Chapter Fifteen

The Champaign was a beautiful color, a soft inviting peach that promised tastiness inside its bubbly depths. Natalia couldn’t help but wish it tasted as good as it looked. The delicate flute of real glass rested lightly in her hand, as she drifted through the crowd. Her hair was pinned up with pretty plasticine combs, and her long dark blue, tunic gown, was slit up the sides to the knees, it left one shoulder bare and the other was completely encased in an angel wing styled sleeve. It was the height of couture fashion. Silvery glass pearls dangled from her wrist, neck and ears.

She looked like she belonged in the Sydney Council hall, a strange fanlike building modeled after an opera house that had been destroyed in the wars. The carpets were a thick plush silver, and the walls were an opalescent white, called mother of pearl. Hanging from the ceiling where chandeliers made of clear quartz crystals, the whole effect made Natalia feel like she was a gemstone, stuck in an all-white jewelry box.

Servers floated through the room holding trays of drinks and tiny hors d'oeuvres. She plucked a tiny cracker from a tray, and savored the taste of real fish, not clone meat but meat from an actual vat grown fish. The one good thing about this kind of assignment is the food. Her eyes flickered as she saw a weapon hidden in the coat of one of the guests. She was guessing it was some kind of Taser, doubting anyone would be dumb enough to bring an actual firearm. She felt a soft pulse in her brain as Noriko acknowledged the visual, and moments later Lucas, dressed as a security guard, walked up to the guest and claimed the Taser, informing him that it would be held at the coat check. For successfully finding a weapon, Natalia treated herself to another snack, nearly licking her lips at the taste of cheese.

She and her team were there to spot threats and security breaches that normal Leo security couldn’t, Shido and her tuned their noses to the point where Natalia seriously considered asking several guests to leave for the sins of not bathing, or bathing in perfumes that hurt her hypersensitive nose.

She wished she didn’t need to keep her nose on so high a tuning, but even in upper crust crowds like this drugs could cause issues. She had already located three other weapons and two people who had to be dealing Pixie Dust they had so much of the euphoric on them.

Shido had posted himself at the long buffet table to make sure no-one tampered with the food. The male Kitsune looked quite happy, and unless Natalia was missing her guess, quite full of the expensive real food. She walked up to the buffet table, and Shido smiled at her, handing her a mushroom that had been stuffed with fish and cheese before being deep fried.

“If all the parties are like this, I’m going to gain five pounds”. Shido said.

“The way you eat, I believe it.” Natalia stated sarcastically. “Why don’t you go dance. I’m a bit hungry.”

The male slid off to flirt with the many Uppercity women attending the party. None of them would know what he really was, but Shido enjoyed any woman who had a bit of “sparkle” to her.

Natalia grazed on the delicate foods on the table. While she did enjoy it, part of her hated the waste of it all. She knew not all of the food would be eaten, that a lot would be thrown away, and she also knew that many families in Undercity would literally kill to have the protein that would be just thrown away after the party.

Don’t be so negative, it’s parties like this one that will build support so we can funnel more resources into the reclamation projects. And the further they get the more resources we all will have. She nibbled on some lovely tempura fried vegetables as she watched one of the Sydney council members have a ‘secret’ meeting with his mistress. She understood why it was necessary to have ISF at parties like these; they were big glowing targets for anarchists and other anti-government and anti-military groups. But it still felt like a waste of her skills. Tomorrow, I get to see Rei, I wonder what he would make of all this? She mentally shook her head, now was not the time to think of the intoxicating male. She was working, and she was a professional. She focused her mind, mentally shouting, Noriko report please?

Natalia felt a warmth bloom in her mind letting her know her friend had heard her. A minute later the Siren woman’s creamy voice whispered into her mind Lucas is checking the doors, Shido is working the dance floor, and Miyako is working the main body of the party. No major threats have been located, but it is still early, and the main guests have not arrived yet.

Keep me posted.

Of course Major.

Natalia sighed and set the now flat Champaign on a tray and selected a glass of wine. She was a bit more pleased by the sweet flavor that left a pleasant heat in her stomach. Unlike the human guests she did not have to worry about inebriation, her metabolism worked far too efficiently for that.

She sighed as her mind again drifted to Rei and the date they’d gone on then blinked as she realized she was not imagining his scent. Quickly she scanned the room, spotting him carrying a tray of discarded drinks. He was on the other side of the hall, and wearing a very different face from the one she was familiar with. She would not have noticed him at all if it wasn’t for her over tuned nose.

Her heart started pounding in her chest. She knew he did odd jobs, which meant that he was likely here to spy on someone. That didn’t bother her, she was positive there were at least two dozen spies working the crowd, it was just a surprise seeing him. She also knew it was possible that they could blow each other’s cover if she wasn’t careful, human women in dresses like hers did not talk to the help.

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

Quickly she walked to the bathroom and pulled a pen out of the pocket hidden in the angel sleeve of her gown. She wrote a quick note on the napkin that had come with her drink.

Noriko?

So your boyfriend is here. Interesting. It’s good to know you have something in common.

Can you please have Miyako meet me in the lady’s room? I need her to deliver a note.

I am already relaying the message, she is on the way.

Thank you Noriko. Natalia mentally sighed

My pleasure. Wait till Saki hears about this.

Oh Gaia… Natalia whimpered

Noriko Laughed. Our Saki has little hearts in her head.

She’s young.

And a romantic, unlike our ice princess Major.

Shut up. Natalia tuned her pheromone glands and focused them into her pointer finger, using them to smear her scent into the napkin. To another Kitsune it was better than a signature. She let her glands return to normal as Miyako came into the restroom. The girls traded napkins as they washed hands, before they went back out to the party. Natalia watched as the ebon haired Kitsune made her way to Rei. Natalia smiled, turned, and walked outside ‘to cool off a bit.”

She moved easily to a small cul-de-sac hidden by a large plasticine tree and waited to see if Rei would answer her note.

Rei was very seriously considering abandoning the party, and the job Alexander had given him. His head had been buzzing with a headache since he’d woken up that morning, after he’d spent several nights tormenting himself with nightmares about whatever horrible things had happened to Natalia to make her frightened of him even touching her, and he’d heard nothing interesting except that the Councilman from Darwin was allergic to seafood. That had only been interesting because he’d been offering a tray of tuna rolls to the man at the time.

He sighed and resisted the urge to rub his forehead as the buzzing peaked into pain for a moment, just as a man set an empty glass on his tray, thanking whatever lunatic ran the universe when it faded back to a dull roar once again.

“My you are a cutey.” A woman in a fine dress said, he was too distracted by his head to care if she was Kitsune or Human, commented as she slid up next to him. She set a napkin with a small note scrawled on it on his tray before she slipped back into the crowd.

“Well, at least I still have the old charm.” Rei muttered to himself, as he picked up the napkin and began to ball it up to throw away. He paused when he caught the rich scent of Natalia. He looked around, trying to find her, confused, when he realized the aroma was coming from the napkin. Slipping away from the crowd, he opened it carefully.

“Meet me next to the plasticine tree.” The note read, with her scent nearly saturating the cheap paper. He inhaled a few times, and noted his head seemed to clear just slightly as he focused his thoughts upon her. Smiling, he spotted the garden doors and drifted towards them, slipping the napkin into his pocket.

He quickly managed to find Natalia, hidden from the view of the party as a whole. He smiled as she spotted him and waved him over. “I didn’t expect to bump into you here. You do move in odd social circles.”

“I could say the same about you.” Natalia commented dryly. “My… father wanted me to keep track of who was snubbing or kissing the asses of who.”

Rei nodded. “Yeah, I noticed it was like a really polite dingo dominance fight in there. Lovely party.”

Natalia giggled, before turning serious. “Please tell me you are just here spying on the guests, Rei.”

“I can honestly say my intentions are pure.” Rei said, with a smile. He, technically, was spying on the host after all. “I did tell you I do odd jobs from time to time. That’s not ALWAYS’S a euphemism you know… though I find it fascinating you automatically assumed it was.” He winked.

“Well… yes… um…” Natalia blushed. “Okay, so I haven’t been completely upfront about what I do… but…”

“No worries, sweet heart. We’ve only just had our first… second… let’s go with second date. You can save the next world stopping revelation for…”

He gasped, the pain in his head suddenly spiking. For a few moments he couldn’t even see straight and when the blinding pain faded the buzzing had graduated to an actual migraine.

“Are you okay?” Natalia asked, worried.

“Yeah… yeah… Just a really, really… really bad headache… it’s been bothering me all day but it just got worse.”

Natalia took his arm and guided him to a bench, sitting him down. “I’ll get the catering manager, and you can tell him that you’re going home.”

“But I won’t get paid!” Rei argued, trying to stand up. It was a testament to how bad his head hurt that she needed to put no effort into holding him down with the one hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll pay you if you’re that hard up for cash. You need to go home…”

“Fine…” Alexander could kiss his ass. Then a thought occurred to him and he smiled wickedly… or wearily, he wasn’t sure which. “But only if you’ll go with me?”

“Wh…what?”

“Come on… I’m not safe to travel Undercity alone like this! Walk me home. I promise to be a perfect gentleman.” He winced as a dropped platter, hitting the stone walkway somewhere nearby, caused shards of pain to radiate through his skull. “If for no other reason than I can’t really do anything else.”

Natalia chewed her lip. “You wait out here for a little while, and I’ll come and get you. I need to talk to a couple of people before I go.”

Rei nodded and smiled as he admired the view as she walked away from him. He’d never actually shown someone where he really lived but was suddenly looking forward to showing Natalia.

Alexander sighed, slumping to his padded chair. He watched the other twelve Sirens, the most powerful of the Deep Dweller and skilled in joining him in gestalt, either slumped or passed out asleep from the effort of maintaining a connection to Rei for so long.

It had been a pain to locate him in the morning, but they’d gathered a bit of useful data by using him as a Trojan horse through which to invade party goers’ minds from. Most of the information was just useful from a potential black mail or equipment theft standpoint, however. No one they read was both knowledgeable of the investigation into Marigold, and lacked shields.

Rei’s new girlfriend, however, had proven the most interesting. While her surface thoughts had been all worries for Rei, her deeper thoughts had been unreadable. That required training, even to resist through a proxy, and that meant she was InSec.

Planting the suggestion to bring her home had cost them the link, but that was okay. If she was close to Rei, she was probably the person they needed to probe. There was no resisting a Deep Probe when standing in Alexander’s presence.

It was a shame she’d most likely die in the process, but Rei would get over it.