Exist Once More Read online

  So many questions marched through my mind. Well, marched wasn’t the right description—in truth, they ran wildly, banging into each other and shrieking like rabid monkeys in the African rainforest. We’d seen some of them on a trip to observe the origins of Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever that mutated and wiped out a good portion of the world’s population in 2018.

  For the first time, I felt as though I could understand, at least a little bit, the panic people must have experienced as disease threatened to dismantle the world as they knew it. We might not be facing a planet-wide pandemic, but the Elders betraying their teachings, turning their backs on our founding principles, to carry out some harebrained scheme to give Earth Before some kind of redo seemed just as catastrophic to me.

  Not to mention just as overwhelming and hard to stop.

  I took a deep breath. To stop a disease outbreak, people had to find the index case—the first person to contract it, along with how exactly it passed to humans. Armed with that knowledge they could begin to search for ways to not only stop subsequent infections at the source, but potentially study things like antibodies and transmission rates.

  That was what we needed to do—find the source. Figure out when the Elders took the Return Project from a concept in its testing phase to full-blown alterations of major events. Which meant going back in time, and if Sarah couldn’t create a copy of Truman’s cuff in the Science and Technology Academy tonight, maybe Booth could be a second option.

  “Are we allies?” I asked quietly, still suspicious about how he’d been able to ascertain the trouble Oz and I were in tonight without being clued in by one of us.

  He watched me for several seconds, bits of fear still littering his gaze but the rest unreadable. “Consider me a conscientious objector. I’m not on their side. I’m also not sure you and your friends are the best option we’ve got to stop them. At the moment, you’re the best shot we’ve got, and so I plan to continue to help as I can. Yes.”

  My heart caught at the implication, which was that no one else was fighting them. Booth, and any remaining Elders unsure of the path their peers had taken, might not have agreed. But they weren’t doing anything proactive in trying to stop it, either.

  Did they not know how? Were they too frightened that going against Zeke and the others would mean they, too, would simply blink out of existence one day?

  I couldn’t say for sure, but I could hear Oz’s voice in my head telling me to focus. We needed information, and lots of it, and Booth’s reason for labeling himself a conscientious objector couldn’t sit at the top of my list.

  “We need details.” I sat forward. “What exactly is the Return Project, and how accurate is the Projector? What’s the end game?”

  He shook his head, dropping into his chair and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I was never part of the inner circle and since they’ve started to suspect I do not agree with what they’re doing, they’ve been careful not to speak about it around me. That said, it has always been clear to me that their work is not only about reparations, but about the chance to start over.”

  “But we already started over,” I argued, my brain a bit numb. “All of your ancestors played significant roles in destroying Earth Before, and that’s why we’re here in the first place.”

  We hadn’t confirmed that it was all of their contributions that the Elders wanted to change, but at that point, it was more than a guess.

  Based on Booth’s flinch, I’d hit the nail pretty close to the head.

  “Yes. My own paternal founder, as I’m sure you’re aware, was responsible for one of the darkest moments in the history of the United States. The Projector indicated that much would have been different had he survived—too much for us to comfortably change his outcome, I thought.”

  “More than saving Hiroshima?”

  His eyes widened. He licked his lips, the fear back in his eyes, and shrugged. “More significantly, perhaps, though not in numbers. With President Lincoln’s influence throughout the end of the war and the restoration of the South, the Civil Rights Movement would have taken hold sooner. But from what I could tell, it would still never fully accomplish its goals.”

  Fascinating. Under different circumstances, I could have spent a week in the Projector room, just following threads forward, different outcomes for the bad decisions made by the humans who had lived before me.

  “What else does it say? Anything at all that could help us figure out what they’re doing next? What they’ve already changed?”

  “I do not know. They don’t share that information with me, and access to the Projector has been revoked from all but a few in the inner circle. I never believed there was any true way to guess how influencing the past would affect our present.” Booth looked so tired all of a sudden it was almost as if he was going to collapse onto the floor. “But if you asked Zeke the same question, he would say that our technologies give us a chance to set things right. To fix the mistakes, intentional or otherwise, that our families made. The ones that stole the lives of millions and led us here.”

  “But what about families like mine? The ones who led us here on purpose, and believed this was the better life? A chance to do things right this time?”

  “Oh, Kaia. Your grandfather and the others like him were good men. Visionaries, humanitarians. But they couldn’t spend too much time thinking about the people who were left behind. Or the ones who had come along, but would always be forced to live with a different sort of legacy.”

  The people who were left behind…like Yumi? Like that couple on Cryon with my parents? Did the Elders think that my grandfather and the others who established the rules for Genesis, who decided which families boarded the refugee ships and who didn’t, hadn’t tried hard enough to fix Earth Before? Had murdered people, in essence?

  No. That didn’t make sense, and the Elders had to realize that—they had simply done what they had to do.

  “Time travel was in its infancy when we came here,” I reminded Booth, as if he’d gone daft and hadn’t been one of the very people who’d taught me about the history of the world before this one. “My grandfather and the others didn’t have the option of using it to even try to set things right. They did what they had to do to save the human race. Everyone was in agreement. You know that. You taught me that.”

  “And I was not wrong. But that doesn’t mean that, over time, different feelings have not bubbled to the surface among the leaders here.” Booth shook his head. “It is worth examining, is it not? It is our job as Historians to peer directly at the actions of those who came before us—our own families included. I’m not saying that your grandfather and the others who worked with him to save our species were wrong…but if you look closer, you will see that no decision made is completely without fault. Or completely without negative consequences. The founders knew that burden, and they bore it for all of us. Now, it has passed on to you, and to Oz and Sarah. And it is not a light one, I fear.”

  He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and opened the comp on the desk in front of him. The action felt like a clear dismissal. So, I turned and went out the way I’d come in, feeling disoriented in the stark white, cold hallways for several moments, though my feet knew the way back to my room.

  Halfway there, I stopped. It was as if my legs could go no further, stalled by the weight of Booth’s words, of considerations that had never before occurred to me. In some ways, what he said made perfect sense, and maybe I could even agree with him that even the actions that saved us from a dying planet could be considered morally ambiguous, in the right light.

  In others, I didn’t see how any of that mattered now. We were here, and the way the Elders were going about trying to take us back was dangerous. Those were the facts of the here and now, and wasting time playing what ifs was a distraction for another day.

  I hoped my grandfather would have agreed. I hoped that he would want us to first and foremost save Genesis, and the good, decent people he h
ad chosen to begin this new life.

  I hoped that, given the new information, he wouldn’t have decided that he was wrong—not about leaving, but about the fact that we were worth saving at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sitting and waiting for Levi, Sarah, and Yumi to return was almost enough to make me wish that Zeke had kept us longer in his office—almost. I paced the room for a while, wishing Oz would come by and growing more worried about leaving him behind when he didn’t. Finally, desperation won out and I changed clothes, dragging myself down to the gym for a run of my own volition.

  The Elders would be as surprised to see me here as they had been to discover me supposedly doing extra homework during our night off. Luckily, no one else was around, and Zeke didn’t show up with a cannon full of questions for the second time that night.

  I was covered in sweat and feeling weak in the legs after a couple hours of blowing off nervous steam, on my way back to my room and hoping to high heaven that all of my friends would be waiting for me there. At first, when the raised voices of my roommate and her boyfriend crept down the hall toward me, I felt nothing but elation. They were back! Oz was okay!

  But then I noticed Levi and Yumi, also in the hall. They leaned together against the chilly wall, feet crossed at the ankles and a single messenger bag at their feet. The expressions on their faces when they saw me were twin reflections of awkward regret.

  Even Levi didn’t seem all that thrilled at having a front-row seat to all of the drama, tipping his head toward the closed door with a grimace. “Shaping up into quite a storm in there. Figured I had a bit to wait it out.”

  I bit my lower lip, eyes trailing to the bag, then to Yumi. I was dying to know what he’d found at my house, but between Yumi’s presence and the drama on the other side of the door, there was really nothing to do but eavesdrop. Unfortunately.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Sarah shouted. “I can’t be with someone who wants to be with someone else.”

  “I don’t want to be with someone else,” Oz replied, much quieter but frustrated enough to be heard, even through the wall.

  “Okay, fine. You know what? You can lie to yourself, and Kaia, and everyone else who asks. Even me. But I’m sick and tired of coming home to rumors about you and her getting caught alone here or there, or the two of you hiding in closets doing stars knows what.” The catch in her voice sounded like a sob, and my stomach dropped.

  The last thing I wanted was for Sarah to hurt, and since all of this started, I hadn’t been able to figure out how to stop it. I knew that, despite all of the mistakes Oz had made, that he felt the same way. We were as helpless to prevent it as we were to halt the Elders’ interference in the past and at the moment, I wasn’t sure which made me feel worse.

  “I just can’t. Things have changed, Oz. I think that if I went and pulled another card out of the machine that your name wouldn’t even be on it. Too much is different.”

  Oz had no response for her, apparently, which was odd considering that what she’d said went against everything we believed about True predictions. About the past, present, and future in general—that it was set in stone.

  And yet, he didn’t argue. I remembered the other day, how I wondered for the first time about Sarah’s feelings for Oz, and sometimes vice versa, and how different they were from what I’d experienced with Caesarion. Other thoughts trickled alongside those—what Booth had just said about different ways of looking at things, and how the Elders had always lied to us. Everything we believed had been called into question, so what did that mean about Trues?

  Was it possible, that things could change? That destinies could be altered if truly unexpected or unforeseen events happened to the people who lived them?

  I was so deep in my own mind that it surprised me when the door swung open. Oz stopped short at the sight of the three of us. His shoulders slumped, a twist of sorrow on his face that he didn’t even attempt to hide before he retreated back into the lion’s den from which he’d barely managed to escape.

  Levi nudged me, barely disguised delight on his face that could only mean one thing—gossip abounded. And I’d missed it. Had they broken up for real, or had Oz managed to talk her out of it once again?

  Something about the air in the room, the way it felt heavy, devoid of hope, told me he hadn’t. Hadn’t bothered or hadn’t succeeded, I had no idea, but either way, this was about the most awkward room I’d ever been in my whole life.

  And that was saying a lot, considering.

  My stomach felt tight. I didn’t want to be here and not be able to talk about what had happened during everyone’s evenings, but we couldn’t discuss it with Yumi there. The confused expression on Levi’s face seemed to indicate that we weren’t going to get away with excluding her for no reason indefinitely, but tonight definitely wasn’t the time to address it. Not until he gave me what he’d found on Wolfram.

  “I, um…” I licked my lips. “I left my bag in the gym. You want to walk with me, Sarah? I want to hear about your night.”

  A flicker of disappointment shot across Yumi’s face before she hid it, and shame heated my cheeks. We were always excluding her—or at least, that must be how she felt. Even tonight, when she’d done both of us a favor, I was stealing Sarah away instead of staying here to talk about it together.

  My feelings about our third roommate were complicated and awful. The day was approaching when I would have to face the reality of how what we wanted to do impacted her, but it wasn’t today.

  Sarah got to her feet, fighting back tears. She grabbed her own bag and her tablet and gave me a nod. “Sure.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Levi said, shooting his own guilty look toward Yumi. They’d probably talked about hanging out until we had to be back in our rooms.

  “I think I’m going to bed,” Oz said, surprising no one. He would likely come with us to the gym, because no matter how badly he felt about Sarah, I knew that he wanted to know how successful the night had been for everyone else.

  Since it had been pretty darn crappy for the two of us.

  We left Yumi alone, telling her goodnight, and made our way not to the gym, but to the nearest empty common room. As soon as the door shut and locked behind us, Sarah punched a few buttons on her tablet, then tossed it onto a desk.

  “I’ve got the cuffs. Two of them. I’m sure that Yumi and her mom suspected something but they don’t know what. We can try them anytime.”

  She pulled two travel cuffs from her bag and tossed them next to her tablet on one of the couches. Seeing them there, for us, took my breath away—I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the freedom that went along with having Jonah’s, not really, until that moment. How badly I wanted one for myself.

  “Well?” she continued when no one replied. I think we were all too shocked that she actually pulled it off, though I wasn’t sure why. Sarah almost always did what she promised, especially when it came to inventing or manipulating tech, and she hadn’t let us down since this whole thing started. “I did my part. What did you all find out? I mean, if you were really researching anything at all and not just hanging out.”

  I ignored the barb. She knew we weren’t doing anything like she was implying, because she’d obviously already heard that we’d been called on the carpet together. Again. And Zeke wouldn’t do that if he’d caught us simply hanging out or in some kind of gross, compromising position.

  “Oz and I had an interesting evening even before we got caught researching what turned out to be flagged files. And after Zeke let us go, Booth and I talked for a while.” I made sure they were all listening, then dove ahead. “I think we can be sure that the Return Project is what we always feared—they want to fix enough things that the planet will heal and we never would have had to leave.”

  “Not bad for a night’s work,” Levi muttered. “Explain how this works.”

  “They’re descended from people who helped destroy Earth Before’s chances of survival, like we though
t,” Oz started. “All of them.”

  “Everything that’s in the Hope Chest, all of the Reflections that have determined ways that Earth Before could have been saved…” I shook my head. “Weapons. War. Destruction of the environment, religious division. Their ancestors were in some way responsible for all of them.”

  The silence went on longer than it did when Sarah pulled out the finished cuffs. For her part, she wasn’t pretending not to care what we had to say anymore.

  “That’s intense.” Her eyes were wide, and for the first time in months, they didn’t hate me or Oz.

  Which was especially weird, considering I was ninety-nine percent sure they’d just broken up for real.

  I tried not to think about that at the moment. Or what it meant for our class going forward, or what it meant for the entire belief system in Genesis. “We still don’t know how they’re planning to do it. Like, what other events have been altered or what they’re going to do next. If we’re going to stop them, we need to figure that out.”

  “That’s what the cuffs are for,” Sarah reminded me. “We can go back and follow them to when they interfered with Truman, right?”

  “It might even be easier than pulling up holofiles,” Oz said dryly. “Since Kaia and I found out the hard way that either the Elders are watching everything we do, or they’ve got all files that could possibly lead back to them flagged to pop up when they’re accessed.”

  We nodded in agreement, but no one stepped up to suggest a time to track them, or who should go. My impatience grew; even though the others might have forgotten about Levi going to see why in the heck my parents reminded me to feed a dog statue, it hadn’t been far from my mind since I saw him in the hallway.

  “Levi. Did you find anything at the house?”

  “I was wondering when someone was going to ask.” A wicked smile spread across his face. “Yeah, I found something. And it’s definitely interesting, to say the least.”

  “Would you just spit it out?” Oz snapped, losing his patience with Levi’s tendency toward the dramatic about a half a second before I did. “We’ve only got ten minutes before we have to be back in our rooms.”