Dr. Moss’s cragged face hovered mere inches from mine. “We needed to push you to the very breaking point,” he told me. “There is no other way. You needed to be truly afraid.”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “You’re crazy, you know that? You’re both completely insane.”
“You saw something, didn’t you?” Dr. Moss gripped me by the shoulders, shaking me slightly. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know!” I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t have the strength.
“But you made contact,” Dr. Moss insisted. “You saw through Juliana’s eyes—you were able to force your way through to the other end of the tether. Where is she? What did you see?”
“Nothing!” Dr. Moss’s eyes were wild, and his desperation was terrifying me. How could I have been so foolish as to think that I could use my connection with Juliana to my advantage? It was only one more way in which they had me trapped.
“That’s not true,” Dr. Moss said.
“Mossie!” Thomas shoved him away. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s scared?”
“I need to get out of here,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes and rubbing hard, as if by doing so I could erase everything I’d seen.
“You can’t,” Dr. Moss cried. “You have to process what you saw!”
Thomas slipped his arms under mine, lifting me off the ground. I leaned against him, too tired to resist his help. “We’re leaving. You and I will talk later,” he said to Dr. Moss. “I’ve got to get her back to the Castle before someone starts wondering where she is.”
I tried not to think about the people waiting for me back at the Castle. I would deal with them later; right then, my priority was getting the hell off that roof.
“Come on,” Thomas said, guiding me back to the elevator. “Lean on me. We’re almost there.”
TWENTY-FOUR
By the time we’d gotten back to Juliana’s bedroom, I was feeling much better. My heart rate was back to normal and I could draw full breaths again; I was calm enough to hold the glass of water Thomas had brought me, taking small sips to soothe my parched throat. I reclined on the bed, propped up by a couple of pillows; Thomas paced like a jungle cat a few feet away.
“I can’t believe I did that,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration.
Now that I’d recovered a little, I was less frantic and more forgiving. After all, I’d gone up on that roof voluntarily; I’d agreed to do whatever it took. I didn’t think they’d go so far as to nearly throw me off the building, but now that the experience was over and done with that was not what was bothering me. I’d achieved my goal—I’d opened the connection with Juliana, and any time I wanted to now I could dip back in, find the tether again, and travel through it to the other side, if only in my mind. But after what I had seen I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore. Because what I’d discovered was the answer to a question I’d never even thought to ask.
Juliana had been complicit in her own kidnapping. She had walked willingly into the hands of Libertas in exchange for her own freedom. And she and I were the only ones who knew. She, and I, and the mysterious Janus, the person with whom she’d arranged her escape. But who was he? Why in the world had she done it? And, the biggest question of all—how was I going to tell Thomas? Because clearly he had no idea. He believed that Juliana had been kidnapped, and when Thomas believed in things, he did so wholly and without question.
I couldn’t help but feel a burning sense of betrayal. Juliana was just as responsible for my presence in Aurora as anyone else. And not only that, but she’d turned her back on her country, abandoning her family and her responsibilities in pursuit of … what, exactly? What could Libertas possibly give her that was worth leaving behind the only life she’d ever known? I wished the tether allowed me to see into her private mind as well as her surroundings, but I couldn’t hear her thoughts, only what she said and what was said to her. It wasn’t enough. There was so much more I needed to know.
I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get away. The longer I stayed in Aurora, the more I saw how lonely and trapped she must have felt. And with the arranged marriage to Callum, the fate of two countries weighing on her shoulders, maybe it wasn’t so difficult to understand why she had done what she’d done. If it had been me, would I have done the same?
Thomas would be horrified when he found out. I could tell that he put a lot of faith in her, and even though I hated to admit it to myself, I was jealous of that faith. His loyalties, too, lay with Juliana, and he wanted her back as soon as possible. Of course he does, I told myself. It was childish for me to expect him to prefer me. But I didn’t like being a placeholder, a poor substitute for someone else. It made me feel cheap and used and extraneous. More than ever, I wished that I could return to my normal life. At least there, I could be who I was. At least at home, I had people who loved me instead of people who loved the person they thought that I was. I was trying not to think of Granddad, of Gina, because I knew that if I started I would never be able to stop, that I would be consumed with missing them. But it was so hard, and I was so tired. I just wanted this all to be over.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Thomas about Juliana—not just yet. My heart swelled with tenderness for him, so strong that it was almost overwhelming, and I searched in vain for something to say to him.
“How’s your neck?” I settled on at last.
“What?” He glanced up in surprise. “Oh, fine. How’s your hand?”
I was cradling my right hand gingerly in my left. “A little sore,” I admitted.
He laughed. “Well, that’s normal. You’ve never punched anyone before, have you?”
I shook my head. “Not really my thing.”
“For a novice, you’ve got one hell of a right cross,” Thomas told me. His eyes wandered to the foot of the bed, and then he raised them to mine in a silent question. I nodded and he took a seat, careful not to rumple the covers. “Otherwise, you’re okay?”
“I guess.” At least I’d stopped shaking, which was a marked improvement.
“It was Dr. Moss’s idea,” he told me. “I didn’t want to do it. I was so afraid I’d lose my hold.”
“So was I,” I told him. “But you didn’t.”
“No,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “I didn’t. Thank God.”
“I don’t know that God had very much to do with it.”
“You don’t believe in God?” Thomas asked.
“Not really,” I said. “I was raised agnostic.”
He nodded. “Me too. But I’ve always thought that there had to be something out there. Something bigger than this.” He gave me a wry smile. “Maybe it’s just like Mossie said. There’s apeiron—that source of all perfection—and then there’s us. All our different versions, in every possible universe. And that’s it.”
“It’s as good a theory as any,” I mused. I didn’t know anything about what my parents may or may not have believed, but I’d always found it interesting how Granddad talked about the universe, like it was a living, breathing organism full of intention. Even Thomas had done that: The universes want to be equal, he’d said. It reminded me of that phrase Mr. Early had written on the board the first day of my Western philosophy class: Kata to chreon. But even if Thomas and Granddad and the ancient Greeks were right, it didn’t mean the universes cared at all about us as individuals. At the end of the day, one analog was just as good as another. And if that was true, then what did it matter who we actually were?