The ongoing trials and tribulations of Ronin Kassius as he assumes the identity of Isabel val Sanreal and returns to Ar Telica City. Having survived the encounter with the Gun Queen of Ar Telica, Ronin returns to Ar Telica and begins his/her new dual life as Isabel val Sanreal, illegitimate daughter of the uber rich Sanreal Family, and as the Gun Princess, Mirai, an artificially created entity with preternatural abilities. But as he struggles to deal with the reality of living the rest of his life as a girl, Ronin/Isabel is caught in the middle of an ever-expanding web of deceit and intrigue as House Elsis Novis spars with the Aventisse Empress over possession of the research on the Angel Fibers conducted by Ronin’s sister, Erina Kassius.
The new reimagined series, The Gun Princess Royale - Book 1 is now finally available on Amazon KDP. Over two years in the making, I'm happy to present it to readers. Please check it out on Amazon KDP or Kindle Unlimited. 873 pages.
– I –
Trailing behind Straus, I followed him – I mean, her – oh, whatever – out of the massive commercial and residential building, otherwise known as an officetel, via a bridgeway some five floors above street level.
Continuing southward, we crossed into an adjacent megascraper, then descended five sets of escalators to arrive at ground floor, eventually exiting out onto a sidewalk running parallel to a six -lane street packed with the morning’s commuter traffic.
After reluctantly asking Straus where we were going, he muttered something about a pancake shop and pointed across the street at an establishment with the name, The Hardboiled Café, written in an austere font across its storefront windows.
“Huh…?”
With a name like that I wondered what kind of café it was. However, since it was only a stone’s throw away, I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
Or so I thought….
Arriving at an intersection, I waited to cross the busy street along with a few dozen other people. Before long, the sidewalk became overly crowded and I was propelled into Straus by a businessman – a salaryman – who didn’t even bother to apologize when he shoved me aside.
I snorted and sourly thought, Girls really have it tough.
Just because they couldn’t defend themselves, that wasn’t a reason to walk over them. Then again, I’d recently discovered that some girls could defend themselves quite well, though two of them were Simulacra and one was a martial arts prodigy.
I found myself clenching a fist as I glared acidly at the salaryman who’d pushed me aside.
However, my acidity spiked when Straus moved to shield me from the people around me, including the aforementioned salaryman cruising for a bruising.
“What are you glaring at?” Straus whispered loudly.
“I was glaring at him, but now I’m glaring at you,” I growled back.
“Care to explain why?”
“I’ll explain when you explain what you’re doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he retorted.
“It looks like you’re getting in my way.”
“No, I’m saving you from getting arrested for beating someone up.”
“If I beat someone up it’s because they had it coming.”
Straus inhaled long and loudly before raising his hands in surrender. “Okay. You want to get bumped, be my guest. You want to get arrested—don’t claim I didn’t warn you.”
I sneered up at him. “No, I’d prefer you get run over.”
Straus lowered his hands. “That’s a really cruel thing to say.”
“It would be if you were human but you’re a fake,” I reproached him. “These days I seem to be surrounded by fakes. Hey, even I’m a fake—oomph!”
Straus clamped a large boyish hand over my mouth, shutting me up in the blink of an eye. Then he leaned hastily toward me to heatedly whisper, “Could you not announce it to the world?”
It wasn’t the shock of having my mouth palmed that left me speechless.
Nor was it his hand plastered over my mouth that stifled the retort in my throat.
No. It was finding myself face-to-face, and in very close proximity, with a very human looking boy that was actually a remote-controlled mechanical avatar.
It was just too much for me to bear, and a soft, pitiful whine piped up from my throat.
Straus blinked and looked faintly startled. “Hey, are you all right—?”
I snapped.
Again.
I know it sounds strange after having spent time in the presence of Simulacra, a Gun Princess, and having fought off a Gun Queen, but for some reason that I couldn’t pin down, I couldn’t cope with Straus’s presence. Something about knowing that the teenage boy inches away from me wasn’t real set my hairs on end and made my skin crawl.
Imagine encountering your worst phobia, and then double – no, triple – the resulting anxiety.
Hence, it’s only natural that I lost it.
With my right hand clenched into a fist, I unleashed a piledriving punch that caught Straus under his chin. But seeing Straus fly back several feet and then land supine on the sidewalk pavement, I realized in horror just how hard I’d hit him. Had he been a human teenage boy, there was no doubt my punch would have broken his neck and killed him. That blunt realization had me trembling like a leaf and I looked down at my discolored right hand that was balled into a bruised fist. It burned in agony for a handful of seconds before the Angel Fibers and my ultra-grade Simulacrum body mended the damage I’d incurred.
As the burning sensation faded to a dull throbbing, I flexed the fingers of my hand, both amazed and frightened by how quickly it had healed.
By then Straus was sitting up unsteadily.
Not knowing what it was like to operate a mechanical avatar, I assumed that I’d knocked the avatar’s senses or sensors into disarray because Straus swayed woozily as he clutched his jaw.
Yet regardless of how hard I’d hit him, Straus was a machine while I was made of flesh and blood. Thus, I didn’t believe he’d suffered any damage. But the two salarymen in suits that came to his assistance didn’t know any better.
They helped him up and Straus thanked them.
When one of them suggested going to the hospital, Straus shook his head and allayed the man’s concerns with a grin.
The other man suggested he call the authorities, but again Straus brushed it aside with a grin.
Then he said something in a low voice while looking sheepish, and the two men backed off.
One of them slapped Straus’s back and muttered something about treating his girlfriend better.
It was then that I noticed the mixed looks I was garnering from the pedestrians surrounding us.
Expressions of shock and disbelief, as well as many reproachful stares, were directed at me.
More than a few people were muttering deriding remarks, and I heard phone cameras click away, but no one dared come close to me. After watching me knock Straus to the ground with a single punch, they instinctively saw me as bad news. Perhaps they subconsciously recognized me as a predator, a lioness amongst antelopes, a shark amongst minnows, a hawk amongst pigeons.
Regardless, they watched me, they muttered, but they kept their distance.
And though I was quite aware of them, I chose to ignore them and instead focused on gathering up my scattered emotions.
Straus bowed politely to the two salarymen, then quickly walked up to me.
Keeping his voice low, he stopped well short of leaning down at me as he spoke in a hushed, guttural tone. “Do you know how close you came to being arrested? What the Hell is wrong with you?”
I noisily sucked in air through my nose, then reflexively clenched my hands as I harshly whispered back, “You freak me out!”
Straus’s eyes widened before narrowing. “You didn’t have a problem with me before.”
She – I mean he – no, I mean she – was right.
I didn’t have a problem with her when she was operating the Cat Princess, but I was having a severe phobic reaction to her pretty boy avatar.
Was it some kind of twisted fear of machines that resembled good looking teenage boys?
Was I experiencing an andro-mechano-phobia?
Abruptly, I gasped both inwardly and outwardly as I recognized a new problem.
What the Hell had I been thinking?
Had I really considered the machine boy as a pretty boy?
Was that also part of my phobic reaction to him?
I swallowed hard and then took a couple of deep, unsteady breaths as I struggled to rationalize my adverse emotional response to Severin Straus who was staring at me impatiently.
“Well?” he ground out through clenched teeth. “Why do you have a problem with me now?”
My breathing and my heart gradually calmed down. When I felt steady enough to give him an answer, I replied in a low whisper, “You really wanna know why?”
“A straight answer would be appreciated.”
“Because back then you weren’t giving cross-play a whole new meaning.”
Straus grew still for a long moment before venting a loud breath, just like a very real and very frustrated teenage boy. However, before he could say anything, the pedestrian light behind me began to play a chime and I recognized it for the ‘walk’ melody.
“Come on,” Straus growled and stepped out onto the street along with a hundred other pedestrians.
The people that had been avoiding me now swept me along with them, so I didn’t have much of a choice but to follow Straus across the street.
Arriving at the opposite sidewalk, I looked around to regain my bearings as the crowd rushed by me. Being a good twenty centimeters taller than I was accustomed to, I was able to spot the sign for the Hardboiled Café above the heads of the people surging past me. But I’d lost sight of Straus, so I decided to walk up to the café’s entrance. I was almost at the door when I saw him standing there anxiously searching for me.
At sight of me, he looked relieved then quickly annoyed.
Shaking his head, he yanked open the café’s door and stepped inside.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” I muttered acidly as I caught the door before it closed shut in my face. “Asshole couldn’t even hold the door open for me.”
If she was going to pass herself off as a guy, then she could remember to treat a girl better.
Who cares about gender equality?
Good manners beget good manners.
I made it a mental note to etch that into Straus’s metal skull, then realized with a stark chill that I was expecting Straus to treat me like a girl.
That brought me to a sharp standstill within the entrance to The Hardboiled Café.
When the heavy door closed behind me, it bumped my backside, propelling me deeper into the establishment and jolting my various trains of thought back into motion.
However, the question remained unanswered – did I want Straus to treat me like a girl?
It was true that men held the door open for other men out of politeness as well, but it was something of an expected common courtesy that men treat the fairer sex with respect.
Maybe Straus hadn’t treated me like a girl because I was a girl.
In other words, being a girl herself, Straus had felt she didn’t need to afford me any special courtesy and had treated me like an equal. She could also have been pissed at being punched in public. But as a consequence, and perhaps because I misread the situation, I was forced to face the broader question of whether I wanted people to treat me like a girl.
And I had no answer for it.
On the one hand the notion repulsed me. I had lived for years fearing that one day I would turn into a girl, and now I found myself living as one – albeit as a girl that possessed extraordinary abilities. However, I understood that whether I was treated as a girl wasn’t entirely up to me, because leaving Straus aside, if people saw me as a girl then they would naturally treat me as one.
So then the question was what should I expect from them?
I’d read about how girls and women often complained of getting the short end of the stick, so should I expect the same?
Standing in the small foyer, Straus grumbled at me, “Took you long enough.”
I stopped and stared at him.
Was being treated fairly, equally, with common decency, and respect too much to ask for?
I decided to reply to Straus in a manner that I felt was justified under present circumstances.
“Up yours,” I swore at him and gave him the finger.
Then I wondered, Is that even possible for him?
A second later, I made two important observations.
Being preoccupied with Straus, and questioning how I expected people to treat me, had pushed my andro-mechano-phobia into a back seat.
That was good.
What wasn’t so good was that I was still giving Straus the finger when a young waitress – a pretty, brunette with shoulder length hair – came to greet us.
The girl looked at Straus, at me, then my finger, before asking with a troubled smile, “Um…table for two?”
Feeling distinctly ashamed, I lowered my finger and then hid my hands behind my back.
Straus made a show of sounding disappointed in me. “Yes, please. Table for two….”
His tone made me seethe at him.
Bastard, don’t blame this on me! This is your fault!
Nonetheless, I admitted that I’d slipped up. Thus, I trailed silently behind him as the waitress guided us deeper into the café to a booth that lacked a window view.
I sat down somewhat dejectedly on the booth seat across the table from Straus.
When the girl took our order, Straus took the lead and ordered for the both of us. At that, I threw him an icy glare that he pointedly ignored as he slouched with an arm draped casually over his seat’s backrest, and confidently dictated our breakfast order to the young waitress.
Watching him through narrowed eyes, I once again wondered how long Straus had been practicing passing herself off as a teenage boy. And then I was annoyed by how natural and cool he looked, and I realized with a pang that the Ronin Kassius part of me envied him.
Straus looked the way I would have wanted to appear to a girl.
Cool, calm, collected, with an air of unbridled confidence.
Even though my envy was misplaced, my emotions swirled painfully within my chest because I knew that I would never be seen that way by a girl. There was no going back for me and knowing that made my heart twist unpleasantly in my chest. However, back at the dorm apartment I’d resolved to start accepting who I was now, and part of that involved facing situations like this no matter how difficult they may be.
In other words, no retreat and no surrender.
Sitting stiffly, I clenched my hands under the table, then relaxed them. After a few slow, deep breaths, I gradually loosened my ramrod posture, until I glanced up and saw the girl blushing pink as she jotted down the breakfast order. My mouth fell open, and when I closed it shut with an audible clack, the pretty waitress noticed and visibly blanched at me.
It took a moment for me to understand why she’d paled.
It was because I was glaring at her.
However, I wasn’t staring at her fiercely because I was being territorial. Rather, it was because I couldn’t believe how easily she’d been charmed by Straus’s male avatar.
Afraid to look at me, she smiled sheepishly at Straus, jotted down the last of the order and hurried away.
Watching her retreat to the kitchen, I realized Straus had been expecting her to dart a glance over her shoulder, because he delivered a perfectly timed wave to the girl’s furtive look.
Infuriated, I kicked one of his shins hard under the table.
To my surprise, Straus winced sharply as though experiencing the kick for real.
“What are you doing?” he complained in a low, strangled hiss that proved the kick had hurt him.
“I could ask you the same question,” I snapped at him without remorse.
“I was having a little fun.”
My mouth dropped open again. “Are you serious?”
“Of course, I’m serious.”
I shook my head at him aghast. “You’re unbelievable.”
Straus looked equally annoyed at me. “You’re one to talk.”
“Heh? What the Hell do you mean by that?”
“What? You didn’t notice the way men were looking at you out on the street?”
“Looking at me? You mean after I decked you?”
Straus blinked in confusion that matched mine. “No, I mean before that.”
“Then I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Again, he blinked at me as though perplexed. “How oblivious are you?”
I winced, then retorted, “I’m not oblivious. I was just having trouble dealing with you, so I had other things on my mind.”
“Then you didn’t notice how she felt challenged by you?”
Startled by his question, I drew back. “What are you talking about? Weren’t you asking me about how men were looking at me?”
“I was. Now I’m asking about her reaction to you.”
I bit my lower lip for a moment, then admitted, “No, I didn’t.”
“Then take a look,” Straus suggested.
I pouted in consternation, and then looked over at the counter separating the kitchen from the rest of the establishment. Coincidently, the young waitress happened to be staring in our direction. When our eyes met, the girl grew ashen in a heartbeat then ducked her head quickly. Conveniently for her, a couple of salarymen happened to enter the café moments later, and she hurried off to welcome them.
Although she had caught me glaring at her earlier, I was still confused by the frightened look on her face.
I turned to Straus. “What’s her problem?”
His eyes widened before he shook his head slowly in apparent disbelief.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said in a low voice. “You may be new to being a girl, but you sure know how to scare away the competition.”
My feelings went from confused to sour in an instant. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
“And why is she the competition?”
Straus snorted softly. “Having said that, you can be surprisingly obtuse.”
“Just answer the damn question.”
This time he sighed. “To you, she’s not competition. But from her point of view, you definitely are the competition.”
“And why the Hell would she see me that way?”
“Because I’ve been coming here a few times, striking up a little friendly conversation with her in the mornings.”
The absurdity of what he’d just told me made my vision swim, and I slumped back in my seat. “Oh my gods, you’ve been hitting on her….”
“I prefer to call it testing the boundaries.”
“…of what….”
“Of how convincingly I can operate this avatar.”
Still slumped, I stared at him vacantly for a while. “Why?”
Straus shrugged a shoulder. “That’s a secret.”
“Yeah, don’t tell me. I don’t think I can handle it on an empty stomach.”
A chuckle escaped from him, briefly triggering my andro-mechano-phobia – yes, I was convinced by now that I suffered from said phobia.
Desperately seeking a distraction, I turned my attention to the interior of the café.
Fortunately, it genuinely caught my interest and I found myself intently studying the various images of men and women captured in numerous photos, posters, and murals plastered throughout the innards of the café. I belatedly realized many of the photos depicted movie scenes in which most of the men wore trench coats while the women were attired in long form fitting dresses that emphasized their feminine charm. Some of the women were depicted as smoking from long cigarette holders while reclining on sofas. I found it puzzling to see those pictures in a commercial establishment such as this café because smoking died out as a widespread public habit a long time ago, though it was still something of an expensive private pastime.
However, I felt I understood the café’s theme.
“Hardboiled…I get it now.”
“Really?” Straus asked in a faintly snide tone, as he slouched in his seat, his arm annoying draped over its backrest.
“Well, I didn’t think hardboiled eggs had anything to do with it,” I replied just as snidely.
“And here I thought you only had Mercy on your mind.”
“If I had nothing but Mercy up here”—I tapped my forehead—“I wouldn’t have scored tenth place in my grade last year.”
“And yet you only qualified for the Delta Tier.”
I pressed my lips together as I exhaled loudly through my nose. “That’s because my brain isn’t malleable enough. But I’m not stupid.”
“Maybe not, but you’ve got a rock in there instead of clay.”
I ground my teeth together and started to flip Straus the bird. But remembering my earlier faux pas, I restrained myself to a harshly whispered, “Frek you.”
Straus snorted. “No thanks. You’re not my type.”
I flinched but not because I felt insulted. Rather, I was startled. “Your type? What? You have a type?”
Straus huffed under his breath. “Every girl has her type.”
I stared blankly at him for a second. “Every girl has her guy type? Or every girl has her girl type? So, which is it?”
Straus cocked his head at me in slowly spreading confusion. “What exactly are you asking?”
After mulling the question for a moment, and sparing the pretty waitress a glance, I decided to bluntly ask, “Are you a lesbian?”
His mouth fell open and stayed open for a long while. “Why the Hell would you ask something like that?”
I jerked my chin at the waitress busy greeting another batch of patrons. “Because you were watching her ass as she walked away.”
That was a lie, something I spouted on a whim, probably because I wanted to get a reaction out of Straus, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Straus slapped a hand loudly on the table and hissed, “I am not a lesbian.”
“Then what are you? Bisexual?”
Straus clamped his mouth shut for a long moment before sitting back and crossing his arms. “No. I’m not.”
“Are you a virgin?” I asked bluntly.
Straus looked shocked then regarded me with a simmering glare. “Mind your own business.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes’.”
For a moment, I thought Straus might actually strike me. It was odd that a machine could express such a frightful expression, but I can recognize true anger when I see it, and Straus looked unmistakably angry before turning away to look into the café rather than at me.
Hmm…I struck a nerve.
I thought back to the Akane Straus that had emerged from the Sarcophagus that inexplicably materialized above the apartment’s spacious balcony. The young woman I saw back then could barely push herself up off the ground. I acknowledge that my way of thinking may offend some people, but I couldn’t imagine her enjoying a physical relationship with anyone if she was afflicted with such a debilitating disease. Then again, I knew very little about Akane Straus so perhaps the disease didn’t hamper her life until recently.
But a relationship isn’t a solo experience.
It requires two to tango, and thereby two people to make it work.
This is where my low opinion of people darkened my outlook on Akane Straus’s chances of finding love.
Whether it’s part of my nature, or a trait carved into me by life’s experiences, I have difficulty seeing the good in people – both men and women. Recent events and my present circumstances have done nothing to change that. Thus, when I thought of Akane finding Mister Right, someone who would accept her and love her for who she was regardless of her disability, I equated it to finding a needle in a haystack.
It wasn’t impossible, but it would be extremely challenging.
Of course, the proverb falls apart if you introduce a superconducting magnet or metal detector to find the needle, but surely you understand my point.
I’m not saying there wasn’t someone out there for her.
I’m simply saying finding that someone would be difficult.
“When did it start?” The question left my lips before I could stop it.
Straus looked faintly puzzled, shedding some of the anger she’d been silently radiating.
“Your muscular dystrophy…when did it start?” I asked her, my voice and feelings subdued by that memory of her on the balcony. “Was it long ago…?”
“My last year of high school,” Straus replied in a flat tone that was surprising because he regarded me with uncertainty and very little anger, as though he was trying to figure out why I was asking. “Nine years ago.”
Nine years, I thought to myself. “Did you know Erina back then?”
Straus’s uncertainty grew but then he exhaled loudly and sat back a little deeper in the booth’s high-backed seat. “She and I attended Telos Academy. We weren’t classmates, but we were in the same year. She was the star student, and I was the star of the Track-and-Field team. As friends, we were an odd couple.”
I frowned inwardly.
If they were friends in high school, I was tempted to ask if Straus knew of me back then.
Did she know Erina had a younger brother?
But then I decided it didn’t matter. In a way, it was something of a redundant question now.
Dismissing it, I preferred to ask, “You were a Track-and-Field star?”
“My times in the inter-state competitions were good enough to earn me silver—twice. But in my third year…well…shit happens….”
Straus turned away. His tone had been flat, but there was a bitter look on his face.
“You dropped out of Track-and-Field in your third year?” I asked.
“Nope. I continued running to the bitter end, but I failed to qualify for the inter-state championships in my senior year. I’d lost my edge. I wasn’t the Sprint Queen of Telos Academy any longer.” His lips twisted in resentment. “When life deals you lemons, you can’t always make lemonade no matter how much you try.”
I waited for a little while, to see if he would continue on his own. When he didn’t, I gave him a little push. “So what did you do?”
Straus was silent for a short while. “You really want to know?”
I nodded.
He took a deep breath that made his shoulders rise and fall. “I went into a treatment program and underwent therapy. The docs told me I had ten years at best.” I watched him clench his jaw for a telling moment. “That was hard to take.” Straus laughed stiffly. “But Erina took it harder still. She was already doing research into motor neuron disease disorders and a whole lot of other shit, including Prometheus’s Curse. She just added my problem to the long list she had. Eventually, she whittled down her list to just two problems – yours and mine.”
Straus’s blue eyes held my gaze.
“By then she was working for the Telos Corporation, and they’d pulled her into their dark depths. And that was because of him.”
“Him…?” I tipped my head at Straus. “Who is him?”
“Simon val Sanreal. The lord and master of the Telos Corporation. Eldest son of the Sanreal Family. And he’s your sister’s fiancé.”
I blinked slowly as I digested this tidbit of information. “Her fiancé?”
“That’s right, little girl. Your sister is engaged to one of the richest, most eligible bachelors in the known galaxy.”
“So she went for the money,” I muttered sourly. “That’s just like her….”
“Actually, you ignorant twit, your sister was relentlessly pursued by Simon Sanreal for almost two years before she finally caved in and accepted his marriage proposal.”
I expressed a puzzled frown at Straus. “She was being chased around?”
He looked annoyed at me. “Are you paying attention or not?”
“I am paying attention. But you’re telling it thick and fast.”
“Then start keeping up.”
I almost retorted reflexively but held myself back at the last heartbeat. “Fine. Care to explain in a little more detail?”
“Simon val Sanreal expressed a surprising amount of interest in your sister. For some reason she just happened to be his type.” Straus folded his arms across his chest. “Still with me so far, little girl?”
I’d ignored her the first time she called me that, but this time I bristled. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then don’t call me kitten,” Straus snapped. “Agreed?”
I really felt like throwing something at him, but instead I just gnashed my teeth a little. “”If you’re not going to explain”—I placed my hands on the table—“then I’m leaving.”
“Like I said already, he pursued her romantically for almost two years before she caved in and agreed to marry him. By then she’d already been working at the Telos Corporation for four years, and she was a member of one of their black research divisions for two years. And that was his doing. At first, he was interested in just her – probably saw her as a worthy challenge – but then he grew interested in her research as well. It wasn’t long afterwards that Erina was transferred into a clandestine division conducting sensitive research.”
“Sensitive? You mean…the Angel Fibers.”
Straus snorted as he nodded. “He pulled her into the dark side of science.”
The dark side of science? Is that an understatement or an overstatement?
But that begged the question: how should Project Mirai be viewed?
It was my understanding there were a lot of checkboxes to tick when conducting scientific research. By that, I’m saying there are rules and regulations on how it should be ethically, safely, and morally carried out. When taken into context with everything that had happened to me, I had trouble imagining that Project Mirai would have ever received government approval. It was undoubtedly made possible because Erina’s black research division wasn’t conducting itself in a sanctioned manner.
In other words, quite a few checkboxes had been skipped over or left unticked because to Erina the ends justified the means.
And now Project Mirai was sitting in a café waiting for breakfast to be delivered.
Project Mirai was also guilty of illegally entering a schoolboy’s apartment.
Project Mirai had been mistaken for a goddess—I mean, idol.
Project Mirai had jumped down a building and ridden atop a speeding maglev through the city.
Project Mirai had most recently caused a scene by punching a boy to the ground.
And Project Mirai had scared away a hapless waitress.
Indeed, Project Mirai was building up quite the rap sheet of crimes and misdemeanors.
When I thought of Project Mirai that way, I was reminded of those holovid movies where the protagonist is the product of illicit research. They escape from a secret lab, then find themselves in a town or city full of unsuspecting humans. Before long, the bad guys would come after the escaped research project, and it wasn’t always a happy ending for them.
I looked down at my right hand.
The bruising it had suffered when I’d punched Straus to the ground was gone.
Like in those holovid movies, I was in a city of blissfully unaware humans, so was I headed for bad ending too?
My thoughts and fears must have been written on my face because Straus was looking at me intently.
I cleared my throat and tried to relax my features before asking, “How do you know all this? I mean how long have you been a part of this?”
At first Straus looked ready to fire back an answer, but he stopped and seemed to give his reply a little more thought. “How long have I been involved…?”
I gave him a nod.
“Do you mean to ask, how long have I been a part of Project Mirai?”
“How long have you known about the Angel Fibers? About Mirai? About the other universe?”
He sighed loudly. “Ever since Erina pulled me into her world. Ever since she began working for their black division.”
I was puzzled. “Why?”
“Because I became her test subject. She used their biomedical research labs to try all sorts of various things to keep me alive. But things didn’t look up for me until your sister shoved the Angel Fibers she’d cultivated into my body. Yeah, she came close to killing me—the closest anyone has come—but it stopped my muscular dystrophy. It didn’t make it any better, but it didn’t make it any worse, and best of all I was still alive.”
Straus leaned toward me over the edge of the table.
“Do you know what that meant to me? Knowing that I wasn’t getting any worse? Knowing that I wasn’t going to die?”
I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to lie to her, so I shook my head slowly.
Straus sat back. “Erina and I have had our share of differences over the years, but I owe her. She saved my life. And she opened a new world to me. The world of the Gun Princess Royale avatars.” He pointed at himself. “Without them, without this technology, I’d be an invalid in a wheelchair living a confined life.”
“But you still are,” I pointed out.
He shrugged a shoulder while nodding. “I’m aware of that. I’m not denying it. But without one of these, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this freedom.”
I stared down at the table between us.
I understood Straus’s point-of-view, and I wasn’t going to begrudge her the freedom and mobility the machine avatars granted her.
To be honest, I didn’t entirely dislike her. What I had was a grudge against her. I resented her over our physically violent encounters. I also resented that I had yet to win against her.
I thought back to the woman I’d seen lying on the apartment’s balcony.
I did the math in my head.
Straus was the same age as Erina, and Erina was eleven years older than me. That was one of the big reasons our parents left her in charge when they abandoned us for the sake of their research.
They trusted her to look after me.
Erina had graduated from high school and commenced third tier education at age nineteen. Her studies were funded by the Telos Corporation. In other words, she’d earned herself a scholarship from them, and they pulled her into the fold when she graduated five years later after studying a range of sciences that only an Alpha had the mental propensity to accomplish. And to top it off, she completed her four-year doctorate in three.
She really is special, I grudgingly acknowledged.
Yet I felt no pride in being related to her, although that was only in my former life as Ronin Kassius.
I exhaled long yet softly.
Erina was twenty-four when she started working for them.
I swallowed quietly.
Or was she working for them before then? Was the scholarship all part of it? Did they see something in her while she was still a high school student?
“If you keep frowning like that, you’ll get wrinkles,” Straus remarked.
Lost in thought, I looked up at him nonplussed. “What wrinkles?”
He regarded me thoughtfully for a long moment. “You need to talk to your sister.”
I snorted unhappily. “I spoke to her this morning…on the phone…the phone that I’ve now lost.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then explain yourself better.”
Sitting up on the bench seat, Straus once again leaned toward me. “No, I mean really talk to her.”
Understanding what he meant, I clenched my hands under the table. “It’s not that easy for me.”
He closed his eyes for a second, opened them, then nodded weakly. “I know that. But it’s important. Very important.”
I ground my molars together as frustration with Straus – and Erina – threatened to overwhelm me. It wasn’t easy to think straight, especially when I was close to seeing red…until I started to wonder why it was so important that I talk to Erina.
As I pondered the problem, I calmed down a little and started seeing things clearer.
My conversation with Tabitha back in dorm apartment came to mind.
With a frown, I asked, “Is this about what Tabitha told me?”
Straus hesitated before replying, but he was interrupted by the waitress arriving with our breakfast order on a tray that she wielded deftly on an upturned palm.
I refrained from glaring at her and sat quietly as she placed cups and plates on the table before us.
When she departed, I gave her back a cool look that I then fixed upon Straus.
“Tell me what’s going.”
– II –
Staring at me intently, Straus folded his arms on the table as he continued leaning toward me.
“I don’t know what you and Hexaria talked about in that room. In fact, none of us know. Not me. Not Erina. Not Renew. And not the team assigned to watch over you. When they tried to spy on you, they encountered a Conquistador Class Awareness the blocking the view—an Awareness working for Libra. And Libra is a puppet of House Cardinal, a rival to House Novis. So you can imagine the kind of warning bells that set off.”
I could indeed, thus I replied with a shallow nod.
Straus pressed on. “The only reason they didn’t pull you out of there when Hexaria showed up at your door was because Revenant assured us that you were safe. And if anything happened, he would summon your Sarcophagus, drag you inside, and transport you to safety.” Straus tapped the table hard. “But the fact that nobody expected Hexaria to show up—the fact that you kept your rendezvous a secret—took everyone by surprise.”
“I had a good reason to keep it a secret.”
Straus was still for a second before asking, “What reason?”
I shook my head firmly. “That’s between me and Tabitha.”
He exhaled unhappily at my answer. “She called you while you were at Ar Telica Tower, didn’t she?”
Damn it. She knows about that?
Straus insisted on an answer. “Well? Did she?”
“When I spoke to her on the phone, I didn’t know who she was.”
Unexpectedly, that made him laugh. “Everyone thought it was Revenant talking to you on the phone. He’s done that before so Renew, the security team, Erina—everyone thought you were talking to him.” He laughed again. “That bitch pulled the wool right over our eyes.” He gave me an accusing look. “And so did you.”
“Like I said, I had a good reason to keep it a secret.”
“Well, keeping it a secret almost caused a meltdown between Erina, Renew, Sanreal, and the security team.”
“Why is that?”
Straus seemed surprise that I would ask. “Don’t you remember what Erina told you about the trans-location process?”
“I remember what she said.”
“Really?” he scoffed, then picked up two empty glasses on the table that he set down a few inches apart. “To translocate, you need a homing beacon for the source and the destination. Taura Hexaria’s body is the source. It’s a machine avatar with enough internal space and power for the beacon. It’s how she jumps around from place to place.”
I was surprised to hear this. “Her body can translocate?”
“Remember the Zombie Apocalypse you were thrown into?”
I nodded.
Straus tapped one of the glasses. “Hexaria was using a mechanical body back then. And that body could translocate because it contained a source beacon. All she had to do was pick a destination and the system would move her from one place to the next. That’s how she escaped the Zombies in the library. And that’s how she got into the dormitory building this morning. House Cardinal planted a destination beacon in the residential complex, and she used it to translocate into the floor above you.”
I realized where the conversation was going. “You thought Tabitha was going to kidnap me.”
He huffed. “I’m not the only one who thought that. You should have seen the faces on Erina and Pearson when Hexaria showed up at your door. And Simon val Sanreal was a heartbeat away from ordering Renew and her people to storm the building.”
“So why didn’t you pull me out?”
“Because Revenant kept telling us that you were safe. Even after Hexaria’s entrance, he insisted the situation was under control.” Straus paused for a breath. “But Revenant wasn’t telling anyone what was happening in there. He said it was private between you and Hexaria, and no amount of threatening him was making him spill the beans. So eventually they ran out of patience, and the decision was made to get you out of there. At that point, I volunteered to go in.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You volunteered? What about Renew? Why wasn’t she sent in?”
He shook head slowly. “I don’t know. But when the call came, I volunteered and Erina vouched for me.”
I glanced at his chest. “Because you’ve got a beacon inside of you.”
Straus stiffened for a telling moment. “That’s right. If necessary, they can translocate me to another location.”
“And me along with you.”
“Obviously. And that beacon got me into the building without the need to go through the doors. Once inside, I waited for you and Hexaria to exit the apartment. Then I followed you. But when you suddenly bolted in a panic, more alarms went off. I had people yelling at me to go after you.” Straus shook his head wearily. “Jeezes, I really felt the pressure back then.”
“So what happened?”
Straus seemed to gather his thoughts before answering me. “Hexaria chased after you, and I ran behind her. But you are fast—I mean you are really, really fast on your feet. You left us behind. If you hadn’t stopped at the stairwell, we would never have caught up to you.”
I was surprised to hear him say that, but then sharply corrected him. “I didn’t stop. I tripped. The girls on the stairs saved me.”
“Yeah, well, good thing for us that they did.”
“Ha, ha,” I mockingly laughed at him.
Straus brushed it aside with a curt wave. “When I saw Hexaria stop at the landing, I hid in the crowd behind her. When she called you Mercy and stirred up the kids on the stairs, I moved closer. I saw you losing control. You were turning blonde in front of everyone. That made me panic, so I pushed through the crowd surrounding you, grabbed a hold of you, and yanked you out of there.” He sat back, and then crossed his arms. “And now we’re here having a private conversation.”
“A private conversation?”
I swept my gaze over the café that was steadily filling up with customers, yet the tables nearby were empty, thus forming a sort of No Man’s Land between us and the other patrons.
However, being here presented a peculiar conundrum of its own.
I turned back to Straus with a puzzled look on my face. “After all that trouble—after all that running around—why are we here? Why hasn’t anyone stormed in here and dragged me away? Why are we being left alone?” I tipped my head at him. “Or are they waiting for us outside?”
A troubled look crossed his face. “I wouldn’t know about that. What I do know is that I told Erina I needed time alone with you. And if we’re still here chatting undisturbed, then it means Erina was able to convince the Sanreals to give us a measure of privacy.”
“Privacy?” I was starting to see the picture and I didn’t like it. “So this was your idea?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Why?”
Straus bowed his head in thought and remained still for a long while. However, even before he gave me an answer, I was fairly certain why he – or should I say she – wanted to talk to me. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to hear him say:
“Erina’s in trouble and you’re the only one who can help her.”
I exhaled slowly and wilted back in my seat. “I knew it…it’s always about her.”
“Kassius—I mean, Isabel”—Straus hesitated and took a breath—“Erina truly needs your help. I’m not lying to you about this.”
I closed my eyes.
I’m so sick of hearing this.
He cautiously continued. “Isabel, the Sanreal Family is watching Erina closely.”
Opening my eyes, I stared coldly at him. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“Everything.” Once again, he folded his arms on the table and leaned toward me. “Erina is protecting you.”
I chortled in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“She’s protecting you from them. She convinced the Sanreals that you could be talked into co-operating.”
I smirked. “Well, she was counting her chickens before they hatched.”
Straus’s expression turned into a glare that he seemed to struggle holding in check. “And that’s why she’s in trouble. Because you’re not co-operating, the Sanreals are considering taking matters into their own hands.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they have ways of dealing with you. Such as isolating you in your Sarcophagus. Keeping you locked up and releasing you only when they need to. Putting your head—your mind—in a virtual space where they can keep you under control.”
The way he said it, I realized it wasn’t an idle threat.
That’s why my throat grew tight and I found it a little difficult to swallow. Yet I somehow managed to then warily ask, “How do you know all this?”
Straus banged on the table, startling me. “Because I spent the morning listening to Sanreal, Erina, Pearson, Celeste, Team Mirai, and the heads of the Spartan Division arguing over you—arguing over what to do with you. And the only reason you haven’t been boxed yet is because Erina is batting for you. She stepped up to the plate for you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“She’s batting for me because she needs me.”
“Exactly, and you need her as well.” He pointed sharply at me. “But you pushed your luck today with that Great Escape routine you pulled. And then things got serious when we realized that House Cardinal had helped you out. And they got worse when Hexaria showed up and you kept it a secret from everybody.”
I blew a fuse.
In anger, I half rose from the seat, then jabbed a finger back at Straus.
“I pulled that Great Escape because that four-eyed bitch called the storm trooper sisters on me! So don’t you point your the finger at me!”
For emphasis, I banged on the table hard enough to make the plates jump, then glared so hotly at Straus it was a miracle the air between us didn’t catch fire.
However, I soon noticed something in the periphery of my awareness.
The café had grown deathly quiet.
The drone of background chatter had ceased, and everyone inside had turned to look at us.
I could almost feel their gazes pressing into my skin.
Believing it was best to avoid their eyes, I sat back and then pointedly stared at the pancakes slowly cooling on their plate on the table. After a short while, conversation began anew amongst the patrons, but Straus and I held onto the heavy, unpleasant silence that now hung over us.
A twinge from my stomach pushed me into action.
I reached out for the pancakes, tossed a couple onto a plate, then lathered them with a thin layer of honey syrup.
I dug into them, grateful they were still warm.
Straus watched me in silence, before pulling out his slim phone from a trouser pocket. He tapped away on it for a while, then placed it on the table and pushed it across to me.
“Read that,” he said in a hushed, somber tone.
Munching on a mouthful of pancake, I looked down at the phone.
The CyWeb browser was opened on a gossip site, the kind that reported on society’s high life in Ar Telica and around the world. The article on display had a photo of a blonde girl that looked remarkably like Mercy, and remarkably like me, alighting from a VTOL in the dead of night.
I read the caption above the photo.
SANREAL HEIRESS ARRIVES IN AR TELICA.
I read the caption below the photo.
ISABEL VAL SANREAL, YOUNGEST HEIRESS TO THE SANREAL FORTUNE, ARRIVES IN AR TELICA TO BEGIN A NEW LIFE.
Feeling curious in a dark, twisted kind of way, I scrolled down the article.
When I finished reading it, I looked across at Straus who was sitting back with his eyes closed and his head reclined against the headrest. “What’s the point of this?”
He replied without opening his eyes. “The point is that for now the Sanreals have decided to keep you out of the box. To the world, you’re Isabel val Sanreal, and you’ve arrived in Ar Telica to begin anew.”
I tapped the phone’s screen again and navigated through the gossip sites.
I found another article about me with a photo of me on the landing platform but from a different angle.
The caption above the image read, FROM RAGS TO RICHES – ISABEL VAL SANREAL LANDS ON TELORIA.
Straus spoke up in a low voice. “All of that serves to establish your identity. It also helps distinguish you from Mercy Haddaway while drawing comparisons to her.” He peered at me through lidded eyes. “And it means that you have a role to play on the stage they’ve set for you. What happens now depends on you.”
I resumed eating and finished off another couple of pancakes that I washed down with the orange juice the waitress had provided in a large glass pitcher. Then I started again on a couple more pancakes that I lathered with strawberry jam.
Straus continued sitting back with his head reclined and he’d closed his eyes again.
After all the talking he’d done, I was wary of this change in him.
The silence also made me uncomfortable until eventually I couldn’t endure it any longer.
After another swig of orange juice to clear my throat, I regarded the mechanical avatar sitting across the table.
“Do you know how hard this has been for me?”
Straus cracked open an eyelid and stared at me in silence.
I looked into his one open eye. “Do you know why I’ve managed to stay sane after everything that’s happened to me? It’s because I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive. But now I’ve got some downtime and it’s catching up to me.”
He opened both eyes, then gently said, “I’m listening.”
My chest tightened.
Straus was lending me his – her – ear, something that only Ghost and Mat had done before.
Maybe this was what I needed.
Someone else to talk to.
I ate more of the pancakes, washed them down with juice, then continued in a remarkably steady voice. “I’m not good with passive aggressive. And Erina just makes me feel aggressive. I try not to get angry—I really do—but she just gets under my skin. And then my blood boils and I lose my temper.”
Straus chuckled wearily under his breath. “Funny, she said the same thing about you.”
I stopped cutting up the pancakes on my plate and gave him a hard, questioning look. “She did?”
“You and your sister are cut from the same cloth. You’re both recalcitrant and egocentric. You both can’t see past your noses.”
I sneered at him. “Thanks for the compliment.”
“You’re welcome.” Straus sat up. “I understand that you blame Erina for what happened, but it’s misplaced. You should blame Kateopia.”
“Oh, I blame Kateopia. Rest assured. I definitely blame her.”
“And you’re wrong about one more thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re not Ronin Kassius. You’re Mirai. You were never Ronin Kassius.”
The truth hurts, but this was a hurt that I’d already experienced and cried over. It was a hurt I was slowly coming to terms with on my own. Thus, he was sorely mistaken if he expected to use it as a trump card against me.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I replied through a thin smile.
“Then why won’t you cut Erina some slack?”
“Because I can’t accept how she treats me. Even if I was never Ronin Kassius but just a copy of his mind, I’m still me. I have feelings, memories, thoughts. I am not a machine.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“But she isn’t.”
Straus sighed. “You’ve made that point clear to her. Trust me on this.”
Frankly, that puzzled me. “Are you saying that she’s reflected on her mistakes?”
“I’m saying that she’s definitely reevaluating how she deals with you.”
I placed my utensils down on the table. “You see, that’s the problem. Erina doesn’t see me as a real person. She sees me as a research project. Something she needs to manage.” I shook my head slowly. “And that’s why I have a problem with her.”
Straus frowned slightly but held his tongue, and so I continued voicing my complaint.
“To Erina, I’m not important as a person. I’m important because of the research she’s conducting. And she values that research above everything else. And the proof is that she was willing to face an Empress and not back down an inch.”
Tabitha had said Erina was protecting Mirai and Clarisol, but I didn’t believe that for a moment.
Erina was protecting her research.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Straus softly argued, “That research isn’t just important to her. It’s important to humanity.”
I shook my head gently. “I don’t have a problem with the research. I can accept that it has the potential—the potential—to save lives. That doesn’t mean that it will. But as I said, I don’t have an issue with it. My problem is that when Erina looks at me, she’s not seeing humanity’s salvation.”
“Then what does she see?”
“In her eyes, I’m humanity’s future.”
In a very human way, Straus’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and the frown he’d been wearing deepened as he stared at me in silence.
I watched him too, aware that I was looking at a machine and not a handsome teenage boy, but somehow I felt as though I’d moved past my troubles reconciling the illusion with reality. Thus, I was able to meet his gaze as though it belonged to a real boy, and not feel unsettled all the way to my bones as my andro-mechano-phobia slumbered in the recesses of my subconscious.
Straus broke his silence, tipping his head slightly in my direction. “If I say that I agree with you, will you listen to my advice?”
I was unable to hide my surprise. “You agree with me?”
Unexpectedly, he gave me a troubled look. “It’s just a gut feeling I have…a feeling that Erina is looking for something more in you. A feeling that she has something else planned for you and the Angel Fibers. Something other than what she has told the Sanreals.”
“…like what…?”
“You said it yourself. Like becoming humanity’s future.”
He was right.
I had said so myself yet hearing it from him made me feel cold.
“Will you listen to my advice?” he asked.
I pressed my lips tightly together, fighting off the chill I felt.
“Isabel?”
Damn it—snap out of it!
In a hurry, I blurted out, “Don’t bother. I know what you’re going to say.”
Straus hesitated for a second. “Then what are you going to do? Keep going the way you have?” He hesitated again. “Leaving aside whatever plans Erina truly has for you—and I’m not comfortable with speculating behind her back—if you continue on this path, if you keep going the way you’re going, butting heads with Erina at every turn, then she won’t be able to protect you.”
“You keep insisting that she’s protecting me, but I’m not buying it.”
He exhaled in exasperation. “Do you know the reason why you are living as Isabel val Sanreal?”
“Wasn’t that something House Novis arranged with the Empress?”
“No. The Empress only wanted Mirai fighting in the Gun Princess Royale. The part about you living as Isabel was a proposal that Erina pushed through with the support of her team. Using her influence over Simon Sanreal, and a psychological report prepared by Celeste, Erina convinced him to have you assume the identity of Isabel val Sanreal. You are valuable to Erina and to the Sanreals. But Kateopia twisted their arm and had them enter you in the Gun Princess Royale where they stand to lose you. With that in mind, the Sanreals had decided to keep you safe when you were away from the GPR. That meant confining you to your Sarcophagus and using its technology to have your mind experience living in a virtual reality.”
I nodded faintly. “You said that already.”
“The Sanreals didn’t want you exposed to the outside world. To them, it was a huge risk. Think about it. You’re special. You’re the culmination of years of research and they didn’t want to risk losing you to an accident, to injury, to a whole variety of unexpected circumstances.”
I started shaking my head as I felt something was amiss with his explanation. “You’re telling me I’m special, and that they couldn’t risk having me out in the real world. Yet they were planning to send Clarisol away in this body. They were planning to have her live far away from Teloria. That makes no sense to me.”
Straus shook his head quickly. “Not right away. They weren’t planning for that until it was certain that Mirai would live for a very, very long time. If it turned out that Mirai fell short of expectations, then they would suspend the plan and wait until Mirai could be perfected or a new improved version could be made. They were being careful to tick all the boxes. Putting Clarisol in a defective Simulacra was not an option, especially with the problems that Clarisol’s Simulacra eventually experience.”
A second chill ran through me as I remembered what Tabitha had told me. “What problems?”
Straus took a deep breath and shrugged uneasily. “After a while, they go crazy.”
“Crazy?”
He shrugged again. “The Sanreals don’t know why, but Clarisol’s Simulacra don’t last long—a year at best—before slowly going mad. They’ve been trying to figure it out for years. They blame it on the Simulacra they make for her, so they were pinning their hopes on Mirai. But then the Empress found out about Mirai and their plans went awry.”
I wet my lips slowly while digesting this.
Then Tabitha wasn’t lying. And Erina found out. But did she tell the Sanreals? Did they not believe her? Is this why she felt compelled to reveal all to the Empress?
I cleared my throat gently. “Then what about the Angel Fibers. Could the Sanreals afford to have Mirai or Isabel leave their grasp? Wouldn’t they need her for more research?”
“Erina said she could make another Mirai to continue the research. Once she didn’t need the first Mirai—once she was sure the prototype met the Sanreals requirements as a suitable body for Clarisol—then Clarisol would be free to assume the life of Isabel Allegrando, far away from it all.”
I pressed my lips together and inwardly disagreed.
No, not Clarisol, but a copy of her consciousness. The real Clarisol would still be stuck in that prison for her mind.
However, I chose not to correct Straus, asking instead, “Is that all?”
“What?”
“Is that all there is to it?”
Straus gave me a puzzled frown, perhaps baffled that I was expressing this much interest, but then continued explaining the decisions behind my circumstances. “The Sanreals also feared that Kateopia might kidnap you. But Erina told Kateopia that if Mirai was stolen, Mirai would die.”
A third chill ran through me.
Thus far, Straus was confirming what Tabitha had told me.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it took a little effort for me to find my voice. “Is that true?”
He looked visibly uncomfortable as he shrugged a shoulder. “Honestly, I don’t know. Your sister won’t tell anyone what precautions she took, and I don’t have a reason to doubt her. You’re precious to her but I don’t know if she’s willing to lose you permanently. With her it’s a war of wills with the Empress and that gives birth to a contradiction. On the one hand, she’s adamant that you’re too valuable to hand over, but on the other she’s determined to keep exclusive control over the research no matter the cost and to avoid putting you in a box. For the Sanreals, the idea of keeping you in the Sarcophagus under the proverbial lock and key suited them just fine. And like I said, your mind could be kept busy living in a virtual world so perfect you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
My blood slowly ran cold as I wondered if I was already boxed.
What if right now I was experiencing a simulation so perfect that I perceived it as reality?
How would I be able to distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t?
I have to admit that I was scared, but I’d be damned if I let Straus see how frightened I was.
Swallowing discreetly, I then asked, “So why am I out here and not in there?”
“I told you. Because Erina had other ideas. She didn’t want you boxed. She wanted you to experience real life. To live in the real world. And so she convinced Simon to make use of the identity of Isabel Allegrando – an identity the Sanreals had carefully created over the span of many months for Clarisol – and to bring Isabel into the Sanreal Family. To amend her existence so that she was the illegitimate daughter of Phelan Sanreal, otherwise known in the other universe as Phelan Sanreal Erz Novis, the head of House Novis.”
“Why? Why would she do that? Why go that far?”
Was it because Erina knew I would have trouble accepting my new existence?
Erina was an Alpha, so perhaps she’d used her enhanced intellect to plan ahead. But that implied that she cared about Mirai. It implied that Erina had a heart and she saw Mirai as more than a research project. This contradiction bothered me because having Mirai contained safely in the Sarcophagus made life easier for Erina – it made Mirai easier for her to manage. So why did she argue so hard for Mirai’s freedom?
It just didn’t make sense to me, unless I assumed that I was wrong about Erina, and that was a notion I was unwilling to entertain.
Hence, if I wasn’t wrong about her, then where did that leave me?
Before disembarking from the Sanreal Crest, Erina had admitted that she wanted me to mature, to evolve, to be more than I was now. I still believed that was a rare moment of honesty from her, and because of that I couldn’t shake off the impression that Erina had long term plans for me.
This brought my thinking back to the issue of Clarisol.
If what Straus told me was true, Erina’s plans clashed with the Sanreals’ intention to have Clarisol live out her life in Mirai’s body as Isabel Allegrando.
In summary, Erina had her own agenda, and it went contrary to those of the Sanreals.
My former sister was indeed playing a dangerous game.
I closed my eyes tightly as I leaned back, then reclined my head against the headrest behind me.
Why go that far? Is Mirai so special that she would risk my life, her life, and Ronin’s life as well?
I opened my eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling.
My gods, Erina. What have you dragged me into?
Straus stepped into my thoughts. “Isabel, listen to me carefully.”
I swallowed and continued looking up at the ceiling. “I’m listening….”
“The Sanreals are watching you. They are watching me. They are watching Erina. They are watching how you behave around her. They are watching the decisions you make. They are considering how much or how little control Erina has over you.”
I looked down at Straus and met his gaze.
Those perfectly realistic yet mechanical eyes were staring fixedly at me, grabbing my attention and refusing to let it go as their owner spoke in a low, grim tone.
“If you continue to challenge Erina the way you have been, they will make a judgement call, an executive decision, and take matters into their own hands. They will take you away from Erina.”
Straus paused but I knew what he was going to say.
After all, it was an inevitable conclusion.
“Isabel, they will box you.”
Thank you for getting this far. I apologize for not posting sooner. I've had work intrude into life and I'm also learning to deal with a health issue.
Book 1 of the newly reimagined & rebooted series, The Gun Princess Royale, is available on Amazon for purchase or reading on Kindle Unlimited. More than two years of writing have gone into it. Please check it out. It's 873 pages so the sample for reading on Amazon is a whopping 87 pages.
Work on Book 2 of the newly reimagined series is ongoing. Concept design for now. I'm also looking at restarting a META/Facebook promotion for the new book in March.
A happy & safe 2024 to all of you.
