Tandem

brothers and sisters, in your homes and in your cities, but I deliver unto you this message. You all know why we’re here today. You all know of the injustice we have suffered under the tyrant rule of this declining monarchy. You all know of the promise that comes with revolution. The promise of liberty. The promise of freedom. The promise of choice. Our ancestors lived under the oppressive rule of a foreign royal for centuries, before the fathers of the First Revolution raised an army against them, and yet their true and solemn purpose was hijacked by thieves and traitors, a man that would crown himself king. And now, today, his inbred, worthless spawn sits on a throne while we—the people of this once-great nation—bleed and toil for his benefit. The king and his advisers say that the only way to make peace with Farnham is to force two teenagers into marriage, but the true path to peace is overthrowing both monarchies and forming one republic, of the people, by the people, and for the people!”

The furious hum of voices swelled to a roar. People teemed around me on every side, pressing forward to rush the empty stage. Someone shoved me and I took a step back, grinding the toes of a nearby protester under my heel.

“Hey!” he shrieked. I turned to apologize and he got a good look at my face.

“It’s you,” he whispered. Then, louder, “It’s her! It’s the princess!”

Princess? I thought in a panic. What the hell was he talking about? I was no princess! Then I remembered what Thomas had said back in the basement. Your face is a little bit more familiar to the average person. People were turning and staring, and I suddenly felt very exposed. They thought I was someone else.

Someone they hated.

As I scanned the scene, I saw, for the first time, clumps of armed men dressed in black. They were carrying military assault rifles and patrolling the perimeter in groups of two or three. One of them noticed me, and we locked eyes. He pointed me out to another guard, and instinct took over. I began to run again, sprinting as fast as my legs could take me.

NINE

Trapped, trapped, trapped. The word echoed through my head, banishing any other thought as I ran past shops and homes and cars and people who turned to look at me with unabashed curiosity. I was going too fast to tell if anyone else had recognized me, but I really hoped no one had.

For a while, I didn’t even look to see where I was going—I didn’t know the city anyway, so what was the point? Then it occurred to me how dumb that was—I was in Chicago. The Aurora version of Chicago, but still, it was possible there were similarities, that there was something I could use to orient myself. The Sears Tower, the enduring symbol of the city on Earth, had to be around somewhere.

I scanned the tops of the buildings, trying to locate the singular silhouette of the landmark and navigate by it. There were other skyscrapers, everywhere in fact, huge ones that disappeared into the clouds that had started to gather, including what looked to be an enormous campanile rising in the distance, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. The Sears Tower didn’t seem to exist in this version of Chicago; perhaps it had never been built. I knew its shape so well, there was no way I’d ever miss it, or mistake it for something else. I was completely adrift in this unrecognizable world.

My home wasn’t here. It didn’t matter which way I went or how fast I ran.

But I kept running. I passed several of the press boards Thomas had mentioned earlier; none of them, to my relief, were showing my picture, or his, although I could see now why he’d feared the possibility. The boards were like giant TVs, broadcasting silent news reports and advertisements in an eye-straining array of bright, dazzling colors. There was one every few blocks or so, mounted on the sides of buildings and rooftops, big as billboards. If someone had put my picture up, it would’ve been seen by almost everyone in the city in minutes, maybe less.

I kept time by watching the clocks on the press boards as I sped by them—it was around four thirty in the afternoon, meaning I’d been gone from my world for a little less than seventeen hours. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour ticked by. The chiming of the bells in the faraway tower reached me on a breeze. Finally, I figured I’d gone long and far enough that Thomas would be hard-pressed to find me; I ducked down a quiet street and sank to the ground, panting. I’d gotten away. Though exhausted, I was proud of myself for escaping. I relished in that feeling of accomplishment for a few moments before I let myself acknowledge what I’d known all along—I was truly alone, and I didn’t have the first clue as to how to get home again.

The only idea that sprang to mind was to keep running, but I was so tired, and I’d stopped paying attention to my surroundings. I tucked my knees against my chest, wrapping my arms around them, like if I could get as compact as possible, no one would be able to see me. There was a press board directly across the street; I spent a few minutes mindlessly watching the advertisements go by until a news program took over. I held my breath, expecting to see my own face, but instead the picture was of a building; it had been designed in the Queen Anne style, just like my house back on Earth. The headline that ran alongside the photo said: COLUMBIA CITY, NYD— BOMB SCARE AT KING ALBERT STATION. HUNDREDS EVACUATED.

It was infuriating not to have my cell phone; if I had, I’d have been on it in a second, frantically trying to decipher the codes of this strange place, to see which parts of it corresponded to parts of my own world. Practically, that wouldn’t have worked for a number of reasons, but my fingers itched to do it anyway. I’d never heard of Columbia City on Earth, though that didn’t mean much; the United States was a huge country. But something about the broadcast told me that Columbia City was a big metropolis—big enough, at least, to have a fancy train station—which meant that it was important. Then I remembered Thomas’s badge—United Commonwealth of Columbia, it had said. Thomas had called it the UCC. Maybe Columbia City was their capital. If so, it likely only corresponded to a few places: New York, D.C., Boston, or L.A. I stopped puzzling over it then, realizing that I was only doing it to distract myself from the task at hand, which was figuring out what to do next.

And then, out of nowhere, someone grabbed my arm and dragged me into a nearby alley.

I struggled to my feet and found that I was surrounded by three armed men dressed in black; each had a forest green patch on his arm, ten tiny golden stars stitched on it in the shape of a triangle, the same pattern I’d seen on the banners at the rally. I knew without having to be told that they belonged to the group called Libertas. My stomach sank. They were most certainly not there to help me.

One of the men—bald, with dark gray eyes and a puckered pink scar across his forehead—took hold of my ponytail and yanked me toward him.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his breath spreading, thick and sour, over my face.

“Nobody,” I whimpered. Sparks exploded in front of my eyes and a pain so bad I could hardly think swelled in my skull. “Please don’t hurt me,” I begged. “I’m nobody. I just want to go home!”

The bald guy laughed, tightening his grip on my hair. I winced, squeezing my eyes shut to stem the tide of tears. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”

“Let go!” I cried, my fingers scrabbling against his arm, trying for a patch of exposed skin to sink my nails into. “You’re hurting me!”

He leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “Answer my questions and I’ll think about it. Doesn’t that sound like a fair deal?” I nodded. I was shaking like a sapling in a hurricane. “Who are you and who do you work for?”

“I’m no one,” I insisted again. “I don’t work for anybody. Please. I haven’t done anything! You’ve got me confused with somebody else.”

The bald guy snorted. “Well, you’re wrong about that, sweetheart. I know exactly who you aren’t.” He laughed and ran the muzzle of his gun along the base of my jaw. A sob rose in my throat; to keep it from escaping I bit my lip, so hard that it started to bleed. “You haven’t given me much of a choice,” he went on. “We had a deal, and you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain, so I’m afraid—”

Suddenly, from behind us, there came a loud crash, but before the men or I could react, a bullet whizzed through the air and found its target in the bald guy’s shoulder. He released me with a guttural moan and I stumbled forward, landing hard on my hands and knees. Ignoring the pain that tore through my palms, I glanced