Return Once More

The hallway floors transferred a chill to the soles of my feet but I ignored it, wanting my privacy. There were two necessary stops before Egypt, and only a few hours before my friends woke and started wondering about my disappearing act. First, I needed to review Caesarion’s timeline and store the info in the password file in my tat. Second, the Research holos would help me figure out a proper wardrobe—I couldn’t go to ancient Egypt in this getup.

It took me less than five minutes in the Archives to download the sliver of information related to Caesarion. I wanted to meet him when we were about the same age. But getting to Egypt at the right time—before he died, but not long before—would be tricky. The facts were vague, but it helped that he’d died the same year as his mother. Her death I could find, and if the historical outline in the Archives held true, Caesarion left Alexandria around then. The date of her murder seemed like the best place to find him.

If he hadn’t left the city yet, he would be at the palace, and missing that would be hard.

With plan in place to get in and out as quickly as possible, I headed down the cold halls in my bare feet, slipping into the Research Lab. I had to swipe my wrist tattoo to open each door, but as with everything else, the information was stored but not monitored. As long as I didn’t give anyone a reason to be suspicious, all of my actions would disappear among the hundreds of other wrist swipes today.

The fashion holo pulled sizes and color preferences from my stored bio stats, styling me in a cream-colored linen dress that reached my feet. Black and teal scarves fell off my shoulders and ringed my waist, and heavy turquoise and gold jewelry adorned my neck and wrists. It wanted my hair darker, almost black, but there wasn’t time to dye it. I hated itchy wigs; my dark brown would have to do. Way to go, Israeli heritage. The leather sandals it chose were softer, more comfortable than the shoes I’d worn in Rome. Black makeup smudged my eyelids and trailed underneath, making me look like a sort of attractive raccoon.

The jewelry, scarves, and makeup were added because I’d entered “elite” into the social strata column. Cleopatra and her family had wealth beyond imagining, and no one without status would be able to get near them, except the servants. I could have easily slipped into the palace as a slave, and perhaps it would have been the smarter call and simpler to blend in, but at the last moment, I knew I didn’t want to go unseen.

If Caesarion looked up, if our eyes met, I wanted him to notice me. Just for a moment, to glimpse the look in his eyes when he felt our co

Nerves quickened my heartbeat. If I waited until tomorrow, or even another five minutes, I would change my mind.

A quick rummage through the closet produced all of the recommended pieces. The memory of old movies with teenage girls digging through piles of clothes looking for a missing shoe or that one skirt they wanted to wear made me smile. I simply punched in identification numbers attached to each piece of clothing, and drawers slid out, hangers popped away from the racks. The makeup and jewelry followed suit. The girl in the mirror looked exactly as the holo had styled her. It was now or never.

Excitement struggled to take over my nerves, the desire to see Caesarion still warring with the deep-seated worry that something could go wrong. If it did, I would be alone and the only way to get help would be to turn myself in. It might be dumb to take the risk—I knew Analeigh would think so—but I didn’t want to wait. Nothing would go wrong. In and out.

I wanted my moment.

To be extra sure that Analeigh, who loved mornings like some kind of psychopath, wouldn’t freak the hell out and sound some kind of alarm, I sent her a quick wrist comm, scheduled to be delivered at the same time her alarm went off:

Don’t worry.

Dressed in the light linen that swished pleasantly in the deserted halls, I hurried to the portal chambers, swiped my wrist tat, and another record of my movements swirled into the void. I really should have paid more attention to Sarah as she babbled on about comps and how to trick them, but it was one trip. One hour. Two at the most.

The doors air locked behind me with a suction sound, and my ears popped.

An attack of anxiety and second thoughts weakened my knees, and I sank down onto one of the cold metal benches. I wouldn’t get caught. People were asleep. No one knew I had Jonah’s cuff, and the overseers and Elders had no reason to check my movements.

Out of nowhere, hot anger flared, burning my stomach. Jonah had run off; if my absence did trigger some unknown alarm, people might assume I’d done the same. As much as I loved him, I hadn’t been able to forgive him for leaving me. I would never put my parents and friends through the same thing.

Tears stung my eyes, my fingers curled into fists. I should stay. Follow the rules, be a good daughter and a proper apprentice.

But I didn’t want to. This could be one of my moments, a morning that would change the way I saw the world, and I didn’t want to miss it because of Jonah.

Or because it scared me.

It wasn’t worth the worst of the sanctions, like exile to Cryon, where rumor had it people fried under the too-close sun and beat the shit out of each other all day until they went crazy. But the chance of getting caught was so small, the infraction so unprecedented, it didn’t seem possible to me.

When the panic cleared, those cloudy what-ifs seemed less scary than never knowing what it might be like to stand in Caesarion’s presence and feel, just for a heartbeat, a perfect co

I would be quick.

The four little lights on the cuff glowed red under the fluorescent lights. Twelve rotating dials of numbers and three letters were on the inside, and I spun them until it they read 0812 0030 BCE 0600. August 12, 30 BCE 6:00 a.m. When the date and time were steady, three of the red lights turned to green and I sucked in a deep breath, then blew my bangs away from my face.

I twisted the cuff around and raised the tiny speaker on the opposite side, to my face. “Alexandria, Egypt, the lighthouse.”

The last red light extinguished, then glowed green.

*

Alexandria , Egypt , Earth Before–30 BCE (Before Common Era)

Egypt was freaking hot. Hotter than hell, or Hades or Tuat, or any other burning plane of existence people had ever believed they would traverse after death. Sweat immediately soaked through the light linen dress, but the salty breeze from the ocean worked to keep me cool.

An overseer would have known a private spot, but the lighthouse was the most inconspicuous place that had come to mind. It ended up being a lucky choice because the immediate area was deserted. The structure was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and until the advent of time travel no one had laid eyes on it for thousands of years. There were no photos or renderings that could have done it justice, anyway. It rose out of the tip of the Island of Pharos, spewing light into the breaking dawn and giving the illusion of comfort and protection, even though it was nothing but a building.

Sadly, it didn’t do much for a girl drowning in nerves and excitement and the tiniest bit of guilt, so I’m sure much of its appeal slid right over my head.

The waves in the bay lapped gently at the shore. In the distance, across a narrow expanse of water, the royal palace glowed in the early morning sunshine. Caesarion was in there. His mother had just died and his life was falling apart, but he was there. My True.