Claustrophobia

Chapter Five - Crorst - 5

Soft lights bathed the restaurant in a comforting glow, the snow white of the tablecloths seeming to give off a radiance of calm and tranquillity. Cutlery clinked and clattered good-humouredly against the plates as the richest and most famous dined hundreds of meters high above the city of Craeon, which itself was beginning to head into its second life of the day. A small group of jazz musicians played quietly in one corner, nothing too slow but neither was anything they performed incredibly up-tempo; it was as if the music they played had been specifically designed for this environment. The tables to the left and right of them belonged to people that had come from Helios, and in one of the window booths that overlooked the city, Z9 spied Yvatra sitting with a young man, engaged in a restrained but heated debate about something.

'This way,' Z9 said to Carmen, walking away from the eyesight of the princess. Carmen got the message and followed after her without a glance to enquire why.

'Good evening,' said a young waiter, hair slicked back and smiling in a way that said 'I'm doing this for money even though my boss is an ass and so are half the customers.' Z9 didn't blame him, knowing the kinds of people that would regularly frequent such a place as this.

'Table for two under the name of Zarre,' Carmen said.

Zarre booked the table? Z9 asked herself. He'd better not be around as well, my public relations handler. I've got enough handlers as it is, and one of them is busy sorting my table out for me.

The waiter looked through a list on a Halo-Core on a podium. 'Ah, here we are,' he said, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of being able to do his job properly. 'Booth number six. This way, please.'

The waiter guided them through the room, Z9 scanning the room furiously for any of her famous five. She also had her ears open for the seemingly ever-present loud, obnoxious voice of Lar.4G, but she didn't hear this any more than she saw one of her targets. At that moment in time, the place was empty of all she knew save for Yvatra in the booth on the other side of the great dish in the sky.

'Here we are,' the waiter said, showing them to one of the window booths. 'Feel free to ring the bell for assistance whenever you'd like. Send your orders via the screens and your meals will be with you shortly afterwards.'

'Thank you,' Z9 said to the young man, sliding into the right bench as Carmen got into the other side. The young waiter bowed and left them to their discussions.

'Quite a view,' Carmen said, peering out of the window to the city below them, 'isn't it?'

'It is,' Z9 replied, peering out with him. It was true. The tops of the buildings were like a child's building blocks, and she looked out over them with the dominance of a goddess assessing the world she had built. Far off she could see the edges of the sea, glittering mercury under the newly-rising moon. Everything seemed so soft and cosy, like it was a child's storybook waiting to be wandered through in dreams. Z9 didn't know if she could see the faint, distant lights of the Helios, but she was sure that some of those specks on the beach were part of the giant cruise ship. For a moment, Z9 forgot everything and found herself lost in the serenity of the view. She saw nothing with the regular suspicion that she viewed every street of Celestria, scrutinised nothing with the paranoid precision she had been trained in for most of her life. She simply allowed herself to slowly exhale and relax.

Carmen, it seemed, caught onto her as she breathed out. 'The journey so far seems to have done you good.'

Z9 looked up and across at him. 'What do you mean?'

Carmen simply smiled at her, waving his hand over the Halo-Screen in the table and bringing up his menu.

Z9 looked at him a moment longer before doing the same. Everything sounded perfect, and she wondered how Celestria hadn't learned from Crorst, where everything seemed so laid back and calm. Since arriving she hadn't felt she was in any danger, or under any kind of threat. She wondered if staying here for a while would be good for her nerves or wreck them.