Return Once More (14 page)

Our cloaks hid the standard clingy, black material along with the Historian emblem bright on the breast, and we wore black running flats. Our hair swept off our necks in dark and light ponytails and the glasses completed the outfits. We couldn't leave the air lock without the glasses or remove the recording chips until we returned—the portal wouldn't work otherwise--but nothing prevented us from destroying them instead of archiving the information.

I lowered my mouth to the cuff after turning the time and date dials to the correct position. “Roma, the armory.”

*

Roma, Genesis–50 NE (New Era)

Roma housed the System's industry and production factories. Day laborers and tall buildings fought for space on crowded central streets, and basic home dwellings were smashed together on the outer edges of the city. The factories supplied everything mechanical for the System, as well as tools, hover transports, ships, electronics, and pretty much anything else that needed to be manufactured. Each planet contributed something specific, and had been designed that way from the beginning.

The cuff dropped us right at the armory's front door, which was bad, given the extra security cameras that surrounded the only building in the entire System that housed weapons. Analeigh dragged me behind a recycling Dumpster around the side of the metal and glass building. From there, we snuck around to the back where, based on the news report, the pirates had breached the exterior.

Analeigh's watch said we had three minutes to spare, and right on time, a band of ragged boys belly-crawled through the privacy fence at the rear of the property. There were four of them, all armed with stun batons and Gavreaus—sonic wavers.

The building held
stockpiles
of stunners and wavers, the only two weapons manufactured in Genesis. The rest had been left behind on Earth Before, having been determined as one of the contributing factors in society's descent and eventual failure. The recorded history surrounding their mechanics and manufacture had been wiped, and now that knowledge had all but disappeared. I supposed a Historian could re-create it by observing the development firsthand, but otherwise, we'd have to start from scratch to re-invent guns or bombs or anything else.

Their clothes snagged my interest in a less scary way. Instead of the sleek, tight uniforms the citizens of Genesis favored on a daily basis, the pirates wore khaki shorts that landed at their knees, faded T-shirts, ankle socks, and a brand of tennis shoe that hadn't been manufactured since Earth Before. I wondered where they had found four pairs that fit and also looked as though they were pretty well intact.

When Jonah's shaggy dark head came into view a strangled noise tickled my throat and my feet took a step forward, both without my instruction.

Analeigh held me back with a light touch. “Don't. If you go now it'll be a distraction and they might not rob the armory. This is still history. We can't change it.”

I nodded, never looking away from the boys. They were all brunettes, with hair that needed a cut and clothes that needed a wash, but even from here I could tell they were slightly older than us, good looking, and fit.

“Man, no one ever talks about how they're, like, the handsomest band of pirates ever,” she whispered.

“Right?” I giggled as softly as possible but the boy at the rear paused.

His head whipped around, and both Analeigh and I covered our mouths. After a moment he frowned and followed his friends up to the back door. My brother slapped a wad of something sticky near the keypad on the thick iron door and all of the boys turned away. A moment later light flared and a soft fountain of sparks flew through the air. A small pop accompanied the display, but the sound barely registered.

The door sagged on its hinges and the boys disappeared inside the armory.

My mind raced while we waited for them to reappear. Until now, worry over my brother's fate had been a constant, but abstract, thing. Seeing him carrying a weapon, watching him break into a building with the intent of stealing … it brought it home. My chest felt too tight, like someone had secured a rubber band around my lungs. The idea that I could lose him for real, for good, made me shake all over.

Violence existed in the System, but death was rarely the result. The stunners would knock someone out for an hour or so, and fistfights and the like still occurred on occasion, but the Gavreau wavers—named after their inventor—were the only weapons capable of killing. Citizens didn't carry them. They were issued to Enforcers, who handled emergency mortal sanctions, and to one Elder in each Academy in case of emergencies. They could be set to incapacitate, but at their highest setting, the sonic wavers liquefied internal organs.

The thought of that happening to my brother numbed my nervous system.

Mortal sanctions of exposure could be issued, too, but they were as rare as anything else deadly. It had only happened twice in my lifetime, and I didn't want my brother to be the third.

Sounds of a commotion rang from inside the armory but were short lived. A few shouts and quick, electrical zapping of stunners later, only shuffling murmurs whispered into the early morning. The boys reappeared a moment later, black duffel bags slung over their shoulders and roguish grins making their faces appear even younger than when they entered.

I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the bins and into their path. The two boys at the front dropped their bags and grabbed me so fast I couldn't make a peep. Analeigh flew at them, digging her fingernails into their hair and yanking, but it didn't loosen their hold on me. One let go of me long enough to fling her at Jonah, who caught her against his chest and held on tight while she beat at him with her fists.

He held her away, eyes widening in recognition before they slid to me. “Stop! Jean, Teach, let her go.”

“Why? They're Historians. They could tip off the Elders in two minutes,” one of the boys barked, a dark curl falling into his eyes.

“She's my sister.”

“So?”

“Let her go, Teach.” My brother took a step forward, his face dark and threatening in a completely unfamiliar way. The boys dropped my arms. Jonah let Analeigh go and she stumbled against me, her hand finding mine.

“Should we run?”
she asked silently.

“No. It's fine.”

Jonah's dark eyes softened as he ran a hand over my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you know where I'd be?”

I eyed his companions—Jean, Teach, and the unnamed third—then cocked my head toward the bins that had provided Analeigh and me cover. “Can I talk to you in private?”

“Jonah, we have to go. Those Dockers aren't going to be unconscious forever, and we need to be well away from Roma before they wake up. That junker ship of ours can't outrun the Enforcers and you know it.”

“She's not a junker, Sparrow. The older models are better, you know that.”

“It doesn't change the fact that they'll catch us. We need to go.”

The boy my brother called Sparrow had blue eyes that clashed impressively with his nearly black hair. The old, threadbare T-shirt clung to the muscles rippling across his chest. He grinned when he caught me staring. “You never told us your sister is so … grown up.”

My brother growled, then stepped in between Sparrow and me, cutting off my line of sight. He leveled me with a glare that would have worked on anyone else. “Leave.”

“No.” I stuck out my chin. “I need to talk to you and I'm not leaving until I do.”

“I don't have anything to say to you, Kaia. Go back where you belong.”

“I found your cuff in your room. That's how we got here. And I'm going to keep using it and showing up wherever you do until you talk to me. Might as well get it over with today.”

“Just bring her with us. If she's got a travel cuff she can get back to the Academy whenever she's ready,” the one named Teach said.

Light bounced off his honey-brown hair. The false sunlight on Roma shone brighter than in most of Genesis, maybe to compensate for the drab days spent toiling in factories, and I squinted. Indecision fluttered across Jonah's features. They'd always revealed his every thought and feeling to me—or so I'd thought before he'd left without a word. He looked different, and not only because of the bumped, horrible scars on his throat and wrist where the tats had been dug free. He seemed older, more serious, than in my memory.

“Jonah, come on,” Sparrow urged, all of the playfulness gone from his voice and posture.

Jonah nudged me in front of him. “Let's go, Special K. You, too, Analeigh.”

We followed the pirates back through the fence, then jogged through deserted back alleys, hugging buildings and making little noise crossing the glass paved roads and sidewalks, until we reached one of the four docking portals. Three dockmasters lay sprawled in a heap, their electric-blue uniformed limbs tangled together. Snores emanated from at least one of them, so I assumed they were all alive—either dosed with a sleeping draught or stunned into unconsciousness.

We stepped over them one at a time. Teach and Jean went first, followed by the flirtatious Sparrow, then Analeigh and me, with Jonah going last. We tramped in hurried silence through the air lock and then onto the air bridge that connected the pirates' ship to Roma. The air changed subtly, turned colder, as we left the terraform behind and hung suspended in a tube over empty space.

We stepped through a dented metal door and into a second air lock. Jonah slammed the outer hatch into place and turned the lock, and once the oxygen light above the interior door flicked from red to yellow to green, we stepped onto the ship.

Which, no matter what my brother said, was a junker.

Rust spots dotted the cargo bay floor, leaving brownish red splotches across the faded blue metal. Stairs rose to a second level, a thin, wobbly-looking railing accompanying them. Sealed containers littered the bay, filled with stars knew what, and a rack draped with stunners and wavers hung on one wall. The smell in the air reminded me of mildew and spoiled dairy.

“This is a piece of crap,” Analeigh said, somewhat accusingly.

“Hey. Do not insult my baby. She flies with the best of them,” Jonah snapped.

“Some of us are about more than a pretty face,” Jean joked, elbowing Sparrow in the ribs.

“Jonah's pickier when it comes to the faces on his fleshy ladies. Not that any of them can hold a candle to Anne Bonny,” Sparrow replied.

“Anne Bonny?” I asked, shooting my brother a look.

He shrugged, a slight pink tingeing his cheeks. “That's her name. The ship.”

“Okay, well, Jonah, go ahead and have a little chat with your pretty sister. I'm going to get this gorgeous bucket of rust in the air before we get busted and have to really test her engines.”

Sparrow started for the stairs, and I turned to Analeigh. “Why don't you go with them and check out the bridge.”

“But—”

“Please, Analeigh. I'll be ten minutes talking to Jonah and then we'll go back.”

She checked her watch, frowning. “Ten minutes, Kaia. Breakfast is in twenty.”

I nodded and turned, catching Jonah whispering something to Jean, his eyes on Analeigh as she started for the steps. Teach held out a hand to her but Analeigh ignored it, climbing the swaying staircase unassisted.

My brother jerked his head and Jean followed, leaving the two of us alone in the cargo hold. Jonah watched until Analeigh and his friends disappeared, a strange twist of emotion on his handsome face. It disappeared as he turned back to me.

He heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can't go around using that cuff whenever you feel like it, Kaia. Not only could you get seriously sanctioned, but if the Elders traced you right now you'd be putting my life in danger. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not. Not that
you
considered our family's safety when you decided to go all space cowboy.” I sank down on an unmarked wooden crate and pulled my knees into my chest.

Pain and guilt flooded his face. It felt good to push my anger where it belonged, but we didn't have much time to beat around the bush, even if that had ever been our style.

I shrugged and waved a hand, cutting off whatever stammered apology he was working on. “How did you know it was safe to warn Rosie Shapiro?”

The shocked silence confirmed my suspicions.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he managed, not even bothering to put any force behind the lie.

“I found your True Companion card with the cuff and did some research. Rosie Shapiro was on the original victims' list. She jumped from an eighth-floor window and died on that street. And yet, when we observed yesterday morning, she claimed illness and left the building around four-thirty, less than fifteen minutes before the fire broke out.” I stopped talking, mesmerized by the sight of the blood draining from Jonah's face. I reached out and touched his hand, almost surprised that he let me. “It's okay, Jonah. I know you saved her. How did you know it wouldn't blow up the future?”

He chuckled. “Well, the Cubs did end up winning the pennant in 1956 because of me.”

“That's not funny. What if it had been something worse?”

“There's not much worse if you're a Cards fan.”

“Jonah.”

“Why are you so interested in Rosie?” He peered into my face, dark eyes serious a moment before everything clicked into place. “I missed your birthday. Who is he?”

“No one. Someone who died young that didn't have to.”

“Ah, yes. The Vespasians and their tragic loves. Have you met him?”

My cheeks heated up, giving me away. His eyes widened a little before a proud grin snuck onto his face. “My little sister, the rebel. And now that you know I saved Rosie's life you want to know if you can save … ?”