by Simon Archer
“Are we sure they even know?” Clem asked, pointing at the host who was still blabbing away about all the things she wanted the viewers to buy straight away. “I mean, those guys back on the ship could’ve just recognized us from the show.”
“I don’t know,” I said, furrowing my brows together as I considered this. “It seemed like more than just that to me. But it could go either way. It’s beside the point, anyway. We need to act like they’re looking for us. That’s the safest option.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Clem said. “But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
The screen panned to advertisements, and then back to Termina, where the cameras panned to several aerial shots of different streets throughout the city, all completely barren and empty.
“Wow,” Lin said as her jaw dropped open. “It’s still like this? Even after all this time?”
“That’s better than the alternative,” I said as I continued to watch the grim scene.
“Which is?” Clem asked.
“People taking to the streets, losing all faith in TelCorp and the Parliament,” I said. “It’s far better to keep people cooped up safely at home then having them trying to take down TelCorp and the government when Termina needs both more than ever.”
“You really think it could get that bad?” Clem asked.
“I’m surprised that it hasn’t already,” I said, casting him a cursory glance. “Aren’t you? I was expecting so much worse than this. Semra can handle a bunch of reporters on her own. But a full-on mutiny in the middle of a global crisis? Yeah, that’s not going to go over well. I hope it stays this way for a while.”
“I guess you’re right,” Clem said glumly.
“Oooh, I found drinks,” Kinley said with a grin, pulling several liquor bottles out of a cabinet under the desk.
“Excellent,” I said, taking one from her as she passed them around.
“Can we pay for these?” Malthe asked.
“Who cares?” Kinley shrugged, tossing back one of the bottles and taking a long swig. “We’re robbing them in the morning, anyway.”
“I guess that’s true,” Malthe said.
We spent the rest of the evening joking around and watching the scenes from Termina on the TV thing. Nothing more of note happened, but we had a decent time. It was a nice, though brief, reprieve from the frightening and hectic events of the day.
I didn’t sleep well at all, tossing and turning all night, and judging by the rest of my team’s movements in the small room we shared, they didn’t fare any better.
So I lay awake staring at the ceiling, wondering about this strange new world we’d found ourselves in and what we would find in it. And should we reclaim it for ourselves, I wondered how and where we would find our place in it all after all this time away.
Finally, I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Cindra breathing rhythmically beside me, calming me and sending me off into the world of dreams and spirits.
It had been a strange day. Tomorrow would be an even stranger one. I just hoped we would all survive to see its end. Even more, I hoped we would be back at sea at this time the following night. I definitely slept better there.
19
We rose early the next morning to get out and swipe some money from the hotel lobby before anyone else got up. It had been a restless night, and I was anticipating an even more restless day ahead.
“So, what’s the plan?” Malthe asked when we’d congregated back by the couch in our suite, wiping some sleep out of his eyes groggily.
“There’s a safe downstairs,” Lin said. “I saw that guy behind the desk put the money there when we gave it to him.”
“Well, how are we gonna get him to give it to us, then?” Clem asked.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing we have these now,” I said, pulling the gun I had taken from one of the shippers out of my pocket.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kira said, balking at the weapon. “That’s not exactly keeping a low profile, Nic.”
“No, it’s not,” I admitted. “But you all said yourselves that this seems like a high crime area. And we’re getting unfamiliar faces, anyway. And we need the money, so unless anyone else has a better idea…?”
I waited around for someone to offer one up, but no new ideas came, and everyone remained silent.
“I figured,” I sighed after a few moments of silence, putting the gun back in my pocket. “A flat our armed robbery it is, then. And by the time the guy gets around to calling the police, we’ll hopefully be long gone.”
“Where are we going after that, then?” Kinley asked. “It’s not like we can just call an air car or whatever. We’ll be recognized.”
“There’s an abandoned dry cleaner down the street,” Lin suggested. “I saw that they went out of business recently, and no one’s taken over the building yet. That could be a good place to hide out for a little while and make sure we get our new faces.”
“That’s as good an idea as any,” I said with a shrug. “We just need to make sure no one notices us going in there.”
“I think I have a way of getting around that,” Malthe said. “So right after the robbery, a couple of us can make it in the other direction and act like we’re going somewhere else. We can even drop a clue, let on to the guy working in the lobby that we’re headed down to the docks or something like that, so the police go in another direction. Then the rest of us can loop back and join you in the abandoned building.”
“Good thinking,” I said, clapping Malthe on the shoulder gratefully. “Let’s head down, then. Cindra, Kinley, and Clem, how about you guys make the run for it? I’ll drop the hint. Then we’ll break off and meet up in a few.”
“Will do,” Clem said with a nod.
And with that, we put on our fake holographic faces and headed downstairs. It was still early enough that the lobby was empty but for the same worker who’d checked us in the night before. He looked about half asleep, which was a good omen.
I crept up to him, pulling the gun back out of my pocket. Not that I’d ever actually shoot the guy, I just needed him to think that I would.
I pressed it to his right temple, but he still didn’t seem to notice us.
“Can we just open it without waking him?” Kira hissed in a fake accented voice in case the clerk heard.
“No, I saw that he needed to do an eye scan to open it,” Lin hissed back, also in an accent.
The man’s eyes fluttered open, and then when he registered who we were and what we were doing, he nearly jumped out of his chair before thinking better of it since I had a gun pressed to his head.
“Wha… what do you want?” he stammered, his eyes wide as he looked up at me. “Money?”
“You read my mind,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Okay, okay,” he said, whipping his head around as he tried to figure out what to do. “Um, I’m going to need to move to get it, is that okay?”
“Just so long as I move with you,” I said, hopping over the desk to stand next to him as he clambered over to a steel safe in the corner. He did the eye scan, and it clicked open.
“How much do you need?” he asked, his voice trembling with fear.
“All of it,” I said.
“All of it?” he repeated, and I could tell from his expression that he was very worried about losing his job over this.
“You’ll lose your life if you don’t,” I growled, pressing the barrel of the gun against his skin as a reminder.
“O-okay,” he stammered. “All of it, then.” He pulled a pillowcase off a stack of bed linens and piled all the contents of the safe inside of it. I didn’t know much about this place’s money, but it certainly seemed like a lot.
“Thanks, man,” I said when he handed it to me. “You’ll be glad you cooperated.” I gave him one last menacing look and tossed the pillowcase to Clem.
“We’ll stay here and watch him like we planned,” I told him. “We’ll meet you all down at the docks. Then on to the ne
xt continent.”
“See you soon, chief,” Clem said, saluting me, and then he, Cindra, and Kinley went running off with the money.
“Now, I’m going to stand here and count to one hundred,” I told the clerk who was now quivering and in tears on the floor by the safe, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the barrel of my gun. “And then all but one of us are going to leave. And then I’m going to count to one thousand. I’d suggest you do the same because if you so much as move an inch before you finished, my friend here will blow your head off.” I pointed at Malthe, who blinked at me and then collected himself.
“Right,” he said, nodding.
“Now, close your eyes and start counting,” I ordered the clerk. He did, and so did I, out loud so that he knew I was still there.
I jerked my chin as I counted to indicate that everyone except for Malthe should go stake out the abandoned building. They did so, though reluctantly.
Finally, when I reached one hundred, I lowered my gun and walked toward the door, waving for Malthe to replace me next to the clerk. He did so.
“I’m starting over at one,” I told the clerk who was sobbing now. “You’re going to want to count to a thousand now, and don’t move, or my friend will blow your brains out.”
I counted out loud as I walked away, making my voice sound softer and softer as I went so the clerk would think I had gone further than I really had. Then, I waved Malthe over to me, pressing a finger to my lips to indicate that he should be very quiet.
Once we were both outside, we made a break for it, running as fast as we could across the pavement and toward the abandoned building that Lin had pointed out to us.
When we got there, the rest of our team was already inside, to my relief. The building was just one giant room filled with old broken down washing machines and driers.
“How’d it go?” Clem asked.
“He might just be stupid enough to think Malthe’s still there,” I said. “And he’s definitely stupid enough to fall for the whole docks thing, too.”
“Good,” Lin said. “I’ve counted up all the money, and we’ve got more than enough to last us for a while, based on my understanding of the currency and pricing here.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Do all the continents use the same currency?”
“I think so,” she said. “Or if they don’t, it’s easy enough to exchange.”
“Good,” I said. “So Malthe, can you give us new faces again?”
“Sure can,” he said with a grin. “Just hand over your bracelets.” He held out his hands as we turned them over, then sat down and got to work again like he had back in the ship, using the contents of his bag that he’d brought with him from Termina. The blinds were drawn so no one could see us through the windows, though it was still early, and I hadn’t seen anyone else out and about yet when Malthe and I left the motel.
“Look!” Kira cried, and I whipped my head around to make sure she was okay. “There’s all this dry cleaning still here! We can wear these clothes.”
“Oh, thank God,” Lin sighed. “I was damn worried about sporting that motel logo all over the place. Not to mention, the clothes were just downright ugly.”
We all laughed nervously as Kira crossed over to where she’d seen the clothes, began pulling garments out, and passing them around for us to try on. I got a casual suit that seemed to fit okay, and everyone else got similar clothing for themselves, so no one looked too out of step with one another since we’d be traveling in a group.
“Ah, I’ve got it!” Malthe cried once we were all dressed except for him. “Here, try these.” He eagerly passed the bracelets back out to us.
I put mine on quickly and tapped twice.
“Do I look any different?” I asked, looking across at Cindra, who was just pressing her own bracelet to her wrist.
“Dashing as always,” she grinned back at me. “But yes, you’re blonde now, with green eyes and a beard.” I pressed my fingers to my face, but couldn’t feel any stubble. But then again, it was a hologram, so that didn’t mean much of anything.
Then, the others tapped their own bracelets twice and transformed themselves. They were all different now, different from what they looked like themselves and from the first set of holographic disguises.
“Good,” I said, giving a curt nod. “You’ve done it again, Malthe. Now let’s get out of here. Where to next?”
“The ocean liner doesn’t leave until tonight,” the hacker reminded us. “So we’ve got some time to kill. I was thinking… Late last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got on that computer again. I found out more about this Tibor Enterprises, as Achilles called it.”
“And?” I asked eagerly, taking a step toward him. “What did you find out?”
“I couldn’t find much,” Malthe admitted. “But I did find some. The whole operation seems kind of shady. It’s a private company, but it contracts out to the government a lot, it seems. But there’s something more… something off about the whole thing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, still on the edge of my metaphorical seat.
“Well, I took a look at their investment portfolio and all that, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that they only contract out to the government, even though that’s the only client that they’ve publicly acknowledged. It seems like they must do more, though, to make that much money. And some of it doesn’t seem to be earmarked properly. It’s just all kind of weird.”
“Okay…” I said. “So, what are you thinking?”
“I think I need more information than I can find on this Internet thing,” Malthe said, shaking his head. “I don’t dare try to dig deeper by trying to find some kind of dark web or anything else like that, just in case someone finds out who we are.
“Okay, so how do we find it?” Clem asked.
“I think they have a base of operations here,” Malthe said. “I thought we could go try to check it out. It seems like they have a shop of some kind full of Termina goods and shit like that. We might not find anything here, but I figured it could be worth a shot.”
“Okay, let’s do that,” I agreed. “Where is it?”
“Here, I wrote down the address on a notepad from the motel,” Malthe said, digging around in his pockets to find a crumpled up piece of paper. Lin took it from him and put on her thinking face.
“I was looking at a map last night,” she said. “I think this is nearish to the docks where we’ll need to get on the ocean liner.”
“Oh good,” Kira said. “That’s easy.”
“Don’t speak so soon,” Kinley said, shooting her a sharp look. “It’s never as easy as it looks.”
“Fair enough,” I laughed. “We’ll probably need to find a ride, then. Let’s just head out the back door and try and get a hold of a driver.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Cindra said, just as police sirens began to sound off in the distance.
“Looks like that guy finally got around to calling the police,” I said, arching an eyebrow at the noise. “Took him a while.”
“He either counts to a thousand really, really slow, or he waited way longer than he had to,” Malthe said.
“Eh, he was a dweeb,” I said. “Probably cowered in the corner until a few minutes ago, when he finally realized that we were all gone.”
“Back door it is, then,” Lin said as the sirens drew closer.
So we crept out the back door and on to the next block over. There were a few more people out and about now, which was reassuring.
The seven of us continued to walk down the block as the sirens drew even closer and then stopped a bit behind us.
“Sounds like they got to the motel,” Cindra muttered.
“That’s good,” I said. “We’ve got a decent head start. It’ll be ages before they even realize we’re not at the docks if they even figure it out then. It’s been so long they might just write it off as a lost cause at this point.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Kinley muttered.
“Looks exactly like how we flag down air cars,” Clem said, following my gaze.
“Yeah, it does,” I said, taking a step out into the street and holding up my arm similarly. Several of the vehicles just zoomed by us, but eventually, one stopped.
“Where to?” the driver asked without giving us so much as a second glance.
“This address,” Lin said, reading it out from the crumpled sheet of paper for him.
“Termina fans, huh?” he chuckled. “You’re brave souls for it, in this day and age.”
“I guess so,” I said carefully.
“You know, it’s funny,” the driver continued. “Even though it’s all in the news and everybody’s freaked out and everything, more people than ever have been going to that place. I don’t quite get it myself, but the Termina fever is up more than ever.”
“Really?” I asked, leaning forward. “You don’t say. That is interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” the driver agreed. “I don’t know. I guess people are excited and afraid all at the same time. Things have been boring in this world for a while now, I guess. I think that’s it, really. It’s been a long, long time since the Great Binder Wars, and people are starting to get complacent. They’d like a little thrill, a little fear now. What do you think?”
“I guess that’s kind of what we were thinking,” I said, exchanging a look with Cindra. “We just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“Exactly, that’s exactly it,” the driver cried, pointing at me in the rearview mirror. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. People are scared, but they’re also getting curious. It’s a weird thing. You know, a lot of them have set they hadn’t even paid much attention to the whole Termina craze until recently?”
“Really?” I asked. “You know, you could say that about us, as well. We always knew about the show, but we didn’t start to really watch it regularly until now.”