Transmission 003 // “Black & White”
The bell pierced the soft murmur of Miss Nelson’s art studio, like a morning alarm through a dream. Amelia gathered her pencils and charcoals, eyes trailing after Marv as he peeled off toward the tech lab. His grin was loose and lazy, but blazed at full-beam. His sneakers barely seemed to touch the floor.
He was on the way to Coding Club—his kingdom. The one place he wasn’t an outsider, or the scholarship kid from Old Town, or Bryony Thorburn’s scratching post. For the next hour, he wouldn’t be running from the wolves of Willowbrook High. He’d be leading the pack.
“Enjoy your analogue side quest, Ames,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll swing by around seven. Math study. Cool?”
“Yeah,” she said, but he was already gone. “Cool.”
Marv had a way of making things feel lighter. They’d landed at Willowbrook High in the same year—two strays tossed in the same bear pit, neither of them remotely prepared. And yet, here they were, a few months into senior year. Still standing. Proof that two misfits, stitched together by circumstance, could be something more than the sum of their parts.
He was a nerd. A geek. A total goofball. A chaos sprite in an oversized hoodie, who once reprogrammed the vending machines to give out free candy. The opposite of her in many ways—he’d push her boundaries, hang around when she wanted to be alone, find the quietest corner of her mood and sit on it—loudly.
And, despite all that, she wouldn’t change a thing.
Amelia’s smile slipped away as she turned into one of the school’s older hallways. The lights buzzed overhead. Shadows clung to the corners like cobwebs. The walls loomed inward, waiting for her to flinch. She walked this corridor every week, but it still felt like stepping into a clenched fist. A slow prickle crawled down the back of her neck. Her fingers curled, damp and useless. The air felt thinner in her lungs.
Her fear of enclosed spaces had always been there, since that night. She hated the way it gripped her when it came. How it waited, patient and cruel, for just the right moment. It was a flaw. A fault line. A tell she couldn’t hide. A scar, sitting right at the edge of her awareness, that never quite closed up.
Around the corner, she paused at a door with frosted glass panels—the kind that blurred the shapes inside and gave nothing away. She glanced left, then right. The hallway slouched around her. Dented, paint-chipped lockers lined up on both sides, punctuated by bulletin boards filled with old notices, which curled at the corners like the autumn leaves outside. Amelia’s fingers wrapped around the warm brass doorknob. Her heartbeat began to settle. The school’s newer wing gleamed like a trophy, with polished floors and rows of identical desks in every room. The walls were painted a pale shade of mint designed to pacify teenagers. This part of the school was older, messier. It hadn’t been touched in years, and Amelia much preferred it.
She pushed open the door. Chalk dust met her nostrils immediately. A base note of marker solvents hung underneath, the cologne of a classroom of a certain vintage. The room itself was a patchwork of mismatched tables, dented metal chairs, and rusted radiators. One window was stuck open and never closed completely.
The only thing that didn’t belong was the digital whiteboard. It blinked softly in the corner, like it was awake. Its surface shimmered faintly, like a lake before a storm. Amelia sometimes thought it might be broken. Every now and then, she caught a pixelated ripple gliding across the screen. But no one else ever seemed to notice, so she tried not to either. They’d been installed in every classroom, part of some government initiative that no one had really explained. The surface could stream video and display images. Teachers wrote with a finger or stylus, and Evie would tidy the handwriting in real time—which, Amelia had to admit, was actually a big help in Mr. Sloane’s class. But, in this weathered, old classroom, it looked like a time traveller who’d taken a wrong turn.
She put it out of her mind and scanned the room, taking everything in.
Room 14B.
Every Monday after school, Willowbrook High’s chess club met here. She’d see the same faces around the school—sometimes in the hall, sometimes on a stairwell. Maybe there’d be a nod. A glance. But they never spoke. They didn’t need to. There was nothing to say. Chess Club was their shared pocket of stillness. It wasn’t a secret. But it was sacred.
Amelia, like the others, had her reasons for going. She loved the game, but it was more than that. Chess was the last thread connecting her to her father, and every move she made was a way of drawing herself closer to his memory.
She was halfway between four and five when her parents died. Too young for the grief to make sense. Old enough for it to take root.
Evelyn and Benjamin Lockwood.
She knew their names better than their faces. The years had scraped her memories down to fragments. A laugh at the dinner table. A hand on her shoulder. A voice from another room. What remained felt like pinpricks of light scattered across a pitch-black canvas.
Her mother was a scientist and lived in a quiet world of books and research. She was still as a stone, but radiated warmth—like embers resting in a hearth. Her father was the flame that danced around her edges. Restless. Crackling. Irrepressible.
He worked in politics, that was all Amelia knew. Phone calls. Meetings. Sometimes he’d vanish for days. When he was home, he’d seal himself inside the study at the back of the house, like a king guarding his gold. She remembered the steady stream of visitors—tailored suits and polished smiles—drifting past the living room while she played with her dolls on the floor. Her mother would barely look up, curled into an armchair, a book in her lap. And, all day long, behind that study door, she’d hear her father’s footsteps. Pacing. Persuading. Debating. Performing.
What she remembered most were the quiet moments. When the house was silent, the air warm with candlelight. She’d creep from her bed and peek through the crack in the kitchen door. There he’d be. Alone at the table, hunched over the board like a priest at prayer. She’d watch from the shadows. Bare feet. Breath held tight. He’d move the pieces slowly, in silence—the tornado stilled for a time. In those moments, the man behind the door made sense. No audience. No mask.
Just her dad.
Amelia joined chess club hoping it might help her remember more of him. But she hadn’t expected it to feel like coming home. Where others hesitated, she moved her pieces with certainty—not from strategy books or study, but from somewhere deeper that she couldn’t name. She could often see the game unfold a few moves ahead, as if the board were whispering to her. Patterns rose in her mind like constellations, familiar, though she couldn’t say why. It was as if she’d been waiting her whole life to play. At first, it was about her father. Then it wasn’t. Soon, it was hers too.
Maybe it had been years in the making. Amelia was six—two years into her new life with the Swansons—when the package arrived. Matthew handed it over with a frown. There was no return address. Just her name, nothing else. She tore the paper away. Excitement turned to disappointment. She hoped it was a toy, or a book. But it wasn’t. It was a chess set. Wooden. Worn. It smelled of damp, like it had been left out in the rain too long. She unfolded the board. Something dropped from inside. A note. The handwriting was neat and careful, though the paper was creased and the ink smudged. All it said was:
This was your father’s. For when you’re ready.
But six-year-old Amelia wasn’t ready. So she tucked the board away in a drawer and forgot about it. Years passed. Dust settled. The wood dulled, like her memories, left to fade in the dark. But, as she grew older, its whisper grew louder. And when the weight of her past pressed too hard against her chest, she’d pull it out again, tracing her fingers over the wooden pieces, trying to feel the shape of a life she couldn’t quite remember.
She never did find out who sent it. But she was grateful all the same. Because it led her here. To Room 14B. To chess club. To something that she could finally call her own.
Amelia took her usual spot, a rickety desk by the radiator, tucked at the edge of the room. She finished setting up her board just as the door creaked open.
Raymond Rosecroft stepped inside.
Officially, Raymond worked at the Exilium Library in Old Town. Unofficially, he was also captain of the school chess club. When a teacher shortage put the club in jeopardy, he stepped in without hesitation. For Raymond, chess wasn’t just a game, it was a way of seeing the world. He could, and often did, turn matches into sprawling epics—tales of kings and armies, shifting alliances and ruthless betrayals. With his passion, wit, and encyclopedic knowledge, the pieces came alive on the board. Chess became history in miniature, each game a sixty-four-square symphony.
Raymond belonged to the Exilium completely, and the library to him. He was the keeper of its stories and the guardian of its secrets. They were kindred spirits. Outliers. Artifacts of another era, stubbornly laying in front of the tank tracks of progress.
For five years, he had served as Head Librarian. He lived above the library with his cat, a British Shorthair named Wellington. Raymond had stepped into the role suddenly, after the passing of Miss Eleanor Watts, the previous librarian. She had left the world as gently as she had lived—dozing off during a talk on feudal symbolism, and never waking up. A quiet, poetic end for someone whose life had been gently steeped in books and history.
For Amelia and Marv, the library had become a refuge. A pocket of quiet away from the pressures of High School. A place for homework, high-jinks, and hiding out. And, on Mondays at precisely half-past three, Room 14B became an extension of that sanctuary. For a little while at least.
Raymond crossed the room with unhurried grace. Tweed jacket. Pressed slacks. Leather shoes—polished, but scuffed by years of use. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard caught the soft light. He looked like he belonged among books more than people. And yet, his calm authority filled the room.
“Good afternoon, Amelia,” he said in a low, measured voice. Just a greeting, but it landed like a judge’s gavel. She straightened in her chair.
“Hi, Raymond,” she replied.
He insisted on first names. I’m not a teacher, he’d say, with that faint smile. Just a fellow enthusiast. To Raymond, respect wasn’t about titles. It was earned, move by move, on the board.
Raymond made his way through the room, greeting each player in turn. Quiet and precise, but personal. A word here. A nod there. Nothing wasted. The others were already paired off. That left Amelia on her own. As always. Raymond returned and paused at her desk—looming over it like a bishop surveying the battlefield.
“Care to duel, your majesty?” he said, his voice laced with gentle mock-formality.
Amelia lifted her head and met his gaze without blinking.
“It would be an honour, brave knight.”
Raymond slipped off his jacket, folded it neatly over the back of the chair, and sat down. He checked the positioning of each piece with quiet precision—an act that felt part habit, part ritual, part meditation.
Amelia had learned that playing chess with Raymond wasn’t just about winning—it was a conversation. Every move meant something. Each choice, a new paragraph in the story unfolding on the board.
She’d never beaten him. But she was no longer easy prey. She studied his openings, traced the patterns in his play, tried to predict his attacks before they came. With Raymond, nothing was given. Every move, a risk. Every square, a fight. Every small victory, a cause for silent celebration. Everything had to be earned. He was a master of misdirection—his traps were elegant, brutal, and everywhere. Playing him often felt like running across quicksand.
Around them, the room carried the quiet buzz of a thousand moves being measured. Raymond leaned back in his chair, a half-smile ghosting across his lips.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s see how far ahead you can think today.”
He placed a pawn with a soft thud—the first ripple, radiating across the board.
Amelia paused, considered, then replied with a move of her own.
Raymond studied her closely.
The game began to unfold. Pawns crept forward. Knights criss-crossed the centre. Bishops sliced through open diagonals. And the queens lingered—silent in the background, watching, waiting for their moment to strike.
Amelia’s next move claimed one of the free spaces in the centre.
“Good,” Raymond murmured. “You’re seeing the space. Now own it.”
She bit back a smile. Pleased he’d noticed.
One of his knights ventured forward—its odd, angular path hinting at possibilities she couldn’t quite see.
The rest of the room fell away. It was just the two of them now, locked inside a world of black and white.
On his next turn, Raymond edged a rook to the left, threatening Amelia’s queen. Her stomach turned. She’d missed the gap.
She made her move, but he seemed to know what she’d do before her fingers even touched the piece. His counters came fast. Surgical. Precise. Her defenses began to creak.
“You started well,” he stated. “But you’ve regressed.”
Regressed.
The word pierced Amelia’s chest like a spear.
“You’re thinking like a pawn,” he continued. “Remember—you’re the general, not just cannon fodder. See the whole board. Every piece has a purpose. Every sacrifice holds meaning.”
She stared at her fallen pieces.
“Sacrifice? Sometimes it feels like that’s all I do.”
Raymond didn’t blink.
“Amelia,” he said evenly, “unless you’re playing across from a fool, sacrifice is always necessary to win.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“The key is knowing when—and why.”
Amelia scanned the board and inhaled deeply through her nose. Her eyes locked on a chink in Raymond’s armour. An exposed rook. Her hand moved before her mind could catch up. Her fingers took the queen by her crown, and she committed.
Raymond’s brow lifted.
“Interesting.”
And then, without hesitation, he repositioned his knight. She saw it the moment it left his fingers. Her heart dropped.
“Checkmate.”
Amelia didn’t move. Not at first. Her breath snagged in her throat—then vanished. She dropped her gaze to the board, scanning the wreckage like she might undo it with enough concentration. Her fingertips found her temples, pressing hard, trying to force the sting back down.
The board lay quiet between them. A graveyard of bad decisions.
A long moment stretched out before curiosity got the better of her.
“You knew I’d make that move, didn’t you, Raymond?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No. I didn’t. But I thought you might.”
His hands rested on the table, one placed gently over the other. His gaze was steady, locked with hers. Finally, he spoke.
“The board is a map,” he said, gesturing to the squares below.
“Most players never see it. They treat each game like a single battle.”
He paused.
“But it’s not. It’s a campaign. Two armies, each one marching toward the other’s capital.”
And then, he let the silence stretch, giving the idea room to settle.
“In the beginning, the map is wide and full of promise. Clear roads. Open fields. A thousand different ways to march forward. But every move changes the landscape. Bridges are burned. Routes are blocked. Positions are fortified. The generals give their orders, and the map redraws itself around them.”
He picked up a fallen piece and rolled it between his fingers, before standing it back up.
“The closer you get to the enemy’s capital, the fewer paths remain.”
Then he folded his hands again.
“Good players are master cartographers,” Raymond said. “They know how to work the map. Read the terrain. Track the enemy. Chart a course—all at once. That’s what it takes to win.”
Another pause.
“But the best players…” He tapped the board lightly. “They stop seeing those things as separate. The troops. The terrain. The enemy. It’s all connected. Every move creates consequences, intended and unintended.”
He shifted his shoulders, voice softening.
“To the masters, it becomes a matter of instinct. They don’t impose their will on the board. They don’t try to control every variable. They simply let the map reveal itself, and respond to what it tells them.”
Amelia stared down. Her fallen king seemed to be mocking her.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” she muttered. “My map-reading sucks.”
“You played well,” Raymond said. “Better than last time.”
She didn’t look up.
“Still lost.”
“Yes. And you will again.”
No malice. No comfort. Just fact.
“Every defeat brings you closer to understanding. The more you lose, the better you’ll become.”
He leaned back slightly.
“That, my dear, is exactly how progress feels. My advice? Learn to enjoy the journey—for what it is.”
The defeat still stung, but his words were soothing.
Amelia thought of her father—those candlelit nights at the kitchen table.
She’d always believed he was playing alone. But now she saw it. There’d been someone else with him all along. Maybe not in the room—but in the game.
A shadow across the board.
She knew that focus. That intensity. She recognised it now, because she felt it too.
With Raymond.
Across from her, he reset the pieces. The familiar weight of a new game settling between them.
He looked up, met her eyes at the centre of the board.
“Your move.”
Amelia wished, more than anything, that her father had lived long enough to teach her how to play. But as she looked across the board at Raymond—calm, steady, waiting—she felt something else.
A flicker of gratitude.
And as she reached for the next piece, the full weight of it hit her. Her father hadn’t been playing on his own.
And now, neither was she.
