Tether (29 page)

“To the KES?”

“No,” he said. “The KES is corrupt. I think we can agree on that. Even if the General thinks he’s protecting the country, or the world, or whatever, it doesn’t justify his methods. People are dying on the battlefront and rioting at home. Someone has to take him down if we even have a chance of putting the UCC back together and Juliana on the throne.”

“Just because someone has to take him down doesn’t mean it has to be you,” I argued, though I knew I was wasting my breath. There was no way to talk him out of what he intended to do, whatever that was. Maybe he’d convinced himself it was about duty, or honor, or patriotism, but in the end, it was personal. Thomas needed to destroy the General because his father had spent over a decade fashioning Thomas in his image. I would’ve bet my life Thomas needed to prove to himself that he was something more than just the sum of the General’s expectations. That he was his own person.

But he
was.
Risking—or sacrificing—his life to bring the General’s tyranny to a halt wasn’t going to make that more true, just as failing to do so wasn’t going to make it false. Someone had to say it, and if not me, then who?

“I don’t trust anyone else to do it,” Thomas admitted. “If I went back to Earth with you, I would always wonder if there was something more I could’ve done. I don’t think I could live with the guilt.”

“It’s not your job to save the world,” I told him.

“Says the girl who’s about to follow her analog into another universe
in order to save the world,
” Thomas pointed out.

“That’s different,” I protested. Okay, so he wasn’t wrong,
but if he kept making decisions based on his father, he was never going to step out of the General’s shadow.

“Maybe you’re not the only one with a destiny,” Thomas said. “Maybe I’m supposed to do something important, too. And maybe this is it.”

“Do you really believe that? Or are you just saying it so I’ll get out of your way?”

Thomas gave me a look as if I’d hit him. “We’re on the same side here, Sasha. If I wanted you out of the way, I’d ask you to move.”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re on the same side.” I could feel the gulf between us growing wider even as we sat there, staring at each other, half in love and half lost. “It feels like you’re telling me to leave you behind. That
is
what you’re telling me, right?”

Thomas hesitated. “I think, for now, that’s the safest thing to do. Let me deal with my own universe’s problems. If Selene wants to drag you into hers and you’re willing to go along with it, that’s your choice. But I need you to do me a favor.”

“Oh, you mean besides deserting you to fight the General by yourself?”

“I want you to promise you’ll take Juliana with you to Selene’s universe.”

“What makes you think she’ll even go?” I was getting pretty tired of people talking about Juliana as nothing more than a bargaining chip, a pawn on a chessboard to be moved around and captured by whoever had the most guns and the best advantage. The worst part was, Selene and I had been doing the same thing. We’d been thinking about her only in terms of what
we
wanted, but we knew, better than anybody else, that she was a real person, and she deserved to make her own choices.

“Let’s say I have a feeling she’ll take the first opportunity to save herself,” Thomas said.

“You might be underestimating her.”

“If I promise to help get Callum across the border into Canada, I bet she’ll go,” he said. “They really seem to care about each other, bizarre as that is, and Callum’s not politically important without her. Once he’s gone, nobody will bother looking for him. But I don’t know if there’s a place on this planet we could hide Juliana for long. On Taiga, no one will be able to touch her, and with the two of you, I’ll always know she’s protected, even if I can’t be there to do it.”

“You’d trust me with that responsibility?”

“I’d trust you with anything.” He scooted closer and cupped my face in one hand. “Like I told you before, you’re my true north,” he said matter-of-factly. “You haven’t steered me wrong yet.”

I closed my eyes and let him put his arms around me, though I wasn’t sure that was a very good idea.
We’re breaking up,
I thought, which was strange, because the thing we had between us was never very defined. It didn’t have a name or boundaries; it didn’t look like much from the outside. But inside, it felt infinite, and it seemed impossible that something so vast could ever crumble.

“But I’m always getting you into trouble,” I said, pressing my face into his shoulder.

“Maybe,” he whispered. “But it’s my favorite kind of trouble.”

He shouldn’t have kissed me, but he did. It would’ve been so much easier if he hadn’t. If he’d released me and moved away, said good night and gone to bed, it would’ve been hard, but it would’ve been the right thing, for both of us. He kissed me anyway. It started off slow, just a tentative brush of his
mouth against mine. I tried to pull away, but I was never very good at taking orders, even from myself. I let my hands wander across his shoulders and back; the bare skin of his arms was hot. He cradled the nape of my neck with his hand and wove his fingers through my hair. I shut my eyes and let myself fall. The hard part would come soon enough; I was happy to put it off for just a little while longer.

In quantum mechanics, there’s this theory that says a particle exists in all possible locations simultaneously until someone measures it. The mere act of
looking
forces the particle to take its place in the world. My life held endless prospects, and I could’ve lived it so many different ways. But in that moment, all those other possibilities fell away, and my life, the one I was choosing to live, narrowed to a finite point. Being with Thomas felt like being seen; but more than that, it felt like being
observed.

Thomas placed a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Sasha?”

“Yes?” I felt as if I were going to topple over, like one of those toys with the round bottoms that can never stay up straight. If this was what it felt like to break up in theory, what was a real goodbye going to feel like?

“What exactly does Selene want you to do to save her world? She must have a plan.”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Why don’t you ask her?”

Thomas glanced over my shoulder. I turned to see Selene, just as I expected, standing at the top of the steps. Thomas helped me to my feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m interrupting.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “Stay. Answer Thomas’s question. I’d like to know, too.”

“How did you know I was there?” Selene asked me.

I tapped my temple. “Listening.”

Selene grinned. “You learn fast.” She walked over to us. “To understand what it is I need Sasha and Juliana to do, I’ll have to tell you a little bit about my world.”

“So tell me,” Thomas said.

She paused for a moment, then told him about Typhos, the asteroid that had decimated her planet, and Kairos, the sacred text whose prophecies had saved her people.

“Recently, Kairos’s prophecies have mostly been about one thing,” she went on. “Blueprints for the construction of a machine we call Terminus. The reason we can’t leave Home is that Taiga can’t sustain us. All the plants are gone, all the animals, with the exception of what we were able to preserve. But the planet isn’t completely dead. It’s been a hundred years—the sun has started to emerge from beyond the dust cloud that covers the sky, and the soil still contains the essential nutrients for things to grow. The water is clean, the air is clearing up … now is the time to bring Taiga back to life.”

“How is a machine supposed to do that?” Thomas asked.

“Electroculture,” Selene said. “If we can divert enough energy into the ground, we can accelerate plant growth and revitalize the planet. That is what Terminus will do. It will take the energy we feed it and distribute it into the ground that surrounds Home. We have been constructing it for a quarter of a century, and now it is complete. Except for one thing.”

“Where are you going to get all that energy?” I wasn’t an expert on biology or engineering, but even I knew that electroculture on that level would require a pretty big battery.

Selene held up her hands. “Where do you think?”

“The power.” I understood now why Selene kept insisting that she and I wanted the same thing. Pouring the energy from our metaphysical bond would activate the Terminus machine, but it could also—if I was lucky—be a large enough release
of power that it would overwhelm the tether and break it, just as Dr. March predicted.

“That’s right. But you and I can’t do it on our own,” Selene said. “It has to be the three of us.
The sparrow, the starling, and the lark.
Kairos wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t true.”

“Let’s say Sasha and Juliana both agree to help you,” Thomas said. “Can you guarantee that they’ll be safe in your world? That nobody will come looking for them?”

“Yes, of course,” Selene said with confidence. “No one in your world has ever been to Taiga. They don’t know how to get there.”

“How do you get there?”

“Do you know what ley lines are?” Selene asked. I shook my head. “They’re natural paths over the Earth that are suffused with mystical energies. Ancient cultures knew of them and designated them with monuments and markers. Birds and other migratory creatures follow them when they move from north to south and back again. But they can also be used to move between worlds. We call them transits.”

“And they just … exist?”

“They’re built right into the fabric of the universe,” Selene said, “no technology required. There are doors everywhere, Sasha. You just have to know how to find them.”

She walked over to the wall of windows and looked out at the sliver of the lake we could just barely see through the buildings. “There’s a transit near here—they often occur close to water. That was the one my ancestors stumbled on by accident. It’s not very far from there to Home, on the other side.”

“After you activate this Terminus machine, what happens to Sasha and Juliana?” Thomas asked.

“They’ll have a place with us as long as they wish to stay. And when they want to leave, they’ll be free to go.” Selene
frowned. The idea of Juliana and I going back to our own worlds made her sad—Selene was happiest when we were all together. But I caught a glimpse of Leonid in her thoughts, and the tether practically sighed with a deep yearning for home.

“Are you sure it’s going to work?” I asked.

Selene nodded. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my entire life.”

It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I realized something was wrong.

Selene?
Her eyes were still shut, but I could sense her mind opening.
Can you feel Juliana anywhere?
The last time I remembered sensing her presence on the tether was back during her interview, when it was flashing like a strobe light with anxiety and regret. Now it had faded to almost nothing, just the slightest pale flicker that on the one hand proved she was alive but on the other hand told us something was dangerously off.

“I think she’s unconscious,” I said. “Like they drugged her or something.”

“Whatever it is, it’s deeper than sleep.” Selene rubbed her eyes. “Even when she’s sleeping, I can tell.”

“Me too.” Worry jangled against my rib cage. What was Libertas planning to do with Juliana now that she had served her purpose? I wouldn’t put it past any of them to kill her, especially not Kit, who seemed to hate her with an intensity I wouldn’t have thought a sibling could feel. Then again, Lucas had betrayed Thomas; as an only child, what did I really know about brothers and sisters, anyway?

But I was beginning to know a little through Selene. My attachment to her grew deeper by the minute, and I knew without question that I’d do anything to help her. Juliana, too, if it came to that, even after everything. The strength of these protective feelings frightened me, but they also made me feel important. There were people in the world who counted on me. I didn’t want to let them down.

“We’d better tell the others,” I said. We found the KES agents gathered downstairs in the living room, sipping mugs of coffee and talking in low voices. Thomas was in a corner conferring with Adele. I searched for Callum but didn’t see him; he must not have woken up yet. Either that or he was avoiding everyone. The safe house was packed with people he’d been raised to see as his enemies; this new situation probably wasn’t doing a whole lot to change that way of thinking.

They all looked up as Selene and I descended the stairs. “What’s wrong?” Navin asked. “You two look like you’ve been punched in the gut.”

“We can barely sense Juliana on the tether,” I explained. “I think Libertas knocked her out after the interview.” This didn’t seem to surprise anyone.

“She escaped them before,” Thomas said, rising from his seat and moving closer to me—but not too close. “I bet they’re not going to take their chances on her doing it again.”

“Smart,” Rocko said. He shrank beneath the weight of a half-dozen glares. “What? That power they have is spooky. I wouldn’t want anyone using it on me if I could help it.”