Escape was the only answer.
Omari would be humiliated if he lost Kate. He would have to send for Eric. No one would believe could do a better job after that.
Kate wasn’t even sure if she wanted Eric back. But she was positive that she wanted revenge. Omari was the enemy.
She sat in her quarters, considering the best way to take her enemy out. If she wanted to put Omari in his place, she would have to leave the base. Simply hiding out for an hour or two wouldn’t do it. He could cover it up, or simply lie about losing sight of her.
But, if he discovered she wasn’t even at Shackleton Base. That would be the kind of revenge she was looking for.
Now she needed to come up with a plan.
At first, she considered catching one of the shuttles back to Earth. But in order for that to work, she would have to hide on the shuttle until it headed out. Such a small space left too much opportunity for discovery and failure.
That’s when it hit her. She didn’t have to leave the moon at all. Almost thirty bases dotted the moonscape. All she had to do was get to another one.
The nearest base wasn’t necessarily the best choice. One further away, a small lab a few kilometers south, was not as heavily guarded. It was a science station, focusing primarily on long term experiments. It was never intended for tourists or secret testing.
That would be the one.
“Kate?”
She sat up quickly, waking from her daydream, and looked over at her communicator. She had been waiting for this call.
“Kate, are you there?”
“I’m here,” she said walking over to her desk, “go ahead.”
“It’s the same,” the base librarian told her, “identical transmissions over the next five years. What I’m wondering, though, is why no one picked it up before? Now that I’m looking, it seems so obvious.”
“But you’re looking,” Kate said. “We never had any reason to question the logs.”
“Someone must have seen it,” the librarian said.
“Like who?”
“What about Yori?” he asked. “He would have reviewed every log before it was added to the library.”
Kate realized he was right. Yori would have reviewed every log. He would have been the one to notice something was wrong. And he was the one who was murdered.
•••
Sun followed her husband into the depths of the library, neither one saying a word.
She did not want to be there. The Curator’s office was underneath the library, deep within the ground. It was the place where the keeper of the box could hide, a place where the secrets the box held would be safe from the outside.
No one was allowed to even enter the hallway, let alone the office. William knew this. He had always followed the rules. He had always been one to respect the traditions of the family.
But something changed. He did not explain to Sun why he was taking her there; why he was changing the rules without asking. But, Sun knew he must have a reason. So she followed.
At the end of a long hallway she had never stepped foot in was a large, oak door with the Alexander family tree carved in its center and no handle, only a small glass panel on one side.
William walked up to the door and placed his hand on the panel. The door opened to reveal a circular space. A wooden desk sat in the center and shelves lined the walls. Sun stepped inside and began walking slowly around the room, examining the multitude of artifacts and objects around her.
Then William spoke up, breaking her concentration.
“Sun?” he asked. “You need to look at something.”
She quickly walked over to his desk. William had placed everything on the desk exactly as it was when he first entered the room. Even Yori’s journal was open to its final page and an open pen rested between the pages.
“This is how I found the desk when I first entered,” he told Sun. “What strikes you first?”
“Why is the professor’s map here?” Sun asked.
“I had the same question and it led me to find this.” William picked up Yori’s journal and showed Sun an entry from the week before his death. As she read, she slowly sat down in the worn, leather desk chair. After flipping through a couple of pages, she looked up at William with shock and sadness in her eyes.
“Keep reading,” he said and placed his hand on her shoulder. Sun continued until she finally got to the last entry. When she finished, she placed the journal back on the desk and cupped her face in her hands.
“Why wouldn’t they have warned us?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Maybe they did,” William said. “That’s what the box is for, to help us survive.”
“Then why haven’t we discovered them before?”
“We haven’t asked the right question,” he answered.
Sun stood up abruptly and said, “then let’s ask the right question.”
The two left the office behind and headed to the vault where the box was kept. One could open the box; the other could ask the question.
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