But the message wasn’t from a classmate. Or if it was, they were masking their identity very well. After a long, encrypted series of letters and symbols, the following words flashed on my screen:
Marian Fitzwalter, these instructions will disappear in thirty seconds. Tonight at midnight, the grid will be off-line for exactly twenty-eight minutes. This will give you enough time to get over to your father’s office building and retrieve a small brown notebook from his locked desk drawer. The key will be waiting for you, taped beneath the desk chair. Inside the notebook you will find one page with writing on it. You are to capture the contents with your digi-pen, and then neatly rip out the page of the notebook. On the next piece of paper, you will write the following letters and numbers, so memorize them well:
RA 28h 31m 29.49400s
DEC –90° 50' 03.3738"
DIST 6.37 ly
You will then bury your pen in the dirt by the tree outside Tower 42B, tear up the piece of paper, and rinse the shreds down the drain in the office bathroom. Many people have risked their lives for this. Do not let them down and do not speak of this to anyone.
I could not have been more surprised by these words if they’d jumped off the screen and bitten me in the face. I had time to read them once more before they faded into nothing and the screen turned black. All I could see was my own shocked expression in the reflection. My head swam as I tried to reason it out, but I couldn’t. Nor could I disobey.
And that is why, five hours later, I am crouching here on the ledge outside my own father’s office, buffeted by wind and rain, having snuck through six tunnels, dodged three couples out for late-night strolls, ran up four back stairwells, taken two freight elevators, slipped out an emergency door onto the roof, and climbed down the fire escape ladder to this ledge. I have never done even ONE of those things before.
I take a deep breath and prepare to drop down onto the balcony when the light switches on in the office and two men rush inside. I freeze and press myself lower onto the ledge until I’m almost lying down.
“Where do you think he hid it?” one man asks. I don’t recognize the voice, or the bottom half of him that I can see, but I do not dare to lift my head higher.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” the other replies. “We only need to ransack the place, make it look like someone was searching for it. When King Richard turns up dead, Prince John’s hands will come up clean and he can blame his enemies.”
“But he doesn’t have any enemies,” the first guy points out as he pushes over chairs and pulls out the few unlocked desk drawers. “None who’ll admit to it, anyway.”
“Hey, you know the old saying: ‘An enemy is just a friend you haven’t double-crossed yet!’”
The first guy booms with laughter, then stops. “We better watch our backs, then.”
They flip a few more couch cushions, toss out the contents of the cabinets behind the desk, then leave, not bothering to switch off the light.
Aren’t they worried about the grid finding them here? They wouldn’t know it’s temporarily turned off. As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I know the answer. They’re not worried because Prince John has ultimate control over the grid.
I don’t have time to dwell on the unfairness of it all, because I have four more minutes until the grid turns back on. There is no chance at all that I can follow the instructions and make it back home in time. I will be caught for sure.
Is this whole insane mission a trap? Maybe I’m no different than those men, brought here as part of the prince’s plan to frame his enemies. Maybe I’m being set up to take the fall. Or my father is.
Three minutes left. I have a big decision to make. Whoever sent me here must not know me well. They have left me no choice. I take a deep, ragged breath.
And jump.
Judging by the horrid taste of the broccoli-flavored vita-square that the food replicator spewed out for dinner today, the original vegetable must have been barely edible. I would spit it out in protest, but I need all the energy I can get right now. I have a mystery to solve.
I have to admit, with the arrival of the mysterious boxes, the feather now tucked safely under my mattress, and Robo-teach’s bizarre photograph, this is turning into an exciting day. Usually the most exciting things that happen up here are an occasional spontaneous dance party in the plaza, or maybe a newbie to the station will get claustrophobic and run around in circles shouting “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” at the top of their lungs. But that’s rare. Mostly we make our own fun and don’t have too many rules to follow. My only real responsibility is attending school and not breaking anything. This leaves plenty of time for other pursuits.
All around me my classmates are still buzzing over the resemblance between the guy in the dorky hat and me. I pretend that it’s just a coincidence, matching DNA or not. I don’t want people to think it bothers me.
“How about a magic trick?” I ask, knowing that will get people off my case. I’ve been working on a new one, and this is as good a time as any to try it out. I slip my hand in my pocket and hide a round glass disk in my palm.
Gabriella leans across the table eagerly.
“Anyone have a token?” I ask.
“That depends,” Toby says. “Will we get it back?”
I grin. “Can’t promise that.”
Gabriella digs into her pocket anyway and eagerly hands over what must be her last token.
“Why do you keep falling for this?” Finley asks her.
I generally stay away from Finley, even though he’s closest to me in age. He’s the commander’s son and a bit of a buzzkill.
I drape my napkin (really an old piece of cloth that doubles as a napkin) over my empty water glass, then hold up Gabriella’s token so everyone can clearly see it. I slide it under the napkin and wait for the clink it makes as it hits the bottom of the glass. Only the token is still in my hand — the clink was really the clear glass disk I had hidden in my palm. The disk fits exactly into the bottom of the glass, totally blending in so it’s invisible. I snap my fingers and whisk away the cloth, revealing what looks like an empty glass and an empty napkin. Where’d the token go?
Everyone claps and hoots. Gabriella is so delighted she doesn’t even complain about losing her token. While everyone is oohing and aahing over the seemingly empty glass, I ball up the napkin with the token that I’d never actually let go of and stick it all in my pocket.
Finley rolls his eyes, and that’s my signal to leave. Quick as a flash, I flip the disk out of the glass and make a mental note of slight adjustments to make the next time I perform the trick. Then I hop on my board and zoom out of the dining hall. I may be able to fool the others into thinking I don’t care about that photograph, but I’m having a hard time fooling myself. I have questions, and I know just the person to ask for answers.
With so few of us living in such a confined space, you learn to tell each person apart by the oddest traits. Like right now, I can tell that Will is trailing about twenty feet behind me because when he exhales, a faint whistle zips through his front teeth. It’s so perfectly even that I swear you could use it to tell time. When I was younger, the rhythmic huuh-huuh-fweee, huuh-huuh-fweee used to lull me to sleep. Now between his whistling and Toby’s singing, it’s a wonder I get any sleep at all.
I pretend I don’t know he’s following me as I speed up, looping around the winding hallway that leads down to the lower level of the station.
Uncle Kent can usually be found in one of three places: Either he’s playing cards in the back of Shane’s garage, he’s at his job monitoring the gravity generator, or he’s staring out into the darkness of space on the Central Plaza’s observation deck.
Since by all rights he should be in the middle of his shift at work right now, that means he’s either playing cards at Shane’s or on the deck. I head to the Central Plaza first. My lack of faith in my uncle’s work ethic is rewarded when I easily spot the back of his head.
The glass dome that houses the obs
ervation deck extends fifty yards out into space. It totally gives the illusion of being outside, as long as you don’t look behind you. Five rows of benches are permanently affixed to the transparent floor, but often people bring their own comfortable chairs, or even blankets. Uncle Kent is sitting in the first row, hands on his knees, face tilted up as he looks out into the cosmos. I plop down beside him. A few seconds later Will joins us.
It’s time to find out what he knows.
“I don’t know anything,” Uncle Kent swears when I ask him who my parents are.
I shake my head. “C’mon, Uncle K. You’ve raised me like a son for fourteen years, and I don’t even know if you’re my mother’s brother or my father’s brother.”
Uncle Kent rubs his forehead, adjusts the collar of his maintenance uniform, closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Honestly, Robin,” he says wearily, “all of that is ancient history. Why does it matter all of a sudden?”
I tell him about the mystery man we saw in class, leaving out the part about the feather. I kinda want the feather to be just mine. Even though the kids in class know, of course, so it’s not much of a secret anymore.
“Do you know who it could have been?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “You said there were trees? Real ones?”
Will and I nod.
“Whoever he was, he would have lived hundreds of years ago. What’s the point in even thinking about it?”
He has a point. “All right, at least tell me the easy part, then.” I gesture to the three of us on the bench. “Tell me how we’re related.”
He sighs, fixes his eyes out into the distance, and says, “We’re not.”
After a pause that seems to encompass months and years, Will and I both shout, “WHAT?”
I follow that up with “Sorry, come again?”
Uncle (?) Kent says, “Your parents were my best friends. When they left, I took you in. Will was just a baby, and his own mother was gone. I figured he could use an older brother. You were a little more than a year old at the time we all came here.”
I try to process this. Did I live somewhere else before I lived here? Is that possible? “I don’t understand, Uncle Kent — or should I just call you Kent now?”
He cringes at that. “Your father and I thought of each other as brothers. I was always your uncle, even if not by blood. And I always will be. We’re a family.”
“But where are my parents? What happened to them? You said they … left?” The idea that they willingly abandoned me had never occurred to me before, although it should have, of course. In this age of interplanetary travel, stories of people taking off for the hope of a better life elsewhere weren’t unheard of. That’s probably how half the people on Delta Z wound up here. They’d been left behind. Or were the ones doing the leaving.
Uncle Kent (guess that’s how I’ll always think of him) stands up and walks to the edge of the dome. “It’s complicated,” he says. “They didn’t expect to be gone this long. Their mission was only supposed to last a year, two at the most.”
Will and I hurry to join him at the window. “Mission?” I repeat. “What does that mean?”
“Were Robin’s parents spies?” Will asks excitedly.
Uncle Kent gives a small smile, his first since we sat down. “Nothing that dramatic. But they did have an important job to do, one that was not wholly without risk. I just thought they’d be back by now and we’d all go home.”
I follow his gaze out the window. I’ve never understood why he spends so many hours looking outside. We’re so high in orbit that we can’t see anything interesting, like the sunrises or sunsets people who live on the planet below get to see when they look out. All we can see are the stars zooming by in the distance as we get dragged around the planet like an afterthought. Frankly, it makes me dizzy if I look too long.
“Is that why you sit here and look out all the time?” I ask. “Are you waiting for them to return?”
He rubs his eyes again. “I suppose so.”
Suddenly serious again, Will says, “So Delta Z isn’t really our home?”
“Of course it is,” Uncle Kent is quick to reply. I can hear him trying to keep his voice steady. “We’ve made a life here. It’s a good one, isn’t it?”
Will and I both nod. I’m sure Will’s thoughts are spinning as much as mine. Has Uncle Kent stayed here all these years because of me? An unfamiliar feeling wells up inside me. Gratitude, I think they call it. And also sadness. What did he leave behind? What did he give up?
“I haven’t given up hope of seeing them again,” Uncle Kent continues, using almost the same words I’d been thinking. “The Locksley men are tough. If there’s a way to —”
My hand shoots out to grab his arm. “What did you say? The Locksley men? What does that mean?”
“That’s the town your parents came from. I grew up in the next town over.”
While I try to process this, he adds, “Locksley men were known for their bravery. Always fighting for one cause or another. Stubborn, too.”
“Locksley boxes,” I stammer. “Boxes arrived from a ship.”
“What?” Uncle Kent asks, finally meeting my eyes for the first time during this whole conversation.
I try again, and this time I make more sense. “A whole bunch of boxes arrived that have Property of Locksley Manor printed on them.”
His face pales. “When?”
“Just a few hours ago.”
“Are you sure that’s what they said?”
I nod as another unfamiliar feeling creeps in. Worry. I don’t like it. It makes me itchy.
Uncle Kent stumbles back onto the bench and puts his face in his hands.
“Dad?” Will asks, his voice trembling. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“They’re not coming back,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “They knew what they were doing was dangerous, but they’re really gone.”
Sloshing water all over the office floor as I step through the (thankfully unlocked) sliding glass door is the last thing I should be worrying about, but I still feel guilty. The housekeeping staff works hard to keep The City clean and neat. I reach down to rub my sore knees. They’d gotten scraped up when I jumped from the ledge to the balcony. Athletic activity is frowned upon at our social level, and now I see why. It hurts!
My father used to bring me up here all the time when I was little, in the days of King Richard, but not once since. The office feels less inviting now, and colder, and not only because I’m shivering from the rain.
I run over to the office chair — or what’s left of it, anyway. Where is the key? I fall to my knees (ouch) and crawl around the floor, feeling around for it. In a city without crime, why would he have moved it?
I scramble back up and feel around the desk. All the drawers are hanging open except for the locked one at the top, where the notebook is. I tug at it, but it doesn’t budge. Still, I tug again and feel around the edges to see if I can wedge something in, but it’s solid.
Two minutes. My mouth has gone completely dry. Maybe I can bang something against it until the drawer breaks apart. I push my hair away from my face and look around the room, willing a solution to come to me. What about the bust of Prince John that he had installed in everyone’s offices? I wouldn’t mind smashing that thing. But besides the noise that would cause, I can feel the thickness of it. I could toss it over the balcony and it likely wouldn’t break.
My eyes then land on the holo-pic of our family, on the wall beside the door. The intruders knocked it sideways, but it still hangs from one bracket. The royal photographers took it years ago at a banquet when my father received an honor from King Richard for something or other. I risk a small smile at the image of Grandmother, whose eyes are a little more focused than they are now. We’re all smiling in the image, too. I remember it was a special night, with dancing and music.
I reach out to straighten the holo-pic. But when I try to snap it back onto the bracket, it bulges a little in the cen
ter. I reach behind it and feel a lump.
My hand stops, and then I yank the whole picture off the wall. The notebook is attached to the thin holo-screen with clear tape. I scratch and pull at it until it springs free.
I’m out of time now, but I keep going. I’m nothing if not a rule follower. The notebook is much lighter than I thought it would be, barely weighing anything. I’m not sure what good this would do on someone’s head.
I flip it open and have to stop myself from running my hands over the soft, delicate pages. Most are blank; one reveals three lines of code in gray lettering:
RA 14h 39m 36.49400s
DEC –60° 50' 02.3737"
DIST 4.37 ly
I should be focusing on what those numbers might mean, or how they would lead someone to Richard, but all I can do is marvel at it. I run my finger gently over the letters and numbers, and I can feel the slight indentations in the page left by the writing tool that made them. Pens holding ink and pencils with lead or graphite do not exist anymore, of course, so whoever wrote this must have gotten creative.
Closing my eyes doesn’t make ripping out the piece of paper any easier. It feels so destructive, like ripping off someone’s limb. The tearing sound that it makes will haunt me. But I pull out my digi-pen, scan the document, and tuck it safely back in my belt.
Any second now that door will burst open. I should get rid of the evidence, as instructed. I should go rinse it down the sink. But I can’t, I just can’t. I stick the paper into my boot, and then my stomach twists as I turn back to the notebook. I don’t have anything to write with! How am I supposed to enter in the false codes? Why hadn’t whoever wrote me the letter considered this?
And why hasn’t the door opened by now with Prince John’s guards storming in?
I try to remember if I learned anything in school about making a writing tool, but such lessons are painfully few and far between. I need something brown or black that I can mix with water, or even saliva.