“So that’s why you didn’t go on Speculus last night, huh?” Henry asked. We were standing on the platform of the South Gateway station, waiting for the 7:20 train that we took to the Academy every morning. Groups of factory workers and commuters shuffled around us, yawning and taking huge swigs from plastic travel mugs. One scraggly-looking old man was vaping by the trash can, even though there was a huge sign a meter away from him prohibiting both vaping and smoking on the platform.

“Pretty much. Sorry, man. Not that I didn’t want to talk to you, but I kind of had too much on my mind to even think straight, let alone articulate.”

“Understandable. So, did you kiss her?”

I choked on my own spit. “I’m sorry, what?” I managed between coughs.

Henry shook his head, his sleek black hair flipping back and forth dramatically. “Ta-ma-ra. Did you kiss her, you moron?”

“Of course not!”

He sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Zak. If you don’t get your act together, someone else is going to make a move on her, and you don’t get to say I didn’t warn you.”

I spluttered indignantly. “I made a date with her, what more do you want? It’s not exactly like I had a chance to get super romantic, considering the fact that the very fabric of our existence has been challenged.”

“Blow it out of proportion, why don’t we?” said Henry. “We haven’t even seen much of that dig site, other than getting up close and personal with one hole—and GSAF’s security system. We can freak out after we find the underground kingdom of the Little Green Men. Let me see that coin.”

I’d already shown him once, but I dutifully produced the tarnished coin from my pocket once more. Henry frowned down at it. “Yeah, I guess it does look like that arch. But they had vaults like this in India, too, I know that much. So it could be from Earth.” He flipped it over to examine the solar system on the back. “This, on the other hand…”

“What’s that you have there, boy?” a throaty voice interjected. I looked up with a start. The vaper had wandered over to us, and he was leering at Henry now over the top of his hawkish nose.

Henry, ever polite, replied, “None of your business.” He accompanied this with a gesture.

“Don’t get testy, now,” the old man said, powering off his e-cig and buttoning it into his shirtfront pocket. His hair was white and unkempt, sticking out every which way in longish clumps like an even-crazier Albert Einstein. He wore a gray factory uniform like my dad’s old one, with the name Emil stitched onto the lapel in cursive writing. “It’s only that that looks like something of mine that went missing a few years back.”