“He’s a first class brooder. I could tell something had gone on between you two, and that something didn’t.” She jokingly knocked her shoulder against Zoe and smiled brightly. “I admit I had my reservations when he first told me about you, but now I think it’s for the best. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him genuinely smile.”
Zoe felt her cheeks blush as she thought of Evan and the kisses they shared. Hadn’t he smiled generously and frequently in their time together on Earth? Was it really such a happy place for him?
“What was he like before we met?”
Eva chuckled. “Serious. Reserved. Private. He spent a great amount of time away from Terra, out discovering different universes. I think Gaia was his favorite even before he met you. Each time he came home there would be new scenery in our residence. Once our entire common room was nothing but shades of white and blue; hundreds of small black birds waddling about in the distance. There were great mountains of ice just floating about like monoliths. Icebergs. Every time I was in the room I’d find myself shivering just from the sight of so much coldness.”
“Polar ice caps,” Zoe whispered through a smile. She had never seen them in person but knew they were a magnificent sight. She felt a small balloon of pride inside her at the thought of Evan appreciating Earth, her home. “The birds are called penguins.”
“He always seemed to have this romantic notion of Gaia, that of all the universes it was the most beautiful.”
“Why do you think he left so often?”
Eva shrugged. “Who knows? He just always seemed to be looking for something that didn’t exist here.” She looked at Zoe knowingly, a bit of a sly smile on her lips. Zoe felt her cheeks flush again. As idyllic as it seemed she knew better than to think he was unknowingly looking for her. That was a notion for fairytales and movies, not her life.
The light in the cabin dimmed around them as the transport entered through a long corridor. The natural landscape of Terra was gone and replaced with the standard concrete, steel and glass.
“We’re here.”
Zoe nodded at Eva as she watched the transport descend slowly into the Transport Station parallel to a platform. When they came to a complete stop the doors opened with a pneumatic hiss, beckoning them out into the deserted platform.
“Come on. It shouldn’t be too far. Keep on the lookout for Crown Soldiers.”
If there were any soldiers they were hiding very effectively; Last City looked as deserted as a ghost town, a sprawling city interconnected between veins of glass corridors. Zoe let Eva lead the way through the maze until they came to a building marked City Center in a tidy font. The concrete facade of the building shared a similarity with the Brutalism architecture she had seen so often at home.
The interior of the City Center rose up towards a ceiling that vaulted several yards above their heads. Despite the Brutalism exterior, the interior was strangely art deco, the popular style that evoked the era of the roaring twenties and dancers in fringed flapper dresses. A series of rooms branched off through arcaded walls of golden archways, adding a touch of gothic air to the space. It wasn’t the Spanish architecture her home in Santa Barbara was known for, but the style made her homesick nonetheless.
“I think this is it!” Eva called. They were separated only by a few feet as Zoe lost herself in the splendor of the room’s architecture. She followed the sound of Eva’s voice until she saw it: a secondhand gate made of glass and steel that closely resembled the gates from the Transport Station.
“It doesn’t look like it has power,” she observed. The gate she had traveled through had glowed to life in her presence. This new gate sat in the middle of a dimly lit corridor where no one would have thought to look for it, sans glow. It wasn’t very impressive.
Eva rummaged through the bag she carried and pulled out the glass box from Zoe’s house. With delicate care she removed a loosely-wound scroll before placing the box back into the bag.
“You’re up.” She handed the old piece of paper to Zoe, who merely looked at her, confused.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“I don’t know. The King said you would.”
Zoe took the scroll and unraveled it, the foreign map sketched in careful ink spreading out before her. She stared at it for a long moment, willing the map to somehow show her what she was supposed to do. This isn’t going to work. How could the King have faith in her to know what to do? Many people were putting their lives in her hands and she couldn’t help but think it was an enormous mistake on their part. They were expecting magic from someone who didn’t even know her own identity. The expectation was too great.