It was the first time Jace and I had been alone in the airship, and we stood still and quiet for a while after Nathan said his goodbyes and the hatch of the airship closed.

“Well,” Jace said finally, moving toward the control panel, “guess it’s now or never.”

I followed him and sat down in one of the pilot chairs. We pulled up a map on the dash screen and entered the coordinates for Millville. A flight path was projected for us, three and a half hours of flight time, and the airship began to hum in anticipation as we prepared it for takeoff.

We were preparing for takeoff to my hometown, and the city of my parents. Or, at least, the city that had once been theirs, before something had compelled them to leave.

Something had driven those people out. Something had either taken them or forced them to leave. And if Helping Hands was connected, the government might have been, too. We needed to get into the abandoned towns to look for clues as to what had happened, where everyone had gone, and why.

And I had my own reasons for exploring Millville. I wanted to find my parents. I wanted to understand what had happened to them.

Jace reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. He always seemed to know when something was troubling me. Though maybe that was because recently things had been troubling me nonstop.

“We can take off whenever you’re ready,” he said.

It was a strange thing to consider. Would I ever truly be ready to find out what had happened to Juno and Culver? Was I ready to find out more about them, or about what life had once been like for me in Millville? Or would the truth be so horrible that I would’ve preferred to never have known?

I also wasn’t sure about returning to the real world, the world of enemies and wanted posters with my face on them and putting myself at risk of capture again.

But I had come this far. I needed to find out more about my parents and about my daughter. And this mission felt like the first step in doing that.

“I’m ready,” I said. And it was at least a half-truth.

“Good.” Jace smiled. “Because you’ll be flying us there.”

“Me? But you’re the virtuoso!” I said incredulously. What was the point of Jace being such a great pilot if I was going to have to fly us anyway?

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” he replied coolly. “But frankly, I think you could use the extra training.”

I smiled. He wasn’t wrong. But then he continued in a more somber tone.

“Besides, if anything happens to me… I want you to get home safe.”

I stopped smiling. I couldn’t imagine leaving Edgewood with Jace and coming home alone. And I would do anything to prevent that from happening. But Jace was right. We needed to be ready for anything.

So I put my hands over the controls and exhaled deeply.

Ready or not.

I worked the controls, and the airship began to jerkily rise through the air.

“Gently, gently,” Jace coached. “Keep her steady. That’s it.”

His bright smile and his encouraging nature made me feel more at ease. If there was anything that made the prospect of learning more about my birth less scary, it was definitely his easygoing and protective personality.

“All right, we’re at elevation. Show me what you’ve got,” Jace said mischievously.

I pressed the controls forward, and we shot through the air.

The GPS coordinates provided a path that we could follow through the map on the dash. When I veered slightly from it, the path began to glow red. But when I was on the path, it glowed green. It was hard to stay on the green path, but Jace corrected my tight grip on the controls and showed me how to steer the airship in a much smoother fashion by using a lighter touch. I had been so used to using a firm hand while flying the bulky airship from my Operation Hood days, but I quickly realized this ship responded to controls much better. Jace placed his large hands over mine, and we flew together as I figured out how best to orient the ship on the projected flight path. Flying had been one thing. But flying on an imaginary route in the sky was slightly harder.

After an hour or so, I felt comfortable in the cockpit, and Jace had begun to explore the cabin.

“Hey, look!” he yelled from behind me.

I made sure that we were at the right elevation and pointed in the right direction, and then turned around.

Jace had pulled the two rows of passenger seats down to form a bed. So that was where we would be sleeping.

“Do you think it’ll be safe to sleep while we’re on the ground?” I asked, pondering. “Or should we sleep in shifts so one of us can keep watch at all times?”

“That stealth tech is pretty advanced,” Jace replied casually. “I think as long as we’re grounded away from any inhabited areas we should be fine.”

“It’s basically just… one bed,” I noticed nervously.

“Well, I am happy to sleep on the floor if it’d make you more comfortable,” he said.

“No, that’s okay,” I said quickly. I wasn’t sure if it was okay or not, actually, but I didn’t like the thought of Jace sleeping on the cold, hard floor of the cabin when there was a perfectly good bed available to us.

I turned back to the sky. The airship was making good time, and the sky was calm and blue. We were at a high enough elevation that all we could see was a field of fluffy clouds beneath us, the sun reflected brightly off their dimpled surfaces. I felt more confident flying now than I had throughout training. We had a trunk full of disguises, some exciting new tech, and a bushel of fresh fruit and bread and enough Nurmeal to last the trip. We wouldn’t really want for anything. But it felt like there was a void inside of me for some reason anyway. I had been trying to ignore it all morning, but there was definitely a nagging feeling of uncertainty clouding my thoughts.

I hadn’t been able to come to terms with the lack of a birth name in my personal records. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. How had Juno and Culver spent nine months waiting for me and then been unable to even write down a name? I wanted it to be any other way. I had begun making excuses for their behavior. Perhaps the thought of losing their child was so painful that they didn’t want to get too attached to me. Maybe they were sick or tired when I was born and didn’t have enough time to come up with anything. Maybe the Ministry had taken me before they had decided on one.

I knew it was just a name, but to me it was symbolic of so much more. If they hadn’t named me, did that mean they weren’t excited to be parents? Did it mean they didn’t want me? Would they be indifferent to my presence if and when I did find them?

Would they be who I expected them to be? Would I be who they expected me to be? Or did they even think about me at all?

The records provided information, but they didn’t provide context. They were a blessing and a curse in that way. They also left me with as many questions as I had answers. I was redistributed to the Sylvones at two months old, but did that mean that I had spent two months in a holding center? Or had I spent longer with my birth parents? I didn’t have any information about those two months. And although I didn’t think they had any bearing on the person who I had grown into, I wanted to know my story. I wanted to know my whole story. The files just didn’t provide enough information.

I was so lost in thought that when Jace came and sat down next to me, I jumped.

“Ready to switch?” he asked.

I was ready for a short break. I had been flying for a while, and the subtle steering was causing muscle fatigue in my forearms. We timed out the control switches perfectly (just like we had been trained) and then Jace was flying and I was taking a short rest in the passenger seats.

“How are you feeling?” Jace asked.

I realized I had probably been quiet and thin-lipped for too long. I had never had much of a poker face.

“I’ve just been thinking about my parents and my file. The usual,” I replied. Jace and I had discussed the file so many times by now that I knew he probably had all of the details memorized.

“What about them? If you don’t mind me asking,” Jace said.

“It’s just…” I trailed off. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into it at that moment. My own thoughts weren’t clear on the matter, so how could I explain them to Jace? We still had another hour before we’d even be in Millville.

“You can tell me,” Jace said, realizing I had gotten caught up in my thoughts again.

“It’s just that I’m having kind of an identity crisis,” I finally said. It was the first time I had said it out loud.

“How so?” Jace asked, beckoning me to continue.

“Well, I have a pretty good understanding of who I am,” I began. “I’m Robin. I’ve answered to that name all of my life. And even though it’s not a name that was given to me by my parents, I still consider it my name.”

Jace kept his eyes to the skies, but I knew he was listening intently, and continued.

“I once had a concept of home. But when my father kicked me out and my mother let him do it, I didn’t just lose a family. I lost the only place that had ever felt like home. Now I’m going to this new place that was my real home and may have contained my real parents. And maybe I even went by a different name when I was in this town.”

Deep down, that was my hope. I didn’t want to be some nameless baby in the arms of the CRAS. I wanted to be wanted and loved, even if it meant that my eventual redistribution would’ve been that much harder on my birth parents.

“And I guess I’m worried that the more I find out about who I once was, the more confused I will feel about the person I am today. I’ve been trying to find out more about my history and my story, and that includes knowing more about Millville and my parents, but I worry that the more I know about this alternate person that I could’ve been, the more I’ll start to lose the person I think I am,” I spat out. It had been draining just formulating the thoughts and getting the words out, and my eyes had started to mist. When I was finally done speaking, it felt like I had just finished running a marathon.

Jace was quiet for a while, making me wonder what he was thinking. Was he disappointed by my shallow concerns? Maybe I had shared too much.

He flipped on autopilot and turned all the way around in his seat to look at me.

“You,” he began, “are Robin.”

I furrowed my brow while I considered what he was saying, but he continued before I could formulate an answer.

“You are Robin. And you are one of the smartest, bravest, most loyal and loving people I have ever met.”

I began to blush.

“And it’s not your name that makes you that way. It’s not the place you were born. It’s not even the parents you had,” he said. “It’s the culmination of all of those things, of everything you have experienced or overcome in your life, that makes you the person you are. And that can never change. No matter what we find out here.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. Jace stood and walked over to me. He knelt down until we were eyelevel with each other and pressed his forehead against mine. I pressed back.

“Thank you for saying that,” I whispered.

Jace swept the tear off my cheek with his thumb. “I’m saying it because it’s true,” he replied. Then he kissed my forehead and stood back up.

“Just relax for a little while. Maybe have some lunch. We’ll be there before you know it,” he finished. Then he returned to the cockpit and switched off the autopilot.

I walked to the back of the cabin and looked into our food stock. It was ample and would definitely last a week and maybe then some, but I wanted to be mindful of emergency situations. If we were somehow trapped in one place for too long, we would need to stretch our rations thin. So I grabbed an apple and left everything else untouched. I just needed something small anyway, to settle my stomach and make me feel less nervous about the mission.

Jace was right. It wasn’t just about a name. It was about your whole life and all of the experiences you had had. It didn’t matter if I was Robin, or unnamed, or anything else. I was still me. And curiosity was a big part of who I was. So I would get to Millville and begin looking for clues about my past, as well as clues about the disappearances. And Jace would be there all the way.

My stomach dropped slightly as the pressure in the cabin changed.

“Come up here, Robin,” Jace said from the cockpit.

I walked up and sat down beside him.

“We’re about to start losing elevation so we can do some recon before we land. We need to find a place that’s not too hidden but not too far away from the town either, in case we need to get back to the airship in a hurry,” Jace said.

I nodded. My heart was racing. The map in the control panel dash showed that we were very close now.

“So let’s brush up on our landing together,” Jace added. “Get ready to switch out controls in 3… 2… 1…”