Trading Secrets

“Leura, can you hear me?”

A small point of light entered her vision, then it spread quickly and the world came back into view.

Mika was leaning over her. He didn’t seem worried, in fact he looked as happy as she’d ever seen him.

“That was quite a performance,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “They’ll be talking about that one for years, I’m telling you. Best opening race I’ve seen in a long time.”

Everything came flooding back, the race, the sharks, the look on Cron’s face as he threw her into their waiting jaws… and Sol!

Leura sat up with a jolt. She expected to feel pain, and was confused to realise she felt totally fine. She was on the ground at the end of the hovertrack. Many of the other white robes were there as well, most of them standing and looking perfectly healthy, though there was one girl lying near her still unconscious. A red robed stranger was pressing a thin device against her arm, Leura heard it make a faint hissing noise, and almost instantly the girl opened her eyes, and sat up looking perfectly fine again. Leura glanced at her own arm and noticed the sleeve of her robe had been pulled up and she could just make out a tiny red dot, like she’d been pricked by a needle.

Mika waved a hand in front of her, showing the thin device he was holding. “The best medicine the Expansionists have to offer, lets us have a little extra fun at these things.” He winked at her, but she looked back concerned.

“Where’s Sol?” she asked forcefully. Mika smiled from ear to ear and nodded towards a podium a short distance behind them.

Sol was standing there with her hoverboard tucked under one arm, and a large gold trophy in the other.

One step lower on the podium was Cron, though he was so much taller than her the top of his head was still above hers. He had a silver medal around his neck, and looked furious about it. Another boy Leura didn’t recognise was on the lowest step with a bronze medal he was holding quite contently in his hands. The whole stadium was on their feet cheering for them.

For a few moments Leura was overwhelmed with a mix of emotions, including ones she wasn’t very proud of, like envy and shame. Then she felt herself swell with relief as she realised what Sol’s victory actually meant… They’d beaten Cron… They’d won the bet!

Leura jumped to her feet and started cheering louder than anyone else. She hoped Mika hadn’t noticed her brief moments of disappointment, but he seemed too busy cheering for all the winners himself.

As the noise died down, Sol leapt off the podium and bounced towards them, her face flushed with a mixture of happiness and disbelief. She threw her arms around Leura, dropping her hoverboard and trophy in the process.

“Can you believe it? And I won a brand new hoverboard! They’re going to send me one from Slipstream, and they make the best hoverboards in the system! And it’s all thanks to you really, you saved me by distracting the sharks, and then Cron slowed down to take you out and I snuck right past him!”

Leura gave Cron a smug grin as he walked off back towards the stands. She may have lost, but so did Cron. That’s all that mattered. “At least one of us beat him, now we just have to make sure he doesn’t back out of the deal.”

Sol didn’t seem to be listening, “I thought there was no way I could catch up but I took that last jump just right and landed right in front of the big idiot, you should have heard the way he shouted at me as we crossed the finish line, didn’t even know most of the swear words he used…”

“Congratulations Sol!” shouted Mika, giving her hand a rigorous shake, “I knew you could take home the trophy, you did Alexandria proud today, you both did,” he added, with a respectful nod towards Leura.

They dropped off their hoverboards near the starting line, and Leura gave hers an affectionate pat before they joined the other white robes heading back up to Alexandria’s place in the stands. A large group of blue robes passed them, with faces either flushed with excitement or sickly green with nerves. Leura tried to give them looks of encouragement, but was quite glad to be heading in the opposite direction to those Crater Sharks.

When they reached the rest of the students from Alexandria, Sol was immediately swarmed by people congratulating her and eager to get a good look at the trophy. Leura slipped away and found Wentworth over near the far edge of their area.

He watched her walk over with an I told you so look on his face, but Leura knew him too well to see how hard he was trying to cover up the anxiety he’d gone through while watching her race. “Still glad you didn’t compete then?” she asked casually.

Wentworth faked a smile, “I’m devastated actually, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be eaten alive by robot sharks, now I’ve missed my chance.”

“It’s less exciting than you’d think,” said Leura truthfully, “barely felt a thing, as soon as you’re in those jaws you’re out cold.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that,” he said, giving her a genuine smile. “I’m sorry you lost, you did brilliantly.”

“I’m just glad Sol won and not Cron,” said Leura, trying to catch sight of Cron in the crowd but couldn’t spot him.

“Well at least your race is over now, you can sit back and watch them with me, it’s actually kinda fun, once you know those sharks can’t really eat anyone.”

Leura laughed, and she wasn’t the only one. A gruff, throaty laugh came from over the barrier separating Alexandria’s section from the rest of the stands, and standing there watching the twins was the man with the shaved head and rough beard that had spoken to them at the Sydney skyport. He was wearing the same thick clothing and heavily pocketed vest, and there was a look of satisfaction plastered across his face.

“Don’t have the stomach for their games then? Well, good for you son. Watching violence is something most travellers have gotten very good at.”

“How do you keep finding us?” asked Leura with a sharp edge in her voice.

“It’s my job to find people, to know things. I’m a Scouter. You never heard of us?”

The twins shook their heads.

“Well I know you’ve heard of Continuum Intelligence, the right hand of the Board. Your mother was its rising star before the pair of you came along, and I was her best soldier.” He grinned at them knowingly, leaning casually on the barrier between them. Leura could tell he sensed the impact that his words had on her. One mention of Raya, and she was drawn in like a moth to the flame. “I’m Bowen Aeros, and I’m here to offer you something that no one at that library of yours is going to offer you.”

“And what’s that?” asked Wentworth warily.

“The truth about Raya,” said Bowen slowly, looking delighted at the reaction on the twins’ faces. “Don’t you want to know why she was taken away from you? Don’t you want to know what she did?”

Leura couldn’t have hidden the hunger in her face even if she tried. “Tell us,” she demanded, her eyes wide and locked tightly on Bowen.

“Not so fast there sharkbait, this isn’t a gift, it’s a trade.” He glanced swiftly at the crowd around them, making sure no one had taken notice. “There’s something only the pair of you can get for me, something at Alexandria. Bring it to me and I’ll tell you everything there is to know about Raya Volkova.”

“What is it?” asked Leura, brimming with frustration that she was so close but still refused the answers she so desperately craved.

“A device, a hollow pad, kinda like a computer from your time. It was Raya’s, given to the Librarians after they took her. All you have to do is find it and signal me.”

Leura and Wentworth’s questions overlapped each other.

“How are we supposed to find it?” - “How are we supposed to signal you?”

Bowen waved them closer, “How you find it is your business, but you signal me with this,” he held out a small object, it looked like a complex earphone made from a pearly white material. “It uses tachyon tech, faster than light signals, so we can talk even when separated by time. Just turn it on, put it in your ear and say my name.”

Leura reached out and took the earphone from Bowen’s outstretched hand.

“There you are!” shouted Sol from behind them, making both twins jump and spin around. She was running over to them, dodging around some purple robes and still grinning from ear to ear. “The next race is about to begin, let’s go get a good seat for it!”

Leura turned towards Bowen, but he’d vanished back into the crowd as effortlessly as he’d appeared.

“What are you looking at? What were you doing all the way back here anyway?” asked Sol curiously.

Leura hesitated, but only for a moment. “We met someone that might be able to tell us more about mum, but we’ll explain when we get back to Alexandria, come on, let’s go watch the races.”

Leura knew Sol was burning to know more, but as the blue robe race had now begun she was soon pleasantly distracted by the brutal scenes of crashes and shark attacks, all being projected onto the massive screens floating around the stadium.

No blue robes from Alexandria made it onto the podium, and as they moved up the ranks, they released more Crater Sharks onto the track. The purple robes had to deal with nine of them, and somehow Jason managed to scrape second place, bringing home another silver medal for Alexandria. A brown robe named Vance Sulu won the trophy on the next race, becoming the second champion from Alexandria, but none of their black robes made it onto the podium. Leura didn’t judge them for it though, there were now eighteen Crater Sharks prowling around the track, and they seemed to hunt even better in packs.

Now it was time for the open rank races. Any adult traveller could compete, and since there were so many eager to do it they were split into dozens of heats. Winning the race was not enough to get you on the podium anymore, you had to finish the race with the best time overall.

The last of the Crater Sharks had been released from their cages, and the track now resembled a feeding frenzy more than a hoverboard race. But the riders competing at this level were not like the students that came before. Leura watched with fascination as they flew across the track, riding boards that made the ones from Alexandria look cheap and outdated. Even with all those extra sharks, most riders made it over the finish line.

The highlight of the afternoon was watching Mika, still using his hoverskates, dominate his race with grace and style that made Leura’s head spin. What she wouldn’t give to be as good as that!

When the heats were over, and the winners were announced, no one was surprised to see Mika on the podium, although there was a ripple of disappointment in the Alexandria stands that he was in second place, having lost by mere seconds to a woman with shiny black hair tied so taut across her head she almost looked like she was wearing a swimming cap. As the screens showed a close up of the winners, Leura looked into the woman’s scowling face, her features sharp and long, making her look a bit like a crow, and felt an immediate dislike for her. Her name, along with the other winners, was projected beneath her image. Leura read it with a sickening drop in her stomach. Valkyr Thorisdottir.

“Thorisdottir,” whispered Wentworth beside her. “You don’t think… isn’t that what Mika said Frey’s last name was? She must be her -”

“Daughter probably,” finished Leura, her dislike for Valkyr growing by the second.

With the tournament now over, and everyone stuffed to the brim with food, drink, and entertainment, the crowd was beginning to make its slow crawl out of the stadium. Everyone was talking happily about their favourite races of the day, or the more spectacular crashes. But the twins were silent, letting Sol ramble on instead. They were both lost in thought about the proposition Bowen had given them, and what he might be able to tell them about their mother.

Leura had always been more concerned with finding Raya than knowing why she was taken in the first place. But with Cron’s defeat, she’d finally found a way to Jotunheim, and was now free to wonder… what exactly had Raya done? Could Bowen really tell them the reason they had to grow up without a mother?

Leura’s mind began imagining scenes from the night Raya was taken. She’d pictured it before, but this time was different. Now she saw Valkyr’s face, laughing as two little babies were torn from their mother’s arms. A small voice in the back of her head tried to remind her that it was Frey, not her daughter, that was there that night. But Leura could not shake the feeling that Valkyr was also to blame, and with every step they took on the long journey home, her hatred for the woman grew stronger, until it burned so hot and sat so deeply within her, that she knew she would never be free of it again.

Over the following weeks, all Leura could think about was how to find the hollow pad for Bowen, and finally going to Jotunheim.

They told Sol all about the offer Bowen had made them during a particularly dull History of Humanity class, and she’d agreed it sounded like a fair trade, especially since the hollow pad had been Raya’s to begin with.

“I’ve heard the Librarians have their own secret library hidden inside this one, filled with all the things they don’t want any of us students to find,” said Sol, clearly thrilled at the thought of finding such a place.

“Even if that were true, how are we supposed to find it, let alone get inside,” said Wentworth moodily, “we need some help, if we just tried to explain it to Mika -”

“We’re not telling him, how many times do I have to say it!” snapped Leura, “we only get one shot at this, if Aristar finds out we’re trying to steal it she’ll make sure we never get the chance. We have to figure this out on our own.”

Cron was another problem. After Wentworth recovered from the initial shock of finding out Leura had made such a risky bet, all three of them were eager to arrange a trip to Jotunheim. But ever since the tournament, Cron had been avoiding them completely. Every time Leura and Sol came anywhere near him he found a way to distance himself again.

“He’s trying to weasel his way out of the bet,” said Sol darkly, as Cron dashed out of the Sandbox after the day’s lessons were over. “I wish I knew where he disappears to, he’s not in the Rec room, or our living quarters. Maybe he’s leaving the library?”

Leura didn’t have any answers, and their lack of progress was starting to get to her. Not a very patient person at the best of times, she felt like she’d been so close to getting everything she wanted, only to have it withheld at the last second. Her obsession with Jotunheim was starting to leak over into her dreams, and she often woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares filled with icy caves and shadowy beasts. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was running out of time to save Raya.

“I think we need to roll the dice again,” said Leura, more to herself than to the others. She led them back towards their living quarters, and though Wentworth looked uneasy about it, he followed along without complaint. Like Leura, he hated having a problem he couldn’t solve.

Inside the twins’ room, Leura took out the dice of serendipity from a hiding spot between her bedframe and the wall. Then she started pacing up and down the small space, thinking out loud. “We can’t ask them for straight answers, we have to make it seem like a choice we have to make…”

“Why not ask if we should get help from Mika?” suggested Wentworth, “before we rule it out completely.”

Leura nodded, stopped her pacing and rolled the dice across the stone floor, asking aloud, “Should we get Mika to help us steal my mum’s hollow pad?”

The dice came to a stop, and darkness remained for a moment before the flames began to rise. They watched with wide eyes as the golden yellow flames reached the top surface and formed the shape of the number 41.

All three of them stared in silence at the dice as the flames vanished into the darkness once more.

“We can’t tell him, we can’t risk it,” said Leura with finality, and she was glad to see both Wentworth and Sol give solemn nods of agreement.

“Okay, ask if we should search for the Librarians’ secret library,” said Sol, with an excited little hop, “if it doesn’t exist the dice would just tell us not to bother looking for it, right?”

Leura picked up the dice and rolled them again. This time they showed a blazing emerald 97.

Sol let out a cry of joy and punched the air a few times in excitement. “It’s real, I knew it! I bet there’s all kinds of cool things in there! Rare things, and dangerous things, and maybe even some illegal things…” Her excitement seemed to render her speechless for a few moments, as it often did, and Wentworth seized the chance to snatch the dice for himself and finally ask them a question of his own.

“Should we trust Bowen Aeros?”

Leura wanted to scream at the sight of him touching the dice. She couldn’t explain it but it felt like a betrayal, like he’d just stolen something precious of hers. The dice landed with a soft thud and seemed to come to a stop unnaturally fast, like they were just as upset about being rolled by someone else as Leura was. Then they did something they’d never done before.

One of the dice had bright orange flames, and showed the number 35. The other was olive green and 67.

The flames faded away, and Leura turned angrily to Wentworth. “Well that wasn’t very helpful, was it. You better not have broken them.”

Wentworth was still staring at the now dark dice. His mind liked dealing in logic and certainty, but it seemed like the dice couldn’t figure out if it was a good idea to trust Bowen or not. But since 67 was closer to 100 than 35 was to 0, they were leaning more towards yes. Not by much though, and not enough to reassure Wentworth that they were doing the right thing. He turned to Leura. “Maybe we should forget about helping Bowen. We can focus on Cron instead, get him to take us to Jotunheim.”

“We’re trying, but don’t you want to hear what Bowen has to say?”

“Not if it’s all lies, no.”

“The dice would know if he was lying to us, they must be confused because… well, it’s risky isn’t it, what he’s asking us to do.”

Silence fell between them again.

“Let’s just see if we can even find this secret library, okay?” said Leura, “take it one step at a time. We need to start spying on the Librarians, find out where they go after lessons.”

“Well we can’t start following them all over the place can we? It would look a little obvious, don’t you think?” said Wentworth with his arms folded tightly across his chest.

Another silence fell, until Sol’s mischievous laugh broke through it. The twins turned to see her standing there with her hand held out in front of her, and sitting in her open palm, shaped like a gold coloured hummingbird, was Stardust.

It didn’t take Stardust long to figure out where the Librarians were going.

The next day, while they were stuck in lessons, Stardust fluttered around the high ceilings of the library, watching the Librarians coming and going. By the time lessons were over for the day, the nanobots knew exactly where to take them. Leura, Wentworth, and Sol followed the golden hummingbird right to the end of one of the many passageways that branched off the Hall of Creation, and up to a dark metal door, perfectly flush with the stone wall around it. It had no handles, or had any sign of how to open it. Unsurprisingly, it was locked, and waving their Phonelets in front of it did nothing to change that.

“Can you unlock it, Stardust?” asked Leura hopefully. The nanobots swarmed over every inch of the door, but after a few minutes retreated back to Sol’s shoulder in the shape of a drooping blob, clearly unhappy with itself.

“Well, it’s definitely the place then, if it’s even better protected than Thoth’s database,” said Wentworth.

“Come on, we need to see how the Librarians are opening it,” said Leura, leading them back up the passageway. They lingered around its entrance, pretending to be interested in the holographic images on the walls, showing awe-inspiring scenes from the late Expansionist era. Eventually, their tall and slender Quantum Relativity teacher, Librarian Teone, made his way past them and turned into the passageway that led to the dark door.

Looking at each other nervously, they gave him a brief headstart, then slipped into the passageway after him.

Tip-toeing as quietly as they could, they crept along behind Librarian Teone, getting as close as they dared. But as he approached the door, apparently without having to do anything at all, it hissed open for him and closed swiftly again as soon as he was through.

When they walked up to the door, it remained sternly closed, obviously aware they were not one of the Librarians.

“Well, so much for that plan,” said Sol dryly.

“Actually, I think it makes things very simple,” said Wentworth, “we can’t get through this door without help from a Librarian. The only question is, if we can’t trust Mika, then who else is there?”

Leura cast her mind over her various teachers, all of them intimidating in their own way. She felt a strong liking that bordered on hero-worshipping of Istros, but she was also very frightened of the warrior Librarian. There was also Callimachus, who seemed to like the twins well enough, and doted on Sol like she was his own daughter, but would he help them with something like this? How would they even explain what they needed? Leura was certain they couldn’t tell them the real reason they wanted their mum’s hollow pad…

Then without warning, before any of them could move so much as a finger, the dark doors hissed open again, and Mika stepped out into the passageway.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, everyone reeling from the suddenness of the encounter, then Mika asked the obvious question, “what are you doing here?”

Leura felt like her brain had crashed and was still trying to reboot itself, so all she managed to say was, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m coming back from the Other Library,” answered Mika automatically, then looked startled at himself and quickly added, “students aren’t allowed back here, now off you go, you should be enjoying the Rec room before dinner starts.” He tried shooing them off with a wave of his hand, but they stayed rooted to the spot.

Leura didn’t have time to think it through, but instinct took over and she threw all caution to the wind. “The truth is, we’re looking for stuff that belonged to mum,” she let the emotion that always came to the surface whenever she spoke about her mum fill her voice. “We know she left things here, that’s why you had her timedial, isn’t it? She’s our mum, we should be the ones that get her things, not you, not the other Librarians. Us.” She felt her eyes swell with tears and she let it happen, but was careful not to overdo it. She had to admit, it was an impressive performance.

Mika looked troubled, “I’m afraid it’s not that simple Leura. We were only given a few things, things they wanted examined. Her timedial was one of them but it’s always been a tradition to pass them down through the generations, and I convinced the others that we should let you have it. Everything else…” he trailed off, seemingly lost in thought. “Although… there is perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?” asked Leura, not needing to fake her curiosity.

Mika was mumbling to himself, “it’s certainly of no more use… no one’s bothered with it for years… yes, yes I think it would be quite alright.” He looked up at them, “I will bring you something else of Raya’s, if you’d just wait here a moment -”

“No!” shouted Leura, before quickly adding, “I mean, couldn’t we please go with you? Even just seeing some of the other things would be enough, please Mika.”

He contemplated them for a moment, and looked up the empty passageway. “We’re only supposed to bring higher ranking students to the Other Library, but if we’re quick I suppose… Follow me then, and stick close.” He turned back to the door, which opened back up for him and they all rushed through it into the room beyond.

“But, this is a time capsule,” said Wentworth, after the door closed and the light in the room had brightened enough for them to make out the small, round space.

“Yes, of course,” said Mika, busy twisting the rings of his timedial, “right, hold on tightly then.” He held out his arm for them to grab onto, and then the room collapsed and sprung back into place with a familiar crunch, and Mika led them back to the door. “Stay right behind me, the less people that see you the better.”

They emerged back into the same passageway as before. Confused, the twins and Sol hurried to keep up with Mika’s huge strides. When they arrived at the Hall of Creation, the first change Leura noticed was that the courtyard in the centre was barren. The lush greenery and eye-catching Folded tree were gone. Looking up and down the curved hall, Leura saw that the walls were bare as well. There were, however, lots of people in red robes walking around the hall, and Leura spotted a few black robes among them.

Mika carried on towards the entrance to the atrium, greeting a few of the other Librarians they passed, who looked curiously at the three little white robes trailing behind him. As they entered the expansive room, all three of them stared around in shock. The atrium was no longer the beautiful collection of books they were used to. Now it looked more like a warehouse, with rows upon rows of towering shelves, overflowing with objects and boxes. With a flutter of excitement, Leura realised she was looking at a treasure trove, collected by generations of Librarians since the dawn of time travellers.

“If I recall, it’s somewhere over near the back left corner,” said Mika with a slight frown, leading them through a lane between shelves, heading towards the opposite end of the atrium.

“Are we in the past, or the future?” asked Sol, eyeing off the items on the shelves with feverish interest.

“We’re in the final years of Alexandria. We don’t do any teaching here, the library is used more like a research lab, and archive.”

“So the future… does that mean… but, where are we then, like the future we?” asked Sol, her face scrunched up in confusion.

Mika laughed. “None of you are here, we can be certain of that. We can’t be in the same moment twice, remember, time travel doesn’t work that way. Some travellers do try and track their future selves, they foolishly think that if they can get a glimpse of their future they can change things to make it better. This, of course, never works. There are too many variables, too many possible futures, all emerging and disappearing again in endless waves, like quantum superposition itself. Mostly, they just end up getting in trouble with the CI and landing in a cell in Jotunheim.”

The twins shared a knowing look at these words. “But, even little things we do can cause big changes to our lives, can’t it? It must be pretty easy to change your future, if you know what you want changed,” said Wentworth.

“You’re talking about the butterfly effect,” said Mika with a laugh. “A butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane in some far off land - what nonsense - the structure of time is far stronger than that. It’s more like the other way around, a hurricane might cause a butterfly to give an extra flap of its wings, if it’s the right distance away. The truth is our futures are both inherently unpredictable and yet tightly bound at the same time. It takes a great deal of effort to know anything about them for certain, and even more effort to change even the very smallest of things.”

Sensing Wentworth was about to bombard Mika with questions, Leura changed the subject. “Why bother setting up a time capsule just to visit a future version of the library? I mean, it’s not like the library’s changed that much. Couldn’t you just travel from anywhere?”

Mika looked shocked. “Has Callimachus not covered coalescing yet? Travelling from any random place is incredibly dangerous. What if you arrive right at a moment someone else is already standing in? Coalescing is not pretty, the CI has to step in and try to minimise the damage every now and then…” He gave an involuntary shudder.

“How do time capsules protect us from that though? Wouldn’t everyone travelling from the exact same spot be an even worse way to do it?” asked Wentworth.

“Time capsules are built specifically to make coalescing impossible. They work alongside our timedials, pinpointing an exact moment in time for us and making sure it’s free. Then as we reach it, they signal our timedials to block us there.”

“What do you mean, they block us?” asked Leura uneasily.

“Well, it’s a pretty simple thing to do really. Time travelling creates recognisable brain waves, a combination of low delta and high gamma waves. The right signal can counteract that frequency, so we can’t enter that state of mind anymore. We call those signals dampeners.” He reached into his pocket and took out his timedial. “That’s what these are. They’re like an alarm clock, except they don’t make noise when they go off, they release a strong dampening signal instead.”

Leura reached into her own pocket and took out Raya’s timedial. “They make it so we can’t time travel anymore,” she said softly, looking at the intricate device like she was seeing it properly for the first time.

“Only for a moment. There are more permanent dampeners of course, used in places like Jotunheim… Ah, yes, this is the place!” Mika had led them right into the back corner of the atrium, where the shelves were packed with hundreds of labelled boxes. “Her name should be on the box, keep an eye out would you.”

“There!” shouted Wentworth almost at once, pointing towards a small box on the shelves above them. Mika was only just able to reach it, even with his considerable height. He brought the box down, placing it on the ground at their feet, and they all knelt around it.

“Like I said before, they didn’t give us much, most of her personal effects would be in storage at Jotunheim,” explained Mika as he lifted the lid off the box.

There were only three items inside.

The first, and most obvious, was a knife, with edges made from what looked like pure darkness. Leura was instantly reminded of the dice she had hidden away in her bedroom. It was fastened to the bottom of the box with a strap around its hilt, keeping it from moving around.

The second could only have been the hollow pad. It was smaller than Leura expected, not much bigger than the smart phones from her own time, though clearly much more advanced. It was made of a transparent material, and she could see faint traces of gold electrical wires and silver circuit boards embedded inside.

The last item was so small Leura almost missed it. Tucked into a corner of the box was a crystal, not much bigger than a marble. Now that Leura had spotted it though, she could hardly take her eyes off it. Its colours seemed to be moving. Near the surface were different reds and yellows, but deeper within the colour shifted towards purple and then blue. It looked like someone had trapped an extremely hot flame within a crystal, and the flame was continuing to burn. Mika reached down to pick it up.

“Don’t!” shouted Leura, afraid that it would burn him, but Mika merely smiled and plucked the crystal up between his thumb and forefinger, holding it before them so they could get a closer look.

“This was found on Raya the night they took her. They wanted us to tell them what it was, and after years and years of trying, we still have absolutely no idea.” Mika sounded delighted by the stubbornness of the flickering crystal to give up its secrets. “We’re confident it’s harmless though, and since no one’s bothering with it anymore, I think it’s okay for you to have it.” He held out the crystal towards them.

Leura didn’t move. She was still staring into the flickering depths, where the blue colour was strongest. She couldn’t put it into words, but the crystal was making her afraid, like it was trying to give her some kind of warning she couldn’t understand.

Wentworth reached out beside her and took the crystal from Mika. “Leura already has our mum’s timedial,” he said, with an edge of defiance, but Leura was quite happy to let Wentworth have this one.

Mika was picking the lid of the box back up when Leura remembered with a jolt of panic why they were here in the first place.

“What kind of knife is that?” asked Leura, trying to buy them a little more time.

Mika looked a little apprehensive, but couldn’t seem to resist answering, and failed to mask the awe in his voice. “It’s a zero point blade. Very rare, very dangerous. We were supposed to find out who made it but they left no trace. That’s materialised dark matter along the edges, you see it? You can make an edge with that stuff so sharp it’s only a few atoms thick. It can cut through anything…”

“And it was our mum’s?” asked Leura, unnerved to think she could own such a dangerous weapon.

“Well, it was with her when they took her,” answered Mika sympathetically. Leura looked at the impossibly dark edges of the blade, and could almost sense their sharpness, like they longed to be tearing into things once again, splitting matter apart with a precision unmatched by anything in the natural world. Knowing it had once been held in her mother’s hands made Leura feel cold and empty. It joined the rest of the things trying to drag her underwater, just another thought needing constant effort to keep contained in the back of her mind.

“And what’s that?” asked Leura, pointing at the hollow pad.

“That’s just some old tech, probably doesn’t even work anymore,” Mika said quickly, then placed the lid back on the box, and before Leura could think of any way to stop him, he’d placed it back on the high shelf and turned to lead them back out of the atrium.

Leura gave Wentworth a panicked look, but he was busy examining the flickering crystal. She looked at Sol instead, who gave her a reassuring nod and motioned for her to follow Mika. Leura hesitated, and then saw a flash of gold darting between Sol and the boxes. With a sudden realisation and a rush of relief, she joined Sol as they hurried off after Mika, Wentworth trailing along behind them, having finally tucked the crystal safely away in his pocket.

Leura kept glancing nervously back over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of gold again, but Sol gave her a warning look and nodded towards Mika, silently warning her not to draw attention to them.

“Keep up now,” called Mika, noticing they were dropping a little behind, “best to get you back to our time quickly.” There were other Librarians walking amongst the shelves, none that Leura recognised, but all of them seemed to find the sight of three white robes among them quite shocking.

Just as they were reaching the end of the atrium, Leura spotted something that was mostly gold and perhaps a little bit of silver, launching itself from the shelf beside them and disappearing into the folds of Sol’s robes. They gave each other a quick smile and upped their pace, just as eager as Mika now to leave this Other Library behind.

Back in the time capsule, Mika set his timedial and collapsed the room around them. Leura tried to notice if she could feel it, the moment the dampener went off and she would temporarily lose her ability to time travel. But it was the same as ever, and they walked as a group through the passageway, back into the familiar Hall of Creation, with its heavily covered walls and impressively green courtyard.

They thanked Mika earnestly, and he beamed down at them, genuinely thrilled that he’d been able to help. Then they said goodbye and hurried off to their living quarters.

Inside the twins’ room, Leura and Sol turned to each other with trepid anticipation.

“Did Stardust get it?” asked Leura breathlessly.

Sol held out her arm, and out from her sleeve came Stardust, a shapeless blob of gold, with two objects protruding from within it.

One was the thin, transparent, top half of the hollow pad. The other was the silver hilt of a blade.