Return Once More (25 page)

“What is going on with you?”

“What's going on with
me?
You're the one taking unauthorized, unsupervised travels with a stolen cuff to see a boy you were never supposed to meet.”

“How could we never be supposed to meet if we're meant for each other? What sense does that make?” I didn't mean to yell, or to start crying, but that didn't stop both from happening.

Most boys fumbled when girls cried in their presence, or at least tried to offer awkward comfort, but Oz only stared. The unreadable expression on his face betrayed nothing of his feelings. “It doesn't have to make sense. You're abusing your Historian privileges and you know it.”

His accusation, so similar to Caesarion's, hit me like a slap in the face. It made me cry harder because it was true. And he didn't even know the whole of my transgressions. That not only had I traveled alone to observe Caesarion, but had talked to him. Held him, kissed him, told him the truth about us. About me. Whether or not the Elders had let us all down by hiding something, I had let everyone down, too. Yet, even now, barely able to breathe from under the guilt, I couldn't regret it.

Wouldn't.

“It's not like you've been Mister walk the line, Oz. You've been traveling alone, too. We both have our secrets, and yours are worse.”

“I'd rethink that if I were you.”

“You know why
I'm
traveling. I'll even tell you where I got the cuff—I didn't steal it, I found it in Jonah's room. He left it.” Oz's lack of emotional reaction clenched my own fists in response, and swept confusion into my tangled web of thoughts. He wasn't scared of anything I knew, and that scared
me.
“Why are
you
traveling?”

When he didn't respond, I pushed harder, hoping he would confide in me. “I know you've been tracing the development of guns, starting in ancient China.”

The air in the room changed, electrified, and my fear from a moment ago returned. It slammed into me, wet my palms with a slick, cold sweat, but I didn't move. It grew so thick that it couldn't only be mine—there was too much.

“Stop. Checking. Up. On. Me.” Oz enunciated each word through clenched teeth, fury and something else, something almost like the terror slicing through me, clouded his gaze behind his thick, black spectacles.

“Or what?” I whispered.

“Or I will report what I know about your actions to Zeke and the other Elders. You will face a sanction more serious than you're prepared for, and that's if you're lucky.” He stepped toward me, his hand reaching out and circling my wrist, clamping down so hard I bit my lip to stop from crying out. “You have no idea what you're dealing with, Kaia.”

The dread in my mouth tasted horrible. “Tell me.”

He ignored my pleading, more pronounced aloud than it had been in my mind. “You can't break these rules. They're in place for a reason, and it's to ensure that this society we've worked so hard to form stays intact.”

The phrase
stays intact
brought Caesarion's kind face to my mind and calm swished through me. It also reminded me of the tactics and maneuverings that colored the ancient world, and I recognized that Oz and I were in a negotiation of sorts—and that he did not hold the only hand.

“What makes you so high and mighty? You stand there and tell me that I'm such a terrible apprentice for not following the rules, but you're doing the exact same thing!”

“I have permission and you know it.” He smirked, a mean expression hardening his gaze. This wasn't Oz. Oz was shy and quiet and awkward and yeah, sometimes haughty, but mean? He never had been. “You know, I've been warned by my father not to fall for your supposed advances.”

Mortification heated my blood, but denying it was dumb. “I let them believe what they wanted.”

“So your real secret would not be found out.”

“You know my real secret, Oz, and you've always loved reminding all of us how much better and smarter you are. Yet you're here threatening me instead of telling your father what you know. Why?”

“Because we've known each other most of our lives. I consider you a friend. Our history counts for something to me even if it doesn't to you. And I'm warning you—I'm begging you—you've got to stop.” He dropped my wrist, staring a little at the red welts he'd left behind as though someone else had made them, blood draining from his face. “I'm trying to help you.”

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 pinned me with her toughest gaze, the concern in her eyes pushing my guilt to new levels. “
Everything,
Kaia.”

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 Minnie's reflection, and relayed that, too.

“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 funny.”

“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.”

“All these years, everything about Oz has seemed so straightforward and boring. It's weird even thinking about him putting us all in danger this way.”

“I know. And I don't care what Truman says, there's more to what's going on than a simple application. You didn't see his face. Oz is terrified—for me, for him, maybe for everyone, I don't know. But when he saw Jonah's cuff he said something in French.”

“What?”

“
L'avenir est dans le passé,”
I repeated in passable French. I was one of the few who struggled more with Romance languages than German-rooted dialects. It was annoying.

“The future lies in the past?”

“That's what he said, and when I asked him what the hell he meant, he seemed crushed that I didn't know. It sounds like some sort of Historian motto, except it isn't. Right?”

She shook her head, blond waves falling around her shoulders. “No. And I can't imagine it would be. If anything, the future sprouts from the society they've built in the System. Our evacuation from Earth Before is a natural break in the pattern, we move forward from there. The past informs our decisions, how we're set up and governed, but I don't see how it could
be
our future.”

“I know.” I paused, gauging her reaction and whether it had been smart to share, but I needed someone here who understood the Historians and what we stood for. I needed Analeigh, the brains of our friendship. Without her I was lost, not only as to what to do next, but how to get out of this quagmire created by my own rule-flaunting ways.