The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (9 page)

“
What did you title it?”
Leticia asked, looking at him through her lashes.

“
The Benefits of
Biosculpturing.” Julius cleared his throat before adding in a low
voice, “On how a new Bio Sculpture Gel accelerates correction and
recovery of aging skin, with the power of DNA repair
enzymes.”

“
Could I have a
sample?”

Julius leaned forward, and lightly traced
the side of Leticia’s face with the back of a fingernail. “Your
skin’s still smooth.”

Anya looked away for a moment. She knew how
Leticia could shudder at the mere thought of discovering her first
wrinkle.

“
Aced it, I
guess?”

“
Full marks.”

“
Overachiever,” Leticia
concluded, before saying something about not knowing how Julius got
enough sleep.

That seemed to divert the topic of
conversation away from all things Elven, and mythological. Anya
secretly heaved a sigh of relief, then thought of her mother for a
moment.

Maybe Chloe did have it better off than
Julius, in some ways, whose family owned a fourth-generation
multinational company. His family seemed to be the
all-work-and-no-play sorts. Working at a diner was probably less
antagonizing than working at expounding theories, and processing
lab analyses, all day.

Besides, Anya found some of the super-smart
students to be quite dotty, when it came to matters that required
plain old common sense.

Julius was busy during an ad break, texting
a reply on his phone—a GVMT model.

“
We heard those aren’t,
super good,” Anya started, treading carefully. While she had no
need to make any mention of the elves, she had to warn Julius, if
what the elves said about the subliminal powers of the phone were
true. “Our phones run hot, sometimes.”

“
Really? I thought that was
kinda…normal.” Julius flipped the phone around while holding it
with his left hand. “I don’t use it much, though—not when I’ve got
you around.” He put an arm around Leticia’s shoulder, and gave her
a kiss on one cheek.

“
He’s part of the 10%
who
doesn’t
sleep
with their cell phones within an arm’s length.” Leticia’s lazy
smile let Anya know that she’d try to convince him to switch
models, some other time.

“
Rehearsal’s tomorrow,”
Julius murmured. He had co-written the script for
The Lunartics,
a
satirical play on the effects of a full moon, put up by the
University of Zouk City’s senior-year students. He also had a lead
role as a sparkly werewolf. It was the play Anya and Leticia had
gotten reeled into to help.

“
Yep,” Leticia replied.
Anya made no comment. If Leticia realized it coincided with the
scheduled Gilbreth break-in, she made no sign of it.

Julius gave Leticia a kiss on the nose. Then
they started to make out on the couch.

Anya glanced over at the couple, not minding
she was being ignored out of existence. Leticia had a knack for
keeping guys wrapped around her little finger.

Anya would tell Leticia later that she had
no intention of attending the rehearsal, which would begin at
8.15pm. If the break-in was going to happen as planned, Anya wanted
the day off to rest. She was always on the lookout for new and
unique experiences, and enjoyed the whole process of psyching
herself up before any assignments.

Anya leaned against the arm of the sofa, one
elbow propped up by the side of her head. She rubbed the back of
her ear, absent-mindedly, before recalling it was the same spot
that Nin’s lips had gently touched.

“
Until
tomorrow…”

Anya swung around, startled. Anya could’ve
sworn she heard someone whispering in her ear.

Julius and Leticia were still absorbed in
each other—hands going lower—to the sound of a belt unbuckling.

Chapter 5:

A dreamless, uninterrupted night of sleep
passed for Anya London.

She stared at the ceiling when she woke up,
calling to mind the safe location of the envelopes from the “A :
Mizuno” bag. But she decided to doublecheck that they were indeed,
as she had left them.

Anya opened the cabinet in her room, moved
aside a pile of books on the floor, and removed a light switch box
on the wall. It hid a cubbyhole where she and Leticia stashed their
earnings. She realized it was a little bit like Nin’s safe, apart
from the fact that his was hidden in plain sight.

The stash was still there. Anya headed over
to the chin-up bar on her room door, to do some pull-ups. She gazed
out through a crack in the curtains at the police guarding the
vicinity of their apartment. She’d spent so many mornings, dressed
in the black sleeveless tank top she slept in, looking out at the
police with her arms folded across her chest. The police traveled
in saucer-like land vehicle machines on stilts, which kept watch
over the city and its inhabitants. Anya was always on guard when
she gazed upon the police. She’d wonder when she would get
caught.

Anya checked the front door next—Julius’s
tennis shoes weren’t at the entrance. He was no longer in the
apartment. She hadn’t heard him leave, though he’d spent the night
with Leticia in her room. They’d kept Anya awake for a certain
portion of the night.

“
I’m not going to the
rehearsal tonight,” Anya let a blurry-eyed Leticia know, who had
just rolled out of bed and sauntered into the living
room.

Leticia blinked a few times. “Did Nin say
when we’re supposed to meet?”

A text came in on Anya’s cell phone:

Greetings—we’re planning on striking at
midnight :-) Can you & Leticia be @ the stone church earlier?
For a quick rundown :-)

“
They wanna enter The
Gilbreth Institute at midnight,” Anya replied Leticia, flipping the
phone between her palm and fingers. Midnight was fourteen hours
away. “Meeting earlier to go through the details.”

Leticia sat across Anya at the table,
resting her face in her hands. “I thought the rehearsal was on
Thursday.”

It was currently a Tuesday morning.

“
Just tell Julius we had
something at the last minute,” Anya replied, as if the matter was
settled. “Your little brother is in the hospital for,
something-something.”

At the same time, she messaged Nin:

Midnight’s cool :) What time at stone
church?

“
Remember when we did say
that, the other time? When we couldn’t meet Julius and his buddy
for a movie?”

“
Yeah…” Anya thought back
to the incident. “February twenty-fifth. We stole, I mean”—Anya
corrected herself—“returned, a Mayan amulet.” She could still
picture it clearly. The amulet of the ancient civilization was
forged in the shape of a sun, and inlaid with four gems of jade,
sapphire, obsidian, and turquoise.

Leticia nodded. “And Julius bought a huge
teddy-bear, and get-well-soon card, and wanted to visit
Rafael?”

Anya remembered. Julius was very concerned,
and proactive, that way. She wondered if it had anything to do with
the fact that it involved hospitals and medicine. That was his
family business after all.

“
It’s a full dress
rehearsal…” Leticia trailed off. “Does Nin…need me,
there?”

Anya gave a sigh. “Julius needs you
more?”

Leticia raked her fingers through her
tangled, bed head hair. “He’s so excited about it…he likes me there
for support. He’s such a good actor—I keep telling him that.”

Anya thought that Julius would need less
encouragement if he really was a great actor, but she held her
tongue.

“
Julius wanted some help
with translating a Spanish website too, for a charity project. I
don’t know where he finds the time to juggle so much at once.”
Leticia was getting dewy-eyed and lovey-dovey.

Another Tavia,
Anya thought for a moment, before a reply came in
from Nin:

Stone church, 9pm.

Ten hours feels like ten
years,
Anya said to herself. She felt she
had to wait that long for another possible touch of
Nin’s.

“
I’ll go.” Anya stretched
out her arms. “Nin wants to meet at nine. Tell Julius my…mom, went
to the hospital. Tomorrow, I’ll tell him it was just a
scare.”

Anya crossed her fingers that wouldn’t come
true. Chloe had been admitted before, from health problems due to
alcohol poisoning.

Leticia nodded. “Do you need me around?” she
asked Anya. “Would it make you…feel better?” She paused, thinking
it over. “I can meet all of you at The Gilbreth. I should be done
by midnight.”

“
Don’t worry about it.”
Anya didn’t want Leticia to feel bad, although she would have liked
her to be there. If only for moral support. “The less people to see
me sweating over the break-in, the better.”

Leticia laughed. “Just call
or text me if you
really,
really, need my help.”

Just then, Leticia had a call on her cell.
“Jule!”

Anya wondered if she would float away to
“the man in her life,” if she did have one. Leticia would drop all
plans for a date with a boyfriend. People always seemed to be glued
to “the other person” in their life.

While Leticia was chattering and gushing
over the phone, Anya went to her room and brought out a handful of
DVDs from her collection. She glanced at the clock, settling in for
an afternoon of TV-watching and pigging out on ice cream, to get
her mind off what she’d be embarking on in the evening.

* * *

Anya jolted up off the
couch when Lady Lala’s “I Will Survive (Lady L’s
100
^th
Remix)” started blaring—it was the ringtone on her cell
phone’s alarm setting. She had half an hour to meet Nin at the
stone church.

“
Dammit,” Anya cursed. The
ringtone had just interrupted a dream she had been having of Nin.
Something…sweet. Bittersweet.

Anya noticed some leftovers Leticia had left
for her, on the table. A packet of Chinese food—chop suey—along
with a fortune cookie, by the side.

Anya cracked open the cookie first. She read
the message on the slip of paper inside:

A kiss is not a kiss, without the
heart—often, you think of somebody.

Anya gave a wry smile. She hummed a random
tune, as she tried to recall drifts and drabs of her dream, as she
stumbled toward the bathroom to freshen up.

He had been holding her hand. He was
teaching her how to ice-skate. Snow was gently falling in the air
surrounding them, and the trees weren’t bare, but covered with
little silvery leaves, which shivered in the breeze.

“
When the ice dragon
breathes…” Nin said to her, “he breathes ice…”

“
Why don’t I feel cold?”
Anya asked.

Nin looked across the frozen lake they were
standing on, then shyly looked away. “I don’t feel cold
either.”

Anya gazed up at him, a smile forming on her
lips. It made her feel radiant—she could feel it, in the dream,
whilst her human body was asleep—and drawn to Nin. His warmth, his
heart, his…

He turned to her. His gaze fell upon her
lips, his hand resting on the inward curve of her back, as he
leaned in…

Before a bright light caused him to
flinch—Anya raised an arm to shield her eyes against a sudden,
illuminative flare…

She saw an archer in the distance, with a
bow and arrow—the arrowhead was a dull shade of gray—made of
iron—

“
NIN!” she screamed—her
throat felt like it had been lacerated by broken glass—as she
lurched forward, pushing Nin out of the way, who had been the
target of the arrowhead...

And she felt Nin catch her, his eyes wild
and wide open—had the arrow hit her?

Her vision began to blur. Were her eyelids
closing shut, forever?

3…2…

Anya gave a sharp exhale,
snapping herself back to reality. Her heart was thumping, fast. She
felt like she had almost
really
died, and been on the way to crossing over to the
other side.

The Other Side of
Life.
A chill ran through her, as she
recalled the words from one of the poems on the
parchment.

She tried to rationalize. The ice dragon.
What was that about? Had Nin ever said anything about an ice
dragon?

Anya splashed some water on her face, before
scrutinizing her facial features in the mirror. Anything to get her
mind off the eerie end to the dream she had, which had started off
well enough.

She lightly tugged at the sensitive skin,
just below her right eye. There’d always been a fine line there,
which she tried not to bother with most of the time. She applied
some eyeliner—to keep the focus on her eyes, not the fine lines
below.

A dream. Just a
dream,
she told herself.

She couldn’t say for sure
if she
had
died,
by the end of the dream. Besides, she’d already had several dreams
about dying before. She’d once dreamt that she had been an army
recruit in a computer game, gunned down by a psychotic inmate who
had escaped from one of the high-security prisons in Zouk City.
That dream had resulted from a 12-hour hardcore gaming session,
prior to when Anya finally crashed and took a break.

She found herself thinking of Nin, for a few
moments, as she brushed her hair. It comforted her, in a strange
kind of way. That he—that they—were still alive, in this realm of
existence.