The stubborn friendship in them broke down the last of my resolve, no matter how selfish it felt to include her in my subterfuge. Maybe telling her one more thing would be okay. “I want to use the cuff to go see Jonah before this morning’s heist.”
She surprised me a little by not even flinching. “Why?”
“I want to know why he left.” It wasn’t my prepared answer. I had meant to tell her it was to ask about Rosie and how he could be sure the future hadn’t been irrevocably damaged. To do our duty as Historians, to ensure the future by protecting the past, but my heart ached to know why he’d abandoned our family. Left me alone.
Her eyes softened, and she turned her palm up, grasping my fingers. “I know you do. But do you really think he’s going to tell you? It could be dangerous.”
“Jonah would never hurt me.” Physically.
“I know that. I can’t imagine your brother hurting anyone—he always seemed like the nicest guy, to me—but those people he’s with now … those pirates.” She wrinkled her nose. “Jonah can’t control them. He’s one of them, and you need to accept that we don’t know what he’s capable of anymore.”
Jonah had taken on an older brother role with all of my friends, and Analeigh had been especially attached to him. Sometimes it slipped my mind that she’d lost him, too. “I’ll be careful. I’ll get there ten minutes early and stake it out, then grab him when the fewest people are around.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, Analeigh. You have a perfect record. You’ll be able to pick your specialty at the end of next year, work in whatever era you want. I can’t ask you to jeopardize that because I’m a big fat baby about missing my stupid brother.”
“First, you’re not fat, or a baby. Second, for all the things Jonah is, stupid isn’t one of them. Third, if he has changed the past, we need to know. We’re Historians, Kaia, and I know that means as much to you as it does to me. Our job isn’t only to observe and record the past. We have to protect it, to make sure that it all transpires like it’s supposed to, so that everyone we love in Genesis is still here at the end of the day. It’s our duty. The Elders would understand.”
The determination shining in her gaze surprised me. Analeigh never broke rules. Not ever, not the tiniest one. I could kid myself about there being no precedent for using an illegal cuff to time travel without an overseer, or believe they would somehow praise us for taking our job so seriously instead of reporting the discrepancies regarding Rosie and Jonah, but those were lies. None of our actions would come without a sanction, probably a big one, if they caught us, but the thought of having Analeigh with me choked back my protests. I threw my arms around her neck as Sarah stumbled into the room.
“Whoa, is there something you guys need to tell me?” Sarah asked, staring at us from the doorway. She grinned and it lit up her face. Rooms always brightened when Sarah stepped into them, but now her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were a little glassy.
“Someone just got kissed,” I sang in an obnoxious tone, grinning back.
“What? No, I didn’t. We were working out!”
“I’ll bet you were,” I teased.
“Is that what it’s called now? Working out?” Analeigh gave Sarah a wicked wink. “Maybe that’s why I haven’t been on a date in a while—I’m behind on the lingo.”
Sarah stripped off her sweaty shirt and tossed it onto Analeigh’s head. My best friend shrieked and pawed it away. A nasty, wet sock hit my nose and cut off my snickers. Sarah escaped into the bathroom, still hurling damp clothes at us as she disappeared.
And for a few minutes, I forgot about Caesarion and Rosie and Jonah’s potentially putting us all at risk. About how I might do the same.
Chapter Eleven
The whole getting-up-hours-before-breakfast thing wasn’t my favorite part of my newfound independence, but it was the best time to use Jonah’s cuff without getting caught. At night there were alarms set at the Academy’s exterior doors, supposedly for our safety but probably more to ensure none of us snuck out for romantic trysts. The Elders took their jobs as teachers and fill-in parents very seriously, though they either pretended ignorance or really didn’t realize there were a host of spots inside the Academy used for that purpose.
There were no official rules on procreation or marriage and divorce, but after fifty years of indoctrination, social responsibility governed every decision. It meant that even though we had free access to multiple forms of birth control, and most of us dated and fooled around, we were careful not to waste our future on teenage flings.
Unless you were Sarah and Oz.
Oz was acting like nothing had happened between us in the hall the other day. I did, too, but a cloud of suspicion hung between us that had never existed before, and it surprised me that our friends hadn’t noticed. He was lying. I was lying. We both knew it.
I shook away my uneasiness over Oz’s recent attitude change, promising myself I would check his bio information again the next time I was in the Archives. Sarah had been a good friend to me for over five years, and True Companion or not, she needed to know what kind of guy she’d drawn in the genetics lottery.
“Okay, so you know how to work that thing?” Analeigh pointed at Jonah’s cuff, all lit up with red lights in the quiet, deserted air lock.
I’d insisted on swiping my tat again instead of letting her do it. No one had to know she’d come along. We both shivered in the freezing pod, tugging our cloaks tighter almost in tandem.
“Yes.” I paused, sticking a rubber band between my teeth to buy some time. By the time my hair sat atop my head in a messy bun, a presentable response that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d already used it spilled out. “We’ve seen the overseers do it hundreds of times.”
Blending in on Roma wouldn’t be a concern, so we didn’t worry about changing our clothing or appearance. People in all manner of Academy garb, not to mention varying factory uniforms, would be around, so we wouldn’t seem out of place. It made sense that the pirates would find enough cover there, as well.
Our cloaks hid the standard clingy, black material along with the Historian emblem bright on the breast, and we wore black running flats. Our hair swept off our necks in dark and light ponytails and the glasses completed the outfits. We couldn’t leave the air lock without the glasses or remove the recording chips until we returned—the portal wouldn’t work otherwise--but nothing prevented us from destroying them instead of archiving the information.
I lowered my mouth to the cuff after turning the time and date dials to the correct position. “Roma, the armory.”
*
Roma, Genesis–50 NE (New Era)
Roma housed the System’s industry and production factories. Day laborers and tall buildings fought for space on crowded central streets, and basic home dwellings were smashed together on the outer edges of the city. The factories supplied everything mechanical for the System, as well as tools, hover transports, ships, electronics, and pretty much anything else that needed to be manufactured. Each planet contributed something specific, and had been designed that way from the beginning.
The cuff dropped us right at the armory’s front door, which was bad, given the extra security cameras that surrounded the only building in the entire System that housed weapons. Analeigh dragged me behind a recycling Dumpster around the side of the metal and glass building. From there, we snuck around to the back where, based on the news report, the pirates had breached the exterior.
Analeigh’s watch said we had three minutes to spare, and right on time, a band of ragged boys belly-crawled through the privacy fence at the rear of the property. There were four of them, all armed with stun batons and Gavreaus—sonic wavers.
The building held stockpiles of stunners and wavers, the only two weapons manufactured in Genesis. The rest had been left behind on Earth Before, having been determined as one of the contributing factors in society’s descent and eventual failure. The recorded history surrounding their mechanics and manufacture had been wiped, and now that knowledge had all but disappeared. I supposed a Historian could re-create it by observing the development firsthand, but otherwise, we’d have to start from scratch to re-invent guns or bombs or anything else.