An Empire Fallen

Chapter Six: Do You Still See Their Ghosts?

Things were...tense as the team sat together in the meeting room patiently awaiting Lía's arrival. Despite their argument that morning it was well known among the members that they had a job to do. The kind of job where a sick day would have you shot point blank, and, although Luca so wished to be petty he did not desire to be dead. And so, here he sat, on the plush, overpriced chairs awaiting orders like a filial little pet. 

"Look, children" Lía says as she strides into the meeting room, Mikołaiat her side, "I know things are far from peachy keen at the moment but each of you still very much have a job to do. One you've been failing quite miserably at for almost two months now. Mikołai."

Mikołai moved to the head of the table, setting his laptop down on the glass table and opening it with a quiet swoosh. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the taps of Mikołai's slender fingers against the keyboard, occasionally ceasing when he stopped to brush his dusty brown hair out of his eyes. Every now and again, his muted amber eyes would glance around the room before quickly shifting back to the screen illuminating his angular face. Luca had always thought Mikołai looked kind of dead, it was his alabaster white skin, and the way his shaggy mullet hung around his face, casting dark eerie shadows under his eyes and making his cheeks look even more sunken than they were in actuality. The worst part was his eyes, they were so dull and...empty, looking into them felt akin to staring death itself in the eye. It was fucking grim. 

"Okay, so as you all know we're not any closer to finding that pen-drive so I've been working with Liv to try and retrace her steps that day. I've assigned each of you to an area where it's most likely to be, and if not, then at the very least some hint to where it could have gone."

As Mikołai explained Olivia's route that day Luca couldn't help but think they were retredding the same ground. He had planned to divide them into groups and assign them areas of Olivia's route to investigate, they were all places the team had already been to several times the past month in the hunt for the stupid fucking pen-drive and they were all well aware Mikołai was grasping at straws now, but weren't they all?

Luca couldn't find the strength to complain about it when he was told he would be going with Mikołai and Liv to their university dorm. At least it would get him away from Lía for a while.

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"Does your place usually look like this?" Luca joked when they had opened the door to their little apartment. The whole place had been trashed, textbook pages had been ripped from their covers and scattered across the floors. The dining table that once sat neatly pushed up against the far wall of the kitchenette now lay broken on the tile, and the walls had been sprayed with indiscernible graffiti.

"No!" Olivia cried out incredulously, eyes darting around the room.

"I guess we're not the only ones looking for the pen-drive then...I'm gonna see if they've left anything behind, feel free to lend a hand."

"Yeah, okay." Luca answered, smiling sheepishly at Olivia. Instead of returning the smile like she usually would she turned away from him and stormed into her old bedroom. Luca frowned. He knew exactly why she was ignoring him but that didn't mean it stung any less. He knew there would be consequences for him yet fulfilling his promises to her and knew even better that Olivia would not be so quick to forgive the slight, but, there was nothing else he could've done but lie. Had he not, Olivia would have been killed and him punished, his lie had saved them both and he wouldn't apologise for that.

As he rifled through the lined paper strewn across the floor his mind couldn't help but to wander back to were it always did these past days. Líadain and Ciano. The thought of whom once made his heart warm, the weight of his love resting heavily in the pit of his stomach, like a stone and the bottom of a stream, steady and unmoving. Now, to think of them only brought about anger. Before he could dwell on it further, Luca felt the gentle tap of Mikołai's fingers on his shoulder.