The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 85 : Dusk Hale Holdings LLC

The rest of the week and the next, went in a blur for Dusk.

Rosemary had returned to Ci'gazze. The new team from Regis Cybera College working on the VR Engine had started moving to Ci'gazze. They were given accommodation for a week in Uni-Viva before they find their own places. Mellow and Rowdon were given their new designations. Rosemary was looking after all that, with some help from Susco, who could not leave Regis.

Dusk continued to stay at Continental Plaza on the 37th floor suite with Catherine. Luke spent most of the nights there too. Both the girls had early morning training which now went on for 3 hours. Catherine forced Dusk to have breakfast at the Imperial Palace every morning. They had to borrow rooms there to shower and change. Dusk started to wonder why they couldn't just stay there only.

It would save them half an hour of travel (longer sleep), packing change clothes every day, save hotel cost, but unfortunately, it would mean meeting the Emperor 6 times a day! She was glad Catherine did not think of it or that she herself did not make the mistake of suggesting it even in jest. Somehow, it seemed that Catherine's aim in life was to envelop Dusk deeper into the Royal life! At every opportunity, she was trying to drag Dusk to a palace, or make her take help of her family.

To Dusk's embarrassment, the Emperor joined them for breakfast every day. She noticed one day, he was even standing at a corner watching the training and evaluating how they were progressing. It seemed he had a special liking for Catherine.

Dusk got a new pink Hover-Car from Futurista, much to Catherine's delight, who used it all the time, of course, with Imperial Security driving her around. She completely ignored the condition that Drabert had set that it was hers to use when Dusk was not in Regis. The pink Hover-Car zooming across the city became a regular thing on Pictorial as people kept posting it. Dusk was sure the orders for Pink hover-cars would have shot up in the next few days.

Catherine's college started in the second week. She took the hover-car to college also as against the earlier practice of being dropped there by her father's chauffeur. The car was a hot attraction in college since none of the other students had one. Her fellow students were also more impressed that the car belonged not to her family but to her (well, more correctly, to her company, which was more impressive that she had her own company). Few students in the college could consider themselves independent enough to travel by their own car, as against their family's car.

Dusk was spending a lot of time supervising the VR Gloves project. The prototypes had worked better than she expected. But programming them was proving to be a hurdle. Surprisingly Catherine's Mathematical Modelling & Analytics skills were proving to be very useful.

On top of all this, Pedro and Rutherford were coming to her almost every hour with some additional information, clarification or request for approvals relating to the new factories both for Patricina and for Futurista.

Dusk had been to Patricina Metalic office only once. It was at the other end of the city and Dusk refused to shuttle between the two offices. Imperial Security refused approval for Dusk to use Intra-City Maglev Pods since they would need to 'secure' the railway stations each time she travelled. To them it meant, evicting all other passengers and letting her in. That also meant stopping all other maglev services till she left...

So, the fastest mode of transport was out of the picture and travelling by car from one end of Regis to the other was painful for her. A complete waste of time in her view. Therefore, she sat in Regis Cybera College most of the time, sitting in the library and study rooms for attending course lectures remotely or borrowing one conference room for her meetings. The college did not mind at all, though Dusk felt bad about it.