We started in Montana, then flew to Mexico to track Meiko. Then it was back up even further north to Alaska and now we flew even further down south to Brazil.
"I need to lay down," I said, lugging my bag through the terminal of yet another airport. "Please tell me the hotel is close."
Flower glanced at me slyly. "You really think, after our little financial success, we're going to be staying at a hotel?"
All this running around the entire world was exhausting. Flower rented us yet another van, which we all climbed in slowly and sleepily. The sun was high in the sky and most of us had slept on the plane, but I felt like I had only slept a wink.
The only person seemingly unaffected by this haze was Rin.
Ever since we had all entered the getaway car, escaping Meiko's hectic mansion, she had been giddy with joy. When I had fallen asleep on the plane, she was staring out the window with a grin. When I had woken up, she was exactly the same.
She didn't even push me off when I fell asleep on her shoulder in the car.
"Len, get up. We're here," she said gently. It felt like only seconds since we left the airport and yet my surroundings were completely different.
Manaus was a large city surrounded by rainforests on three sides and the Amazon River on the fourth. The streets were cramped and crowded with people. Store vendors were set up along the sidewalks, selling everything from fruits to children's toys. Cars drove down the thin streets, feeling almost choked by the buildings surrounding. Flower had driven us through all of the chaos of the city and led us to the southern edge and stopped in front of a large cottage bordering the Amazon River.
"Come on!" Rin pulled at my arm. I sluggishly followed her out of the car, too tired to notice our friends smirking at my sluggish movements.
The air was hot and humid, as expected in the middle of the Amazon. I had been standing in the hot sun for only a few seconds and I was already scared I was sweating through my civilian clothes.
The cottage that stood in front of us was built with the smooth clay walls, a similar style compared to the rest of the city. It had two floors and a flat roof. It was a simple, rectangular building.
"This is our five-star resort?" Yuma muttered.
Flower shot him a glare.
"I like it," Anon said, walking towards the front door ahead of us. "It's cute." She pushed open the door. The rest of us followed her in.
There were two bedrooms on the ground floor, each extremely small and with two twin beds taking up most of the floor. There was also a small kitchen along with a seating area with a coffee table and a small TV sitting across the room. A steep staircase led us to the second floor, which contained two more bedrooms. These two were bigger than the ones downstairs, each with a larger bed as well.
As I explored, the second I saw the bigger bed, I set my bag on the ground outside the door. "Do… do you guys mind if I-"
"Go for it," Kanon snickered, making her way back downstairs.
I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
When I woke up the second time, my head felt much better, but the room was almost a million degrees.
I rolled over, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and cringing at the uncomfortable heat shining in through the window. I hadn't even crawled under the blankets and it was still horrible.
I changed, leaving my smelly clothes in the corner of my room. I'd deal with it later.
The others were all downstairs. Like our last trip, everyone had made themselves quite at home in our living room. It seemed a ritual for each of them to take up as much space as possible.
Rin, however, sat on the loveseat with a book in her lap. When I came down the stairs, she grinned at me. "Mornin'," she called.
"Psh," Yuma let out an amused laugh. "As if."
I rubbed at the back of my neck. "What time is it?"
"Almost three," Kanon chirped, not looking up from her tech. Every time she emptied her bag, it seemed to be a completely different set of gear than before. It all looked alien to me.
"Jeez," I answered.
Rin folded her book up and jumped from her chair. "So who's coming to check out the address with me?"
"I think we're all going, right?" Flower looked around the room.
"I'm… I think I'm going to hang back," Yuma said, typing away on his computer. "I need to start working on all this."
I smiled. "Who's life are you starting with?"
"Mine, of course," he answered with a smirk.
"Ah, yes," I teased. "Ladies first."
"Fuck you."
I chuckled.
"Come on," Kanon rolled her eyes. She zipped up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Let's go check this out."
Rin had been packed and ready to go for hours, it seemed. Her bag sat in a neat pile at the foot of her chair before she swooped it up. The thought occurred to me that they had been waiting for me.
We stepped into the blinding sun.
Though most of the city was built with small, two-story buildings made of paneled wood, clay, or bricks, there were other modern-style buildings towards the center of the city. Not nearly as many as I had seen before, but there were a few.
It was in front of one of these buildings that Rin stopped, her hands on her hips. The building, a modern office space, seemed like any other skyscraper we had ventured to. It towered over all buildings around it except for its neighbor. Directly to its right was another tall skyscraper, only a floor or two taller than our building of interest. From the ground, the two looked identical.
I rolled my eyes. "Why does it always have to be the giant skyscrapers?" I groaned, remembering the infinite number of stairs I had climbed.
"This can't be right," Kanon gazed over the blue windows with awe. "How could she hide here? It's the tallest building in the city."
Rin furrowed her brow. Pedestrians passed us on the sidewalk. "But… but this is where Yuma's data leads. This is where all of Meiko's money came from."
There were two sets of doors across the street from us. People streamed in and out of them, most of them dressed in business attire. It reminded me of the casino from so many weeks ago, where the sea of people had made every face indistinguishable from the next. It would be impossible to find anyone of interest in that crowd.
Rin leaned against the building behind us. It looked like a restaurant of some sort. "Let's just… chill here, I guess. See if we can spot anything suspicious."
"What's the building called?" Flower asked, pulling out a tablet.
I squinted across the street. There was a plaque mounted between the two sets of doors.
"Is it even in English?" Anon questioned.
"I think so." I took a step across the sidewalk. The cars racing through the streets were only inches away from me now. Through their gaps, I began to piece together the letters on the sign. "Skye Platinum Offices," I read, returning to the girls. Each of them had settled casually against the restaurant. "That's what it's called."
Flower's fingers tapped against the screen. Her eyes widened. "Okay," she began. "So it's an office building. People can rent out floors for their companies. But the entire building is rented out by one person."
"Does it tell you who?" I asked. "Is this, like, some secret hacking thing you're doing? I thought that was Yuma's job."
Flower rolled her eyes. "I'm on Google, Len."
"Oh."
"And no," she concluded. "It doesn't say any names. But it looks like, whoever's running it, they're renting the space because they're the head of an Amazon company." She looked up at us. "Amazon, like, the online store. Not the rainforest."
Rin frowned. "So Amazon has been paying Meiko billions of dollars?"
Flower lowered the tablet. "I don't know. I don't get it, either."
"You don't think the tracker was wrong?" Anon suggested timidly. "Luka's no idiot. Maybe she masked her location and Meiko's tech wasn't advanced enough to get past it."
"I hope not," Kanon answered. "We don't have any other leads."
For the first time in a few days, Rin looked displeased. "I still think we should just sit here for a little longer. We have to be sure this isn't it before we give up."
Flower nodded in agreement.
So we leaned against the wall and waited. Anon strayed from the group, grabbing a newspaper from a nearby stand.
Kanon snickered as her sister opened the paper and scanned it. "Can you read Portuguese?" She teased.
"I can look at the pictures," she responded with a smile.
A ripple of laughter rang through us. The stream of people never seemed to cease coming in and out of the Skye Offices. There's no way Luka has this many people working for her, I thought. That'd be way too risky. There must be a thousand people in that building right now. How can she trust all of them?
That was, unless they didn't know they were working for her.
We didn't have to wait long. Suddenly, a very expensive-looking BMW parked in front of the building, eliciting honks and shouts from the other drivers of the road. A car door opened and shut.
Rin tensed. "You don't think that's-"
"Shh!" Flower hissed.
The car was too tall for us to see who had exited on the other side. But all four doors opened, revealing their bodyguards. Whoever they were, they were important.
"That's her," Rin said with certainty. "It has to be. It has to be-"
The car drove away, revealing the elite who had exited the car.
Rin's shoulders slumped.
Across the street stood a tall girl, probably about my height, dressed in a suit with a phone pressed to her ear. I had never seen anyone with hair that long, let along hair that bright color of teal. It hung from her head in twin pigtails.
"That's not her," Flower muttered.
"Then who is it?" Kanon asked.
"You don't think that's the person running all this, do you?" Rin asked. "You don't think she-"
"Guys," Anon said. She angled the paper towards us. The same girl, with those twintails, the same phone in her hand, and a wide grin spread across her face, was featured on one of the pages in the newspaper. The black and white picture showed her standing in front of Skye Offices with a smile. Amid all of the Portuguese were the names Skye Office Building and Miku Hatsune.
We looked back towards her. She chatted away on her phone relentlessly.
"A businesswoman," Flower smirked. "Always fun."
"If anyone here knows something, it's gonna be her," Rin stated.
"So… what do we do?" I asked.
Kanon crossed her arms. "We need to tap that phone."
I have been neglecting this site so much omg I suck
Yay for Miku! Our last rather... important character :)
Thanks for reading!
