Return Once More

The decontamination doors released at that moment, the hiss of the air lock popping my eardrums. I shoved past him and into the hallway, struggling to breathe. My entire body shook from head to toe, as though there hadn’t been enough oxygen in the pod. My wrist burned from his tight grip and I gulped air, determined not to cry in the halls. Determined not to run away from him.

The escape brought my anger back on a swift and powerful wave of indignation. “Newsflash. I didn’t ask for your help, Oz, and I don’t want it. You say we’re friends and that means something but you can’t even tell me what’s going on. So you know what? Turn me in or don’t, but don’t act like you’re being a friend of any sort.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, stomping off toward my dorm. The shakes wouldn’t be left behind as easily as Oz, though, and our confrontation added to my fear and confusion over everything that had happened these past several days.

The Elders were lying. Oz had a secret, and it had changed him. Just now, the first boy I’d kissed, who’d said exactly two words the entire first year at the Academy, had hurt me. Threatened me.

He was wrong about one thing—those seven years counted for something for me, too. It meant that, even without realizing it, I heard what he hadn’t said.

Oz was scared.

And if a guy whose father sat as an Elder, who had traveled alone with supposed permission and altered the past as though he knew the outcomes had a reason to be afraid, I had to assume I did, too.

*

I found Analeigh in our room, thanking the stars she was alone. I didn’t think I could stand to see Sarah’s face right now, not after my confrontation with her True moments ago.

My best friend leaped up from her bed, fear and worry drawing her features together in a pinch. “Kaia! I’ve been texting. Where have you been? What happened to you?”

I crashed into her, wrapping my arms around her back and letting loose the sobs that had been building since the good-bye with Caesarion on the beach.

“Whoa. It’s okay. The Elders let you go; it must not be too serious.” She sank onto her blue comforter and took me with her, smoothing my hair like my mother would have.

My uncharacteristic display of emotion probably freaked her out, but I was pretty freaked out, too. Everything had turned into such a mess in the blink of an eye. When my sobs finally subsided into hiccups I sat up, wiping my sore eyes and feeling dumb.

“Sorry. It’s been a crazy day.”

“Start with what happened when the Elders pulled you out of Reflection, and tell me everything.” Analeigh pi

The secrets were too many to keep now. They reached too far, impacted too many other people. They churned inside me until they threatened to hurl out in actual vomit instead of words. The Elders, and Oz, and my brother, had been keeping everyone’s eyes closed to some greater truth, but we were all Historians and we deserved to know.

“Okay. First of all, the Elders pulled me out of Reflection because I accessed a trail of files related to weapons development. They thought Jonah had asked me to help him figure out how to make new ones. Truman assumed I’d been snooping into the files Oz has been reflecting on the past couple of days to, like, stalk him or something.”

She sucked in a breath. “It doesn’t surprise me that militant whack job keeps close tabs on Oz’s bio data, but I had no idea certain search parameters were alarmed.”

“Neither did I. They said any file related to the primary reasons for the fall of society on Earth Before are flagged. Weapons, segregation, overpopulation, organized religion, class distinction.” I rattled off the big five, then remembered the strange tone of Mi

“Exile? That’s what it said? Not evacuation or relocation?” Her manicured eyebrows drew together and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Strange. Like they thought they could fix it. Return.”

“I thought so, too.” I paused. “And Oz hasn’t just been researching the development of weapons. He’s been going out on observations alone, and he changed a trajectory during at least one of them. I know because I saw him, and followed up in the Archives.”

“You saw him? You followed him to the past?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “But he can’t … we can’t do that. Change things.”

“I think we both know we can. We’ve just been told that we shouldn’t.”

Analeigh’s skin turned green and sweaty. She leaned back against the wall, breathing deep. “We have to turn him in.”

“They know he’s traveling. At least, Truman does. We need to find out if the Elders know he’s altering things before we can decide what to do.”

I didn’t mention we also couldn’t do anything because then I would be caught, too. That I was just as bad as Oz—maybe worse, because I believed he had known the consequences of his interference.

“How did you get out of the interrogation? Why did you tell them you were reading those things and following Oz’s research?”

My face flamed at the memory, then got even hotter remembering that Oz knew what had been said. “Well, since Truman assumed I have some kind of stupid crush on Oz, it seemed like the best idea at the time to let him believe it. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

She snorted, the kind that made the corners of my mouth twitch against my best efforts, and the tension that threatened to strangle us both eased the tiniest fraction.

“Shut up, Analeigh. It’s not fu

“It’s hilarious. You and Oz Truman? Can you even imagine such a thing? You’d be bored out of your mind in less than an hour, and he’d go stark raving mad from having to corral you twenty-four seven.”

“Exactly. Hilarious.” The observations hit a little too close to home, given the exchange between us in the decontamination chamber. As though those five minutes had been a microcosm of our imaginary relationship.

It didn’t make a lot of sense, now that I thought about it, that Elder Truman would think for a moment that his son and I could have been a good match. Then again, he assumed I had a wayward crush, not that anything more substantial or two-sided was going on.

And it wasn’t. At least, not in the way he assumed.

I took another deep breath, knowing this second confession would be harder, because it put me under the judgment microscope, not someone else. Analeigh might make fun of Oz for acting like he had a stick up his ass all the time, but she followed the rules, too. Best to dive right in, like jumping in one of the ice-cold pools on Persepolis.

“I’ve been using Jonah’s cuff to observe Caesarion.”

“Kaia,” Analeigh gasped, her face drained of color and her eyes giant round disks. “How many times …”

I waited for more, but she appeared to be at a loss for words. That said more than anything else, really, and since I’d shocked her into silence with that revelation, I chose to keep quiet on the rest of my transgressions, at least for the moment. “There’s more.”

“Oh, stars. I can’t take more.”

“When I got back from Egypt, Oz was waiting for me outside the air lock. He shoved me back inside and said he knew where I’d been and why I’d gone. Told me I had to stop or bad things would happen. It was scary. For Oz.”

That tidbit hung in the air between us, thick and dreadful. I held out my wrist and she took in the red welts ringing the skin below my tat. Her green gaze burned hot with anger behind her glasses. “He hurt you? What a hypocrite! He can’t say anything because you know he’s been traveling alone, too.”

“That’s what I thought, and I told him as much, but he said there are things I don’t understand. And like I said, it was pretty clear from my session with the Elders today that Truman knows he’s traveling. He claims it’s for next year’s certification.”