The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (4 page)

Leticia let out a huff. “Is this from Saudi
Arabia too?” She gestured towards the pendant in Anya’s hand.

“
Yes,” stated Nin. Another
lie.

Anya nodded sullenly, feeling like she was
being bullied. “My dad got me that bracelet,” she muttered, eyeing
the accessory. It was still in Dresan’s hand. “I’d like it
back.”

Dresan approached, standing beside Nin and
Tavia. “He could get you another one,” Dresan said,
matter-of-factly.

Anya licked her upper lip. She was getting
tired of talking. Her lips felt dry and chapped. She’d leave Nin
the goblet, if that was what he wanted. The bracelet meant more to
her.

“
He’s on the run,” she
replied in the same tone as Dresan.

“
Did he murder someone?”
Tavia was interested to know more.

Anya shook her head, somewhat despondently.
“He was framed for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“
Dre,” Nin said, holding a
hand out for the bracelet.
Enough’s
enough.
He went forward so gently, that
Anya didn’t retaliate when he reached for his pendant. He lowered
Anya’s bracelet onto her hand. It was this moment when Nin knew,
beyond all doubt that he had found the right person for the
radical, high-risk mission the Elven trio was about to
undergo.

“
Did you secretly take
anything else, when our backs were turned?” Nin turned his head a
little towards Tavia and Dresan, not taking his eyes off
Anya.

Anya sighed, but took her time answering.
She liked keeping people on their toes, and being paid attention.
She looked at her feet for a couple of moments before answering
Nin. “Yeah. I stole your heart, when you were not looking.”

Or maybe Leticia
did,
Anya thought to herself. She looked
over at Tavia.
Maybe this will set things
off between Nin and his girlfriend.
Anya
and Leticia could then get away from the scene on their trusty
motorbikes. Anya didn’t know that Nin and Tavia were actually
cousins.

“
Is that so?” Nin’s voice
resonated with astonishment. “Stealing my heart,” his voice seemed
to say, “now that would be a hard item to replace.”

Anya studied Tavia’s face. Tavia looked more
impressed than aggravated. Anya didn’t think a squabble was going
to ensue.

“
I was just kidding.” Anya
put her cherished bracelet back on the same time that Nin tied the
cord around his neck. “I wonder what you want from us,” Anya added.
“You could have just attacked us and run off with the golden cup,
if you wanted it that badly.”

A look of fear flickered across Leticia’s
face—and Anya felt like kicking herself for speaking her mind so
freely. Especially since Leticia and she weren’t the ones with
power handguns and ammunition.

“
Instead,” Anya continued,
hoping to buy some time, in case Nin did decide to turn his pistol
on them, “you go to such great, elaborate lengths to…get us
to…talk.” She looked at the three figures staring back at she and
Leticia. Suddenly, it seemed clear. “Are you thieves,
too?”

Nin smiled wryly at Anya. She was cognizant
as she was competent.

He felt that Anya and Leticia had lied a lot
less than he had. He decided to give the policy of honesty a
shot.

“
The goblet you found,” he
said slowly. “It’s Elven.”

Dresan clasped his hands in front of him.
Tavia assumed the same formal pose, looking quite regal, in a
trendy kind of way.

“
It belonged to an Elven
huntress,” Nin went on, “who lost the goblet, in a bet to a human
prince. Who I assume came to be known as ‘King John.’” He left out
the part that the huntress, Elena, was one of his ancestors. Nin
realized that thieving and gambling ways ran in the family, more
than anyone in his family actually cared to admit.

Anya and Leticia were trying to decode what
Nin had just said.

“
Elven?” Anya’s voice
sounded wobbly and unsteady.

“
Like, the elves in,
Lord of the Rings
?”
Leticia quipped.

“
Here we go,” Tavia
remarked. She decided to sit on one of the wooden boards in between
the train tracks, where she proceeded to admire her lacquered
fingernails and the tattoo design on her hand. At least Anya and
Leticia didn’t think of elves as the Santa-type variety, which the
real elves preferred to refer to as ‘pixies’.

Nin bobbed his head from side to side.
Information on the Elven race was semi-accurate, at best.

“
W…” Anya was stuck between
asking “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when.”

“
We know because: we’re
elves.” Nin felt a knot form in his gut. He had long ago been
warned about entrusting humans. Contradictorily, he also felt as if
a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Anya gave something between a gasp and
cackle. “For real?” She shook her head quickly from side to side,
like she wasn’t sure if she was in the dreamscape of a deep
slumber.

“
Yep.” Nin slipped his
hands into his pockets. He walked a few paces away, and hopped onto
one of the ridges that lined the train tracks, carefully balancing
as he took small steps forward. He was just killing time as he let
the news sink in.

“
Oh, my God,” Leticia
exclaimed. She pointed a finger at Dresan. “Your ears—I wasn’t
sure, but…”

Dresan tucked his hair back behind his ears.
He could still pass off as human—if you chose to overlook the
slightly pointed ears.

Anya and Leticia looked at Tavia, who lifted
her hair up. Her ears looked normal, until she detached something
from the upper portions.

“
Prosthetics,” she said,
holding the pieces out. They were the exact same color as her ivory
skin. “Something like contact lenses. I hate wearing them
though.”

Nin seemed rather amused, as he observed the
reactions of the two human girls, continuing with his agile
balancing act, and softly whistling a melodic, almost hypnotic,
tune all the time.

Anya thought the trio—Nin, Tavia, and
Dresan—did look taller and leaner than the average human. They all
had exquisitely fine features too: high cheekbones, delicate chins,
fine noses. While Nin’s hair still hid his ears, Anya noticed that
he barely left any footprints in the soft sand, when he jumped off
the tracks and landed on the dirt ground.

Dresan took a quick look around to make sure
they weren’t under surveillance. The next generation of
audio/motion-detector devices had been installed around the train
tracks, just a few days earlier. He and Tavia had just manipulated
and debugged them, along with some compact mobile sentinels that
traveled up and down the street tracking action and human movement.
Anya and Leticia didn’t know it, but they could’ve been followed
from the inner heart of the city earlier, if the elves hadn’t
tweaked some of the detector devices.

Dresan wrapped his beige coat tighter around
him, hands in his pockets, slightly hunched over. “Do you know
of…The Velvet Underground?”

“
No, they don’t,” Nin
replied flatly, although the question was directed at Anya and
Leticia.

“
There’s a rock band called
The Velvet Underground,” Leticia started. She had a huge MP3
collection, and knew a wide range of bands and musicians. “And a
club at—”

“
Not the band.” Tavia
lifted an eyebrow. “Not the club, either.”

Anya shook her head again, mouth slightly
open. Things were getting bizarre.

“
Humans and elves have a
history.” Nin was pensive. “They had a falling out several
centuries ago—it was a fight between art and science, essentially.
By art, what I really mean is imagination, and magic.”

Science had clearly won, on the human side
at least. Anya wondered how that had affected the elves.

“
Anyway, we were going to
do a little…filching, of our own,” Nin continued in a low voice and
at a quick pace. The girls had to strain to listen. “We’re trying
to find the missing piece of a parchment. We might have the right
location.” Nin pictured it in his mind. “Breaking in is another
story.”

“
Where is your…location?”
Leticia asked, twiddling her fingers nervously.

Nin started heading off to the north, away
from the church and train tracks. Tavia and Dresan followed suit,
without a word.

“
Where’re you going?” Anya
called out. She turned—the motorbikes were still parked where she
and Leticia had left them.

Nin faced them. Strands of his hair whipped
across his face in the cool breeze that was blowing. His pose gave
the impression he was a wild child.

“
The Velvet Underground.
It’s what we call our…underground network. All our stuff is there.”
He had a skip in his step as he turned back, like he was having fun
with all this. “Come on.”

Anya and Leticia followed the so-called
“Elven” trio. Curiosity always got the better of them.

Chapter 3:

Nin continued on foot at a steady pace. Each
stride was taking Anya and Leticia further away from the stone
church, and closer to the “network” Nin had to show them.

“
Are we there yet?” Anya
got her answer when they reached the end of the train tracks, which
stopped abruptly. Anya and Leticia waited, looking out for any sign
of an entrance which led underground.

Nin crept over to a birch tree, and went
around it. Nin lifted up his wrist device, and punched in a few
numbers, before holding it to the surface of a pale strip of bark
on the tree.

Anya gasped and took a step back when the
front of the tree swung open, to reveal a dim, narrow staircase
that spiraled downwards. Tavia stepped in first, and then Dresan.
Nin lifted a hand out towards Anya and Leticia, then to the
staircase, with his palm facing upwards.

“
You’ll get through, don’t
worry,” Nin let Leticia know, when she put a leg in first, before
turning her body sideways to enter. The trunk of the birch tree
swayed more to the skinny side.

Nin shut the door behind him once his guests
had followed his directions.

Tavia and Dresan wore similar pendants as
the one Nin had around his neck. The pendants lit up the otherwise
pitch-black passageway. Anya and Leticia were in awe of the white
glow emanating from the crystals, and silently grateful for it.
Without this guiding light, they would never be able to keep up
with their newfound, intriguing Elven associates.

“
Hey.” Anya turned back
slightly, to face Nin. He was behind her, the last in line. “How
come the orb’s not shining?” She pointed to the globe in her right
pocket, which Nin had earlier prevented from shattering into a
million pieces.

“
It isn’t Elven,” Nin
replied with a smile, so radiant that it lit up his beautiful face
better than any crystal ever could.

“
You mean, yours isn’t…”
Anya nearly tripped on one of the stairs. Nin caught her elbow from
the back, to steady her. “Yours isn’t from Saudi Arabia,” she said
meekly, almost in a whisper. She didn’t want him to think she was a
klutz. She wondered if he knew how much she liked it when he held
her elbow—with a light, firm touch.

“
No, it’s not,” Nin
laughed, but not in a cruel way. “I’m not an art student either.
And Tavia’s my cousin.”

Nin couldn’t precisely recall what other
facts he had twisted. He thought those were the most important ones
that could do with some clarification. Tavia gave a little wave,
when Nin called out her name.

Anya paused for a moment, frowning slightly.
“Is Nin even your real name?” Her tone revealed a hint of
impatience.

Nin nodded. “It’s short for
Ithilnin.”
Prince of Helli’sandur,
he conveniently left out. He’d leave his past
behind him, for the moment.

“
What’s that
mean?”

Nin was a little surprised to be asked the
question, but he satisfied Anya’s inquisitiveness. “It means, ‘the
moon’s reflection upon the water’s surface.’ I was born during a
full moon.”

“
That’s so cool,” said
Anya, a little wistfully. “I wish I had an equally lyrical
name.”

Nin took a couple of steps down, before
turning back to her. “So…who’s the other person in your life?”

“
What other person?” Anya
felt a strange, instinctive pull towards Nin. He was just so nice,
though she couldn’t really say she knew him all that well as a
person.
Maybe Leticia’s right—maybe he’s
put a charm on me.

“‘
Anya’ means
‘inexhaustibleness’ or ‘other person’ in Sanskrit, the classical
literary language of India,” Nin recited, sounding like a
linguistics professor. “The Russian meaning of the name is
‘gracious’.” He looked her straight in the face before asking,
“So…are you all three?”

Anya couldn’t lie to him. She was trying
hard not to lose herself in his lovely violet eyes. “I don’t have
‘another’ person…in my life.” She wasn’t entirely sure if she was
gracious, in the context of social situations—fine manners and
social graces weren’t exactly her forte.

Do you…have an ‘other’
person?
she almost asked Nin.

But the group had just reached the bottom of
the staircase.

Tavia placed her palm on a gold leaf imprint
on the wall. Anya and Leticia found themselves standing in a large,
open space adorned with intricately carved wooden furniture, lit by
a warm orange glow. The charming and cozy feel to it was a stark
difference from the clashing styles of present-day contemporary
minimalism and anti-establishment grunge, which made up Anya and
Leticia’s cramped apartment unit.