Alyxia and Farron walked into the room an hour later to see Reiley standing over a map of roughworld Regis, a calculating look on her face. The single light source in the room cast shadows on her face, making the young ex-lieutenant seem more brooding than usual. It was plain to see that Reiley Griffin was in one of her strategic moods again, though Alyxia had not really been around the room to witness them.
"You cleaned the room," Reiley announced, still focusing on the map. Without even looking up, she had detected their presence. "Congratulations. You survived."
"You cleaned the room?" Farron repeated, an incredulous smile on his face. "That's great!" Even though Alyxia was a little offended by the statement, Alyxia accepted the compliment with a shrug and a smile.
"How do people do this for a living?" Alyxia wondered aloud as she massaged her sore arms. "Props to them." She was aware of how privileged (or prissy, as Reiley would have put it) she sounded, but she simply could not help it.
"Here, let me do that," Farron said as he took her hand in his Without warning her, he started to massage her arm, unaware of how red her face was turning. Alyxia felt that she would burst with excitement and held in a scream of whatever it was that she was feeling.
"Can you put that off for later?" Reiley said, audibly gritting her teeth, pulling Alyxia out of Dreamworld.
Suddenly embarrassed, Alyxia rushed over to where Reiley stood and looked at some lines that had been drawn on the map. She couldn't make head or tail of it, so she looked to Reiley for guidance.
"She's changed the patrol routes," Reiley explained. "Made them more widespread. The blue lines-" She gestured to the map- "-are the routes which the roughworld patrol used to follow up until now. The white lines are the areas which I've seen them go to so far." Alyxia could see that the blue and white lines diverged in many areas, with the white lines snaking through more roads and covering a larger area than the blue lines.
Reiley pointed to the Hipster on the map with her foot. Alyxia could see that the white lines converged at the spot where Reiley was pointing. "We're in much more danger than I thought," Reiley admitted, ashamed that her previous thoughts were wrong.
She then brought out a smaller map from her pocket, showing the Hipster in detail. By this time Farron had joined them. Grabbing the map from Reiley's hand, Farron spread it out on the floor and started to place dots of white ink on various places on the map.
"When we were on our way back, I'm pretty sure I saw patrol officers at these places." Farron stated, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "Judging by the map scale, they have at least a 500 metre radius from our alley."
Alyxia saw that the patrols were quite close to the place where Farron had marked 'base'. She felt a sudden chill run down her spine, knowing that the officers were so close to their hideout. What if they were discovered?
"But Reiley was right, they're giving this place a wide berth," Alyxia said, trying to be positive. "Are those their permanent positions, or do they change?"
"We don't know for sure," Farron admitted. "But maybe we'll be able to find out tomorrow."
"There's not going to be a tomorrow," Alyxia reminded him. "We've got a bounty on our heads, remember? What are we going to do?"
"I've been thinking about that," Reiley said. " We have no choice but to get out there, even with us being wanted. We have to branch out and contact people if we have any hope of survival, both short and long term."
"That means disguises and aliases," Alyxia recalled, remembering something Reiley had said a while back. "If we can get out of the 500 metre radius unnoticed, they won't be able to trace us with the right disguises."
Reiley stared at Alyxia with a strange look on her face. ".....So you do have your moments."
Alyxia did not fully understand what Reiley meant by that, but continued anyway. "With the right supplies and clothes, I could try to make us virtually unrecognisable. If there's one thing that I am good at, it's makeup." She gave an eager grin to Reiley, almost pleading with the other girl.
Farron answered when Reiley did not reply. "That doesn't sound too bad. Just tell us what you need and we'll get it."
"But that's the thing," Alyxia whined. "I'd only know what I need if I see it. It wouldn't be the same if I asked either of you to get it for me."
Farron feigned a gasp, fluttering his eyelashes in an exaggerated manner. "Are you assuming that I don't know my makeup supplies?" He exhaled and shook his head, seeming almost offended in his demeanour.
Alyxia couldn't help but roll her eyes at him joking around. "I'm serious. You guys said that the disguises are of utmost importance, and I want to help out by doing the one thing I can do." She looked at Reiley expectantly. "Please?"
Farron held a hand up with a look of confusion on his face. "Hold up. Aren't you her boss? Don't you tell her what to do?"
Reiley glared at Farron with a blank face, something Alyxia discovered that Reiley was exceedingly good at. "I'm her bodyguard/P.A. When it comes to most things regarding her safety, I call the shots."
Alyxia nodded in agreement. "You learn early on not to mess with Reiley." She tried to send Farron a subliminal message with her eyes to not mess with Reiley if he hadn't realised it already, but he didn't seem to get it. Or maybe she wasn't too good with subliminal messaging.
She was absolutely sure that he would mess with Reiley.
***
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Alyxia whispered/screamed as she and Reiley peered around the corner of the alley to check for the patrols. "I feel so rebellious!"
After approximately an hour and a half of begging, bowing and scraping, something Alyxia was not used to, Reiley finally agreed to take her along to get the supplies for the disguises. However, judging by the look on the other girl's face, she was starting to regret her decision.
Minutes passed, which felt more like hours. Reiley looked back at Alyxia and mutely gestured to her to follow her. Noiselessly, the two girls tiptoed while crouching to avoid being seen by the soldiers in their black outfits.
As they tiptoed to relative safety, it suddenly hit Alyxia that Reiley used to be one of those soldiers in their black outfits.
Browsing through the shops selling the sparse makeup supplies which were available in the Hipster, Alyxia constantly wondered about whether they fit in as members of the roughworld. With their plain clothes, they certainly looked the part; Alyxia was concerned that they did not act the part. Alyxia stood out with the stiff, straight posture she had been taught to have ever since she was a child, as did Reiley with her noticeable slouch.
In one stall where they were getting some liner, Alyxia noticed that the two young owners of the stall who seemed to be their same age were looking at them. In a hushed whisper, one of the girls said to her companion, "Look at the prisses there. Don't they get enough makeup up there in Glitz?" As Alyxia learned a while back, the roughworlders called the exaltworld 'Glitz' while simply referring to their own part of Regis as 'the town'. So many names to remember.
Through the corner of her eye, she noticed Reiley stiffen when the girl spoke. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable, but it was there. Why did she have the sinking feeling that she would need to drag Reiley away from a dirty cat-fight?
A horribly imbalanced cat-fight at that; those two poor girls would be no match for the former lieutenant.
Before Reiley could do anything, Alyxia grabbed the other girl's hand. "Look, I see better stuff in that stall over there!" She said in a loud voice, before dragging Reiley away from the potential scene of a crime. She was proud of her diss; she had publicly exclaimed that another stall was preferable to the stall of those mean girls, thus reducing its standard in the public eye. When she was sure that they were out of the area of visibility of those girls, she let go of Reiley.
An indignant Reiley gave the young princess a questioning look as she rubbed her wrist protectively. "What the hell was that for?"
Alyxia held her hands up in surrender. "I'm sorry, but I thought that you were going to attack those girls!"
"If we didn't have a cover to maintain, I definitely would have, " Reiley grumbled as they moved on through the Hipster. "I've seen the price tags on those things up there when you've asked me to get them and nearly died of a heart attack."
Alyxia nodded, remembering the time Reiley burst into her room with the supplies and lamented about how she could have bought a lifetime's supply of her favourite strawberry clear chewies. She almost shuddered at that memory, remembering how genuinely distraught Reiley seemed.
Great, now I'm craving clear chewies.
"How much money do we have left from that bit of jewels we exchanged?" Reiley asked her, gesturing to Alyxia to hand over the bag of moers. Alyxia complied, remembering the look in the pawnbroker's eyes as they handed over the jewels to be converted into moers.
"We have a fair amount left," Reiley said to her in a hushed voice. "But I don't know how long it will last. It seems that the prices have gone up."
"Maybe due to the change in government," Alyxia mused. "They're hiking prices to cover for administrative changes. That's what the newsfeed said, at least."
Reiley stopped in her tracks and looked at Alyxia with a nonplussed expression. "I hadn't thought of that. But what if it's not administrative changes?"
Alyxia looked back at Reiley "Bribes?"
"Possibly."
"Those must be some extremely costly bribes we're talking about."
"Yup."
"But how would that work?"
"I think I've got a bit of an idea," Reiley muttered as she continued walking in the direction of the alley that would lead them to the base. "But this definitely isn't the place to talk about it."
***
"You've got to be kidding me," Farron breathed as Alyxia and Reiley told him what they thought was going on.
"I wish," Alyxia muttered as she twirled a lock of her hair around her finger, "What I don't understand is that if bribes are being given and accepted, how would that affect the price tags?"
When Farron didn't answer immediately, Reiley looked at him pointedly. "You're the criminal mastermind here. If it were you, what would have happened?"
"Hey!" Alyxia reprimanded Reiley for the jab at Farron, but he simply gave a sarcastic smile to Reiley.
"Why thank you for the compliment, Reiley," He said gleefully. "And one thing that could explain the rise in prices is if the producers and big businesses were forced to pay the government to stay in business, and then they raised the prices to cover the costs. Classic case of cost-push inflation. But we don't know if that's the story for sure."
Reiley nodded in acknowledgement. "But it definitely can't be to cover administrative costs. Military dictatorships aren't very different from monarchies."
Alyxia did a double take. "Are you saying that Aunt Ember is planning on making her claim to the throne absolute?"
"Sure seems like it," Reiley muttered, seeming more grim than usual. "And if I were you, I really wouldn't refer to the woman who's put a price on our heads as 'aunt'." Before Alyxia could open her mouth to argue with Reiley over that statement, the other girl flopped down onto the cot and closed her eyes, ending the conversation on that note.
Alyxia glanced at Farron, who simply shrugged. "Let her get her sleep. We could use a little less nagging around here."
The young princess almost moved to reproach Farron, but she decided against it in fear of waking up the sleeping Reiley. Farron noticed this and leaned towards Alyxia in a conspiratorial manner. "Why are you so afraid of her?"
Alyxia chuckled. "I'm not afraid of her, Farron. Respect and fear are two different things."
"Even then," Farron prodded on, "she's under you. Even if she's your bodyguard/P.A/ whatever the hell she is, she still serves you. You're her master."
"Funny, I would have almost thought that you were respectful of the authorities," Reiley's tired voice rang out from the cot. "Oh wait, if that was the case, you wouldn't even be here. My bad."
Farron looked slightly irked by the announcement. "Weren't you sleeping?"
"I was," Reiley admitted, not bothering to get up from the cot. "But I hear everything. So if the both of you are ever planning on doing something funny, take it to another room."
"Wha-" Alyxia stammered, visibly embarrassed. "Reiley!"
"You never know," Reiley ventured. There was a pause, maybe indicating a shrug that was beyond Alyxia's line of view. "Just had to put that out there for your information."
Placing a hand to her forehead, Alyxia stole a glance at Farron who was visibly cringing. "We'll keep that in mind. Now please sleep!"
Another pause, maybe to indicate Reiley considering the suggestion. After a while, Alyxia could hear Reiley mutter, "If I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open, Lennox." More silence. Then miraculously, a snore.
"She's asleep," Alyxia whispered to Farron. "What do we do now?"
"Let's go steal some lunch from Sylvie," Farron suggested with a sly smile.
"Sounds like a date," Alyxia replied with a smile.
The dynamic duo sneaked out of the room, attempting to be as quiet as possible. It was only after they had painstakingly closed the door with making a single noise that they were able to breathe.
"I'm stealing Reiley's share."
"Don't even think about it!"
***