Two nights later, they were staying at a roadside hostel. It seemed pretty brazen; this was the first public place they stayed at, but Touch assured her it was safe. There were only a select few that knew about this place and were welcome here. He was, and now she was as well.
The dirt road in front of the hostel concluded at a dead end from the side they came from. Signs and barricades claiming the road was closed off due to disrepair isolated it from the main road.
They had been sleeping in shifts for over a week. Though they took naps wherever they could, it had become exhausting. The worst part about being a fugitive was the constant travel.
Together, the three of them, Arch being carried by Touch, march up the small but steep hill shrouded in moonlight, and to the building speckled with orbs of warm yellow light.
“I can’t believe Bevmond’s council would allow them to set up a trafficking ring.” Rachel sneered in disgust when they made camp the other night.
“Usually they wouldn’t. While technically legal under AriCorp, none of these towns had actually allowed it. Same with bounty hunters. But now people can appeal to AriCorp to enforce their own laws, so their hands are tied.”
“But Aris' a div! He hates trafficking! How could he allow this?”
“There are so many excuses to justify this kind of contradiction. Aris probably thinks he’s protecting strays and criminal divs from being sold to someone worse. He might not even know what his own people are doing behind his back.”
She didn’t sleep well that night. But she was so happy to see that Arch did.
As they walk, Rachel notices plain-clothed guards, armed with rifles, posted around the perimeter as they cross the gravel courtyard. The place was lit all around by either soft dim yellow lights, or candles and lanterns. If the modern white painted exterior and drywall interior had been replaced by stone or wood, the place would look positively medieval.
They were warmly welcomed by a woman in the front lobby named May. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, red-brown hair, and a stern motherly air about her. She seemed very familiar with Touch and showed them to their room, down a narrow hallway in the back. It had a single bunk bed, and nearly enough space to jam three beds together. It had a window in the center, overlooking a grassy area and the lights from Mayvern far in the background. They threw their packs on the top bunks.
After taking her first hot shower in days, and turning in her laundry to be done, Rachel passed out on the bottom bunk, while Touch, returning from his own shower, unrolled a thick blanket on the floor and did the same, Arch nuzzled close by his side.
They stayed there for several days. All in all, there were less than thirty people there at once, and no more than a dozen people walking around at any one time, but whenever she came out of her room, she met someone new and interesting. As she went to go pick up her laundry, she saw some scrawny nerd of a kid sitting at a table, taking a thin screwdriver to his robot hand. It was the coolest thing she had ever seen, and she wound up talking to the guy for over an hour about it.
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Apparently, he was a robotics engineer from the city, and after an accident cost him his hand, they told him his insurance didn’t qualify him for advanced prosthetics, since he was only an apprentice. So he just built his own using his company’s equipment; and was now on the run for stealing the hand, all the illegal modifications he made to it, and his little side business of modding electronics for other people in the city.
They were now friends, and she was sure to swap contact info with him before going back for her laundry.
A few hours later, she went out for dinner. She walks down the narrow hallway, bare feet slide across the hardwood floor as she passes by a fold up door to the hallway closet, then a second room that she could only assume was empty because she has yet to hear any noise from within.
She crosses the front lobby, a spacious room with armchairs, coffee tables, and couches surround empty fireplaces on either side of the room. The wide windows stretch away from the front door, offering a view of the gravel courtyard and the single story mini motel across it. The sun had just set, and the grounds were speckled with their warm yellow lights. The front desk where May was usually found is empty. The door to the back room is closed. There was a job board for the staff hanging behind the desk.
A skin and bone young man with tattoos across his face, which was currently wrinkled in a smile that reached his eyes, his whole body was shaking from a joke his friend just told him. He had a bowl of stew in one hand and throws the other to his mouth as he continues shaking and laughing through his nose and deep from within his chest.
She can only see the top of his brown-haired companion’s head as she passes. He was in a red armchair that had a tall and curved back. The jovial tattooed man nods, and Rachel smiles in greeting.
She rounds the front desk, across a broad hallway, and crosses the threshold into the main room; a little over twice as big as the front lobby. The outside wall is mostly large panes of glass overlooking the back courtyard; a large grassy field with a thick tree in the middle, surrounded by the back half of the mini-motel and the rear wing to the main building.
The room is furnished with rows of wooden picnic tables pushed together in the center, and small high-set chairs and tables in the corners. There was an elevated stage in the back of the room, and people were setting up large pots of various stews, stacks of sandwiches, and a salad station in the front.
The group of four servers had already started handing out food to those that had trickled in, even though dinner officially started at eight. Rachel fell in behind a guy and politely declined offers of food until she reached the veggie and bean stew.
There she locks eyes with a woman with the body of either an ex-con or professional gym trainer. She had a swirling black tattoo running all the way up her swollen arm, up to her neck. She was wearing a light gray tank-top and green cargo pants. Rachel stood, frozen by the sheer intensity of her gaze, unsure of how to react. Did she do something wrong?
“Well?” the woman demands, strong and clear. Not loud or hostile. Maybe it was just the way her face was.
“Can I have some of the stew, please?” Rachel asks, then lifts her tray. The woman immediately pours a generous portion into her bowl, then glares about the room, Rachel apparently forgotten. Rachel grabs a fried tofu sub and some fresh fruits and veggies from the line, not turning to look back at the swole woman once as she retreated from the serving table.
She almost went back to her room to eat, but decided it would be much more entertaining to just sit and watch people from the back table. Rachel sat there watching a very colorful cast of characters cross her way. She kept herself occupied by imagining the stories behind every unique piece of gear, clothing, scar, limp, nervous tick, accent, and mannerism. In spite of the situation outside, most people seemed pretty happy and easygoing. Though she heard many talking about the friends they lost so far, and the ones they were waiting up for.
That woman serving food was just so intense for no reason that, from then on, Rachel could pick her out from a crowded room. Just from the way she carried herself and glared at everyone. The swirling tattoo running up her arm didn’t hurt.