Disclaimer. My characters are dumb and Alaska is fucking awesome. I hope I get to go there someday.
"I hate Alaska," Kanon muttered as we emerged from our plane.
"Not a fan of the cold?" I asked.
"No, I like the cold. It's just that the sun never goes down here."
We entered the terminal. Rin and I had our bags on us but the others needed to grab theirs from Baggage Claim. With my duffle on my shoulder, I glanced out the window. "What time is it?" I asked.
Yuma's eyes scanned the room for a clock. "It's 6:30."
We had flown throughout the night. I was beginning to get used to sleeping on planes. At this early hour in the morning, the sun was already high in the sky. I had never experienced anything close to a 24-hour day and I actually found myself looking forward to it. Standing outside at 11 pm in full sunlight seemed like a myth to me. Although I knew it was true, I'd only truly understand once I got to see it.
We all headed towards the claim. Rin and I kept our heads down and our hoods up as we walked, just in case Meiko or some of her allies were present in the airport. There was no sign of her so far. While we stopped in front of the baggage, Flower kept walking. She was in charge of getting our rental car. Yuma's forged documents were in her bag.
Only once we were in the car and on our way to the hotel did we feel safe enough to talk about the mission.
"We got lucky in Mexico," Yuma said from the passenger's seat.
Rin and I sat in the second row of seats while Anon and Kanon watched us from the back. "You can give yourself some credit," I said with a grin. "See? You know what you're doing."
He rolled his eyes and glanced at me over his shoulder. "The fact that you're here is proof that I have no idea what I'm doing."
I laughed.
"So what's next?" Anon asked.
"Basically the same thing," Flower said from behind the wheel. "We need to scout the airport. And when Meiko comes back, we have to tail her."
"You think she's somewhere in town?" Kanon asked.
"I doubt it," Rin answered for her. "She's not stupid enough to live in a city with this many people."
Flower sighed. "You're right. And that's what I was afraid of. She could be anywhere in this state. Tailing her is going to be next to impossible without being detected. We need to be careful."
It was summer, but the temperatures were still low in this Alaskan city. I was a bit surprised to see a lack of snow. I thought it was winter year-round up here.
"We have to split up our airport shifts," Flower continued. "Two people need to be there at all times. We'll do a day shift and a night shift. Twelve hours each."
Rin huffed. "Or you could do three shifts of eight hours and let Len and I actually help you guys."
"It's too risky," Flower scolded.
"What's the point of us being here if we're just going to sit around?" She argued.
"If she sees you, the whole plan will be ruined."
"I'm not just fucking doing nothing! I can't stand it."
Flower let out an annoyed huff. "How about this? You guys can go around town and see if you can find any leads. But stay the hell away from the airport unless we call you."
Rin crossed her arms next to me and said nothing.
"Deal?" Flower asked again.
Rin looked out the window with narrow eyes. She wasn't going to get anything better than that. "Fine."
Flower relaxed.
We reached our hotel a few minutes later.
Just like Mexico, we only booked one room, which earned the six of us a very confused look from the clerk. Everything was the same; two beds, a couch, a TV, a desk. The room itself didn't matter much. We weren't going to be staying here much.
After scanning the room for any unwanted devices, everyone began unpacking their items with the efficiency of machines. Anon pulled her medical supplies out of her bag neatly and arranged them on the desk in case of any emergencies. Kanon was in the process of checking through her tech, Yuma standing beside her doing the same. Flower was checking to make sure her guns hadn't been messed with.
Looking over Flower's bag of weapons, I wondered with grim amusement how catastrophic it would be to have switched bags with someone.
The only things Rin and I had to unpack were the stray items the others had stored in our bags.
"We'll do 6 am to 6 pm shifts," Flower said. "Anon, you're with me. You want day or night?"
"Day," she picked immediately.
Yuma groaned. "You're telling me I gotta sit around at the airport all fucking night?"
Rin let out a laugh. "Poor you," she mocked.
Flower shot the girl an annoyed glance. "Yes," she answered Yuma. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
He returned to his work with a sour expression. Next to him, Kanon wore a small smile.
"Well," Rin said. "We're leaving."
"Already?" Flower asked.
"I'm not staying here any longer than I have to," she continued.
I stood next to Rin silently. In this matter, I knew I didn't really have any other option.
"Don't get into any trouble!" Anon called cheerfully. How she could retain her good mood with these people surrounding her, I had no idea.
Rin had received the only confirmation she needed. With it, she started towards the door. I followed her.
"Be careful, Len," Flower said to me. Rin walked on, out of earshot.
I glanced back into the room. "I will."
"Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid," Flower concluded, turning back to her work.
"Len, come on!" Rin called from down the hall.
I blinked a few times at the room, then followed. Her words echoed in my ears. I had always thought it was Rin making sure I wasn't doing anything stupid.
"Where are we going?" I asked her as we rode the elevator back to the ground floor.
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "I doubt there are actually any leads in the city to her whereabouts. Flower is just trying to keep us occupied."
I frowned. "Yeah. I know."
"It's stupid."
"But it makes sense," I countered.
She stared intently at the wall. "Meiko wouldn't do any of her business so close to home."
"But if she did," I offered. "What would it be?"
"There's no way-"
"Look," I interrupted. The doors had opened. I lowered my voice. "We don't want to just waste our time here. Who knows? Maybe she thinks she's safe enough here to deal, or whatever. We should assume that there are traces of her in the city and just try to find them."
"We'll be looking for nothing," Rin muttered.
"Then at least we'll have passed the time while everyone else fucks around at the airport."
She considered my words for a second. We crossed the lobby and pushed our way outside. I welcomed the fresh air into my lungs with a drawn-out breath. The city was completely surrounded in wilderness and mountains. The scenery wasn't too far from Montana, though the frost in the air was much more obvious here.
Rin started down the sidewalk in a random direction. "I guess," she finally said. "But what would she even do? Most of the time, it's not her doing the dirty work. She's like a receptionist or something."
I thought for a moment. "With an ally of Luka's nearby, you'd think the city would be full of drugs," I observed with a hint of amusement.
"There's no way Meiko is dealing so close to home."
"Maybe she's not. But I bet some of her…" I searched for the correct word. "...friends are."
"Do you know how stupid that would be?" She asked. A car drove past us. "To let your little henchmen go out in public and do something so risky?"
"I'd bet she doesn't know. Think about it. You're working for this underground boss who probably doesn't pay you much, but there are assloads of drugs around your workplace with a college town nearby. Don't you think some of them would take advantage of that?"
"There's a college in this town?" She asked, looking around the street. We were the only two pedestrians to be seen.
"Yeah. University of Alaska. They have a campus in Fairbanks."
Her gaze fell to the sidewalk. "You… you might be right."
"It's a start, at least."
"So we're going to campus?" She asked.
"Why not? We could pass as college students."
She smiled a bit at this. We crossed a bridge over a wide river, which, according to the signs, was called the Chena, and headed to the northern part of town. The occasional directory signs along the way pointed us in that direction for the campus.
"Did you go to college?" She asked once we had strolled through the town and stepped onto the neatly arranged buildings of the campus.
"Yeah," I answered. "I graduated last year."
"What'd you study?"
I chuckled, looking away. I should have known she'd ask that. "...Nothing too interesting."
'What was it?" She pried. Now that we had reached campus, we were not alone on the sidewalks.
"...Industrial Design," I answered.
"What's that?"
"Just designing stuff for mass production. Like cars."
"You designed cars?"
"I wanted to." I glanced around at the people near us. Some students walked alone, some with friends. Some wore backpacks, some carried their books. Only a few short weeks separated the summer semester from the fall and it seemed like a few students had already returned from their summer vacation. Many sat around in groups talking and laughing. I noticed a trend of armbands on group members. Once I noticed them, I saw one everywhere I looked, many different colors and designs. People of the same band were usually the ones sitting together.
"Why didn't you?" Rin asked.
We passed another group of kids. I took a deep breath. "A job like that is only for the best of the best, you know?"
She narrowed her eyes at me. "Are you embarrassed to talk about it?"
"Well," Yeah, kinda, I finished mentally. "It's, like… I went to an art school for it. It's basically an art degree."
"What's wrong with that?"
"I dunno. My friends used to tease me about it."
"Assholes," she muttered.
I couldn't help but chuckle at her concern. "Not, like, badly. It was just a joke we had."
"So…" she trailed off. "You're good at drawing and stuff?"
I shrugged. "I guess. I haven't done it in a while."
"Did you like it?"
"Yeah. It was fun. But even with my degree, I got a job that had absolutely nothing to do with design." I rubbed at the back of my neck. "Maybe that's why I… don't really like talking about it. It feels kinda like a waste of time."
"If you like something, it's never a waste of time," she said without looking at me.
"That's surprisingly wise of you to say," I said as we turned a corner.
She looked almost offended. "You think I'm stupid or something?"
I chuckled. "No, no. That's not what I meant." When she didn't respond, I asked, "What do you like to do?"
"What?"
"Like, what hobbies do you have?"
She let out a laugh. "There isn't much room for hobbies in my line of work, Len."
"Oh, come on. There has to be something." The buildings of the college were the only modern-style structures in the entire town. The further we walked through them, the more students we saw.
I glanced in her direction to see if she was going to respond at all. The gears in her head were turning. "I guess… I like reading," she said.
"There you go."
"But I don't get to do it very often anymore?"
"Why not?"
A sly smile pulled at her lips when I asked the question. "Because I spend all my free time training you."
I rolled my eyes. "Way to make me feel like an asshole."
"Don't," she answered in a lively tone. "It sucked at first but now it's kinda fun. Plus, you're almost done."
"I feel like I barely know anything," I admitted.
Her happy expression wavered slightly. "You proved yourself in London. You know what you're doing."
That was the closest she'd been to acknowledging her change in attitude since I'd carried her across the country on my back. Her snide confidence was almost completely gone and replaced by a nervous anxiety. I didn't mention it, though. I hoped that she would return to her old self soon.
I said nothing, letting my eyes wander over the students. It occurred to me that we didn't look so different from them. Figures. I was only a year older than these graduates and Rin was even younger than me. We perfectly fit in as a pair of college students.
"What's with all these things on people's arms?" Rin asked me.
"I dunno," I answered, following her eyes to another group of kids. Each of them wore sky blue bands around their biceps. They were all guys. "Maybe it's, like, a frat thing."
"A what thing?"
"When you go to college," I explained, patient with her ignorance to the real world. "You can join these groups named after letters in the Greek alphabet. There are fraternities for guys and sororities for girls. Basically you all just move into this giant house together and throw parties and stuff. There's always this, like, hierarchy of groups, too. So whatever house you join basically determines your position on the social ladder."
"That sounds awful," she said. "The idea of living in a house with a bunch of other girls sounds horrible."
I shrugged. "There are some advantages to it. Like, a bunch of people meet their best friends in their Greek Life. It's not all bad."
"Were you apart of it at your college?"
I shook my head with a laugh. "Oh no. I could stand the hazing."
"Hazing?"
In the center of campus was a little village of stores. There was one with University of Alaska gear hanging in the windows, one with plain old clothes, a food store with a multitude of people sitting inside, and a coffee shop hidden at the end of the stores.
"You hungry?" I asked her. We had been walking for a while and the strap of my duffle was beginning to wear on me. A snack sounded great.
She shrugged. "Sure. Where to?"
I glanced between the coffee shop and the cafeteria. "Looks like we have two choices."
"Let's go with that one," she pointed down the street after nervously eyeing the crowded room of the cafeteria through the windows.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Let's go there."
Minutes later, we sat together at the table, still chatting about college life. The coffee I had ordered steamed in front of me. It warmed me with every sip, feeling even better compared to the cold outside.
"This is weird," Rin said, glancing around the room.
"Why?" I rested my elbows casually on the table, raising my cup to my lips occasionally.
She hesitated before answering. "It feels like we're... normal."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing's wrong with it. It's just weird. Like we're normal people."
The scent of coffee grinds soaked the air in the room. People littered the small cafe, some studying, some reading, some talking with friends, some sitting in even more groups of kids with even more bands around their arms. The sea of chatter drowned out our conversation from all those sitting around us. Not to mention we had chosen a seat where the only two people sitting near us each had headphones in.
"Normal college students," I joked, taking another sip.
"Where did you go to high school?" Rin asked.
"Florida."
"That's where your parents lived," she clarified. She knew that from Yuma's little background check on me before I found them.
"Yeah," I nodded. Somewhere behind the counter, someone spilled a drink. A wave of groans rose over the employees.
"Was it different from college?"
"Oh yeah," I said with a smile. "High school sucked. But college was cool."
"How's it different?"
I furrowed my brow. "You didn't go to-?"
"I never went to any school," she answered briskly. "My parents taught me how to count to ten and read. Everything else I learned from either books or the others."
I frowned. "How…?"
"I never existed," she said somberly. "Never had any birth certificate, no diploma, no nothing."
Being born into a life of constantly living underground, both figuratively and literally, seemed unbearably lonely to me. No wonder she was so jumpy going out like this.
The air grew thick around us.
"High school sucked," I answered her precious question in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. "Everyone acts like a dick, the teachers didn't care about anything, and everyone was just trying to get out as quick as they could. But college was better because everyone was too broke to care about anything except passing their classes, which basically put everyone in this constant state of not giving a shit. It was like we were all in this together. The professors are more laid back, the people are nicer because of that whole sympathy thing. Plus, you get to study what you want. I never had to take any English classes in college because I tested out of them in high school. And I hated English."
"You don't like reading?"
I shook my head. "Hell no."
She smiled shyly. "What is wrong with you?"
Her questions continued forever, our topics eventually straying from school to jobs, stores, hobbies, holidays, and everything else she was completely ignorant to about the real world.
The light coming in through the window did not help at all in telling me what time it was.
"Have you been to an aquarium?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. We had refilled our drinks a few times now. Many of the people occupying the room when we arrived were long gone, replaced with the evening rush.
"No," she answered, swirling her drink with her straw. She had ordered some frap that looked more sugar than drink. "But we had a trip a few years ago where we ended up in a submarine near Costa Rica. So I've seen the fish."
"That must have been a big one."
She took a sip. "It was a lot of money."
"What about the zoo?"
Her eyes shied away from me. She shook her head.
"Do you know what a zoo is?" I asked.
"Yes," she answered with slumped shoulders. "I know what a fucking zoo is."
"Well you didn't know laser tag - anyway. Looks like we're going to the Fairbanks Zoo."
"Is there actually a Fairbanks Zoo?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. But if there is one, we're going."
She glanced out the window, then up at a clock across the room. "It's gonna have to wait. It's already seven."
"What?" I looked over my shoulder to see the clock for myself. Sure enough, it read seven pm. "It looks like it's noon outside."
"Kanon's right," Rin crossed her arms. "Alaska sucks."
"I kinda like it. Always daytime. It's literally a city that never sleeps."
"Psh," she let out a laugh. "You won't be saying that in a few hours when you're trying to sleep."
When we arrived at the hotel room, Anon and Flower had already returned from their first shift at the airport. They were each passed out on one of the beds. Yuma and Kanon were long gone into their night shift. The room was silent.
They had closed the curtains when they arrived. These Alaskan hotels were forced to have thick, expensive curtains. Peering through them, I saw the city expanded before me as if in midday. But when they were closed, the room was almost pitch black.
And now we had an awkward sleeping situation to work through since the two of them decided they each needed their own bed.
"You can have the couch," I whispered once we had crossed the room. Neither of them stirred. "I'll sleep on the floor." I dropped my bag softly onto the floor, careful to keep quiet.
Rin set hers next to it without a response.
My mind flashed back to the night in London when she had cuddled up with me for the night and turned my blushing face away from her once I realized that she was probably thinking about the same exact thing.
"...Okay," she finally whispered, almost too soft for me to hear.
I pulled one pillow off the couch, grabbing an extra blanket from the closet. It was hard to keep quiet as I helped Rin pull the futon out. But we managed. Once she was settled on the springy bed, I curled up on the floor. I found myself unable to think of anything else but her warm figure pulled against me.
I let out a sigh, curling into a ball on the floor and clamping my eyes shut.
