Текст книги "Return Once More"

The stubborn friendship in them broke down the last of my resolve, no matter how selfish it felt to include her in my subterfuge. Maybe telling her one more thing would be okay. “I want to use the cuff to go see Jonah before this morning’s heist.”

She surprised me a little by not even flinching. “Why?”

“I want to know why he left.” It wasn’t my prepared answer. I had meant to tell her it was to ask about Rosie and how he could be sure the future hadn’t been irrevocably damaged. To do our duty as Historians, to ensure the future by protecting the past, but my heart ached to know why he’d abandoned our family. Left me alone.

Her eyes softened, and she turned her palm up, grasping my fingers. “I know you do. But do you really think he’s going to tell you? It could be dangerous.”

“Jonah would never hurt me.” Physically.

“I know that. I can’t imagine your brother hurting anyone—he always seemed like the nicest guy, to me—but those people he’s with now … those pirates.” She wrinkled her nose. “Jonah can’t control them. He’s one of them, and you need to accept that we don’t know what he’s capable of anymore.”

Jonah had taken on an older brother role with all of my friends, and Analeigh had been especially attached to him. Sometimes it slipped my mind that she’d lost him, too. “I’ll be careful. I’ll get there ten minutes early and stake it out, then grab him when the fewest people are around.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, Analeigh. You have a perfect record. You’ll be able to pick your specialty at the end of next year, work in whatever era you want. I can’t ask you to jeopardize that because I’m a big fat baby about missing my stupid brother.”

“First, you’re not fat, or a baby. Second, for all the things Jonah is, stupid isn’t one of them. Third, if he has changed the past, we need to know. We’re Historians, Kaia, and I know that means as much to you as it does to me. Our job isn’t only to observe and record the past. We have to protect it, to make sure that it all transpires like it’s supposed to, so that everyone we love in Genesis is still here at the end of the day. It’s our duty. The Elders would understand.”

The determination shining in her gaze surprised me. Analeigh never broke rules. Not ever, not the tiniest one. I could kid myself about there being no precedent for using an illegal cuff to time travel without an overseer, or believe they would somehow praise us for taking our job so seriously instead of reporting the discrepancies regarding Rosie and Jonah, but those were lies. None of our actions would come without a sanction, probably a big one, if they caught us, but the thought of having Analeigh with me choked back my protests. I threw my arms around her neck as Sarah stumbled into the room.

“Whoa, is there something you guys need to tell me?” Sarah asked, staring at us from the doorway. She grinned and it lit up her face. Rooms always brightened when Sarah stepped into them, but now her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were a little glassy.

“Someone just got kissed,” I sang in an obnoxious tone, grinning back.

“What? No, I didn’t. We were working out!”

“I’ll bet you were,” I teased.

“Is that what it’s called now? Working out?” Analeigh gave Sarah a wicked wink. “Maybe that’s why I haven’t been on a date in a while—I’m behind on the lingo.”

Sarah stripped off her sweaty shirt and tossed it onto Analeigh’s head. My best friend shrieked and pawed it away. A nasty, wet sock hit my nose and cut off my snickers. Sarah escaped into the bathroom, still hurling damp clothes at us as she disappeared.

And for a few minutes, I forgot about Caesarion and Rosie and Jonah’s potentially putting us all at risk. About how I might do the same.

Chapter Eleven

The whole getting-up-hours-before-breakfast thing wasn’t my favorite part of my newfound independence, but it was the best time to use Jonah’s cuff without getting caught. At night there were alarms set at the Academy’s exterior doors, supposedly for our safety but probably more to ensure none of us snuck out for romantic trysts. The Elders took their jobs as teachers and fill-in parents very seriously, though they either pretended ignorance or really didn’t realize there were a host of spots inside the Academy used for that purpose.

There were no official rules on procreation or marriage and divorce, but after fifty years of indoctrination, social responsibility governed every decision. It meant that even though we had free access to multiple forms of birth control, and most of us dated and fooled around, we were careful not to waste our future on teenage flings.

Unless you were Sarah and Oz.

Oz was acting like nothing had happened between us in the hall the other day. I did, too, but a cloud of suspicion hung between us that had never existed before, and it surprised me that our friends hadn’t noticed. He was lying. I was lying. We both knew it.

I shook away my uneasiness over Oz’s recent attitude change, promising myself I would check his bio information again the next time I was in the Archives. Sarah had been a good friend to me for over five years, and True Companion or not, she needed to know what kind of guy she’d drawn in the genetics lottery.

“Okay, so you know how to work that thing?” Analeigh pointed at Jonah’s cuff, all lit up with red lights in the quiet, deserted air lock.

I’d insisted on swiping my tat again instead of letting her do it. No one had to know she’d come along. We both shivered in the freezing pod, tugging our cloaks tighter almost in tandem.

“Yes.” I paused, sticking a rubber band between my teeth to buy some time. By the time my hair sat atop my head in a messy bun, a presentable response that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d already used it spilled out. “We’ve seen the overseers do it hundreds of times.”

Blending in on Roma wouldn’t be a concern, so we didn’t worry about changing our clothing or appearance. People in all manner of Academy garb, not to mention varying factory uniforms, would be around, so we wouldn’t seem out of place. It made sense that the pirates would find enough cover there, as well.

Our cloaks hid the standard clingy, black material along with the Historian emblem bright on the breast, and we wore black running flats. Our hair swept off our necks in dark and light ponytails and the glasses completed the outfits. We couldn’t leave the air lock without the glasses or remove the recording chips until we returned—the portal wouldn’t work otherwise–but nothing prevented us from destroying them instead of archiving the information.

I lowered my mouth to the cuff after turning the time and date dials to the correct position. “Roma, the armory.”

*

Roma, Genesis–50 NE (New Era)

Roma housed the System’s industry and production factories. Day laborers and tall buildings fought for space on crowded central streets, and basic home dwellings were smashed together on the outer edges of the city. The factories supplied everything mechanical for the System, as well as tools, hover transports, ships, electronics, and pretty much anything else that needed to be manufactured. Each planet contributed something specific, and had been designed that way from the beginning.

The cuff dropped us right at the armory’s front door, which was bad, given the extra security cameras that surrounded the only building in the entire System that housed weapons. Analeigh dragged me behind a recycling Dumpster around the side of the metal and glass building. From there, we snuck around to the back where, based on the news report, the pirates had breached the exterior.

Analeigh’s watch said we had three minutes to spare, and right on time, a band of ragged boys belly-crawled through the privacy fence at the rear of the property. There were four of them, all armed with stun batons and Gavreaus—sonic wavers.

The building held stockpiles of stunners and wavers, the only two weapons manufactured in Genesis. The rest had been left behind on Earth Before, having been determined as one of the contributing factors in society’s descent and eventual failure. The recorded history surrounding their mechanics and manufacture had been wiped, and now that knowledge had all but disappeared. I supposed a Historian could re-create it by observing the development firsthand, but otherwise, we’d have to start from scratch to re-invent guns or bombs or anything else.

Their clothes snagged my interest in a less scary way. Instead of the sleek, tight uniforms the citizens of Genesis favored on a daily basis, the pirates wore khaki shorts that landed at their knees, faded T-shirts, ankle socks, and a brand of tennis shoe that hadn’t been manufactured since Earth Before. I wondered where they had found four pairs that fit and also looked as though they were pretty well intact.

When Jonah’s shaggy dark head came into view a strangled noise tickled my throat and my feet took a step forward, both without my instruction.

Analeigh held me back with a light touch. “Don’t. If you go now it’ll be a distraction and they might not rob the armory. This is still history. We can’t change it.”

I nodded, never looking away from the boys. They were all brunettes, with hair that needed a cut and clothes that needed a wash, but even from here I could tell they were slightly older than us, good looking, and fit.

“Man, no one ever talks about how they’re, like, the handsomest band of pirates ever,” she whispered.

“Right?” I giggled as softly as possible but the boy at the rear paused.

His head whipped around, and both Analeigh and I covered our mouths. After a moment he frowned and followed his friends up to the back door. My brother slapped a wad of something sticky near the keypad on the thick iron door and all of the boys turned away. A moment later light flared and a soft fountain of sparks flew through the air. A small pop accompanied the display, but the sound barely registered.

The door sagged on its hinges and the boys disappeared inside the armory.

My mind raced while we waited for them to reappear. Until now, worry over my brother’s fate had been a constant, but abstract, thing. Seeing him carrying a weapon, watching him break into a building with the intent of stealing … it brought it home. My chest felt too tight, like someone had secured a rubber band around my lungs. The idea that I could lose him for real, for good, made me shake all over.

Violence existed in the System, but death was rarely the result. The stunners would knock someone out for an hour or so, and fistfights and the like still occurred on occasion, but the Gavreau wavers—named after their inventor—were the only weapons capable of killing. Citizens didn’t carry them. They were issued to Enforcers, who handled emergency mortal sanctions, and to one Elder in each Academy in case of emergencies. They could be set to incapacitate, but at their highest setting, the sonic wavers liquefied internal organs.

The thought of that happening to my brother numbed my nervous system.

Mortal sanctions of exposure could be issued, too, but they were as rare as anything else deadly. It had only happened twice in my lifetime, and I didn’t want my brother to be the third.

Sounds of a commotion rang from inside the armory but were short lived. A few shouts and quick, electrical zapping of stunners later, only shuffling murmurs whispered into the early morning. The boys reappeared a moment later, black duffel bags slung over their shoulders and roguish grins making their faces appear even younger than when they entered.

I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the bins and into their path. The two boys at the front dropped their bags and grabbed me so fast I couldn’t make a peep. Analeigh flew at them, digging her fingernails into their hair and yanking, but it didn’t loosen their hold on me. One let go of me long enough to fling her at Jonah, who caught her against his chest and held on tight while she beat at him with her fists.

He held her away, eyes widening in recognition before they slid to me. “Stop! Jean, Teach, let her go.”

“Why? They’re Historians. They could tip off the Elders in two minutes,” one of the boys barked, a dark curl falling into his eyes.

“She’s my sister.”

“So?”

“Let her go, Teach.” My brother took a step forward, his face dark and threatening in a completely unfamiliar way. The boys dropped my arms. Jonah let Analeigh go and she stumbled against me, her hand finding mine.

“Should we run?” she asked silently.

“No. It’s fine.”

Jonah’s dark eyes softened as he ran a hand over my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you know where I’d be?”

I eyed his companions—Jean, Teach, and the unnamed third—then cocked my head toward the bins that had provided Analeigh and me cover. “Can I talk to you in private?”

“Jonah, we have to go. Those Dockers aren’t going to be unconscious forever, and we need to be well away from Roma before they wake up. That junker ship of ours can’t outrun the Enforcers and you know it.”

“She’s not a junker, Sparrow. The older models are better, you know that.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that they’ll catch us. We need to go.”

The boy my brother called Sparrow had blue eyes that clashed impressively with his nearly black hair. The old, threadbare T-shirt clung to the muscles rippling across his chest. He grinned when he caught me staring. “You never told us your sister is so … grown up.”

My brother growled, then stepped in between Sparrow and me, cutting off my line of sight. He leveled me with a glare that would have worked on anyone else. “Leave.”

“No.” I stuck out my chin. “I need to talk to you and I’m not leaving until I do.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Kaia. Go back where you belong.”

“I found your cuff in your room. That’s how we got here. And I’m going to keep using it and showing up wherever you do until you talk to me. Might as well get it over with today.”

“Just bring her with us. If she’s got a travel cuff she can get back to the Academy whenever she’s ready,” the one named Teach said.

Light bounced off his honey-brown hair. The false sunlight on Roma shone brighter than in most of Genesis, maybe to compensate for the drab days spent toiling in factories, and I squinted. Indecision fluttered across Jonah’s features. They’d always revealed his every thought and feeling to me—or so I’d thought before he’d left without a word. He looked different, and not only because of the bumped, horrible scars on his throat and wrist where the tats had been dug free. He seemed older, more serious, than in my memory.

“Jonah, come on,” Sparrow urged, all of the playfulness gone from his voice and posture.

Jonah nudged me in front of him. “Let’s go, Special K. You, too, Analeigh.”

We followed the pirates back through the fence, then jogged through deserted back alleys, hugging buildings and making little noise crossing the glass paved roads and sidewalks, until we reached one of the four docking portals. Three dockmasters lay sprawled in a heap, their electric-blue uniformed limbs tangled together. Snores emanated from at least one of them, so I assumed they were all alive—either dosed with a sleeping draught or stunned into unconsciousness.

We stepped over them one at a time. Teach and Jean went first, followed by the flirtatious Sparrow, then Analeigh and me, with Jonah going last. We tramped in hurried silence through the air lock and then onto the air bridge that connected the pirates’ ship to Roma. The air changed subtly, turned colder, as we left the terraform behind and hung suspended in a tube over empty space.

We stepped through a dented metal door and into a second air lock. Jonah slammed the outer hatch into place and turned the lock, and once the oxygen light above the interior door flicked from red to yellow to green, we stepped onto the ship.

Which, no matter what my brother said, was a junker.

Rust spots dotted the cargo bay floor, leaving brownish red splotches across the faded blue metal. Stairs rose to a second level, a thin, wobbly-looking railing accompanying them. Sealed containers littered the bay, filled with stars knew what, and a rack draped with stunners and wavers hung on one wall. The smell in the air reminded me of mildew and spoiled dairy.

“This is a piece of crap,” Analeigh said, somewhat accusingly.

“Hey. Do not insult my baby. She flies with the best of them,” Jonah snapped.

“Some of us are about more than a pretty face,” Jean joked, elbowing Sparrow in the ribs.

“Jonah’s pickier when it comes to the faces on his fleshy ladies. Not that any of them can hold a candle to Anne Bonny,” Sparrow replied.

“Anne Bonny?” I asked, shooting my brother a look.

He shrugged, a slight pink tingeing his cheeks. “That’s her name. The ship.”

“Okay, well, Jonah, go ahead and have a little chat with your pretty sister. I’m going to get this gorgeous bucket of rust in the air before we get busted and have to really test her engines.”

Sparrow started for the stairs, and I turned to Analeigh. “Why don’t you go with them and check out the bridge.”

“But—”

“Please, Analeigh. I’ll be ten minutes talking to Jonah and then we’ll go back.”

She checked her watch, frowning. “Ten minutes, Kaia. Breakfast is in twenty.”

I nodded and turned, catching Jonah whispering something to Jean, his eyes on Analeigh as she started for the steps. Teach held out a hand to her but Analeigh ignored it, climbing the swaying staircase unassisted.

My brother jerked his head and Jean followed, leaving the two of us alone in the cargo hold. Jonah watched until Analeigh and his friends disappeared, a strange twist of emotion on his handsome face. It disappeared as he turned back to me.

He heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can’t go around using that cuff whenever you feel like it, Kaia. Not only could you get seriously sanctioned, but if the Elders traced you right now you’d be putting my life in danger. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not. Not that you considered our family’s safety when you decided to go all space cowboy.” I sank down on an unmarked wooden crate and pulled my knees into my chest.

Pain and guilt flooded his face. It felt good to push my anger where it belonged, but we didn’t have much time to beat around the bush, even if that had ever been our style.

I shrugged and waved a hand, cutting off whatever stammered apology he was working on. “How did you know it was safe to warn Rosie Shapiro?”

The shocked silence confirmed my suspicions.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed, not even bothering to put any force behind the lie.

“I found your True Companion card with the cuff and did some research. Rosie Shapiro was on the original victims’ list. She jumped from an eighth-floor window and died on that street. And yet, when we observed yesterday morning, she claimed illness and left the building around four-thirty, less than fifteen minutes before the fire broke out.” I stopped talking, mesmerized by the sight of the blood draining from Jonah’s face. I reached out and touched his hand, almost surprised that he let me. “It’s okay, Jonah. I know you saved her. How did you know it wouldn’t blow up the future?”

He chuckled. “Well, the Cubs did end up winning the pennant in 1956 because of me.”

“That’s not funny. What if it had been something worse?”

“There’s not much worse if you’re a Cards fan.”

“Jonah.”

“Why are you so interested in Rosie?” He peered into my face, dark eyes serious a moment before everything clicked into place. “I missed your birthday. Who is he?”

“No one. Someone who died young that didn’t have to.”

“Ah, yes. The Vespasians and their tragic loves. Have you met him?”

My cheeks heated up, giving me away. His eyes widened a little before a proud grin snuck onto his face. “My little sister, the rebel. And now that you know I saved Rosie’s life you want to know if you can save … ?”

“I’m not telling you who he is.”

The teasing grin slipped from his face as he studied the determined set of my jaw. “There are things that go on in this System that you’re not privy to, little sister. If you’re lucky, you’ll never know they exist.”

“Did the Elders find out what you did with Rosie? Is that the reason you left?”

Our eyes locked. The accusatory tone in my voice banged off the walls of the cargo bay, barely tempered by the tinge of hurt I tried to hide. We didn’t have time for this now, my pain. It wouldn’t lie quiet, though, after building up all of these years.

“It’s one of them.” He raked a hand through his too-long hair, leaving it unkempt in its wake. I used to give him haircuts; Jonah said he preferred my steady hands to the grooming booths at the Academy. “I know I hurt you when I left, Special K, and that’s the last thing I wanted. But I’m still your big brother, and it’s my job to protect you. Three years ago that meant leaving the Academy, and the System. Right now, that means telling you to keep your head down and stop asking questions about whether it’s possible to change the past. And be careful who you trust.”

“You’re not going to tell me why?”

“People who know why tend to disappear, one way or another. You deserve better.”

“Then why should I trust you?”

He tried to hide the pain in his golden eyes, but it spun me around like a good slap anyway. Guilt welled up in my chest, bubbling like lava, but I didn’t back down. I wanted answers. I wanted to know how he’d known the Cubs’ pennant would be the biggest fallout of Rosie’s existence. More than anything, I wanted the truth about why he left me behind.

The staring contest that followed ended in a draw, which didn’t surprise me since I’d never won with Jonah my entire life.

“Wait here for a second,” he said, leaving the cargo bay through a door at the back without waiting for my response. He returned a minute later and passed me a tiny metal chip the size and shape of the fingernail on my pinkie. Two long wire antennae, as thin and soft as strands of hair, sprouted from the top.

“What is it?”

“Technology a friend at the Academy developed for me when I went after Rosie. It hurts like a bitch, but if you jam it in the edge of your wrist tat, right there—” he touched a spot in the center of the outer, straight edge—“it holds your location until you take it out. You insert it in your dorm room, you’ll appear to be in your dorm room until you take it out. Remove it when you get back, though, because they’ll notice if you’re static too long on the locator floor.”