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.

Their clothes snagged my interest in a less scary way. Instead of the sleek, tight uniforms the citizens of Genesis favored on a daily basis, the pirates wore khaki shorts that landed at their knees, faded T-shirts, ankle socks, and a brand of tennis shoe that hadn’t been manufactured since Earth Before. I wondered where they had found four pairs that fit and also looked as though they were pretty well intact.

When Jonah’s shaggy dark head came into view a strangled noise tickled my throat and my feet took a step forward, both without my instruction.

Analeigh held me back with a light touch. “Don’t. If you go now it’ll be a distraction and they might not rob the armory. This is still history. We can’t change it.”

I nodded, never looking away from the boys. They were all brunettes, with hair that needed a cut and clothes that needed a wash, but even from here I could tell they were slightly older than us, good looking, and fit.

“Man, no one ever talks about how they’re, like, the handsomest band of pirates ever,” she whispered.

“Right?” I giggled as softly as possible but the boy at the rear paused.

His head whipped around, and both Analeigh and I covered our mouths. After a moment he frowned and followed his friends up to the back door. My brother slapped a wad of something sticky near the keypad on the thick iron door and all of the boys turned away. A moment later light flared and a soft fountain of sparks flew through the air. A small pop accompanied the display, but the sound barely registered.

The door sagged on its hinges and the boys disappeared inside the armory.

My mind raced while we waited for them to reappear. Until now, worry over my brother’s fate had been a constant, but abstract, thing. Seeing him carrying a weapon, watching him break into a building with the intent of stealing … it brought it home. My chest felt too tight, like someone had secured a rubber band around my lungs. The idea that I could lose him for real, for good, made me shake all over.

Violence existed in the System, but death was rarely the result. The stunners would knock someone out for an hour or so, and fistfights and the like still occurred on occasion, but the Gavreau wavers—named after their inventor—were the only weapons capable of killing. Citizens didn’t carry them. They were issued to Enforcers, who handled emergency mortal sanctions, and to one Elder in each Academy in case of emergencies. They could be set to incapacitate, but at their highest setting, the sonic wavers liquefied internal organs.

The thought of that happening to my brother numbed my nervous system.

Mortal sanctions of exposure could be issued, too, but they were as rare as anything else deadly. It had only happened twice in my lifetime, and I didn’t want my brother to be the third.

Sounds of a commotion rang from inside the armory but were short lived. A few shouts and quick, electrical zapping of stunners later, only shuffling murmurs whispered into the early morning. The boys reappeared a moment later, black duffel bags slung over their shoulders and roguish grins making their faces appear even younger than when they entered.

I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the bins and into their path. The two boys at the front dropped their bags and grabbed me so fast I couldn’t make a peep. Analeigh flew at them, digging her fingernails into their hair and yanking, but it didn’t loosen their hold on me. One let go of me long enough to fling her at Jonah, who caught her against his chest and held on tight while she beat at him with her fists.

He held her away, eyes widening in recognition before they slid to me. “Stop! Jean, Teach, let her go.”

“Why? They’re Historians. They could tip off the Elders in two minutes,” one of the boys barked, a dark curl falling into his eyes.

“She’s my sister.”

“So?”

“Let her go, Teach.” My brother took a step forward, his face dark and threatening in a completely unfamiliar way. The boys dropped my arms. Jonah let Analeigh go and she stumbled against me, her hand finding mine.

“Should we run?” she asked silently.

“No. It’s fine.”

Jonah’s dark eyes softened as he ran a hand over my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you know where I’d be?”

I eyed his companions—Jean, Teach, and the unnamed third—then cocked my head toward the bins that had provided Analeigh and me cover. “Can I talk to you in private?”

“Jonah, we have to go. Those Dockers aren’t going to be unconscious forever, and we need to be well away from Roma before they wake up. That junker ship of ours can’t outrun the Enforcers and you know it.”

“She’s not a junker, Sparrow. The older models are better, you know that.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that they’ll catch us. We need to go.”

The boy my brother called Sparrow had blue eyes that clashed impressively with his nearly black hair. The old, threadbare T-shirt clung to the muscles rippling across his chest. He grinned when he caught me staring. “You never told us your sister is so … grown up.”

My brother growled, then stepped in between Sparrow and me, cutting off my line of sight. He leveled me with a glare that would have worked on anyone else. “Leave.”

“No.” I stuck out my chin. “I need to talk to you and I’m not leaving until I do.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Kaia. Go back where you belong.”

“I found your cuff in your room. That’s how we got here. And I’m going to keep using it and showing up wherever you do until you talk to me. Might as well get it over with today.”

“Just bring her with us. If she’s got a travel cuff she can get back to the Academy whenever she’s ready,” the one named Teach said.

Light bounced off his honey-brown hair. The false sunlight on Roma shone brighter than in most of Genesis, maybe to compensate for the drab days spent toiling in factories, and I squinted. Indecision fluttered across Jonah’s features. They’d always revealed his every thought and feeling to me—or so I’d thought before he’d left without a word. He looked different, and not only because of the bumped, horrible scars on his throat and wrist where the tats had been dug free. He seemed older, more serious, than in my memory.