Exist Once More Read online

  Levi watched Sarah as she vented, her voice winding tighter and tighter until it seemed possible that her head might actually explode. Despite the situation, the whole thing struck me as funny. When I burst out laughing, though, they both looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles.

  “Sorry,” I gasped. “It’s just, you should have seen your face, Sarah. The tip of your nose got all red like that one…horse, or whatever, that pulled the sleigh through the sky.”

  Levi quirked an eyebrow at me. “You have gone off the deep end. Is that it?”

  “No, dork,” Sarah swatted him, finally looking more amused than anxious for the first time since I sat next to her in the auditorium. “She means Rudolph.”

  “He wasn’t a horse,” Levi replied, looking confused. “He was a deer.”

  I snapped my fingers. “A reindeer.”

  “Yeah, whatever that is.”

  It was true we’d never seen one in the real past. Maybe the Elders were lying about them, too.

  That thought brought me back to reality, where very little was funny, and my smile evaporated. One thing was clear: the three of us were running out of time to solve the mystery of the Elders’ Return Project before the Genesis Council took over.

  And as nice as it would be to hand over the reins, I didn’t have much confidence that anyone outside our Academy could understand what we did, how it worked, well enough to fix anything.

  Not to mention that I would be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t worried that we would lose our ability to do good in the System forever once they took away our portals. That they would decide it’s better this way and never give it back.

  “We need help.” The bluntness of my tone captured both of their attention, and fast. “We need answers, and as much as I think we could find them in Harry Truman, if this is the last time we can use the portals, I think we should go somewhere else.”

  “Oh, you do? Pray tell.” Sarah folded her arms over her chest, defiant.

  Levi looked like he was waiting to hear what I had to say before making up his mind.

  I took a deep breath, hoping like hell that they would really think about what I was about to suggest before shooting it down. Because we needed to make a move, and we needed to do it now. Only time would tell if it was the right one.

  “I think we should use them to find Jonah.”

  It wasn’t as easy to convince them as I would have thought. Even with the mysterious coordinates we hadn’t had time to search out, and the fact that all signs pointed to the fact that my brother had known about the Return Project, at least in some capacity, they weren’t convinced the pirates were the right way to go—or that we’d be able to come back once we’d left.

  It wasn’t the plan we’d agreed on to stop the Elders. I knew that. We were supposed to take the cuffs, and go back to the days before the bombs were supposed to be dropped on Hiroshima in order to catch the rogue Elders in the act of changing Truman’s mind.

  But now, facing the deadline thrown down by the Council earlier tonight…I didn’t know. I thought we needed to zoom out, and take a look at the bigger picture.

  Levi had volunteered to stay behind, to assess things at the Academy and continue looking for the mystery coordinates. Be our lifeline of information here. It was brave of him, but I didn’t think entirely selfless—he didn’t want to leave Yumi.

  It occurred to me then that he might never forgive us if we succeeded. If succeeding means wiping her out of existence again.

  Then again, I might never forgive myself.

  Sarah was going along with it, maybe just because the temptation of reuniting with Analeigh was too great. We’d worked together to figure out the best way to meet up with them, at least, which meant that no matter how unsure, she was on board.

  As we stepped into one of the empty portals—the place was like a ghost town—a comm came through on our wrist tats at the exact same moment. With the exact same message.

  Kaia Vespasian and Sarah Beckwith, please report to the office of Elder Midgley immediately. Anyone else who sees the two girls is asked to escort them here without hesitation and despite their willing compliance.

  My body went cold.

  “Escort us? Despite our compliance?” I nearly screeched, forgetting already that people probably had their eyes peeled for us. “Are we under arrest?”

  For the second time in less than an hour, the two of them looked at me like I’d gone stark raving mad. Which made sense, considering Genesis didn’t really have police, per se. Arresting people was an Earth Before throwback.

  “Calm down.” Levi moved quickly out of the airlock, leaving the two of us ready to go.

  It sort of surprised me that no one was guarding the portals, but why would they think any of us would go against their wishes? The Elders were all presumably under watch, and the tracking system in the Archives showed the location of everyone in the Academy and roaming the past. Ours, Sarah promised, showed us in our rooms—a fact that I had to assume now had been discovered to be false.

  Which meant they could be on their way here right now.

  “We need to go. Now.”

  Sarah nodded, and swallowed. Her face was pale, and my head felt light. We were really doing this.

  Levi knocked on the glass to get our attention, and a moment later, his voice rang in my head. “For what it’s worth, I think asking Jonah for help is a good choice.” He glanced over his shoulder, then back at us. “He knew about the Elders’ ancestors being the reason they’re trying to change the past. He could know why, too.”

  Sarah and I both nodded. Her eyes were full of tears as she watched him, and I knew she was wondering whether we would ever see him again. Whether we would ever be back here again.

  Then I set the cuff to the date and time we’d decided on—two days ago when someone had filed an assault complaint against the pirate crew out on Palenque.

  I pressed the button. Levi left, hurrying away from us, presumably before he got caught down here and blew our whole secret alliance. Now that Sarah and I were…what? Wanted? That was important.

  Sarah’s eyes met mine. They snapped me like a rubber band, straight to the problem at hand, as the blue light filled the airlock.

  “We’re doing this,” I said.

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Let’s go find Analeigh. It will be good to see her.”

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought of my best friend when I’d suggested going to Jonah instead, but it wasn’t until that moment that I let myself be excited about it. At least something good would come of this escapade, even if it turned out that Jonah thought we were idiots for not taking the shot to witness the past on Earth Before one last time.

  Then the Academy disappeared. I found that, despite everything, I desperately hoped that it wasn’t for the last time.

  Chapter Twenty

  Palenque, Amalgam of Genesis - 51 N. E. (New Era)

  Sarah and I held a brief discussion once landing on Palenque about whether or not to try to stop the pirates from harassing or assaulting the guy who had filed the complaint. In the end, we decided that the Historians had caused enough trouble by making tweaks to what was supposed to happen, and besides, we needed to stay focused.

  As much as I hated the idea of my brother—or Analeigh, or anyone, really—hurting someone for reasons unknown, we had to let it happen and grab them on their way back to the Anne Bonny. If we didn’t, who knew what ripples would flow out. We might not end up back here at all, for one. An important one.

  My head spun with the implication. It was the reason that no one ever talked about traveling to the near past. Encountering oneself in the timeline, well…it was said to be problematic at best. A thing to be avoided as stringently as interacting with people whose faces were completely strange.

  But we were already breaking rules. It was a calculated risk, but even as I told myself that, my mind argued back: that’s probably what the Elders have been telling themselves this whole time.
<
br />   It was true, of course. No one saw themselves as a villain. We all wanted to believe that our actions were in the best interest of the whole.

  But now, standing exposed on a planet we weren’t supposed to be on, was not the time to have an existential crisis. Later, when I had a moment to myself, I would ruminate on my own failings as a Historian.

  Sarah waited beside me as we studied our surroundings, keeping my brother’s ship, the Anne Bonny, safely within view. She sat on the outskirts of the largest settlement on Palenque, stark and metal in contrast to the soft night on the planet that supported over ninety percent of Genesis’s farming industry. Fields, full of wheat and soybeans, along with corn and more vegetables that were too unfamiliar to identify in the darkness, stretched all the way to the horizon.

  There was nothing to do but sit. We could have talked, but Sarah and I had exhausted all topics related to current events and then some, and it seemed as if neither of us felt much like rehashing them.

  It was a warm night under the terraformed dome. The climate here was perpetually perfect for farming, and the stars and moons over our heads were bright. The atmosphere was clear on the planet, less populated than Sanchi, and it was sort of nice to be out in the open. I stared at the sky for a long time, thinking about how the heavens had been the thing that had really inspired human beings forever.

  If no one would have sat staring upward, they never would have noticed that the same stars moved in a reliable pattern night after night. The same direction. The knowledge allowed our ancient forebears to navigate the seas, and to cross great distances without getting lost. The stars—not these stars, but the ones I’d stared up at not long ago with Caesarion by my side—had led man to every last nook and cranny of Earth Before.

  We’d been such a great species, with such great promise, before we’d allowed petty, tribal differences to tear us apart.

  I thought of Booth’s responses to my thoughts the other day in Reflection. The idea that justice was a circle, not an arc with a beginning and an end, and began to entertain the idea that perhaps we were not so different from the humans who had screwed everything up. That we were still the same species, still homo sapiens, and this great society we’d built was not immune to the destruction wrought by division.

  No matter how hard my grandfather and the other founding members had tried to remove the hatred, the lines, the divisions…maybe at our heart, tribes were simply where we gravitated. Maybe it was impossible to live as one.

  After all, the leaders of my own Academy thought they knew better than everyone else. Thought they could make a decision that felt right to them without even running it by the rest of us. What did that smack of, if not selfish hubris?

  As though there were any other kind.

  I heaved a sigh and sat back against a fake tree, the stony bark uncomfortable in a way that the real, scratchy thing wouldn’t have been. It smelled wrong. Fake. It had never bothered me before spending so much time on Earth Before, but now I craved the scent of fresh air, changing seasons, coming rain on a breeze—all things that could be imitated but not replicated.

  It was a problem experienced by many Historians, and something they warned us about in the early years of our training. The desire to spend more and more time in places we didn’t belong was the reason for the built-in self-destruct in our brainstem tats. Stay in the past longer than scheduled, plus a couple of hours padding for unforeseen complications, and go boom.

  I closed my eyes, just for a moment. The past couple of days had been a whirlwind and now, sitting still for the first time in hours, my bones felt heavy on my muscles. The worries of the entire species were too much to think about all at once.

  “Oh, sure, I’ll keep watch and hope the pirates don’t kill me before Jonah recognizes me. If he does.”

  “He totally will,” I replied, not peeking at Sarah. She was being dramatic, about my brother not remembering her and about the pirates killing her.

  They hadn’t killed anyone that we knew of, though we had witnessed violence on their part. I tried not to think about it, knowing in my heart that my brother would never do anything he didn’t have to in order to survive. Or to save us. He wouldn’t let his crew do anything unforgivable, either.

  We had a while before they would be finished. I would rest, and try to shake the feeling that we were missing something huge.

  Something that would change everything, if I could only remember what it was.

  I didn’t remember falling asleep. It was one of those times when I did realize I was dreaming as I wandered through the halls of the Academy. The place was deserted. I knew it somehow, the way you know things in dreams, and wondered where everyone had gone. Why I wasn’t with them, wherever they were.

  Perhaps they were out with passes, even the young ones. Perhaps they had flown away to the moon—it was a dream, after all, and there was no telling.

  Out of nowhere, a boy appears in front of me. I don’t know him, but it seems as if he knows me. His hair is black like the Elders’ robes and too long. Messy. Analeigh would tell him to get it cut, and so would Sarah, both of them disapproving of a lack of attention to grooming. His eyes are gray like the sky on Earth Before after a storm, shifting and changing as clouds gather and disperse.

  They’re flashing now, full of lightning that strikes me as sad rather than scary. Desperate.

  “Hello?” I say, unsure how to begin but unable to get around him. In fact, the entire Academy has disappeared, leaving me and the boy in a vacuum.

  He tips his head. “Do you remember me?”

  I look at him again, more closely this time. He is broad across the chest and he feels kind. Sensitive. As if I could tell him anything and he would think carefully before responding, even if he didn’t agree with me.

  As his eyes hang on to mine, my heart skips a beat, and then another—he is handsome. I feel drawn to him, but I don’t know him. I’m sure of it.

  I shake my head, and his shoulders tense. A frown tugs at my lips. “Should I?”

  “Yes. You know something changed the other day. Figure out what it was.”

  I think harder but as he steps nearer, the thoughts in my brain change to cotton. The scent of his body is familiar, in a way, as though this isn’t the first, or even the twentieth, time it has filled my nostrils.

  A thought tickles the very back of my mind. It is as quick as a sprite, dodging my probes as fast as I can sense its presence, and frustration builds in my gut. “I’m…I can’t…”

  “Kaia,” another voice whispered, far away but coming closer. An invisible hand touched my shoulder, shaking it hard enough to startle me. “Kaia! Wake up!”

  And I did, jerking away and slamming my shoulder into the bark of the mimicked tree in an attempt to get loose from my attacker. Who turned out to be Sarah, of course, with wide eyes and a finger pointed toward the outline of three boys—and the silhouette of one very familiar girl—coming toward us through the mist.

  They were laden down with bags and an armful of what looked like some kind of tech—it was all chips and wires—when we stepped out of the shadows. The boys dropped their burdens and reached for the stunners and wavers at their belts. The sight of the weapons, so rare anywhere in Genesis, shot my hands into the air. Sarah followed suit, but we hadn’t even gotten a word out in our defense before my brother’s eyes widened and he leapt forward, dragging me into his embrace.

  He stunk like he needed a shower and, true to Jonah fashion, wedged my head into his armpit. I struggled to get loose even as part of me—the part of me that wasn’t listening to her nose—wanted to hold on for dear life.

  The dream stayed with me, digging nails of discomfort beneath my skin. Frustration refused to fade away as quickly as the images and tugged at the ends of my hair, the hem of my shirt, and settled deep in my blood.

  Analeigh crashed into us both, and dragged Sarah into the mix for good measure, until the four of us were a tangled mass of legs, arms, exclamations, and t
ears. Crushed in the middle, the dream boy lingered. I heard him in the corners of my mind, asking me to try. To keep trying.

  I shook it off, trying to give this moment all of the happiness it deserved. The reunion ended too fast, and even though Analeigh and I were still staring at each other with tears in our eyes, Jonah’s friends were exuding an impatience that flattened our celebration.

  One of them—Sparrow, if memory served—growled. “We’ve got to get going. That guy is going to alert the Council any minute. We didn’t tie him up that well, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Jonah straightened up. “Kaia, you coming with us for now?”

  When I nodded, the pirates surrounded Sarah, Analeigh, and me and marched us onto the ship. Sparrow, the pilot, disappeared onto the bridge while the other boys set about stowing cargo, paying us little attention.

  I’d been thinking about what Sparrow had said outside, about the man calling the Council—presumably the same man who had filed the assault report that allowed Levi to find them.

  “Why didn’t you tie him up very well?”

  “Kind of a sore subject, Special K,” my brother muttered, casting a sorrowful glance toward the two other boys—Jean and Teach—separating booty into trunks. He sent a second look sailing toward Analeigh.

  That one was harder to decipher, but it was part irritation and part something totally new. For her part, my best friend feigned innocence. It was an expression I’d never actually seen on her face, either, since until now, that was something she’d never had to fake as far as I knew.

  Something else new and unsettling. Fantastic.

  “We wanted you to know how to find us if you needed to,” Analeigh explained softly. “The others weren’t entirely sure why that was so important.”

  “But how did you know we’d be able to find you at all?” Sarah screwed up her face. “You took the only cuff we had, remember?”