Return Once More (5 page)

I must share my birthday with a few others, because there were at least two tables filled with kids too young to be out without a special pass, plus a red vinyl booth occupied by another group of Historian apprentices in my class.

I knew Jessica Beaton's birthday and mine were the same. She'd been born on Petra, an outer planet that contained mostly water, but we'd been at the Academy together for years. We'd never gotten along.

I wondered if she was going to find out the name of
her
True Companion tonight. In general, I felt more curious than swoony over the whole thing, probably because of the impossibility of it all. Still, it would be interesting.

“Kaia, Analeigh, over here!” Sarah's happy voice floated over the laughter and mid-twentieth century music floating out of a reconstruction of something called a jukebox. It ran on digital files like everything else, but the owner, Max, liked the throwback feel of the place. The robot servers even wore roller skates and red gingham aprons.

The metal chairs made screeching noises as they scraped against the black-and-white tiled floor, and Analeigh and I flopped into them. I hadn't told her about finding Jonah's cuff even though keeping secrets made me nervous. She knew me well enough to know I was hiding something, so if we'd been alone it would have been nothing but an endless interrogation. Thank goodness Sarah and Oz had been granted passes to celebrate with us. I needed a buffer.

The two of them shared a chocolate milkshake across the table, poring over a menu even though we ate here every month. We all ordered cheeseburgers—except Oz, who didn't eat meat, not even the fake, synthetic kind Genesis had to offer.

Once the menus were gone Sarah and Analeigh stared at me while Oz examined his cuticles. Discomfort started in my belly and slowly tightened all of my limbs until my fingernails dug into my palms. Being the center of attention did that to me. “Yes, I'm going to find out, okay? Stop staring like I've got a big glob of spinach in my teeth.”

“We could be staring at your unruly eyebrows. Honestly, Kaia,” Analeigh admonished.

“Oh my stars, I will get them done tomorrow.” My heart wasn't in the retort, my mind mired in the decision to get me up and moving toward the info pod in the corner.

The True Companion calculations had nothing to do with fanciful notions of fate or destiny, the way people used to believe. Science had simply managed to break down genomes into their most basic, molecular components and isolate ones that lined up seamlessly. Like puzzle pieces.

Before we could predict molecular compatibility, most people were happy with regular love—Chosen Companions. Chosens were far more common than Trues, and couples in Genesis were content. In the end, that would be enough for me, too, but for tonight, the curiosity was too much to bear. What if my True lived down the street, or on Angkor or Persepolis?

“Well, go do it!” Analeigh's green eyes shone, her excitement affecting me in spite of my best efforts. Her seventeenth birthday wasn't for several months, so she was living vicariously tonight.

I grinned and stood up, rubbing my palms together and cackling. Analeigh and Sarah laughed, but when I met Oz's smoky-gray gaze, his eyes were serious. They peered into mine as though hoping to see something specific, but I had no idea what. He looked away first.

Victory.

I left them and headed for Stars' information pod, a shoulder-high metal machine that spit out all kinds of information. Jess stood in front of the display screen, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she waited, hand outstretched, ignoring me. Once we turned eighteen and received transport cuffs like the one Jonah left behind, we wouldn't have to use the pods to access a database while away from the Academy. They only existed to track information requests of the apprentices.

The machine beeped once, its red lights flashing to green, and a slip of pink cardstock slid into Jess's hand. The name of her True Companion. “This is stupid,” she mumbled in my direction.

I shrugged. “It's kind of fun. Like how people used to go to those silly fortune-tellers and pretend they could see into the future.”

“Except now we can
actually
see into the future.”

“Not really,” I corrected out of habit. “Trues are the only part of the future we can predict. The people are there, but their paths are always changing based on the choices we make now. Too many potential trajectories.”

Despite our ability to time travel, predicting future trajectories with any success remained inexact. People were simply too unpredictable. The existence of free will would never change, so the Originals had chosen instead to focus on the past as a more viable way to ensure the best possible outcomes for humanity.

“Why are you lecturing me?” Jess tucked her sleek, chin-length black bob behind her ears and glared at me, her brown eyes sharp. She stood shorter than me, like most of the people in Genesis from Asian descent, but that had never affected her intimidation factor.

“I'm not. I'm just saying the cards are for fun. It's like a game. Don't be so snotty.”

“Oh,
I'm
the snotty one? Miss, I'm exempt from the rules because my granddaddy was an Original?”

I ignored her pettiness, mostly because it would piss her off. “What's your card say?”

She clutched it to her chest. “None of your business.”

Jess stalked back to her table of friends, shredding the pink card on the way and stuffing it into a recycling pit. Her thumb pressed the black button on the front and the contents caught fire and smoldered into ashes. I'd seen the name over her shoulder, anyway. Someone named Gretchen Lillian Morris, 2337-2368.

No life choice, unless it embraced violence or hate, was taboo on Genesis. The Elders seemed to prefer same-sex pairings, actually, because it saved them from a birth. Population control and the two-child recommendation remained a point of silent contention among some, particularly the traditionalists, but no one could argue that it was a potential threat. Genesis was only so big. I wondered if Jess had suspected her True would be a woman.

I pressed the bio tattoo on my left wrist—the triangular Historian seal decorated my right—into the pod and waited while my personal information displayed across the screen. A laser scanned my wrist and the information pod blinked, then whirred. A moment later it spit out my own little pink card. My conversation with Jess had reminded me this was all silly fun and I glanced at it quickly, no longer filled with anything except idle curiosity.

Caesarion Caesar (47 BCE–30 BCE)

To have a True so far removed from the present was also pretty rare. There was a girl, Jess's friend Peyton, whose True wasn't scheduled to be born until 6780. We'd spent an afternoon trying to figure out how in the System they'd figured that out, but we still didn't have a clue. Future Trues were a strange phenomenon, and usually not more than a generation removed since predicting Chosens was impossible.

I read the printed words again—
Caesarion Caesar
—then folded the card and stuffed it into the back pocket of my leggings. My faux burger waited at the table—pepper jack cheese, no tomatoes—and I took a giant bite and smacked obnoxiously while Analeigh made impatient noises.

“Come on, Kaia. Who is it? Do we know him?”

No one assumed we'd know him, so really she meant did we know
of
him. And we did.

“Caesarion Caesar.”

Oz's eyes snapped up at the announcement—his historical interests lay in the ancient world, while mine tended toward revolutionary France. His long fingers squeezed his grilled cheese sandwich so hard a hunk of melty goodness slumped out onto his wrist. “Caesarion. As in, the only son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra?
That's
your True Companion?”

“Aw, that's kind of sad. His uncle killed him, right?” Analeigh bit her lip and cocked her head to one side, her classic I'm-trying-to-remember pose. Her historical interests were early nineteenth-century America, so the Caesars landed well wide of her comfort zone.

“His adopted brother of sorts,” Oz corrected. “Octavian—Augustus—was actually Julius Caesar's great-nephew but he was adopted and groomed to be his successor.”

“I guess I missed out on my chance to be a princess, guys. If only I'd been born, um …” I trailed off, attempting fruitlessly to calculate in my head how many years ago Caesarion had died. Or been killed. I shoved more cheeseburger in my face while Analeigh and Sarah laughed.

“Two-thousand five hundred and ninety years ago. Give or take.” Oz wiped the cheese off his hand with a napkin. He didn't look up as he took another bite of his sandwich.

“I can totally see you as a princess, Kaia,” Sarah giggled. “Your family is as close to royalty as it gets now.”

“Shut up, Sarah.”

“Yeah, you are
totally
wrong,” Analeigh protested.

“Thank you, Analeigh. You're a good friend.”

“She's wrong because you would never wear a dress long enough to be a princess.”

I threw a roasted potato at her face but missed. It slid down the blond waves that hung almost to her waist, then plopped onto her shoulder. She gave me a dirty look and flicked it onto the table, grabbing a cloth napkin to dab at the oil left behind in her hair.

After we settled down, Sarah changed the subject, asking Oz where his observation would take him tomorrow.

“Pearl Harbor,” he replied. “I'm looking forward to it, I suppose.”

I hadn't been to Pearl Harbor, but I'd seen the holo-files. Only Oz would look forward to watching a bunch of people blown to smithereens.

“Yeah, that should be
interesting,
” I mocked.

Oz grunted his response, missing or ignoring my sarcasm, and Sarah patted his arm. She leaned over to press a kiss to her boyfriend's freckled cheek, her fingers teasing the black hair at the nape of his neck. “Leave him alone, Kaia. You know Oz will be happy when his traveling days are over and he can hide out in the Archives all day.”

I loved the Archives at the Academy, too, but not as much as being present at the events. It helped me understand, to pick up on the mood of a thing and not simply the actions. But Oz was … shy, maybe? Focused? Snobby? Either way, he wasn't big on interacting. He preferred to be alone in the Archives, reflecting on our recordings until his brains slid out of his ears.

“How many rules did you break today, Kaia?” Sarah's mischievous gaze sparkled. “Should we bust out the Guide when we get back to the room, take bets on your sanction?”

Oz's serious gaze fell heavy on my face as it burned. Analeigh and Sarah kept giggling, snorting that if Caesar hadn't been able to hold my attention, who would.

“Seriously, I think she might have missed him altogether,” Sarah gasped.

“Ohhh, and he could have been her father-in-law!” Analeigh hooted. “He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would have approved of a girl like you, Kaia.”

It was weird to think of the man we saw murdered yesterday in a different context. My True mourned him. His father. Something shifted in my gut, an uncomfortable twinge. “Can it, you guys. It's not even a serious infraction to mess up an observation as an apprentice, and you know it.”

“
You
would know. I'm sure you have that page dog-eared.”

Most of my Guide to Sanction Determination was in fact dog-eared. It outlined potential infractions, and according to their severity, intent, frequency, and a host of other factors, suggested appropriate sanctions. I liked to be prepared.

Analeigh sighed, sobering as she returned to her typically grave self. “Seriously, Kaia, I don't understand why you can't just do what you're told.”

Oz's silent, judgy stare started to unnerve me, even though it wasn't uncommon coming from him. He and Analeigh both followed every rule to the letter, never setting a toe out of line. Maybe they had the right idea. Sometimes, in the present, I convinced myself to be more like them.

The past, though, never failed to make me waver.

The moments we captured, the special ones … people never saw them coming, never understood the impact of the seconds as they ticked past. The Historians did good work, and being a part of this Academy made me proud. I loved my parents and had watched my brother break their hearts, and I knew that Analeigh was right, that I should follow all the rules, not just the ones that didn't interfere with my selfish desires.

But I wanted to
live
moments, not just record them.

Max sent over four strawberry cupcakes—he must have pulled my favorite from my bio-tat info—and the flickering candle and off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” by my friends made me forget about my family and my brother and following the rules, anchoring me here and now.

But as I blew out the pink candle and licked away the creamy frosting, I wondered what he had looked like. Caesarion. What he'd liked to eat, whether he had ever fallen in love, what kind of mother Cleopatra had been … and I couldn't help the little seed of sadness that took root in my heart at the realization that he could have died before he could celebrate his own seventeenth birthday.

Before he'd really gotten to live at all.

The Archives were my favorite place inside the Academy, the spot that, more often than not, really made me feel at home. Long hallways sprouted from the massive main chamber and led to private viewing rooms, utilized by advanced reflectors who preferred seclusion. All of the rooms were typically quiet, even if several Historians were present at once. When we returned from trips, we analyzed and critiqued our recordings in here, individually and in group sessions. Reflection was a huge part of our jobs as Historians because without it, all we had were holo-files—essentially the same as reading history texts on Earth Before, but probably way more cool.