Blink: 3003 (Book 1)

02

The sound of the house door tone sliced into Amber's hearing, tearing her away from her homework. She tapped her stylus against her desk for a moment then elected to let someone else in the family answer it. Scribbling away she returned to the mathematics. The incident with the boy at school had upset her normal sense of equilibrium, so she buried herself in work to try and divert her restless thoughts. She breezed through the complex equations, barely stopping as her mind reorganised the array of numbers and letters. They were calculations of interstellar dynamics, navigational computations of the kind processed by spacecraft.

Amber could do the maths almost as quickly as the average navigation system, something her teachers had been swift to flag up. She was currently on the fast-track to early entry into Illuvari's naval academy – two years at most. Her screen flickered as she worked her way down the lines of deduction, shutting off the outside world.

That is, until her mother shouted her name.

"Amber, can you come downstairs please?"

With a resigned sigh she tossed the stylus onto her desk and stood up. She stepped out into the hall and walked to the head of the stairs, looking down to the front door. Her mother stood off to one side revealing two boys her age. Her heart juddered in surprise. She instantly recognised the new pupil from school, the boy she'd seen on the bus, the one who'd been looking at her with such curiosity, shadowing her so strangely and had disappeared without a trace.

He looked different now though, clad in a jet black hooded top, dark canvas trousers and thick-soled boots. A silver band hung around his wrist, surmounted by a blue oval like a glowing sapphire. His companion was taller, clad in identical clothes and his dark hair was clipped short. A small skeletal rig held a rectangular transparent plate over his right eye that was riddled with barely visible lines of blue.

"Amber," her mother began uncertainly. "These two...gentlemen say they need to talk to you."

The boy from school stifled a laugh. "Eh, I wouldn't say we were gentlemen, Mrs. Garret, just two guys trying to do a job." He looked up the stairs and his smile faded. "Amber, we need to have a talk, in private."

"Who are you people?" Amber said, not moving from the head of the stairs.

"We work for a branch of the Interstellar Exploration Fleet."

"I know they seem awfully young," her mother interjected, worry and confusion thick in her voice. "But their identification passes confirmed it. I think you should speak with them."

"What's this about?" she demanded.

"Amber please-," the boy raised his hands in placation, "there is nothing sinister about what's going on here, but it is important. We need to talk to you alone. It's a security matter."

Reluctantly she descended the stairs, eyeing the two teenagers suspiciously. She stopped in front of them and folded her arms.

"Well?"

"If we could step outside?"

"Why?" she demanded.

The larger boy bristled but his companion smiled ruefully. "I know you don't like this. Believe me, I know exactly how you feel, but what we have to discuss is highly classified. We can't talk about it in front of your family."

"Amber, it's alright," her mother said. "Just speak to them for a moment. We're right inside."

She pressed her lips together tightly and gave a stiff nod. The boy opened the door and gestured for her to go first. Stepping out into the evening air Amber hugged herself as a gentle breeze swept through the street. Perfectly rectangular strips of grass lined both sides of the street, each one planted with four trees rich with green leaves. Globular white gravity lights floated above the neighbourhood to illuminate the night.