Janus 02.Redemption #Wattys2018

5.02 The Trojan Horse

Eden seemed to know the region well. It was far from her house where she used to live yet she seemed to know well where they were heading at. If the Lost Souls' territory was a ghetto and the Outcast's dominion was an underworld, the New City definitely was everybody's dream.

Every building was fully equipped with advanced technology which met every insane need of the inhabitant taking into consideration their income. The bigger your value in New City the more you could get. Hi-tech apartments, hi-tech cars, hi-tech devices, whatever you could think of was transferred into an in vitro environment creating a hi-tech heaven. People seemed happy and did everything they could to maintain their residence there. They had heard stories about the Outcasts and the Lost Souls but it sounded more like an urban legend to their ears and had no intention or curiosity to find out whether they were true or not. They were living their hi-tech happy ending after all.

They arrived in the building that looked exactly the same as the ones before that and the ones after that. Diversity was a privilege saved for the upper class. They didn't mind because the less you stood out of the crowd, the lower the possibility of being noticed for anything that could get you banished from there.

Eden turned her sleeve inside out and placed it in front of the door.

The door opened and she entered the building.

"Are you crazy?" Ed asked her. "Atlantis is looking for you and you are using your uniform? You had better stand in the middle of the road screaming "I am here assholes!" This would have given us more time to run than this shit!"

"Come in!" Eden told him and headed to a door in the end of the hall.

Ed stepped in the building and followed her unwillingly. He was certain that she had just signed their death sentence but he didn't have any better idea for the moment.

"Now, what?" He asked her as she stood in front of the door. "Please give me a fair warning if you are about to take off your shoe and turn it inside out." He stood behind her trying to guess her next step. Eden took his hand and placed on the door. The door opened instantly.

"They are looking for me. They haven't started searching for you as well. There is no physical evidence of yours on their database. You are not a New City's citizen and we never had any physical contact all those years that I was working for Atlantis. You are safe here. This is your new house for as long as you want it to be." Eden closed the door behind Ed and turned on the lights. It was obvious that no one had visited this apartment for a long time. It hardly had any furniture and no decoration whatsoever.

"You can find food in the kitchen, eat, drink, take a shower or go to sleep. It's your choice. I have work to do" said Eden and moved on to the living room. There was nothing there but a desk.

"If there is no evidence of me in the New City then how it's possible that the door recognizes my fingertips?" Ed asked her as he was following her in the living room.

"I already told you that this is for you. A safe house if anything ever turned bad."

"Did you get this house for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself. I wouldn't be so stupid as to let them know that you are important to me. It would be equal to putting a bullet to your head" Eden answered as she was searching in the desks' drawers.