The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (17 page)

Nin fumbled behind the closed door to get
his crystal light pendant out. Sensing his difficulty, Anya
gingerly fished her pendant out from under her shirt. She had been
hesitant to use it until now, and was ecstatic to find it worked
exactly as Nin’s did that very first time she had seen it in the
passageway, which led down to the Velvet Underground.

“
Here’s the vault.” Nin
moved aside some discarded CPUs, and a stack of boxes behind that,
to reveal a small plain door. What seemed like a built-in cupboard
in a depression in the wall, with some jackets and tools casually
strewn about, actually hid a passage. Nin and Anya squeezed in
through the gap, and headed down a steep stepladder.

Nin turned around almost as soon as he set
his foot upon the ground. They were close—so close—closer than
they’d ever been, to locating the final parchment piece.

Anya’s eyes widened when they stood before
the hexagonal vault. The sensor system was, indeed, on. Red lines
criss-crossed through the spaces in between the glass cabinets
which held the treasured items of Varian Gilbreth’s private
collection.

“
You can take a rest,” Nin
told Anya, as he studied the room, scrutinizing the criss-cross
pattern of the sensors. “I’ll do this part.” He held out his hand
for the second key, which would unlock the cabinet of medieval
parchments. Then he opened the front cover of his wrist device, and
showed Anya a jagged thick piece of ancient-looking paper inside.
“I’ve got a fake replacement too.”

Anya nodded, perplexingly. Elves were
skilled in covering their tracks. She handed him the second
key.

“
I dare you…” Anya said in
a low, mischievous tone, “to get to the cabinet in fifteen
seconds.” It was only fair, since she had been allocated that
amount of time to secure the two keys. She was standing up close to
Nin, close enough to tiptoe for another enticing kiss that’d sweep
her off her feet.

Nin seemed to know just what she had on her
mind. But he decided to let her wait. He cracked his knuckles and
relaxed the tension from his neck muscles.

“
All right,” he remarked,
pointing to the glass cabinet at the end of the room. It was the
one circled on the third map Anya had studied, the one with the
accompanying text, “X MARKS THE SPOT: Medieval parchment pieces,
HERE.”

Anya folded her arms in front of her, as Nin
took a daring backbend over the first red sensor line, balancing on
one arm before he flipped over onto his feet. Anya covered her eyes
when he reached the center, and came within a hair’s breadth of one
of the sensor lines at his chin level. Acrobatic, slinky Ithilnin
made an art form out of getting through the sensor obstacle course
successfully, jumping over, sliding under, and bending (contorting,
almost) with equal dexterity, graceful as a cat.

He put his hands up when he made it to the
glass cabinet—Anya didn’t know whether he had made it in fifteen
seconds. She was so completely mesmerized by his movements that she
had forgotten to time him. All she knew was that he made what must
have been exceedingly complex look deceptively easy.

Anya gave him a silent round of applause,
with deep admiration and sincerity. He simply smiled. As he turned
his attention to the parchment pieces in the glass cabinet, Anya
cautiously edged around the room, dodging the sensor lines, which
seemed to be pointing in all directions.

There were pictures hanging on the wall, and
one in particular caught her attention. It was a framed photo of
Varian Gilbreth, founder of The Gilbreth Institute, standing in a
group in front of an archaeological find: a morbid and strange
fantasy lineup of high society medieval folks mingling with
skeletons. The attire of the medieval individuals showed their high
status. Some of them wore royal robes, bejeweled rings on their
fingers, and an all-round uppity kind of expression on their
faces.

One of the young men standing in the group
looked strangely familiar.

Anya went over and read the small golden
plaque at the bottom of the framed photo. It read:

The Dance of Death, medieval fresco,
Croatia.

The Dance of Death is wholly consistent with
the medieval acknowledgement of death and life as a continuum. The
origin of the theme dates from a thirteenth-century legend of three
young men who confront themselves as three corpses one day while
out hunting. It is elaborated here in a parade of people of society
(note the priest, king, and scholar) mingling with skeletons,
highlighting the fleeting nature of their mortal lives and vain
pleasures.

Standing in front, from left to right:
Marcia Anne Starr, Karen Yap, Varian Gilbreth, Samuel Lycata.

“
Samuel Lycata…” Anya
muttered, leaning her neck forward for a better look.

She recognized the last name, and then the
face, as Julius’s dad. The photo was taken many years ago, but she
could definitely see some resemblance to both Lycatas in recent
times. What was the senior Lycata doing in front of a medieval
fresco, standing next to the well-rumored to be reclusive and
mentally unstable Gilbreth, like they were the best of friends? Was
this how Julius’s dad spent his vacation time?

Anya had seen Samuel Lycata in person just
once, when he was a guest speaker at UZZO, University of Zouk, Zone
One. He had given a motivational talk on setting and achieving
one’s goals. He was the CEO of Xenith, one of the four
international pharmaceutical megacorporations, which raked in
billions of dollars each year.

A cold shudder went through Anya, when she
turned back to check if Nin had located the parchment piece he was
looking for. For a moment, she envisioned him as a skeleton, almost
like she was stuck in an episode of lucid dreaming.

Anya didn’t know if it had anything to do
with the skeleton king painting she had seen in The Velvet
Underground, or the Dance of Death fresco, which was still fresh in
her mind. Maybe the two paintings had no connection whatsoever. But
then again, maybe they did. Anya was beginning to think anything
was possible, judging from all she had been exposed to in the past
few hours.

Anya was more concerned with how weak Nin
looked, as he leaned against the glass cabinet, almost ready to
keel over and collapse onto the ground. A sensor line was right
behind the back of his neck—one distracted step backwards could
cost them their lives, if Varian Gilbreth turned out to be as
ruthless as he was paranoid.

“
Are you okay?” she called
out. She stared nervously at the range of security cameras in the
room. They were similar to the round, black globule in the corner
of the wall at the Omega building’s backdoor.

She made her away over to Nin when he didn’t
respond. She crawled through and over the sensor lines with much
difficulty and caution.

“
Are you just trying to see
how slow I am?” Anya called out again, in a staccato
half-laugh.

Nin could be a joker at times, and Anya
would’ve given him a prize if he was playing a trick on her right
then. She saw his hands going up to his temples, as he rubbed the
sides of his forehead, as a person having a bad case of migraine
would. She draped an arm over Nin’s shoulder once she got to him.
“What’s the matter?”

Nin’s breathing turned raspy for a moment,
before he got it under control. He turned around, leaning slightly
against Anya for some support, as he hit a button on his wrist
device. A violet ray of light shone from the screen, and he
positioned his arm in front of him, so that the ray of light
flooded over the nearest sensor line.

His wrist device beeped a few times in
succession softly, indicating a substance in the sensor line. Anya
gaped at what the violet light revealed: tiny particles floating
within each red sensor.

“
Pure iron,” Nin told her,
sounding like all the air had been knocked out of his lungs. He
peered at the tiny particles, going up so close that it made Anya
fear for his safety. The red hue of the sensor gave his eyes a
similarly reddish tint. “I’m staring at death in the
eye.”

All the very real images of death were
making Anya very uncomfortable. She wanted to get out of the vault,
fast—once they’d gotten what they came for.

“
Pure iron kills elves,”
Anya said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. What she had
researched was true, then. “You need to get out of
here.”

Nin was fighting the grogginess. “At least
we know Varian Gilbreth believes in elves,” he pointed out. Then he
lifted a finger and pointed towards a jagged parchment piece inside
the glass cabinet, hidden under a handful of others. “That’s the
one we want. I recognize the painting and style of the script.”

“
Don’t you dare die on me,
Prince Ithilnin of Helli’sandur,” Anya heard herself saying. Anya
wasn’t sure how the pure iron needed to work, in order to be
deadly. For the first time since they’d entered the building, she
felt an overwhelming, unfounded sense of dread and terror.
Everything she knew was going to come to an end, overnight, like a
candle snuffed out in the middle of the night.

Nin shook his head, like a half-awake drunk
would. “It’s lethal once it enters the bloodstream…right now it’s
just…draining my energy…”

He handed Anya the fake parchment piece from
his wrist device, as she took back the second key from him, and
opened the sliding glass door. She carefully made the switch and
let Nin have a look at the parchment piece he had pointed out.

“
Yes…” he muttered to
himself. He saw the title of the poem, and finally had the missing
word to the letter ‘i’ that had plagued him for so long.

Anya stared at the parchment, which was
unreadable to her. “What does it say?”

Nin was scanning through the three lines of
the poem, linking the words to what he knew of the parchment
already. “Something very, very deep.” The implications were
tremendous, and he tried to make sense of it, wondering what to do
now that he had all three pieces which made up the entire poem on
the parchment. “The title’s…”

Chapter 11:

Suddenly, all the overhead lights in the
vault went off. The red sensor lines stayed on. They cut eerily
across the darkened room, like streaks of blood and impending
doom.

Anya held onto Nin out of sheer terror—both
their hands were lukewarm to each other’s touch, because both their
bodies were ice-cold.

Nin had placed the parchment in a plastic
sleeve, which he prudently stored in his wrist device. He had
gotten what they had come for—now came the hard part of retracing
their steps and making a clean getaway.

They heard a voice coming on outside:
“Lockdown activated.” It was the same mechanical, automated voice
as before.

“
That’s supposed to happen
just once,” Nin uttered to Anya, as he started guiding her back to
where they had entered the vault. He tried tuning in to Dresan over
the earpiece, but could only hear crackling feedback.

* * *

Outside the janitor’s room, Tavia watched as
the head guard rushed out to another area in the Omega unit, where
all the guards on duty were assembling. Her earlier orders from Nin
were to wait for Dresan’s signal to her, for yet another
fingernail-tapping distraction, once Anya and Nin were ready to
emerge from the secret vault.

She had to move at lightning speed, when the
head guard became intent on seeking out the source of the metallic
clinking. She was more than happy to see him go.

Tavia fiddled with her earpiece, wondering
if the annoying static had something to do with the unexpected
second fake lockdown activation. She tapped the earpiece a few
times, then pressed it harder against her ear. Was there a message
for her? Had she missed something?

Just then, she heard someone whisper,
“Tavia!” The voice was coming from somewhere in front.

The only available light source came from
the moon outside. Tavia didn’t want to bring out her crystal
pendant, to see better in the dark. The flash of bright light might
attract unwanted attention from a guard at another area in the
building, that was out of her immediate line of sight.

“
Nin,” she hissed,
tentatively. “Is that you?”

She peered into the open space in front. She
was to follow his orders, so Nin said. His orders were to go, if he
and Anya got stuck behind. But Tavia felt she couldn’t do
that—she’d do her best to help, if they did get into some kind of
trouble.

“
Nin…” she called out
again, under her breath, as she lurked in the shadows. She went
right up to the edge of the corridor, where Nin and Anya had been
just moments before they had entered the janitor’s room.

A hand came out of nowhere, and went over
Tavia’s mouth. She kicked and struggled—nailing somebody, or
something, in the ribs—but all the strength from her body ebbed
away in two seconds flat.

Everything went black.

* * *

Anya could hear the main power supplies
shutting off, one by one, throughout the Omega unit. Each sounded
more and more foreboding, signaling that time was running out. Each
hum of the power supply shutting down echoed the nervous thump in
her heart.

She wanted to ask Nin what was going on, but
decided not to distract him from getting through the red sensor
lines. Relying on their crystal pendants for some light, they
engaged each other in a dance in the dark, as they helped each
other dodge the sensors. Nin helped Anya with her balance, while
Anya looked out for any sensor lines that Nin might have missed, as
a result of his compromised faculty of concentration.