“What are we even doing here Emma?” Lily asks her.
“We’re having a late dinner, not eating our steak...”
“No, I mean what are we doing here? What have we been doing? The biggest crisis that has ever faced the city has come and gone and we were at ground zero and now we’re like... trying to run away from it now?”
“Honestly sometimes it feels like a dream. But it happened. It happened, and we were there. That Lego harpy lady was right; people hate us for what they think we did to their city, while all this time we thought we did an awesome job at stopping that monster. I feel horrible about that.”
“So we’re not heroes...”
“No. Not to them.”
“So what should we do now then?”
Emma lingers on her answer.
“Go home. Find a way to help fix the mess we helped create, at least...”
Again, she pauses.
“At least until they want us to be heroes again.”
Lily steps off the bus. The air downtown is still thick with the dust of the massive reconstruction efforts happening all around her.
As she crosses the road she can’t help but notice just how empty this place is now. Whatever businesses that have not been destroyed or damaged beyond repair are now closed, their storefronts sitting empty, red ‘out of business’ signs splayed across their windows. It’s almost a ghost town.
And yet, there still remains a hive of activity, centred around a humble co-operative market that has remained open. Inside, its shoppers continue doing their grocery shopping, like any other day. They are residents of the area who have chosen to stay, who have chosen not to flee and leave their homes, and this place continues to serve them, as it always did.
“Hi, I’m looking for the manager?” Lily asks a cashier serving some customers. She points her towards a hipsterish young man busy stacking produce in the fruit and veg section. Lily thanks the cashier and heads over to him.
“Excuse me, are you the manager?” she asks him.
“That’s who I am...” he replies as he stacks a box of persimmons onto a shelf.
“I saw a flyer for this place. I’d like to work here.”
“Sorry, we’re not hiring anyone at the moment. As you can see, things have been... kind of rough these past few weeks.”
“No, I just want to help out.” she tells him. “Volunteer.”
“Well, we could always use more of them.”
He sticks out his hand.
“I’m Rob.”
She shakes it.
“Lily.”
“Welcome aboard Lily.”
The raps at the door gets Emma’s attention.
“You wanted to show me something?” Lily asks her.
“Yeah.”
She steps into the bedroom as Emma moves away from her computer’s screen, letting Lily take a peek. She presses the spacebar on her keyboard, unpausing the YouTube video of the hostage situation at PopCon.
“That’s us!”
Lily and Emma watch the two hooded figures take care of the hostage taker, save all those lives, get swarmed by the attendees. Luckily the video didn’t get a good look at their faces. Still, it’s out there for the world to see.
“Do you think Agent Harpy was right, that she could protect us from all of this? This exposure?” Emma asks her partner in crime.
“You know what? I don’t think we’ll need protection. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Yeah, maybe. All these commentators don’t think we can though.”
Emma quickly scrolls through the list of negative comments left underneath the video, many of them threatening harm to the two women. Lily scoffs at them.
“Well, they’re idiots. All of them.”
Emma laughs.
“Yeah. Yeah they are.”
She moves her pointer to close the video.
Click.
About The Author
H. J. Rethuan hails from the sunny city of Perth, Western Australia. A long time writer, his first short novel, the romantic thriller “The Runaway Assassin”, was released in May 2013.
Other Books and Short Stories by H.J. Rethuan
The Runaway Assassin
The Man From China The Sky Is Falling
Rocket Rider Two Killers The Hunt For The Demon God Warrior
The Girl Between The Blooms The Young Designer
Gorgeous! The Girl Who Flies Drones
Dragons & Machine Guns Give Me All the Sad Things
The Commander of Time and Space Under A Broken Sky
The Open Your Eyes Series
Open Your Eyes Blink
Con Girls Broken City
For more information, visit
hjrethuan.com
Open Your Eyes (Book 3): Con Girls Page 3