My heart squeezed until my chest hurt, and against my best efforts, tears pricked my eyes. I reached out and grabbed his hand, and Jonah held on tight. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Special K.” His voice shook and the sight of tears gathering in his eyes shook me to the core. “I miss you all so much.”
Analeigh’s light footsteps on the stairs ended the companionable grief a moment later, and she cleared her throat softly. “Kaia, we’ve got to go.”
I nodded and stood, throwing my arms around Jonah’s neck and giving him a tight hug. He had been more evasive than anything, but he was my brother and I loved him. In his own way, he had tried to help.
The Elders and their mysterious secret business didn’t strike me as interesting as the suggestion that I could at least try to save Caesarion. If Jonah wouldn’t tell me how I could verify the trajectories the way he must have before he saved Rosie, and then maybe I could figure it out on my own by spending more time with my True. If I could gauge the potential course of his unlived future, know his mind and his essence, maybe the answers would follow.
The chip my brother had given me burned hot in my palm as the blue, shimmering field surrounded Analeigh and me. Even if, in the end, I couldn’t be sure enough to save Caesarion, the chip meant that our story didn’t have to be over.
Not yet.
Chapter Twelve
Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)
Three days passed before I found time to go see Caesarion again. We had the trip to observe the Louis XIV’s coronation, then a couple of days of mandatory reflection, and I didn’t want just an hour with my True this time. I wanted as much time as I could pilfer.
For every ten days of apprentice work we were granted one free day—not always a pass out of the Academy but time to spend as we chose—and that was today. Twenty-four wonderful, empty hours where no one expected me to be anywhere. Not showing up at meals didn’t raise any eyebrows, even, since we often chewed protein tabs or ate the snacks stowed in our rooms. We took advantage of the alone time if we didn’t score a pass to leave the grounds.
I told Analeigh and Sarah that I planned to spend the day in the Archives working on my Sun King—an affectionate term for Louis XIV, even if he did drive the monarchy into bankruptcy—reflection because the upcoming certification reviews worried me. I’d gotten enough things wrong in the last several weeks that it sounded plausible to me, but neither of my friends bought it. Analeigh didn’t push, though. She’d been tiptoeing around me since we’d seen Jonah and his pirate friends, maybe assuming time alone would shine old wounds. It sucked to leave her in the dark. I’d turned into one of those idiot girls who chose a boy over her best friend, but at least this was temporary. A twinge of regret in my chest at the thought of him dying very soon only strengthened my resolve to try to find a way to save him. Just him.
If Analeigh guessed my plan to use Jonah’s cuff to travel alone again, she didn’t say anything. Probably because visiting her True Companion with the idea of saving his life would never enter her mind.
But she didn’t know what it felt like to stare into the eyes of a person who felt like part of her. To know the grim details of his impending, senseless death but be helpless to intervene. Analeigh hadn’t lived with the empty hole Jonah had left in my house, or borne the weight of lost love, of bitter strength, soldered in the necklace hanging against my chest.
If Jonah could improve his True’s outcome, why couldn’t I?
Since secret travels and illicit contact seemed to be my life now, flying under the radar at the Academy seemed the best plan, so I had done better with my last recording. No one in the crowd at the coronation of Louis XIV distracted me—even Maude Gatling approved during our initial reflection. The less attention the Elders and overseers paid me, the better.
Of course, behaving didn’t stop me from checking on Oz in the Archives a couple more times, out of plain and simple curiosity. He, Levi, and Jess were assigned to observe part of the first Crusade yesterday and his bio information confirmed he’d joined them. It made me second-guess my instincts about him traveling on his own, but I dismissed the thought quickly. Rosie’s second life hadn’t been a comp error, and neither had Oz’s travel.
He was up to something, but I couldn’t worry about my problems and his, too. Not today.
This morning, all that mattered was that I could leave for most of the day and night without anyone thinking twice. According to Jonah, if anyone did go looking, my dot on the Archive floor would show me in my bathroom, where I currently stood—once I got up the nerve to use the device he gave me.
I took a shaky breath over the sink, grasping my brother’s tiny, metallic disk with a pair of tweezers, poised to jam it into the base of the golden barcode on the inside of my left wrist. This was the price. A little moment of pain, and I could be with Caesarion again. Figure out if saving him was an option.
I gritted my teeth, held my breath, and jammed the sharp metal under my skin in one rough shove. The faint glow of the golden threads under layers of skin flickered and dimmed, then went dark for the first time in seven years. A quiet groan escaped and I held still, both to wait out the wave of sweating and nausea and to make sure Analeigh hadn’t heard me.