Текст книги "Return Once More"
Автор книги: Trisha Leigh
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
Chapter Eight
The pressing ache at leaving Caesarion took a backseat when I checked the time again, aware that Reflection started three minutes ago. Four wrist comms from Analeigh had beeped while the air lock held me hostage, each relaying her increasing concern. It didn’t help that the scrapes on my knees had embedded ancient Egyptian sand and gravel inside them, which meant the stupid scanner forced me into a decontamination shower before letting me loose on the Academy.
At least no alarms had sounded as the scanner swept my hands or face. It didn’t know I’d interacted with anyone, or that I felt as though he’d touched more than my skin. I hurried toward Reflection, trying to shake loose the lingering feeling of his mouth on mine. My knees were still weak, and it wasn’t just because I was panicking over being late.
“Kaia.” Oz paused reluctantly when we passed in the otherwise empty hallway, adjusting his glasses. “I thought you’d be in the Caesar review.”
“I, um, was double-checking that our wardrobe is set for the Triangle visit and lost track of time.” His eyes narrowed. I swallowed hard, then forced a giggle past my lips. “The hats, you know? I love trying on those hats.”
His gaze shifted from curious to irritated. “Analeigh and Sarah were worried.”
“I know, and as you said, I’m late for Reflection. So, if you’ll excuse me.”
Oz didn’t move out of the way, his broad shoulders and solid stature so unlike the reedy boy I’d spent the morning with in an Egyptian garden. The way he studied my face made my palms break out in a cold sweat, and for a moment I felt trapped.
“Something’s different about you. Where were you, really? I doubt even you could get quite so flushed over hats.”
“Why did you lie about going to Pearl Harbor?” It slipped out like some kind of an innate defense mechanism, handy for deflecting attention from my own transgressions.
Oz went very still. I could almost see every tensed muscle relaxing in order, as though he’d started at his head and concentrated on loosening one limb at a time down to his toes. His eyes, typically sharp and focused, turned bored. The entire process took only seconds, but was deliberate enough to wig me out. He was too calm, too apathetic. It reminded me of a lion lulling its prey into a false sense of ease.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was in the Archives, and I saw you at the Mongolian invasions.”
“Why did you pull up my info in the Archives?”
“Why were you in Asia?”
“Why were you checking up on me?”
We faced each other, at an impasse, the unspoken challenge in the air dampening my skin with chilly sweat. He wasn’t going to admit he’d been in the wrong place, and I wasn’t about to tell him where I’d been, either.
“I’m late for Reflection.” I shouldered past him, moving fast. My heart pounding for a totally different reason than it had in Alexandria. Oz’s eyes followed me all the way down the hall until I turned a corner and escaped his view.
*
All Historians had their own reflection data file under every historical event, person, and archive in which to catalog our thoughts. We filled them with our opinions on the effects of that particular entry on the development or destruction of Earth Before—whether or not a lesson should be recorded for future generations, and what exactly the memory could help us accomplish or avoid in the years to come. In turn, those files were compiled and scanned, and when a large enough consensus was reached, entered in the Hope Chest.
Today we weren’t messing with our files—those were done in individual sessions. Group sessions were to review apprentice recordings, and this one went as badly as expected. Differing opinions were a part of human nature we’d never escape, but the Originals had sought to balance them by providing multiple viewpoints whenever possible. As a result, apprentices sat through three sessions on each recorded observation, each with a different certified Historian. Maude had dressed me down in the initial recap a few days ago, and Minnie had been even worse the next session. Today, an overseer named Booth taught the final class and embarrassed the crap out of me until my ears felt permanently red.
It occurred to me that I only had to suffer through another year of training. After that I could focus on whoever and whatever I wanted, as long as I was willing to write up the initial reflections when I entered them in the database. Maybe it would behoove me to pay attention until then so I didn’t die of shame before my eighteenth birthday—or accumulate enough infractions to be delayed.
Booth asked me to stay behind when he dismissed us four hours later, and my stomach sank. “Miss Vespasian, you’re putting all of us in a very awkward position with your continued lack of effort.”
“It’s not a lack of effort, I swear. It’s more of an … excess of attention in the wrong areas. I’ll try harder to focus on the assignments.”
Booth had a gentle nature and was my favorite of the Historian Elders. Wrinkles cut deep grooves in his coffee-bean skin, and the whites of his eyes had gone a bit yellow these past couple of years. He walked bent over with a cane, his spine twisted. At eighty-two he had to be close to the oldest living human in Genesis. Knowing I’d disappointed him shamed me more than the combined verbal torment dished out by the Gatling girls.
He gave me a small, mostly toothless smile and patted the back of my hand. “I see much of Lloyd in you, you know.”
“Really?” It turned up my lips to think people saw my grandfather when they looked at me.
“Yes. He could be easily distracted by the sidelines, believed the real triumphs and failures of human history were to be found in the minutiae of the everyday, in the lives of inconsequential people. Not in the monumental events you’re studying at the moment, but in humanity’s reaction to those things.” Booth’s eyes took on a faraway look, as though his mind had wandered past my grandfather into some secret room that housed memories that would never be archived. “That history could be altered by the simplest of changes to an insignificant life, like tossing a tiny pebble into a pool of water.”
“What do you believe, sir?” I asked, mesmerized by his insight.
His gaze focused on me a moment later, sharp now. “I believe there is no point in thinking about changing the past when our duty is to use our collective knowledge to ensure the most advantageous future.”
The words tightened my chest. After years of training, the mere mention of changing the past made imaginary hives break out across my skin. “I’m honored by the comparison to my grandfather. I’ll do my best to make his memory proud.”
“There is a difference, Miss Vespasian, between being a dreamer and being a rebel. I trust that given your family contains excellent examples of each, you understand where that line rests.”
The sawdust from earlier reappeared on my tongue. “Yes, sir.”
Booth’s insinuation was clear. My grandfather and my brother had gone disparate ways. One was acceptable. The other was not. It didn’t take a genius to know my path took a major swerve toward Jonah’s today. Even so, I fought the urge to defend my brother and his decision to live outside the System. His name was pretty much as taboo as visiting my thousands-of-years-dead True Companion.
And right now, I needed to cool it before my own guilt tipped me completely off my nut.
Booth nodded, but his gaze remained thoughtful. “You may go. I trust on our visit to see the Sun King in a few weeks you will keep your focus where it belongs.”
“That’s my favorite period. I’ll do well.”
He flicked a finger toward the door at my assurance, allowing my escape into the hall. Only Analeigh had waited, her eyebrows raised in a silent question.
“Pay attention to the assignment at hand, Miss Vespasian,” I rasped in a fair imitation of Booth’s scratchy voice.
Analeigh laughed, but the hollow sound said it was only to humor me. We had been off since I’d found Jonah’s cuff, and this morning’s trip didn’t help. She knew I was hiding something. Neither of us was in the mood for lighthearted fun, I guessed, and the chat with Booth sobered my lingering high after meeting Caesarion. No matter how badly I wanted to, going back wasn’t an option. The past could never be altered without consequence. I didn’t want to believe he had to die for nothing, but it had already happened; I needed to be happy with this morning’s interaction and leave it behind me.
Analeigh and I stepped into the dining hall for lunch, a larger space than most of the rooms at the Academy, but just as cold and perfunctory. No pictures hung on the white walls, and no carpets spanned the tiled floor. Round glass tables and steel chairs dotted the room, to the entire effect of making the space feel empty even when we were all in here at once. My mom said the sparseness was a Historian thing, and that the Agriculture Academy had walls made out of vines and flowers.
There were ten tables, one for each class and two extras for any Historians or Elders that wanted to join us, even though they rarely dined in our company. Our class, like most older classes, had split into two distinct groups, but we were no different from the rest of the System and were required to get along. Even the dissension between Jess and me wasn’t much to write home about—nothing like the epic high school battles waged in old movies or the electronic books I’d devoured as a child. No one had been pushed in front of a bus, no pig’s blood had been spilled. Perhaps because we had no buses. Or pigs.
We didn’t all love each other, but we were polite and avoided confrontation.
Jess, Peyton, and Levi were seated and chatting when I made it to the table, but fell silent at my approach. Oz shoveled asparagus stalks into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten for a week, avoiding my gaze, but Sarah looked up at the sudden pause, guilt darkening her light-blue gaze. I dropped my plate next to hers, my apple rolling toward the center of the table. By the time I’d retrieved it Analeigh had settled next to me, but no one had resumed talking.
“You guys are making it totally obvious that you were either talking about me or Analeigh, and you know Sarah’s going to spill, so you might as well share.”
Peyton and Levi glanced toward Jess, who shrugged. Sarah stuffed a huge bite of bread in her mouth, obviously keen on waiting for privacy before divulging the contents of the conversation.
“What’s going on?” Analeigh asked, folding her arms across her chest.
Oz mopped up the last of the vegetable juice on his plate with a final bite of bread, then sighed. “Kaia’s brother and his merry band of thieves and rebels are in the news again.”
My heart sped up. Not due to mortification, as Jess had likely hoped, but because news of my brother and his crew had been in short supply for months. The lack of information worried me. The System wasn’t big, and although there were places to hide, they couldn’t stay away from civilization forever. Since the moons and outer planets weren’t terraformed, eventually the … well, pirates, for lack of a better term, had to return for oxygen, proper attire, and sustenance. They pillaged those things, along with money and food and whatever else struck their fancy.
It was hard to reconcile the reports of their crimes with my playful, quick-to-smile, handsome older brother. No one knew why he’d left. If my parents or any of his friends had suspicions, they had never shared them with me. My anguish over missing him was rivaled only by my anger at being left behind without a word of explanation.
“What happened?” I asked after a bite, trying not to sound too eager.
“They hit the armory on Roma. Took a bunch of weapons and oxygen tanks.” Levi glanced around as though there were Elders peering over his shoulders, even though talking about subversives like Jonah was taboo at worst, not forbidden.
An idea formed in the back of my mind, tiny but growing into something substantial by the moment. “When?”
Levi frowned, then leaned forward and dropped his voice even further. “Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”
It was true that I preferred to avoid gossip about my brother. I didn’t hate him the way the Elders thought we all should, and even though I was angry with him, I wanted him to be safe. Jonah wasn’t idle gossip. He was my brother. I loved him even though his actions put more pressure on me to walk the line, a line I’d rather keep just in sight, so our parents could be proud of at least one of their children.
So my grandfather’s legacy wasn’t completely tarnished.
My failure to answer turned all six pairs of eyes toward me. Jess and Pey both looked bored with the conversation, like they wished I would get over myself so we could talk about something more interesting. Levi’s dark features spoke of idle curiosity, as usual. He was kind of the gossip king of the Academy. Sarah’s face was pinched with concern, Analeigh’s eyes crowded with a million questions.
Oz’s steady gray gaze brimmed with suspicion and annoyance, narrowed and so focused on my face that it made me start to sweat.
I concentrated on not squirming. “I … I like to know he’s okay.”
“It was this morning around six,” Oz supplied, his voice softer. “They weren’t hurt.”
Sarah slid a sidelong glance at him. The hitch in her body language told me I wasn’t imagining his odd behavior, the gentle thread to his reassurance.
When I didn’t respond, the conversation around the table shifted. Jess changed the subject, blabbering about what decade of clothing she planned to wear for the sixth year’s upcoming certification party. Oz finished his food in three huge bites, then he and Sarah left the table. Pey and Analeigh stayed quiet, and my jumbled thoughts didn’t allow me to inflate the conversation.
Analeigh’s silence unnerved me; she would want to know why Jonah’s latest antics had interested me so much, and why I’d said anything at the table when I typically hated people talking about my brother. I’d have to think of something other than the real reason for my change of heart. Because admitting to my rule-following friend that finding Jonah’s cuff had opened a world of possibilities to me, if I had the guts to grasp them, wouldn’t play well. And now that I knew where Jonah had been, I could travel back and corner him.
Get some freaking answers.
Chapter Nine
New York , New York , United States , Earth Before–March 25, 1911 CE (Common Era)
Heavy clouds pressed together, obscuring the sun over New York City and making the early spring day overcast and dreary, the temperature below average. The high-necked shirtwaist, ankle boots, and long woolen skirt kept me warm enough, though comfort hadn’t been an early twentieth-century fashion concern.
I hadn’t figured out the best time to visit Jonah yet, and today’s observation delayed my plan to travel without authorization a second time even further. If I was honest, as much as I wanted to throw my arms around my brother’s neck and squeeze out answers, I’d started to waver. It wasn’t getting in trouble as much as disappointing my parents. Again. Our family had been through enough, and I’d taken a huge risk yesterday.
Today’s observation would be a distraction, though not a happy one. We’d drawn Rachel Turing as our overseer at the Triangle since a male overseer would be harder to blend into the crowd. There were men in the building, and some would even perish in a few short hours, but they were, for the most part, too recognizable. On a positive note, Rachel treated us as adults in a way Maude could never manage, and had left all of today’s horrible research in our hands.
Though the overseers had witnessed this event multiple times, it was new to Analeigh, Sarah, Peyton, and I, and the shortcut research we’d tried to split hadn’t been enough once Rachel had been assigned. We’d all spent hours determining which worktables had empty seats, how many of us needed to roam the room passing out buttons, ribbons, and thread, and the exact spot that would be consumed last by fire and smoke, allowing us to remain until the final moments.
Our work had been accurate so far—the five of us had spent the day sewing and basting, hauling material and finished products. Even though the guidance spewing into my brain from the tattoo made my hands fairly certain at the unfamiliar work, I’d poked so many holes in my fingers they resembled Swiss cheese. The real kind.
Tables and chairs, baskets of discarded strips of cloth and trimmings littered every square inch of workspace. There wasn’t much room to even walk; I couldn’t imagine the scene when these girls started to panic. As the end of the day drew near, grasshoppers banged around in my stomach. Even though the five of us wouldn’t perish in this fire, the idea of watching it happen to everyone else sloshed bile into my throat.
We were on the eighth floor, where the fire would start in approximately—I glanced at the clock on the wall—fifteen minutes. Restless and unwilling to sit still, I traded places with Analeigh, who had been up, handing out trimmings to the girls at the worktables.
Quitting time inched closer. Foreladies wandered the rows, passing out pay envelopes but not allowing anyone to move from their stations until five. Up and down the rows, I stared into the doomed faces, checking for the one that matched the photo of Rosie Shapiro in my protected file.
When I saw her, it surprised me. She wasn’t sitting at her sewing machine like I’d expected, but coming out of the coatroom, shrugging into a tattered wool cloak and securing a scarf over her shining curls. My glasses displayed her file, the one that promised she perished on the same day and time printed on Jonah’s True card, but she’s leaving. Now.
She wasn’t supposed to do that.
Her brown eyes were warm and soft, but as they met mine, the horror in them karate-chopped my throat. She knew what was coming. That everyone in this room was about to die. She had been warned, and only a Historian could have done it.
Jonah.
I thought about Caesarion, and how I wished I could save him. Now, right in front of me, stood proof that Jonah had struggled with the same feelings. No one else obsessed over their True or broke a gabillion rules to meet them. The others got their card, laughed, maybe read the person’s history, and then stuck it in a digital archive of their life.
But not my brother. Not me.
I wanted to ask Rosie where she was going a half hour early, but even though I’d broken the rules with Caesarion the other day, now Rachel’s watchful gaze made speaking with Rosie impossible. The overseer’s dark eyes latched onto me, probably wondering why this particular girl had drawn my interest, already preparing her lecture about my scattered attention. Instead of asking Rosie anything, I wandered after her as she made her way to the stairwell, dropping trimmings on the workstations along the way.
A gray-haired forelady frowned, eyes sweeping Rosie’s outerwear. “It’s not quitting time.”
“I know. I’m feeling quite ill.” As though to prove her point, Rosie swayed on her feet, then leaned over and retched at the woman’s feet.
The forelady didn’t even flinch as vomit splashed onto the scraps on the floor, splattering bits onto her shoes. “I’ll have to dock your pay.”
“I understand,” Rosie replied, her hands shaking as she wiped her lips. All of the color had drained from her face; she looked like a ghost. She looked like she wanted to scream warnings, or maybe wished that she’d never been here at all.
The forelady heaved a sigh. “You’ll have to take the elevator. The doors are locked until five.”
Locked from the outside, she meant. So no one could sneak away.
Rosie nodded, then spun and headed toward the freight elevators that would ferry a precious few of these girls out of this deathtrap before it stopped working. With one final glance around the room, her eyes filled with tears and a sob scratching from her throat, Rosie Shapiro disappeared.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. She was meant to die.
The thought of what else she would change when she walked out that door, what pieces of history were forever moved or forgotten or dragged into the darkness, closes the room in around me. It’s hard to breathe among the clothes and all of these poor, doomed girls, but when Rachel’s penetrating gaze finds mine, asking what’s wrong, I shake my head.
Get it together, Kaia. This is Jonah’s secret, it has to be. Trust him.
Ten minutes later, a girl near the windows that faced Greene Street shrieked, “Fire!” If I believed in hell the way my mother did, the way Analeigh’s parents did, it would look like this. The five of us moved quickly to the small space at the front corner of the room, the one we’d determined would allow us to stay and watch the longest.
Most of the girls nearest the windows, where the fire had broken out, were frozen in place, half consumed by flames before they moved from their chairs. Fire spread faster than I could have imagined; the piles of scraps incinerated in seconds, the flames passing quickly to the wooden tables, the walls, and the girls running frantically in every direction.
The doors were still locked. No one opened them, despite the workers beating their fists bloody against the thick metal. The girls closest to the doors were crushed against the stubborn barriers, slumping to the floor as the rest moved on to the elevators. Smoke choked the room. It burned my eyes and clogged my lungs. Analeigh, Pey, Sarah, Rachel, and I lay flat on our stomachs, but even being farthest from the fire and near a window, where at least a little fresh air attempted to enter the inferno, breathing was difficult. We were supposed to stay until the last girl jumped from this floor, but I wondered how we would stand it.
The elevator stopped working. A few of the braver girls grabbed onto the cables, sliding downward and crashing onto the elevator’s roof. I knew from my research that the ones that went first would be crushed by the bodies of those who jumped second and third. They would all suffer broken limbs and severe burns to their hands, but a handful would survive.
Then the elevator was gone. It wouldn’t come back.
Screams echoed in my ears, loud and unceasing from the girls around me, muffled from the floor above, where the fire had spread. The girls that would survive took the stairs up to the roof. The rusted fire escape outside the windows broke and fell away, taking more girls to their deaths, and the workers that remained on this floor would burn, asphyxiate, or jump.
I squinted through the frames of my glasses, through eyes that felt as though they were on fire themselves, trying to record clear visions of these girls’ faces. Terror rolled their eyes back into their heads, tear tracks cut through soot-smudged skin. Fire singed the hems of their dresses and more than one girl slapped uselessly at flames eating away her hair. Farther from the windows, they started to drop, crawling weakly forward but eventually collapsing until the fire ate what was left of them. The acrid smell of burning flesh spilled into the room, mingling with smoke.
Sirens wailed in the distance, then grew closer and finally stopped. Shouted orders and exclamations of disbelief, distant and hard to decipher, lifted from the street. The female workers perched in the windows, looking down at the street with mixtures of desperation, wild fear, and resignation flashing across their young features.
The oldest girl at the windows couldn’t be past twenty, and there were a couple even younger than me. The manifest in the Archives listed two fourteen-year-old girls among today’s victims, but they were both on the ninth floor.
If the doors had been unlocked, most of them would have lived. Maybe all.
The men who ran the factory ordered the doors be kept locked so that the girls’ purses could be checked on their way out, to prevent the theft of their cheap material. Neither of the owners would be held responsible for a single one of the 146 deaths taking place at this very moment.
Two girls at the window grasped hands and jumped. More took their places. Some jumped alone, others together, but in the end everyone died alone. It was the one universal truth.
It was a strange moment of peace inside the chaos, the choice the girls had in the manner of their deaths even if they couldn’t choose to live. It wasn’t what the Elders wanted us to see but it was a lesson there for the taking, though small, and I grabbed onto it with both hands.
Choices. We always, always have them.
I started to cough, bloody phlegm hitting the floor in front of my face. Analeigh’s face turned beet red as she hacked away, and the fire crept closer—we would be five additional victims in less than a minute if Rachel didn’t get us the hell out of here. But she’d made this trip before, and the timing had been tested. Thirty seconds later she lowered her lips to the cuff ringing her wrist, the shaking blue haze surrounded us, and the horror disappeared.
*
Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)
“Put the masks on, girls. Immediately.”
Rachel’s voice reached through the haze and opened my eyes, which I’d pressed closed in an attempt to erase the images dancing behind them—terrified girls aflame, screaming, sobbing, jumping to their deaths. It was the worst event I’d recorded so far.
Oxygen masks hung from the air lock ceiling and I grabbed the nearest one, holding the clear plastic over my nose and mouth, and breathing the recycled air and cleansing chemicals deep into my lungs. Ten minutes passed before the five of us stopped coughing and our faces returned to normal, healthy colors. We pulled on the masks until the cords retracted into the ceiling, then stripped off our smoke-scented garments and dumped them in the drawers. The smell permeated our skin, our hair, and the sleek black undergarments, too, and we all headed for decontamination showers without being told.
Twenty minutes later we were cleaned and dressed in the fresh outfits waiting in the drawers. The comps cleared us, the doors swished open and, for once, the smell of canned air was such a welcome respite from the lingering smoke that I wanted to cry. None of us had spoken—not even Peyton, a notorious chatterbox—and we continued down the hall in silence. It was almost lunchtime, but none of us felt much like eating. Sarah sent Oz a wrist comm asking him to meet her for a walk around the gymnasium, while Analeigh and I returned to our room. We dropped on the couch, then both sighed at once. It broke the tension, somewhat, although my best friend, never one for letting issues grow old and smelly, quickly reminded me that today’s horror wasn’t the only thing we had to discuss.
“Where were you yesterday morning? And don’t give me any crap about the gym because we both know your idea of exercising is to run back to the room to take a nap between sessions.” She pinned me with a serious gaze, her green eyes determined behind her glasses.
It was on the tip of my tongue to confess. I wanted to tell my best friend about meeting the boy born to love me—how he made me feel with a simple touch, the way I could almost sense my body and his making a complete whole, the rules I’d broken—but it would only put us both in bad positions. Not to mention that I didn’t think she would understand.
The idea that I was becoming my brother closed my throat. For all of my promises that I wouldn’t break my parents’ hearts the way Jonah had, it hadn’t taken much prodding to make me forget them. Just the lure of meeting my True Companion in the flesh.
Keeping such a huge thing from Analeigh pushed my tears past control, and she leaned over, pulling me into a hug that toppled me off balance. I put a hand out, bracing my weight on the wall so I didn’t smash her, and felt Jonah’s cuff slide from my elbow down to my wrist.
It was stupid to keep it on me, but it worried me more to leave it in the room. We shared clothes all the time since everything matched, and it would have been too easy for Analeigh or Sarah to stumble across it in a drawer.
Analeigh’s eyes grew wide as she stared at the golden band, the symbol of certified Historian status glaringly out of place in our apprentice dorms. “Where did you get that?”
I paused for the briefest moment. “I found it in Jonah’s room. On my birthday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why haven’t you turned it in?”
“I don’t know. I just … wanted something of his, I guess.”
I hadn’t meant for her to know about the cuff, but relief at being able to set down one secret lifted a little weight from my shoulders. Still, telling her that I’d used the cuff to see Caesarion … I couldn’t. “Did you see the girl that left about ten minutes before the fire started?”
Analeigh frowned, probably trying to keep up with my train of thought. “The one who said she was sick and threw up on the forelady?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I saw. Lucky girl.”
“What if she wasn’t just a lucky girl? What if she knew what was about to happen? That if she didn’t get out then she never would.”
Silence stretched between us as our eyes locked, Analeigh chewing on her bottom lip the way she always did while she was thinking. “How would she know?”
“Maybe someone told her.”
“Who would just tell that one girl, Kaia? If someone knew about the fire—and no one did, because none of the contemporary investigations or any of our reflections on the time period have revealed any indication of arson—but if they did, why wouldn’t they warn everyone?”
The questions were so Analeigh. She saw everything, remembered everything, and analyzed it quicker than any other Historian in our class, or any class, for that matter.
“That girl? Her name was Rosie Shapiro. She’s Jonah’s True.” I paused, running my fingers over the dials on his cuff. “I think he warned her.”
