Exist Once More Page 9

  Putting bullets into the prisoners’ heads along the way.

  There was nothing that told me why they’d been singled out or the reason for their execution. It made me think that there wasn’t one, or that no one had ever been privy to their thought process.

  I swallowed hard as the tattoo at my wrist flashed slightly, warning us that the scheduled meetup time was approaching.

  “We have to go,” Yumi said in my mind, her voice trembling and soft.

  “Back up slowly,” I responded in the same way, nudging her at the same time.

  We were less than fifty yards from our rendezvous point, and made it there inside two minutes and without getting shot, to boot. The others were waiting, looking disheveled and sweaty but not stricken like Yumi, or as horrified and scared as I imagined I looked, based on the concern flashing on Oz’s face and the curiosity plain on Levi’s. Their gazes fell on our hands, still locked together, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go.

  Even Sarah looked worried, and Maude hurried through the process of getting us back home, which proved even she could be unsettled on missions. The blue light surrounded us within moments, and the horrible moment in human history disappeared.

  If only distance could erase the memories as easily as it assuaged my fear over ending up in a heap like one of those poor, defenseless people of the past.

  Chapter Eight

  My limbs continued to feel shaky and unsettled after we returned home. Yumi and I relayed what we’d recorded before meeting up with the others, and our description of the event seemed to surprise even Maude. She claimed that specific occurrence had never been recorded before in any other student trips to the camp, and that she was proud of us for seeking out new information.

  I’d never heard either the words “never been recorded” or “proud” come out of her mouth before and wasn’t sure what to make of it, to be honest. Except that it made me uncomfortable. As a result, the dark coziness of my bed and the covers over my head were all I’d been hanging onto since we all decided we should go to dinner to keep up appearances.

  I let out a long, deep breath at the blessed silence in our room—Sarah and Oz were studying in the common room, their relationship appearing somewhat better for the collaboration of the past several days—but the dream of a few moments to relax and analyze died at the sight of a blinking message alert on my desk comm. I considered not pressing the flashing yellow button, leaving whatever it was until the following day, but after a glance at Sarah’s and Yumi’s revealed them to be dark and still, curiosity got the best of me.

  A message only for me?

  My mouth went a tad dry with anticipation. I pressed the button that allowed the hologram message to pop up, and the sight of my parents filled my eyes with tears. My hands tried to reach out, to touch them even though I knew they weren’t there, and I pressed my hands flat on the desk to anchor myself in the here and now.

  They had both lost weight under their drab, Cryon-issued clothing and dark circles ringed their eyes. But they were alive and sending me a message.

  That had to count for something. Everything, really.

  I forced my brain to stop whirling and listen when my mother started talking, swallowing tears of her own as she clung to my father’s arm.

  “Kaia, sweetheart. We’re so…it’s taken us all this time to earn enough credit to send you this message, and we don’t get much time. We’re not angry with you. We love you, and we want you to know that we’re doing fine.” She licked her lips, glancing behind her even though no one else was in the hologram’s frame.

  My father shifted his weight, far too slight on his large frame. The changes in him hit me harder—he’d always been such a substantial physical presence. “We have to go, honey. There’s just one more thing…don’t forget to feed Wolfram, okay? We know you’re responsible, but maybe we never made it clear how much he means to our family. Okay?”

  The picture flickered and my mother cried out, reaching forward like she wanted to grab onto me, too. And then they were gone.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks, a hundred different emotions coursing through me at seeing their faces again. At knowing they were alive, even if they were changed. Cryon wasn’t known for caring for people who fell ill and were unable to meet their work requirements, but my parents were strong. I had to believe they would be able to shoulder the burden until I could figure out how to reverse what had been done at the Academy.

  It wasn’t until my swirling feelings had crested and evened out that the strangeness of what my father had said hit me. Wolfram was a statue of a dog in our house, one my grandfather had left when he’d died. It was a replica of his beloved pet on Earth Before, a mutt that had passed away years before he’d left for Genesis. Which meant my father’s message made no sense—Wolfram never had, and never would, need to be fed.

  So that meant that either the treatment on Cryon had made my father lose his senses…or it was some kind of secret message.

  I didn’t tell any of the others about the message, or about the potential secret message embedded inside it. The day might come when I needed help trying to figure it out but for now, with so much else going on and the tape on my heart barely holding the way it was, I decided to work on it myself.

  The mystery was a connection to my parents. They’d been gone such a short time, relatively, but it felt like forever. Seeing them, hearing them trust me with something…it gave me the courage to believe maybe we could really figure out how to fix all of this, that maybe things in Genesis could go back to normal.

  The five of us who went to England had Reflection with Maude that afternoon. In two days we would rehash everyone’s recordings again with a different Elder, then a third time with someone new before being released to put together our final thoughts for the files on the event. Thinking about watching what had happened at least four more times exhausted me all the way to my bones, and we hadn’t even done it once, yet.

  I didn’t want to re-watch what Yumi and I had seen up against that fence. Didn’t want to feel the gut-wrenching horror that already refused to go far from my thoughts—it snuck up on me when my eyes were closed at night the way it was, and having to parse it for the Elders felt like torture.

  Based on the slightly green tinge to Yumi’s face as we gathered in the lab, she felt the same way. No one else acted out of the ordinary, wearing varying expressions of boredom that were typical for these sessions, more so as we reached our completion date.

  A second, assessing glance toward Oz revealed a tight tension pulling at the skin around his eyes, and apprehension in the firm set of his mouth. It wasn’t as though he ever looked particularly relaxed in group situations, but his nerves reminded me that we had plans later that night—we were finally going to have the time to sneak into his father’s room and steal his cuff.

  If Oz was already freaking out about it, I didn’t see why I should stop.

  Maude strolled in, her black Elder robes flowing behind her, and I did my best to put the concerns about later tonight out of my head in favor of the more immediate ones. By the time it was Yumi’s turn to go over her recording, I’d girded my loins to the extent possible.

  Maude pushed play on the chip from Yumi’s glasses and the recording began, the sight of the teenagers on the steps squeezing dread tight around my heart.

  The conversation between the kids kept everyone’s attention but I hardly heard a word of it, my mind racing ahead to what came next. It felt slightly different watching it from Yumi’s point of view; a little off to the side and with the building obscuring the first of the guards, the one who began the shooting.

  Sarah and Maude both jumped at the sight of the bodies slumping to the ground, and Oz closed his eyes to block it out, his face pale. The recording ended a few minutes later when we rejoined the rest of the group, and the holofile disappeared at a flick of Maude’s wrinkly old finger.

  “Very interesting, as promised. Now, Miss Phan, what are your Reflections on t
he events you recorded yesterday?”

  Yumi cleared her throat and shot a quick look my direction. I had no help to offer—in a few minutes Elder Gatling would expect a similar answer from me, and I’d have to come up with something unique and insightful.

  It seemed likely that she’d be looking for something other than that was messed up.

  “When we researched the establishment of the internment camps for Muslims in the United States, then the UK and the rest of Western Europe, I kind of thought…well, based on what we observed in Germany and Poland in the nineteen forties, and even the ones for people like me in the United States during the war, they didn’t seem that bad.” Her cheeks went red from embarrassment even though no one reacted to her words. We were trained well to keep our opinions to ourselves unless asked. “But even before we saw that they were killing some of the inmates, the things the kids said when they were talking made me feel like that place was as terrible as any other where people were kept prisoner.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Maude probed, her dark eyes sharp. “What is the similarity?”

  “The removal of autonomy, of freedom, is part of it,” she started, sounding uncertain, as though feeling her way along in the dark. “But it’s more than that. The lack of connection to the rest of society is the worst part, I think. The feeling of otherness. It happened to the Jews and as a group, they never recovered. Never felt connected to the rest of the world, or even their God, in the same way. It must have been that way for the Muslims after this happened. Even if they’d let them go, they wouldn’t have been able to feel a part of society. Their oppressors made sure of that.”

  Yumi stopped talking and the room went quiet. The tone of her voice, strangled as she talked about feeling a part of things, said she’d connected with the air of otherness in that camp in a real, visceral, way.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if it was due to the fact that somewhere, even if it was deep inside, and even if she was unaware of it, Yumi understood because she felt the same way. If her very essence recognized that she didn’t belong among us.

  My heart hurt at the thought. I liked her, and as I’d gotten to know her better over the past few weeks, those strange feelings of not really knowing her had started to ease. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, or how to consider her existence going forward, but I knew that things weren’t as simple as they had been a week ago.

  Elder Gatling seemed to consider her pupil’s view of things, but in the end, Maude just nodded and moved on. She’d usually request a summary of fallout we expected based on what we’d observed—how it would influence the future, the one that eventually led us here, but she didn’t. Not from Yumi, anyway.

  She did make the request of Oz, Levi, and Sarah, whose recordings weren’t nearly as revelatory. They’d gardened for a while with some of the older, silent groups. Their empty eyes were eerie, for sure, but they weren’t discussing their feelings or anger the way the kids had been. They were far more accepting, as if they’d let go of the shreds of both rage and hope long ago. Their answers satisfied her questions but wouldn’t win them any prizes when it came to final evaluations. Strange for Oz to not try harder, but we had plenty more on our minds. The old Oz would have spent days researching previous Reflection files in order to improve his own.

  It made me sort of sad, all of the ways that last semester had changed us. Back then, having the best ratings, being able to choose our specialty, had been our biggest concern.

  But that had been back when the weight of the future of the entire System wasn’t pressing in on us, threatening to smash us flat with a single misstep.

  Luckily, going last meant I had an answer ready when we got to my recording, just as difficult to watch as Yumi’s. I agreed with what she had said about the kids, but when Maude posed the question of how the moments we’d observed would affect the future, I spoke from my heart—almost always a mistake when it came to these sessions, but one I was willing to make today.

  “Setting up those camps was the decision that led to the downfall of the West. It wasn’t the beginning of the end—that started with the divide among the general populace, the fear-mongering that led to separation—but the failure by the people who called themselves leaders to mend it.” I shrugged. “That’s when everything changed. When they couldn’t turn back, like Yumi said. Couldn’t make it right anymore.”

  Maude stared at me for a long time. The strangled twist of Oz’s features suggested he thought I’d said something I shouldn’t have, something that raised her suspicions. I didn’t think that was it, though. It was that she’d never seen a recording like mine, or Yumi’s. It was that she didn’t know what to make of it, along with all of the other changes that they’d seen at the Academy, and in the holofiles of the past. I thought.

  And so I stared back, waiting for a question. A challenge, a follow-up.

  My stomach growled, the dinner bell creeping closer while I waited. While we all waited.

  Finally, she spoke. “Do you truly think such a thing is possible, Kaia Vespasian? That a society can reach a point of no return? A point where redemption is no longer possible?”

  At first, it felt like a test. A riddle, almost. But the worry behind her steely, expressionless gaze made me think twice.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, nothing left to do but be honest. “It seems like it sometimes, when we’re staring at these kinds of decisions that changed everything. With the benefit of our hindsight, of course.”

  She watched me for a moment longer, then frowned. “If that is true, if every society rises and falls as we’ve seen during our Observations, then what must logically follow about our own System?”

  “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” I murmured without really thinking about why, or how the things connected in my mind.

  My response startled Maude, and the slight drop of her jaw and widening of her eyes was the most reaction she’d ever given any of us, as far as I knew.

  “Martin Luther King. You were just there.” She nodded, her gaze hot on my face. “Very good, Miss Vespasian. Very good.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but she released us for dinner, instructing us to spend the evening ruminating on how we would assess the Observations from England more deeply for her sister the following day. Oz, Sarah, Yumi, Levi and I all filed out of Reflection in silence. For once, I knew we were all still thinking about the assignment, and what it might mean for us.

  My eyes met Oz’s as we turned the last corner before entering the cafeteria.

  “What time tonight?” I asked quietly, trying not to attract attention. Sarah wasn’t aware of my decision to go with him, I didn’t think, and even though she would find out soon enough, I didn’t have the emotional capacity for a fight.

  “Seriously, Kaia, you don’t have to go with me.” Oz frowned, but the protest sounded weaker than usual.

  “I know, but we need this cuff and we’ll all feel better if someone is watching your back, right?” I gave him a small smile, wondering at the tug of…nerves? in my stomach. “I’m going.”

  “Fine. He goes to his room at nine-thirty sharp. He likes to be out of the shower by ten, then he reads for an hour before he goes to bed.”

  “Sheesh. I can see where you get it,” I teased him, then immediately regretted the comment. For all of his strangeness and faults, Oz just didn’t have the mean streak that ran rampant in his father. “Sorry. I’ll meet you in the common room at nine-fifteen.”

  Our doors all locked at ten, so if we didn’t make it back before then, I wasn’t sure we were going to get back into our rooms, but getting the cuff came first.

  He nodded, his lips pressed together so tight they’d turned white. “See you then.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Where are you going?” Sarah asked, her tone accusing the way it hadn’t been in days.

  Lights out was in under an hour. I hadn’t been out of the room after dinner since Analeigh left, no
t unless I’d been doing extra Reflection trying to prove my loyalty. The thought disgusted me as I looked at Yumi. I’d been kissing up to the people who had brought her here without a second thought of what it could mean in the long run.

  And why? What had ever made me think that doing what they asked would bring Analeigh back? Bring my parents back? I knew in my heart—had always known—that they’d only kept me here to watch me, not for any real chance at redemption.

  I was almost ready to state, out loud, that I didn’t want that, anyway. Not from them.

  “I’m going with Oz so I can watch his back in his dad’s room,” I said, pressing my lips together and hoping it looked more like a smile than a grimace. “He needs someone else there and we want to keep our…reconciliation with you as private as possible.”

  The excuse was both valid and lame. The latter because Truman had seen the three of us chumming around the halls together, and the former because we couldn’t do anything more without Sarah’s help. If they took her the way they stole Analeigh, well…everyone in Genesis would be screwed.

  Her face was blank. Too controlled, and a little too pale. But she only shrugged. “Okay. Don’t get caught.”

  “That’s the plan.” My palms were sweaty. I wiped them on my leggings in an attempt to dry them off, unsure whether it was Sarah or the upcoming mission toying so hard with my nerves. “Can you let me in after lights out? Oz said his dad doesn’t get in the shower until nine-thirty so I doubt we’ll make it back in time.”

  “Sure. Although I don’t know what Oz is going to do.” She didn’t sound particularly worried about it, either, and it seemed to me nothing good would come out of continuing the discussion.