“It’s nice to hear a climber say that,” she said. Then she smiled and pulled out a card from behind her desk. “Here’s your library card. Let met know if you need any more help.”

Max thanked the girl once more and then headed over to one of the computer stations.

The card the librarian girl had given him had a wifi network and password to sign-on with.

Soon enough, he was online.

But it was like he was on a different internet.

He couldn’t access any websites he used to frequent: Google, The Outer-Rim Times, social media.

Every time he typed in a site url, he got an error message.

Maybe it was just like his old mobile phone. Certain things that worked in the outer-rim, didn’t work here in the tower-zone.

He clicked on the internet browser’s home button and he was taken to a website called Find Out More.

It had a similar layout to other search engines he’d used in the past, but he’d never heard of it before. It must be an exclusive search engine to the tower-zone.

Max thought this control over the flow of information seemed a bit excessive, but he didn’t ponder it for long.

He typed in “climber database” into the search bar and clicked on the first result.

It was a boring government website. It didn’t look special in the slightest.

And yet, Max shivered as he looked at the computer screen.

If his sister was in the tower somewhere, that meant she must have passed through the tower-zone first. She would have had to graduate from the climber academy and be given jurisdiction to head up to the higher floors. There must be some trace she would have left behind.

With both excitement and trepidation, Max typed his sister’s name into the search engine box on the government website.

Eleanor Rainhart.

Elle.

He pressed enter and waited for the website to load.

A page loaded and Max looked on it with shock.

There was large black square with a white question mark where a photograph should be. Then in bright red font above the empty photograph were the words, “Restricted Information.”

Huh?

Max slumped in his chair. He thought he was about to find out more on his sister, get one step closer to finding her, but it didn’t look like that was happening today.

Restricted Information.

What the heck did that mean?

Max got up from his chair and went over to the librarian girl, he’d spoken to earlier.

“Yes?” she said in her whispery-tone.

“I need your help with something. I just tried to search for a climber in the database and it came up as ‘Restricted Information’. Do you know what that’s about?”