Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series, Dan Sugralinov [the reader ebook .TXT] 📗

is here — the thumb. Just rotate your wrist around it, no strength needed. Let’s try.”

He grabbed my now reddened wrist again. I repeated Roj’s movement exactly and freed myself, although not without effort. My wrist burned. Next we worked on a two-handed forearm hold. This time I had to lift my thumb sharply, grab it with my free hand and quickly pull upwards.

Smiling, I shook myself and went to work on my first technique. Unlike Dis, I couldn’t learn anything instantly here…

“Stop!” Hairo commanded after half an hour of training.

Freeing myself from his ‘gentle’ grip, I gasped to get my breath back and heard the measured hum of turrets activating.

Hairo raised his comm to his mouth and quietly asked:

“Yoshi, who’s that hanging around by the flyers? A wild one..? Who? Furtado? Trixie? Got it. Switch off the turrets, I’ll handle it.”

He ended the call and walked toward the hangar, gesturing us to follow him.

“Let’s see what he’s up to.”

On the way I learned that a few workers had already moved into our complex that day, including Trixie and his grandfather. When he saw us, the dwarf behaved strangely — he took to his heels.

“Hey, Furtado! Stop! Roj!”

My bodyguard ran after Trixie, easily caught up to him and span him round. Then marched him back to us.

“Hey, Trixie!” I said. “How’s it going? How’s your grandpa?”

The little hunchback cast an angry glance at me and gave a sniffle, wiping tears away with his sleeve.

“What happened?”

“Nothing!” Trixie muttered.

“Alright, fella, I see you ain’t in the mood,” Hairo said peacefully. “Next time you want to take a stroll, pick some place else, away from the hangar. You don’t have access rights, got it? Those guns there could have made a heap of ash out of you if I hadn’t been here.”

“I need flyer,” the little man said. “Trixie fly to European District!”

We were all stunned into silence for a few seconds. The declaration was of the kind that didn’t fit right away into one’s usual perception of the world.

“Veratrix, you’re a non-citizen,” Hairo said calmly. “You know what that means, right? You can’t fly to Europe. A patrol flyer will stop you at the border of the first citizen zone. You’ll be punished, little man!”

“I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!” The dwarf shook his fists and shouted like a madman.

When efforts to find out why he wanted to go to Europe didn’t help, Hairo sighed heavily and called Sergei.

“We need to ask this guy some questions,” he explained.

The techie appeared with a metal case, which turned out to contain a miniature syringe. Seeing it, Trixie twitched, emitted a piercing wail and tried to bolt again. Roj caught up to him and brought him back once more.

“Keep hold of him, this is gonna hurt,” Sergei warned, leaning over the little man.

After the needle, the hunchback went limp and fell silent like a burst balloon. Drool dripped from his mouth.

“How do you feel, Veratrix?” Hairo asked.

“Me good…” he answered sleepily.

“Tell us — why do you want to go to Europe?”

“Jess there… She waiting for me…”

“Who’s Jess?”

“A girl… beautiful… we in love!”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“She fall in love with Trixie… in Kinema…”

He spoke disconnectedly and vaguely; Hairo had to repeat his questions and ask more, but ten minutes later, we had the full story of the boundless love and ignorant treachery of Veratrix Furtado, whose deeds, however, were hard even to call traitorous, for the little man knew not what he did.

At Hairo’s command, Roj took Trixie to a cell. As it turned out, the building had a kind of isolation area.

“Let our Romeo sit there while we figure out what to do,” the security officer said wryly.

“He should be in Dis,” I said. “Our castle is new, we need a gardener.”

“You’ll have to do without for now!” Hairo said sharply. “You understand what he nearly did to us? That girl is a plant, I guarantee it! This little guy said too much and she smelled a Threat. And sent it up the chain. God knows how else they’ll try to make contact with him.”

I remembered the stationary portal on Kharinza and nodded. The risk was too great.

“You realize we all could have been killed because of him?” the security officer asked, looking me right in the eyes. “Back in Alaska.”

“I know.”

“This is how they found us. The Darant brothels are controlled by the United Cartel and the Triad. But the specific spot where Trixie met Jess is Cartel-controlled…” Hairo thought for a moment, then punched his fist with his other hand. “Damn it! Diego can’t meet with the Cartel! If he tells them about us and Alex… Sergei, take Alex home, go into red alert. Don’t let Maria leave his side! Send Roj to me, we’ll fly together.”

Forgetting about me, Hairo ran to the hangar, shouting commands into his comm as he went.

I went off to rest. Sleep took a while — my body was warm and full of adrenalin from training, and thoughts whirled through my head; of Trixie and for some reason Behemoth, the Cartel and the Triad, my new hand-to-hand abilities and the Demonic Games, the temple in the desert, which would be completed any minute, and Terrastera, where I’d be able to go tomorrow… I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke to Maria’s voice.

The bodyguard was shaking me by the shoulder. She almost shouted:

“Alex, wake up! Wake up! Alex! There’s trouble!”

Not immediately finding the boundary between dreams and reality, I croaked:

“Maria? What did you say?”

“Nobody came back from the operation. Hairo, Willy, Roj…” Her eyes gleamed with tears in the darkness. “They’re all dead. We have to run, Alex! Run!”

 

 Interlude 2. Kiran

ONE EARLY MAY