The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) Read online

  “What’s going on here?” Tavia interrupted, one hand on her hip. Her sky blue eyes were ablaze, with a glint of a killer’s rage. She looked ready to draw her pistol again. At Anya and Leticia, this time.

  Does Tavia have some blades or knives hidden away somewhere too? Anya thought. Then Anya saw it, when Tavia dug one of her heels into the ground, and angled her outer sole toward Anya. Anya spotted the outline of a blade, situated in a camouflaged compartment in Tavia’s boot.

  “Is this some kind of competition?” Dresan added, stepping in like a mediator. Confrontations were something to be avoided, to him at least. “To determine who’s…the better thief?”

  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.�
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  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.

  The first thing Anya noticed was the elves’ collection of weapons, which was displayed in a glass cabinet beside one of the walls. There was a classic AK-47 assault rifle, double edged daggers, razor sharp throwing spikes, a curved knuckle knife with a polished burgundy-and-green wood grip, and a medieval crossbow shaped in the form of a dragon’s head.

  “So, what do you think?” Dresan asked, putting an open hand out to their surroundings, with undeniable pride in his tone of voice. Anya was studying a macabre painting which hung on the wall, depicting a headless skeleton king—one hand held the grinning skull with a fancy crown, while the other hand circled around the hilt of a silver sword. She reached out to lightly touch one of the skeletal figure’s bony fingers—and drew back when she thought she saw the skeletal hand move. Did it?

  “Just like a movie,” Leticia commented almost absent mindedly, but with sincerity. “But a lot better,” she was quick to add.

  “Mostly Dresan’s handiwork,” Tavia let their human visitors know. “Everything you see here is fully solar-powered.”

  That meant a lot of solar energy. Or an extremely efficient energy system, that the elves had in place.

  “You must have an IQ of 175,” Leticia said, facing Dresan.

  “One forty-two on the Elven scale, to be exact,” Dresan replied with a humble smile.

  Anya hid a grin, as she made her way to a table. Leticia had always liked intelligent guys. Anya didn’t have a favorite type, but liked it when others appreciated her skills—as Nin seemed to, with her thieving talent.

  Something was leaning against the table, which Anya thought was quite interesting. One part of it held a cylindrical glass panel filled with murky blue, green, and purple swirls.

  “Those violet swirls were made from discarded midnight lipgloss made for toddlers,” Nin pointed out to Anya, stepping up beside her. That such strong chemicals were used for aesthetic purposes was abominable, to the elves. “We found some old stock at a warehouse—the chemicals disintegrate in the ions, instead of polluting the planet.”

  Anya smoothed some fly-away strands of her shoulder-length hair, before picking up the object. It was a little heavier than Anya expected. She peered into one end of it. “What’s this?”

  “A heavy-duty plasma gun,” he grinned, like a
kid in a candy store. “And you are pointing it at yourself.” The words deadly beauty went across his mind at the same time.

  Anya quickly returned the gun to its original spot. She looked up at Nin, trying to read him, and figure if some of his hobbies involved a whole arsenal of firearms. “So, are you a hit man, or something? How many people have you killed?”

  “Elves don’t kill—humans do.” Nin’s tone had a bite of cynicism in it. “Ours work like stun guns.”

  “They can wipe out your memory though,” Dresan’s enthusiastic voice rang out, “if set to maximum power. I created that, by the way.” He was always pleased to chat about the gadgets and gizmos he had created.

  “How about…knives, and stuff,” Anya ventured. “Do you use those too?”

  Nin caught her sneaking a peek at his boot. “We’ll use those to maim people, if we need to…then knock them out afterward. We try not to kill.”

  Tavia had disappeared into a small room, where she sat before three slim computer screens. The screens were touching side by side, and one of them had multi-colored post-it notes stuck all around the border.

  “Looks a little like ours,” remarked Anya, standing at the doorway of the room as she admired the computers. They were sleeker than the ones she owned. “Lei and I each have two screens.”

  “Double trouble.” Nin was busy opening a small safe in one corner of the room. The safe was hidden in the wall, and would be easily overlooked by a casual observer. He had to keep his hands from shaking—he was guessing it had been a long time since any human had set their eyes on the parchment. He had been warned against trusting humans, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

  The desktop picture appeared on the center screen, where Tavia was situated. The picture was a well-lit photo of a popular fashion designer.

  “That’s the guy…who designs eco-friendly fashion, right?” Anya pointed at the screen. She recognized the face. The fresh-faced twenty-three year old hosted a TV show, had appeared in numerous advertisements, and could rock a pair of pink jeans better than most girls. “His latest biodegradable-something was received very well.”