No Tears | NR

Chapter 2

Berlin, Germany

A few days later, Yara still hadn't managed to shed a single tear about her loss. It's not that she didn't want to cry. It's quite the opposite actually. She wanted to cry every single minute of every single day since the passing of her sister. But she couldn't.

She used to be able to cry when she was much younger, not that she did it often back then. As she grew older, she built up a mental blockade that didn't allow her to cry. As the older one of two children, she had felt that she mustn't display any signs of weakness and crying was a sign of weakness. That's at least what she had subconsciously convinced herself of. Now that she was older, she knew better. And yet, she hadn't managed to break down the mental blockade that she had built up over the course of her life and which didn't allow her to cry.

Yara was crouched down next to her sister's gravestone. She had reread the stone's inscription countless times, still not wanting to believe that her best friend and the only person she considered to be her family was really gone. The woman gently placed her hand on the cool, smooth stone wanting to get one last sense of physical closeness to her sister before she had to leave.

Then she stood up and gazed at the grave and the stone one more time before she turned around and swiftly walked away from the grave. She didn't dare to look back knowing that it would shatter her heart all over again. Yara stepped out of the cemetery onto a wide sidewalk. 

It was early in the morning. The sky was grey as per usual in Germany's capital and a cold wind was blowing. The street next to the sidewalk was busy with people driving to work.

Yara loved and hated this city. She loved that the city had become a home for an enormous number of different cultures that mixed here and turned into the city's very own culture. The city had also gone through a lot of history in the past. It had to be completely rebuilt after its complete destruction in the World Wars. Then it had been split into two parts with a wall going right through it. Not to mention all of the centuries prior to the World Wars that this city had seen and existed through. It gave visitors and citizens a unique perspective on gone by history. For Yara, however, the city's history brought up rather traumatic memories. Her sister's death just aggravated her largely negative feelings associated with Berlin. On top of that, it was a very busy and highly populated city, just like any other big city. It was never quiet. There was always something going on or someone going somewhere.

Yara finally reached a staircase in the middle of the sidewalk which had a sign with a large "S" standing next to it indicating that this was the entrance to a subway station. Another sign over the staircase stated the station's name.

Yara walked downstairs and took the subway to the city's central train station. About an hour later, she climbed onto a train that would take her to Leipzig. She had originally planned to stay there for a few days and then fly back home to the US from there. But her flight had been canceled after the local airport had been closed due to damage that needed repairs after the Avengers had fought each other there.

So instead, three days later, she found herself in Frankfurt at the airport. She had taken a train here and was currently waiting for her gate to start boarding.

She would have chosen a quicker way to get back home that didn't include a six-hour train ride, but this had been the best option if she didn't want to have to change flights. So here she was, in Frankfurt, waiting to board her plane.

About twelve hours later, she finally set foot into her apartment in New York. She had completely lost any feeling for time and she was absolutely exhausted, but she had finally managed to get through customs, get her luggage and take a shuttle and several busses to get here. She sat her heavy duffel bag down next to the door and dropped her backpack on top of it. She slowly walked over to her couch and fell onto it. She didn't bother to move and adjust herself to lie more comfortably for a while, just trying to relax a little and enjoy the feeling of being home.

Yara only moved when her phone buzzed. She pulled the flat device out of the pocket of her pants and unlocked the screen trying to move as little as possible. The woman groaned as she read the message she had just received. "You've got to be kidding me!"

"Hi, Mrs. Krieger, I tried to call you earlier, but I couldn't reach you.  I need you in an urgent matter concerning our partners in Norway. I am aware that your vacation is only ending tomorrow, but they have a problem with an AI project. The deadline for the project is technically in a month. You are our only expert in that area. I will send you all of the information that you need with your boarding passes within the next hour. Your flight leaves at 8 am tomorrow from JFK."

Yara looked at the left top corner of the phone screen to check the time. It was 9 pm.

"Well, at least I'll still be used to German time when I get there", the woman mumbled to herself trying to look at it as positively as she could.

With that, she got up and went to do the laundry that she had just brought back from Germany only to bring it to Norway next.

Her flight to Norway had been fairly comfortable, compared to her flight from Germany a day earlier. The company that she worked for was fairly successful which meant that she got to fly in business class. She arrived in Oslo about 8 hours later. After she got through customs for the second time within two days, she needed a while to find the rental car that her boss had booked for her earlier. The small, black Mercedes was parked in between two black SUVs from different brands. She got in and put her hotel's address into the car's console. After a few seconds, the console finished calculating the best route and displayed an excerpt of a map with a large arrow in its center and a blue line leading up from it to the top of the console. A number was displayed in the bottom left corner: 7h 25min.

Yara had managed to sleep on the flight here, but she still dreaded the next 7 hours.

AN

OK. So the start is taking a little longer than I expected, but we're slowly getting there. Right now, I'm coming up with everything sort of on the spot. It'll get better once I know where exactly I want to go with the story.