, I thought, in the space between heartbeats. I was surprised by how easy that was to admit. For a long time, I’d thought the deaths of my parents might have inured me to love—fear of losing something beloved was the reason I’d never wanted a pet—but it hadn’t. In fact, it had only made me want it more, something I hadn’t realized until this moment.

“Whatever happens,” Grant continued, “this has been the best night of my entire life.”

I laughed. “What could happen?”

“Anything,” he said. My heart pounded away in my chest like a bass drum, and my hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists to keep Grant from noticing.

He took a deep breath. The air changed, as if there had been a shift in the Earth’s rotation. “I have a gift for you.” He dug around in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a flat black box the size of his palm. “Open it.”

Inside the box was a thin silver bracelet on a bed of black velvet. It was the simplest thing I’d ever seen, and because of that, one of the most lovely. Not a single engraving or gem or artistic flourish, just a plain, elegant silver band. I picked it up and tried to slide it over my hand, but it wouldn’t fit. It was too small. A flush crawled up my neck and into my face. My hand was too fat for Grant’s gift.

“No, not like that.” He reached over to take the bracelet; I didn’t quite see how he did it, but he managed to open an imperceptible hinge. He placed the bracelet around my left wrist before closing it with a firm snap . It was snug, but not tight, as if it had been sized just for me.

The sleeve of Grant’s jacket rode up and I caught another glint of silver. I grabbed his arm.

“You have one just like it?” It was a question, but not. He was wearing a bracelet identical to the one he’d just given me on his own wrist. My brain struggled to process this information, to make some sense out of it. Grant really wasn’t the type to wear jewelry. At least I didn’t think he was, but it wasn’t like I knew all there was to know about him. Still, it struck me as odd.

Grant didn’t explain. Instead, he cupped my face in one hand and adjusted the scarf around my neck, pulling me in by my waist and holding me close. I shut my eyes and let myself drift in his arms, forgetting about the bracelets. He leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. I thought I heard him whisper I’m sorry, but the words were washed away by the hush of the waves on the sand, if he even said them at all.

Thomas watched the rise and fall of Sasha’s chest as she slept. High above, the aurora performed its nightly dance across the indigo sky, casting a soft green glow upon her skin. After everything he’d seen, he still couldn’t believe how much she looked like Juliana. The resemblance was breathtaking in its perfection, and unsettling, too; he would have called it impossible if he didn’t know the truth. Thomas slid his KES ring back on; it was a relief to wear it again after two weeks of having to carry it around in his pocket. His hand throbbed with pain, and a strange sort of restlessness stirred within him; it was the same way he’d felt on the night he came face to face with Grant Davis. The universes didn’t like to be messed with, and try as he might, he couldn’t shake off the sense that he had made a catastrophic error in bringing her here.

But it was already done.

The waters of Lake Michigan— his Lake Michigan—gently lapped the shore ten yards away, and the towering skyscrapers of the Chicago skyline rose behind him, nearly invisible in the dark. They called it the Tattered City; Libertas had stripped it to its bones, and the buildings were largely derelict now, places where squatters played house. Electrical power was erratic in the Tattered City these days, and the city officials had started enforcing a mandatory blackout after midnight in an effort to conserve energy. He couldn’t have planned their arrival in Aurora any better; the streets would be dark and empty, and he would slip through them easily with his otherworldly cargo. Operation Starling was proceeding exactly as planned.

Something beeped in his pocket; his mobie had caught a signal. He pulled it out to send a message to Agent Fillmore, who was waiting in the wings for his summons. The mobie was about the size and shape of a playing card; this one was government-issue, made of a near-indestructible titanium alloy and only an inch or so thick, not counting the retractable cover. He pressed a button and the cover slid away, revealing the screen, which demanded a thumbprint and a numerical code to be entered before it would show him what he wanted: the time. Nearly one in the morning now. Right on schedule.

We’re about to miss curfew . The thought caught him off guard. No point worrying about that. And yet, he couldn’t stop imagining Sasha’s grandfather waiting up for her, wondering where she was. He tried not to feel guilty about it; after all, he was just doing his job. It’s for the greater good, he told himself. Remember that.

Fillmore arrived in minutes. They’d chosen this spot because it was deserted at nighttime in both worlds. That was the trouble with going through the tandem, at least the way they did it—you always landed in the exact same geographical location in the destination universe as you were in the universe you’d just left. It would’ve been much easier to take Sasha from the Chicago of her world straight to the heart of Columbia City, where they were ultimately headed, but unfortunately it just didn’t work that way.

“How was the dance?” Fillmore asked sarcastically as he bent over Sasha’s body. He was a short, squat man with the face of a troll and the smile of a Cheshire cat. How he’d come to work for the King’s Elite Service, Thomas didn’t know. There had to be a reason the General kept him around, and it must’ve been a good one in order for the General to have assigned him to Operation Starling, but Thomas couldn’t imagine what it was.

“Don’t touch her,” Thomas said, grabbing Fillmore by his jacket collar and yanking him back. “I’ve got it.” A wave of protectiveness surged through him; Sasha was his assignment, his responsibility—Fillmore had no business getting anywhere near her.

“Did she let you kiss her?” Fillmore teased, unfazed by Thomas’s poisonous glare. Fillmore was a creep, and insubordinate to boot. Thomas was light-years above him in the KES chain of command, and yet Fillmore pressed his luck at every opportunity. This happened from time to time, older agents thinking they could jerk him around in spite of his rank and connections, but he tried not to let it get to him. He knew where he stood.