Ntshona (16 page)

“Oh god, I wonder if they saw the news; they probably think I’m a terrorist now. I want to call them”.

“You can’t, their connections might be tapped,” said Lon.

“Ja, it’s risky for you two to contact anyone right now,” added Cat.

Eve looked slightly depressed.

“I wonder if my parents saw the news too,” said Lon, “hopefully Chris has told them that I’m not a terrorist,” he thought for a moment, “Actually, maybe it’s best of Chris doesn’t tell them anything. After all, if they know what he knows, and then the police find out that they know, then there could be a lot of trouble for all of us”.

“I really don’t think your brother is that stupid,” said Cat.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed.

Cat got to her feet. “I’m gonna take a shower now, but let me put your clothes in the wash first,” she picked up Lon’s worn clothing from the floor.

“Oh, I didn’t know where to put mine,” said Eve, “so I folded them and left them by the sink in the bathroom”.

“Ok, I’ll sort them out. If you want something to eat, check the cupboards, there should be something there; just take whatever. If you want to go to sleep, then it’s the second room down the corridor. There’s only a single bed though, so it might be a bit of a squeeze. Is that okay?”

“Oh-” Lon was about to voice up, but was cut short by Eve.

“We aren’t, um… together”.

Cat was surprised. “I am so sorry! I thought you two were…” she then realised why Eve had been so embarrassed, and that what she had insisted on her wearing in the meantime was inappropriate around a man with whom she was not in a relationship, especially considering her lack of underwear. “What size bras do you wear? I think I may have something that fits you”.

Lon thought he could feel his wet hair steaming.

“Um, can I come and take a look please?” Eve requested.

“Of course, come, come!”

Lon decided to search the cupboards in the kitchen area for food. He needed to replenish a great deal of energy, however he felt a little too lethargic to bother, and poured himself a bowl of the most expensive looking of the multiple varieties of cereals Cat owned, and poured some for Eve as well. He then moved back to the couch and turned on the television to scan for any news related to his situation.

Cat and Eve returned to the living room at roughly the same time Lon almost choked on a spoonful of sugary fruit flakes.

“They’re blaming us for the explosions on the highway!” coughed Lon.

“What?!” exclaimed Eve.

“They’re saying that we’re extremely dangerous and have a general disregard for human life!”

“What the hell kind of crap is that?” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said Cat, “I’m sure there’ll be eyewitness footage surfacing online before long”.

“But my parents are bound to think I’m a terrorist by now!”

“Seriously, don’t worry. I don’t think anybody buys that crap,” Cat said in an attempt at consolation.

“Either way, it’s annoying as hell,” said Lon, “the police go around blowing shit up, and we get the blame! And they’re only after us because the government didn’t manage to abduct us when they took our friends”.

“I keep telling you,” said Cat, “we don’t know if it was the government”.

“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Eve. “It seems like there’s something important you’re not telling us”.

“There are many important things I’m not telling you. I
seem
to remember clearly mentioning that earlier”.

“It’s a little bit frustrating for us, you know?” Lon spoke on both their behalf. “It seems you’ve got something planned involving us, yet you’re not telling us anything about it”.

Cat began to get agitated. “Look guys, I promise I’ll tell you lots of important stuff, just not right now”.

“Then when?” Lon was getting more demanding, and rightly so, he and Eve were in an extremely dangerous state.

“Okay, I’ll tell you this now: we’re meeting with someone else tomorrow, a woman who has the… connections that we need”.

“Need for what?” asked Eve.

“Well, you’ll find out in the morning, won’t you?”

“Wait a minute,” said Lon, “when have you been making all these plans? We just met you today, and you’ve already schemed something highly secret involving us, and arranged for us to meet someone else, all without leaving our sight; we’ve been with you all day”.

This instilled a sense of pride in Cat. “I’m good at what I do. Also, it would help if you paid more attention to the things going on around you”.

Lon had the feeling he was being criticised. Rightly so, too, he felt, as he had apparently been brainwashed by the government so badly that he had believed masses upon masses of their lies and not noticed the truths of the world, even though he had hated the country’s leaders for many years.

“Anyway, I’m going to take a shower. Lon, you can sleep on the couch, Eve can have the bed”.

“That’s fine,” he said, and soon after both he and Eve retreated to their dreams.

Chapter 8

“Morning sunshine”.

Lon heard Cat’s voice. Had she always been so sarcastic? A stream of light spilt across his face, and he covered his eyes with his hand for protection. “Ow! Give me a chance to react before you de-tint the windows!” He sat up on the sofa and slowly opened his eyes. “Ouch, so bright. What time is it?”

“9am”.

“9am?” he repeated, “9am on a Sunday?”

“Yep”.

“Are you mad?” he dragged himself off the sofa, and only then fully realised the after-effects of being chased through the city by armed police. He caught himself before falling on his face, and slowly walked to the breakfast bar where he propped himself up to release the pressure on his tender legs.

“Shame man, are your legs paining?” asked Cat as she spread butter on a slice of toast.

“Yeah, actually my thighs-” he cut himself off at the sight of what Cat had on display; she was adorned with a very low-cut, black nightgown bordered with small pink frills, which was so high at the bottom that he could just about see the whole length of her legs. This definitely was not a lady with issues of low self-esteem.

“What?” she said.

“What?” he replied.

“You were saying something, then you just stopped. Does it hurt that much?”

Lon’s face felt as though it had a radiator strapped to it. He turned ninety degrees to face the corridor off the living room. “Sorry, it just feels a bit hot in here. It’s probably because it’s the middle of summer, right?”

“Really? I’ve set the apartment’s temperature low. Maybe it’s that thick bathrobe you’re wearing. You should take it off”.

He had no idea how to react to her suggestion. Was this how confident girls came on to somebody they liked? “Sorry?” he had no idea what else to say. He needed to hear again what she had said, perhaps he had misheard her the first time.

“Take off that robe; go and put your clothes on, they’re clean and dry”.

He almost felt stupid for the misunderstanding. Fortunately he was not forward enough to have made the situation potentially stickier for himself. “Oh, yeah, I’ll get changed soon. I just need to get used to the pain in my legs”.

“Right. Do you want any toast?” offered Cat.

“Oh, yes please”.

“I’ll put you some in now, it’ll just be few seconds”.

Eve, who was awoken by Lon’s loud voice, emerged from the bedroom at the end of the short hall, and walked, as if also in pain, towards the living room and kitchen area. She was greeted by, almost in her direct line of sight, the back of a very bare pair of thighs. Lon saw her eyes expand in a moment of disbelief before she span on her heel and quickly retraced her steps back to the bedroom.

“Do you think Eve will want some toast too?” asked Cat.

At this point Lon determined that the scenario was in fact rather comical, thus had to squeeze one of his little fingers hard in an attempt not to laugh. “I’m not sure, maybe you should go and ask”.

“Do you think she’ll be awake?”

“You’re worried about waking her up, yet you had no problem waking me up?” Lon could not help but feel that he was being treated differently.

“I’m sure you don’t mind,” she said. She seemed to be in a very sarcastic mood.

Lon frowned.

Cat turned and walked in the direction of the spare bedroom in which Eve had slept. “Eve
… Eve, are you awake?” she said through the closed door.

“Yes, I’m just about to get out of bed,” was her reply.

Lon felt a smile spread across his cheeks.

“Good,” said Cat, “do you want some toast?”

“Um, yes please, if you don’t mind”.

“Okay, it will be done soon,” and she returned to the kitchen to finish buttering Lon’s toast. “There you go,” and she handed him a toast-filled plate.

Eve came out of the room again, this time avoiding looking at anything of Cat’s except her face. She placed herself on a tall stool by the breakfast bar.

Both girls were dressed in revealing nightwear. Lon was not displeased.

“Sleep well?” he asked, trying with the utmost self control to maintain eye contact.

“I guess. You?”

“I actually can’t remember falling asleep,” he said. “Do your legs hurt?”

“Yoh, they’re sore hey! I don’t get to do much exercise these days”.

“Yeah, my legs are killing me,” he said.

The conversation quickly dried up.

“Here’s your toast,” said Cat as she handed it over to Eve.

The following several minutes of uneasiness were filled mainly with the sounds of chewing and nothing else.

“Oh, listen,” Cat remembered something, “do you know what the live citizen profile database is?”

“Yeah,” responded Eve, “isn’t it where the government keep all our information?”

“That’s right. Well, it turns out that your brother,” she faced Lon, “thought ahead and hacked into your two profiles to delete all your family links. Apparently he’s more worried about this than I am”.

“That’s actually a relief,” said Lon, “I wouldn’t want Chris’ company to be linked to terrorism. Hopefully that means my parents are safe now too”.

Eve sighed in respite, “That’s a lot less to worry about now. But why couldn’t he delete the ‘Terrorist’ bit?”

“Apparently the way the program was written makes it easy to change the links between relatives, but not other information. So now you’re officially terrorist orphans”.

“Have you thought of what you’re gonna do about checkpoints?” Lon asked Cat after they entered the car and closed all the doors.

“Actually, I’m already way ahead of you. I had Strys hack the police servers again to find out where the checkpoints have been set up. I already sent the locations to my car’s GPS”.

“Wow, you really are good at what you do,” said Eve in reference to what Cat had said the night previous.

“How many checkpoints are there?” asked Lon.

“I didn’t bother counting”.

“Are there so many?” he began to worry.

“Ja, there are a lot”.

“Aren’t you concerned at all?” asked Eve.

“No,” said Cat, “there are more roads in this city than there are checkpoints; it’s still easy to get in and out of the city centre. If you know where the checkpoints are, that is”.

This return to Cat’s usual chilled, confident self came as something of a relief to Lon and Eve. They were beginning to see her as a strong, reliable person.

The car descended through the floors of the car park until they were at ground level, and then exited and drove away from the building.

It was difficult to tell with Cat, but Lon and Eve were still very on edge. Every time they discerned a police vehicle or police personnel among the traffic and crowds, they felt inclined to hide, despite the windows of the car being deeply tinted when viewed from the outside.

“I’ll give you a warning about this girl we’re going to pick up,” said Cat breaking the paranoid silence, “you often need to take her with a pinch of salt”.

“That sounds like a fun person to be around,” said Lon.

“Could you be more specific?” asked Eve.

“You’ll see soon enough,” stated Cat.

Not much else was spoken until the car arrived at some neighbourhood not too far from the city centre. Here there were a mixture of accommodation blocks and office buildings, with the odd retail outlet. The traffic was not thick on the roads this early on the country’s day of rest.

Cat drove slowly so as to make it easier to keep an eye out for who they were looking for. Thankfully the buildings here did not completely blot out the sun, therefore giving rise to fewer shadows, and fewer pedestrians frequented this place than other streets near the city plaza. Due to these reasons, determining which person was the one Cat was looking for was, in reality, very easy.

The car pulled up at the side of the road close to where stood a young woman, attired in summer clothing of a style not too dissimilar to the nightgown Cat had worn to bed the previous night, with a comparatively large holdall bag slung across her left shoulder.

The girl walked up to the car and opened the back door. “Hey, howzit?” she directed at Lon, who was sat at the opposite side of the rear seat, as he had become accustomed to in the previous twenty-four hours. “How you doing Cat?” she asked as she threw the holdall she was carrying into the centre of the back seat and got into the car herself.

“Not too bad thanks, just a bit stressed after what happened to us last night”.

“Right, hey! I saw on the news, was it you guys who they said were blowing up the roads last night?” said the girl.

“Ja,” Cat replied, “but actually they were firing rockets at us or something”.

“Yoh, that’s pretty hectic, hey! I heard quite a few people were sent to hospital in pretty serious condition,” said the girl.

It was beginning to become apparent to Lon and Eve, or at least seemed to be, that each person involved with Cat was generally very casual and took extreme and heavy things very lightly, almost as if, in some way or another, they were accustomed to these sorts of matters. Was this a good sign or a bad one?

“Yeah, and after that,” Cat continued, “they had a tracker on us and we were chased down the streets by two coppers on bikes and ended up having a gun fight with them”.

“Is it? Man, that shit’s crazy! How did you get out of it?”

“Well, it turns out our hero back there,” she pointed over her shoulder at Lon, “is a hotshot with an automatic”.

The girl faced Lon. “Is it? Where did you shoot them? Was there a lot of blood?”

The excited look on her face unnerved him. “I shot the front wheel of each bike”.

“Why did you do that? You were supposed to hit the pigs that were on the bikes,” said the girl.

“I’d rather not kill anyone,” he said.

“Hey man, you’re lucky they didn’t kill you! That’s what they’re like, you know?”

“I know they’re violent, but I’m…” he intermitted in order to consider how ironic he was about to sound, “I’m a pacifist”.

Cat let out a short burst of laughter. “You are funny Lon!”

“Yeah man,” added the girl, “you don’t sound like a pacifist to me!”

The car pulled off from the side of the road and began towards the group’s destination.

“My name is Lin, by the way,” the girl held out her hand for Lon to shake.

“Lon,” he said, taking Lin’s hand.

She laughed. “That’s pretty funny, hey? And what’s your name?” she asked Eve.

“Eve,” is all she said, in a slightly cold manner.

“Hi Eve, pleasure to meet you,”

“Pleasure,” she replied.

“Which part of China are you from?” asked Lin.

“I’m not from China,” Eve responded in an even icier tone.

“You know what I mean, which part of China are your family from?”

Eve rapidly became annoyed. “They’re not from China”.

“Then where are they from?”

“They’re from Taiwan”.

“Oh, okay… so they’re from Southeast China”.

“No, they’re from
Taiwan
”.

“Yeah, I get it, you mean Fujian, right? In Southeast China?”.

“No!” Eve was fairly angry by now. “Fujian is part of Taiwan!”

Lin laughed at her. “No no no, sweetie, Fujian is clearly part of mainland China, so you’re Chinese”.

“No it isn’t! Besides, my family are from Taipei!”

“Taipei Island? That’s nice; you’re a Chinese islander”.

“No I fucking am not! Fujian has been a part of Taiwan since the second Chinese Civil War, and what you call ‘Taipei Island’ has been its own country since the Japanese left it in the mid-twentieth century!”

“Girls, let’s calm down,” said Cat, “we don’t need to start hating each other right away”.

“I’m just trying to educate her on the facts,” stated Eve.

“The facts?” said Lin. “It looks like you’ve been brainwashed by the government far more than most people. I pity you”.

“Why the fuck would the government brainwash me into thinking that?” asked Eve.

“Because this country has strong economic ties with the Taiwan region of Greater China, and it’s in the government’s best interest to make impressionable
proles like you feel connected to it”.

“What the fuck kind of logic is that?!” said Eve.

Lon hated it when Eve was angry like this. She was usually very calm and even-tempered, but was fiercely protective of her heritage, as was Lin, it seemed. “It doesn’t matter because neither of you are Chinese!” Lon shouted at them. “If you were born here, then you’re the same nationality as me”.

“He’s got a point,” said Cat in concurrence, “using your argument, I’m American and Brazilian”.

American and Brazilian? That was unexpected.

“Whatever,” said Lin, “let’s just get to where we’re going and sort this business out”.