Chapter 14 : Dine
Quota 0/270 - On hold : 11 days left to start the quota (Only 2 days left to meet Mister T. deadline)
7:30 AM
'What could possibly be waiting at the bottom of the hotel steps?'
Victor pondered what kind of vehicle Shirley had arranged for the day. Jet lag still lingered, and he had woken up earlier than usual.
7:31 AM
'This half-hour is going to feel long. Are you girls all here ?'
He began counting to make sure he hadn't left any behind.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
All accounted for.
'Maybe it's odd to call inanimate shovels as if they were my children. I should probably see a therapist once I'm back in France to get to the bottom of this.'
7:32 AM
Feeling the upcoming half-hour would be lengthy, Victor left his hotel room, awkwardly carrying 11 shovels in his arms.
'It must be really handy to have children with legs; at least they can walk on their own without needing to be carried.' Victor thought as he struggled into the restaurant.
Olivia and the mysterious man were already there but hadn't started eating. They were patiently waiting for the rest of the team. Olivia was cleaning her weapon for the umpteenth time, and the mysterious man had his eyes closed as if the world didn't deserve his gaze.
He had to open them when he heard Victor approaching. The shovels occasionally clanked against each other, making Victor's approach impossible to ignore.
Even some of the restaurant's patrons looked up from their newspapers to watch with curiosity and amusement as the young man and his 11 shovels approached.
Once he reached the table, Victor carefully placed 10 shovels on the ground and kept one on his lap in case he had to defend himself.
'I hope the system will start to offer other weapons for sale soon because I feel a bit disadvantaged," Victor murmured, noticing the weapon in Olivia's hands.
It was the same weapon as the day before, but now there was a huge suitcase beside her.
Inside must be all the weapons she needed for their mission.
"Maybe there's a rocket launcher in there," Victor thought.
The fairy tale had been hauntingly effective, as it refused to leave his mind.
"Do you want to know what's inside ?" Olivia asked, seeing him eye her suitcase.
- Not really," he replied after giving himself a moment to think.
Victor felt that he wasn't quite ready to confront reality.
"This girl is nothing like that Afghan girl. That Afghan girl has nothing to do with this girl. This
Afghan girl is nothing like this girl," Victor repeated to himself as if he was trying to reassure himself.
'Anyway, rocket launchers shouldn't be available for sale, right ?' he wondered.
Doubt crept into his mind. He ate a pastry to try and dispel it, then a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and finally a sixth, then a seventh.
He finally felt satiated and reassured.
The mysterious man had returned to his semi-somnolent state, while Olivia had also begun to eat. Victor checked the time on his phone to see how much longer they had to wait.
7:35 AM
Only 25 minutes remained until the end of his wait, but to Victor, they felt like an eternity.
He was almost relieved when Shirley finally walked through the restaurant doors. Though still wary about the vehicle she might have prepared, he at least felt freed from his ordeal.
Olivia was the only one who could have spoken to him during the wait, yet she was too captivated by the pastries before her to notice the distress in Victor's eyes.
He checked the time on his phone.
7:55 AM
'I can thank her for being early. Finally, something is going to happen !' Victor thought hopefully.
But reality hit Victor hard.
The mysterious man had started eating.
Shirley had begun her meal.
Olivia was still nibbling on the same pastry she'd started half an hour ago.
And Victor waited.
He would have liked to eat to pass the time, but his stomach had already begun to protest after he had devoured 7 pastries in just a few minutes.
He wished someone would talk to him, but they were all hypnotized by the excellent food at the hotel.
Victor had to wait impatiently for them to finish their meals.
Despite getting a head start, Olivia was the last to finish her breakfast.
Shirley had already started talking with the mysterious man who had spoken only a few words throughout their exchange.
Victor was still moping around because he couldn't understand a word. He had given up all hope that Olivia would ever finish her breakfast and had started talking quietly to the shovels at his feet.
He only snapped out of his daydream when Shirley's hand waving in front of his face finally caught his attention.
She looked at him with concern but curiously eyed the pile of shovels at his feet.
Victor picked them up before standing up. He parted with one of them, offering it as a sacrifice to Shirley to bless their day and especially their car of the day.
Shirley accepted the shovel with a big smile and thanked him in English.
"**Thank you.**"
Olivia hadn't bothered to translate such a simple and universal word.
Victor then replied with a broad smile:
"Hello."
Shirley had no reaction as if she expected this reply. Olivia, on the other hand, looked at him in astonishment and pointed out his mistake:
"You used the wrong word. 'Thank you' means 'Merci,' while 'Hello' means 'Bonjour.'"
Victor thanked her using the new word he had just learned.
"Thank you."
The man had hinted to Shirley that they would talk once they were on their way. So, they left the hotel and came face to face with Shirley's new vehicle.
Victor shielded his eyes, but Shirley pulled his hand away so he could marvel at what lay at the bottom of the steps.
It was undoubtedly the most impressive vehicle Victor had ever seen on the road. So impressive, in fact, that Victor doubted its legality once again. He also began to wonder if it was a military vehicle. The roof seemed surprisingly wide enough to mount a turret or some other type of armament.
They all entered through the armored doors.
'At least it feels safe, even if comfort took a hit,' Victor thought once the doors were closed.
Once they settled into their seats as comfortably as possible, the man spoke up :
"We will retrieve the location from Dine and leave early tomorrow morning to start the three days. On-site, we'll search until 6 PM before beginning to pull back. The goal is always to be out of the building by 8 PM and back to our vehicle by 9 PM. I've already prepared all the survival necessities so we can sleep inside the vehicle for three days. We'll take turns on guard every four hours throughout the night before resuming our search at 6 AM. Any questions ?"
- I understand that we want to bring back as much as possible, but why search for so long?
- Every house the company sends us to has galleries that need to be explored, and it will take several hours to retrieve all the items if we go far inside them.
- Do you think there will be so many items that we can't carry them all if each of us has a bag ?
The man shook his head.
- You know the company's rules, but you're not aware of the odd ones that apply to the places we enter. Have you ever wondered why there are only four of us when we could easily be ten ?
- For the money.
The man shook his head again.
- The company doesn't care about the money. All they want is for us to retrieve their items. But why not send more people to the same place? After all, more people necessarily mean more items. But unfortunately for the company, they must comply with them and their demands.
- Them ?
- The residents of these houses."
'Well, thankfully the owners have a say in their own house !' Victor thought, pleased for them.
"They have their rights," Victor finally said, hesitantly.
- Indeed, they do. But it's us who end up paying the price," the man replied bitterly. "Groups of five or more are forbidden, and groups of fewer than four are strongly not recommended."
The man stopped talking, as if he wasn't used to exchanging so many words with someone.
'Of course, the dark and mysterious man must remain dark, but above all, mysterious,' Victor thought as he turned to his second source of information available.
He asked Olivia in French:
"Are there any other restrictions?
- Each person can only carry four items at a time."
'Once again, I do hope that if someone breaks into my house, they can only take four items at a time !' Victor exclaimed internally.
He thanked Olivia before reflecting on the two conversations he had just had.
'How do owners know that people are coming to rob them, and why don't they just prevent thieves from entering instead of setting up all these restrictions? I hope at least they have a way to ensure that the thieves don't break the rules,' Victor thought, growing more and more perplexed.
He was about to pose the question to the man when the vehicle came to an abrupt stop. They had arrived at their destination. In front of them stood a building with a facade similar to those around it, but it housed a branch of the company.
They entered inside.
If the exterior revealed nothing, the interior deceived no one. There was marble on the floor and wood paneling on the walls. There was so much wealth in such a small space that Victor felt a pang of sadness for Experimentation.
'Don't worry, Experimentation, I'll bring you back a block of marble to place on the corner of your desk once I've repaid my debts !' he vowed in his heart.
Like the poor Experimentation from Lille, there was a woman of considerable presence behind the desk. Victor didn't even try to guess her age as her face was too smooth to be natural and not the result of beauty products.
The mysterious man approached the woman, who remained seated behind her desk and hadn't even looked up from the documents she was reading.
He had to say her name before she gave him any attention.
"Excuse me for interrupting, Dine, but we've come to collect our assignment as agreed," he said. The woman's gaze was icy, and without a word, she pulled a document from a compartment in her desk.
'I preferred Experimentation. At least she smiled and said hello,' Victor thought, missing the receptionist from Lille.
The man thanked her before exiting the building with the others. He opened the small note the woman had handed him. Written in blue ink was the address of the house he needed to search, and in another handwriting style, in black ink, were the words:
Good Luck
Checking the address on maps, he saw it was a house on the outskirts of Staten Island, sprawling over several kilometers. It was a large area they would need to search, especially if the tunnels really extended across the entire property.
They headed back to their "car" to check out the location up close. After a ten-minute drive, they arrived in front of a gate. Just a few meters ahead, they could see the house they needed to search and a concrete road leading up to it.
'This is perfect, we can park right down by the house, so even if we need to make trips back and forth, we won't have to walk much to the car,' Victor thought excitedly. In the rearview mirror, however, Shirley had a grim expression.
Victor couldn't make out what she was muttering due to the partition separating the driver from the passengers and the language barrier, but perhaps it was for the best.
For the sake of the report, our team read her lips to discover her complaint :
"If only the house had been in the middle of the property with no road, I could have finally shown my helicopter to the others !"
Even though he didn't understand her words, Victor sensed that he had nearly dodged a bullet.
He turned his head to see what he could of the property. Behind the house stood a forest of trees that Victor would not have wanted to go through even if it seemed peaceful at that hour of the morning.
The company didn't allow drone reconnaissance before the quota began, so the team went back to the hotel. Tomorrow would mark the start of three intense days, and they all needed to mentally prepare for what was to come.