Out of everything she expected to feel, nostalgia was certainly at the bottom of the list whe it came to having a routine again. Not that she intended to clock in more often than her contract specified, but restoration was restoration, and such a task would not be done in a week. Given the way her boss had looked while handing her the keys, it wasn’t a stretch to assume this case would take a great deal longer. It was for the sake of her own sanity, then, that she built in her head a new routine for the three days a week she would be out of the house.

The first pang was at seven o’clock sharp when she locked the door behind and stepped off the porch just in time to see the green line bus pass her by, slowing as it reached the stop about two houses down. She thought for a moment about running after it, like in her high school days, but the distinct route that particular bus took, forever imprinted in her brain, would take her out of the district, and as far as she knew, didn’t pass any coffee shops that she liked. She elected to walk instead, past the stone bench at the stop with its faded carved legs and the orange-painted shingled roof. Her destination was the green beyond the fence on the opposite side of the perpendicular street, a feature often lost in the discussion of Hecate’s many fine destinations.

For as long as she could remember, Alexa had loved the park. Passing through the stone archway and its wrought-iron gate that was never shut, strolling the walkways that were laid with concrete but rounded to feel like stones, nostalgia hit her for the second time. She rounded the fountain, picturing her knee-high five-year-old self poking at the figures of serpents spewing water into the pool with the aid of a long stick she’d found running around in the shade. It had been a while since she had walked this way - she often took a bus from the other side of the block for convenience - and now that she actually looked at it, the sculptures still retained their sharp features, not a single scale chipped or out of place. They were exactly as she remembered them. Perhaps it was some kind of composite rather than natural stone. The statuettes she’d seen of similar composition had started to lose their edges and detailing in under half a century, but this park was at least one and a half. She stood there, admiring the handiwork in replicating something from old Earth, before the smell of freshly roasted coffee brought her out of her trance.

Near the opposite exit, parked just off the winding path, was a small wooden cart from which the scent had originated. It was barely bigger than a gardening shed, but just as boxy, striped canopy overhauling its front. In that brief respite from the morning sun was a circular screen and the metal cylinder that vibrated oh-so-slightly as the coffee beans inside were stirred around, embossed with the “CupGO!” logo and its little Xingram subtitle. As she approached, the simply drawn eyes on the screen turned into an exaggerated expression of joy.

“What will you have today, oh valued customer?” a voice rang out from an internal speaker, clear and bright even if it was computer-generated.

“A medium latte please. Iced, half sugar,” she said, on account of the lack of rain. Her usual.

The robot let out a little chime and a small panel lit up, which she unlocked her phone and held it close. The beep of a successful transaction set her back about 50 credits, and there was a soft whirr from within the vending robot as the means were macerated into grounds which hot water was then forced through. A paper cup dropped into the red-lit lower alcove, followed by crushed ice up to about half, then the piping hot espresso-and-milk directly onto it.

The light turned green, allowing Alexa to swing open the door of the cavity and retrieve the cup and complementary lid. The digital barista grinned and wiggled its digital cat ears, before giving her a heart.

“Thank you for your business! Please enjoy your drink!”

She couldn’t help but pat the little robot on its screen-face, before making her way out of the park, onto a street that curved uphill and to the right. Over the top of the row of connected houses right at the bend, the oxidised dome of the museum building was visible, adorned with metallic sculptures that jutted from the apex and its grey, patterned stone rim. After making sure to look both ways, she crossed the quiet street, and began the climb, her eyes on the endpoint.

Her pace quickened along with the incline. She passed a man in jogging clothes filling his drink canister from a stone fountain set in a wall between a flower shop and a restaurant that hadn’t yet opened, then a man walking a small fizzy dog that looked like a mop sweeping the sidewalk, then finally overtook a relatively well-dressed man with sunglasses who was constantly on his tiptoes, trying to see something on the opposite side of the street. The path curved on the outside of the bend, which took longer, but as she neared the top she found a set of stairs cut into the rock in between the bushes, and made the 90 degree turn, continuing up towards the museum. Here, the road curved a different way, snaking left and right on its way to the top of the hill, but mercifully, a straight path was cut through each length and the ground between them, allowing for relatively easy passage to the top for any pedestrians not intimidated by the minor hike.

By the time Alexa made it past the five road crossings and six sets of steps, avoiding the slightly unkempt bushes on either side that belonged to the city, she found herself sweating from both the heat and the way the flat, specular of the parking lot between her and the final set of stairs turned into a veritable sauna in the sun. Still she pressed on, lengthening her strides despite the burn in her calves, until she came upon the two dutiful bronze canines that flanked the entrance of the Frindalis Natural Museum and Conservatory. They were radiating the heat they’d absorbed from the sun in the east, giving her further incentive to ascend into the shadow of the grand awning above the two columns in front. As wind blew through the arcane that went around the main building, it instantly cooled her, condensing the sweat on her skin into larger drops that faded into her undershirt, before she shouldered her way through the tinted glass doors.

The rotunda was empty, aside from the man sitting behind the reception desk right before her. While mornings were expectantly quiet, there was usually more happening, even if it was simple things like her colleagues going up and down the spiral stairs that descended into the basement level in the centre, or the stray visitor milling around the petal-shaped display islands that circled the room.

Today, though, it was only her and the security guard, leaned back in his chair with a bag of snacks she was unfamiliar with.

She dug the transparent keycard out of a pocket and held it by its lanyard, the microscopic metal lines that weaved through its thickness dancing in the shafts of light entering through slitted windows in the dome above. “Steven told me to come handle something today.”

The guard sat up, still clutching his packet. “Something?”

“Said there’s a package coming in. In about…” She looked at the time on her phone. “About time, actually. Did you get a call or anything?”

He shook his head. “I’ll look out for a truck or something.”

“I think they know to come up the back way. I’ll just check with downstairs.” She laid her card for a second on the reader at the edge of the table, and continued past him, taking the wide steps down one at a time. Without the noise of the city and the cars outside, she could hear Steven’s keys jingle in her shoulder bag, clinking against her own facility keys with each step lower she took. The lower atrium would have been similarly silent if not for the hum of air conditioning, blessing her with a blanket of cold much more satisfying than the errant wind. Here there were no displays, just a series of pinup boards on wheels.

Alexa squinted in its direction for a minute, pushing the documents she’d seen for weeks out of her peripheral vision, the morsels of her attention latching onto a new one. It was plain and undecorated; simply a note between departments with no relation to herself. With nothing else holding her back, she slotted her card into the terminal in the wall, causing the pair of heavy doors beside them to glide open.

Gone was the old and ornate of the surrounding building now that she was in the adjoining basement, with solid-painted brick walls and a rubber floor that made her feel like the bottom of her sneakers were sticky.

Break room, storage, evidence room, office, office, climate control storage… She absently rattled off the rooms in her head as she passed them, then turned the corner at the end and peered down the length of the hall. “Jerod?” she called, moving along the right wall towards the cargo entrance in the back.

Bzzt.

She flipped the phone in her hand. The number hadn’t been named in her contacts list just yet, given the slow pace of the replies she’d gotten the previous night - Palix Four was nine hours off local, after all - but she recognised it immediately. She held it to her ear. “Doctor Mendoza?”

“Miss Romilly?” asked the gravelly, yet pleasant voice of an older woman.

“That’s me. I haven’t heard from your deliveryman yet.”

“That is by design. I’m actually calling to inform you that the courier has just arrived. They should be around the back.”

“About to go meet them.”

“Keep me on the call. There’s much we have to discuss.”

“One sec.” She slipped a small device from her phone case, and hooked it around her left ear, syncing it with the call. “Should be good.”

“You came highly recommended, Miss Romilly. I hope you won’t disappoint with this project.”

“...recommended? Sorry, who-” She cut herself off. Steven. “That’s flattering but I’ll have to see the damage first.” Alexa leaned down on the handles of the door to the cargo bay, and slipped inside, setting her coffee down on an empty shelf and hitting the button to open one of the shutters.

The sun cast the rectangular shadow over the whole back lot and the little road that broke off and climbed the hill from the street below, and sitting in that shadow was a small but heavyset truck. To her untrained eye, it seemed…bulletproof. Its driver in a leather jacket and pants was standing just outside, their face obscured by what seemed to be a mask with a rounded, tinted visor where only their lips were visible. In fact, there was no skin uncovered anywhere.

“Package for Steven Klein?” she asked, unsure of how to approach the novelty of it all. Most art came with care and expensive packaging. Whatever Mendoza wanted restored, it came in an armoured car.

“Passcode,” the courier said, crossing his arms.

She stood there, momentarily confused, before turning away and lowering her voice. “He’s asking for a password?”

“F-F-one-one-two-five-four-seven-two,” Mendoza said.

She repeated the number to the courier, who unfolded a small tablet and handed her a stylus. Her thumb held down the button and she simply signed the air in front of her, transmitting the three-dimensional signature to the screen, then handed the pen back.

The courier made a gesture towards the truck, and the back folded open, allowing a small floating platform with a massive flat wooden crate on it to glide out, easing itself to a fixed height above the ground. The thing was almost eight metres wide by visual estimation. “Would you like me to bring it inside?”

“That won’t be necessary.” An older bearded man appeared in the doorway behind Alexa, one of his eyes a milky white. He unfolded a normal wheeled trolley that had been flattened and stored between a shelf and the wall. “I can take it from here.”

The masked man nodded, and the motion of his arm caused the platform to hover over to the end of the loading bay.

Jerod braided three fingers on his hand, and spread them out flat before him, before slowly lifting them. The crate floated off the platform, held by the invisible force of the most steady-handed kinetics mage Alexa had ever known, and gently placed itself on the wheeled trolley.

The courier bowed, wordlessly leading the antigravity platform to the back of their truck.

Alexa hit the button to close the shutter.

“The receiving room?” Jerod asked, cracking his knuckles.

“For the best, yes.”

He wheeled the package out and through the door on the opposite side of the hall.

Alexa stayed in the dock. “That’s a lot of security for a painting.”

“Yes,” Mendoza said. “You’ll have to forgive me for all the cloak-and-dagger. I’m not exactly doing this in an official capacity.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? Doesn’t the museum know?”

“It’s not illegal, just…unorthodox. It’s a very sensitive piece, as you’ll find.”

“Must be very important then.”

“It’s over six hundred years old. As you can imagine, there may have been a few restorations along the way.”

“Good restorations?”

“Debatable.” Mendoza chuckled. “You can skip over any magical checks. I have it on good authority there’s been nothing of that nature used in any previous restoration. The previous - I don’t want to say ‘owner’ - was very particular about that.”

“Can’t say I would have done it differently. Where did you get this?”

“Earth, if you can believe that.”

She froze. Earth, the seat of the Federation of Worlds. The very first strike.

“Miss Romilly?”

“How did you get a painting from Earth? Isn’t that-”

“The how isn’t really relevant. I’m just lucky to have friends of friends in certain places. If you have to know, it was in an Overseer’s vault. Cracked by a bout of saturation bombardment. There’s been some…damage. If it helps at all, I’ve included a full holographic scan of the original work.”

“That helps.” She strode across the hall and closed the reception room’s door behind her. It was chilly in here, and drier, thanks to the filters in the ceiling keeping out dust.

Jerod was already in the process of removing the item from the crate with a pair of crisp white gloves, unfurling the polymer sling that was wrapped around its sides. The canvas was only slightly smaller than the box, over seven metres wide and three or so tall, stretched over a wooden frame with a cradle attached to the back for transport. The fraction of the painting not covered in facing tissue was less than a quarter of the entire thing, and as her eyes swept over it, she identified holes mostly in the top right, likely from some kind of shrapnel, through which she could see the pale blue of a stabilising backboard.

But it wasn’t that which concerned her, because she knew exactly what painting this was. It was in every art history course she’d taken, and had been for centuries. She had known it the second she saw the silhouette of the bull in the top left.

Guernica.

“Well, Miss Romilly,” Mendoza said. “Let’s get to work.”

So much for routine.