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Dante smiled, cigarette in hand, and turned to Eden.
“I’ll buy everything,” he declared.
Just with that, he simply walked out, leaving the two of them alone with the pups. Eden was baffled. ...What had he meant by that? He wasn’t talking about her, was he? She wasn’t fine with being treated like some stupid merchandise!
She took a deep breath and stood up, walking to Loir. She slapped his shoulder, making him whine loudly. The pups barked after him.
“You’re so mean!” protested Loir, making a fake sad expression. “After everything I did, you beat me? Bad Kitty, bad Kitty!”
“This bad Kitty is going to take your damn eyes out if you pull something like that again! Seriously, Loir, a pink outfit? He didn’t buy it for one second!”
Loir sighed.
“I did what I could, Kitty. Moreover, even if he thinks he knows, he can’t know your secret just like that. He has no proof of who you really are... You know, inside the box. Even I had a hard time believing it when I learned the truth...”
“Shut it,” she groaned.
“Hehehe...”
Loir kept smiling like a hyena and got back to his screens. The computers were working fine without his help, though. Eden could see all the files being encrypted and decrypted one after another, pages and pages of information lined up in front of them. This wasn’t something that would excite her at all; she was used to this. The Core was nothing but a huge bundle of data on every Core citizen, everywhere, anytime. It was a bit scary, and it made her truly glad she was out of that System. This was the price of living in the Core: no liberty and absolutely no privacy, either. Eden thought it was frightening. The slightest mistake was immediately penalized unless the Core wanted to test them out, see how far it could go, and the price would get even heavier...
“So boring,” yawned Loir. “Do you think the Core ever wonders why humans are such boring little creatures? Or does it just secretly rewatch good films like we do?”
“I’m not sure the Core has any interest in human movies, Loir. ...Hey, did I bring the star back with me?”
“The... Oooooh, it was a star? I thought it was just a shiny thingy. Let me see. Oh, yes, there it is, with your files! Still warm from your cute little bra too, hehe...”
“Stop being gross. See if you can let me open it.”
Eden walked past the screens and computer installations to stand in a large, blue hexagon just behind it. As soon as she walked on it, the blue tiles lit up and Loir squealed.
“Oh, I’ve been dying to try all my new babies,” he said.
Eden couldn’t help but feel a bit excited too.
Although screens and computers were mostly for Loir to play with, the augmented reality area was her playfield as well. Like her SIN recreated her body and her movements inside the System, this simple zone, which was like a very, very fancy mat, was there to take objects from the System into reality. The pups walked over to see what their mistress was doing, curious, but neither of them dared to step on it.
It was completely harmless, though. Loir controlled everything there. He spent a short minute transferring the file over and, just a second later, a very similar image of the strange star appeared in front of Eden. This version was made like a hologram, with hundreds of little lights secretly activated. It used the properties of light reflection to recreate the image for the human eye. To Eden, this object looked very real. She lightly tapped her SIN, and now, the mat’s system was reading her hands’ movements. She was able to manipulate the star as if it were in the real world, grabbing and moving it however she pleased.
Loir kept jumping back and forth to compare what was going on for Eden and on his screens.
“So exciting!” he squealed. “So exciting! Can you imagine everything we can do with such good stuff? Oh my, I can even rewatch all nine of The Lord of the Rings movies as if I was there...”
“Loir, work first. I need to open this file.”
The hacker sulked.
“You party-pooper... Alright, I’ll let you play with the toys that my Sugar Daddy bought for me. You don’t know how to share, anyway. And you’re not getting any pizza!”
Eden didn’t care. She was fed up just hearing him talk about pizza all the time... She was more curious about what she could see in her hands.
This was a rather unique object. She wondered how she was supposed to use it. It really looked like those wooden puzzles she used to play with when she was younger. This was clearly made of different pieces or something that could move. Eden sat down, crossing her legs. She could spin some of the ends and turn some parts, but it wouldn’t open. She kept trying. She knew Loir was probably studying it on his side, from the way he was frowning.
“...That code is so rude,” he said after a while. “It won’t even let me touch it! So arrogant!”
He began sulking, but when Rolf came in carrying five boxes of pizza, he completely seemed to forget about it. Beer and Bullet happily ran to get their lunch too.
Eden didn’t even seem to notice Rolf was there. She was still in the middle of the augmented reality mat, trying to figure out her puzzle. Rolf brought a plate to her before everything was eaten by the three gluttons behind her, but he was very curious. That woman was curious... He was surprised by how fascinated the boss was with her too. He had seen the boss around women before, but none as peculiar as Eden. She always behaved like one of those street cats, hungry but also extremely cautious and ready to run away at any moment. She was feisty and always somewhat angry. However, she also looked extremely pretty and exceptionally gentle when she played with the puppies.
