When the night was as black as it could get, Blake finally stirred from his statuesque position at the window. The library he had been staring at all night was burned into his memory. He knew where he had to go and what he had to do, now. His grip tightened on the little metal ball.

Keil was curled up at the top corner of the bed, the only space that Jace had not taken up. Jace had all of the covers and, true to form, was snoring loud enough to wake the dead. It had become a low drone in Blake’s ears as he stood, but now it was too loud and too obvious. It didn’t matter now. He had places to be.

The streets, once busy with well-dressed intellectuals, were silent. Orbs of light sat atop angular lampposts, casting strange parodies of the careful art deco designs as creepy, asymmetrical shadows, sharp and close. The shop fronts were navy in the light provided by the moon’s curve, with glints of silver. The shadows, however imposing they may have seemed, welcomed Blake with comforting arms, and he slid into and through them like he was swimming in a calm lake.

He had missed this.

Once he reached the end of the road that faced the library, he paused to assess the security. He did not suppose that a library like this would be heavily guarded, but it would be foolish to think that there were no cameras. From his shadow, he saw two burly robots standing at the impressive doors he had passed through earlier – standard model, as far as he could tell, with two tranquilising guns for arms. No cameras, though. And plenty of windows.

Blake cast his gaze to the windows. He was not above breaking and entering. All he needed was a good foothold and he would be in.

His every move was smooth, practiced. He had learned how to be quiet at an early age. He slipped past the two robot guards to the right side of the building and, in a couple of quick hops, pushed himself off the garbage disposal unit on the corner of the street, off the lamppost, and up to the sill of a partially opened window that some bot had likely forgotten to close – and he did not make a sound. With a deep breath, he dragged himself upwards and into the open space, and he pushed through the window, dropping quietly into the front lobby.

Cautious, he ducked behind the front desk; a cleaning robot pushed an automatic waxer across the broken moonlight shattered on the floor, its eyes cast to the ground. Blake looked at the corners of the room – still no cameras. Satisfied, he slinked out from behind the chair, slid between the doors and into the library proper.

The curved shelves, cavernous like a cathedral’s beams, were forbidding in the dark. Blake disliked the way they looked like bones, curving inwards to protect the knowledge they held. It made him feel trapped. Still, this was the only place he was going to find answers, if Keil was to be believed, and he would rather work without Jace breathing over his shoulder.

He was about to move onwards until he saw, very clearly, a little pool of light at a table. Someone else was there.

He glanced left, right, and saw nobody. Maybe one of the workers he had seen before simply forgot to turn their lamp off.

But still... intriguing.

Blake crossed to the table and checked what the researcher was looking at. Books of... it was hard to say what of. The names were in old Earth language, names like T.S. Eliot, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle; all names that Blake struggled to even decipher, let alone for him to know who these people might be. There were two open books. One had pictures of ruins and symbols from some forgotten time, and the other had lines and lines of gobbledegook that made his head hurt.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Strange, to have such bizarre writing beside a clearly scientific text.

There was a sudden rustle behind him.

Instinctively, he turned, ready to pounce, but he only had the shadows for company.

It isn’t like you to be jumpy, he thought. He brushed it aside as unfamiliarity with his surroundings and returned to his task.

Beside the table was a computer. Blake had used a computer a handful of times – his previous employers had not thought it wise to give him access to too much information – so he hesitated at first. He scrolled, tapped, got used to the controls, and then typed the word, sphere.

Hundreds of thousands of entries flooded the screen – planet and globe and GoBall and orange. Useless.

Blake scowled and amended his search.

Metal sphere.

No change, except now there were links for marbles and ball bearings.

Clearly, he did not know enough about the object in his pocket to be specific, or at least specific enough for this computer. He tapped his foot, sighed sharply and used a new plan of attack.

Shifters.

Fewer entries appeared. Some were alien races that Blake had never heard of or seen, people who could shape-shift or camouflage themselves in times of danger, like the Shade, but... but still, none of the entries were what he was looking for. None of the transformations he saw were anything like his.

Frustrated, he abandoned the computer and turned back to the desk. He perused the garbled text beside the science book for another moment before his gaze shifted and rested on the latter. Something about the book made him pause. Gently, he flicked through a handful of pages, skipping past pictures of old alien artefacts and scripts, mingled with dense pieces of text that would take him hours to read.

Then, he saw it.

He almost lost it as he moved the page, but his hand froze and his mind jammed up and he felt... frightened, shaken, as he stared at the image.

An engraving, carefully photographed, of a person in a long robe, holding a spherical object in their hands.

Blake blinked. The person was stamped into the black of his eyelids. Shaking, he ran his fingers over the picture.

The faceless people in his dreams – they looked like that.

And then there was a scream.

Blake’s head snapped up. The girl stood at the other side of the table, rigid, staring.

Training kicked in. Blake leapt over the table, scattering books aside as he did so, grabbed the girl by the mouth and shoved her, hard, onto the floor.

Silence reigned. The girl did not even struggle. She blinked and stared, face white. Blake kept his hand firm on her mouth and shook his head vigorously, then put a finger to his lips. Hesitant, the girl nodded.

“Miss Clara?”

Blake’s shoulders stiffened, but he did what he had wordlessly promised. He let go of the girl, crawled backwards, and repeated his motion for silence. The girl smoothed her mousey hair and knelt, showing whatever robot had spoken that she was fine.

“It’s all right!” she called, in a well-enunciated tone. “I just dropped a book!”

She ducked back down under the table and watched Blake carefully.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “What do you want?”

Blake said nothing. He had not planned for interruptions, and his reasoning for his break-in was fantastical at best.

The girl waited for a response before she said, “I’ll call security.”

“Don’t,” Blake said, his voice firm.

“Why not? You’ve broken into a library. What could you possibly hope to steal?”

“I’m not here to steal anything.”

“Then why did you have to break in?”

Fair point. It would be difficult to explain that he usually just broke into places, so he didn’t. But his silence made up the girl’s mind.

“I’m calling security,” she said.

Blake bolted. He sprinted to the end of the shelves faster than the girl could follow and found a dark, quiet exit. Nobody followed him as he ran back down the midnight street to the hotel.