Nira felt like she had trouble breathing, but she couldn’t tell if it was from fear, excitement, or something else. Her hands were shaking slightly and uncontrollably as she watched her boyfriend finish talking on the phone.
The fact that Nef had been working with some super-secret organization hadn’t been even half as surprising as the voice on the other side of Nef’s phone. Because she knew that voice.
Nira had only talked to the man once when she had been seventeen, and she had almost forgotten about that. She hadn’t thought about it for years.
Thinking about it now, it was shocking that her mother had let her talk to an Enorian, much less an aristocratic one. At least, Nira had assumed he was, judging by the way he’d dressed and spoken. She had seen him talking to her father more than a few times as well. He had visited them more than once, Nira was sure of that. Some diplomatic meetings, she had been told. Looking at the current geopolitical situation, though, they hadn’t been successful.
Nira couldn’t remember much of anything except for the conversation she’d had with the man. He had talked to her like, well, like she was an ordinary teenager. The only other person who had treated her like that at the time had been her father—maybe that was why Nira recalled the conversation so easily. Or maybe it was also because the man had spoken to her in her own language fluently, which was incredibly rare since they had a common language, and there was no real reason to learn another one.
“What would you like to do when you grow up?”
“You know who I am, don’t you? Who I’m supposed to be….”
“Yes, I know who you’re supposed to be, but who do you want to be?”
And so she had told him. Nira wasn’t sure why she had done that. Maybe because he’d seemed so sincere? Because he’d talked to her like she was an actual person? Thinking about it made her wonder, though. Had the man been involved in her relocation to Enoria? Nira wished she could ask her father, but that was impossible.
“Okay, I’ll just get the laptop from my car,” Nef said into the phone and almost ran to the door. Nira decided to wait for him as a sign of trust. He could take off in his car and never see her again, but she felt their relationship needed this. Especially when she imagined how it would go if Nef ever found out the truth about her. Nira shuddered a bit.
Just then, a realization hit her, and she ran out of the apartment, yelling Nef’s name.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as he stopped halfway down the stairs.
“We can’t stay here,” she said, finally catching up with him, and they both continued running to the car.
“What? Why?” Seeing Nef confused was a rather rare occurrence.
“You said your brother wanted you to stop helping these people.” Whoever they were. “He might make our apartment his next stop to make sure you can’t do…whatever it is you’re gonna do.” Nef blinked at her a few times as if he was surprised that Nira had thought of that, and she couldn’t decide if that made her feel insulted or proud.
“Um, good thinking,” Nef said, nodding at her and putting the phone to his ear again. “Does Al know you got out?”
There was a slight pause from the man on the other side, but then, finally, he spoke. “I think it’s fair to assume that he does.”
“You know, sometimes it’s okay to just say yes,” Nef told him with annoyance, and Nira couldn’t help but smile at that. They got in the car, Nira taking the passenger seat, and received a look from Nef. His eyes seemed to almost beg her not to come, but he said nothing after seeing the scowl Nira sent him.
That was good. One fight was enough for today.
Between the front seats, there was the briefcase Nef had been talking about. Nira picked it up as Nef put the phone call on speaker and put it on the dashboard. He then told the car to go east. Nira had no idea why east, but she supposed it either didn’t matter, or she would find out soon enough. She could tell that Nef was nervous as well. She gave him a small smile, which seemed to work at least a little because he smiled back.
“Could one of you please open the briefcase?” Nira almost jumped when she heard the voice. “Talking on the phone is not very practical or safe.”
Nira looked down at the briefcase in her lap and gingerly did as she had been asked, afraid it might explode on her, but nothing much happened. There was a black laptop, a headset, and, for some reason, a gun.
Nira and Nef frowned at each other for a moment before she lifted the laptop’s lid. The computer booted up almost instantly, but it sure didn’t look like Luminate, Vortex, or any other operating system she had ever seen. Granted, she wasn’t that much into software, but she had expected that she would have been able to at least recognize the system.
The screen was black, and in the middle was a rectangular box asking her for an ID and password. Nira had no idea what to make of that.
“Are you ready to sign in?”
“I think so,” Nira replied, but it sounded more like a question. She half-expected him to say something about her being there, but the man made no comment about it. He just started telling her numbers.
“The ID is 43715,” he said, and Nira repeated it as she typed. When it was done, he continued with the password which turned out to be twelve random letters and numbers. As soon as she logged in, the screen changed into a video, showing...someone’s hand holding a phone?
“Oh, good, it works,” he said, but the sound came from the laptop itself. Nira’s eyes widened in realization—of course, the video feed she was watching had to be what the man was seeing. Right now, the laptop screen showed a green and yellow landscape with a dashboard at the bottom, so he had to be flying somewhere.
“You’re sending this to us through the goggles you mentioned?” Nef asked, his voice excited. Nira turned the laptop towards him a little, so he could see better.
“Yes,” the man answered Nef’s question. “Unfortunately, I’m using an old model I keep because of sentimental value as I didn’t manage to procure the newest one from the headquarters, and so I was concerned that the goggles wouldn’t even work anymore.”
“So what’s the difference between the new and the old?” Nef asked, his excitement seeming to grow into more of a fascination. He always got like this when there was a new piece of technology to talk about or take apart. Nira had to smile. Even if she had almost no understanding of what was happening, the fact that Nef was the same as ever made her feel much better.
“Low resolution, lag, they’re bigger, several features are missing…. And the audio quality is horrendous.”
Before Nef could continue with this topic, Nira jumped into the conversation, unable not to keep her curiosity at bay, anymore.
“So,” she started, trying to think of what to ask. It wasn’t that she couldn’t think of something—there were too many things she wanted to ask but couldn’t with Nef in the same room…car. “Who are you?”
There was a moment of silence as if the man was deciding if he should tell her or not. So, whatever name he’d used to introduce himself to her those five years ago had most likely been fake. Nira couldn’t remember it, even though she’d been trying since the moment she had realized who he was.
“His name’s Kaleth Areon,” her boyfriend answered instead, and Nira had to admit that didn’t sound familiar at all. The video transmission moved right and left slightly several times and Nira thought Kaleth must have been shaking his head. “That’s not your real name, though, right? At least I think that’s what Rayni implied while she hung out with us.” Nira wondered who Rayni was but wasn’t given the time to ask.
Kaleth sighed but spoke.
“If you must know, I changed my surname.”
The man didn’t bother continuing, and Nira felt like they shouldn’t try to force him to tell them more, but Nef had other ideas.
“You changed your surname but not your name?”
“I did not need to,” Kaleth muttered as he looked at his watch. Nira wondered if he had done it only as an impatient gesture, or if he actually wanted to know the time.
“So what was it?” Nef continued. “Your surname.”
Kaleth sighed again. “It was G— No, actually, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Oh, c’mon, why not?” Nef whined, and Kaleth chuckled.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge such information.”
Nira almost burst out laughing at both the amused tone Kaleth had used and the offended face Nef made. “Whatever. There aren’t that many surnames that start with G. I’ll figure it out,” Nef said, tapping a finger on his chin. Nira could almost hear the gears in his head turning.
“Let it go, Nef,” she said, calmly but firmly. She knew he wouldn’t listen, but she felt like she should stick up for Kaleth. She didn’t understand it herself—the man was at least a decade older and could fight his own battles, even if said battle was with an annoying engineer. Maybe she felt like she owed him.
If he truly had gotten her to Enoria, then she owed him everything. But how could she ask him when Nef was right next to her? And from the way Kaleth had explained the situation, it seemed he wasn’t expecting to survive whatever he was planning to do, so there would be no other time to ask.
Nira looked over at Nef, who was still trying to figure out Kaleth’s surname, tapping away at his phone furiously. Maybe he wouldn’t notice her question if she asked now. Nef could sometimes get lost in his own head and completely ignore his surroundings.
She looked at the laptop screen where Kaleth’s hands were currently opening some kind of a dark metal box, and she swallowed. With one last look at Nef, she wrote as silently as carefully as she could: “Did you help me get here?” The words appeared at the bottom of the screen and disappeared when she hit enter.
Kaleth stopped what he was doing for a moment and then he nodded before lifting the lid of the box. Inside was a huge and dismantled gun. Nira ran a hand through her hair, trying to process that. Since she had run away, she had thought it had been her father who helped her do it, but it seemed it hadn’t been just him.
“Why?” she couldn’t help but write.
Kaleth didn’t answer, not verbally anyway. Nira watched as he began putting together the sniper rifle—at least that was what it looked like to her—waiting for some sort of response. Then words started appearing on the bottom of the screen, like subtitles: I was ordered to.
Well, that made Nira feel much less grateful immediately. What the hell did that mean? Who would have ordered an Enorian to smuggle someone like her over the border? What was the purpose of her being here?
Nira wanted to ask all these questions and more, but Nef decided now was a good time to return to reality.
“Did you say something?” he asked Nira, who didn’t know what to do right now. She needed to know more, she really did, but if she did that now, Nef would ask what she and Kaleth were talking about, and her secret...well, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.
“You really should tell him,” said Kaleth, now doing something with the gun’s scope. Nira would have told him something rude if he hadn’t continued talking. Because Nef wasn’t going to leave this alone after hearing that, and unless she lied, there was no way out of this. “Relationships can’t work when lies are involved. Or even just one big one.”
It sounded to Nira like he was speaking from experience.
“What the hell are you talking about? Nira’s not keeping anything from me,” Nef said, sounding so sure. Nira was sure she couldn’t feel guiltier if she tried. “Right?”
“I could say it instead of you, if you’d like,” Kaleth offered, his voice sympathetic, but Nira immediately refused. She needed to do this herself. Nef deserved that much.
“What’s going on?” Nef asked her, suddenly worried. “And how does he know?” Nef pointed at the laptop as he said this, glaring. “Have you been stalking her?”
“That’s a part of my job, Nef. Luxarx is a pillar of Enoria’s security.”
“Nira’s not a danger to the damned Federation,” Nef protested angrily, and Nira’s heart beat even faster.
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Nira whispered, and Nef looked at her, completely confused. Nira just knew that the only thing Nef was thinking of was terrorism. “I’m…not an Enorian.”
The silence that followed was deafening. It was so much worse than that awkward one they had shared just a while ago, and there was nowhere to run. Nira didn’t even want to take what she had just said back as much as she wanted to leave the car. Unfortunately, if she did, she’d fall to her death.
“I’m from Irithara.”
“What?” Nef exclaimed and laughed uncertainly. “This is a joke, right?”
Nira sighed. She knew that the best way to convince him was to just show him, so she put her index finger to her right eye and carefully took off the brown color contact, revealing the mix of violet and blue underneath, before doing the same thing with her left one.
Nef started at her in disbelief for a moment before opening his mouth. “Holy crap.”
Well, that wasn’t the worst reaction she could have gotten, but she didn’t know what to do with it. Luckily for her, her boyfriend talked more than her.
“Irithara? Seriously?” he breathed and ran a hand over his face. “Wow. Okay, so why don’t you have that stupid accent, then?”
“It’s not stupid,” she said defensively and folded her arms. “And I do have it. I just can’t sound like that here.”
“This is insane, you realize that, right?” If Nef had problems handling this, maybe it would be for the best to leave the rest of it for later. “Okay. What else aren’t you telling me?”
Nira swallowed again and bit her lip. She wondered if not telling him anything more would be the better option but immediately decided against it. She had to tell him, it wasn’t fair to not do so. Still, this wasn’t going to go well. “I’m not just an Iritharian,” she started and took in a deep breath. “I’m the heir to the throne.”
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