“It’d be worth it, to bring her back. To make things right again. Besides,” he continued, with a resigned shrug. “What can he do to me? I’m his son.” Something in the tone of his voice told me he didn’t quite believe that, but he was trying very hard to convince himself it was true.
“Right.” I stared at my hands. “Now all I have to do is figure out how the hell I’m going to do it.”
“Actually,” he said. “I might know someone who can help you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and so do you. Come on,” he said. “We’re going to see Dr. Moss.”
TWENTY-TWO
“Dr. Moss … the doctor who treated me last night?” That incident seemed so long ago. I’d nearly forgotten it in the hubbub surrounding Callum’s arrival. I glanced at Thomas’s wrist, hoping to catch a glimpse of his watch, but he caught me looking and raised his eyebrows with a hint of comedy that I was glad to see.
“I’ll have you back in plenty of time for dinner,” Thomas promised. “I’d rather face down a squad of ten Libertines than Gloria when her schedule’s been compromised.”
I laughed. The tension that had gathered up in my shoulders melted a bit. I took a deep breath to center myself. We’d crossed over from the Castle to the Tower via one of the glass sky bridges that connected the two buildings and were now standing in a circular elevator bank. Each elevator was marked with the floors it served, but the one we were waiting for simply said DOWN, which struck me as more than a little ominous. When it arrived I stepped into it beside Thomas and watched him hit the button labeled SUBBASEMENT F.
“Dr. Moss is your friend with all the theories about analogs, isn’t he?”
Thomas nodded. “About Dr. Moss,” he said cagily, tugging at the cuffs of his suit jacket. “He’s not technically a medical doctor.”
“What are you talking about? He gave me a shot!”
“I couldn’t call a real doctor,” Thomas explained. “Dr. Rowland, the royal physician, wouldn’t have been satisfied with giving you a little antihistamine and going about his night. He would’ve been suspicious; he would’ve wanted to do blood work and all kinds of tests on you, and I think you know what that might’ve yielded.”
“Would it have proven I wasn’t Juliana?”
“I don’t know.” Thomas shrugged. “But it’s possible. I knew the General wouldn’t want to risk it, so I took the liberty of calling Dr. Moss instead.”
“What kind of doctor
“Theoretical physicist,” Thomas said with a wry smile, perhaps thinking of my “family business.” My stomach dipped with the impact of a sudden sadness at the thought of Granddad and my parents, but I did my best to put it out of my mind. I couldn’t allow myself to fall apart with missing them, not when I was so close to getting answers about my mysterious ability and its implications for my quest to return home. “He’s completely brilliant, Mossie. He invented the anchors. He knows everything there is to know about parallel universes and analogs.”
I fiddled with the anchor. Most of the time I forgot it was there. “Mossie?”
A shy grin transformed his face. “I like Dr. Moss. And you’ll like him, too.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because,” he said with confidence as the elevator arrived at Subbasement F. “The General hates him.”
The F level contained only a short hallway with one steel door opposite the elevator. A sign on the door read:
SUBBASEMENT F
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED
NO ONE BELOW LEVEL 6 CLEARANCE ADMITTED WITHOUT A DOD ESCORT.
The LCD screen next to the door wasn’t green, or even blue, but bright red and pulsing, a very clear sign that no one was welcome down here, me included. But Thomas had Level 6 clearance; his handprint changed the screen to blue, and the code he punched in unlocked the door. It swished open, revealing a large, slick laboratory just beyond the threshold. Loud music blasted out of unseen speakers, and strangely enough, the song was one that I recognized.
“Mossie!” Thomas shouted. I glanced around the windowless laboratory, taking in several imposing machines, digital boards covered with hastily scribbled mathematical formulas, and tables cluttered with all manner of things: burbling Bunsen burners, stacks of files, and piles and piles of books. There was one thing missing, however—Dr. Moss.
“Mossie!” Thomas cried again. The elderly man popped up from behind one of the shuddering machines. When Dr. Moss saw Thomas, he grinned and shuffled over to an old-fashioned record player. An earsplitting scratch filled the air as he removed the needle from the spinning LP.
“Thomas!” He rushed forward to shake Thomas’s hand. When his eyes landed on me, his grin grew so wide I thought it might crack his face in half. “And look who you’ve brought! Our little Earthling.”
I wrinkled my nose at the term, despite the fact that it was as accurate a description of what I was as anything else. I preferred it to “analog,” but all I could think of were the alien movies I’d seen as a kid.
“Remind me of your name, dear,” Dr. Moss said. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.” He tapped himself on the temple. “Mind like Swiss cheese, and growing holier by the day!”
“Sasha,” I told him, gathering my confidence. It seemed like forever since I’d said my own name out loud. “Sasha Lawson.”
“That’s right. Ms. Lawson.” Dr. Moss grinned at me. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to find you got through the tandem in one piece.” I didn’t doubt it; he’d invented the anchor that had brought me to Aurora, so if I hadn’t survived the journey, it would’ve been at least partially his fault. I shot Thomas a dubious look. This was the man who was supposed to help me? He seemed a little nuts.
“Was that Chuck Berry you were playing?” I asked.
Dr. Moss snapped his fingers, impressed. “Right you are. I was introduced to the Father of Rock and Roll by another one of your kind many years ago, and I’ve never lost the taste.”
Dr. Moss sat down on a nearby stool and drummed his fingertips on his knee. The steel tabletop was littered with notebooks containing lines of cramped, handwritten notes. Seeing them—the whole place, in fact—reminded me of Granddad’s lab at the university, except larger and shinier. On the table there stood a large glass bottle of the type that might once have contained vodka, and it was filled with tiny origami stars in a rainbow of colors. In fact, they were scattered all about, piling up in the empty spaces and peeking out from beneath his notes.
I picked up a green one and held it between my thumb and forefinger. I wondered if the one I’d found in Juliana’s nightstand had its origin here, in Dr. Moss’s lab. “Did you make these?”
“Actually,” Thomas said, taking it and dropping it into the bottle, “they’re mine.”
“Yours?” Then had Thomas given Juliana the blue star, as some sort of token or memento? Was that why she’d kept it? Was that why she’d hidden it away?
He nodded. “When I was little, I was anxious and fidgety. One of my teachers taught me how to make these, and told me that whenever I felt antsy, I should just take out a piece of paper, rip it up, and make stars.” He gave me a wry smile. “The habit stuck.”
I smiled at the mental image of a boyish Thomas sitting at a classroom desk, making stars with his restless hands. “Aw, that’s sweet.”
He rolled his eyes; apparently, “sweet” was not a compliment to a soldier. He ran his fingers through his hair and dipped his head to hide a faint pinkness that colored the tips of his ears.
“I’ve been keeping them safe for you, boy,” Dr. Moss said, not even bothering to look up from a nearby text that had drawn his attention away from us.
“What’s Operation Starling?” I asked. Dr. Moss swiveled around and Thomas lifted his eyes to mine. A moment of silence passed. “Oh,” I said, my voice flat with realization. “Right. Why do you call it that?”
