Exist Once More

by Trisha Leigh

  Oz could take care of himself.

  “If it weren’t for Yumi we could maybe let him stay here, but even if you two have been getting on better, we can’t risk it.” She shrugged. “It’s going to be weird enough sneaking you in, although at least with your track record of breaking the rules, she won’t be too surprised. You’d better come up with some sort of excuse in case the Elders question you about being out after curfew, though, just in case.”

  She had a point, but even if she didn’t feel badly about leaving Oz to fend for himself overnight, I sort of did.

  I glanced down at my wrist tat to check the time. The numbers glowed 9:15. Past time to get moving. “Okay. Hopefully I’ll see you soon, then.”

  I passed Yumi on my way out, stopping to say hi and ask her about her workout before sidling away. She didn’t ask where I was going, but the curiosity on her face promised she wouldn’t forget that she’d seen me leave. Strangely, it didn’t bother me. I didn’t think she would rat me out for coming in late, no matter Sarah’s worries.

  The hallways between our room and the common room were empty and cold, typical for that time of night. My thoughts lingered on my new, third roommate and what would happen to her if the Elders continued on their path to redemption…or if we managed, somehow, to stop them.

  Did it make me a bad person, to focus on Analeigh and my brother, on my parents’ horrible fate, instead of Yumi and her family? On others like her, who must exist now, or those who had disappeared without a trace?

  The internal battle turned my lips down in a frown. It boiled down to a major crisis of ethics as we’d been taught them in the System, but if the Elders weren’t even telling people this was happening, then how were we supposed to know how to deal with it? How to feel about it, and which side to fight for?

  Instinct had sometimes been my friend, other times not, but like Caesarion said, I had a duty to my people—the people of Genesis, the ones picked to be here by good, smart men like my grandfather. I had to think about them, too.

  Oz was pacing in the common room waiting for me, and despite all of his protests that he didn’t need help, his shoulders slumped with relief when I stepped through the door.

  “I thought you got busted or something.”

  “Or Sarah pulled my hair out?” I returned wryly. “It’s not after lights out. We’re not doing anything wrong. Yet.”

  “I know, I’m just…tense.”

  “Understandably. Your dad is an intimidating man.” Just the thought of Elder Truman’s reaction the last time he caught Oz and me together in a compromising situation—however much of a farce—was enough to leech the moisture from my mouth. It renewed the sweat on my palms and I wiped them for the third time in the past twenty minutes, then shrugged at Oz’s raised eyebrows. “I’m nervous, too. We need this to work.”

  “It’ll work.”

  The knots in my stomach eased the slightest bit at the confidence in his voice. He glanced down at his wrist tat and I did the same: 9:25.

  The walk to Elder Truman’s quarters at the Academy would only take a couple of minutes.

  “What time should we leave?” I asked.

  “He gets back to the room at nine-thirty, so not for a few minutes. We don’t want to chance running into him, or busting into his room before he gets in the shower.”

  The fact that I didn’t know how we were getting into his room dawned on me far too late, and bony fingers of panic scrabbled at my heart. “How are we getting in? Are you going to knock and tell him you want to talk? Are the doors alarmed? Will he know?”

  Oz barked a laugh that wasn’t funny at all. “Me wanting to talk to my father unannounced would raise as much suspicion as, well, just about anything the two of us did last semester. No.”

  “Okay,” I drawled, waiting for the plan and ignoring the pang in my chest at the bitter way Oz talked about his father. I missed my own dad so much; it was impossible to imagine a life where my mother had died and my father was…like Truman.

  “I have a key,” he informed me, twisting his hands nervously even though his steady tone had never wavered.

  It had never occurred to me that Oz would have a key to his father’s quarters, but then again, I had a key to my parents’ house in the city. Which only reminded me that I needed to go check on Wolfram. Not to feed him, of course, but to see what I’d been missing about his hard little presence my entire life. Or verify that my father had lost his marbles on Cryon.

  The joke, even told in my head, was the furthest thing from funny.

  “Well, that’s handy.”

  We stood in silence for a couple more minutes, Oz checking his wrist every twenty seconds and my palms itching from moisture.

  “What made you quote Martin Luther King in Reflection?” he asked at nine thirty-two.

  The question took me by surprise. I’d thought about it since we’d left and didn’t have a really good answer. “I don’t know. It made sense, like puzzle pieces clicked in my head and it just sort of came out.”

  For some reason, that made him laugh, a flash of fondness bolting through his gray eyes. “Yes, that seems to happen to you with a fair amount of frequency.”

  I made a face. “Well, I didn’t mean to, but didn’t you think Maude’s questions were a little strange, anyway? All that stuff about the point of no return and how it could apply to Genesis?”

  “Definitely. I wanted to see if you’d repeat yourself in some form tomorrow and see what kind of reaction we get from Minnie.” He checked his wrist again and grimaced. “Let’s go. He should be getting in the shower about now.”

  We moved out of Oz’s room, and got halfway down the hall before I realized I hadn’t asked him what he planned on doing when he couldn’t get back into his room later. Oz had one of the rare singles in the Academy—special treatment because of his father, I’d always assumed. Last semester, finding out he was working with the Elders on their secret Return Project had seemed to verify the suspicion.

  It was too late now. Lights out was so close that anyone who spotted us moving away from our own rooms—never mind together—would have plenty of questions. Being exposed, out in the open, made my stomach jump and lurch the entire three minutes it took us to get to Truman’s door.

  Oz paused outside, his wrist raised halfway to the swiper. “I’ll go in first. If he’s not in the shower for some reason, I’ll make something up.”

  The fact that he’d already told me how such a thing would go over dampened my enthusiasm, such as it was, but there wasn’t much else to be done. It wasn’t as if we could both go traipsing in and get away with it. So, I nodded. My fingers twitched, asking to reach out and touch him, give him some reassurance, but I fisted them at my sides.

  Beads of sweat sat on his upper lip and between his bushy black eyebrows before he nodded, set his jaw, and put his glowing tat up to the console. We both held our breath.

  The unit clicked from red to green, the small sound of the opening lock deafening in the quiet space.

  No alarms went off. Truman didn’t shove open the door demanding to know who disturbed his evening ritual, and no one else appeared, either. I wasn’t sure who I was expecting, but no one was quite the relief, anyway.

  Oz didn’t look back as he slipped into his father’s room. The glare of the fluorescent lights in the hallway turned him into a shadow before the door clicked closed again, leaving me standing alone like some kind of lovesick stalker.

  The thought of anyone having a crush on Elder Truman was enough to twist my lips into a grimace, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because Oz popped his head back out twenty seconds later.

  “He’s in the shower. Come on,” he whispered.

  I hurried inside without having to be told twice, feeling both less exposed and more antsy at the sound of the water running behind the closed bathroom door. Truman was, like, twenty feet away. He could have forgotten his soap or something and pop back out, stark naked to find us here and—

  �
��Kaia,” Oz whispered loudly, waving a hand in front of my face. “Stop panicking and keep your ears open, okay? I’m going to grab his cuff and we’ll get the heck out of here.”

  I nodded, swallowing hard in an attempt to calm down. Listen. I could do that.

  Oz moved toward the second room of the larger Elder suite while I took a moment to look around. The snooping was second nature, and the familiarity soothed me enough that I could hear the running water over the sound of my own pounding heart.

  Definitely an improvement.

  The suite was much larger than the one I shared with Yumi and Sarah, but that was to be expected. Ours wasn’t small—it held three desks, three beds, and our bathroom was attached—but it looked from here as if the Elders had at least two rooms plus a bathroom. I peeked as Oz crossed the threshold and confirmed the second room was an office. Truman’s was huge, with bookcases lining every single wall from floor to ceiling.

  The sight of so many real books squeezed my chest. My family had two, and most didn’t have that many. No wonder Oz had always been such a brainiac, growing up with a room like this to explore. It almost made me want to drool.

  I slunk backward as Oz grabbed the cuff off the edge of Truman’s massive desk, ready to get the heck out of there as soon as possible. It wasn’t until my back hit the door and Oz was halfway to me that the lack of sound from the bathroom registered.

  Oz realized the water had gone off in the same moment and reacted before I could even freak out. He lunged forward, snatched my hand, and shoved me into the coat closet right beside the exit. Oz followed closely behind, crowding against me as he eased the door shut with a nearly silent thud.

  The two of us stood face to face, not moving in the pitch blackness. Barely breathing, though I was suddenly glad that I’d chosen to brush my teeth after dinner. The quarters were close—we were touching at various points on our bodies, but with Truman’s coats at my back and Oz trying to keep his feet from stepping into the thin band of light under the door, there wasn’t any room to maneuver.

  A creak as the bathroom door opened and Truman stepped into the bedroom curled my fingers tight around Oz’s biceps. My eyes adjusted to the blackness and locked on Oz’s gray gaze, the matching panic there somehow managing to both soothe and scare me.

  Why did we keep finding ourselves crammed up against each other in small, dark places?

  Oz raised a finger and pressed it to his lips, to which I rolled my eyes in the universal signal for duh. Like I was going to start talking, or even breathing normally given the situation. I assumed we would wait until Truman went to sleep and then sneak out. Could get hairy, depending on how light of a sleeper he was, but we didn’t come all this way for nothing.

  The cuff was in Oz’s hand. It was useless if we couldn’t get it to Sarah tonight, so that she’d have enough time to copy the tech before they had to sneak it back in tomorrow morning.

  In the darkness, there were limited choices as far as ways to pass the time. I could stare at Oz, silently panic, or think about something else. Par for the course, at least lately, the something else turned out to be Yumi—I wondered how Sarah would work on the cuff without our third roommate waking up and seeing her, asking questions she didn’t have the answers to.

  Maybe Sarah had a plan for that, the way she did for the door. It wasn’t as if my old friend was confiding in me these days, at least not unless strictly necessary, but Sarah was the picture of preparedness in every situation.

  It occurred to me that that personality trait could have been the reason Sarah struggled so hard to let go of the True Companion card that had popped out on Oz’s birthday: she hadn’t been prepared for it. No one liked to be blindsided, but some were better equipped to handle it than others.

  We stood in the silence for what seemed like forever. My leg cramped up, and I found myself leaning into Oz trying to get the muscle to loosen without screaming. He held me up with an arm around my waist while I wiggled and stretched, his breath coming faster in the process. Maybe I needed to spend more time in the gym or something, if barely supporting my weight made him gasp like a person with a rip in their space suit.

  The cramp eased and I straightened up. Oz dropped his arm like I was on fire, and come to think of it, I did feel warm. Maybe a trip to the infirmary and the gym.

  “How much longer?” I mouthed when I caught his eye, suddenly very keen on getting out of there.

  Oz swallowed hard, watching my lips move, and then raised his gaze back to mine. He cocked his ear toward the door. The thin bar of light beneath it had gone dark a while ago—almost an hour, now, according to Oz’s wrist tat. Truman had to be asleep, but there were no snores or even heavy breathing to confirm. Not that I could hear.

  When our eyes met again, Oz looked determined. His jaw was tight as he gave me a nod. My heart thudded so hard my ribs ached as he reached for the closet door and eased it open just far enough to peer out, then wide enough for each of us to slip through. He took one step, then another, before reaching back for my hand.

  His fingers curled through mine and held on tight, dragging me forward to his side. We were standing closer than we were in the closet, the heat of him traveling up my arm and diffusing through my chest. He smelled like shampoo and toothpaste, like something male but too subtle to be cologne. Aftershave?

  I gave my head a slight shake and did my best to focus on the issue at hand, which was getting out of there without Truman waking up and killing us.

  The room wasn’t as dark as the closet, with ambient light coming from Truman’s com screens and from the old-fashioned clock glowing at the side of his bed. The steady rise and fall of his chest promised he was asleep.

  Oz pulled me toward the door, keeping my body close to his, and pressed his wrist to the locking panel. Then, everything happened at once.

  The door beeped, and clicked.

  Truman sat straight up in bed, reaching for the light in one smooth motion.

  And Oz shoved me out into the hallway and slammed the door in my face.

  I found the cuff, somehow, jammed in my hands. I wanted to wait, to yell for Oz to hurry, but some instinct stilled my tongue. Then, it was Truman who was yelling, and even though I wanted to bang on the door, to do something to interrupt the punishment that was coming for Oz if he couldn’t explain his way out of coming to his father’s room after curfew, I ran.

  I told myself that getting the travel cuff to Sarah was more important. Back in our room, safe and sound, it was all I could do to hang onto the hope that when I saw Oz tomorrow, he would agree.

  Chapter Ten

  Sarah let me into the room in silence, one finger pressed against her lips. Her eyes went wide and panicked at the sight of my face, which was slick with sweat and, I imagined, pretty spooked.

  I answered the silent question with a nod and an extended hand. She took the cuff from me with a quiet sigh of relief and a quick jerk of her head toward Yumi’s bed, where our third roommate slept. Unlike Truman, she snored lightly, letting us know she was truly out. It reassured me as I leaned over Sarah while she settled at her desk, the small lamp casting a glow over her comps and the cuff.

  It looked exactly like my brother Jonah’s. The ache of missing him had dulled but never disappeared, and for a moment it throbbed in my chest. Sarah ignored me, getting to work. She must have had questions about what happened or what took us so long, but with Yumi sleeping feet away and our time running low as far as getting that thing copied and back in Truman’s room before morning, she didn’t say a word.

  I watched her for a while but grew impatient at the realization that she wouldn’t ask for my help. Not that there was anything I could do.

  The adrenaline took some time to bleed out of me, but once it did, my eyes refused to cooperate and my body sagged. I jerked awake a third time to an exasperated glance from Sarah, who jabbed a finger toward my bed.

  I yawned and pointed toward the time on my wrist tat, the silent communication meant to tell
her to wake me when she finished, to which she returned an impatient nod before going back to tapping on her screens. The cuff was plugged into one and blinking, but other than that it was impossible to tell what was going on. For me, at any rate.

  Another yawn attacked and I stumbled toward my bed, collapsing onto it without bothering to change clothes or even peel back the fluffy comforter and sheets.

  The next thing I encountered was Sarah shaking me awake with more force than necessary. I groaned, then remembered Yumi and shut up, tossing a glance toward her bed. Still asleep, though her snores sounded lighter and less even.

  “I’ve got everything I need. Wasn’t Oz supposed to come and pick this up?” she whispered, shooting a look of her own toward our roommate. Despite the sharp tone of her voice, her eyes were worried.

  Oz had said he would get the cuff to return to his father’s rooms. But that was before he got caught there last night. I had no idea how things might have changed, but my stomach jerked at the idea that he might not be okay. His father had proven more than once to have the sort of temper that resulted in his son showing up to classes with bruises and black eyes.

  I held onto the belief that if Truman had realized last night that his cuff had gone missing, he would have been banging on our door hours ago.

  “His father caught him last night,” I whispered, sitting up quickly and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I motioned toward the bathroom kicked at the covers, heading for relative privacy. And a toothbrush.

  Sarah followed me, concern all over her face now. “What happened?”

  “Truman got out of the shower before we could leave, so we hid in a closet until he went to sleep. But he woke up when the door clicked open.” My fingers trembled as I held my toothbrush under the paste dispenser—no waste allowed in Genesis. “Oz shoved me out before his dad saw me.”

  “We need to find him.”

  “Did you send him a wrist comm?”

  She nodded. “Two. No answer.”