The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (2 page)

Neither of the girls seemed to be the sort
who thrived on social interactions. At least, not on first
impression. They were dressed quite plainly, in dark jeans and gray
jackets, without tons of make-up or piercings. They looked slightly
scruffy and disheveled, and like their hair had gotten blown around
a bit in the wind.

Still, Nin believed there was a reason for
this chance encounter. He decided to err on the side of intuition.
“I’m Nin.”

He extended his right hand. He wondered if
these two even believed in the Elven race, in the first place.

Nin blinked a few times before petite,
bold-faced Anya finally responded by returning the handshake.

“
I’m Anya
London.”

She had wideset eyes, a high forehead, and a
few tiny freckles on her ski-jump nose—Nin thought it gave her more
character. It complemented the slightly haughty lift in her small
chin too. They continued looking at each other before Anya turned
to her friend, and bobbed her head in Nin’s direction. The
dark-haired girl got the message.

“
I’m Leticia.” She had a
softer, more agreeable look than Anya. She relaxed a little before
adding, “Leticia Pinto.”

Anya wiped the orb on one of her sleeves,
before slipping it into her pocket.

“
So…” Nin grinned. Anya’s
actions hadn’t gone unnoticed. “How much
would
that fetch?”

Immediately, both girls turned pale.

“
Are you a sentinel guard?”
Anya snapped, quickly realizing what a stupid question that was.
Armed forces, including a cadre of super-soldiers who were part man
and part machine, were stationed in and around Zouk City—Nin didn’t
look like one of them. Other thoughts swirled in her mind. But then
again, he could be part of a new secret squad. What difference
would it make who he was, if she and Leticia were finally going to
be arrested anyway?

“
No…” Nin coolly wondered
what identity to assume. He’d play his “questions” game, and see if
the girls reciprocated. Maybe then, he’d reveal bits and pieces of
trivia, about himself. “I’m just…a regular. Like you. Can’t anyone
enjoy the great outdoors anymore?” Nin had a harmonious quality in
his voice, expressive of his congenial nature within.

Still, Anya was cautious. She was wary of
the male species—nice ones with strikingly good looks, in
particular. They always seemed to have ulterior motives. Anya had
to make an effort, not to be distracted by Nin’s charm and the
curious blend of sultry sophistication he exuded. He had a
presence—a silent but powerful charisma…

The Elven rogue had his own set of
well-guarded secrets to maintain. Like what was lying underground.
Nobody would ever guess. Not in a million years.

“
I’m not armed, I’m not
wired,” he said. “You’re free to take a closer look, if you’d
like.”

Nin opened up his coat—his sleek, black
trench coat, built so he could move like a shadow in the dark—to
show he wasn’t hiding any guns or suspicious gadgets. He drew in a
sharp breath.

“
We’re not wired or bugged
too,” Anya replied, more softly than she intended. Her response
made Nin understand why humans were known to be the race that
couldn’t trust anyone. Anya didn’t offer to mention that they were
unarmed, because technically, that wasn’t true. She and Leticia
always carried around a couple of compact, but deadly self defense
weapons—just in case. They both had a foldable little knuckle
knife, and single cord strangling weapon, tucked away in a
compartment in their shoes.

Anya was looking at Nin’s neck.

“
Here—you can scan me,” Nin
said to Anya, to distract her from his tattoo. He removed a small
detector from his N-Gage, and handed it to Anya. Anya frowned at
the device, wrapped around Nin’s wrist and part of his hand. She
wasn’t sure whether it was connected to his glove.

Nin stretched his hands out. Anya did a
quick body scan, then tried it out on Leticia, before grinning
sheepishly, and returning it to Nin.

“
So,” he started again,
determined to break the ice. “Tell me what you’re doing
here.”

Still no answer.

“
Do you steal for a
living?” Nin got straight to the point. He sounded more amused,
than aggressive.

Anya chewed on her lower lip for a moment or
two. Nin had an underlying purity and simplicity about him, which
she felt compelled to be honest with.

“
Technically,” she began
carefully, “we’re
returning
”—she articulated the word
extra clearly—“items, to their rightful owners.”

Leticia gave a laugh before turning all
serious. “It’s true,” she said in a deadpan voice, and blank-slate
face, to Nin.

Nin’s smooth brow was beginning to furrow.
“What do you mean?”

“
Well…” Anya started
gesticulating in the air with her hands, as she spoke her thoughts.
“Museum directors…and collectors…don’t exactly own the artifacts,
that they commission people to find. Sometimes, people want their
items back. Like this here”—she patted a hand over her
pocket—“belongs to Saudi Arabia. It was stolen from a tomb of one
of their ancient kings, and has been on display at The
Civilizations Museum in Zouk City. The museum people have been
unwilling to negotiate so…that’s when we step in.”

Nin smiled, as he continued watching her
closely. “And you charge a fee for this…service?”

“
Most are willing to pay,”
Anya answered, self-assuredly. She turned her head slightly towards
one side. “We’d do it for free—just for kicks. That’s how it all
started anyway.”

“
Your…hobby? Service to
mankind?”

Anya nodded slowly. “There was an email a
few months ago. Some Egyptian guy wanted something. I almost
deleted the email—I thought it was spam! We had to travel far for
that one—Zone Five over on the west coast.”

“
It was a gorgeous, onyx
sphinx,” Leticia said dreamily. “We got fifty grand, in cash. Just
like that!”

Fifty grand?
Nin thought to himself. The elves had been
siphoning millions out from banks, by charging bank accounts with
small amounts from $0.10 to $10—the numbers were so minor, most
people overlooked it, or were too busy to care. But a small amount
could snowball into something much more massive. A good hacker
could reroute email, reset passwords, and transfer money out of
accounts in a snap.

“
All gone, by the way,”
Leticia added as an afterthought.

“
Money’s a good incentive,”
Anya finished. “Real good.”

Her eyes widened. Had they said too
much?

Nin knew how much humans loved money,
riches, and material things—though he never really could understand
why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the
more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was
alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all
kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they
really were, inside.

“
You must live a good life,
then...” Nin pondered whether making a lot of cash was the main aim
of most human beings.
“What do you spend
the money on anyway?”

“
School fees, and rent.”
Leticia gave a cynical smile. “It’s expensive living in the
city.”

“
Why rent when you could
buy a house?” Nin enquired.

Leticia pursed her lips, and folded her arms
across her chest. “We’re working towards it,” she replied rather
tersely.

“
It’d look…suspicious if we
bought a house right now,” Anya explained. Nin’s genuinely
innocent, semi-naïve air was the only reason she still entertained
his questions. “Six million dollars for a studio apartment? We
couldn’t afford it. We don’t come from rich
backgrounds.”

Nin nodded. The disparity
between the rich and the poor wasn’t as great in the Elven world as
it was with humans, but he knew the privileges of nobility—he’d
walked away from it all, not so long ago.
Quality of life shouldn’t be structured around social class
and status.

He made his way to one of the pews, and
stretched his arms out behind him. “Do you meet the
buyers…here?”

Anya shook her head. “We thought we could
stash some of our treasures here. Temporarily.”

“
It’s quite bold of you, to
steal things in broad daylight,” Nin remarked, stalling for
time.

Anya tried to hide a smirk. “The museum is
closed on Mondays.” She rubbed her eyes—there were faint dark rings
under them.

Nin was absolutely convinced that Anya and
Leticia weren’t amateurs. He was considering enlisting their help.
He needed to get his hands on an artifact himself, one that might
hold the key to explaining what the letter ‘i’ was all about, the
letter on the piece of paper he had neatly tucked away.

But could the girls be trusted?

“
Penny for your thoughts?”
Anya asked him, as if reading his mind.

Nin tilted his chin up slightly, as he
pointed to the bag in Leticia’s hand. “What’s in there?”

Anya gave a twisted smirk. It was something
Leticia had bought online from one of their counterculture
friends.

“
It’s a secret toolbox.”
She felt like she could trust Nin—it was hard keeping her real life
a secret from everyone she knew. Maybe he was into the whole
counterculture scene too. Might he be something of a kindred
spirit, that way? “It’s made of some hi-tech TN.09 thing…whatever
you put in a secret compartment zipped at the side, is literally
invisible. You could pass this through security baggage scanners,
and whatever you hide in it wouldn’t show up on the
screen.”

Nin nodded, seemingly
impressed.
TN.09
was the short form for
Titanium-nano
—it was the code a group
of cyberpunk elves used to refer to their ongoing experimentations
with a new form of nanotechnology. It was more sophisticated and
less environmentally damaging than what humans had been working on
all along.

“
Fascinating,” Nin said,
with a convincing smile. “I know some of the people who…made that.”
He stopped himself, before saying anymore.

Anya and Leticia gasped. “Really? Does that
mean people can be invisible too?”

Nin thought about it. “I don’t know.” He
knew the substance was safe to touch, and wasn’t lethal if injected
directly into an elf’s bloodstream. But he wasn’t sure about
humans. He presumed it could be worse, since humans were generally
weaker-bodied.

“
Is it cancerous?” Anya had
lots of unanswered questions about TN.09.

“
Even the sun is
cancerous.” Nin hoped they wouldn’t be put off by his sense of
humor. “So,” he tried again, determined to have a look at the bag’s
contents. “Tell me what’s inside.”

Tension hung in the air. Leticia looked
toward Anya. She acquiesced, once Anya gave a slight shrug (which
could have meant anything).

“
It’s called the ‘King
John’ cup,” Leticia said with pride, bringing out a richly enameled
golden cup. A ray of sunlight streamed in through one of the
stained glass panels, right onto the goblet. “Fashioned in
1340—that’s what the guide said at the museum last
week.”

No it’s not,
Nin thought. If it was the goblet that he thought
it was, it belonged to an Elven family that had been trying to
locate its whereabouts for years.

Nin went forward, drawn by the artifact, to
take a better look. Leticia even let him hold it.

“
Very, very nice,” he
uttered, while checking out the design. In each of the five fields
of enamel was a man and a woman, one over the other. Some were
picking flowers, others were dressed as hunters, carrying a bow and
arrow.

Nin peered into the goblet—there was a
female falconer at the bottom of the cup. It was to be revealed
with the last draught. Elven artisans always took great care and
delight to include divine details, which their human counterparts
often overlooked.

“
Who’s your buyer for this
one?” Nin would make the purchase himself, if he could persuade the
girls with a higher bid than what they had been offered.

But Anya shook her head. “This isn’t for
sale. We wanted this one because it looked so pretty. We were both
dreaming of it last night.”

Nin was pleased at their exquisite taste. He
decided to try his hand at negotiating—he wanted to walk away with
the goblet. After all, the girls were in the business of returning
artifacts “to their rightful owners (their own words).”

“
May I have this?” he
began. “I could give you something in exchange. Something high
quality, also.” He could easily get an Elven item—a royal circlet,
another goblet, an accessory—which he was sure would fit Anya and
Leticia’s idea of good taste.

The two girls looked at him like he was out
of his mind.

“
Who are you, anyway?” Anya
was back on the defensive.

“
I’m a college art
student.” Nin certainly looked, or dressed the part. “I know
someone who would really want this.”

Anya put a hand up in the air. “Finders,
keepers.”

Nin’s mind raced to come up
with something plausible. “A friend of mine is producing an
independent film. A rendition of
King
Arthur.
This would be the perfect plot! I
mean”—he corrected himself—“prop.”

The girls’ frowns let Nin know that his
efforts weren’t going successfully. He couldn’t afford to get the
girls angry. They were the perfect individuals he needed to help
him execute his break-in plan. But neither could he afford to
reveal his true identity, too soon.