Return Once More (21 page)

Could he tell I was nothing more than a girl about to tumble headlong down the wrong path, who couldn't resist the pull of even a long-dead true love? A girl sitting here judging him instead of herself?

“Oz?” Sarah asked, frowning now. Her blue eyes flicked between us, confused, maybe a little worried.

My roommate's expression made me look away, and under different circumstances, I might have laughed. Whatever was happening to my relationship with Oz these past couple of weeks, it wasn't romantic. Simply the dance of two people with secrets they were determined to keep.

He finally realized the entire table was staring at him—at us—and glanced down at his True Companion. “What?”

Oz's admittedly handsome—if tired—face softened as he registered the worry in Sarah's expression, and he lifted a hand to brush a piece of short blond hair off her forehead. The tenderness in his touch twisted loose a piece of my heart. I felt the ghost of Caesarion's lips on mine, a perfect fit I would never know again, and in that moment, realized that I never should have experienced it in the first place.

I never should have met him, because now, nothing in my life could ever live up to the sense of balance and completion offered by his presence.

“Of course I want you to choose reflection, Sarah. I don't want you off gallivanting at all hours when you could be home with me.” He slid an arm around her waist.

It impressed me that he'd heard her question. While our eyes had been locked, I had barely heard anything over the roar of my own panic, but Oz's response made me frown. Sarah would hate being relegated to reflection; she loved the observations and recordings. It would be terrible to see her chained to not only surly, superior Oz, but the table comps, too.

The future had always seemed far away, a little murky. For me, it surely held a Chosen Companion, children, and a job at the Academy in some capacity. Now it appeared obscured by the kind of fog that concealed the ground on Angkor. Most people preferred to steer clear of the swampy mist, yet the planet seemed like a dream to me, as though each step meant an adventure—maybe you'd crash into a hole, or maybe the path would lead you into a beautiful re-created bayou filled with cypress trees and Spanish moss.

Sarah glanced between Oz and me one last time, concern tightening her features. But when a loud alert signaled the end of lunch, she shrugged and let it go. Her laid-back demeanor made her one of the easiest girls at the Academy to get along with, but also one of the easiest targets. She was altogether too nice for her own good. Whatever was going on with Oz, and whatever had shifted between him and me, it could hurt her. I needed to make sure that it didn't.

We all left the mess hall for the Archives, scheduled to spend the afternoon on our final supervised Triangle reflection. Everyone moved slowly after eating, or perhaps because spending the rest of the day watching teenage girls burn to death didn't appeal to a single one of us.

Oz and Sarah sat next to each other on one side of the largest, square metal table. Analeigh and I took the two seats next to them, across from Jess, Levi, and Peyton. Two Elders stood at either end of the table, and today we were blessed with a double dose of Gatling sisters. Jess and Peyton chattered about something that had happened at Stars last night, but as the clock ticked to the hour we fell silent without having to be asked.

The sisters were both heavyset with unruly, gray old-lady curls, a permanent ruddiness smeared over their cheeks, nose, and chin. Their icy eyes could wrap chills around your spine faster than you could pretend to be paying attention, and standard Historian garb didn't flatter either one of them, accentuating every pucker, roll, and dimple they'd earned with fifty-plus years of life. Neither of them were mean, but they were strict. They expected our best.

There actually weren't
any
Elders that didn't command our respect, but the Gatlings froze the frame every ten seconds from the beginning to the end of the recorded memory and asked you to analyze the choices you made. It was brutal.

Today, Maude pulled up her own recording of the Triangle Fire on one end of the tabletop screen and Jess's on the other. Everyone looked as green about the gills at having to relive the situation as I felt.

We watched the recording in ten-second spurts, comparing what Maude recorded to what Jess had seen, and of course my least favorite classmate's work was nearly perfect. There was a brief mistake, maybe five or ten seconds when she looked away from the girls jumping out the windows. I didn't blame her.

Analeigh and Oz's observations were also both hard to fault—Maude had plenty to say about mine, of course, and my distraction by Rosie Shapiro. Levi and Pey both got a lecture on how to make sure the camera cut through smoke so it didn't obscure anything.

Viewing the fire as it played out seven more times didn't make it any easier. If anything, it made it worse, but by the end I felt numb toward the entire thing. I watched Rosie go for the last time as we reviewed Minnie's recording, smiling a little at the thought of the Cubs winning an unscheduled World Series because of my brother. Sports were encouraged in Genesis, on an amateur level, but reflection had determined that a vast separation of wealth had been significantly detrimental to the health of our previous society, so professional athletics had not been reinstated After.

The silence in the room shifted, electrified. Analeigh's eyes grew big and focused over my shoulder, and when I turned, I found Oz's father, David Truman, staring at me from the doorway. His eyes, a darker shade than his son's, flashed with subtle suspicion and rage.

“Kaia, come with me, please.”

My heart thudded, then fell into my butt. I'd been in trouble enough times to recognize the tone of his voice, and at the moment, there were any number of infractions that could have been discovered. I could only hope it wasn't one that could get me into seriously hot water.

There was nowhere to run in Genesis, or on Earth Before, where the Historians couldn't find me. So I followed him, trying to prepare myself to face the music.

Elder Truman led me down the echoing metal hallway, past a giggling group of first-years who went silent and wide-eyed at the sight of him. He didn't do much overseeing unless he wanted to experience a particular event again or spend the day with his son, and never taught reflections, with one exception: the reflection on the actions of his ancestor, Harry Truman.

That class revolved around the American president's decision to test nuclear weapons on defenseless civilians. Oz's father never tired of dissecting it. We kept our honest opinions unspoken and unreflected around him, but after my certification I planned to revise my file on that event to include the words
despicable
,
thoughtless
, and possibly
sociopathic narcissism
for good measure.

Not everyone agreed, the Trumans included, but witnessing that horrible day had turned my stomach. All of those people. There one moment, gone the next. For nothing. Then again, military tactics had never made sense to me. That's why there were many Historians, so that history could never be observed and reflected through a singular, distorted lens. I tended toward one side, while people like Oz and his father peered through a vastly different one. Neither was wrong.

Well, that's what they taught us. I was pretty sure I was right.

“Sit down, Miss Vespasian,” a scratchy old-man voice commanded.

Oh my laundry, Zeke Midgley.

He sat at the head of a long, wooden table in a small chamber in one of the offices. None of the other rooms at the Academy had anything but metal or stone accoutrements, but the additions of heavy cloth drapes and the thick wooden table and chairs made this space eerie. Truly quiet. It would be intimidating even without Zeke and his nearly colorless eyes staring me down from behind his own Historian frames.

If a sighting of Elder Truman was rare, Zeke, the last surviving Original settler of Genesis, was a ghost, a tall tale. And I'd seen him twice in the past couple of weeks.

“Yes, sir,” I managed, plopping into the chair at the opposite end of the table.

No matter how many times they called me on the carpet, it never failed to redeposit all of the moisture from my mouth onto my palms. I'd given in to Analeigh's protests and left Jonah's cuff hidden in the mussed covers of my bed, so at least they couldn't find it on me and take it away. The seat cupped my rear and wasn't cold, the combination making me long to leap to my feet. I had a strange mental image of the chair sucking me in and eating me for dinner.

Focus, Kaia. You're in some serious trouble here. Maybe you should hope the chair
does
eat you for dinner.

Truman slid into a chair on the right side of the table, leaving four empty ones, and Maude Gatling came in, taking a seat on the left. They all studied me until I felt naked. I couldn't stop swallowing in a desperate attempt to turn my tongue back into a usable organ, as opposed to its current impression of a cotton ball.

“Do you know why you're here?” Zeke asked.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. There were any number of reasons I could be here, and opening my mouth upped the chances I'd confess to an infraction that had escaped their notice. My eyes were stretched so wide I worried they wouldn't stay in my face much longer. Trouble and I were well acquainted, and I'd been sanctioned plenty of times for my wandering eye during observations and a couple of instances of breaking curfew, but this room meant something bigger.

“Why were you reviewing Minnie Gatling's reflection on the development of weaponry?”

The question threw me. Thoughts jumbled in my head, scattered like a bowl of marbles dumped on the glass floor, but I kept catching the same one—I had only done that this morning, too soon for the Elders to perform a random review of any of our reflections or research paths.

Which mean certain files had to be flagged in the Archives.

They'd never told us that.

My insides bolted seven different directions, unsure what they wanted to hear. “I was finished with my assignment, and my reflections never get very good marks so I thought I would study some of the overseers'. You know, to work on improving.”

Zeke's eyes narrowed. “Kaia, my dear, you have many talents. Improving yourself without prompting is not usually one of them, unless you have decided to turn over a new leaf.”

“If that
is
the case,” Elder Truman interrupted, “why did you also initiate a search cross-referencing people instrumental in the development of guns minutes prior to reading Elder Gatling's reflection?”

Ice ran in my veins. Minnie's file hadn't been flagged. The
search path
had.

I needed to throw them off track, because if they kept digging into my recent actions, they were going to find two unauthorized trips into the travel air lock. “I didn't realize there were off-limits files in the Archives. Perhaps you should mark them.”

“They're not off-limits, Kaia, but we do monitor access to the Archives that deal with the major contributing factors to our exile from Earth Before.” Zeke's empty eyes bored holes into my face.

There was that word again, the same one Younger Minnie had used.
Exile.

“I think you know that the System takes a hard stance on the development and use of weapons,” Maude added, her steely eyes kinder than usual. “Given your brother's current situation, it would be understandable if he influenced you, maybe asked you to do some research into such things? Perhaps he and his pirate friends are looking to create new versions?”

My jaw dropped at the same time relief turned my limbs to wet pasta. They thought this was about Jonah. “No! I haven't talked to my brother since he disappeared, and I would never support the re-introduction of weapons to private citizens. Read my reflections on the topic!”

“Then why were you so interested in those particular archives?” Zeke demanded. “Stop backpedaling and stammering excuses. A simple answer for a simple question, so we can be done.”

Answers raced through my mind, but none of them were good enough. Or simple, for that matter. They hadn't bought my line about improving myself, and I couldn't blame them. I thought briefly about throwing Oz under the bus, but his suspicions of me made it too risky that he would turn the tables, not to mention his father would defend him.

The sweat on my palms traveled to my armpits. The long delay would confirm I wasn't telling the truth. Lying was my best ally, normally, and now in my moment of need, the nefarious sections of my brain misfired and failed.

Then Truman, the least likely candidate for help, came unwittingly to my rescue. “Is it because my son has been researching the same events for his independent reflection application?”

Zeke grunted, mouth turned down as though he'd bitten a lemon, and Maude shifted, her gaze on Truman. I gathered all of my courage and met Oz's father's eyes. He tried and failed to convey a false empathy—all I saw was the typical contempt that withered my courage into fear.

They knew what Oz was researching. Did they know about his travels, too? His interference? Tears burned the back of my throat and welled in my eyes.

These people, the Historian Elders, had raised me from the age of ten. I believed the things they'd told me about our world, about the truth of what had happened on Earth Before, about my duty to protect the past from alteration and ensure a profitable future. It hurt in unexpected places that now, in this moment, I'd lost the ability to trust any of them when I needed it the most.

“Why would I want to copy Oz's research?”

“He said you've taken a special interest in him lately,” Truman clarified.

If he thought I wanted to be more like Oz the Perfect Student or something, let him wander down that path. It was littered with fewer landmines, for sure.