Return Once More

“I’m scared, Jonah. To use the cuff. If I get caught, if the sanction is bad … After losing you, it will break Mom’s and Dad’s hearts.”

“You shouldn’t use that cuff to travel, not to see your True or me or anyone else. You should forget him, and me, and any thought of messing with the past. But I know you. It’s dumb and it’s dangerous, and you don’t have all of the facts, but you won’t be able to resist. That chip works. They never guessed what I did.”

“Then that can’t be the reason you left.” He clamped his teeth together, staring back at me blandly. My hands curled into fists, frustration mounting so high I almost growled. “But how did you know you could save Rosie?”

“I can’t tell you that. I can say this, though: not everything you’ve learned at the Academy has been true, but one thing is. We can’t change the past without consequence. Every person, every event, affects at least one other. Be careful.”

We sat in the kind of silence that only exists between two people who don’t have to speak to understand each other. Jonah’s warnings rang loud and clear. The pain inside him translated as clearly as his fear and I knew one thing: he believed he had done the right thing in leaving.

My heart squeezed until my chest hurt, and against my best efforts, tears pricked my eyes. I reached out and grabbed his hand, and Jonah held on tight. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, Special K.” His voice shook and the sight of tears gathering in his eyes shook me to the core. “I miss you all so much.”

Analeigh’s light footsteps on the stairs ended the companionable grief a moment later, and she cleared her throat softly. “Kaia, we’ve got to go.”

I nodded and stood, throwing my arms around Jonah’s neck and giving him a tight hug. He had been more evasive than anything, but he was my brother and I loved him. In his own way, he had tried to help.

The Elders and their mysterious secret business didn’t strike me as interesting as the suggestion that I could at least try to save Caesarion. If Jonah wouldn’t tell me how I could verify the trajectories the way he must have before he saved Rosie, and then maybe I could figure it out on my own by spending more time with my True. If I could gauge the potential course of his unlived future, know his mind and his essence, maybe the answers would follow.

The chip my brother had given me burned hot in my palm as the blue, shimmering field surrounded Analeigh and me. Even if, in the end, I couldn’t be sure enough to save Caesarion, the chip meant that our story didn’t have to be over.

Not yet.

Chapter Twelve

Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)

Three days passed before I found time to go see Caesarion again. We had the trip to observe the Louis XIV’s coronation, then a couple of days of mandatory reflection, and I didn’t want just an hour with my True this time. I wanted as much time as I could pilfer.

For every ten days of apprentice work we were granted one free day—not always a pass out of the Academy but time to spend as we chose—and that was today. Twenty-four wonderful, empty hours where no one expected me to be anywhere. Not showing up at meals didn’t raise any eyebrows, even, since we often chewed protein tabs or ate the snacks stowed in our rooms. We took advantage of the alone time if we didn’t score a pass to leave the grounds.

I told Analeigh and Sarah that I pla

If Analeigh guessed my plan to use Jonah’s cuff to travel alone again, she didn’t say anything. Probably because visiting her True Companion with the idea of saving his life would never enter her mind.

But she didn’t know what it felt like to stare into the eyes of a person who felt like part of her. To know the grim details of his impending, senseless death but be helpless to intervene. Analeigh hadn’t lived with the empty hole Jonah had left in my house, or borne the weight of lost love, of bitter strength, soldered in the necklace hanging against my chest.

If Jonah could improve his True’s outcome, why couldn’t I?

Since secret travels and illicit contact seemed to be my life now, flying under the radar at the Academy seemed the best plan, so I had done better with my last recording. No one in the crowd at the coronation of Louis XIV distracted me—even Maude Gatling approved during our initial reflection. The less attention the Elders and overseers paid me, the better.

Of course, behaving didn’t stop me from checking on Oz in the Archives a couple more times, out of plain and simple curiosity. He, Levi, and Jess were assigned to observe part of the first Crusade yesterday and his bio information confirmed he’d joined them. It made me second-guess my instincts about him traveling on his own, but I dismissed the thought quickly. Rosie’s second life hadn’t been a comp error, and neither had Oz’s travel.

He was up to something, but I couldn’t worry about my problems and his, too. Not today.

This morning, all that mattered was that I could leave for most of the day and night without anyone thinking twice. According to Jonah, if anyone did go looking, my dot on the Archive floor would show me in my bathroom, where I currently stood—once I got up the nerve to use the device he gave me.

I took a shaky breath over the sink, grasping my brother’s tiny, metallic disk with a pair of tweezers, poised to jam it into the base of the golden barcode on the inside of my left wrist. This was the price. A little moment of pain, and I could be with Caesarion again. Figure out if saving him was an option.

I gritted my teeth, held my breath, and jammed the sharp metal under my skin in one rough shove. The faint glow of the golden threads under layers of skin flickered and dimmed, then went dark for the first time in seven years. A quiet groan escaped and I held still, both to wait out the wave of sweating and nausea and to make sure Analeigh hadn’t heard me.

No sound came from the bedrooms. My brother hadn’t lied about the chip hurting like a bitch, but the throbbing discomfort passed as I wiped up the drops of blood on the sink and cleaned off my wrist, marveling at the tiny gash left by the sliver of tech. The two hair-like strands for easy extraction trailed outside the wound, tickling the sensitive skin inside my wrist.

The question of who could have helped him create it remained unanswered. None of the other pirates were Historians, which meant someone else at this Academy knew the chip existed. Jonah’s class had been five years ahead of mine—his classmates were all certified Historians now, but none of them had been here long enough to be overseers. We didn’t interact, and I didn’t know any of them well enough to gauge their tech skills. It added to my curiosity over what exactly drove my brother onto that ship and out of civilization, but one obsession at a time.

Outside the air lock, I swiped my wrist tat and waited to see the effect of having the chip inserted. Instead of my name popping up, it registered one of the certified Historians. Clever, and less suspicious, for anyone other than an apprentice to be down here alone. They traveled alone all the time without being questioned.