The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

trio—Nin, Tavia, and
Dresan—did look taller and leaner than the average human. They all
had exquisitely fine features too: high cheekbones, delicate chins,
fine noses. While Nin’s hair still hid his ears, Anya noticed that
he barely left any footprints in the soft sand, when he jumped off
the tracks and landed on the dirt ground.
    Dresan took a quick look around to make sure
they weren’t under surveillance. The next generation of
audio/motion-detector devices had been installed around the train
tracks, just a few days earlier. He and Tavia had just manipulated
and debugged them, along with some compact mobile sentinels that
traveled up and down the street tracking action and human movement.
Anya and Leticia didn’t know it, but they could’ve been followed
from the inner heart of the city earlier, if the elves hadn’t
tweaked some of the detector devices.
    Dresan wrapped his beige coat tighter around
him, hands in his pockets, slightly hunched over. “Do you know
of…The Velvet Underground?”
    “ No, they don’t,” Nin
replied flatly, although the question was directed at Anya and
Leticia.
    “ There’s a rock band called
The Velvet Underground,” Leticia started. She had a huge MP3
collection, and knew a wide range of bands and musicians. “And a
club at—”
    “ Not the band.” Tavia
lifted an eyebrow. “Not the club, either.”
    Anya shook her head again, mouth slightly
open. Things were getting bizarre.
    “ Humans and elves have a
history.” Nin was pensive. “They had a falling out several
centuries ago—it was a fight between art and science, essentially.
By art, what I really mean is imagination, and magic.”
    Science had clearly won, on the human side
at least. Anya wondered how that had affected the elves.
    “ Anyway, we were going to
do a little…filching, of our own,” Nin continued in a low voice and
at a quick pace. The girls had to strain to listen. “We’re trying
to find the missing piece of a parchment. We might have the right
location.” Nin pictured it in his mind. “Breaking in is another
story.”
    “ Where is your…location?”
Leticia asked, twiddling her fingers nervously.
    Nin started heading off to the north, away
from the church and train tracks. Tavia and Dresan followed suit,
without a word.
    “ Where’re you going?” Anya
called out. She turned—the motorbikes were still parked where she
and Leticia had left them.
    Nin faced them. Strands of his hair whipped
across his face in the cool breeze that was blowing. His pose gave
the impression he was a wild child.
    “ The Velvet Underground.
It’s what we call our…underground network. All our stuff is there.”
He had a skip in his step as he turned back, like he was having fun
with all this. “Come on.”
    Anya and Leticia followed the so-called
“Elven” trio. Curiosity always got the better of them.

 
    Chapter 3:
     
    Nin continued on foot at a steady pace. Each
stride was taking Anya and Leticia further away from the stone
church, and closer to the “network” Nin had to show them.
    “ Are we there yet?” Anya
got her answer when they reached the end of the train tracks, which
stopped abruptly. Anya and Leticia waited, looking out for any sign
of an entrance which led underground.
    Nin crept over to a birch tree, and went
around it. Nin lifted up his wrist device, and punched in a few
numbers, before holding it to the surface of a pale strip of bark
on the tree.
    Anya gasped and took a step back when the
front of the tree swung open, to reveal a dim, narrow staircase
that spiraled downwards. Tavia stepped in first, and then Dresan.
Nin lifted a hand out towards Anya and Leticia, then to the
staircase, with his palm facing upwards.
    “ You’ll get through, don’t
worry,” Nin let Leticia know, when she put a leg in first, before
turning her body sideways to enter. The trunk of the birch tree
swayed more to the skinny side.
    Nin shut the door behind him once his guests
had followed his