Exist Once More Page 14

  “Who was that from?” Sarah asked, a challenge in her blue eyes. She obviously thought it was from Oz.

  It hurt that she continued to have suspicions that the two of us had something going on other than trying to save Analeigh, or stop the Elders attempting to undo generations of work.

  “Booth. He wants to take me on an Observation tonight.”

  Now she was the one who frowned, confusion wrinkling her brow. “Why? Just you?”

  I shrugged. “He didn’t say. Unscheduled Observations aren’t totally unheard of, I guess.”

  While that was true, they were usually the result of an apprentice struggling with grasping a certain historical concept, or the process of reflecting in general. By the time kids got to their final year it wasn’t quite so typical.

  A fact Sarah obviously realized. She folded her arms, watched me in silence for a moment, and then went back to her project.

  It was curious, but what could I do but go?

  I slid off the stool, stowed my personal comp, and headed for the wardrobe booths. At this point in my training I could have come up with an outfit that was close for the era without consulting them, but with the time crunch, using the comps was easier.

  After dressing the part of a boring secretary and letting the grooming booth twist my hair up into an equally snooze-worthy knot before applying a thin layer of makeup and understated lipstick, I made it down to the travel pods on chunky, sensible heels with five minutes to spare.

  I heard Analeigh in the back of my mind, asking why I hadn’t glammed it up Peggy Carter-style, and couldn’t help but give in to a wry smile. She loved clothes. I tolerated the process of dressing the part.

  The sight of Oz waiting there with Booth, my classmate wearing a lame suit similar to my own getup, made me pause.

  That Booth wore his regulation robes had me gripping the doorframe with confusion.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, anxious to understand what had brought me—and Oz—here together but no one else. And why Booth wasn’t dressed.

  “You two are going to go without me,” Booth said, hastily, then raised a hand as my mouth dropped open. “You’ll take my cuff so no one will suspect. I’ll stay here the whole time, just in case, but you shouldn’t be gone more than a half an hour.”

  “This is a terrible idea,” Oz said with characteristic bluntness. “How do we know you’re not trying to get us into trouble? That this isn’t some kind of test to see whether Kaia and I will break the rules when given the chance?”

  Booth’s expression grew troubled, but he didn’t reply. He merely turned his rheumy dark eyes on me. “Kaia. Do you trust me?”

  I wanted to say yes, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a stupid response. How in the heck did I know who I could trust?

  Instead of answering, I swiveled to face Oz. The ally I was one hundred percent sure of. “We should go. I don’t know why or what we’re going to see, but information is never bad. Right?”

  “And if we come back to the Elders waiting to turn us over to the Genesis Council for illegal actions? If they try to pin all of this on us?”

  “They most certainly will try to pin all of this on the two of you, or the three of you, if Miss Beckwith has agreed to forgive the two of you as I suspect.” Booth’s voice was as smooth and calm as ever, even in the face of our distrust. “And that is exactly why you must go. As Miss Vespasian says, information will save you. It may be the only thing that can.”

  Oz and I stared at each other for ten breaths, then ten more. Then, with the slightest softening of the skin around his mouth, he nodded.

  I let out a couple lungsful of air and gave the same assent to Booth, who slid his travel cuff from his wrist. He held it out to me, an air of relief emanating from his hunched frame.

  “I assume you know how to use this. I’ve already set the time and place.” He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Go. Hurry back, but don’t miss anything important.”

  “How will we know what’s important?” Oz asked as I stared down at the date on Booth’s cuff, my heart in my throat as it registered. “You haven’t told us anything!”

  “You’ll know, my boy. You’ll know.

  I took a deep breath as Booth backed out of the travel pod, removing himself from the trip. My finger pressed the button that initiated the sequence as Oz’s gaze found mine again, and he stepped closer. His expression worried that he might need to hold me up.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, keeping his distance at the last minute.

  “The Manhattan Project.”

  The surprised shoot of his eyebrows toward his hairline was the last thing I saw before the blue haze surrounded us, and the Academy faded away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Earth Before - December 27th, 1942 C.E. (Common Era)

  Oz and I landed in an obscure spot on the edge of the University of Chicago campus. Snow blanketed the stately, quiet grounds and lent a muted quality to an already deserted space. The holidays had stolen the majority of students and Oz and I took a moment beneath a large maple tree to gather ourselves. Acclimate to our surroundings.

  I blew out a breath, watching as it formed a puffy, white cloud in front of my face. A shiver wracked my body and I wondered why Booth didn’t tell us to bring coats. Maybe he’d forgotten what the weather was like. Maybe he’d never known.

  “Well?” Oz asked, his eyes round behind his glasses.

  “Well what?” I snapped, annoyed that he seemed to think I had any more idea of what was going on than he did.

  “Well, you seemed to know where we were going, so I figured you’d have some clue where there’s some kind of big event going down that we’re supposed to check out?” His voice was calm but the tightness in his jaw betrayed irritation of his own.

  Oz and I had never been short on the ability to rub each other the wrong way.

  I sighed and rubbed my arms, which had goose pimpled under my short-sleeved, off-white blouse as I scanned the campus. My glasses returned the names and functions of the empty buildings around us but found no signs of life.

  “We’re looking for a meeting,” I explained to Oz. “Of scientists, but I don’t know where exactly it takes place.”

  My research on the Manhattan Project so far had been brief—moments snatched here and there—and all I knew for sure was that the group had begun to form back in 1939, but hadn’t been fully funded until recently. They’d had a mild success that led President Truman to believe the research into nuclear fission could be an asset in the war.

  The scientists working at the university now were looking for ways they could turn the still-dream of a nuclear weapon into a deadly reality.

  According to Oz’s family history files, they would be successful, and sooner than later.

  According to the Archives, Truman would never use what they discovered.

  But today, we should be able to witness the true history of the events leading up to that decision. Which would be great, and maybe even super helpful, if we could figure out where, exactly, the meeting of minds was supposed to take place.

  “Why do you think Booth sent us here?” Oz whispered, even though we were clearly the only people within earshot. It was hard to hear him over the crunch of snow underfoot.

  “I don’t know.” I used a normal tone, maybe simply to annoy him. “Let’s just figure out where we’re supposed to be and think about the why of it all later.”

  He fell silent until a few moments later, when his body stiffened next to mine. We’d started walking closer and closer, until the backs of our hands continued to brush and the cold almost enough to make me want to snuggle into Oz’s heat. Almost.

  Instead, I distracted myself with the direction of his gaze, and spotted a man in an overcoat and hat walking briskly across campus. I went still and waited the two or three seconds it took my glasses to pull up his identity—a biologist named Gulio Fermi. One of the more prominent members o
f the Manhattan Project.

  I gave Oz a tight nod and we set off after him at a safe distance. When Oz reached down and took my hand in his, the shock that resulted from the feel of his skin almost made me cry out. Instinct sent me jerking away but he held on tight.

  At my angry glare, he gave me a look that said I was missing something. After I took a moment to calm down, it occurred to me that we might look less conspicuous as a couple strolling hand in hand across a snowy campus than as two people sneaking along behind a scientist on a secret mission.

  I wasn’t sure that was true, since we were dressed as professionals. I didn’t know how we were going to get into the meeting, or at least close enough to hear, but there had to be secretaries and the like involved. Maybe Oz was meant to play another university professor, coming in to get a head start on research or his plans for the following semester.

  It turned out to be a moot point, since he quickly dropped my hand and moved a professional distance away as we entered the building. The relief from the weather was immediate and I flexed my fingers, noticing how red and numb they felt after a ten-minute exposure. The man—Fermi—hurried up a flight of stairs and Oz and I went behind him, not bothering to disguise our footsteps, now. If we wanted into that room we were going to have to come up with a reason we belonged sooner or later—best start acting like it.

  For his part, Fermi didn’t seem like a man headed to a clandestine meeting full of men who would use their talents to give the world a way to kill itself. He glanced over his shoulder at us once, gave us a tight nod and a smile, and continued on his way.

  Down a long hallway, he turned into an office and lab. There were chairs scattered around several different tables, and it bustled with the activity of at least a dozen men and three women who were dressed similarly to me. The women poured coffee and arranged themselves in front of stenography notebooks as the men settled into chairs around a large conference-type table.

  I put on a helpful smile and picked up a tea kettle, starting around the room. When it became clear that the men, at least, knew each other, Oz slipped quietly back into the hallway. I knew that he would stay nearby—hopefully close enough that our enhanced hearing through the brainstem tat would still allow him to hear what was going on in here.

  No one paid attention to me or any of the other women as we went about our work. I found an extra steno pad and pen in a pile next to some lab equipment and grabbed it, sitting down in an empty chair a little ways away from the men, who were beginning to quiet from their greetings and small talk.

  One, a tall man with a shock of dark hair and glasses as thick as my own, took control of the meeting. He sat next to a short, older man with a wild shock of white hair and the wisest eyes I’d ever seen—his face would have been impossible to misidentify, at least for me. Albert Einstein was one of my father’s personal heroes.

  I should have even known, perhaps, that he’d been a part of this project.

  My glasses gave me the name of the man speaking—J. Robert Oppenheimer—and a brief history of his life that sent a shudder down my spine.

  Trying to be inconspicuous, I scanned the remainder of the men in the room. None of the names rang a bell, though they all had impressive resumes that would grow exponentially because of their work on this project.

  They began to discuss things I couldn’t comprehend. Science was another language as surely as ancient Latin or Imperial Mandarin, and even though my brainstem tat tried valiantly to keep me abreast of the discussion, the concepts weren’t as easily translated as idioms and turns of phrases.

  Someone else entered the room, the shame on his middle-aged features and the swift movement of his chest as he puffed to regain his breath proof that he knew he was late. He quickly found a seat among annoyed murmurings and the sounds of the others shifting in their chairs. “Apologies, gentlemen.”

  “You’d think you’d be on time, considering you’re the one who started all of this, Niels,” Oppenheimer said, his tone a combination of bemused authority and genuine impatience.

  My gaze lingered on the man long enough for his name, history, and contributions to come up, but I didn’t get past the name part.

  Niels Bohr.

  Could he have been related to Silas Bohr, one of the Historian Elders?

  A few more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. My head swam with the implications of the discovery that not just one, but two, of our Elders traced their family lines back to this committee. This event.

  They were trying to fix what their ancestors had done. Restore Earth Before. I knew it in my bones, even if we couldn’t prove it yet.

  We knew the Gatling sisters’ family had invented one of the first firearms that became a household item, in use by civilians. And that the Elders had interfered in at least one other event that had to do with the invention of firearms—the one that Oz changed in rural England.

  We knew that they’d interfered—somehow—in the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and that Elder Truman’s bloodline was responsible for that decision in the real history of Earth Before.

  What else did we know? Maybe that Silas Bohr’s relative had been the man behind the Manhattan Project.

  I needed to get out of here. To have some space, to think, to be able to talk this through with Oz. Booth had said that we would know what we were here to see when it presented itself—it had to be Niels Bohr’s involvement in the making of an atomic bomb. There was no way it could have been a coincidence.

  My legs moved without permission, pushing me to my feet and shoving the chair hard enough to cause it to screech across the linoleum. It drew too much attention but there was no way to take it back, and so I rearranged my face into something sick and apologetic, clutched my stomach, and hurried out of the room.

  Oz loitered in the hallway alone, his head tipped toward the door and his lips twisted in frustration. I flew past him without waiting, snatching his hand on the way and dragging him back down the empty staircase. Outside, the wind had started to blow.

  The cold hit me again, all at once, and I turned back into the building without thinking. A glance at my wrist tat told me we’d been gone the better part of an hour already—longer than Booth had figured. We needed to get back, but here in the past, just the two of us, Oz and I could talk in a way we couldn’t at the Academy. Not anymore.

  “What happened? What did you see?” He didn’t speak until after we’d closed ourselves in what looked like a mailroom on the ground floor, an assumption my glasses tried to verify before I impatiently swiped the information away. “I couldn’t hear anything that seemed, well, not that it wasn’t important, exactly, but—”

  “Oz, shut up.” I sucked in a deep breath and willed my heart to slow down. He stopped talking even though it looked like not asking any more questions might have killed him. “I think I know what Booth sent us here to find.”

  “Okay…”

  “It’s not only your ancestor that’s involved in this, it’s all of the Elders. They’re all connected to what they’re trying to change.”

  The wheels in Oz’s head turned so quickly I could almost hear them from a couple of feet away. He was smart enough that I didn’t bother reminding him of what he’d done in England, or about the Gatlings. He just needed a couple of minutes to put it together on his own.

  When the light came on in his stormy gray eyes, I nodded and licked my lips. “There was a man in that room. His name was Niels Bohr and they said the Manhattan Project was his baby.”

  “Silas…”

  “I think so. We’ll have to verify it, but I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence.”

  We stood in silence for several minutes, until the nerves swirling through my blood reminded me that we really did need to get back. If Booth wasn’t setting us up, he’d surely be getting nervous about standing guard at the portal for so long.

  Pity. If we’d had more time I would have been sorely tempted to use his cuff to go see Jonah and Analeigh. I had strong
suspicions that this Return Project was the same reason Jonah had fled the Academy, and now that our parents’ lives were at stake, I couldn’t imagine that he was just running around playing pirate and not trying on his own to figure out how to set things right.

  But we couldn’t.

  “So you think the Elders involved are trying to fix things their ancestors did. Bad things, things that changed Earth Before for the worst. So they can go back.”

  “I don’t know that for sure, but I mean…it’s called the Return Project, but isn’t that insane, Oz?” I bit my lower lip, my mind struggling to compute all of the possibilities. “I mean, if they change enough things, how can they be sure they’ll be around to go back? Why would they want to?”

  Out of nowhere, tears burned in my throat. I wanted to talk about all of this with Caesarion, have him look at me with his soft, serious brown eyes and tell me that stopping the Elders and saving life in Genesis was something we could figure out together.

  My cheeks were wet one minute, and the next they were pressed against the cheap polyester of Oz’s borrowed suit. His arms were around me, pressing me tight into the warmth of his body. Every time I’d been inside them, I never ceased to notice how much stronger he was than he looked. How much more substantial.

  It might not have been Oz that I wanted, but the contact broke something loose inside me. I’d been holding on to it so tight since the day I watched Caesarion die. Since my parents had been banished and Analeigh had run away. Losing Sarah had added insult to injury, and despite all of my late night sobfests over all I’d lost, I guess I’d never really let it all go.

  And my stupid heart picked now to fall to pieces. It felt impossible to gather up, splattered all over me and Oz and this empty university building a thousand years in the past and millions of light years away from our reality.

  Oz raised a hand to the back of my head, his fingers dug into the careful twist. Chunks fell loose and swept over the back of my neck, sending a chill through my limbs. I instinctively snuggled closer, letting Oz hold me.