Chapter Thirty-six

Interlude: Between Ghosts and Chocolate Thieves

The tent was a modified distortion space, one of the many that had been set up in the field for the soldiers, in a space a little farther away from where the search was being carried out. There had to be at least forty beds for resting, but in them the only thing that could be seen were some backpacks.

Private Monica Greinberg entered the tent with a smile. But even though she was smiling, a vein was throbbing in her temple. She turned to the only one in the tent at the time, a search team soldier named Claude Bonnet, who was taking off his boots.

Monica reached over and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, what's up?" Claude asked.

Monica's smile was intimidating. "Tell me, did you eat them?"

"Huh? What?"

"You ate them, didn't you?"

Hey, what's with that smile? It's creepy! Claude thought. "I ate what?"

"My dark chocolates."

Claude stared at her with a poker face. "I didn't eat anything."

"Liar, you're always the one taking my snacks."

"I haven't had time today, I've been running around all day."

"You haven't had time today? Then you would have stolen them from me if you had time?"

"'Have they disappeared on you?" Claude asked, trying to deflect the question.

"Are you sure it wasn't you?"

"No, woman! We've been in different groups all day. Ask Marie or one of the others. It wasn't me. At least this time."

Monica stood up and looked at him as if in doubt. "This is so weird…"

"Someone stealing your candy?"

"I wasn't the only one. Other teammates have also had some things go missing or found the stuff in their bags messed up."

Claude frowned. "You guys too?"

"What do you mean?"

"Some guys from the other platoon had something similar happen earlier, they found everything messed up, and at noon two of our guys had their lunch disappear, they had to go and print food again."

They both stared at each other for a few seconds.

"Do you think what they say about this place is true?" Monica asked .

"That it's cursed?"

"Some people overheard Commander Lefreve talking earlier about some team that disappeared here during the time of the war."

"Not to mention all those rumors about strange things happening. And now the plane."

"Don't say things like that, I don't like Dark Events."

"What if all the people who died on the plane are the ghosts they're talking about around here?"

"They are very fast ghosts, the crash just happened."

Claude put on a straight face. "You don't understand my point. The plane disappeared in 2012, right? What if everyone died back then and what we're looking at is the plane that just came back from hell?"

"Why do you assume it was in hell?"

"Thinking about hell is much better than imagining where it might have been. We don't know what that Other Side is where the feys come from, do we? Nor do we know the dimension from which the fractus came. Imagining what we can't conceive of is much scarier. At least hell gives us a frame of reference, if only a mythical one."

Monica nodded at that, but she couldn't deny that it made her shudder to think that what Claude had just said might be a possibility.

Who knew how that plane had gotten there. Was it possible that the souls of those who had perished were in the vicinity, angry that the mystery had not yet been solved? Could they be the ones who had been provoking those hooligans to the soldiers?

***

I have no idea what that was, but it was delicious.

The little pug with fur like glass licked his muzzle in satisfaction. He had traces of chocolate on quite a few parts of his snout. The snack wrappers lay shredded in the grass, but he had finally been able to get the contents out. He couldn't know that he couldn't eat chocolate even though, due to the change of his metabolism inside the mirror box, it certainly couldn't do anything to him either.

In fact he had found several types of food that day, each with different flavors, from sweet snacks, to salty ones, and mineral drinks he had found lying around. The lake water was refreshing, but those drinks tasted much better.

After each one he had felt full and had almost slept half the day. But he had still had time to walk all over the place. Because of the movement of soldiers he came to believe that they were looking for him. But the soldiers were simply combing the terrain looking for pieces or moving things around.

From the mirror, to the city of lights with its gigantic tree, and from there to a base full of machines, and from there to a forest.

But the surprises didn't end there. Since that girl captured him in her arms and he fell asleep, it was as if the world had changed. He also had been discovering some things that were different about him.

One of them was that he could willingly use his crystal skin to cut things. He remembered how he had left that bar before he was captured, cutting the door. At the time he hadn't wondered how it had happened but, in the days that followed, he had been looking at his paws. If he wished, his little claws, now made of the same crystalline material that could be as sharp as a nano-blade, could be stretched out and used to cut.

He had not harmed anyone who had tried to touch him because everyone seemed to treat him well, except for that tall black-haired man. He hadn't done anything to him, but the little dog had been frightened by him. There was something strange about him.

Be that as it may, the next day he was bored in his cage, even though he was comfortable. It must have been dawn. He had seen the girl who captured him, leaving with the others and that was odd. Why were they leaving? The pug didn't wait a second. He stretched out one of his little paws and neatly sliced the cage he was in. He had run a few moments before they boarded the ship and had secretly snuck onto it before it took off. Then the ship had landed later.

He had looked for the girl with the big appetite who had been feeding him for the last few days, but he had almost lost sight of her after she got off the ship and went off with that bald guy somewhere. The other SID members he didn't know too well to approach. On the other hand they seemed too busy doing different things that he didn't understand.

He had thought of Sil Moore often, his memory of her was fresh. But he had had so many new sensations in such a short time that it was hard to keep up with the world he was discovering.

He had discovered something new, he could easily pass unnoticed at will. That had surprised him. It had happened when he had gone to urinate in a tree and when he lifted his hind leg he discovered that it had mimicked the same color as the tree. He didn't know how it had happened and for several minutes he wondered about it. At first he thought it was due to the tree, but when he did another test he approached another tree and placed his front paws on it.

That happened again.

For a couple of hours he entertained himself, until he finally thought he understood what was happening. He simply had to approach the object and it would go unnoticed. But, if that was so, why didn't the contact with the ground work? His paws should have mimicked the green or brown of the grass and soil, but it wasn't happening.

After an hour he understood something else. He had to look at what he wanted to mimic. He had to look at it for a few seconds and his body would change, although it didn't seem to last if he didn't maintain contact. It was tiring but he had found a new trick.

Thanks to that trick he had looked at walls, to pass unnoticed by a group of soldiers, who did not detect him when he stole food. Also thanks to that trick he had gone to the main tent and had sniffed the boots of that SID girl with the two-rollered hairdo that everyone called Mai, but she seemed too busy to want to play with him and so he didn't bother her. He passed unnoticed by everyone and without further ado retired, but not before stealing some cookies from a short-haired woman who drank tea constantly. The last thing the pug heard before he left was something like "Miss Izumi, have you taken my cookies?"

The day had passed quickly with the new excitement. He had tried to play with the spider droids, but they seemed to ignore him completely. Remembering what had happened to that square thing he had stolen, when he escaped from the mirror and had broken into pieces, he didn't want to bother those droids. Something told him that they were very similar to that block, even if they had a different shape.

He had been a little frightened when he had found a charred body while walking through the trees. The smell really disgusted him and he had moved away looking for a different place.

Beyond being unnoticed, he had enjoyed the freedom of that day. He had finally been able to see a sunset outside his prison and feel free. In the early evening he had been surprised to see those floating balloons illuminating the place, but what interested him was to find his dinner. He had stumbled upon a freshly-printed meal that a soldier had neglected to take and that he had stolen. Noodles with meatballs.

After drinking water from the lake he had gone around the tents to distract himself and that was when he had found the bags with the belongings of many soldiers. He had done it earlier, but had found nothing interesting, apart from some sweets and other things he had taken and then left abandoned in the grass. The authorities had come to think that they might be parts of the plane and some soldiers had been reprimanded for causing disorder and confusing evidence.

Finally he had come across a soldier's bag, which had dark chocolates in it, and that had become his dessert.

Where should I sleep? He wondered as he made his way back to the SID tent. I hope that black-haired girl is back by now.

Halfway there he stopped. Where he was passing by there were no floating lights and so he could see the sky.

Why does it look like that? There is something strange. He thought, looking up at the heights.
Slowly thick clouds had begun to cover the region.

That lasted a few seconds but he continued on his journey, without worrying too much. With his back to him, in another tent, Jim Stuart in the synthetic with red hair came out and looked up at the night sky as he stretched.

Neither got a glimpse of the other.