Ntshona

by Matthew A Robinson

  “Now we can relax,” said Cat, whose heart remained pounding for some time afterwards, and off they went once again in the direction of her apartment.

  “Lon, how did you get so good at shooting guns? I thought you’d never used one before,” said Eve.

  “Chris has a VR room. Because I’m not really employed I get a lot of free time to play games. Obviously that’s a good thing!”

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” said Cat.

  Lon would have blushed, had his cheeks not already been red. “Well, I’ve got the skills to pay the bills”.

  Eve gave him a small laugh. “You know, you can be cheesy sometimes”.

  “Ha ha, that’s not one of my own, I got that from Marcus”.

  The situation of their friends had slipped out of their minds up until that point.

  Eve sighed. “How are we going to get them back?” Her eyes began to dampen.

  “Don’t worry too much,” said Cat, “we’ll definitely think of something”.

  The mood in the car became sombre, and hardly a word was spoken afterwards.

  In the rear-view camera display Cat could see the police motorcycles take the wrong turn at the last intersection. Now she was certain the three of them were safe, at least for the time being. She changed the car’s number plates and paint colour several times over the remainder of the journey.

  Chapter 7

  “We’re almost home,” Cat informed Lon and Eve.

  The area was unfamiliar to them, yet they could tell that it was not far from the city centre. The buildings were tall, but not quite as tall as others in the city.

  The car slowed as it approached a relatively new looking apartment block on the right, and turned into the building’s vehicle entrance.

  Cat reverted the car to its factory colour and registration.

  They climbed more than ten storeys before reaching Cat’s designated parking space.

  Before Lon and Eve opened the car doors to alight, Cat stopped them. “This isn’t a government owned building, but I’m not sure if the owners are linked to the government or not. Just to be safe, we have to take out the cameras before we leave the car”.

  “How can we do that?” asked Eve.

  “Remember I told you earlier how I’ve been working on a palm screen mod that helps you avoid cameras?”

  “Yes, I remember”.

  “Well, I haven’t finished it yet. What I’m about to try is a much simpler method; one that you two are aware of”.

  “And what would that be?” asked Lon.

  “I’ve installed a small EMP generator”.

  “Oh, I see! You’re gonna fry the cameras’ circuits?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right”.

  “But won’t it mess up your palm screen?” asked Eve.

  “Obviously I considered that when I made it. It’s small, and I’ve designed it to mostly only take down camera systems”.

  “Oh, I see,” said Eve.

  “Well, let’s give this a try, shall we?” said Cat as she powered on her palm screen and activated the new device.

  A few moments passed and nothing seemed to happen.

  “Okay, we can get out now, make sure you put the weapons back under the seat” said Cat.

  “What? Nothing happened,” said Lon.

  “Did you expect an explosion or something?” she asked.

  “Not an explosion, but some indicator that the cameras are now offline”.

  “Don’t be daft,” she said, and opened the car door to get out.

  Lon and Eve did the same after replacing the guns in the compartment under their seat, and followed Cat to the nearest lift, which they entered.

  “What’s the radius of that thing?” Lon inquired.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. It can vary depending on the surrounding area”.

  “How so?”

  “Well, it can be affected by walls, floors, ceilings, but sometimes it can make it through doors”.

  “Ah,” Lon looked upwards to the ceiling of the lift compartment, “so that camera should’ve been taken out too?”

  “Here’s hoping,” she was now back to using her casual, relaxed voice.

  They waited for the lift to request instructions, however, it did not ask.

  “Hmmm, looks like I configured this wrong and took out too many electronics,” she said, “I’ll have to do it manually, let’s see…” she began to ponder over the manual input system to the right of the door; a grid of buttons on a panel numbered zero to nine, plus a button with “10x” marked on its surface. She pressed 10x followed by 7 and 2.

  The display above the manual input grid lit up with blue letters saying “Next floor: 72”.

  “Ah, did it right,” she said, and the lift began to accelerate upwards.

  “You said earlier that you were working on a different type of surveillance avoiding device; what’s that like?” asked Lon.

  “I’m trying to create a palm screen add-on that obscures computer facial recognition in the area surrounding the user, but it’s a little tricky. I want to be able to finish it, because the EMP device is too crude and destructive. It’s more of an ‘if all else fails’”.

  The lift began to slow and soon came to a stop. The doors opened and introduced them to a lengthy corridor with numerous doors spread along both sides of its distance.

  Cat exited the lift, and Lon and Eve followed her to the door of her apartment. She unlocked the door using a retina scan, and it slipped open.

  The interior of Cat’s place had a similar layout to the apartment behind Chris’ workshop, although not as impressive, yet it gave off a more comfortable, homely impression. Furthermore it was, to Lon’s surprise, quite feminine; he was expecting something a little less… warm. Perhaps her calm, yet serious and stern attitude was simply a cover for Cat’s more girly nature. Or perhaps Lon did not yet understand women that well.

  “Please make yourselves at home, but don’t make a mess,” said Cat.

  Lon and Eve walked over to and sat at the opposite ends of a three-seater sofa, while Cat went to the landline telephone built into the wall by a sixty inch television screen to check her messages.

  She removed the flat, transparent receiver from its holster, touched a few buttons on its display and put it to her ear to listen. She had no messages to reply to, so replaced it in its holster on the wall. “Sorry my TV isn’t so big,” she said, “I don’t often watch it, so I didn’t feel the need to get a bigger one installed”.

  “It’s okay,” said Eve, “my apartment’s really small, so I only have a sixty-inch too”.

  “Ummm, I don’t want to overstay our welcome after just arriving,” said Lon, “but do you have a washer-dryer we could use? We only have these clothes with us, and we’ve both been sweating all day; I think they need washed”.

  Eve nodded in embarrassed agreement.

  “Of course I have one, and yes you can use it. However…”

  “However?” echoed Lon.

  “I don’t know what you will wear while your clothes are being washed and dried”.

  Eve’s cheeks turned pink.

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” stated Lon.

  “Well, you do have a choice,” continued Cat, “I have several nighties, which would look cute on you Eve, but I think the best thing I have for you Lon is a baby-blue bathrobe, unless you want to wear a nightie too”.

  Eve giggled.

  Lon frowned. “Okay, if it’s blue, I can deal with the bathrobe”.

  “Settled! Now, I have a bathroom and a small shower room, so you can decide between yourselves who uses which. I’ll go and get the clothes for you,” with that, Cat exited the room to retrieve the clothing she had promised.

  “I’ll take the shower,” Lon declared to Eve.

  “That’s fine, I need a good soak”.

  They waited a few moments for Cat to return with the clothing before going to wash.

  Eve was still bathing when
Lon returned to the living room with wet hair and donning the lovely, fluffy blue bathrobe.

  “That looks good on you,” said Cat, who was dissecting her palm screen on the coffee table next to the sofa.

  Lon’s cheeks quickly developed a sort of crimson hue. He did not know whether she was being sarcastic. “This is embarrassing,” he said before sitting down next to her on the sofa. He had brought with him, in a neatly folded pile, the clothing he was wearing that needed washed.

  “You can put those on the floor for now. I’ll put them in the wash with Eve’s later”.

  He placed them on the floor as per Cat’s suggestion. “What are you doing to your palm screen? Are you altering the EMP… chip?”

  “It’s not really a chip, but it acts like one. I’m trying to reconfigure it to not destroy voice and motion activated systems”.

  “I see. How many EMP ‘chips’ do you have?”

  “If you’re asking if I’ll upgrade yours and Eve’s, then yes I will, but I need to get this problem fixed first. I don’t know how long it’ll take”.

  “Okay. Where do you get the money to do the things you do? Are they funded by your company?”

  “You could say that, but that particular money which comes from the company originates from donors and investors”.

  “Like who?”

  “Most of our investors are small companies, most of them you’ve probably never heard of, and some donations are from private entities, but our main ‘anonymous’ investor is a certain company called ‘Silvertech’”

  Lon was surprised to hear this, “So you get money from Chris?”

  “Yes, he’s been a major proponent of our cause right from the beginning”.

  “I had no idea!”

  “Of course you didn’t, not many people do. It’s too dangerous for his company to be openly associated with ours, in that if we’re taken down by the police or the government, he probably will be too”.

  “I thought he would’ve at least told me, if no one else”.

  “There’s more to it than that. Your brother is quite a powerful man, despite his humbleness”.

  Lon was intrigued. “Seriously? How?”

  “I can’t tell you, it’s too dangerous for too many people to know. In fact, I don’t even know the half of it myself”.

  “Okay, so how much does he donate to you guys?”

  “I don’t deal with the numbers, but he’s got us out of some really tight financial situations in the past. That’s one of the reasons I feel I need to take care of you for the time being. That, and because I’m such a nice person,” she gave Lon a huge, creepily sincere smile, which he certainly was not anticipating.

  Lon smiled back at her, trying his best not to laugh.

  They were both silent.

  For a brief moment Lon thought he felt a connection between them. He kept forgetting that Cat was young like him, thus rarely took the time to admire her beauty.

  Their moment was cut short by the sound of the bathroom door opening down the hall from the living room.

  Cat returned to working on her palm screen, while Lon’s face began to glow more brightly.

  The light stepping of Eve’s feet could be heard slowly emerging from the corridor. Eventually she came into sight, looking very shy. She wore a low-cut, above knee-length nightgown composed of a light coloured, silk-like material. It was relatively loose fitting, yet made visible the shape of her slender body. She held her arm across her chest so as to leave to the imagination the contents thereof. “Sorry, Cat, I feel a little exposed in this,” she whispered.

  Cat looked up from her palm screen at her. “Wow, it looks so cute on you!”

  Lon was blown away; never had he imagined Eve in such a capacity. The skin on his cheeks shifted an extra tone of red.

  “Sorry, Cat, do you have anything a little less… revealing?” she was clearly uncomfortable.

  “I’m afraid not, that’s my thickest winter nightie”.

  Eve’s lip began to quiver.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t mind, I’ve seen it all before,” said Cat, “Come, sit,” she patted the sofa in between her and Lon in a gesture for Eve to take a seat.

  Eve reluctantly obliged, and slowly walked to the sofa and sat down.

  Lon did not know where to look. After briefly checking out her figure, he decided it was more polite to look at the floor.

  She examined Lon in the bathrobe. “You look nice,” she said attempting to improve her mood.

  “You look nice too,” replied Lon, biting his lip and still looking towards the floor.

  Eve broke the following awkward quietness by asking Cat, “How can I pay you back for my hospital bills? My bank account is probably being monitored, and I can’t contact my insurance company because it’s a government broker”.

  “Oh, there’s absolutely no need to worry about that,” Cat responded.

  “But it must have been expensive”.

  “No, I paid using virtual money”.

  “Virtual money?” said Lon.

  “Most money is virtual,” said Eve.

  Cat thought for a moment. “Then it’s ‘virtual’ virtual money”.

  “I’m not following,” said Lon.

  She sighed. She had hoped she would not need to explain this, “I used an app that can credit anybody with any amount of money, at no cost to me”.

  “What?” said Eve.

  “Where the hell did you get an app like that?” Lon asked.

  “Obviously I made it… well, it was a joint project”.

  Lon and Eve were silent.

  “I only use it for legitimate reasons though,” she quickly added.

  “Did you use it to pay for the apple pie you bought us?” asked Eve.

  Cat pondered over a decent answer. “That’s a legitimate reason!”

  Lon burst into laughter, and Eve joined him, but in a softer manner.

  Cat frowned and faced back down towards the coffee table to continue working on her palm screen.

  More uneasy silence ensued.

  Lon could not help himself from taking the odd sneak peek at Eve’s attire, trying to be stealthy as he did so.

  Again, Eve broke the silence. “I wonder if my parents are okay,” she speculated.

  “I’m sure they are,” said Cat, adding solace to her situation. “If the police really do think you’re a terrorist, then your parents are likely to be questioned, that’s all. Even if they’re just trying to find you to kill you, your parents will still only be questioned as to your whereabouts”.

  “Oh god, I wonder if they saw the news; they probably think I’m a terrorist now. I want to call them”.

  “You can’t, their connections might be tapped,” said Lon.

  “Ja, it’s risky for you two to contact anyone right now,” added Cat.

  Eve looked slightly depressed.

  “I wonder if my parents saw the news too,” said Lon, “hopefully Chris has told them that I’m not a terrorist,” he thought for a moment, “Actually, maybe it’s best of Chris doesn’t tell them anything. After all, if they know what he knows, and then the police find out that they know, then there could be a lot of trouble for all of us”.

  “I really don’t think your brother is that stupid,” said Cat.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed.

  Cat got to her feet. “I’m gonna take a shower now, but let me put your clothes in the wash first,” she picked up Lon’s worn clothing from the floor.

  “Oh, I didn’t know where to put mine,” said Eve, “so I folded them and left them by the sink in the bathroom”.

  “Ok, I’ll sort them out. If you want something to eat, check the cupboards, there should be something there; just take whatever. If you want to go to sleep, then it’s the second room down the corridor. There’s only a single bed though, so it might be a bit of a squeeze. Is that okay?”

  “Oh-” Lon was about to voice up, but was cut short by Eve.

  “We aren’t, um�
�� together”.

  Cat was surprised. “I am so sorry! I thought you two were…” she then realised why Eve had been so embarrassed, and that what she had insisted on her wearing in the meantime was inappropriate around a man with whom she was not in a relationship, especially considering her lack of underwear. “What size bras do you wear? I think I may have something that fits you”.

  Lon thought he could feel his wet hair steaming.

  “Um, can I come and take a look please?” Eve requested.

  “Of course, come, come!”

  Lon decided to search the cupboards in the kitchen area for food. He needed to replenish a great deal of energy, however he felt a little too lethargic to bother, and poured himself a bowl of the most expensive looking of the multiple varieties of cereals Cat owned, and poured some for Eve as well. He then moved back to the couch and turned on the television to scan for any news related to his situation.

  Cat and Eve returned to the living room at roughly the same time Lon almost choked on a spoonful of sugary fruit flakes.

  “They’re blaming us for the explosions on the highway!” coughed Lon.

  “What?!” exclaimed Eve.

  “They’re saying that we’re extremely dangerous and have a general disregard for human life!”

  “What the hell kind of crap is that?” she said.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said Cat, “I’m sure there’ll be eyewitness footage surfacing online before long”.

  “But my parents are bound to think I’m a terrorist by now!”

  “Seriously, don’t worry. I don’t think anybody buys that crap,” Cat said in an attempt at consolation.

  “Either way, it’s annoying as hell,” said Lon, “the police go around blowing shit up, and we get the blame! And they’re only after us because the government didn’t manage to abduct us when they took our friends”.

  “I keep telling you,” said Cat, “we don’t know if it was the government”.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” asked Eve. “It seems like there’s something important you’re not telling us”.

  “There are many important things I’m not telling you. I seem to remember clearly mentioning that earlier”.