Return Once More (6 page)

Anyone could watch history. We trained to interpret and apply.

There were fifteen eight-by-eight table comps surrounded by stools in the main room, where the walls were made of a hazy glass polymer. History, via recordings, twisted across the terrain of Earth Before on every one of them. On one wall, we watched the building of the Great Wall of China. On another, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A third displayed the prisoners breaking free of the Bastille in Paris, but the images constantly changed. Regardless of what events played at any given time, it reminded me how much life has been lived up to now. The Archives brought humanity's previous home alive even here, millions of miles and hundreds of years away.

Colored dots spattered the thick glass floor, each representing a Historian. We were color-coded by year—fifth year was red. Certified Historians were gray and Elders were black. Some of us were out observing and recording; if I stepped on someone's dot it would display his or her name, bio data, and current location.

It comforted me to know that long after my time is complete, this room will still exist. In a way, so will I. Maybe one day there will be Historians traveling back to watch me.

If I ever did anything worth recording.

Normally, I'd be in here to study holo-files and expound on how they had, in my estimation, affected the eventual outcome of humanity. This wasn't my scheduled period, though. I was supposed to be in Research figuring out what clothing we'd need for our upcoming observation—the trip to 1911 New York City was in a few days—but Analeigh had agreed to cover for me. She pretended to believe that I wanted to check on my Caesar recordings, to see how much trouble waited at my end-of-the-month evaluation, but she must have known it was about him.

Caesarion.

Not knowing anything substantial about my True deposited a feeling of disloyalty under my skin that wouldn't dislodge. Ancient Egypt had never called to me as a specialization, and the Academy required only a passing knowledge of major influential events. Now I wanted to know more.

Like, everything.

Something in the way Oz looked at me after hearing the name of my True made me wonder if there was
something
to know, but I doubted anyone had ever chosen Caesarion for a complete documentation. Even seventy years of regulated time travel hadn't allowed us to catalog everything. The first Historians began with the most impactful moments. The people whose influence was easily visible in the events that shaped our collective destiny—for better or for worse—we started with those. For posterity.

Reflection completed our triangle of duty. It required
studying
to stitch together the quilt of history to understand where exactly we went right or wrong—mostly wrong—and to ensure that in another two thousand years, we wouldn't have to abandon a broken Genesis the same way.

Mistakes could not be repeated.

Once a consensus was reached that an event or decision had led directly to the downfall of society, it went into a document known as the Hope Chest. Nothing could be deleted from that file. As we observed and recorded more specific memories and traced their influence forward, the Historians came closer and closer to ensuring a future free from the shackles of the past. It sounded cheesy, but I believed in it. We all did. Genesis was good, it was working. The last thing we needed was to start screwing it up.

According to my fuzzy recollection of Caesarion, he had been erased before being allowed to have any impact on the world, good or bad. Dying young
was
his contribution, in a way, but a small one. Not something to intrigue a Historian. Unless she happened to be his True.

I sat down in one of the smaller alcoves, one tucked away from the main entrance. The glass polymer benches, tables, and fluid screens made these spaces cold, and I tugged a heavy brown sweater tighter around my shoulders. It was one of the few items that belonged to me—a gift from my brother, a treasure from Palenque, the planet set up for agriculture and food production. It bore no Historian symbol, and wrapped inside it, I felt like simple Kaia Vespasian. It was nice. Historian apprentice Kaia felt pressure to uphold the image of her grandfather, not to mention of this Academy, one of the most respected in the System. Daughter Kaia felt as though putting one toe out of line would break her parents' hearts all over again. But no one expected anything of plain Kaia. She could spend the afternoon getting to know the boy who, in a different world, might have loved her.

I slid a finger across the screen embedded in the tabletop, pressing the tattoo on my wrist flat against the chilly surface to gain access to the holo-files. It meant my movements could be tracked, but wanting to know about my True wasn't so weird. Sure, I should have been in Research, but the Elders largely trusted us. They didn't check our movements unless they had a reason, and the Guide made everyone aware of the consequences of committing infractions, big and small.

A stern talking-to or even a week of menial duties seemed a small enough price for learning more about Caesarion.

Using the tip of my index finger, I tapped
The West
and scrolled over thousands of years of human history. Back through the wars, disease, and devastating overpopulation at the end of our time on Earth Before. Past the massive advances in science and technology, the intolerance, the hatred, more wars. Steps forward in human rights, leaps backward. Through the revolution that nearly destroyed France, and the one that birthed the United States. I swept past the Crusades and through the Middle Ages—my least favorite time to visit—and finally landed in ancient Rome, where the flashing screens slowed under my touch.

Caesarion's parents were often observed and recorded, which translated to easily located in the database. My True had never had the chance to see whether or not he could make a mark of his own. Instead, his death fell under the too crowded category of collateral damage.

Necessary tragedy.

The scant information in the Archives frustrated me. He'd been born to Cleopatra and Julius Caesar during their love affair, which preceded her more infamous tryst with Marc Antony by several years. When Octavian took the helm of the strongest city in the world after the event we witnessed a few days ago in Rome, he needed to ensure no one existed who could challenge his tenuous claim to the throne.

After all, he was only the
adopted
son of Julius Caesar. One from his direct bloodline could have posed a legitimate threat. After studying humanity for the past seven years, the reasoning made intellectual sense to me. It didn't make it hurt less, or make it any more fair, that a power-hungry jackass had murdered a young man simply to eliminate the threat he
might
have represented.

Then again, kids younger than Caesarion had died for a whole lot less.

The only Archived observation of him had been recorded the day he was born. I pressed the
play
icon and rested my chin in my palm, elbow on the edge of the table as the holo-images flickered to life. My dark hair fell around my neck and shoulders, keeping me warm as the hard profile of Julius Caesar solidified. Now that I'd seen him in person he was easy enough to identify, though his charisma didn't translate with as much clarity in the holo. An unexpected pang of sadness thrummed in my middle at the sight of him like this, alive and happy, after the way we saw him last.

He strode into an opulent bedchamber. Purple and gold silks draped the windows, and matching linens lay rumpled atop the giant bed. Soft yellow paint splashed the walls. Ornate tile slapped under his sandals as he made his way to the bed where a woman held a newborn baby wrapped in cloth. Dark hair stuck to her tanned forehead. Bright lights twinkled in her night-sky eyes as she tore her gaze from her son and looked up at the man who'd helped create him.

Until now, I'd only read text Archives about Cleopatra, and her ordinary features took me by surprise. She had a quality about her though, that was similar to Caesar's. A magnetism, something that drew me to her face, in fear that the tiniest nuance of her thoughts might escape my notice.

“It's a boy,” she whispered in Greek as he sat beside her on the lush bedding.

His eyes went wide with a difficult-to-describe expression—a jumble of disbelief and pride, love and fear. He ran a gentle hand over Cleopatra's head, smoothing back her hair, then reached for the baby. She handed the boy over, and Caesar held him up until he squirmed and started to bawl, inspecting this little person for flaws, perhaps, or maybe just in awe—it was hard to tell. I'd have to reflect many more times to guess the emotions crisscrossing his ruddy cheeks and flashing through his dark eyes.

I could have reflected on them both for hours.

The baby—
my
Caesarion—favored his mother. He had a shock of obsidian hair and his skin shaded darker than his father's. Sharp disappointment twisted my heart. His adult face, his voice, his countenance, would remain mysteries.

I wondered how this memory had been recorded. There had been slaves or midwives in the room, perhaps, for a Historian to blend among. I'd heard the Technologies Academy was developing invisibility clothing similar to what they'd created for our glasses. After they perfected it, Historians would be able to access more intimate moments in the past, moments that had been forever hidden from the public.

The recording ended as Caesar laid the baby in a bassinet beside the bed and stretched out next to his lover. I assumed whoever had been in the room had been dismissed at that point, and the final image was of the Roman and the Greek, their arms wrapped around each other as what looked like early-evening sun streaked through the windows and bathed them in golden light.

I stood and stretched, giving the recording a flick with my fingertip that sent it back to its place in the Archives. Impatience tickled my limbs, an itching desire to do something—to move, to run—but there was nothing to do. No one could save a single member of that family from their collective fate. The hardest stories for me were always the ones that ended in tragedy. To stand in their presence, hear their breaths and their heartbeats and know they'd be silenced too soon.

But
everyone
I observed had already died. Some of them made me more melancholy than others, and Caesarion perhaps more so than any other, now that I was aware of our connection through time. It seemed natural to hope that someone who would have loved me would have lived a rich, full life.

But maybe he had. It would make me feel better to know what his life had been like as a teenager—that he'd been happy before his adopted brother stole his future. The image of Jonah's cuff danced in my mind, a temptation that quickened my breath.

I could find out. Just
observe
Caesarion. Not talk to him, of course, but to know what he was like, how his life felt while he'd lived it, might be worth a sanction.

The rules about contact had the stiffest penalties, and altering the past in even the smallest capacity could mean repeating a year, being assigned a specialty no one else wanted, or maybe even exile. But an apprentice traveling alone wasn't even
listed
as an infraction in the Guide, since we didn't own our own cuffs. So it wouldn't break any rules.

Technically.

I stared at the floor in the main room, at the colored dots that marked the Historians currently in the field, absently touching them with the toe of my slipper, one after the other. The seven Historian Elders were spread out, all observing different times and places. My brother's dot hovered in the present, inside the Academy. Jonah had dug the bio tattoos out of his neck, throat, and wrists before running away. Since they were linked with skin and arteries, veins and blood, he must have had help. Someone from the Medical Academy, or at least someone with training. One of the other pirates was the prevailing opinion, which means they'd been planning his disappearance.

Maybe rebellion ran in my blood.

The ache in my center gnawed harder at the reminder of Jonah. No one knew where he was now, or where he'd be spotted next. No one talked about the outliers, and the Elders tried—mostly unsuccessfully—to keep news of their attacks and whereabouts off our radar. It made people uncomfortable, the idea that they lived outside. Apart.

I touched Oz's dot idly, remembering he was scheduled to be at Pearl Harbor, in 1941, today.

Except he wasn't.

The embedded bio stats read
Bukhara
, 1221
. Eastern History gave me trouble—I'd banished many of the details to the back of my mind when I'd decided Renaissance Europe would be my specialty—but focused concentration knocked loose a few facts.

Bukhara. A city in Asia, part of the Persian Empire in the ancient world, and I thought part of the USSR at some point, but in 1221 … it would have been under attack or recently felled by the Mongolians. Their invasion of the Rus territories lasted for another several years before it spread into Europe.

What was Oz doing observing the Mongol invasions instead of watching the Japanese drop bombs on Pearl Harbor? Not to mention visiting the
way
wrong century? It crossed my mind briefly that he'd lied on purpose, but I dismissed it. He had to be with an overseer, even though he
appeared
to be alone.

System glitches weren't unheard of, so maybe the tracking comp needed a reset. Or maybe their assignment had changed for some reason, even if the Mongol invasions weren't typical training observations—not high-profile enough, and far too broad in subject matter—and while the Mongols were an impressive civilization, there was nothing significant about how they conquered the Eastern world. At least, not that I could recall.

Before I could turn in an electronic request to reset the comp or sate my curiosity about what Oz might or might not be up to, the doors to the Archives whooshed open, spilling warmer air into the cool space and distracting me from my thoughts. I looked up to find Zeke and his deep purple Elder robes sweeping inside, the Historian emblem on his breast glittering gold under the harsh fluorescent lights.