Underneath The Hidden Stars

Chapter XIV

Mira decided to spend the night at Lucy's, just to watch over her. She helped her get to the bedroom, tucked her in, and took over the sofa. After setting the alarm clock for work, she hid under the heavy blanket. Moments later, she fell asleep and started to dream.

Mira had been having the same dream for a long time now, with only minimal details changing from time to time. However, despite the changes, the plot is the same: she's walking through the rubble of the school on her home level and hears her name. Then suddenly everything goes dark, but her hearing doesn't give out. She hears her name shouted out a few more times, followed by a 'you're not Mira, what did you do to my sister?'. After that, the voice usually goes quite abruptly, and the dream ends. Then Mira wakes up, drenched in cold sweat and with tears in her eyes. And she gets the same dream, all the time. It had happened so often, that at that point she was already used to it, even though it would make her extremely uncomfortable every single morning.

That night, her dream was interrupted in the middle, as Lucy started coughing in her room. Brushing it off as just a cold, Mira went back to sleep. The situation repeated itself a few more times, until Mira's alarm rung, indicating it's time to get ready for work. While she was preparing her meal and clothes, Lucy coughed a few more times, making Mira question her cold bath method, but she let her sleep and went off.

The safety office was completely hectic, it has been confirmed that at least 30 people had died on the spot, and that 200 people were in intensive care at that point. Some people were reported to have gone missing that night, but as their bodies hadn't been found yet, no one could say surely if they're alive or not.

As soon as Mira walked it, she was forced to remember her job as a detective, and after a short briefing on the situation, she was sent out to the field to find out what had happened the night before.

When she finally approached the Level Hall, Mira started looking around to find out where the bomb might have been placed. After walking on rubble for quite some times, she confirmed her previous guess that the bomb must've been placed on the side wall of the building, as it resulted in the explosion in only one have of the Level Hall and the destruction in the other side was of a similar radius. The only questions she had at that point, were whether the bomb was placed on the inside or outside the building, and if it was really placed on the Level Hall or the building that stood next to it. Mira took out a small notebook from out of her bag and wrote everything notable down. She then found the exact spot where the gap between buildings would've been and started counting her steps to both sides.

"To the Level Hall - 43 steps." she wrote down and went back to count again. "To the other buildings - 52 steps. Which means, that the bomb was placed inside the Level Hall." she stood there for a moment, and nodded before going back to the office.

Mira went straight to the camera room and looked through. Although she couldn't check the footage from inside the buildings, she could at least somewhat monitor who was entering and leaving the Level Hall at the time. Theoretically, only people with passes to travel between floors should be able to walk into the Level Hall at any time, meaning that person should be one of the people that works in a different floor. Mira glared at the screen and watched the sped up people walk past the building without even thinking of going in. When she was about to fall asleep, she noticed a person with a rather small build entering the building around 5 minutes before the explosion happened. 3 minutes later, they walked out and glanced at the direction of the camera. Mira paused the video and zoomed in as far as she could. The person was wearing a black coat with a hood that covered their entire head, but it was unbuttoned in the front, and she saw long hair, going down to the waist, but the angle was odd and she couldn't tell what was the person's hair colour. She pressed play and watched if the person would walk closer to the camera so she could see them better, and to her surprise, they did. Only a few seconds later, Mira had a full shot of a ginger girl on her screen. She jumped back from her chair and covered her mouth with her palm. Still visibly shaken, she left the room and picked up her gun from her desk drawer. She put on her bulletproof vest and a coat over it, threw a pair of handcuffs in one of the coat's pockets and left the building.

Mira walked for a few minutes and went inside the building. The smell of baked goods did make her happier, but the situation that was about to happen was hanging like a cloud of dread above her head. She looked around and saw the same redheaded girl sitting in one of the armchairs in the furthest corner of the bakery. She walked to her and took a seat.

"Hey."

"Hey, Ava."

"I'm sorry it happened the way it did."

"You killed innocent people, Ava. You know no apologies are going to solve that."

"I know, it's just that-"

"I don't care Ava. Not anymore. You almost killed Lucy there! Like, seriously? If you were planning to do that, couldn't you at least tell her to not go to the damn date? Do you friends really mean so little to you? Seriously?" Ava stayed silent as she stared blankly at the table between them. "I'm gonna have to arrest you. You're caught on camera, if I don't deal with you, someone else will. And they definitely won't be so kind then."

"Can I... can I just show you something?"

"Like what? An explosion?"

"No, it's... Come with me. I'll show you. I've got nothing to lose at this point. Death might even be better than rotting in the below for the remainder of my life."

Mira glared at her friend with suspicion, but decided to follow through.

"Okay. But you have an hour, not more. After that, we're going straight to the safety office, capiche?"

"Yes! Okay. Alright. Let's go."

The girls walked out of the bakery and went to the direction of the local high school. Mira didn't let her guard down, not even for one second, and kept her hand on her gun that was resting in her pocket the whole time. They passed the school, but entered the library that stood right next to it.

"Could you walk like 10 meters behind me? So I wouldn't be immediately caught by my own people."

Mira frowned, but slowed down and followed her friend. As they went deeper into the building, Mira tensed up. She gripped the gun tighter, just in case, and noticed they had reached a dead end and Ava was right in front of her. Now, the shelves in that particular section were different from the bookshelves in the rest of the library. In this part, the actual bookshelf bit only started at around waist level, unlike the ones that start from the ground in the other parts of the building. Ava looked at Mira, smiled, and lightly pushed on of the bookshelves' bottom part with her foot. To Mira's surprise, a small door opened, and she was eager to explore it, but Ava moved her foot away and placed her finger on her lips before walking out of the building. Despite how much she wanted to go through the door, Mira gave in and followed her friend out.

"Don't tell anyone I was the one to tell you, okay? Or I'm absolutely dead." she said and turned around with her hands behind her back. "Come on, cuff me. I've heard them in your pocket, and everyone will trust you more if you lead me in cuffed."

Mira reluctantly placed the cuffs on her friend's wrists and turned her around.

"You shouldn't have started doing this. I wouldn't be in this situation if you hadn't."

"That's a little selfish, don't you think? You wouldn't be in this? Mira, you keep forgetting other people go through shit, too. Sure I could've not joined them. But then it would not have been me who showed up after that week. It would've been my lifeless body. And by choosing to live, I condemned myself to sin." she looked up at the ceiling. "At this point, I've done so many bad things, even the almighty Goddess Vetos, who forgives all," she said mockingly. "Even she wouldn't forgive me, Mira. So how about you just take me to the station and let's get this over with, okay?"

After taking Ava to the station and showing proof of her deed, plus with Ava giving her full testimony that supported the evidence, it was decided to send Ava to the below, as soon as the Level Hall that leads to the trolley station gets fixed. Until then, she was to stay in a cell in the safety station.

Having left Ava at the safety station, Mira headed back to the library, although this time, she took a flashlight with her, so she wouldn't have to repeat the torch situation again. Without overthinking it too much, Mira went to the same spot with the odd bookshelves and carefully pushed the bottom part with her foot, the same way Ava did it before. She then squatted and pushed the door with her hand, before crawling in through the opening.