by Andre Pisco
We put the napkins and the plastic cups in the trash. When we left the other group was no longer in the room and half the parking spaces in the garage were empty. It was the first time we saw that room so empty and the truth is that the cars were well suited to disguise the mold in the corners of the walls and even the faint color in some areas. The jeep was as good as new except for a couple of scratches on the hood. The front glass had been replaced and the whole car had been cleaned. The smell of blood was now a camellia scent and the seats were black and padded.
Kendra, Vic, and Maggie sat in the back seats and Elisa sat next to me. Only she half-opened the window to allow in a refreshing breeze that swirled across the crystal-clear air. From the sun only fine traces of light showed up, striking the metal signs along the road and the remnants of sharp glass that were on the broken windows.
"Okinawa... our first mission was there," Maggie said.
"And it almost didn't happen." Kendra added, "If it wasn't for James over there convincing us to do the right thing."
"I did what I had to do. We came a long way since then." I told them.
"There you are, all sentimental. At least we don't have to deal with the terrible blood smell anymore today. I couldn't handle it anymore."
"Yeah! I hate blood. It's viscous and always reeks of rotten." Vic said, "That's one of the reasons I decided to practice the bow. The further away from a fight I am, the better."
"I like the adrenaline that runs through my body when I'm face to face with a beast. I actually used a double-edged sword, but in the meantime, I've switched. The ice glove offered me much more security in dealing with people and, of course, I didn't always have to carry it on my back or on my waist." Elisa answered her.
"James, why a gun? You never explained it to us." Kendra said.
We were already on the highway. We still had to go through a tunnel, a roundabout, and then drive for dozens of miles. It was 10:22. Ahead of us was just a truck carrying oranges and strawberries bags and on the other side two cars, one yellow and the other dark blue, traveling at similar speeds. The farther we got from where we had come, the more the clouds filled the sky, grayish, thick, obscuring the sun. We entered the tunnel and all the noise was drowned out. The orange lights of the lamps fastened to the walls, illuminating the whole tunnel, swirling through the car roof. Beams of lights hit the rearview mirror and mirrored on the tarmac.
"My father. He also used a gun, although it was a black one. He was the one who always backed me up and said I could be whatever I wanted. After a month at the academy, when it came down to deciding which weapon we wanted to learn, I had no doubt that I wanted to follow his legacy. I wanted my last name to mean more than my father's downfall." I answered them, while driving, always paying attention to the road even if there was not a single car in front of us.
"Didn't your brother have the same idea?" Vic asked, "But I'm also not surprised that he chose a weapon that would put him right in the front line."
"My brother is only two years younger than me, but he was born at the exact time my father was making the transition. Although I was only two years old, I still have vague memories of my father holding me and feeding me, but Keno doesn't. He only remembers the hell it was the first few years of his life. The fights between my parents, having to move, the whole mess... He always wanted to get away from it and even tried to change his name. Fortunately, he's calmer these days."
"That what was him being calmer?" Maggie asked me.
"Yeah. He's usually grumpier. Apparently, having a girlfriend made him softer."
"Too bad I didn't meet him. I feel like I missed some good adventures and you're almost at rank B." Kendra said. She was between the two girls but looking at Maggie's window. There was nothing to see except for the brown walls with yellow stripes, some graffiti and signatures, and the oval ceiling.
"Don't worry. More adventures will come." I answered her and I know she spotted my smile on the rearview mirror.
When we exited, on the other side, the green hills were now damp, a tiny rain falling on the new front glass.
"I don't understand anything about this weather." Vic said, "It was still sunny earlier."
"There are cities with different temperatures. Okinawa is a city with many factories and old buildings, if I remember well. Pollution contaminates the atmosphere and..." Maggie was saying when she was interrupted.
"How do you know that?" Elisa asked her.
"I read about it. I used to spend a lot of time reading, too. Benefits of having studied at home."
"I don't think that's an advantage" Kendra answered her.
"Better than spending my teenage years scared that my father would be taken away by the police at any moment," she replied, realizing seconds later that she had exaggerated, and her voice burst through silence, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean that."
"It's okay, Maggie. I get it. I get it. You're right. Maybe having a peaceful life would have been better. At least boredom doesn't kill."
"We all had problems in our childhoods. Don't get upset about it." Elisa told them.
"She's right. Even nowadays my parents think that being a Hunter is shameful, that they can't introduce me to their friends who are all bankers, lawyers, the kind of people who don't understand what it's like to fight for something they believe in." Vic told them, "But, Elisa, nobody knows anything about your parents."
"What do you need to know that for?"
"It's only fair that we all know the slightest bit about each other's lives, isn't it?" Maggie said, "If we're going to keep risking our lives for each other, we can at least get to know each other better."
"I agree with them, Elisa. Nobody's saying you need to tell your whole life but slowly share. Nobody's going to judge you, you know?" I told her.
"I know, but that's not it. I feel fragile and vulnerable knowing that someone knows what I've been through." She said, the rain overriding her voice, "Do you want to know the truth? How come I never mentioned my biological parents? I don't know who they are. Okay, are you happy?"
"What do you mean you don't know who they are?" Maggie asked her.
"I was adopted when I was 4 years old. They were great, but they weren’t my parents. It's like an essential piece of me was taken from me at birth. But forget it, it doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does! If it bothers you, we'll work it out as a group. Have you ever tried to find out who your birth parents are?"
"I tried, of course. The orphanage that contained all the information burned down when I was still 10 and my adoptive parents always told me they didn't know who they were and after what happened to them, I just gave up. I couldn’t even find out who had sent the killer after my mother. I’m a mess. Maybe it's better if I don’t know who my parents were, you know? The closest I had to a family since then was Ashen's group, and after he pushed me out, I ended up enjoying being alone. I think this is the first time since then that I feel like I have a family, or the closest thing to it." She said, all rushed, without even pausing to breathe, "Come on, that's enough. Looks like we're arriving." She said and pointed to a sign that said there were only a dozen kilometers away.
"You can talk to us about anything, Elisa. But all right, let's not insist anymore, shall we?" I asked and they all agreed.
The water droplets poured down on the wine-colored sign that did not move even with the desolating gusts of wind. Elisa closed the window. Her lap was already damp when she turned on the air conditioning. A stream of hot air crept through the inside of our clothes and spread through our bodies.
"I bet I'll catch a cold," Maggie said and sighed.
"You're missing a good coat." Elisa said.
"You sound like a 40-year-old man talking. By the way, if you don't have marks on your body from risking your life so much, it doesn't count." Maggie answered with a slightly sarcastic tone.
We all laughed. The only four-story buildings, five if we counted the ground floor, made up the entire row of dark brown that stretched
across those streets. Smoke sprang up behind the structures, black and thick, flying over the brick roofs and covering the sky with a grayish fog. The city itself was sad. It had a melancholic temperament, the streets to be colored and the people always with their faces frozen, eyes half closed, suspicious of each other, clashing with each other's shadows and arguing at the coffees' doors due to trivialities. The last time we had been there we had not crossed the highway that gave access to the city. It resembled the second city we'd worked in. A certain antiquarian mysticism, as if a legend shared by the elders stated that the fog hid a secret behind it, to which only some would have the privilege of seeing it revealed.
"Now what? Where do I go?" I asked Kendra. I'd already slowed down. I was at 20 per hour, maximum 30, which was the legal limit around the cities unless it was an emergency.
"Here." She said and handed me her cell phone.
I wrote the name of the street, Lowland Street, on the GPS and waited until I heard the woman's high-pitched voice. She told us that we were about ten meters away and that we still had to make two turns to get there.
"Have you ever come here before?" Maggie asked Kendra.
"Not really. I know my sister has hiding places in several cities, but I have no idea where they are. I never had much interest. As soon as I could, I left the house and let her take the lead."
I turned left and went to a wide street, steps away from a circular zone, with a warrior statue with a shield and sword in his hand, in the center, and a couple of coffees around. There was a fresh fruit market in the corner. Dozens of people came and went, loaded with bags, not talking to anyone, walking along the sidewalk. Sometimes there were groups of two people, three at most, and they talked quietly, fearing that someone was listening. When we passed by, although on the other side of the street, I noticed that the market was not a building but a long street, in an endless alley, sheltered by a plastic roof.
"Here even the fruit seems to have less color," Maggie commented.
"I was thinking the same thing. No wonder Lipa has a safe place here. It matches her icy personality." Elisa said, "Damn, how come my pants haven't dried up yet."
"Also, why did you have the brilliant idea of coming in latex paints?" Vic asked her.
"I didn't think it would rain, did you? If I'd known, I'd have come in regular black pants like Kendra. It doesn't matter now either. We're getting there." She said, looking at the red dotted line on the GPS coming to an end.
I had already made the last turn and we had stepped into a narrow street, flanked by workshops and warehouses with dusty gates, a shrill noise, even worse than chalk being scraped off a blackboard, and sparks splashing on the bifurcated sidewalk.
"That one over there," Kendra said and pointed to a cross-iron gate whose sidewalk before it was cross-checked.
"It could only be. On top of that, it stands out from the rest." Elisa said, "Now what?"
"I'm going to text her that we're here and then I have to do the quasi-ritual, so she knows she's safe," Kendra answered her.
Chapter XVII
I stopped in front of the gate. She sent the message and left. She nodded to the camera on the upper right side of the gate and stepped forward, stepping on one white pebble and then jumping into another. The camera followed her movements. It didn't take more than a few seconds for the gate to rise off the ground, ascending, and disappearing into a facade that was in between the bulkhead.
"This means we can get in, right?" Vic asked.
"I suppose so. Let's get going before somebody starts to wonder why we're here." I told them.
Kendra knocked on the window next to me and waited for me to open it, "My sister told us to go in with the jeep and park it on the right side."
She walked along the jeep while I searched for a good place to stop. The lights were all off and the little clarity that illuminated the warehouse stemmed from the glass fogged roof. I parked next to a pile of white trash cans and rusty metal plates. Against the wall was a five-story metal shelf full of objects such as tape, ruler, pliers, scanners, drills, among others. Further ahead, in the place where the dim light stood out the most, the rarefied air had hundreds, if not thousands, of particles hovering in the air.
"Isn't your sister rich? She could have found a better place." Vic said, followed by a sneeze.
"The best places are the ones nobody suspects," Kendra answered her.
"Hm, hm, I see you haven't forgotten my teachings," Lipa said, coming from a blue painted metal door that only opened with a five letter or number code.
Despite the distance, the five green clovers blinked in the modern machine until Lipa's body was in front of us and blocked our sights.
"You just changed your hair color, as usual." Elisa said as soon as she saw her, "You're never going to leave this business, are you?"
"Probably not. Only if I die or find someone to replace me when I'm old."
"Lipa, don't say that." Kendra said, "I told you, you don't have to follow Dad's legacy."
"And I've already told you I like the freedom and the danger." Lipa answered her and before anyone else could say anything, her eyes stared at Victoria, "Do I know you?"
Victoria, as was to be expected, stepped forward and replied, "I am Victoria, the new girl in the group. Is there a problem?"
"Sassy. I like her." Lipa told me, "You look even prettier." She winked at me.
"Come on, Lipa, what do you have for us?" I said, trying to ignore the teasing.
It wasn't that her strong and ferocious personality or her tits tightened by the purple top she wore, and her silky legs covered to her knees by a red skirt with blue frills didn't appeal to me. It was that I knew that if I were to give her a finger, she would want my whole hand and I would not be able to say no to her. Not when I was baffled by the way her tongue slid across her thick lips at the end of every sentence or the way she swung her ass while walking as if it were a mesmerizing watch or coin.
"Follow me." She said, turning and walking towards the door where she had come from, "acix, right? I called some of my contacts. I got the right person, but it's not going to come cheap."
"We have money," I answered her.
She laughed as she pressed the buttons and unlocked at the door, "Not everything in this world is about money. This person has more than enough. He'll want something more specific." Lipa told us.
"Anything more specific? What are you talking about?" I asked her. That was her world and it was very different from what I was accustomed to.
"He will probably ask you for a favor. You decide whether or not to accept it, but if I were you I would. Arranging a meeting with him cost me two-gun shipments and a favor that someone owed me." Lipa told us.
We followed her down the arched white-walled corridor that seemed to never end. We passed a fire extinguisher and several small batteries of incandescent blue lights, lying on the floor and strapped to the wall.
"This used to be a secret passage used at the height of the third great war. I had to send someone to remove the cobwebs and paint the walls, but now it's great for transporting the material." She kept going until Kendra interrupted her.
"What's in it for you?"
"Not much. There's also something I need to ask him. I wasn't going to resort to him, but since you guys needed him... it'll work too." She said.
"I knew there was something more to it. You were being too altruistic."
"It's not like I haven't helped you without asking for anything. It just comes in handy now. You know, after what happened to the council, things haven't been easy. The albino attacked some of my warehouses. He's almost in control of everything that happens on the black market. I had to take care of my business out of the limelight. But something good came of his rise to power. He became violent and began to persecute the loyal members of the leaders he had killed..."
"And that's a good thing?" Kendra interrupted her.
"Let me finish. Some of the fleeing members have come to ask for a place i
n my trenches. My army has never been so numerous and with such varied skills."
"You're saying that sooner or later you two will have to face each other, right?" Kendra asked her.
"Something like that, yes. I know he's locked in his condo. We're both dealing with our problems in our own way." Lipa said, "But there's no point in wasting time on it now."
"Aren't you afraid?" Vic asked her.
"Fear weakens us. In this line of work, it's normal to be hunted anyway. Dying from a bullet is an honor. A sign of respect even."
"Damn it, Lipa. You haven't changed at all. You still have those ideas." Elisa told her and sighed.
"As I recall, you had them too." Lipa said, "You lost your guts, didn't you?"
"Of course not, but I realized that there is more to life than the longing for one more fight and the faint urge to die on the battlefield." She answered her, looking at me.
"You've finally found a family. You know, what I said to you still stands."
"Thanks, but I don't think this is the right time."
"What are you talking about?" I asked them.
"Lipa offered to help me find my birth parents. And just like before, I'm going to reject it. I don't want that in my life right now. And none of you dare say anything about it."
"We won't." I replied, "So where are you taking us, Lipa?"
"We have to go somewhere. I just don't want to leave through the front door. I can't risk it. Well, just a warning, the person we're about to meet is very impatient and stubborn. Don't try to argue with him."
"But who is he?" Kendra asked.
"He's an old hermit who's spent his whole life exchanging trinkets for others. He knows everyone, even more people than I do, and everybody respects him. He never screwed up a business. In this line of work that is essential. As time went by, he became a little paranoid and moved away from the limelight. Now he only accepts face-to-face meetings with people he's heard of or who can offer him something he can't afford with money." Lipa explained, "And definitely don't give him too much talk. The man's a great manipulator, and he loves to see people arguing. He's going to take something you guys hadn't even noticed and use it to drive you away. I suppose he sees it as fun."
