I kept time by watching the clocks on the press boards as I sped by them—it was around four thirty in the afternoon, meaning I’d been gone from my world for a little less than seventeen hours. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour ticked by. The chiming of the bells in the faraway tower reached me on a breeze. Finally, I figured I’d gone long and far enough that Thomas would be hard-pressed to find me; I ducked down a quiet street and sank to the ground, panting. I’d gotten away. Though exhausted, I was proud of myself for escaping. I relished in that feeling of accomplishment for a few moments before I let myself acknowledge what I’d known all along—I was truly alone, and I didn’t have the first clue as to how to get home again.
The only idea that sprang to mind was to keep running, but I was so tired, and I’d stopped paying attention to my surroundings. I tucked my knees against my chest, wrapping my arms around them, like if I could get as compact as possible, no one would be able to see me. There was a press board directly across the street; I spent a few minutes mindlessly watching the advertisements go by until a news program took over. I held my breath, expecting to see my own face, but instead the picture was of a building; it had been designed in the Queen Anne style, just like my house back on Earth. The headline that ran alongside the photo said: COLUMBIA CITY, NYD—BOMB SCARE AT KING ALBERT STATION. HUNDREDS EVACUATED.
It was infuriating not to have my cell phone; if I had, I’d have been on it in a second, frantically trying to decipher the codes of this strange place, to see which parts of it corresponded to parts of my own world. Practically, that wouldn’t have worked for a number of reasons, but my fingers itched to do it anyway. I’d never heard of Columbia City on Earth, though that didn’t mean much; the United States was a huge country. But something about the broadcast told me that Columbia City was a big metropolis—big enough, at least, to have a fancy train station—which meant that it was important. Then I remembered Thomas’s badge—United Commonwealth of Columbia, it had said. Thomas had called it the UCC. Maybe Columbia City was their capital. If so, it likely only corresponded to a few places: New York, D.C., Boston, or L.A. I stopped puzzling over it then, realizing that I was only doing it to distract myself from the task at hand, which was figuring out what to do next.
And then, out of nowhere, someone grabbed my arm and dragged me into a nearby alley.
I struggled to my feet and found that I was surrounded by three armed men dressed in black; each had a forest green patch on his arm, ten tiny golden stars stitched on it in the shape of a triangle, the same pattern I’d seen on the banners at the rally. I knew without having to be told that they belonged to the group called Libertas. My stomach sank. They were most certainly not there to help me.
One of the men—bald, with dark gray eyes and a puckered pink scar across his forehead—took hold of my ponytail and yanked me toward him.
“Who are you?” he demanded, his breath spreading, thick and sour, over my face.
“Nobody,” I whimpered. Sparks exploded in front of my eyes and a pain so bad I could hardly think swelled in my skull. “Please don’t hurt me,” I begged. “I’m nobody. I just want to go home!”
The bald guy laughed, tightening his grip on my hair. I winced, squeezing my eyes shut to stem the tide of tears. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”
“Let go!” I cried, my fingers scrabbling against his arm, trying for a patch of exposed skin to sink my nails into. “You’re hurting me!”
He leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “Answer my questions and I’ll think about it. Doesn’t that sound like a fair deal?” I nodded. I was shaking like a sapling in a hurricane. “Who are you and who do you work for?”
“I’m no one,” I insisted again. “I don’t work for anybody. Please. I haven’t done anything! You’ve got me confused with somebody else.”
The bald guy snorted. “Well, you’re wrong about that, sweetheart. I know exactly who you aren’t.” He laughed and ran the muzzle of his gun along the base of my jaw. A sob rose in my throat; to keep it from escaping I bit my lip, so hard that it started to bleed. “You haven’t given me much of a choice,” he went on. “We had a deal, and you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain, so I’m afraid—”
Suddenly, from behind us, there came a loud crash, but before the men or I could react, a bullet whizzed through the air and found its target in the bald guy’s shoulder. He released me with a guttural moan and I stumbled forward, landing hard on my hands and knees. Ignoring the pain that tore through my palms, I glanced over my shoulder to get a peek at my unexpected savior.
Thomas was crouched on a nearby Dumpster, pointing a pistol at the other two men, who had their guns trained on him. My eyes flew to the top of the building, the only place he could’ve come from. It had to have been a three-story drop, and yet he looked unfazed.
“Let her go,” he said. His voice was tight and his face was set in an expression of such incredible focus and determination that I felt myself rescued before any rescuing had taken place.
The bald guy staggered to his feet, but Thomas didn’t hesitate; he shot the man in the leg, and he was down again. One of the others—this one had long, stringy hair and was the tallest man I’d ever seen, quite literally looming over my five feet seven inches—wrapped his arm around my neck and pulled me backward toward the alley’s dead end. His grip was so tight it was cutting off my breath; I choked and sputtered, swinging my elbows in the hopes of jamming one into his ribs, but all I found was empty, indifferent air. The third man, who had a black ski cap pulled tight over his ears despite the warm weather, advanced on Thomas as he dismounted the Dumpster and they faced off, guns aimed and fingers on the triggers.
“No,” Ski Cap said simply. “She’s coming with us. Get out of the way.”
“Not without her.”
My gaze zoomed back and forth between them. My heart was pounding as fast as a hummingbird’s, and it was almost impossible to focus on anything but sucking in air as Stringy Hair’s arm continued to crush my throat. Then he jerked me sideways, which allowed him to lift his gun and point it at Thomas. It was two against one now. Thomas was outnumbered. And yet, from the look in his eyes, I knew they had more to fear than he did.
“We don’t take orders from KES scum,” Ski Cap said.
Thomas laughed mirthlessly in disbelief. “Oh, I’m scum? I’m not the one blowing up hospitals and train stations, making traitors out of innocent people!”
Ski Cap sneered. “It’s for the greater good.”
“Please, spare me,” Thomas scoffed. “Hand her over.”
“Not a chance,” Ski Cap replied. “She’s ours. We’ll kill you if we have to.”
“Fine,” Thomas challenged. “Shoot me.”
Ski Cap raised his gun, but he wasn’t fast enough; before he’d gotten off a single round, Thomas drew out a second pistol and pressed the trigger. The gun fired, but what came out the other end was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The barrel emitted a conical stream of blinding white light, the edge of which hit Ski Cap and sent him flying across the alley, where he came to rest, finally, completely still, his head streaming with slick rivulets of blood.
The blast shook the alley and we all stumbled backward in its wake. Stringy Hair released his grip and his gun, which clattered to the ground near my feet. I gasped, pulling in air as fast as I could. I stared at the gun, unmoving, my brain screaming at me to pick it up, to defend myself, but I was too disoriented. I’d never handled a gun before, never even touched one, and I knew I’d never be able to shoot somebody. I wouldn’t even be able to hold a gun convincingly enough to make anyone think I was capable of shooting somebody.