Tether (25 page)

She barreled through the door with her gun raised, and there was nothing for the rest of us to do but to follow her.

“Where are you taking us?” Callum demanded.

“Our moto is just up the street,” Thomas explained. “We’re going to a KES safe house, and then we’ll discuss what to do next.”

Selene’s green light danced happily on her end of the tether.
We’re almost there,
she said.
Oh, Sasha. Taiga is almost saved.

What are you talking about?
Juliana asked. I was just about to respond when a bullet whizzed past my head and shattered the glass of the car window directly behind me.

“Get
down
!” Thomas grabbed the person closest to him—Adele—and pulled her to the ground, rolling away so he wouldn’t flatten her. Bullets zipped through the air like rocks in a landslide, pinging against the metal siding of the motos that lined the street. The violent sound of glass breaking filled the air above his head, but time seemed to slow as the shards fell; they floated down like snowflakes, weightless and sweet. This happened sometimes: when the adrenaline started flowing, the world decelerated, as if someone had pulled the fabric of the universe tight around him. All at once he felt his senses heighten and his mind quiet as his training kicked in.

He pulled out his sidearm and pressed his back up against the nearest moto, then glanced around to assess the situation. To his left was Sergei, peeking through a blown-out window, with Juliana cowering in his shadow. To his right—he let out a deep sigh of relief—was Sasha, pressed against the concrete sidewalk, with Navin and Selene at her side. Cora and Rocko had dragged Callum behind another moto, and Tim was standing against the mansion’s garden wall, hidden
in the shadows. Everyone was alive and apparently unhurt. Well, almost. Adele pulled herself into a seated position beside him, clutching her knee.

“A little gentler next time, Mayhew, if you don’t mind,” she grumbled.

“Maybe next time I’ll take a pass on saving your life,” he returned. Adele laughed.

Without agreeing on it or sharing anything more than a glance, he and Adele rose to their feet and began shooting at the windows of the building on the opposite side of the street. Rocko, Cora, Sergei, and Tim followed suit, returning fire with an exactness that was indistinguishable from instinct. They discharged their weapons without hesitation, until the dark figures behind the empty eyes of the building stopped moving and disappeared. Breathing hard, Thomas exchanged looks with his team; there was a subtle gleam in their eyes that hadn’t been there before, and he remembered how young they all were, himself included. They were still getting used to the exhilaration of fighting the bad guys and winning.

The bullet wound in his shoulder ached with the echo of his gun’s recoil. He did a quick sweep of the street, narrowing in on Sasha, who had her hands pressed against her face. Selene touched her back; she jumped, startled, and looked up, spotting Thomas. He crouched down to examine her, brushing the hair away from her eyes and taking her hands.

“Are you okay?” If there’d ever been any hope of hiding the way he felt about her from his fellow agents, it had evaporated; Juli had done a fine job of unmasking their relationship, and although the words
boyfriend
and
girlfriend
seemed both too casual and too definite to describe what he and Sasha were, he was proud to wear the label, insofar as it meant anything at all.

She gave him a weak smile. “I’m fine. Just a little shaken up. No worries.”

All he had was worries, but he didn’t say that to her. Instead, he helped her to her feet and took her in his arms, because, really, what else could he possibly do?

Then she stiffened, and he knew she’d seen something, or heard something, or felt something he couldn’t access. The tether linking her mind and those of her analogs sometimes seemed like a third person standing between them, always transmitting, always watchful. But he made a mistake. He misinterpreted, read the signal wrong.

“Gunner, Patel, bring the moto around,” he said. He wanted away from this bullet-riddled, too-exposed street immediately. More than anything, he wanted to make them all safe, even the ones who didn’t think they needed his protection.

Then he heard Juliana scream.

He whipped around, drawing his weapon again, even though he’d wasted all his bullets on the Libertine shooters. A dark green van with the ten stars of the Libertas insignia screeched to a stop at the intersection, pulling up just as a man in black dropped a sack over Juliana’s head and looped an arm around her neck, dragging her toward the vehicle. Sergei grappled with three other Libertines, fighting them off as best he could, but they overpowered him quicker than Thomas could run, knocking him unconscious with a hard blow to the head. He dropped to the ground, and his attackers ran off, jumping into the van as Juliana disappeared into its belly and shutting the door behind them.

Thomas sprinted after the van as it sped down the street. He ran harder than he ever had before, flying so fast over the broken asphalt that the soles of his boots barely touched the ground. The driver of the van stomped on the gas pedal;
he would lose them in seconds if he didn’t do something. He leapt onto the back of the van, scrabbling for purchase on the bumper as his fingers closed over the hot metal handle. He felt it turn, and then the door opened, sending him soaring; he held on tight as he dangled off the back of the van. The road rushed like a river beneath his feet.

The van took a sharp turn and he swung back. Somehow Juliana had gotten the hood off, and he caught her terrified expression, heard her voice—so nightmarishly like Sasha’s, threaded with panic—as she screamed his name. Then someone stepped between them and pointed a gun at his hand, still gripping the handle.

“Nice try, toy soldier,” the man said with a self-satisfied grin. “Next time you might want to pay a little bit more attention.” Then he fired the gun and Thomas let go, tumbling to the ground. The asphalt tore up every inch of exposed skin as he rolled to lessen the impact of the fall. He came to rest in a gutter, choking on a puddle of dirty, stagnant water. By the time he managed to stand, the van was nowhere to be seen.

Juliana was gone. “Thomas,” Sasha said as he limped back to where he’d left the group. They were huddled together, talking in frantic, hushed voices. Sergei slumped against the moto, awake but injured; Cora held a ripped piece of fabric to his head in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

Sasha rushed to Thomas’s side and put a light hand to the cuts on his face, but he winced at her touch and jerked away. There was no part of him that didn’t feel the hot, dark burn of shame at losing Juliana to Libertas—
again
—and he couldn’t stand her kindness. Just looking at her reminded him how badly he’d failed, and for the first time he understood how much of a liability having her there was. She was a distraction,
one that had cost him his mission and put his queen in terrible danger. Sasha never should’ve come to Aurora. It had been so stupidly selfish of him to see it any other way.

“Everybody, get in the moto,
now.
” Nobody bothered to argue with him; the whole group was shaken up about losing Juliana, even Adele, Tim, and Cora, who’d all seen combat before. Even Rocko, who under most circumstances would’ve died rather than betray fear. They piled into the moto, all except Sasha, who hung back and fixed him with a searching look.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a couple of scratches.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He stared at her blankly, and she stared right back. Finally she broke her gaze. “All right. I know, I know,” she said as he gestured at the open moto door. “I’m getting in.”

It had been just six weeks since he’d last seen the safe house on Eugenie Street, but he felt like an entirely different person. As they pulled up in front of the squat redbrick building amid the jungle of run-down high-rises that lined the block, he recalled, with perfect clarity, the person he’d been back then. Devoted and careful, he’d spent almost all of his time thinking about the KES and his mission, plotting the shortest route to success. It had never been about rising in the organization, not really. He’d been raised to believe he was built for greatness, and his whole life centered on realizing that potential.

But the safe house was the place where all of that focus and determination began to break down. Or maybe it had happened just a few hours earlier than that, on Earth with Sasha. Sometime between leaving his world and returning
to it, a crack had formed inside of him, small at first, then gradually widening until it became an enormous canyon that split his heart in two irreconcilable pieces: the part that loved and would do anything to be with Sasha and the part that still wanted to serve his country, the people he’d pledged his life to protect. When he’d survived his execution and Sasha had returned for him, he’d thought, briefly and foolishly, that there was something he could do to bridge the gap, so that he could have both things. Now he knew that was impossible. He would have to choose, and soon, or else he would lose them both.

“What are we doing here?” Sasha asked. “I thought this place was compromised.”

“It wasn’t,” Thomas replied. Distance, that was what he needed—to put as much space between himself and Sasha as possible so he could make his decision with a clear head. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we?” Callum demanded. “Where have you taken us?”

“This is a KES safe house,” Adele explained. “We’ll hunker down here until we can figure out what to do next.”

“We have to find Juliana!” Callum insisted. “How much time do you need to figure that out?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Tim replied. “We need strategy, tactics. We can’t just go in there swinging our fists. We’ll be crushed.”

“Not to mention, we don’t even know where they’ve taken her,” Rocko pointed out.

Callum was quiet for a moment. “I think I might be able to help a little bit on that score.”

“Great,” Navin said. “Where is she?”

“Not here,” Thomas said. “Let’s get everyone inside.
Gunner, ditch the moto somewhere and meet us back here. Rocko, you go with her. I don’t want anyone doing anything alone, you got it?” Libertas would never have been able to get their hands on Juliana if Sergei hadn’t been the only agent guarding her when they pulled up. Thomas wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

Everyone murmured in agreement, even Rocko. They all seemed wary of Thomas, as if they weren’t sure what he would do next. He had to get himself together. He couldn’t have his team doubting his leadership abilities, especially not while everything else was so uncertain. He’d put himself and his desires before his mission for far too long. It was time to give some thought to what everyone else needed from him.

He stood guard while the rest of them descended the stairs to the basement entrance. Sasha put her hand on his arm as she went by, but he let her pass without acknowledgment. Guilt plucked at him—she’d done nothing wrong, and she didn’t deserve to be frozen out—but he didn’t know what else to do. He was Agent Thomas Mayhew now, and Agent Thomas Mayhew didn’t allow himself to get sidetracked worrying about other people’s feelings. Emotions were poison to careful planning; he couldn’t feel and think at the same time. Thinking was what the situation called for, so he put the half of his severed heart that cared only for her in the same dark cabinet where all of his secret pains and weaknesses lived, then shut the door.

As soon as Thomas stepped over the threshold, a familiar voice greeted him. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite toy soldier,” Fillmore said, grinning from his seat on the only chair in the room. The place had not changed at all since Thomas had last been there. It was still the bed and the metal munitions locker, with a tiny bathroom to the left. Sasha stared at the bed as if she expected it to come alive and bite her, and Thomas forced
himself not to remember her lying there the night he brought her through the tandem.

Thomas glared at Fillmore. “That’s enough.”

“And look! You’ve brought my favorite fake princess with you,” Fillmore continued, bowing low to Sasha, who looked so disgusted that Thomas had to smile. She really hated Fillmore, with good reason. “Who are the rest of these—?” His brow wrinkled as Selene stepped out from behind Sasha. Fillmore shot Thomas a confused look. “Where did you find
another
one?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Thomas said. Cora and Rocko came through the door. “We need your help. Libertas has the princess—”

“Queen,” Callum supplied. “She’s your queen now.”

Leave it to the only royal in the room to insist he use Juliana’s proper title in the midst of all this chaos. “Libertas has the queen, and we need a plan to get her out.”

“Happy to be of service,” Fillmore said. “Things have been a little dull around here since Operation Starling ended. How can I help?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Thomas said, kneading the back of his neck. Fillmore could indeed be very useful, in spite of the fact that he was disrespectful and highly insubordinate at even the best of times. He knew the Tattered City better than anyone, and he’d been involved in several ops involving Libertas.