Tandem

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.

It sank in then, as I watched the two of them part ways. Thomas wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t insane. Everything he had told me was true as far as he knew it. I was trapped in another world with no idea how to get back home. 

EIGHT

It was too hot outside for all the clothes I was wearing. I started to unzip the hoodie, but Thomas stopped me.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Taking off some of these layers. I’m baking.”

“Keep it on,” he said. He glanced up and down the street, which was mostly empty except for a few people wandering by. What is he so worried about? I wondered. The street was practically deserted, and anyway I was dressed like the Unabomber—surely that was much more noticeable than just showing my face.

Since he was looking around, I did, too. It was difficult to describe the Chicago of Aurora. If someone had insisted that I was standing in the city I’d grown up in, it would have been hard to point to anything definitive that would prove them wrong, but I knew instinctively that this wasn’t my home.

There were some things, though, that were obviously unusual. I squinted to read a nearby street sign: West Eugenie Street. We were in Lincoln Park—or we would’ve been, if we were on Earth—but the neighborhood, which I knew, was unrecognizable. The surrounding buildings were taller than I would’ve expected, given that we weren’t downtown; there should’ve been houses and apartments no taller than four stories, but there were towering high-rises in their place, as far as the eye could see. The basement we’d emerged from belonged to one of three side-by-side redbrick row houses that sat in the center of the block, overshadowed by their larger neighbors, remnants of a bygone era. I wondered at their even being there; it was as if someone had forgotten about them, or they were being protected, although they were so run-down that it seemed unlikely.

The rest of the buildings were more modern-looking than they would’ve been in my Chicago, as if they’d just been built. They were mostly glass, with elegantly curved edges and tinted windows that reflected the light from the sun in a rainbow of colors like pools of oil. But they were more dilapidated, too, as if they’d been around for ages and not well kept up. The awning that protruded from the entrance of a nearby condominium was torn, the shreds of what remained fluttering half-heartedly in the breeze. There were no trees—I looked up and down the street for blocks without seeing one—and more trash in the gutters. It was as if I’d been transported to a slightly distant future where nobody took care of anything. Cars lined the edges of the street, but they were models I didn’t quite recognize. They were sleeker, and more compact, all except a large, intimidating, black SUV parked a few doors down. Thomas headed in that direction and motioned for me to follow him.

“Stay close,” he said in a low tone. “If anyone passes by, don’t look at them.” Who is this person that I look like? I asked myself. She had to be someone important, otherwise Thomas wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.

When we reached the SUV, Thomas went around to the trunk and pressed his thumb against a small LCD pad the size of a Post-it note near the handle.

“Yeah, this vehicle isn’t at all conspicuous,” I said.

Thomas didn’t rise to the bait. He simply opened the cargo door and said, “Climb in.”

“Absolutely not.” I stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not getting into the trunk, are you serious?”