Isaac

  I lean into the safe—a thin line sweeps my eye, then a second beam maps my palm.

  Jameth and Alexian trade an unbelieving look.

  Then, in perfect unison—like they’ve rehearsed it—

  “Books?”

  I smile. “You want to see them?”

  I’m in too deep now. And with those two, half-truths don’t exist.

  I head downstairs in silence, like someone who knows he’s about to do something irreversible. They follow, whispering to each other in low, half-heard bits.

  “What are you two plotting back there?”

  “Nothing,” Alexian says.

  I stop in front of the closed door—Dad’s office, immediately to the right of the entryway.

  Jameth is on my heels. “Never been in here.”

  “Me neither,” Alexian adds, inches from my side.

  “Yeah, well—give me some space.”

  They step back. I bring my Personal up to the biometric reader.

  The door opens.

  I step in, past the two L-shaped desks in the center of the room.

  “I thought your dad’s office would have, I don’t know—some crazy tech,” Jameth says, a hint of disappointment in his voice.

  I stop at the double-door safe set into the wall opposite the entrance—matte steel, no handle. He’s not wrong. There isn’t much else in here.

  “Stay there.” I gesture for them to hold by the desks.

  Jameth takes a step forward.

  “No.” I block him. “Stay back. If the reader catches you mid-scan, it’ll try to ID you too—and then we’re all screwed.”

  He nods.

  Click. The safe door swings open.

  I pull out a large opaque box with reinforced edges and close the safe.

  I set it on the nearest desk and lift the lid.

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  Books—stacked neatly, sealed in clear sleeves.

  “These shouldn’t exist. But my grandfather saved them. And my dad kept them like they were gold.”

  Alexian reaches out.

  “How did he even get them?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I think they’re the only ones in the Cloud.”

  I pick one up, careful, like it might crumble, and peel open the sleeve. The plastic gives with a soft crackle as I slide the book out—then the smell of old paper rises, dry, sharp, real. I show it to them.

  Alexian inhales without thinking. “What is that?”

  “Paper,” I say.

  A red cover. The faded title: 1984.

  A stylized eye in the center.

  At the bottom, the author’s name: George Orwell.

  Plastic bookmarks are tucked between the pages.

  “It’s about a world where people are watched every second, and whoever’s in charge rewrites history to keep control.”

  Alexian presses her lips together, then smiles like she wants to dismiss it.

  “Maybe you’re exaggerating.”

  I shake my head, serious. I open the book at one of the tabs.

  “Read this: The lie becomes truth. Who controls the past controls the future.”

  Jameth taps his Personal instinctively.

  Alexian doesn’t. Instead she touches my bare wrist.

  “They’re just lines from a book.”

  “Yeah.” I hold her gaze. “But think about it. Doesn’t it feel… familiar?”

  Silence.

  Her hand slides from my wrist to the cover, fingertips tracing it—maybe curious about the texture, maybe drawn to something she can’t name.

  “So this is why you’re willing to risk everything? Because of an old book?”

  Jameth jumps in before I can answer.

  “Then why have they always told us things that aren’t true? Why do they pipe that landscape into the airtrain—like we can’t tell the second we leave the school perimeter it’s desert?”

  For a few seconds, we just look at each other—complicit, unsettled—each of us trapped in our own thoughts.

  I close the book.

  “They’re making us live inside a lie. And we’ve gotten so used to comfort and fake things that reality scares us.”

  Alexian swallows. I can tell the last words landed hard.

  “They’re turning us into slaves to this system. And we don’t even know what’s outside the Cloud, for real. The ocean. Rain. We don’t know anything about the real world.”

  I let the silence sit for a beat.

  “Does that sound normal to you?”

  Alexian’s eyes drift up toward the ceiling. Then she steps closer.

  “I’ve wondered a lot what the ocean smells like. I’ve never understood it—not even imagined it.”

  “The salty air,” I tell her. “But I don’t really know what that means either. They say your skin dries out after swimming in salt water, once the sun hits it.”

  “That must feel weird…” she murmurs.

  “It must feel amazing,” I insist.

  She smiles, and for a moment her eyes brighten.

  “Nothing like a pool.”

  “I wish I could touch snow,” Jameth says instead. “When it falls through the holes in the sky-cover, it melts before it reaches us. We never get any.”

  I slide the book back into the box.

  “I read that it’s soft. Cold. And you can even eat it.”

  Jameth’s eyes go wide. His reddish eyebrows practically jump toward his hairline.

  “Eat it?”

  I lift the box and return it to the safe, re-authenticating with the same two biometric scans.

  When I turn back to them, their faces are different from when we walked in.

  “You have to trust me. You don’t know everything behind this yet—but I can promise you this: the future of humanity is on the line.”

  I move toward the door, making it clear it’s time to leave.

  Alexian stops right in front of me.

  “Are you really sure?”

  I meet her eyes.

  “Yeah. And I hope one day you’ll understand why this mission matters.”

  She bites her lip.

  Jameth steps in and hooks an arm around my shoulder. With his other arm he pulls Alexian in.

  We huddle close—tight. Foreheads nearly touching.

  Then Jam gives my shoulder a squeeze.

  “We’re with you. And we won’t say a word. Relax.”