Nathaniel felt cheesy. He had been scouting every single surface around the place for days now and so far he couldn't figure out why his internal scanner was giving him creeps of decade. He observed people rushing in and out of the building and some random group of construction workers being herded around the place. A woman in far more elegant business suit than was necessary and hands full of papers made long explanation about some catering problem and waved at everyone else.
The Gala was closing in. For that they had wanted all of the buildings involved to be shiny again and now just poshed them up. He saw more vans coming up with kitchen supplies and whatnot. Nate made all the notes. However at this point it was hardest to tell how he will be able to scout completely and inside out. Because he didn't really had to. It wasn't even his task. He was asked for mostly successful escape. Roland had simply said that he was known to be a master escape artist so be it.
Oscar had agreed and so he was just the transport guy.
But why do just that if he could disarm a whole bunch of crafts? Oh hell, he was so not fucking skip an option if it was presented basically on a silver platter.
Because Nathan wasn't a guy who turned down an option of a chance. He did all things not just to survive but also live.
One thing was that he was famous thief in certain circles but other was that he had something not many had and if it was to be made official he'd be gone in less than sixty seconds. So it was a no for most of other normal things he could instead do.
He wasn't like Noel that just needed to survive massive incident to become accepted and acknowledged into that part of society that hates people like they both used to be and Nate never really stopped being.
Yes the guy still held amazing amounts of sheer boldness and mind of a horny teen on steroids (not his description by the way) but often times it would be accompanied by sterling brilliance and diligent tracking of a task .
Nate's sort of shield from people. He may seem unbearable as a person to strangers but once you managed to sneak over this build you saw the truth.
Partly a reason why after Samara incident he locked himself away and tried to toss the key just for Noel to come after him and mop all that jazz up. Well, not really. He's been out for months himself and then sent off to Passadora County General to see the damage a heart sustained.
Needless to mention here that at that point he made a very direct point at telling them not to do anything to him needed or not. Well, he did try for ten minutes before he got stuffed into a room.
However that kinda failed since he simply made a run for it never to be seen again.
District was different though. Passadora had like ten of those covering planes sized close to a whole American state. For example Passadora county was roughly the size of Arizona or close to South Carolina. Roughly. Very.
And Heitagen district was just one of ten stacked neatly side by side. It was one that held majority of cool stuff and tech. Something Nate kept gravitating towards all the time. To be honest he was and always has been more techie guy than any of them. But not as advanced as the other guy he met later on passing only to find out he was in fact a journalist wannabe tester for truth untold.
He could hack his breakfast all the way to China and not even loose a blink while reaching for coffee. Definitely high above Nate's level. However a different kind of techie level entirely. Which was one thing he loved about himself if he hated the rest.
In particular circles they called him Machina and few others he knew he had a code name Engine Whisperer and it was kinda cool indeed.
However it was something he just did unconsciously and couldn't control much more than direct where and when he needed. And he had no idea how it happened. It's just been there all his life so he had no idea.
But now, when the Gala was steering closer another, completely unrelated issue made its appearance resurface. And this one dealt with another problem Nate suffered for a while when they still went around Samara. In those old times they called it many ways. He just stuck to menace since it was. And it had a buddy that sometimes got low, sometimes found it's way back to Nate. And he always was one of those while Noel played the other until caved in and became united.
Smoking has always been partly a way to play in his thieving ways as it gave perfect cover for stake outs but often it gave stress relief packed in a convenient blending in.
Noel had nothing to stop doing that since no regulations forbid the space ships having smoking rooms. So he kept the habit adding few more that lessened only tiny bit.
Nate, however, was a different story.
He did smoking for years. He simply liked it and it never bothered him. Cravings weren't like it was for others and he was pretty fine. All until one day there was a kick-back from the genetics class. He did have had a doc or two. All with a line of scientific degrees that wielded into medical science and bioengineering.
They also had the news he hoped to never received.
He was slowly dying, or if he indeed happened to be immortal, slowly suffering.
That it was a menace any other day he could easily handle was one thing, when it could possibly get in the way to a job of half the century was another. And Nate hated his genetics for that with a passion.
And he made all sneaky peeky things to hide the fact he was dying internally because some asshole in that institution passed one gene sequence over a droplet of coffee on his pants and so it became his yet another menace to deal with.
Noel didn't know that and he was best to keep it that way.
Nate was, to put it simply, somebody's wet dream of a science. He was basically born with some magic until they added some science and ended up being just a mix of impossible crap to make his life either slightly easier or way more complicated than he needed to begin with.
Usually he tried to ignore any of that shit they put into him and then paid hard for ignoring the mess. Mostly because what they did to his DNA wasn't all up to what he was born with or that so called programming did some wonders to add to the mix.
Like headaches. Nate hated them more than his other problems because when his head hurt his brain stopped functioning. Just like that he simply became a bundle of brain fogged vertigo. But thankfully that happened rarely.
And then this dying problem as he began calling it. It was simply because his lungs were supposed to ensure ability to breathe underwater like fish or hold his breath extra long time like some seal.
But somebody made a mistake when possibly their coffee accident made them miss some DNA connection to the right chromosome and as a result he gained some lung condition that slowly turned his lungs into a giant mucus ball.
So far the only solution to this problem was to use some mojo to remove the whole issue temporarily when his oxygen levels reached critically low and an additional intake by oxygen tank was required.
It was kinda okay situation since it didn't happen often and so far the whole process took rather long time. That was good because on this planet it was accessible option however it cost some mild fortune he almost never succeeded to gather in the time it took his lungs to accumulate that mucus stuff. However on this planet the air was different than on Earth and that was what made his condition less dire.
Then happened another problem from the whole Samara incident.
That was mostly just aftermath from high voltage electric shock as he fell into the force field. That was what causes basically most dangerous accidents and it was because his heart developed arrhythmia or something. Not that it was just one time he'd fallen for energy fields. After Samara he'd just kept missing memos of their location and ended up suffering exploding crafts after running into invisible ones. That did either got him in jail until somebody (usually Noel) came to bail him out or at hospital where he usually (unless Noel kept him there) escaped at first chance.
Now he was once again on that old road and felt unusually awkward. There still was major possibility of Noel attending the Gala event and if he did Nate's chance of grabbing crafts along became pretty damn thin. He could manage staying out of the way if he kept to Roland's plan and make only escape clean. It was close to impossible if Noel was there and he went on with his own side plan. Because if he got caught there will fail not just his own plan but the whole deal altogether. And Roland didn't do just pat on the back and promise next time it will happen and all would be fine. Nope. That man went for blood cold and ravenous.
And then the while shithole would become gravely huge and dark.
Nate just didn't know what Noel would do if the worst happened. He could either go by his offical means or he could just stick for fun and join him in his little sneaky plan. That would only be one part of that whole thing. And still two visible options Nate couldn't just tell.
He sighed and slipped into shadows.