The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (27 page)

Julius thought for a bit, taking out the
piece of paper which he had scribbled the poem onto. “He was the
only one who knew all the words of the parchment,” Julius said. “I
wanted him clear-headed…to see how much more I could get out of
him.”

“
Actually…” Leticia
continued the conversation, leaning against the jeep, flaunting her
curves slightly, and buying time, in case the elves and Anya were
already at the Tree of Life, and were busy figuring out what to do
next. “What if what he said is true? About the Tree of Life? Don’t
you care?”

“
Actually…” Julius imitated
Leticia’s voice at first, before dropping to a humorless tone. “I
don’t. People are silly creatures that should have self-destructed
a long time ago.”

“
Then what’s the point of
living forever?”

Julius leaned back against the jeep, beside
Leticia. “My dear girl! That’s not the point. It’s all about the
profit margins, huge profit margins…you have no idea how many
people, throughout history, have spent their lives searching for an
elixir of everlasting life. Xenith is my family’s legacy…this will
be my legacy.”

He opened the blue box, searching for the
tell-tale sheen in one of the vials…when he realized none of them
were labeled ‘H’ or ‘E,’ in black marker, in his own neat
handwriting.

“
Where are my vials?”
Julius said, in a deathly whisper, just loud enough for Leticia to
hear, as he lifted the glass tubes.

The stress was too much for Leticia to bear.
In the second that Julius looked at her, he noted her features
tensing up, which was followed by a quietness, a lack of response,
that signaled her game was over.

Leticia took a sharp intake of breath,
before turning to Julius, eyes gazed downward. “What—”

He instantly struck her across the face with
a closed fist, right under the eye. It was like a small rock had
hit her—her face was stinging with a tight, stabbing, burning pain.
Leticia felt her eye had just exploded.

“
How
could
you,” he said, caustically. He
shook his head slowly, as he seethed with rage. “After everything
you said—after everything we’ve been through!”

He brought a hand up to his head, trying to
maintain some level of sensibility.

“
I…” Leticia started,
recalling some of the ups and downs in their relationship. She
hadn’t meant to deceive him this way. The elves just seemed so sure
about what they’d said about the Tree. “It wasn’t to hurt
you—”

“
All along—you just…you
were just…”

Playing along,
he couldn’t finish. He couldn’t believe it.
Leticia, who had always been there for him, even in his darkest
days. The whole thing was a fabrication—that’s what it was, then.
The love of his life turned out to be the biggest lie.

“
Where are the vials?” he
repeated, demanding to know. His mind was working at the speed of
light, as he filled in the missing gaps. “And the diamond
dust?”

Leticia was hunched over the jeep, one hand
over the side where Julius dealt a blow. She raised an arm to block
him, and drew back, when he took a step closer to her.

With brute force, Julius dragged her over to
the passenger seat of the jeep. Leticia tried to fight back, but
she was no match for Julius.

“
Oh…” he scoffed, digging
for something in his bag on the backseat, “I never should have
trusted you. Never!”

He regained his composure, turned on the
ignition, and hummed along to the death metal tune that played on
the radio, as he calmly handcuffed Leticia to one of the metal
grooves on the side of the jeep.

“
You’re not going anywhere,
girl,” he snickered. Leticia was aghast, at how he could say “girl”
with an unprecedented amount of affection.

Julius wasn’t taking any chances this time.
He felt Leticia down, and tossed her cell phone out into the
surrounding foliage. He sat on the driver’s seat, opening one of
the compartments. He rummaged through some pieces of paper before
taking out a silver case and a long, slim hollow tube.

“
Are they already there?”
he asked, looking through one end of the hollow tube.

Leticia didn’t answer.

“
It’s the symbol, isn’t
it,” Julius continued, still speaking in an acidic tone. “Why else
would they be there…”

“
See you at the
Amazon…15-45, 47-57,” Nin had said to Leticia. She didn’t know what
they were going to do at the Tree either. And she could swear that
the elves really hadn’t seen the symbol. But why would Julius
believe her now?

Leticia glanced over at the open bag on the
back seat, and saw some guns and a machete inside. She watched as
Julius picked up the bag, and held up the blowpipe in his other
hand. He blew through one end of it, at an imaginary target in the
distance, then waved the tube in front of Leticia’s face.

“
These work like poison
darts.” He opened the silver case, which was filled with little
hand forged iron arrowheads, sharpened to a point. “A sure
killer.”

Chapter 18:

Nin, Dresan, and Tavia entered the compound,
and continued to move in a tight triangle formation, with Anya in
the center, holding on to the box containing the vials.

Dresan started taking out the security
cameras surrounding the complex—Tavia kept watch for him. She fired
a shot at a couple of scientists who stepped out of their tents,
dragging their bodies off away to the side once they were
unconscious.

“
Over there,” Nin
whispered, barely audibly, to Anya.

Nin and Anya headed over to some crates,
which they hoped would hold the precious roots they needed. They
started ransacking the crates, one by one, methodically and
desperately, very conscious of the precarious position they were
in.

The first two boxes contained roots, but not
the deep tree roots with the reddish hue. Anya struggled with
opening the lid of one, before Nin helped her pry it open. This one
also turned out to have shredded bits of bark and leaves, with no
sign of the redroot.

“
Which one is it?” Anya
looked at the rows of boxes stacked up against each other, before
turning to face Nin. He stood, baffled, caught between figuring out
which box to open, and whether he should be looking for the golden
four-leaved symbol. He turned to look at the Tree, as he tried not
to get distracted with the sorry state the battered Tree was
in.

“
I think I’ve got to find
the symbol,” Nin said to Anya, as he tried to target which section
of the boxes she could continue to search through. “It’s got to be
there somewhere.”

Anya knew Julius would be on the way. He
said he’d be coming.

“
I’ll look for the
redroot.” Anya had never seen Nin look so distressed. She was aware
of what he was going through. She’d do whatever she could to allay
some of his anxiety.

Anya stood for a moment, wide-eyed with the
pure, innocent, untainted trust she fully placed in Nin. She
wondered what he was looking at, when there wasn’t any time to
lose. He was looking at nothing but her—right into her. He liked
how they both seemed to understand each other, and take each other
for what they really were.

He kissed her on the side of her cheek,
another one of his actions inspired by being ‘in the moment,’
before heading off towards the Tree, which he felt was calling for
him. Anya kept her eyes on his nimble figure, the figure whose lips
had just warmed her skin, and unknowingly taken away a little piece
of her heart. She had to remind herself to breathe again, before
continuing her search for the right tree roots.

“
Number four,” Tavia
whispered to Dresan, as one of the scientists fell to the ground,
after she fired off a shot.

Dresan and Tavia kept watch over Nin and
Anya, taking aim whenever someone stepped out from one of the
tents. The elves had to be faster, because some of the people were
armed.

“
I’m going inside,” he
muttered to Tavia.

“
What?” She looked around.
She wasn’t sure she could keep a three hundred and sixty-degree
watch for Nin and Anya, by herself.

“
I’ll only take a
while.”

Dresan slipped into one of the tents. He was
lucky. The people inside were all fast asleep. He used his stun gun
swiftly and accurately on all of them. He worked systematically and
with precision. When he made his exit, he smiled at Tavia, before
continuing in the next tent. He’d make his way from one tent to
another while Tavia stayed on guard outside. That way, they
wouldn’t be outnumbered.

Dresan signaled to Tavia when he was going
to slip into the next tent, which was slightly bigger than the
others. His intent was to stun-gun all of the individuals who were
fast asleep inside.

Tavia shook her head, before looking to the
side. She thought she heard something.

“
Too dangerous,” she
whispered to Dresan. All it took was one bullet to cause a fatal
wound. The tent Dresan was about to go into was slightly bigger
than the rest. That could mean more people, which ultimately meant
a higher chance of something going awry.

He chose not to take her advice, as he crept
up to the tent. He raised his head when he thought he saw a guard
moving in the distance. Dresan stood still, lifting the gun, and
shot at the target, smiling when a dark figure fell to the ground:
another eliminated officer. What Dresan didn’t expect was a guard
that had crept right up into the compound.

The guard sprang up from the shadows, coming
out from his hiding place beside one of the pitched tents. Dresan
froze for a split second, as he stared down the barrel of a
gun—before Tavia took aim and fired at the guard’s arm, causing the
gun to fly out of his outstretched hand. Dresan shot the guard in
the chest thereafter, bringing another sentry down.

Dresan took another step, before turning
swiftly to the left, bearing the sole of his foot down into the
ground for balance and support. He fired a shot, which caused a
bullet coming in his direction to ricochet midair. Dresan took
another step, to the side this time, when a guard stepped up from
behind, aiming his weapon at Dresan. Tavia fired a shot, which
missed, but sufficiently distracted the guard—it was Nin who heard
the commotion, whipped out his pistol, and took aim, taking the
guard down with one shot.

Dresan looked at Tavia and Nin with a
straight face, bringing a hand across his collarbone in a, “I
nearly got my head chopped off” gesture, before facing his palm
up—his own wordless way of conveying a much-appreciated thank
you.

Anya and Nin had witnessed Dresan’s narrow
escape. Anya was close to immobilized. The sheer danger of what
they were doing had really sunk in. She forced herself to continue
frantically searching for the redroot, as Nin proceeded to search
around the Tree of Life itself. He was seeking out some markings on
the tree, or a specific spot to stand in the ground, while racking
his brains as to what the symbol meant.

“
Let not the eye fool
thee…” Nin muttered under his breath, as he jumped on certain
spots, waiting to see if reciting the poem would have any
effect.

He met Anya’s gaze for a moment, and he put
his hands up slightly, to signal that he still hadn’t found the
symbol.

Don’t give up,
she sent her thoughts to him.

Nin recited the whole poem, then different
portions. But nothing happened still.

He paced up and down,
before stopping at the base of the tree, where its roots still
clung strongly into the ground.
2, 1,
7,
Nin thought to himself.
Second, first, and seventh signs—Taurus, Aries,
and Libra—Julius, Anya, and me—do we all need to be here, for
something to happen?

Nin recalled the illustrations on the
parchment, and went on the ground, using his index finger to
drawing out the rough design of the Zodiac symbol—of the circle,
divided into 12 separate and equal parts.

“
Orn,
Ilfirin,Lir,
” he tried again, almost
chanting the three words that
o, i,
and
l
stood for, on the Elven parchment.

Just as Anya found a small
box containing red roots, Nin muttered the ‘2, 1, 7’ code of
numbers, and marked the first segment at the top of the circle as
‘1’, for the first sign of Aries, and marking the subsequent signs,
in an anti-clockwise direction. He had always respected the ancient
arts of astrology, mathematics, and magic, whether or not anyone
else shared his beliefs. “
Orn, Ilfirin,
Lir
”—he repeated, using his hand to touch
the ‘2, 1, 7’ segments of the Zodiac symbol, with each of the Elven
words he uttered.

Suddenly, the symbol shone on the ground.
Nin was standing right over it. He stepped back in surprise, then
in awe, at the Zodiac symbol in full detail framed by a circle. The
entire symbol shone golden, like it had been engraved into the
ground. A glass capsule was situated in the middle of the symbol,
gleaming like a clear gem. He knew then, what he had to do.

He was just about to call out to Anya, when
she ran over to him, holding out a piece of redroot.

“
You found it!” Anya
whispered, though she could still hear the pride in her
voice.

“
And so did you…” Nin
replied, tilting his chin towards the redroot. It was the last,
elusive item to form the elixir. “Which box was it?”