imperfect (21 page)

Mist barreled through the gate just as the
gate started to crank down. Jaiden and Chelsa pulled in after
her.

“
ID?” the gate guard
inquired. Although he was a low ranking enforcer, he spoke as if he
was the captain.

“
ID?” Chelsa said. “I
didn’t know you needed an ID to enter a city.”

“
Charleston is an
important city,” the guard replied. “ID verification allows us to
keep the city safe from terrorists and other dangers to the
public.”

Kristi shot Chelsa a worried glance. She
didn’t look anything like Kelly Harrison’s picture on her ID card,
especially since she dyed her hair. Jaiden, who didn’t resemble
Zach Wares much in the first place, now looked completely different
from Zach’s picture on the card after his hair cut and dye.

Chelsa petted Ghost and whispered something
into his ears while she pretended to locate her electro-slate from
her backpack. She swiped the slate to show the guard her ID. The
guard grunted and allowed her to pass.

“
Your IDs?” he said to
Jaiden and Kristi.

Ghost unexpectedly leapt down from Chelsa’s
horse and onto the guard. Jaiden and Kristi both realized Ghost was
distracting the guard to let them pass through into the city.

“
Get your droid-cat off of
me!” the guard barked, clumsily locating his gun—he was clearly
inexperienced.

Ghost was offended by being called a
“droid-cat” and snarled.

Kristi ignored the gate guard’s plight and
galloped Mist right by him with Jaiden hot on her heels.

“
Meet me at the Rex
Hotel—there’s a reservation for us there,” Chelsa said to Kristi
when she rode past her. Chelsa thrust the electro-slate into
Kristi’s arms.

“
I will shoot your
droid-pet in ten seconds!” the guard yelled, prompting Chelsa to
finally call off Ghost.

Kristi slowed down Mist enough so that she
could type the directions of the Rex Hotel into the
electro-slate.

“
This way,” she said to
Jaiden, taking lead.

Kristi checked the time. Two minutes until
curfew. Fortunately, the Rex Hotel wasn’t too far away and they
found it within a minute.

The Rex Hotel was
magnificent. That was the only word that popped into Kristi’s mind
when she saw the castle-like building. Even the word “magnificent”
didn’t do the extravagant hotel justice. Everything about the
hotel—from its gilded arches, stained-glass dome to the marble
bricked walkway—screamed
rich!
She wondered if Chelsa was crazy for choosing the
Rex Hotel to spend the night. Five hundred points would probably
get them a broom closet in such a pretentious hotel as
this.

There was a stable-hand ready to take the
droid-horses into the stable located behind the hotel. Jaiden and
Kristi entered the hotel lobby, feeling sorely out of place among
the richly dressed people. Grave looking businessmen in fine suits
strolled around the grand lobby, discussing trades and oversea
commerce with their peers. Many adults cast them disdainful looks.
It couldn’t have been more obvious they didn’t belong in this
lavish world.

“
There you are,” Chelsa
said. She ambled through the massive, gold-gilded double doors of
the hotel just as the city clock
bonged
to announce the curfew was in
act.

“
Are you kids lost?” a
bellhop asked with an air of aloofness. “Perhaps you arrived at the
wrong address. The Regional Inn is across the street from the Rex
Hotel. Oh, and we only allow
domestic
droid-animals inside the
hotel,” he added, spotting Ghost by Chelsa’s heels.

It is a sad thing when a
bellhop is better dressed than you at the hotel you are staying
at,
thought Kristi.

“
No, we’re at the right
address,” Chelsa replied. “And I’ll assure you my leopard is very
well behaved.”

The bellhop sniffed and said, “Very well.”
He spun on his heels and click-clacked away.

“
Chelsa, why in the world
did you reserve us a room at the Rex Hotel?” Kristi asked. “We’re
not going to be able to pay for it. There’s less than one hundred
points on your account.”

“
I didn’t make the
reservations,” she said.

“
Then who did?”

Chelsa shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know
is that there was an instafication sent to my electro-slate asking
me to confirm our stay at the Rex Hotel. Everything has already
been paid for.”

“
Doesn’t that seem a bit
suspicious?” said Kristi. “We might be walking straight into a
trap.”

“
There’s not much of a
choice left,” Chelsa replied. “Curfew’s already in act and we can’t
leave this place now. Might as well spend the night
here.”

“
Yeah, but don’t you think
we should at least make a reservation for a different room in case
the reservation that someone else gave us
is
a trap?”

“
Like you said before, we
don’t have enough points for a room here.”

“
You should’ve thought
about this before telling Jaiden and me to meet you here.” Kristi
felt annoyed Chelsa hadn’t thought through the risks of accepting a
stay at a first-class hotel from a stranger. Her jaw tightened
slightly and her back stiffened.

Chelsa started to form a reply.
“Kristi—”

“
Stop arguing,” Jaiden
interjected. “Chelsa, I would really appreciate it if you told
Kristi and I if something like this happens again in the future.
Kristi, Chelsa’s right; we’re just going to have to stay here for
the night and hope everything’s going to go smoothly.”

The girls shut up and followed Jaiden to the
reception desk. A steward fiddling with his ruby studded watch
looked at them apprehensively as they made their way over. He, like
most of the other people in the hotel’s grand lobby, seemed less
than pleased to have a rag-tag trio of teenagers tramping around in
a world-class hotel.

“
How may I help you?” The
steward’s nose wrinkled, reminding Kristi of Speaker Quincy when he
spoke to her. The steward also had the same condescending tone as
the bellhop.

“
We need a room here for
the night,” Jaiden said.

“
You do realize the
cheapest rooms at the Rex Hotel cost four hundred and seventy-five
points, right?” the steward said.

“
Oh, we already have
reservations,” Chelsa said.

“
Reservation
number?”

“
1047.”

“
Name?”

“
Chelsa
Bright.”

The steward opened a drawer and took out a
laminated card.

“
This card has all the
information you need for hotel services. It also doubles as a key
to your suite. There are two ways you can unlock the door to your
suite: by sliding this card through the card reader or by scanning
the barcode sent to you via instafication for the room
confirmation. There’s a one hundred point fine for losing this
card.” He handed the card to Chelsa.

“
Friendly people, eh?”
Jaiden commented, walking away from the steward.

“
I’m sure we’ll be treated
better once we’ve cleaned up a bit,” Chelsa said.

“
Assuming we’re not
walking into a deathtrap,” Kristi muttered.

“
Just drop it!” Jaiden
threw his hands up in exasperation. “If we’re walking into a trap,
then at least we’re not completely oblivious to it. If there is no
trap, then so be it.”

Kristi realized she wasn’t making things
easier by arguing and tersely apologized to Chelsa. “I guess I’m
just stressed out.”

“
I think we all are,”
Jaiden huffed to himself.

“
We’re on floor twelve,”
Chelsa said. “Let’s go find the elevator. Here, why don’t you hold
onto the card?” She passed the room card to Kristi.

The electric-magnet-powered elevators were
located at the back of the lobby. Kristi slid the card through the
card reader and the elevator door hissed open, revealing the
largest elevator she had ever seen. It could easily hold fifty
people. The marble floor glistened and the window that looked out
to the streets of Charleston was so clear she could’ve sworn the
back of the elevator was open; Kristi wouldn’t have been surprised
if she walked right through the window and into thin air.

The pulsing light of the city threw neon
colored beams onto her awe-struck face. Kristi’s eyes enlarged at
the spectacular cityscape before her.

“
Please enter desired
floor into keypad,” an automated voice instructed.

Jaiden entered “12” into the keypad and the
elevator ascended so swiftly and smoothly Kristi would not have
known they left the ground floor had the voice not announced “Floor
12.” The doors slid open with a soft sigh and the three of them
stepped into a wide hallway carpeted with plush velvet.

“
Well, we’re still alive,”
Jaiden
said a few hours later. “And there
doesn’t seem to be a trap.”

“
I suppose,” Kristi
said.

She was in a good mood after exploring their
suite. It was the most luxurious suite that existed on the face of
the Earth. It was comprised of a kitchen, a living room, four
separate bedrooms (each equally and excessively furnished) and two
master bathrooms. All the furniture and technology offered were
state-of-the-art quality.

“
I wonder who made this
reservation for us. He or she must be very well off points-wise,”
Kristi said.

“
Let’s not worry about
that.” Chelsa kicked her legs back on the couch. “And just enjoy
this stroke of luck.”

“
What should we do? Watch
the news? Play a card game? Visit the bowling alley? Try out room
service?” Jaiden ticked off each activity with his
fingers.

“
How about we watch a
movie?” Chelsa suggested.

“
You brought a
movie?”

Chelsa grinned slyly. “I
have a couple of illegal DVDs I like to keep around all the time.
Have you heard of the
Titanic
?”

“
Isn’t that a ship that
sank on April 14, 1912?”

“
Yes it is, Mr.
Know-it-all,” Chelsa teased him.

Jaiden put up his hands in mock defeat. “I
can’t help it if I memorize everything I learn in school.”

“
What you probably don’t
know,” Chelsa said, “is that the ‘Titanic’ is also a
movie.”

“
I’ve never heard of
it.”

“
Duh. That’s because the
government banned it.”

Chelsa walked over to her backpack slung
haphazardly over a kitchen chair—it was the bag Jaiden had managed
to save from their bandit encounter—and took out a DVD case. She
flourished the DVD and said, “Prepare to be wowed by this film.
It’s amazing. I swear, you haven’t lived yet if you haven’t watched
this.”

Kristi wrapped a fleece blanket around her
shoulders and settled into the couch in front of the smart-screen.
“That’s one of the few things I’ve done before you have,” she said
with a slight smirk.

Chelsa slid the DVD into the player and
dimmed the lights.

“
Are you sure this
is
the right address?” Kristi
asked.

They stood in front of an imposing
skyscraper made out of steel and fiberglass. All of the windows
were tinted black and a plaque that read “Verus Real Estate” hung
over the revolving door entrance.

“
This is the place,”
Jaiden confirmed. “Let’s go inside. No point in standing out
here.”

Maybe the interior will
look more like what I would expect of a spy headquarters,
she thought.

The three of them, plus Ghost, entered
through the main entrance. Contrary to Kristi’s prediction, the
inside of Verus Real Estate looked like the typical real estate
office. Staff in pressed suits bustled about, sorting files,
sending instafications or negotiating deals with potential
customers.

“
Let’s go ask the
receptionist for more information,” Kristi said.

They approached the least busy receptionist.
The young woman in her mid-twenties looked up from the electro-note
she was writing and said, “Yes?”

“
Is this the
headquarters?” Kristi asked, cutting straight to the
chase.

“
Yes, this is the
headquarters for Verus Real Estate. Are you interested in selling,
buying or leasing real estate?”

“
The other headquarters.
You know what I’m talking about.”

The receptionist frowned a bit. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

Kristi didn’t believe her. The receptionist
had paused a second and glanced to her right before replying, which
usually indicated the person was lying.

“
Maybe Dr. Hanson gave us
a fake address,” Jaiden whispered into her ear.

She ignored him and pressed on. “We have
important information the Revealers might be interested in.”

The receptionist looked taken a-back for a
millisecond before dismissing the notion that three teenagers could
possibly have any useful information.

“
I’m going to have to ask
you three to leave if you are not here for real estate related
business.”

Kristi let out a
frustrated sigh just as a woman with black hair neatly pulled into
a bun caught her eyes.
Maybe she could
help us.
The woman glanced over and made a
sign telling her not to leave.