The Uni's Secrets: The Lost Mother

Chapter Twenty-Four: Iguazu Falls

The Buenos Aires MagiMall was not what I expected. It wasn't necessarily that I expected anything, but I definitely hadn't expected this.

All of the MagiMalls I had been to since Father's takeover were dark, dreary, and generally somewhere I didn't want to be. People avoided small talk, stuck to their groups, and avoided even looking at each other.

The Buenos Aires MagiMall, on the other hand, was how MagiMalls should be. Everyone was talking, laughing with strangers. Though there was the same number of guards as at the other MagiMalls, no one appeared intimidated. If anything, the guards were the ones who looked intimidated. Their expressions appeared more humble than usual, and I noticed more than one civilian give them a contemptuous glance.

I smiled. At least somewhere was fighting back.

"Where's the Humanized Transport Department?" Zoe asked.

"I don't know, look at the map," I snapped.

"I was asking Apollo," she replied irritably. "Since he's the Navigator."

"It's on level one," he answered. "But we have to go down to level four and then back up to get to it. The Buenos Aires MagiMall is big."

"Bigger than the Chengdu?" I asked. "That doesn't seem right." I knew for a fact that Chengdu had a larger population than Buenos Aires.

"No, but bigger than Algiers," Apollo said.

"Algiers is bigger than Buenos Aires."

"I don't know!" Apollo exclaimed. "Maybe the people building this MagiMall were more powerful or had more Qyristixals or something."

"Probably," I agreed, deciding I didn't have a better explanation. We stepped onto the elevator and floated down four floors.

"This way," Apollo said. He led Zoe and me through the mall, and after a few minutes we stepped on another elevator.

"Why do we have to go back up?" Zoe asked.

"They had to build it around Buenos Aires' subway tunnels," Apollo answered.

"How do you know that?" I demanded.

"I picked up a brochure about it when we first entered the mall."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course, you did."

"Wow, Lady Know-it-all is annoyed when someone else knows something," Apollo said grumpily.

"I'm not annoyed," I protested. "I simply think it's amusing how you're the one learning completely useless stuff now."

"Can you two stop snapping at each other?" Zoe asked with a definite snap in her voice.

"We're siblings," I informed her. "It's natural for siblings to snap at each other."

She groaned. "Fine. Can you snap at each other once it's less detrimental to our mission?"

"That we can do," I agreed.

The elevator reached the first floor, and we stepped off. Zoe and I followed Apollo through another maze of stores to the Humanized Transport Department. It only took a few minutes for a taxi to pull up.

"Where to?" the driver asked when Zoe handed him a Qyristixal.

"Iguazu Falls," she responded.

The driver whistled. "That's a long drive. It'll cost you . . ." He paused, seeming to calculate something. "Twelve Qyristixals."