As I carried on washing the cups, which had not only miraculously survived the attack, but also had seemingly not been washed since JJ, one of the part-timers, was last on kitchen duty three days ago, I could hear bits of pieces of conversations coming from upstairs.

Manon must have either left or taken refuge in her tower (aka the apartment above the coffee shop) where she worked on the administrative side of things. Either way, I didn’t care much as long as she didn’t bother me.

My thoughts wandered back to what Etienne had said. It was of course awfully sweet and kind of him to offer to do the police’s job for me, but I didn’t want to get him in any kind of trouble. I had looked up laws regarding the usage of skills in public yesterday when I was laying in bed. I went on a dive so deep that I had found official government texts, which unfortunately I hadn’t fully understood. But from what news articles and blog posts said, it did look like using skills in public, to damage property or attack people, was illegal. Using them for any other purpose was frowned upon.

For example, there was no law preventing strikers from building an earth barrier around their group, but they would get fined by the police for doing so, or perhaps even arrested. And teenagers who used flashy skills (like fireworks, or summoning skills) in public, would get put on some sort of list which labelled them as ‘public annoyance’.

But Etienne did have a point. Despite being a high-ranker, there was just too much I didn’t know about this world. Yes, I had read the novel, and every single spin-off and sequel, but those were mostly set in Asia (China and Japan for the first four books). That was a different culture, where access to information about skills was much less cluttered by the Media (capital M, as it included independent blogs, government agencies, and traditional press).

It would have been nice to have someone to ‘chaperone’ me in this world. Someone who knew a lot about it, and who wouldn’t ask questions, either about my past, or my lack of skills.

As much as I liked Etienne, I could not exploit him in this way. I simply couldn’t.

But then, it wasn’t as if I had many friends in this world, since I was very focused on finding a job, and overall getting used to the System during these past few months.

Maybe I could get a roommate? I’d have to move in with someone since my current flat only had one bedroom. But with my lack of everything but money, I didn’t have much faith in the process.

A wild idea popped into my head. Maybe I could get one of the characters from the novel to babysit me? After all, I did meet Alan just yesterday, and he had no reason for being where he’d been. But who else was there? I wasn’t sure how early before the start of the novel I was, as the author of ‘The guide to modern immortal immorality’ had used dates with great scarcity, but I knew it hadn’t started yet, because there were no reports on TV about the great Huáng Yǔháng and his unique class, or any of the wild stuff he did after in the novel.

Amongst the ‘stable’ characters, who didn’t have far-fetched motives or a twisted or violent personality, there were two that stood out. Juliette Romeo (when the setting of the novel moved to Europe, the author went all out on the wacky names), who was a linguist (a sub-class of Diplomat) and worked on translating ancient texts in museums. She lived in Italy, but travelled a lot to North Africa to access Artefact excavation sites. The issue with her was that she cared about her work above all else, and only forged connections that would help her either decipher or find more Artefacts. She was of course very loyal towards those she’d make a connection with, but that didn’t matter in my case, since I had nothing to offer her.

The other “option” was a British navy man: Adair Thames. He was an artillerist who worked towards reducing the number of terrorist attacks along the British coast. He was a kind-hearted family man, who trusted people easily and always gave his best. But he was close to useless without a massive long-range gun nearby. The way he’d get around that in the novel was to pretend to be intimidating by yelling at people with a Scottish accent (which he’d put on for show as he himself was from Cardiff). Hence, he too was not really someone I could use to my advantage.

While lost in thought, I had finished cleaning the cups, and had started unpacking and prepping our frozen baked goods for tomorrow. I had to put them on trays, and into the fridge, where they’d thaw to an oven-ready temperature. I was also supposed to pick out the ones that didn’t look nice, but I didn’t do that. After all, what was I supposed to eat for breakfast, if not unsold pastries?

While arranging a row of cream puffs (the cream was frozen separately and was to be injected into the pastry; Chez Manon didn’t fall that low), I remembered a scene from the book.

***

A red-headed teenager was kneeling in the middle of a bloody battlefield. Around him, mutilated corpses of people in uniform laid in concentric circles, like waves all clashing against a single unwavering rock.

Two figures appeared at the edge of the battlefield. One lean, with long black hair tied up in a ponytail, trailing behind him, the other broad, with a longsword and a crossbow attached to his back.

The teenager slowly got up, exposing the wounds on his body. He didn’t seem that much better off than the corpses around him. Although he was still alive, the people attacking him had evidentially done a fair bit of damage.

His appearance slowly shifted to become more animalistic. His eyes glowed red, as wolf ears appeared over his head. His fingers transformed into long, vicious claws. But he didn’t have enough strength left to fully transform into animal form. He barely had enough strength to stand upright.

‘Who are you?’ he wanted to say, but all that came out of his mouth was a menacing growl.

The man with black hair put his hands in the air and continued walking toward the boy, ignoring the soft mass of flesh beneath his feet.

“I am one of the good guys.” The man said with a wide, friendly, smile.

The boy, not believing him, lunged at him, aiming for his head with his claws.

The man simply stepped aside, watching as the boy lost balance, and fell to the ground. He then kneeled beside him and reached into his pocket.

The boy whimpered, preparing for an attack.

“Look,” The man extended a small packet towards the boy, “would a bad guy bring cream pastry?”

***

This teenager was one of the most powerful shifters, and one of the only S+ rankers, in the world. In typical ‘modern immortal immorality’ fashion, he had had a very traumatic childhood. Born in a remote naturalistic community, he was quickly taken by a private bio-lab once his true potential had been discovered. There, he spent most of his childhood and adolescence, until he grew strong enough to escape.

Although the scene from the book took place in Romania, this boy had been held in a secret spot somewhere in Switzerland before that. Which wasn’t all that far from France.

I shook my head, surprising myself with the turn my thoughts had taken. But that boy – what was his name again? Huáng had renamed him ‘Cain’ for obvious reasons, but he had had a name before that. It hadn’t really mattered in the book, but if I were to rescue him before he escaped –

What was this train of thought? This was kidnapping! Quite literally as well since if he was around 16 in the novel, he must have been an actual kid now.

Which meant that he would be easy to manipulate to stay around and act as a bodyguard.

No –

I couldn’t possibly do that.

But then again, he was currently being used as a human test subject in some underground lab. Anything above that would have been an improvement to his situation.

“Laura, would you like to walk home together?” Etienne’s voice snapped me back to reality.

I checked my phone, and saw that my shift was almost over.

“I thought you cycled to work.” I answered distractedly.

“Well, I can at least walk with you down to the funicular.” He offered.

“Sure. Let me just finish this.” I replied.

I put the last of the pastries in the fridge, took off my apron, and joined Etienne upstairs. But now that this idea of rescuing Cain had anchored itself in my mind, I couldn’t really focus on anything else. No matter the circumstances, it was the right thing to do, right?