Chapter 47: Lies
"There were no traces of her?" James asked without emotion in his voice. He was looking at his computer's screen which had a report of the previous day's happenings.
"No, sir. There was an explosion around thirty kilometers from the conflict, but she wasn't near it."
"Well, it doesn't matter, we'll get to know of her sooner or later, she's too catchy. Get back."
"Understood."
He clicked some more before turning his head to the ceiling.
"She was supposedly very sick and weak. In no way of having the strength to come walking… Someone else helped her? Or did they fake it? No, maybe she was already healthy before this trek… Another thing they didn't tell me, huh."
After a dry laugh, he heard someone nocking at his door. He faced the door without saying anything and waited until the guest entered his little office.
"Oh? Boy? What's it? Did you have any success?" He saw the young man, his assistant Touyah, enter with a frown, his hands closing and opening constantly and his face full of oil and sweat.
"No, it's not functioning at all… Nothing I do or change is making it work." He answered curtly.
"Well, she seriously didn't tell us an important part. She made another one in Narmaisesses, meaning it properly works, and one can do it without the crystal she requested from me, she must have found a replacement at some point. Oh! Gut didn't tell me she had her theory! So that makes it another lie! How savage!" He started laughing at this thought, his face remained serious. "How much they lied to me! With each one I'm feeling more and more angry!"
"What do we do with it, then?" The boy said, interrupting his moment of joy.
"Ah, throw it away, it doesn't matter. We can't do anything without all the information, stop wasting time with it. We already spent so much in them, there's no use if it doesn't work at all."
"Do I put it in another place? Not putting them together?"
"Yeah, keep them monitored, we never know if someone discovers something in one of those. Even if they are in dumps, there could be a hidden genius who stumble upon them and makes them work."
"Alright." The boy turned around and put his hand on the handle of the door, thinking about a place to put this failure of a machine.
They had made four before, with this one there were five. None of them worked, nothing had disappeared or made a change worth mentioning.
*****
Lowering her sight, Charlotte's eyes shined with new found light, a small smile surfaced on her face and her shoulders felt lighter. Yeah, she had been brought to this city, but it was her decision from the beginning, even if she was alone. Moreover, it looked like a better place than she originally thought, at least for now.
<I need to change my cash. What was the currency again?>
She had 3 thousand Gers in her pocket and left the remaining 60.094 in the bag. She hadn't used much the last few days, Gut had covered all their needs since they were on Gercy. The only problem, how was she to change it without looking conspicuous and alerting the ones looking for her.
She kept walking and found a normal looking place to eat.
<I hope this works.>
Going in, she sat on an empty table, looking around, she saw the restaurant had a normal feeling, nothing out of place and without any particular decorations, it had some paintings and photographs, along with 10 tables for four and its chairs, of which six were previously occupied, now seven. She took one in the middle of the wall to the right of the entrance and gave her back to it, from where she could see reception desk and the kitchen's door. She left her bag on the floor and eyed what the others customers were eating.
A man wearing white shirt and pants and without any modified part came to her. "Boy, if you got no money, then go 'way!" He shouted at her, eying her ragged hoodie and battered bag, she looked like a vagabond or homeless kid.
He spoke in aj'snagarian, one of the five languages she knew. The first of the five was gerciesse, of course; then she learned atalasian, the language spoken in the U.S.A., she studied it as it was the most powerful country in the world; getalian and aj'snagarian were the other two languages used in the Lurian Alliance; finally, she also knew eldarian, the language spoken in the Ethas Theocracy and all its allied countries, they shared the same continent as Gercia and was another powerhouse, so she had to. She had started studying other three languages, but didn't finish them, only remembering parts.
"Ah, sorry, I got money. Let me eat something, please, I'm starving." She answered in aj'snagarian, trying to sound like a local and not achieving it, as the man rolled his eyes.
"Then show me it." The waiter said with a frown, reducing the volume of his voice, which let the other customers enjoy their meal. They had looked at her for a moment when he shouted.
"Yes yes." She took out an already prepared 100 paper from her pockets and smiled at him.
"This, is not FC…" He eyed the bill and took it away from her hands, not allowing her to complain, and inspected it. "This is gers! Hey! Don't steal and come to this place to spend your earnings!"
"I didn't steal it!" She said in indignation and stood from her seat, the chair tumbled back and to the floor and she slammed her hands on the table to once again get the attention of the people around.
"Then where did you pick it?" He said as he stored the bill in the pocket of his shirt. "This cannot be used in this part of the city, so go away!"
"That's mine! Don't steal from me!"
The man smirked, "I'm only retrieving what a robber stole, so it's not stealing, got it?"
"I didn't steal it! I-I found it in an alley!" Her eyes wandered for a moment, she had changed her thoughts at the last second, trying not to appear strange.
For the waiter, though, it looked as if the boy had lied.
"Hmm, you found it? I don't believe you."
*Smack!
"What are you doing! Leave the kid alone." A bulky old man hit the waiter in the head. She didn't notice when he came, so she stared at him, somehow relieved and wary at the new intrusion.
He wasn't wearing the waiter's blue clothes that shared the name of the restaurant, Charlotte assumed he was the owner of the place as the other guy didn't say anything. The man crouched in front of her and smiled.
"I'm sorry for this brute, Steve can be a prick sometimes. I'm the chef and owner of the place. How much he got from you? I'll treat it as the payment, order anything from here." He said as he handed her the menu of the store.
Steve caressed his head, muttering that it'll leave a bump and deriding the old man. Charlotte looked at the menu, seeing that the price of the meals ranged from 10 to 30 FC.
"It was 20 gers, only a normal dish then." Steve said and went to the customers who were spectating the show.
"Wha- No! It was a hundred! A hundred gers' bill!" She protested in anger.
"Is that true, Steve?" The old man said as he turned his head to look at the lying Steve, his voice edged at the man.
Steve turned around with his eyes wide open and eyed her before being intimidated by the old man. "T-that, he stole it! I'm sure of it! No one can have this kind of money and be that skinny!"
"I found it scattered around!" Trying to think of things to sound more convincing, she remembered Gut and lowered her eyes in sorrow. "… In a dead body."
"Sigh… I see, whatever, it was yours from that moment. I'll give you the change, so order whatever you want."
Charlotte thanked the old man with a not so bright smile, her eyes clouded by the previous thought. She then looked at the menu and tried to get her bearings. She ordered three dishes after some deliberation, of 10, 15 and 20. The old man eyed her for a moment before going back to the kitchen, muttering something about starving boys and shaking his head.
She was given back three bills after her food was ready, two of 10 and one of 20, in FC of course. As she received and counted them, she eyed Steve and saw a smirk in his face, he was taunting her to start another commotion. She decided to leave him be and be done with the place after eating, there could be unwanted eyes if she started more trouble.
<So, this can be used normally in some part of the city. Where could it be?> She thought once she was outside the small restaurant.
She searched for a map, or somewhere she could see the name of where she was. It was a mystery how Gut didn't carry a map or a log of places of interest of the city in all the things he had brought.
After some minutes of unfruitful search, she saw people going in and out of a small building, it had a big rusty M engraved above a metallic door kept open.
<It can't be… A subway?>
She was surprised at first, but then remembered the sheer size of the city and the apparent lack of cars and buses. She decided to follow the tide and entered the place, it was a custom to have a map in the stations, she thought.
The announcements on the walls were torn, it didn't matter if they were new or old, and its frames were without windows. This was the first truly destroyed place she had seen, she felt that this was how a society drowned in anarchy should be, and somehow felt satisfied. She didn't know why, maybe that was what she wanted to see. After all, what she had seen on the street was only the government's negligence.
She looked around before finding the city's map. It was placed in the platform, she would have to buy tickets and go somewhere else, or she would appear suspicious... She went to the cabin that sold tickets.
"Hello, I want a ticket." She asked the woman manning the counter.
"Then buy one." Answered the woman without looking at her, her eyes fixed in her hands as she did her nails.
"… I'm trying to, sell me one." She said while a brow twitched.
She tried to be polite as she didn't know anything and appeared like a lost child. <There are people who aren't kind, this is normal…> She thought. <Heck, that old man should be the exception for being kind here.>
The woman finally took her sight from her arduous work and looked at the brat in front of her, "you're not from here, honey? Look, there is where you buy your tickets, now stop bothering me, I'm busy." She pointed to the wall next to the turnstiles, two men standing behind a lady buying a ticket, waiting for her.
"Oh, thanks." She looked at the woman after looking at them, bowing her head a little and went to the line.
"Huh, a polite brat, that's rare." The woman opened her eyes in admiration for a moment and continued polishing her nails after she lost the ineterest.
Charlotte waited for the people to buy theirs before she was allowed to it. It was a normal machine which had five options in the screen, one for recharging a card she didn't have, another to ask for help, the third one to see their charged card and the two others to buy a single o in bulk.
She chose the single ticket after some thought, it was priced at 2 FC. Her hand went to her pocket and fished her newly gained FC, the 10 paper. After waiting for a while, she was now with the ticket at hand and 8 FC on her pocket.
<It's a bit on the expensive side but one can't complain here, uh.>
She put the ticket in the opening of the turnstile and went past it, thinking of how wasteful it was to use paper like that. She approached the map and studied it. There were many stations, too many she didn't know where to start. There wasn't any mark to indicate in which station she was in so she had to look around for the station's name, Silver Entrance, before returning to the map and looked through it.
<This city is truly big… Let's see, here it is, Silver Entrance, silver meadow, silver meadow center… haunted star center… Damn, there are too many.> After going through the fifty closer to her, she finally found a stop that could be of help. <Lurian Congress, I guess I can go there to spend my cash… Let's continue.>
Once she was done with looking at all the stops, she realized there were five stablished areas in the city, each one controlled by a powerhouse of the world. The Lurian Alliance on the west side, the Theocracy at the south, which was the nearest area to this station. The U.S.A. was in the middle of the city, the Decros on the east and the governing system of the city in the north, why this last one wasn't in the middle made Charlotte tilt her head, but she let her thoughts go soon after, it wasn't her problem how the city was divided.
She planned a route and got in the next train, she went to the Lurian area to see if she could change the money, or at least use it. Between changing lines and getting lost because of her carelessness, she took more than an hour to arrive, it was like a labyrinth, a fully marked with directions maze. She felt ashamed but at least no one noticed her mistake.
Once on the periphery of the Lurian area, she went out of the station and saw at least five skyscrapers around her, bridges connected buildings and some cars were visible on the road around her, people in the thousands walked on and around her.
*Thud
She felt a strong impact on her back and stumbled forward, which made her walk strangely a few steps and move her hands with vigor so she wouldn't fall.
"Move on, kid!"
She had stared at the city for a little too long, feeling as if she was in a normal, kind city once again. She looked back and saw a man staring down at her, a frown in his face and his arms crossed in impatience.
"Oooh, sorry, sorry." She said as she stood to the side and let the man walk on without saying anything. She then started walking with no destination in mind.
She didn't block the road, it was too big for a single person to crowd it and people were going around her without any problem. If anything, she thought he may be having a bad day and wanted to bother others to amuse him, rude people were rude like that.
After going around aimlessly and taking in the city, she looked for a place that changed currency. She didn't find anything that worked with it. She had found almost every other shop in her search, ranging from computers and electronics to clothes and house tools, she also found one specialized in mechanical stuff for the body. She toured the place around three hours at the very least and started to feel pangs of hunger again.
<Really, I've become so weird.> She thought as she caressed her belly, her hand was still thin and without much muscle, but her stomach still demanded that ravenous amount of food.
She chose a random restaurant and went in, she asked for the normal three dishes and went to the bathroom to look at the cash she had at hand. On the currency she had the most, the bill of lowest value she had was of 50 gers and the highest of 500. Thankfully she took out a 100 bill before, had she taken out a bigger one, more trouble would had ensued.
She put two of 50 gers in her right pocket and the FC ones rest on the other, she then put the rest back in her bag, in another place so she could take them if she needed to without being conspicuous, more conspicuous. After her light lunch, she paid with a 50 gers bill and the clerk frowned at her.
"Though we receive this, we are troubled by it. So get the normal ones next time."
"Uhm, where can I change it? I can go now if it's too much trouble…"
"Boy, you want to be robbed?"
She blinked at him and didn't know what to say for a moment. "Huh, tell me anyway, I still have other bill left and want it changed." She said as she took out the remaining one and smiled a little.
The man scratched his head and asked if she knew directions around here, she shook her head. He asked her to wait for a moment and went to the kitchen, he came back with some dishes to other tables and arrived at her own with a paper. He pointed where they were first in a bad sketched map he did, to what she laughed a bit and he frowned at her, he then told her where she should go and where she mustn't in the process.
"Hey, you know where I can sleep? I'm a little lost here and don't know where to go…" She asked looking down, trying to instill a feeling of a lost puppy to the man.
The man looked down at the map he just drew for her and added some points to it. He went away shortly after as he was called by other customer. She looked at it and smiled in gratitude.
She went to the three last points he had marked, all her hope gone at the last hostel. They all rented shared rooms, she wanted to rest without worry and a shared room was everything but that. She asked the girl manning the counter if there was a hotel nearby and received an annoyed eye and angry remarks before the girl decided it was enough and told her the place.
She went out of the hostel after some apologizing and walked down the street. The hotel was in the same block and could be found with only a little search, something she didn't know but the girl obviously didn't care. Once in the hotel, she spoke with the clerk at reception and got a room for the night for a whooping 100 FC, 120 if she was to pay with gers, she was told. She tried to bargain but the man didn't bulge at all, she decided to spend the night there as she didn't want to search more, the sun was going down already and she didn't want to be a lost child in the night city.
Once in the room, she took a long-awaited bath and relaxed for a while before she ordered something light to eat. After eating, she took out the papers she had of him and read through them. On one of them, she saw something she hadn't thought of before.
"His name was Gustave Treachs… Huh."
Strangely, it was the only one which had that name, the rest were directed to Gut. It was on a too old mission, she didn't know why he still had it. It was almost ten years old, the paper already with some decaying parts, but his name could be read still along with the description of it, one only had to be careful. The others missions he had there were at most a year old. There were seven missions in total, the newest one was her own, all came from James.
"Maybe it was his way of not forgetting his name?"
None of the missions included killing, but the bounty was more than enough to stop working for a year or more, normally they were of transporting some goods and not of killing, she made a soft face as he didn't lie to her about that. The cheapest one worth five hundred FC and the most expensive went up to two million, neither were her own.
"I'm worth a million, hehe. Not a cheap lady, I see…"
She put hers with the other missions and decided to burn them later so she wouldn't be found if anything happened. She then read through his diary. It started one year ago, in June of the 37. At first she read through them carefully but got bored after five minutes in and started to read it faster. In the diary only his thoughts and how something had gone well or awry in his opinion was written. Nothing worth of mentioning and without much importance. The pages weren't daily, only when he was on a mission or something interesting happened, he decided to write.
She slowed when she realized he was soon to meet her.
'March 23, 1738.
I received a new mission, to look after and protect a lady by the name Charlotte Eschete. And if her invention is worth, to escort her to Paversia.'
That was all he wrote that day. After that, he noted what she thought of her, something she felt displeased as he called her childish and careless. With time, though… He didn't change his impression. After some pages, an entry forced her to stop reading.
'April 3, 1738.
Today I finally found what her machine was meant to do, I told James that but he called me an idiot and thought nothing of it. I believe that's more worth than simply disappearing things. This one calls for more investigation and thought. She could move things without touching them. At first I wondered why she was so calm with those thugs, but now I realize that she's more dangerous than what I thought in the beginning. She wasn't as silly as I previously thought. What she did after her ghost show, even if she was protecting herself, was an act going too far. How she got the bravery to do it is still a wonder, I'll need to be more cautious with her, after all, even if she didn't intend to, she killed a man and the other two were near it. I finished her job and left their bodies someplace far and with an alibi to ourselves.'
…
She stopped reading, her eyes darted around the room, looking for anything that could calm her mind, her hands didn't know where to go and her lips dry by the news. She stood from the bed with unsteady legs and went out of the room. Going down to the reception desk, she asked the clerk and went to a still open store. Bought what she wanted and lighted it.
"Fu… I killed someone…" She said as smoke came out of her mouth, her hands still trembling. She kept her gaze at the night sky, only a street away from the hotel.
She could only handle so much by herself, and this, along with what happened a couple days ago, was too much for her. She had lied to herself, trying not to think about it, constantly thinking it was alright, that everything would be okay...
She had shorts and a loose big shirt. She could be recognized as a girl if someone looked at her right then, but her straps and makeup were on, so she didn't mind it.
"I was a criminal before it was cool, huh."
Weekly Power Status
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