(Ola’s Soliloquy)

{ What happens when you date a man for a month and find out he has a terminal illness like cancer? Will you remain by his side and be a pillar of strength through this difficult time in his life, or break up with him?

If I had been asked this question last month, I’d have said: ‘I’ll have to refer to the edicts of law, culture, and custom.’ There are guidelines for everything remotely related to conflict in my homeland.

However, now? This is my answer.

I love myself. I want to go to theaters and parties with him, have fun, enjoy our youth. Not worry about physician bills and experimental treatments. The pragmatic thing to do in this land of freedom is to leave him and hopefully try again with someone who won’t die on me because he accidentally sneezed out a lung.

What if you’ve been with him for five years and, in the sixth year, find out he has cancer?

Five years? Well, now I’m too emotionally invested in him for a terminal disease to get in the way.

What if it took nine years to find out that he has cancer and that he’d known about it from the very first date?

*Sigh.

I’d be incensed, but nine years is a long time for one lie to get in the way of our relationship. The thought of leaving him wouldn’t even cross my mind.

———

See, my point is, in a land of freedom, don’t worry about treating people as items on a balance sheet of pros and cons when you first meet them. Hire someone from the streets simply because he is talented and leave the others your balance sheet considers useless.

Things will change, though, if the hired talent stays by my side for more than a year. Because by then, I’d have come to know them and love or hate who they are beyond what they bring to the table. Even if he loses his talent and is no different from other street ruffians I abandoned, I will still consider him more valuable than everyone else not in my care. }

(Ola’s POV)

Ola put down *The Screamer* newspaper that had, in bold print, the title {Tragic Incident: Leroy Ward, Esteemed R&D Director of Rain Pharmaceutical, and his Guards Caught in an Explosion in Their VIP Train Compartment. The Mayor Says It’s Regrettable and Has His Best Men Getting to the Bottom of It.}

After drumming her fingers on the desk for a minute, she drafted a message to Nell. A big shot in the pharmaceutical industry was making bold moves in the shadows. She had an inkling as to what the trigger was—or rather ‘who’ the trigger was—but getting confirmation was always necessary.

Again, this was simply talent on the streets. It wasn’t absolutely necessary to rope him in. But if the opportunity did present itself, she wasn’t letting go. For now, she planned to keep an eye on the players and figure out how the chess pieces were aligned and distributed.

With that done, Ola looked at the files of the three companies. One of them was responsible for the assault on her council. The first was an innovation hub called ‘Severance Inc.’ Her gut didn’t like the CEO—something about how mousy he looked—but that might just be her bias.

The next was a manufacturing and distribution company. Now, this company looked like it had as many skeletons in its closet as the cemetery over at Midnight’s Church.

The CEO, a woman who thought herself the smartest in the room, looked like the type to send an assassin after her council if she couldn’t win them over. Was she responsible for the assault on Sim-Sim Street? Not likely. Ola put her money on herself being the target instead.

The last was a start-up mining company. It dabbled in various minerals without having dominance in any, which wasn’t all that surprising. Spreading out was a common occurrence she had noticed with most start-up mining companies.

They were setting themselves up for failure, of course, but she didn’t want this one raw material supplier going under yet. Yes, they were leeches, but they were leeches she could get rid of when she pleased.

These files, she put aside for now. Vengeance had no sell-by date, and she knew how to keep grudges.

Ola was getting ready to visit the locations where her new eateries would be built, as well as send the message over to Nell. Before that, she moved to the child’s workshop to see what her council was up to.

“Morning, Miss Ola,” her friend greeted after taking a moment to look up from the blueprints spread all over the table.

“Greetings, my friend. I didn’t know you dabbled in mechanics too,” Ola responded with a smile as she walked over. She noticed small contraptions, gears, and wires spread out on the table as the child struggled to build something.

“She’s actually the one doing all the heavy lifting,” her friend pointed at the child with his chin. Ola held in a sigh at the blatant display of laziness. It was in the small gestures that truly drilled in the fact she was no longer in her homeland.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Heyya, Ola!” the child greeted gleefully.

“Good afternoon to you too, child. What is it that’s got you so excited?” Ola asked, shaking off the brief culture shock.

“You are going to love this! We want to send a message. We are calling it a ‘signal’ for now, from this thing here”—she pointed to the case of bolts and wires she was wrestling with—“to that thing over there.” She pointed to a similar box in the corner next to another child.

Ola paused. Since when were there two children under her care? She’d solve that riddle later. She had more pressing riddles to solve, specifically the wizardry the child was trying to pull off.

“You want to send a message… from here. To there?” Ola didn’t see how that was mechanically possible. Leaving aside the feasibility of it all, the idea itself was unheard of—at least by her. A message going from point A to point B without there being a connecting medium?

“Yes. It’s actually not as crazy as it sounds.”

“Enlighten me, child,” Ola said, taking a seat next to the workbench, her mind already churning out possibilities for applications. This stroke of brilliance was why she loved taking in talents.

——

(Number 3’s POV)

Ever wonder what a capacitor is? What about a threshold? Well, neither did Number 3, but those words sure sounded nice. Thresh! Hold! Capasitaaaaa!

Number 3 got bored fairly quickly after memorizing a lot of cool-sounding words, so she went out to check out the neighborhood. Floating in the sky, looking down on the world, sure put things into perspective.

Like, do you ever wonder if those people doing gene mutations ever considered making avocados the size of watermelons? Number 3 could practically feel herself drooling at the thought.

The neighborhood was where the rich-rich lived. She liked all the different building designs she saw down there. They had their uniqueness and quirks, which had her wondering what kind of families lived in them. So she started drifting through those walls to get a peek inside. The pink house—castle? Mansion? Whatever —looked really interesting.

As she drifted from mansion to mansion, she wondered whether people misinterpreted the saying ‘It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to see heaven.’

If someone had this much money, wasn’t it obvious that they could afford great health care? It’s practically common sense that fewer rich people would actually die. The poor are the ones going to see heaven in droves.

Number 3 suddenly stopped in one of the houses. The walls were shaking, the chandelier in the living room kept vibrating, and intermittent booms kept coming from underground.

She sank into the basement and found it empty, yet the shocks never stopped. She looked at what was supposed to be the final floor, and after a moment of hesitation, she dove deeper.

A hundred meters of earth separated this hidden room from the house’s basement. The room, like the rest of the house, was adorned with pricey artifacts—some functional, some for their aesthetic value. Its size was the same length and width as the entire house plus their backyard. There were racks of weapons: guns, knives, swords… bows and arrows for some reason. Why would anyone use bows and arrows when they had guns?

Number 3 turned to look at the occupants.

Within it were ten people. Some were maids and butlers, while others were muscle. Four people stood out, though.

A middle-aged woman in a velvet silver nightgown, seething with fury in her eyes, was cupping a cup of tea with both hands. She sat on a cushioned chair, leaning forward.

Across from her was a middle-aged man in a classy grey suit holding a letter with his legs crossed, back straight, and eyes calmly closed. There was a slight tremor in his hands when she looked long enough.

The one screaming profanities was a young man—25, maybe 26 years old—and he was also the one causing the vibrations that reached the surface. A hum came from below his belly button, and every time he punched the wall, everything shook.

Number 3 tilted her head slightly and paid close attention. He pulled his fist back and clenched it, then the hum sounded once more, like an engine starting up. A loud boom followed when his fist impacted the concrete.

The hum below his belly button lessened by the time everything stopped shaking, only to power up again when he pulled his fist back. Number 3 had the illusion that the man had a mini jet engine in his stomach.

The last one was a maid. As far as Number 3 could tell, she was made of small folds of skin when she looked at her upside down. When she changed the angle, the small folds seemed to mesh well enough into a face and figure.

Number 3 thought it was somewhat gross, but she couldn’t fault people for looking nasty upside down.

She floated and peeked over the middle-aged man’s shoulder to see what they were so worked up about.

{

Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. Orin,

We have your daughters. Your task is simple: Move the drugs made by the five bottom companies in the third tier up the Formulary into the first tier for the next four years.

Move every drug made by Avannan Pharmaceuticals down to the third tier until further notice. You have a week before you start receiving your daughters one piece at a time.

Have a lovely day.

*Mail delivery by Ya Habibi of the Night-Shift*

}

Number 3 looked back at the man who hadn’t stopped punching the wall to vent his fury and wondered whether there was anything she could do to help. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was pointless to worry about it.

The Orins were richer and stronger. There was nothing her dad and her siblings could do that the Orins couldn’t. Hell, she didn’t even know what a formulary was.

She drifted back up through the earth and continued her adventure through the neighborhood. The small forests that separated the houses were lovely. Some homes had waist-level flower hedges designed to form mazes in their backyards.

After messing around in the mazes, pretending to be trapped and finding her way out, she decided to head back and see if Number 4 and Hadiza were done inventing emails. Well, at least that’s what she thought they were doing. Emails didn’t need Wi-Fi, right?

[Hm?]

Number 3 turned toward a stream of Pain and Discomfort sentiments coming from within the artificial woodlands. When she looked around, she realized she was back at the mansion with the shaking walls. It didn’t take long to trace the sentiment back to a thorny flower hedge on the edges of the compound.

A woman, stripped down to her undergarments, gagged and bound, lay there trying to free herself. Number 3’s heart clenched, and it took only a moment before she realized she was the maid that looked gross upside down.

Well, the one she remembered looked gross upside down, while this one looked… not gross? Number 3 stopped tilting her head when she saw another wave of Pain sentiments radiating from her.

———