Trellis

7

We have split up into two teams. Blair has known too many people during her lifetime, and we need to get to as many of them as possible. Besides, a large group of us would attract too much attention.

I would go with Hallett and Yvet, because Cresswell didn't trust them to stay out of trouble.

'Those two...walking disasters, they are. Don't let Hallett's lack of any emotion fool you. He once got into a fight with a tree.'

'A what?'

'You heard me. A tree. He'll fight anything and everything that gets in his way. Combined with his new telekinesis powers...'

Needless to say, I am not very happy.

We got plane tickets for the back row. I spent most of the time in the bathroom anyway. Everything hurt, especially my head. It was a relief when we got off.

Yvet slings his bag onto his arm, whistling something that sounds terribly out of tune. Maybe it is my airsickness. Hallett volunteers to set the GPS on my wristwatch.

We arrive at a very nice hotel. Yvet, in all his swaggering confidence, walks up to the reception desk and rents a room. I am sure that we will have no money to buy return tickets later.

Yvet makes a beeline for the room and immediately proceeds to order a pina colada.

'Slow down, weather boy.' Hallett dumps our laundry into the sink and starts to scrub it. 'We're leaving you behind if we can't get a return ticket.'

'I don't care.' He takes a sip of his drink. 'This is the life.'

'Except we have a, uh, top-secret mission going on? Kasseida? How's it going?'

'You do understand that I can't hack the database from here?'

'What?'

'Good sirs, we're only here because she's  been here. And I want to know what she did, who she talked to.'

'I hope they're attractive.'

'Rima, we didn't come here to look at pretty people.'

Yvet huffs. 'The only people I am stalking are people I find appealing. Otherwise, I'm out.'

Hallett returns to laundry, muttering something under his breath.

I spend the rest of the afternoon familiarizing myself with the wristwatch. The screen's size will be a problem for me and my absolutely dreadful eyesight. But otherwise, it was pretty much a desktop scaled down.

I glance at Yvet, still sipping his drink, reading a book he had brought with him. My heart clenches. How will he take his companion's death? Will he vow to seek revenge on whoever had done it? Or would he curl up and die?

'Yvet—Rima,' I begin, halfway through hacking into the hotel Wi-Fi. 'What did you get for your powers?'

'Lights,' he grunts, not looking up from his book. 'Making pretty fairy lights. Utterly useless.'

'You know that if you can control light, you can blind someone?'

His eyes flick towards me. 'I can?'

'Did you ever pay attention in physics?'

'I doodled mostly, so no. How can  you blind someone with fairy lights?'

I sigh and perch on the arm of his chair. 'Let me just give you a crash course on light waves.'

I never regretted anything more.

He spent the rest of his free time making mirages of unicorns and tumbleweeds roll past. Hallett, hanging out the laundry to dry, agreed with my sentiment

'Goddammit!' he exclaims as a pink and purple pegasus strolls past, pausing in the middle of spreading out a pair of his jeans across the balcony railings. 'Can't you calm down for a second?'

'No!' More delighted cackling.

'If you don't stop this instant, Rima Yvet, I will take your shoes and fill them with cement.'

Yvet frowns and lets his suit retract back into his wristband. 'Fine. Back to your boring, tasteless life, Dreis. I shall now lie here and let death reclaim me.'

He lies on the bed and pretends to wipe at his eyes.

Dreis smiles and takes off his shirt, tossing it into the sink.

Yvet sits up, as if someone has electrocuted him. 'Damn.'

I avert my gaze and go back to hacking the hotel Wi-Fi.

'Well, if I don't wash this right now I'll have no clean shirts tomorrow. And you don't want that.'

Yvet presses his reddening face into the covers.

To take my mind off...whatever that was, I call room service.

After dinner and another round of increasing nervousness, we head down to the lobby at 2 a.m. It is going to be messy, so I find the surveillance room and disable the cameras while the guard is taking a toilet break. Then, we find where the hotel keeps most of their data.

There is only one worker there, and she is taken care of by Yvet. As she stumbles around, blinded, I start to dig.

Blair has called room service a total of eleven times during her one-week stay, mostly for snacks. And seven times out of eleven, it was the same person. 

'Note that down,' I whisper to Dreis, holding the lone worker in place in her chair with his newfound power. 'Jasper Merio. I'm counting to three, and we're busting out of here.'

It commences with no injuries, apart from the worker, who stumbles into a shelf when we leave. Yvet lifts his spell, muttering to himself that he hopes he didn't give her permanent eye damage.

'You won't. You just redirected the light rays going into her eyes.'

Breathing a sigh of relief, he starts jogging, eager to get back into our room as soon as possible.

We start packing as soon as we reach the room. It wasn't likely that the only witness recognized me by my voice, but just to be safe, we are moving out of city limits tonight. Hallett is not happy about the arrangement, but I tell him we can find a place to hang all his laundry.

On the bus with a bag full of wet clothes, I try to clear my thoughts.

We would have to locate this woman tomorrow. No problem, if she's active on social media. But any chance of me giving them false information is gone. 

My wristwatch beeps, as if sensing my thoughts.

They're tracking my activity on that computer, which is the only computer I currently have access to. If I find out her location, the mayors will know that I have done it. And since we're all going as a team, it's going to be hard to detach Hallett from the group, kill him, and dispose of the body in record time. If only I had an excuse for us to split up further...

The bus turns a corner, and I catch a glimpse of a building, illuminated by bright blue lights.

I push the stop button. Yvet jerks awake, ready to complain, only to be dragged off the bus by Hallett. 

'What is it?' he says, trying his best to restrain a kicking Yvet.

'It would be better to search for any information on her, and escape detection, if we used public property, wouldn't it?'