Tandem

We didn’t have to wait long. Within moments I was feeling much better; the headache had started to recede, the hives were clearing up faster than they had appeared, and in the space of fifteen minutes, I could breathe normally again. I sat up as soon as I had the strength and thanked Dr. Moss.

“Happy to be of service, Your Highness. If there’s nothing else … ?” He looked at the General, who shook his head.

“That will be all,” the General said. “You’re excused.”

Dr. Moss nodded. As he stood, he made eye contact with me, and deliberately held my gaze. A smile quirked the ends of his mouth. He knows, I thought. Was Dr. Moss the same scientist friend Thomas had mentioned before, the one with all the theories about analogs?

When he was satisfied that I understood, the doctor turned and left. I wanted to call him back and pepper him with questions—Thomas had told me a lot about the tandem, but there was still so much I wanted to know, especially about the strange visions I’d been having of Juliana. Maybe Dr. Moss could explain things better.

Thomas slid his arm around my back and helped me stand. “I’ll see you to your room,” he offered. I shook him off, remembering another offer he’d made once, to walk me home. I didn’t want him to touch me, or help me, or do anything for me. I just wanted to be alone.

Perhaps deciding it wasn’t worth fighting in front of the others, he let go of me, but I hadn’t gotten more than a few steps on my own before I had to stop, because the room was spinning. I reached out instinctively and he caught me around the waist.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” he asked. I gave in, seeing as I obviously wasn’t going to be able to get back to Juliana’s bedroom without assistance. As we left the room, Whitehall gave me a kind smile.

“Be well, Juli,” he said with affection. I nodded, wanting to appear grateful, but all I could do was wonder if I would ever truly be well again.

 

THOMAS IN THE TOWER / 2

“Sir, I think we have a mole,” Thomas said. It was early in the morning, and sun was just beginning to rise over Columbia City, chasing away the aurora. He was seated across from his father in the General’s office, squeezing in this audience while the General signed off on some long-neglected paperwork. His interactions with the General had more or less always been this way, with the General only half listening as he attended to some more important matter of Citadel business. Thomas was used to it, but this morning he found it frustrating, and was doing a poor job of hiding it. The General despised signs of physical restlessness, so Thomas often had to resist pacing, drumming his fingers, tapping his feet—all those natural impulses that struck when he was agitated—but today he couldn’t.

“That’s ridiculous,” the General said.

“No, it isn’t,” Thomas insisted. Most of the time, arguing with the General was a fool’s errand, but Thomas wasn’t going to back down about this. If someone inside the Citadel was feeding Libertas information, Sasha was in greater danger than they had foreseen. “They took Juliana out of here right under our noses, leaving behind no trace of entry or exit. How could they have done it without the help of someone with intimate knowledge of the Castle? And Grant Davis—it’s not a coincidence that they had a patrol on the South End at the same time he came through the tandem. Someone told them to go there. They were waiting for him.”

“And you think it’s someone in the KES?” The General’s tone implied that he thought Thomas was being insubordinate. He would have to tread very carefully around this issue—except that he had no interest in doing so.

“The KES isn’t impervious!” Thomas gripped the wooden arms of his chair. The thought of one of his KES brothers betraying the agency and putting Operation Starling in jeopardy made him sick to his stomach, but he wasn’t going to turn a blind eye and keep walking into Libertas traps. Libertas had no idea who Sasha really was —that was a secret known by so few people that unless the mole was himself, the General, Gloria, or Dr. Moss, they couldn’t have any inkling as to her otherworldly origins—but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find out, if the General ignored the fact that someone was funneling KES secrets their way.

“I know it isn’t,” the General told him sternly. “I’ve been part of the KES for thirty years, and I’ve seen many trusted agents exposed for the traitors they were. Do not presume to believe you know everything, Thomas; arrogance will betray you every time.”

Thomas sighed. “I’m sorry, sir.” His father was right; one of Thomas’s weaknesses was his propensity to mistake passion for understanding. He was devoted to the KES and its mission, but he had only been part of it for two years. There was still so much about the agency that he didn’t know.

“If you think there’s a mole, then find him,” the General said. “And find him fast. Because the world is about to change, and when it does, we must be at our strongest.”

“I will, sir,” Thomas said, energized by the General’s faith in him, grudging though it was.

“Good,” the General said, turning back to his paperwork. “Now go eat something. They can hear your stomach growling all the way up at the Academy.”

Thomas rode the elevator from the General’s office suite, which took up the entire 114th floor of the Tower, down to the 62nd floor, which contained the KES mess hall. The King’s Elite Service was a network that spread all over the country and the Tower was its nerve center. More than just a headquarters, the Tower was the workplace and residence of over twenty-five thousand agents and support staffers; they worked on the lower and upper floors of the building, but the middle floors were reserved for residential and other living spaces. Not all agents opted to take the General’s blanket offer of free housing, but Thomas hadn’t had a choice; when he received his assignment after he matriculated from the KES Academy, he’d been given his room number and that had been that. Housing quality was determined by years served, not by rank, so he had one of the smallest, least desirable rooms; it had a bathroom but no kitchen, so he was forced to take all his meals in the mess.

Not that he minded. The mess was one of his favorite places in the Tower, because it was where agents and staff came to socialize. He liked its noise and chaos; it reminded him of his time at the Academy. He’d only been there for a little less than six months, but they had been some of happiest months of his life.

It was a little too early for the breakfast rush when Thomas arrived at the mess, so there were only a few people scattered across the enormous dining hall, spooning oatmeal or scrambled eggs into their mouths while going over files or reading copies of the Royal Eagle, Columbia City’s largest daily newspaper. Thomas got his food and made his way to his usual table. He was looking forward to finally being alone, because it would give him some space to think about his rapidly growing pile of problems.

First, there was Sasha. Just about everything to do with her was a problem. He hadn’t realized just how much he would like her, but he had, from the moment they’d met. At the time, he’d put this down to her resemblance to Juliana, but it hadn’t taken long for him to see how different Sasha was from her analog. If people were houses, Juliana was like the Citadel she’d grown up in—beautiful and well-appointed, but guarded and set apart—while Sasha was her grandfather’s Hyde Park Victorian—cheerful and bright, with the windows and doors flung wide open. Sasha was curious and interested in people besides herself; she liked to laugh and didn’t take herself too seriously, while Juliana, accustomed to being used and befriended for her position, kept everyone at arm’s length. Spending time with Sasha on Earth had been easy and fun, and he’d meant what he said to her on the beach: it had been the best night of his life. Despite the fact that he’d been on a mission, Thomas had never felt freer than when he was on Earth; it had been such a relief to live a normal life for once, even if it wasn’t—and could never be—his forever.

It was the run-in with Libertas in the Tattered City that showed him how much he’d grown to care for Sasha. He’d been so angry with her for running off, and worried for her, too, but when he saw her in that alley with that stringy haired Libertine’s arm around her neck, his blood had run cold, as if a splinter of ice had become lodged in his heart. Fear was an unusual emotion for Thomas—he’d been trained so well over his years of military education to control it, to process it into swift, precise action. He’d learned long ago how not to let it paralyze him, and it’d been years since he’d properly felt it, like a drizzle of freezing rain down his spine. But he felt it then, and