Happily Ever After (The Lunar Chronicles story continuation)

Chapter 17: The desk

Iko sat at her working table at her newly-received office. She had become the wedding planner for Cinder and Kai's wedding, and with such a great responsibility came, of course, an office. She had been the first android to receive a private office, an honour in itself.
Except for that, there was honestly nothing really special about it. The soft yellow walls were plain, not even a nail hung on the wall. The only window had elegant white silk curtains, allowing the light to shine through them even when closed. In the centre stood a big wooden desk, one of those where there are so many concealed rooms and hidden secrets, it was impossible to find everything in it.
The desk was too big for her. When Iko sat at it, it looked like she was a tiny kid dining at the massive table where the grownups sat. She even had trouble reaching for some of the stuff lying on the desk. Despite this, she liked the desk, for opening the desk meant exploring it and along with it every crack and every crevice to find the secrets it held. The desk had previously belonged to Kai, who had gotten a new one since then. Instead of throwing it away, the old desk had been reused and Kai had given it to Iko. In her eyes, it was still in perfect condition. She just ignored the cracks in the wood and the chunk missing from its corner.
She had also wanted to decorate the room for a while, but she had simply not had time, instead she had made everything ready for the wedding. She had created invitations and a seating arrangement for all guests. She had ordered the twenty-three-course menu. She had sorted out the decorations and decided where to put all of them, had even made a plan for where each decoration should be placed in the ballroom, all of which was in the process of being set up for the big day.
Iko had had even more to do after the horrible attack of Rieux. Kai and Cinder had been busy handling the political side of the situation and figuring out what they should and could do. Kai had even told Iko that he wanted the wedding to go on, that nothing should change, for that was the way to fight back. Iko had picked up on the strain on his face. He had forced himself to think so.
She looked for some of her papers. She had looked in at least five drawers of hidden compartments before she found the blue folder in the bottom drawer, it was labelled security.
It was a new folder compared to others and had only been added the week before. After the attack, some advisors had demanded there to be better security at the palace. Iko hadn't even told Cinder and Kai half of the safety precautions they had ended up taking. She had experienced that in their case, it was better to keep them in the dark if there was no imminent danger. The amount of worrying they could was in itself worrying. Then again, Iko was an android and her wiring didn't work the same way as the human and lunar nervous system.
It was mostly the amount of cameras she had kept hidden from the two, because she knew they hated being watched by anyone. Whether that was because of all the attention they had gotten the last year after the Lunar War, or if it was because of their superstitions, Iko had no idea.
Iko went through some of the safety precautions: The amount of royal guards had been tripled, both human and android. New cameras had been set up to cover every blind spot. Cameras on the exterior of the palace covered an area the radius of a mile. A radar could pick up on any flying objects within the nearest 50 miles. If there was any suspicious activity, the military would be alerted and they would execute the evacuation plan, which had carefully been mapped out and calculated to the second to find the quickest and safest way to an underground bunker.
Iko had chosen not to inform Cinder and Kai about all of the pesky details. She had avoided the topic, frankly didn't want them to worry, because Iko knew that they would. Not just because of them being royals, they had been born that way. It was somehow in their blood.
No matter what, all possible safety precautions had been taken.
In a few weeks, the world was going to witness the most wonderful wedding anyone had ever seen. People were going to cry tears of joy just from watching the ceremony, she would make sure of it. Iko wasn't going to let anyone or anything ruin the perfect day.

Iko leaned back in her desk chair when her foot accidentally knocked against the inner side under the desk. The edge of a wooden piece popped out from under the left side of the the desk. Iko leapt from her chair and positioned herself on her knees. She pulled the little handle at the side, the only part of it made of metal. Something that looked like a secret compartment rolled out. She had found other compartment, but this one was different. This one was very compact and well-concealed compared to some of the others Iko had found. She doubted Kai even knew of its existence.
Iko opened the compartment. In it were pieces of blue paper with white symmetrical drawings on them. Blueprints. The took the pile to study them. She quickly realised they were of the New Beijing Palace and began to look through them.
The first was just a blueprint of the palace from the outside, showing the shapes and design of the facade.
Iko looked at the next piece of paper. This one looked more like a map of the palace than a blueprint of it. She recognised the hallways, the chambers, the outline of the palace. Iko's finger traced the familiar hallways but stopped at a path going outside. She squinted her eyes.
Iko had been briefed on every single security detail about the palace. She had lived in the palace for months. There was no way she wouldn't know about a tunnel connecting the palace to the outside world. Unless no one else knew about it.
What if this information had not been passed on to the new generation? What if the hallway had stayed hidden somewhere?
This map said that a the tunnel had been designed by an architect called Sebastian Annotel. Iko recognised the name, as she did with every name of some importance that had been saved in her memory. Sebastian Annotel's son had been in the group of people first sent to colonise Luna. The Annotel family had been on Levana's side during the war and had been loyal to Levana for years.
Iko contemplated how sneaking rebels through the tunnel would lead them right into the heart of the palace, right to where the wedding would be held.
Androids didn't have intuition in the same way as humans. Humans use their senses to subconsciously pick up on signals. Androids calculated chances. They automatically collect data points and store them deep in their memory chips. Calculations are also made automatically, calculating chances for everything. It was those calculations that now bothered Iko. She didn't know why, didn't know what data points had caused the conclusion in her mind. It could have been anything, a microscopic scribble on the page, a dent in the secret compartment.
One way or another, something told Iko that some lunars might have accessed this information.
If the Annotel family passed down the information through the generations, then surely more people would know.
If Iko was right, which she hoped she wouldn't be, it would mean that other people knew, people from the outside, people who might not be as friendly as some would hope.