Read Online Return Once More by Trisha Leigh - Free Book Online

pedestal, and three of the surrounding walls were mirrors. The fourth projected clothing on our bodies based on the coordinates we typed into the system. The comps and tats could provide us any and all required information on the spot, but evaluations showed a higher likelihood of retaining facts when we ingested information the old-fashioned way—manual research. Not having to manually learn languages was the only cheat the Elders allowed, so the days leading up to a new trip were filled to the brim with reading about clothing, mannerisms, customs, and anything else we needed in order to blend into a certain time period.
    â€œDo you need any help with our wardrobe for the Triangle?”
    â€œNah. Check it out.” Analeigh punched a few buttons and spun me around.
    Ankle-length skirts and fitted tops lined with buttons down the back covered us both. The blouses tucked in at our waists, and boots—with more buttons—covered our feet and ankles.
    â€œHmm. Don’t we get hats? I feel like Edwardian fashion means hats.”
    â€œNo hats in New York City!” Sarah called over the wall from the next cubicle.
    â€œHats for the wealthy, but we’re going to be fitting in with immigrants. So no hats, but we will get to pin our hair up,” Analeigh clarified.
    â€œBut I like hats,” I replied, being difficult on purpose.
    She rolled her eyes and punched another button. Wide-brimmed hats appeared on our heads in the mirror with fat, sheer ribbons secured under our chins. I nodded. “Much better.”
    â€œYou can’t wear hats on the trip!” Sarah yelled.
    â€œSarah, I know you can’t see us, but we’re still only like four feet away. You don’t have to yell.” I gave Analeigh a look, and we shared a quiet giggle.
    â€œWhatever,” Sarah said, poking her head into our cubicle. “We need to finish downloading facts before supper.”
    Analeigh switched off the hologram. She and I stepped into the empty space in the room, a circle at the center surrounded by fitting booths, and then the three of us headed for the hatch, matching again in all black, supple Kevlar. We stepped into the labyrinth of sterile, steel-and-white hallways, our words bouncing back at us like pellets from an old firearm.
    â€œYou guys want to split up the research?” I asked as we headed back the way I’d come, toward the Archives.
    â€œWe’re not supposed to—”
    Sarah rolled her eyes. “Stars, Analeigh. As long as we complete the names, order of event, and setting, who cares? We can store all of the research in one file and download it three times under each of our names. No one will be the wiser.”
    We’d taken advantage of Sarah’s prowess with comps and tech more than once. It still surprised me she’d been sorted into the Historian Academy instead of Technologies because I’d never met anyone who could manipulate machines the way she could.
    â€œI guess.” Analeigh sighed. She’d probably do her own, anyway.
    Once surrounded by the thick, cloudy glass and dancing images in the Archives, the three of us split the research and got to work. I’d grabbed the easiest third—the manifest. The historians on Earth Before had listed the victims of the Triangle Fire, those who had lived and those who had died, so all I had to do was load it into a file, along with their physical characteristics.
    Since every class of apprentices had recorded the Triangle Fire, all of the girls in the building had an extensive file, even though few of them were individually significant. Their historical contribution lay in their collective demise, not any individual survival. Morbid, but true.
    Even the summary of the event hurt my heart. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
    â€œWhich part?” Sarah frowned. “The part where the poor immigrant girls were underpaid and worked literally to death in those factories for