The Path

Toni looked at her holobrace absently, it told her nothing of great importance, the seconds ticking by, flittering morsels of news. She looked up at the counter of the noodle stand and landed on her almost empty bowl, a piece of tofu and some noodles barely covered by broth. She jabbed at it mindlessly then abandoned her utensils in the bowl. She finished her drink and tapped her holobrace on the bar to pay. A starscape of glittering recognition exploded from the counter, an extravagant holodisplay to reward the good little consumers for their purchase. Toni chuckled to herself.

“Eh, what’s so funny there Toni?” Lira piped from the seat next to her, pink emanating from her fit onto the countertop.

“Nothing, just an old memory,” Toni turned to Lira, “I’m going to head back to mine, you should come along,” she eyed her up and down as she said it.

“I got nothing better to do.”

They had been spending more time together since they met a couple of months back. It didn’t take long for Lira’s shock from the bolo holo to wear off. Patricide likely only a little more unnerving than what she and her gang got up to regularly. As Toni walked, Lira coasted and pushed on her quad skates. The preferred method of transport down here on the promenade, especially amongst the gangs. Lira rolled with the anarcho-punks, they called themselves Entropy. She spent her days with Entropy, hustling, carving out their territory. The rest of her time was spent with Toni. It wasn’t love, they hardly knew anything about each other than what they gleaned that first day, but it passed the time while Toni sorted out her next play in this sordid game she had gotten herself into.

Lira rolled ahead alert to another gang skirting the edge between territories. It wasn’t often that they got into it over a little territorial cross contamination, as long as business wasn’t impacted. But you never know. This squad was aptly named Deth, all skulls, bones, and black. Toni still wasn’t quite sure if the spelling was an intentional irony or just a sign of the poor schooling on the base level. Whatever the case, they were almost as volatile as Entropy. And the shared border caused extra friction between the two groups.

The Deth squad stopped at a noodle joint and took seats, and Lira turned back towards Toni’s path with a sour look on her face. A cloud of vapor illuminated by holos backlit her. The technicolor scene from above reflected in the pooling dampness on the ground. Could have been a scene from one of those arthouse holos they produce on the upper levels. Could have been beautiful if it didn’t perpetually smell like a sewer on the promenade. They didn’t talk as they made their way back to Toni’s apartments. Silence was a virtue she was glad they both shared.

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What is it?” Lira stood looking down at the base of Toni’s doorway.

“Looks like a package, Lira,” it was a box just shy of shoulder width wide, somewhat shorter on the other two sides, neatly wrapped in brown paper. The paper alone was a strange touch for the lower levels. Anything organic didn’t tend to be disposable unless people could really afford it. Shipping was done in plastic postal crates, left inside locked shipping boxes near apartments by the post. But this was an unregistered apartment, and no normal package would be delivered here. The only identifiable writing on it simply spelled out her name in all of its condemning glory, Antonia Rivington.

“Who’s it from?”

“I don’t know, Lira, I have as much information as you. Now let's get it inside.”

Toni opened the door from her holobrace and they each took a side of the box. It was lighter than she expected but large enough to be awkward to move on her own. Her apartment was the same as she had left it. Nothing had been moved. And she would notice, it was minimalist to a fault. She hadn’t planned on staying even as long as she had.

They moved across the room and placed the box on the table next to the far wall. She grabbed at a torn edge of the paper and pulled. Under the paper, a shimmering white wood showed through the hole she had made. It was intricately carved in a cascading pattern, the grain lines glowing. She tore the rest of the paper away and found a small wooden chest. It was luxurious, definitely from the upper levels. The chest felt familiar, but she couldn’t place where she might have seen it before. It looked like one solid block of wood, but the large glittering gold latch mechanism on the front indicated a seam must be somewhere. Toni tried to unlatch and open it, but it held firmly in place. She ran her finger over the latch, it had a heart shaped depression in the center, but no obvious keyhole or buttons. It appeared to be mechanical, but there could be a holo receiver inside.

“Looks like your locket,” Lira chirped from over Toni’s shoulder, startling her. The mystery had drawn her attention from her present companionship.

“What?”

“The heart in the latch, it looks like your locket.”

She was right, the depression in the latch did look strikingly similar to the locket hanging around Toni’s neck. The benefits of only having limited information. Toni would have never made that connection to the chain that sat on her skin for years, it was practically a part of her. She slowly removed the locket from her shirt and held it in front of the latch. The patterning in the gold matched perfectly. Before she tried it, she removed the chain from around her neck and took a long look at the locket.

How long had this box been locked? What could possibly be inside it? Who had delivered it to her? And a million other questions ran through her mind. She knew she had entered a long game when she decided to seek out her own power and prestige. But this locket had been with her for her whole life. The only way she would find answers was inside. She aligned the locket with the lock mechanism and pressed in. It secured in place and then depressed into the mechanism an almost imperceptible degree, and a soft click emanated from inside. She put her hand on the lid and hesitated. She looked at Lira.

“Sorry, love, but I’ve got to do this alone.”

“Oh come on, all that build up and you're just gonna leave me hanging?” Lira wheezed exasperated.

“You referring to my box or yours?”

“Maybe a little of both,” she retorted, annoyed.

“I’ll make it up to you next time, but I need to do this now, and I need you to leave so I can,” Toni said dismissively. Lira swatted her chrome modded arm through the air passively and rolled out the door without saying another word. Toni bolted the door behind her and returned to the box.

She opened the lid. Inside was more than she could process in a glance. There was money. Some valuables. A small fortune’s worth. There was an old holo unit, and a stack of data chits. An assortment of odd little trinkets that looked old and invaluable, but she couldn't be certain of what they were. And in the center was a pile of papers and a small notebook like the one taken from her the same night she had taken it from her parents.

She picked up the notebook and found it full of schematics, maps, and notes in the same cryptic script that the other had been full of. But it was different. She had studied that notebook countless times. She had never made sense of it, but she had enough familiarity to know that this was not a copy, but another volume. She closed it as her attention shifted to the papers that the book had been sitting atop and lifted the first leaf out of the box.

It was a handwritten letter from her mother to her father dated ten years before her birth. The paper was stained, the ink bled from an excited hand imprinting it. It had a simple message:

We think we have found the path to the Lost Ones, but I fear that this power might be corrupted by our compatriot. I have divided the codex into two volumes, and sent one to you with this letter. Keep it safe. Keep it hidden.

Toni’s eyes widened at the implication. She had known that there was a great secret in that journal. A path to the secrets of the Lost Ones made sense, with her mother’s history associated with the Ministry of Antiquities. She had pieced that much together. Some of the stories of her youth filled in her more fantastical ideas. But this power her mother wrote of, that was evidence. Evidence that her foray into the shadows hadn’t all been for nothing. And there was also evidence that she would have never been able to get there with the original book alone. That left the small problem of the original book’s pilfering. It didn’t solve all of her problems, far from it. It opened a whole slew of new questions, like from where and from whom had the box arrived on her doorstep. If they would be back. If she was still safe here. But she now had a sense of a path out and the means to follow it.