“How could you have lost it!” Sylvester was screaming into his cross-planetary telephone, “you assured me that you had the package under your strongest protection.

“Well if this is the best that the Black Court can do, it’s no wonder you needed my help. I don’t know how you plan to hold power over that measly little planet of yours if you can’t even hold onto a piece of plastic.

“I fulfilled my end of the bargain, I got you the information that you wanted. I told you where to find those thieves that call themselves revolutionaries. If you can’t get me my chip, I will be forced to take action. If you cannot pay my price by the end of six weeks, I will rat out every secret you have, or have ever had and personally ensure there is not a soul in this galaxy who does not know every dirty thing you ever did.

“Call with a return message as soon as you receive this- you know where. This is your final notice.”

Sylvester hangs up the phone and nearly throws it across the room. Only the fact that it was worth more than most his employees make in a year stops his hand. Instead he ops to kick the desk, to his immediate regret. After calming himself down, he calls Mattis into the office.

“Yes sir,” Mattis says as he enters the room only moments later.

“Mattis,” Sylvester says, “I have just made a threat that I must find a way to keep. Also, I think it’s time to start filling m end of the bargain for the prince. I need you to send two agents up - one should be the kind who could infiltrate the home of a mobster, the other should be simple looking, younger, and the kind of person who doesn’t mind doing work. I’ll let you pick them out, but have them in here in ten minutes.”

Mattis nods once and leaves the room. Sylvester sits and unlocks the drawer in his desk where keeps his most prized possessions. He rifles through a collection of newspaper articles, discs, and pictures until he finds what he is looking for- a journal written on a yellow legal pad he received several years ago as a gift from his cousin Abigail, who works as an assistant in the Intergalactic Parliament. She said that she had found it in one of the older parts of the space station where the council met two months out of every year.

When Sylvester first saw it, it was so faded he worried he would never be able to read it. He had sent it to many labs, but none of the could figure it out. Finally, in frustration, he had showed it to Mattis. He remembered clearly Mattis’ face, lost in thought, looking up at the ceiling. He left the room and came back several minutes later with a very thin peice of paper and some charcoal. He laid the paper on the notepad and gently rubbed the charcoal over it. To Sylvester’s surprise, the effort revealed some of the writing on the delicate paper, and even more surprising was the fact that it looked very much like English.

After that, he spend many painstaking months making imprints of every page and transcribing the words that he found there. Much of it was unimportant, but Sylvester had found mention of a small memory card that the journal writer had brought with him.

Finally after years of searching, he had the memory card in his sights, only to have it fade away into obscurity.

Next Chapter: Jaelyn 2