The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 129 : Scarlet's Escapade

Luke frowned, wondering what the girl was up to. Though she was much older than him, she had mostly been confined to her home. She had opened up to him when he started going to Lord Jule's home to learn governance, strategy and analytics. To some extent, he had noted, she was opening up to Dusk...

But leaving the house in the middle of the night under false pretence was very much out of her nature. She was the one least likely to cause that kind of a problem, always following laws and maintain security.

Luke called his security team and asked them to check where Princess Scarlet had gone. They called back in minutes to tell him that Princess Scarlet was in Apartment 285 of PG Dorm building. She had come back with Princess Catherine and Dusk Hale the previous night and not left the apartment.

This surprised Luke even more. He accessed the AI and found that Scarlet had gone out of the apartment at 11:15 pm the previous night. He scanned for Scarlet's communicator and found it to be in Catherine's room. He checked and found that she had left it behind. She had used her hacking skills to ensure it did not report that she had disengaged it.

Now Luke was sure that Scarlet was up to something. But he could not think of any prank or mischief Scarlet could do.

The AI of the apartment said that she left at 11:15, which meant that she had her communicator with her. Else the AI would not say she left at that time. If she left without the communicator, it would say someone left... He asked Dusk to get on her computer and start checking. She confirmed that according to the AI, Scarlet left and she did not come back. The only gap in the records were the 20 minutes that Luke himself had disabled the system.

Then she gave a cry. "There are two Scarlets registered in the apartment. There is Scarlet Lidwig who is in Catherine's room for some reason. And there is a Sca-rlet Lid-wig! Where did the second one come from? It's just spelt different. If you give an oral command, the AI will pronounce both as same..."

Luke put his head in his hands. Scarlet had used her skills to create a duplicate of herself. Which also meant she had two communicators, just like Luke himself had. She would have no problem managing both communicators because she was good with wearable tech.

"Are all the vehicles in the garage?" Luke asked the security team. They confirmed that the hover-car was parked but the duo-pax was missing.

"Damn! Why did none of you stop her or follow her when she left with the Duo-Pax?" Luke asked angrily.

"Who left Sir?" asked the puzzled security officer. It suddenly dawned on him why Luke was asking all these questions. "Do you mean to say Princess Scarlet is not in her room?"

"No! Start a search for her. Put in all units to find the Duo-pax. And do it quietly. I don't want anyone else to know."

Luke then started a city-wide trace for the location of the Duo-Pax called Duskrider. He gave Dusk his priority access and asked her to check arrivals and departures at Airport, Harbour and Maglev station. She started checking passenger lists, identity kits, and even videos to try and find Scarlet. She was now getting paranoid, remembering that the flaw discovered in the communicators during the Cartier Manor incident may not have been fixed.

Luke found the traces of Duskrider. It left the Dorm Building at 11:22 and then travelled to one of the more expensive of the student dorm buildings and the vanished. It went from one monitoring station and did not show up in the next. Or in any monitoring station thereafter. It was possible that the AI had been disabled... Again, Scarlet was capable of that. He directed the search for the Duo-Pax be started from that point in concentric circles.

There were no records of the duskrider leaving the Uni-Viva premises. It would be extremely difficult to avoid detection at the gates. If the AI did not respond, the security system would identify it as unknown vehicle and Militia would have been alerted.