"Aisa Farrow has a diary." Fatima slammed the door shut and stomped over to me, dropping her handbag on the floor next to my desk.

"Damn, no greeting for me? Not even a hello? I'm hurt, Miss Ahmed." I swiveled my chair around to face her. She rolled her eyes, plopping down on to the bed.

"Could you be serious? This is big. Huge. Who knows what data might be in there? Military plans, political secrets, government inside information..."

"Or sad depictions of how depressed she is because she was born in the lap of luxury. Oh, how difficult it is to be pretty! "

"You're an idiot. I think we both know that Aisa is smarter than she lets on, and will have something of importance in there. We're just going to have to try and be smarter than her to find it and abuse it till it becomes a weapon. You should know that, you're the one who came up with the whole mission! Why do you think we have half of our people running around everywhere to look for information of importance?"

I sighed, standing up. "You're right. We're going to need all the information we can find if we want to pull the plan off."

"And we only have a few months until the Appointment Day." her brown eyes bored into me as I settled down next to her.

"Okay, okay. I'll be serious. Tell me everything."

She grinned, leaning back against the pillows. "Aisa has this little brown book she hides in her room. I saw it while I got her ready for the gala, before, you know, you blew up on Zander for some unfathomable reason..."

"Please keep that a secret."

"Yeah, okay. Anyway, then, I snuck back into her room a few days after she got mad at Zander, when the two of you were conveniently traipsing around in some green love field, and I found the diary again."

"I... what? When was this? By the way, I don't like her, Fatima."

"Day before yesterday, actually. I think you were doing some assignments or something together. I think the day that boy, Mark Belington was expelled? It was hidden in her jewelry safe, can you believe that? It took me forever to find the diary, let alone the combination. I flipped through the earlier pages, and turns out she's been writing in that book for the last three years! Somehow, she's never been caught writing in that thing. I didn't have enough time to read every detail carefully, but I think it contains a whole lot more than 'sad depictions of luxury', as you so nicely put it. I had to leave before she came in to change for dinner, so I put it right where I found it and ran the hell out of there."

"I left with her right after lunch, at two fifteen- she came back for dinner at eight-fifteen. You spent six hours there?!"

"Yeah! You spent six hours with her?! We're both so committed, aren't we?"

"You're getting a promotion as soon as we get back from this mission, Miss Ahmed."

"Why, thank you. This happened purely because you gave me the passcode to her room so generously when I asked you to."

I gave her the sweetest smile I could muster. "Why, of course, lovely. Anything for you!"

"Okay, enough of that."

"Fine. What's our plan to get our hands on the diary?"

"I don't know. That's your job. I'm just here to help out with its execution."

I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my head. "Okay, so we need to take the diary without Aisa getting suspicious about its mysterious disappearance, don't we?"

She nodded, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

"Then, we'll need to cover up the crime. We most definitely can't create a duplicate to replace it... but we could use one to hide the fact that her real book is gone?"

"You're really not making sense here."

"I'm saying, we find a duplicate and ruin it to the point that everything inside it looks irreparable, and take the original copy for ourselves!"

"Yeah, that makes sense. I think I can find one like that in the market, but I'm gonna need a distraction. Think you can handle that much for me?" She asked, her brown eyes staring into mine.

"I can hold her attention for a couple of hours, easy. How long do you need?"

"I'll need a day to find the copy and wreck it, and then about an hour at most to replace it."

"So the day after tomorrow, right after your second class would work, right? I could ask Aisa to have an early lunch with me or something, and I could keep her occupied until you give me the green flag."

Her face split into a calculating smile.

"That works perfectly, Mister Denlow."

***

Hey Kev. What's up? We haven't talked in a while.

I tapped out the text and hit send. I was so caught up with Aisa and the mission, the most conversation I'd had with Keva was a couple of short messages I had sent to her when I reached the Superiot. We had gone without properly talking for more than two weeks, and I missed her.

Tossing the cube onto my bed, I started changing out of my uniform. I had just finished removing the dark blue tie when a loud ringing filled the room. I flopped onto the plush mattress once more to see who it was. Keva! I hadn't expected her to call for a long time. It was a pleasant surprise, though. I accepted it and put the Receiver on my desk, causing the box to project her image onto the whitewashed wall.

"Kevvvvv! You called!" I enthused, stretching out her name.

"Yeah, Rai. I called. What's wrong?" Keva's expression was calm, almost bored as she stared at me through her projection. She looked the same as ever; her wavy dark hair reaching her shoulders, a perfect mix of green and brown eyes looking into my own.

"Why would anything be wrong? Can I not feel the need to talk to my darling cousin?"

"You can, but then you probably wouldn't be so well mannered in your texts."

"You're good."

"I know. Now tell me what happened."

"So, we basically found Aisa's diary, and we're going to steal it tomorrow, and as I say this I might be feeling a little shame in indulging so carelessly in another person's private thoughts. But I remain conflicted, for this mission, my mission needs me to do it and I can't possibly deny it what it wants!"

"Good for you. You have some remorse after all! And please stop personifying the mission, that's just weird." She sighed, rubbing her temples. "I won't solve this for you, but I'll help you gain a bit of perspective."

"This mission is important to not only you, but a whole lot of people, especially if it succeeds. The whole first phase itself could upset the hierarchy, and create doubts between the people. Then if we forge ahead as per plan, we could save the entire nation from this cruelty. Now, how important is this diary to this mission? How important are Aisa Farrow's feelings of sadness and your feelings of remorse compared to the suffering of hundreds?

"I get that you feel regret and shame. I would have felt that too. It proves that you are a good human and not just a hypocrite. I know it goes against both our morals, and you know I hate doing this too. But some things are necessary, in the big picture. The task you've taken on is not an easy one, Raiker. How much are you willing to risk for it? Do you want to jeopardize our whole world's justice to simply spare the feelings of one girl? Think about it, then make your decision." She finished, solemnly leaning back on her chair. I suddenly realized that she wasn't sitting in any place I knew of back home. The background wasn't as large or well-kept as my old Superior house, but it was a huge contrast to the shambles we stayed in earlier. There was no junk littering the clean wooden floors; the well- worn brown couches were organized neatly in a comfortable, homey room; a couple of people I hadn't seen in more than two months were lounging around on the chairs at the far corner, bent over something on the table. Keva herself was looking brighter and cleaner than I had seen her in a long time.

"I'll think about it. Thank you, Kev. " I paused, wondering if now was the time to talk about her change of setting. "Completely off-topic, but where in the world are you? This sure as hell isn't where you were last to last week!" I squinted at the projection, trying to figure it out. "Are you at headquarters? What're you doing there? What happened? Are you alright?" The questions tumbled out of me before I could stop them, anxiety flooding me.

"Hold on, hold on! I'm fine, you don't have to worry so much. You care a hella lot about me, for someone who only figured out I existed seven months ago. There were tax raids on the house last week, so we had to make a last-minute move. Lyda and I were the only people there, so we made a fast move out of there. We hightailed it to HQ and have been staying here for the past couple of days. We've told the others to not go back there too." She cracked a smile, breaking out of her shell of seriousness. I grimaced in turn, reminded of the few raids I'd witnessed.

Inferiors had to pay huge taxes to the Governor and his government. Half the time, they can't afford it, so they hid away at their homes instead of lining up at the Enforcer's offices. They got lucky, sometimes, and the authorities don't notice or let them off the hook. But that wasn't the case ninety-eight percent of the time. The junior Enforcers came banging on their doors, and extracted the money from them some way or the other. It was horribly, horribly cruel, and lots of people higher up in the tiers had no idea it even happened. Still, it was an efficient power tactic. It kept the higher classes in power by making them the only source of money and resources for the lower ones, who become poor and starved and entirely dependent on us, the Superiors and Medians. Even they were subjected to this, just not to such an extreme.

"Keva... hang in there, alright? Just a couple months more and I'll be right there with you."

"I know, I know." She turned over her shoulder, glancing at something in the background before turning back to me, her movements suddenly hurried. "Anyway, I'm going to head off to talk to the others and have some dinner. G'night Rai. I'll see ya soon."

Abruptly, the call ended, and I was left staring at a blank wall.