Yellow Diamond's office complex was the tallest building in the west sectors of Facet One — but until she got there, Zircon hadn't understood exactly what that meant. Now, she stared up at the mirrored spires, knowing she shouldn't gawk, but awestruck anyway.
She was alone. Alone with her monocle, her disguise, and a tiny earpiece through which Aqua Aura and Blue Pearl could speak. Currently, Zircon sat on a transport of primarily yellow, middle-class gems (squished between a topaz and a citrine), feeling very conspicuous — despite the fact that she was just another speck of gold in a sea.
Her projected screen was open to her fake case, but her real information was on her monocle. The fake case went as so: she was a newly-made prosecutor commissioned privately by a high-ranking golden beryl, arranging a case against a coworker stationed in Yellow Diamond's complex.
The real information wasn't so simple. First, Blue Pearl had provided a universal access code shared between the Diamonds, hidden so that Zircon couldn't copy or memorize it, but which would allow her into any place that Yellow or Blue Diamond could go — which was everywhere. Then there were the mission details, written by Blue Diamond herself. Enter Yellow's complex. Gain access to her private wing. Report back anything you hear or see. Apparently, Yellow Diamond was religious about banning technology from her quarters, so planting a camera or microphone was out of the question. Zircon had to eavesdrop the old-fashioned way. If she was caught…
Part of her was reminded of Blue Diamond's wish: to keep this between as few gems as possible. The other part of her thought, "This is no job for a zircon. This WILL be the end of me."
She stared at the last item in her personal notes.
The more confident you act, the less you'll stand out.
A drop of sweat rolled down her chin. Right. Easier said than done.
The transport stopped, the doors slid open, and all at once the passengers began filing out, sweeping Zircon out on a wave of yellow. Then she froze. Yellow, green, orange, and red gems swarmed in all directions; technicians huddled around power hubs; troops of rubies marched in double-file lines; agates yelled and transport conductors yelled louder. It was far cry from the zircons' somber transport stop and a whole world away from Blue Diamond's deserted station. Suddenly, her nerves tripled.
In her right ear, there was a soft "ping" as someone signed in. The voice was Aqua Aura's.
"Walk straight until you reach entrance 45," she ordered. "There will be an aragonite there to check you in."
Zircon obeyed silently. She held her breath as she waited in the line, and swore her gem went cold as the bored-looking aragonite accepted her access code, but nothing bad happened. She was pointed towards a lift, which brought her up seventeen levels into a large, well-lit foyer — crawling with more yellow gems. Now, it was just technical gems like herself.
Maybe this wasn't too hard.
Aqua Aura continued speaking, directing Zircon through access points and higher up into Yellow Diamond's tower. With each level, the population grew sparser and more specific. Level seventeen was just technical gems, level thirty-one just yellow technical gems, fifty-two just yellow "upper-crust" technical gems, seventy-six yellow "upper-crust" technical gems sent on behalf of a commissioner. She saw three different gems on this floor. This was where Aqua Aura wished her luck, and then fell silent. A soft cough came instead
"Um," Blue Pearl said. Zircon stood in a corner of the main foyer, her fake case open like she was studying something. She wanted to tell Blue Pearl to hurry up, but couldn't speak at risk of disturbing the silence. She tapped her foot. At a reception desk across the foyer, a honey tourmaline glared at her.
"Go to north hall," she finally said. "There are service stairs."
There were. North hall was empty, so Zircon wasted no time in scanning her universal access code and slipping through. The stairs were empty as well — who used stairs these days, anyway?
"Now go up sixteen and a half floors."
Zircon did a double take. "Excuse me?"
"Sixteen and a half," Blue Pearl repeated.
"Okay," said Zircon, thinking some not-very-nice things, and began climbing.
After sixteen, she climbed up a half-flight, exactly eight steps, and stopped on the ninth. Nothing happened. "Well?" Zircon said impatiently, and was met with six seconds of silence.
Then Blue Pearl said, "This is where I have to leave you now. Once you ascend this last half-flight, you will enter Yellow Diamond's executive floors, where any unauthorized electronic signals will be blocked. You will have to go completely offline. So you must remember what I tell you now."
Zircon swallowed. Right. This was the hard part. "I'm listening."
"Use the service stairs until you reach the top floor. Then, use the universal access code on the door. It will take you to a hallway. The lift you are looking for is the biggest one under the glass dome. No one will be in Yellow Diamond's office. There is a panel along the west wall marked with a star near the floor. If you press it in, you should be able to slip behind the wall, into a small cabinet."
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"Can you tell me why on earth Yellow Diamond would build that into her private office?"
"She didn't," said Blue Pearl matter-of-factly. "Her bismuth did. One who rebelled. It is large enough to fit one pearl. The Crystal Gems used it for intelligence during the war…Aqua Aura found out and told my Diamond, but they never told Yellow. I think we have always suspected her…"
Blue Pearl trailed off, never finishing the explanation. "You have to go," she said. "Before she returns. I am signing off now."
"Wait, once I'm done, how do I leave — "
The other end went dead. Zircon stared at the call screen, her voice petering out weakly. When she tried to call back, her number was blocked.
Oh, stars.
Her hands shaking, she switched off her external communications, leaving only the barest functions of her monocle — audio and visual recording, her identification files, a notepad, the access code. She was really alone now...
Zircon began to climb.
It took fourteen flights to reach the top, but that wasn't even the hard part. The hardest part was getting her hands to stop trembling long enough to open the access code and transfer it to the door, then the paralyzing three seconds as the system checked it.
When the door slid open, she nearly collapsed. But she couldn't do that, so she held herself up on the doorframe as she stepped inside and looked around. She was in a long curving corridor, with painfully steep floors, cielings tall enough for the Diamonds, and towering doors that looked like they could eat her alive.
Everything was empty. As quiet as she tried to be, Zircon's footsteps echoed as she slinked through the halls. The only sounds.
After what had to be a few more flights of running in circles, Zircon came to a centrum, flanked on all sides by columns and huge double doors. The ceiling was a glass dome. The largest doors opened at her access code, and she stepped inside the lift.
"This is it," Zircon whispered softly.
It felt, rather than Zircon stepping out of the lift, like the office was drawing her in with the sheer elegance of it all. It was simple as any yellow gem's would be, but the size — the brilliance — the splendor alone made Zircon's gem warm. About twenty feet above Zircon, the golden walls turned to glass, shooting upward in needle-thin panes to a single spire point far above her head. It was well known that Yellow Diamond moved faster than technology, so Zircon wasn't surprised to see that she had no desk; only a single hovering lounge chair, raised about fifteen feet from the ground with a pyramid of stairs. There was no other furniture. No other hiding places, except the hidden cabinet.
At once, Zircon was on the floor, searching around the metal paneling for the symbol Blue Pearl had mentioned — a star? It had to be here somewhere. But if it had gone unnoticed for five thousand years, it had to be very well hidden...it wasn't like the flat, glittering metal sections of the wall had anywhere that you could hide a carved star. She ran her hand across the metal, feeling for indentations that she had perhaps missed.
She made it halfway around the circular room. Half of the walls had no star. That being said, it likely comes to no surprise that her hands were getting much too sweaty to rub against the walls.
Novas above. Oh, dear stars. Please let the hidden cabinet be on the other side.
But it didn't take her long to confirm what she somehow already knew. The star was nowhere to be found. And if the star had been removed…it couldn't have taken long to find the hidden cabinet —
"That won't be necessary, Pearl."
The voice was like a destabilizer right against her gem. Sharp, authoritative, far away and muffled under the floor. But unmistakeable.
Yellow Diamond.
Before Zircon knew what she was doing, she was running. There was no time to double check for a hidden cabinet. She dove behind the dais and stairs, huddling on the ground. If someone were to sit on the lounge chair above and look onto that side, she would be visible for sure — but it was all she had for now. No alibi, no weapon, no support. Just herself, her luck, her hiding place…and Yellow Diamond.
Her gem was cold. As she registered the sound of a lift entering the office, she felt as if it was stiff enough to crack. And even though she was too scared to move, tears began to form.
"I'm going to be shattered," she thought. "And all I can do about it is wait."
i didn't plan to update because im still in Canada right now, but I had a little time to pound out, oh, like 5 chapters and rough thumbnails for a storyboard of chapter 1 BUT ANYWAY long story short i miss this story and i want you all to communicate with me about it
hopefully i'll be able to post the next chapter in a timely manner but that depends entirely on how many screams i get on this chapter
