Tasìa shuffled through the diminishing crowd with her feet planted on the street walk. There was still the spectacle of the dead Czech now being handled by an investigative team. What remained, the hustling bodies at her sides, belonged to those who had places to be at in the nearby commercial and industrial facilities.

  As she approached Sachmilli Cuervo's van, the back doors opened in invitation. Tasìa sprinted across the street, dodging through self-steered Vespas, and small cars popular with those who lived in the nearby apartment district.

  As soon as she jumped in the van, Tasìa heard Annebél raise her voice.

  "It wasn't me."

  Tasìa leaned down on her haunches against the floorboard and steadied her breathing.

  "You'll have to be more specific."

  Annebél shook her head vigorously. Her facial profile appeared more angular than usual due to her red hair being pinned back.

  "The explosives found inside the HybrClydis. That was not my doing."

  Tasìa leaned her head back.

  "I kinda figured. Mani Montrose who runs the tracks for the VEAA said there were four hundred pounds of explosives in our baby. Since little bitty me, who retrieved the plastique, can't lift much more than my own body and a fanny pack full of Noog-Noogs, I know it wasn't the same stuff.

  "Nor would it have served the same purpose that you intended for it.

  "Not saying you are cheap, mon amis, but I don't see you spending sixty thousand on plastique just to see Sal Javierra shit his pants."

  Then Tasìa gave Annebél an inquisitive gaze.

  "So what brings you here?"

  Tasìa noticed that between herself and the driver seats, both of which were now in a swiveled position facing her, sat Sachmilli's ice cooler.

  She eyed it longingly for a solid second before he propped the top open with his toe. Several bottles of blue-labeled Quilmes floated in water and ice.

  Tasìa thanked him with a smile and a nod as she twisted the top off. She gulped down half the content before she let out a sigh of satisfaction, followed by a mannerless belch.

  Tasìa determined her nerves were still too shot after the series of events that occurred on the rooftop for her to effect any sort of cuteness that would soften her outer disposition.

  To that she shrugged and tilted the bottle for another chug.

  Annebél politely waited as the little thief, or 'liberationist,' as Corporal Rojas mockingly noted her preferred term, finished the full bottle before she answered Tasìa's question.

  "Sachmilli's network is quite robust in Vida Escondida. He got word of our HybrClydis being impounded and sent Mel out to gather intel; the bird harked on some alarming matters and notified me to pick up Sachmilli and book it to Vida Escondida."

  Tasìa chuckled.

  "So Mel is in charge of this operation?"

  Sachmilli, she had noted, watched her with a cool gaze and answered with an equally cool response.

  "He knows more about what's going on than anyone else."

  Am I on the outs?

  "What's the problem?" Tasìa asked.

  "You are here in Vida Escondida going vida loca, stirring up a mess, chasing your tail, and I asked myself, 'Why?' for the entire ride here. Then it clicked. You disagree with the central premise of your mission. You don't really want to save Demona Helo?ste, do you?"

  Tasìa squinched her face hard. Wondering if she made a mistake accepting the beer. She glanced at Sachmilli's detached demeanor, then back at the cooler.

  Fuck it, she was a thief by nature. Invitation, or not.

  "I'm risking life and limb to see this through," Tasìa stated defiantly as she grabbed another bottle of beer.

  "Do you feel that you know what Demona's endgame is?"

  "To be honest. Not really. But she is dying, and I have a chance to save her."

  Sachmilli nodded and looked to his own hands with a stern frown.

  "I get that, Tasìa, I really do. Kleptomania aside, fundamentally, you are a good person. She has, however, tasked you with the impossible. Do you know how she got her brain disease in the first place?"

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Tasìa considered the tone of Sachmilli's question if it hinted that he knew of the virtual throupling Tasìa shared with Demona and Beauregard in her romantic life.

  He definitely considered her current actions to be tainted by an irrational attachment to Demona Helo?ste. That came through loud and clear.

  "To be honest, no, I do not. I thought it rude to ask."

  Sachmilli chuckled, bemusedly.

  "Why," he asked.

  "Her appearance at this time must be truly dreadful. Skull plate removed so her brain can grow like a tomato plant up a set of tresses. The cause of it must be embarrassing."

  Sachmilli smiled, with a nod, and his tongue held firm. He decided to partake of his favorite Argentinian lager.

  "What?" Tasìa asked.

  "Nothing. Your answer reminded me of something an American writer, O'Rourke once said. Idle distraction. Let's continue."

  Annebél gave a not-too-serious punch to Sachmilli's shoulder.

  "Do you forget I gave you that book?"

  Sachmilli shrugged.

  "No. But out of forty thousand words, how can you assume which phrase I was thinking, unless it occurred to you too?"

  Tasìa beaded her eyes sharply and furrowed her brows. She did not like being talked about. Sachmilli saw her reaction and straightened his back.

  "Tasìa, the phrase that came to my mind is simply this: 'You assume she is a hard-ass prude, but she is just really, really nice. Because you don't like her, you can't tell the difference.'"

  "Oh," Annebél responded to his explanation. "I was thinking of something much worse. My bad."

  Sachmilli shook his head, aggravated that he had to explain himself but dismissed the need to harp on it.

  "Annebél, if you could find a place over there by the water ducts to park the van, we can show our friend what we know."

  As Annebél shifted the van into gear, Tasìa's nerves finally settled, but she now felt drowsiness set in. She shook her head vigorously.

  "You alright there, Tasìa?" Sachmilli asked.

  She grinned gobliny and nodded along.

  "Rethinking the beer. Probably should keep sharp, especially with the entities wanting to invade my dream space."

  "Just a month ago you fried them out with LSD, right?"

  When Tasìa acknowledged it with a nod, Sachmilli reached into his flannel shirt pocket and produced two pills.

  "I stopped for some trucker speed for our cross-country road trip. I wound up taking a nap instead."

  Tasìa downed the two pills with a gulp of beer and thought of their previous conversation that Annebél interrupted with a distraction.

  Though Tasìa was still drowsy, it occurred to her.

  Did she make Sachmilli change the subject on purpose? Is there something Annebél does not want me to know?

  Tasìa cast her doubts to the side as she was in no mental state to sort through the matter as sleep deprivation typically nudged her towards a state of paranoia. Instead, she asked Sachmilli a follow-up question.

  "Do you know the answer to that question that you asked me? What is Demona's endgame?"

  Sachmilli nodded with his eyebrow raised. He glanced over to Annebél and then back to Tasìa.

  "Spook matters do tend to get sent my way. Helo?ste was in charge of a project to create an interface with the nanospore entities, but it came at cross purposes with the task force assigned to govern the Egliona entity. They call it the Encapsulation Project.

  "There was a clash between the teams that Helo?ste instigated, and it wound up having detrimental repercussions for all of us in the Quadra. The Egliona Entity got loose.

  "As a result, it left Helo?ste both in disciplinary exile and with a disease condition caused by a feedback malfunction in that interface, which she went against orders and tested on herself."

  Tasìa stared at the middle distance with light suddenly rushing into her eyeballs, and her alertness level increasing.

  She could feel blood pumping into them as she gathered her wits to respond.

  "Such a loose cannon. No wonder Demona runs with Kutuzov's crew. When she was exiled in that tower at the IMCQ, do you think Egliona sought her out?"

  They came to a stop, and Sachmilli stood up. He patted her shoulder.

  "Without a doubt."

  This time, Tasìa wasn't abrasive when she asked.

  "You think I should step away from all of these affairs with Demona, don't you?"

  He leaned against the chair in which he sat and gave Annebél another look. Annebél nodded and then opened the driver's door.

  "Let me get that catch on the back step," she said.

  Sachmilli could walk just fine, but did not complain about it. Tasia then realized Annebél wasn't doing it to assist Sachmilli.

  She then noticed a long hard case to her left marked with a commercial brand, 'Priority's Best,' in English.

  Though she had not noticed the case until now, Tasìa had leaned on it for the entire short trip to the aqueduct.

  She laughed at herself with a shake of the head.

  "At this point, my brain is pretty much gone."

  Sachmilli offered her his hand to help lift her off her haunches.

  "Tasìa. That question you asked me, do I think you should abandon Helo?ste? She is a diabolist, you do know that, correct?"

  Tasìa nodded, "That weighs on my mind as well. She admitted to me that her associations in that respect may have been the result of a seed dream being planted in her mind by outside forces."

  "Just to be clear, White Palace?"

  "Yes. That's the one."

  Annebél opened the back door, and when she caught Tasìa's eye with her own set, she pointed her chin towards the hard leather case.

  "Tasìa, I know how much you love pretty shiny things that go, 'pew! pew!'"

  The redhead dug in her pocket for a key.

  Sachmilli raised his head to get her attention once more.

  "That question you asked, well, it is complicated. I have not reached a conclusion that would dismiss Helo?ste as being vital in the scheme of things as of yet.

  "Given that matter is up for debate, there is something that I want you and Annebél to do—I need you to retrieve Helo?ste's device, the NeoPalm, and together we'll do a thorough examination of it to determine where we should go from there."

  Tasìa jumped out of the van and assisted Sachmilli. Though she was anxious to help Annebél open the case, she still had questions for the old Sabio.

  With a palm out and fingers stretched, outlining the water ducts whose arched grates made of stone-embedded concrete rose eighteen feet in the air to keep a dampener cover in place over the holding clamps where four pipelines met and a waterfall gushed out to a hidden world below.

  Tasìa turned back towards Sachmilli.

  "So, what are we doing here? The NeoPalm is in the HybrClydis that-a-way."

  Sachmilli folded his arms.

  "You are searching for your former associate, Gabriel Matzi, correct? The youths working for Fiona Caza, the one you call Birddog, opened up the stairwell built into the maintenance shack over there and dragged him into it."

  Tasìa drew up her face apprehensively.

  "The Dark-Eyed Ones, assuming they were not a figment of my dream state, called it the Cistern of Souls down there."

  Sachmilli was amused once more.

  "I always wondered if they had a name for it, but I have long known that down there, there be dragons. And bats! Thousands and thousands of nasty bats!"