During this time, I read the journal, along with all and any notes lying around. The thing of most interest was of course the journal, though it never mentioned to whom it belonged to, Jett had been right about the coordinates and such for the map being in the journal. Also, according to the journal, it seemed that the last few entries alluded to the author's growing unease with not only new government policies at the time, but with his or hers growing insecurities about what they were doing, likely this was why there was no name to be found anywhere. The very last entry in the journal was rather interesting though and it gave a lot of insight to not only the kind of person this had been, but what possibly happened to them.
'I do not believe I'll be able to make my journey. Blackstill and Johanson have been shadowing my every move now for several weeks. I feel that either they are secret government workers or they somehow found out about my connection to my late uncle, a secret I have kept as deathly silent about as possible. After his crimes, I think anyone related to him is an immediate character of suspicion, or source of wealth. It's for the best they aren't many of us alive still.
I do not feel disappointed about not being able to go though. Not completely. What on earth would I truly do with this supposed treasure Uncle Wallace left behind? Not only that, but how would I explain my sudden wealth to my neighbors or co-workers? It's too risky and I fear that whatever reason Blackstill and Johanson are tailing me likely will not end well for me. I'm relieved I had that heavy door installed on my office some time ago for I imagine they would have ransacked my office by now. But I won't go down without a fight. Here I will take a page out of Uncle's book and go down fighting.
Tomorrow I will get in my car and lead them away from here, far away. With the closing of the airport within the next three days, I feel confident that they will never be able to return here and discover my secrets, but just in case, I'm going to dismantle the engine aboard Isis and hide the map in my papers as I doubt those thugs would be so thorough to search through them. They will likely think I have it with me, so I will burn a bunch of books and papers in my yard tonight and set off early in the morning tomorrow. My journal will remain in the only safe place I could think of for it, here aboard my spacecraft.
I hope to see you someday again my lovely Isis.'
"Are we really going to do this then?" Jett asked.
Looking up from the public news terminal, I nodded at her. "Yes, we are."
"But do really need to bring her?"
I could tell from the flicker in her eyes how she meant that to sound despite the calmness of her tone. Turning so I could lean against the wall beside Jett, our elbows touching, I looked out at the crowd of people going about their lives. Sometimes I felt so alien to this world where people relied on computers to make a living, where books and newspapers were replaced one by one with touch screens on walls, and where people modified their bodies with nano technology through tattoos. The large majority of people nowadays had at least one tattoo, each design referencing a specific nano-infused ability the ink had been suffused with prior to application. The nano upgrades were much the same as the tattoos, permanent, so one had to be careful and absolutely positive of what they were getting. Some unfortunate others aren't given an option about whether or not to get a tattoo.
Tucking my gloved hands into my long coat's pockets, I sighed. "Neither one of us has ever actually piloted a spacecraft. Leanna is a mercenary and has that kind of knowledge."
"Keyword here, for your information, is 'mercenary'. You can't trust any of them." Jett paused and shot me a side glance. "Even if you did use to fuck one."
Shooting my own side glance back at her, I frowned. "We didn't just fuck, might I remind you. We were in a serious relationship for five years."
"Yeah, and then she left you to rot the first chance she got!"
Clenching my jaw, I tried not to remember that. It was painful enough having to be reminded of it without actually having to remember it. Still, I liked to think with three years since that day, Leanna and I had both matured as adults and could put things like that behind us. Did I feel like I was selling my soul to the devil a little just by suggesting the idea of Leanna coming along though? Possibly. Still, I trusted Leanna, always had, and maybe that was my own special defect - trusting where I should be wary.
"We don't really have any other choices unless you want to wait a couple of years for you or I to acquire another spacecraft and learn how to pilot it? Because it's been nearly a year now since we found Isis and the time it's taken to get her up to a running state has been frustrating when we have a map we can't follow."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Jett pushed away from the wall, crossing her arms. The action pulled her leather sleeves away from her wrists, revealing part of the black and yellow arrow-like tattoos on her forearms. "Know that I'm still against this idea, but I'm just as impatient as you are so give her a call already."
"Where are you going?" I asked as she turned away.
"I'm going to get a new tattoo as a safety precaution," Jett called over her shoulder.
For a moment, I watched her go. As she disappeared into the crowd, I pushed away from the wall and headed the other way, pulling out my cellphone. I'm ashamed to admit that while Leanna's number was no longer in my contact list I hadn't forgotten it. Three years and I still remembered my ex's phone number, I'm a sorry sort. Of course, she probably had changed it by now, but I somehow doubted it. It wasn't in her nature to be unreachable because the more former contacts she had, the more likely she was to get hired for jobs that paid a very pretty penny. Dialing her number, I actually held my breath when it started ringing unsure how to feel as my emotions bounced from wary to anticipated to nervous.
"Whoever this is, you have thirty seconds to tell me why you're interrupting my nap," a groggy voice said.
"Um, hey there, Lea," I said immediately, my tongue taking over for my shutdown brain. "It's, uh, me."
There was a long moment of pause before Leanna spoke again. "Azura?"
"Yeah."
"Wow, it's been a while now. Couple of years, yeah? How are you?"
"I'm fine. Things are pretty much the same, more or less, for me. Listen, I know you rather I just get to the point so do you think I could meet up with you somewhere? After your nap?"
"I don't think I can fall back to sleep now that a lovely voice from the past has called upon me. I'll see you in an hour at the usual spot," Leanna said, blowing a kiss into the phone.
Agreeing, I hung up the phone and mentally scolded myself for blushing. There shouldn't have been any residue feelings left but that was the thing about Leanna, she just had this way of turning my insides into mush. After our break-up three years ago, I was certain I would never have anything to do with her again, ever, but things change. Hopefully for the better.
The usual spot had once been a cafe near the outskirts of the city, but about two years ago, there was a spree of arsons in the area and the cafe fell victim to the pyromaniac. At the time, I had thought it a cleansing, a way of burning out that part of my life. Standing on the sidewalk before the now empty lot where the cafe had once stood, I began questioning if this had been a good idea or not. There was a reason people broke up and moved on with their lives. It was why places like this burned down - it was the universe's way of saying that it was time to sever those old broken bonds and move on with your life.
"Jeeze, did you even age these last three years or did you get a rejuvenation tat?"
I spun around, frowning. "You know how I feel about tattoos," I said harshly.
Putting her dark brown hands up, Leanna shot me an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I got caught up in the moment. I'm just really surprised by how much you still look the same."
"Even though you were looking at my behind?"
"What else would I be talking about?"
Dammit, that smile of hers, and her flirty way with words. I couldn't help myself as I threw my arms around her shoulders, feeling a knot in my throat. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I missed her and feeling her in my arms again felt something akin to home. Stupid cliche emotions and feelings. When I pulled away I could see she looked surprised but with another flash of a smile, the look was gone and she was nodding her head at the empty lot.
"What happened here?"
"Burnt down."
"A pity," she said, combing back some black curls from her neck. "We use to have a lot of fun here."
I smiled. "No we didn't. We just ate here because this was the only place in the whole city that still played music on a jukebox."
"It was cute!"
"Yeah, it was," I laughed, then sobering up from the glee in my chest, I added, "But it's gone now."
Leanna stared at the lot for a long moment before slowly nodding in agreement. Digging a cigarette out from her pocket, she clicked her lighter on and lit it before offering me another one of her trademark smiles.
"So what can I help you with?" she asked, her eyes twinkling in an all-knowing way.
"I'm not really sure how to even go about telling you this, and it sounds completely far-fetched, trust me," I started, pausing with a frown.
"I'm already intrigued, girly. Do tell."
So I did. I told her everything about the old hangar, the spacecraft, the blueprints and restoration, and with some hesitance, I told her about the map. Purposely, I left out the stuff about the journal, saying I only found a note in some papers referring to the map and a possible treasure left behind in outer space. As much as I missed her and all, I knew I had to take a small precaution here, knowing that the journal contained important information that would likely not work out well in my favor if Leanna knew about it. Jett might have been pleased by that if she were here.
Chocolate eyes lit up at the mention of a map and a potential treasure. I knew even before she spoke that she was going to help me. "What's in it for me though?" she asked.
"You get a third of the share."
"Only a third?"
"I thought it would be fair to split in evenly three ways between you, me, and Jett."
"Jett...?" Leanna scowled at the name. "Jett Duran? The same woman that killed your father? That Jett?"
"She didn't kill him," I said, feeling my insides knot in an unpleasant way.
"Oh right, she just left him to die. In the mercenary world, that's the same thing as killing him you know." Leanna threw her cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with a black boot. "Why is she involved in any of this?"
"Because when I had no one else, she was there."
This shut Leanna up as she stared out at the empty lot again. I knew what she was thinking of in that moment. Three years ago, I woke up one morning to find Leanna gone, and all her things too, and a note left behind on her side of the bed. It didn't say a whole lot but the bare bones was that she was tired of playing house with me. That she had met someone else a little while back and they were going off together to the other side of the Earth to do some mercenary work for the chick's father who was some rich and important guy. I fell apart for awhile after that, but Jett had been the one to step out of the dark and come to me and hold me while I sobbed and asked her why would the woman I loved so dearly do this to me. When I had passed out from crying, Jett would stay holding me until I awoke, or she would get me comfortable and go about doing whatever household chores that needed to be done. She encouraged me to shower, eat, and get dressed everyday, and after a month, she was dragging me out of my apartment, taking me for rides on her solarcycle to anywhere she thought would cheer me up.
Yeah, there had been an incident before that, right near the beginning of my relationship with Leanna. I had met Jett through my father when I was about twenty, Jett was only nineteen at the time, they worked on repairing solarcycles, nanobikes, and any hovercar that came their way. They were a pretty amazing team actually and after a few years, my father had made it clear that when he died, his business would go to Jett, which was fine with me and my brothers as none of us had a real passion for modern technology vehicles. One night, probably two or three months after I had begun dating Leanna, there was an explosion at my father's repair shop. One of the nanobikes malfunctioned and slammed into my father, running him over before it made a header at roughly seventy miles per hour into another nanobike. I wasn't too clear on what happened next, but that collision set off a chain reaction throughout the shop and before too long, the place was going up in a fiery ball of hell. Jett claimed she had tried to get my father out but his leg had gotten crushed when the nanobike rolled over him and when she tried to help him -- finding it nearly impossible because of her five foot two frame compared to my father's six foot two and three hundred and something pounds frame -- all he could do was scream for her to get out of there. After two or three failed attempts to help him, she finally jumped out of a window just before the whole place blew up.
We didn't really talk after that, because it was too painful to do so. For both of us. So it was with great surprise that Jett had been the one from everybody in my life to come and hold my hand during my moment of need after Leanna's departure. I think she was just as lonely as I was feeling at the time. Either way, she stuck by my side after that, always finding a way to keep an eye on me. While she wasn't big on calling me up on the phone, she usually just showed up at my doorstep, always checking up on me. Once I started pulling myself back together, our friendly relationship became a bit more intimate from there on out, but we never could bring ourselves to become more than just fuck buddies because there was still too much guilt and pain left over from our pasts to allow anything more to grow between us.
Of course, that wasn't what Leanna was thinking right now in the present, but I'm sure she was recalling that last night before she left. It was clear from her expression that she wasn't completely ready to speak about it yet, which was fine. I wasn't either.
"So, you want me to pilot this spacecraft for you?" she finally said after a long stretch of silence.
"Yes, if you don't mind?"
"I don't. I think I owe you as much after what I did."
In my head, I agreed, but I said nothing.
"So let's go treasure hunting!" Leanna smiled.
All too soon, Leanna and I were pulling up to the old hangar on her steamcycle. I was surprised she still had it to be honest. Back when we first began dating, Leanna hadn't been too keen of my love of old technology, but still humored me enough to allow me to build her a state-of-the-art steamcycle, circa 2045. As an added bonus, and a reward for her humoring me, I made the engine a modern, nano tech infused one -- though you could flip a switch and smoke would pour out of the back like the old steamcycles use to do. So not only did it have the vintage look I loved so much, but it tore through the streets better than most of the newer cycle models could. I was under the impression that when she left me, she had sold it.
Directing her into the hangar, I dismounted and took a moment to fix my old fashioned trousers, glad I had worn them. When I looked up, Leanna was watching me from where she still sat on the steamcycle making me fidget slightly. While I hadn't caught her checking me out earlier in the day, I could definitely see her doing it now.
"Stop that," I said, pulling my long coat closed.
"Sorry, old habits die hard."
Now dismounting, she removed her helmet as I tried to brush it off before we headed inside the office. In the past eight months, I had dusted the place and made some minor repairs to the hole in the floor, mostly to appreciate the space for how it use to look. Jett had teased me about it, but one day I had come in and found that she had set up a light so that I could better see the place. I didn't flip it on now as I pulled on the lift lever and stepped with Leanna onto the corner floor piece just as it began to descend. The lift was built for one person so we had to squeeze together as it went down, but it was clear from Leanna's smile when light welcomed us from below that she was pleased with the arrangement. The area below ground, what Jett and I had dubbed the Underground Hangar of Mystery, was well lit and much cleaner than what I had found eight months ago. Together, Jett and I had did a major clean up of the place before we even went about touching Isis for a full maintenance. The lift didn't whir anymore either now that it had been probably oiled, instead opting now for a gentle hum that was barely audible.
Despite her disposition toward old technology, Leanna went wide eyed at the sight of Isis and I couldn't help but take pride in that. Before, Isis had been covered in dust and grime, looking dark and old, but now she was a bright copper color. Restored to her former glory, she looked dynamic and I imagined the author of the journal probably felt the same twitch of pride every time he or she came down here and looked at it. Leanna stepped forward a few steps, gawking at it, before descending the small staircase by the wall and slowly circling around the spacecraft.
"You think it can really fly?" Leanna finally asked, looking over at me for the first time.
"It depends on how well you can fly."
Snapping our heads to the side, we both noticed for the first time that we were not alone, and hadn't been the whole time since we entered the Underground Hangar. Standing up from the workbench we had converted into a desk, Jett stepped near Isis, her gaze never leaving Leanna. The air of excitement went out of the room and was quickly replaced with murderous tension as my ex and my fuck buddy stared each other down.
"You must be Jett," Leanna finally said, squaring up her shoulders.
"You must be that chick that broke Azura's heart," Jett shot back.
"Guys, please," I pleaded, my voice sounding lost in the midst of their tension. "I know you both have apprehensions about each other but can't you both put that aside for this treasure hunt? Or at least for me?"
Leanna was the first one to hold up her hands in surrender. "I can do it, for you, Azura. I'm an adult like that."
"I am too," Jett said, scowling still but going back to the desk. That was her own way of surrendering and I accepted it, though Leanna still seemed on guard as she looked back up at Isis. Nimbly, Leanna climbed up to Isis's cockpit and opened up the glass dome to get a better look at what she would be dealing with. Letting her figure it out, I went over to check on Jett who was still watching Leanna.
"Did you get the tattoo you wanted?" I asked.
"No. Decided against it at the last minute." Finally turning her green eyes to me, Jett smiled softly as she added, "I know how much you hate them."
Biting my lip, I reached out and cradled her left cheek in my gloved hand. Sliding my thumb over the Smeared Paint tattoo on the space just beneath her eye and across her cheekbone, I followed it down to where it ended in a point against her cheek. I had my reasons for not liking tattoos, but I did appreciate the atheistic appeal of them against human flesh. Jett only had the three, this one, and the Broken Arrows, one on each forearm. They looked amazing to me against her natural light caramel colored skin, besides, I understood why she had hers and I accepted that. The Smeared Paint enhanced her sense of sight, hearing, smell, and taste. She didn't like to talk about it much, but there had been an incident when she was a teen where someone attacked her with a knife, sneaking up behind her to try and get the drop on her. There was still a scar running down her left shoulder where the knife had managed to dig in before she was able to get away. The Broken Arrows enhanced her arm strength, allowing her to lift heavy items with relative ease and letting her hit hard too. She got them after my father's death.
Those were tattoos I could appreciate, could respect. She had done them to keep herself safe and to help others. Pressing a kiss to her tattoo, I rested my forehead against hers, gazing into her eyes.
"They're pretty on you," I whispered.
There was a flash of surprise in her eyes because I never said anything about her tattoos before. Usually I just skirted around the issue, evading it with such precision that it always seemed like the subject hadn't even come up. She began saying something but a loud beep made us look back at Isis. Leanna was sitting in the pilot seat, looking triumphant.
"I can fly this thing! I wasn't sure at first but the controls are like that of a VZM-994 spacecraft. You remember that one, don't you Azura?"
Nodding, I moved toward Isis as I began recounting the day Leanna and I stumbled across the cockpit-only portion in a junkyard. It was some time before I realized Jett had wandered off, the now nearly quiet lift going unnoticed in Leanna and I's recounts of our past ventures together.