Return Once More (19 page)

I needed to grab some clear, adhesive bandages from the infirmary so the wound wouldn't get infected in between travels. Some healing salve wouldn't hurt, either.

Analeigh paused for a moment in my bedroom doorway, looking torn between giving me space and being terrified I'd disappear like Jonah had if she let me out of her sight. Finally, she sighed softly and flipped the lights off on her way out of the suite.

The shower had given me time to think and for the first time in days, a boy other than Caesarion filled my thoughts. My mind turned over Oz's secret comings and goings, and no rational explanation came to mind. If Oz had gone rogue, traveling alone and observing without authorization, someone had to stop him. Someone should stop me, too, because I didn't have the willpower to cease and desist on my own, but since no one had, that left me free to follow Oz.

The halves of me—the one in love with my calling as a Historian, and the one connected to Caesarion—were at war, but if Oz was taking chances that could affect us all, the Elders needed to know.

First, I needed proof. The suspicions I had, based on his bio info reflecting odd times and places, wouldn't be enough. He would claim a system error, and I could end up drawing attention where it would be potentially disastrous—onto myself. His father being an Elder, they would believe Oz in a game of He Said, She Said between the two of us.

With everyone out at Stars for the next hour or two, I could travel back and follow him to England earlier tonight. Try to get answers. Traveling alone twice in the same day counted as reckless, but I had to know what he was up to. If he could help me.

I didn't want to waste time figuring out clothes, so I ran to the wardrobe closet and grabbed a generic black trench coat that fell to my knees, knotting it securely around my waist. My leggings and black flats showed, but with my glasses and hair twisted into a knot under a kerchief, no one in 1714 England would spare me a second glance.

The air lock registered a different certified Historian's name this time when I swiped my wrist. The tech must have been programmed to switch it up, which eased my anxiety further.

The laws of physics prevented Historians from crossing paths on different trips in the same past—like, we didn't see the previous groups of apprentices observing Caesar's death or the Triangle Fire. There was some intricate set of principles that made it impossible, but I didn't need to understand them to work as a Historian. Those worries belonged to the Science Academy. Essentially, the only way to watch Oz was to go with him, so I'd have to travel back in Sanchi to when he'd left, then leave from there. I set the dials on Jonah's travel cuff for ten minutes before Oz's departure, then whispered “Air lock, Historian Academy, Sanchi,” into the tiny speaker.

I disappeared and reappeared in the same place, just about an hour and a half ago. I reset the dials and requested a trip to “Norwich, England, Outskirts,” hoping the vague instructions worked.

*

Norwich
,
England
, Earth Before–1714 CE (Common Era)

The soft landing in the middle of nowhere pleased me. Beautiful, rugged coastline stretched out for miles, all green and browns, trees giving way to waist-high grasses before easing into sand and rock that took a beating from the crashing surf. There wasn't time to admire it, and a quick request for the route into town brought up a map on the lenses in front of my eyes. The hike into town took the better part of an hour and sweat trickled down my back, partly from the exercise and partly fear that I would miss Oz's arrival.

The town of Norwich yawned in front of me, paved with quaint cobblestone streets and pretty, sturdily crafted storefronts, row houses, and churches. A gazebo sat in the middle of the town square. The market bustled with people out shopping for bread or cheese or new clothes for the squalling children they towed through the streets behind them. There were women in full skirts chattering around a round marble fountain that burbled and twinkled in the morning sun, and men in suits walked with purpose into money changers' offices or held heated discussions, pipes dangling from their lips.

The brain stem tat returned Oz's location in response to my query, but his wardrobe blended so well it almost fooled me. The fact that he looked super handsome caused me to do a double take. He strode purposefully down the main street, clad in expensive gray silk, knee-length breeches and a matching waistcoat, paired with off-white stockings and a linen shirt. A darker gray frock coat and a bicorn hat on his head finished off the look, though if my bio-tat hadn't been working overtime spewing information, the details would have escaped me.

It all fit him perfectly, stretched across his broad shoulders and accentuating things on the rear end of Oz I'd never considered assets before today. I must be off my nut, checking out Oz's ass in broad daylight.

My idle admirations screeched to a halt, every muscle in my body tensing, when I noticed the Gavreau strapped in the belt at his waist. The sight dropped a leaden ball into my stomach.

There was no good reason to bring a sonic waver on an observation.

Oz whipped around, as though sensing my eyes or my steps dogging his. I turned my face away at the same moment I registered how the gray coat brought out his eyes, and ducked behind a group of women waiting in line to buy fresh bread. The smell of it cooking filled the air, and brought back the sharp memory of sharing a snack with Caesarion. My heart pounded so hard my ribs hurt.

When I peeked again after counting to thirty, Oz had continued down the street.

The cobblestones made my steps unsteady, tripped me more than once before he turned down a less crowded alley, then onto a different street. A man stood on the stoop of a legal office, and Oz headed toward him. When my eyes focused, the glasses followed my gaze, analyzing the time, date, and place, and running facial recognition on the man before displaying details in my peripheral vision.

James Puckle. Lawyer. Three years hence, inventor of the world's first machine gun technology. Married twice. Children with the first wife, Mary (decd), none with the second, Elizabeth, wed two months hence.

None of it meant anything to me. The glasses and my bio-tat gave no indication that today would be special, not in Norwich, not for James Puckle. He had impacted the world with his technology, but not yet.

Not yet.

My mouth went dry at the thought, recalling the sonic waver nestled against Oz's hip. At the memory of Booth's random comment about changing the past, at the realization that I now knew that it had been done before—by my brother. The chance that he was the only one seemed remote now, watching Oz move with such purpose.

Before my imagination ran wild, my classmate swerved into a young woman who had bent to retrieve a bundle of rosemary she'd dropped into the street.

Her coloring didn't match the rest of the commoners in town; her skin was shaded an olive color similar to my own, and her long, silky black hair was pinned into a knot at the back of her neck. When Oz banged into her she toppled sideways and right into James Puckle, who caught her in his arms and righted her, concern softening his rigid features. His concern shifted to irritation as his gaze swept the street, probably looking for Oz, before he asked her something in a voice too soft to be overheard. She nodded.

The wisp of Oz's coattails turned at the end of the street and I hurried after him, turning right to discover an empty, smelly alleyway. He had returned to Sanchi.

The scene I'd witnessed left no doubt in my mind that Oz was up to no good. Whatever this was, it wasn't an observation. He'd interfered. Pushed that woman so that she and Puckle interacted. Touched the past, as I had done the other day. I knew why I had broken the rules—to meet my True Companion. But Caesarion was personal; I wanted to save him because of my feelings, but it didn't mean the rules that governed the Historians weren't smart or in the best interest of humanity as a whole. I would never jeopardize our lives on Genesis or our future.

Nothing I had done so far would change anything significant. What I'd witnessed a moment ago, though … I had a feeling it could.
Would.

It left me with the lingering question of whether Oz felt the same way about what we'd been taught at the Academy, or if he had different plans altogether for those of us living in Genesis.

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

This morning we were working on private reflections, entering our individual conclusions on the Triangle trip, and this afternoon we'd have our last supervised reflection on the event.

Our footsteps and hushed conversations banged off the walls of the empty hallway as my class made our way to private reflection. I'd read old mystery novels where characters overheard conversations through heating ducts or in sewers—the entire Academy felt that way. At least our dormitories, with our blankets and furniture, soaked up some of the noise.

The seven of us found the main Archive room empty, with the exception of a third-year boy whose name escaped me. He scooted past us and out the door without a word. Oz escaped to the private carrel he had on permanent reserve before the rest of us dropped our things. We spread out, two or three to a table, all subdued in the early morning.

It was my first chance to get back to the Archives since following Oz to Norwich, and I wanted to jump right into figuring out what in the System had happened there, but the Triangle reflection came first. There was no way I was ever going back into that memory if it could be helped, and if our deep reflections weren't approved at our end-of-month review, we had to redo the observation.

The Triangle Fire had been reflected to death—what it meant for women's rights, workers' rights, the development of unions, the reinforcement of greedy businessmen by the American court system, the horrible truth that people had to see injustice with their own eyes before it meant anything at all. Those truths had been established long ago and dissertated by Historians before me.

We were expected to bring
new
observations to the table during deep reflection, and after fifty years, that required focusing on smaller aspects. Which meant, in this instance, my distractions gave me an advantage. Deep reflection was one of the only times my tendency to obsess over the sidelines came into use. While in the past, we were supposed to record what they assigned, but in the Archives any focus was fair game.

The first original reflection I gathered was about the lives of the survivors—how humans had the capability to go on in the face of personal tragedy. There were diary entries in the system from later in Rosie's second life, along with multiple interviews about the fire, and in every one, her guilt over leaving her friends and coworkers behind oozed from the words. She'd never forgiven herself for surviving, but she hadn't disgraced her friends' sacrifice by wasting the years she'd been gifted by my brother. She had fought for workers' rights, and then women's rights, and later, civil and gay rights. Rosie Shapiro had spent a lifetime making her good fortune count.

I thought briefly that my reflection might bring too much attention to Rosie, and therefore Jonah, but it seemed unlikely. For one, the only record that she had died was in the original manifest from Earth Before. Any Elder—if they even noticed—would assume the original records had been incorrect and corrected by one of our many trips.

The next two reflection topics were harder, but after three hours I managed to get the table comp to accept as unique contributions the devolving of humanity into a more animalistic state in the face of imminent death and the idea that the majority of the girls chose to have control over how they died.

Everyone else's eyes were still trained on their comps, fingers nudging observations and typing reflections, with the exception of Oz, who had finished and left an hour ago. He'd probably been sitting alone in his room being boring and ruminating on these reflections since we'd gotten back from New York, wondering if one might be his ticket into the Hope Chest. Aside from his unauthorized trip to England, of course.

I got up and stretched, shaking out the kinks in my legs and neck as I paced the floor, searching for the single red dot roaming outside the Archives, which would have to be Oz's. The more nonchalant I acted, the more Analeigh's suspicious gaze burned between my shoulder blades.

When I finally found Oz, he wasn't in the mess hall or the gardens or the dormitories. His dot disappeared from the travel chamber, then blinked a moment later in Canada, 1934 CE.

What in the
System
was that boy up to? Whatever it was, he could have used a handy dandy chip like the one Jonah handed me.

My Historian training, coded into my DNA as deeply as my attraction to Caesarion, demanded to know why he'd interfered in England. He changed something. I just didn't know what. Or why.

If I cross-checked the places he'd gone, maybe a common thread would show up.

A quick press of his dot displayed bio data, and another punch pulled up a two-week history, which I transferred to my locked file before I slid back onto my stool across the table from Analeigh. I ignored her stare and after a moment, she heaved a sigh and returned to her reflection.

Two thousand years ago, someone would have had to flip through volumes upon dusty volumes of actual books to piece together a connection between thirteenth-century Mongolia, eighteenth-century London, and twentieth-century Canada. A thousand years ago, computers could have attempted the search, but the user still had too much influence as far as entering parameters.

I knew he'd gone to see James Puckle, inventor of the Puckle gun, in 1714. That was a start.

I punched in the dates and asked the table comp to find any historical connections, then picked at the chipped polish on my fingernails while it processed. Strange anachronisms, like fingernail polish that didn't last longer than a few days, filled society in Genesis. Vanity was generally frowned upon, so even though we could time travel, contemporary travel faster than the speed of light, and manufacture vitamin-packed synthetic food, things like the polish, hair dye, and makeup had never been improved. We could probably invent a way to permanently change the color of our nails or hair if the scientists committed a couple of days to the project.