Dungeons Online

Chapter 103: Anxiety in the car

**Same time - Important note. Unless there is a marker of time passing (something I started using rather recently, like 2 hours later and so on), it means the time flows as per usual. But the events of different PoV's don't happen simultaneously (unless claimed otherwise) but rather one by one. This note doesn't increase the chapter cost but was important enough for me to put it here**

"Where are you dragging me?" Jason asked, resisting the surprisingly strong pull of Kira's hand. "Let me go!" He protested loudly, attracting the eyes of the people surrounding them. 

But they were in the middle of the ground floor of the online Hub. One could walk there naked, and no one would bat an eye. So much ridiculous and logicless stuff happened in this place that having two people argue didn't offer any entertainment factor for people to care. 

"Just shut up and come with me," Kira muttered, blushing as she dragged Jason behind her through the place. For someone who used to hide in the staff-only areas of the Hub, she was weirdly sensitive to the few looks that people threw at them. 

"It would be easier if you just told me where we are going," Jason said, his lips twisted in an unhappy grimace. "It's not like I can deny an order from my superior anyway," he added with slight scorn as his eyes clouded.

For a slight moment, Jason felt the chill just by recalling the atmosphere in his workplace. His refugee turned into a bustling stove of corruption and incompetence. 

'I can't deny their skills,' Jason thought. His mind was full of the focused faces of the recently hired staff. 'But they don't have the soul for this,' he thought, shaking his head. 

The main reason why Kira was currently dragging him away was because of the news that he brought to her. As an Investigator, someone a notch above everyone else locally, her means of work varied greatly from Jason's nine to five basis. 

"You see, we recently learned about this huge, low-key family that lives nearby," Kira said, revealing what should be a top secret of the place. "While it would be hard to officially request their help, I'm in a position to ask privately," the girl smiled, even further increasing the beauty that brimmed from her. 

"What do you need me for, then?" Jason asked, finally relaxing a tiny bit. "This isn't a part of my job!" he attempted to protest.

"And that's why I'm dragging you along," Kira said as they moved out of the building. "I don't understand any bit of that whacky, IT stuff," she admitted, raising her hand. 

By the time they reached the side of the street, a car had already waited with its back door open.

"Just let me reiterate," Jason said, trying to sort his thoughts. "You want me to go to some kind of influential family that went under your radar. Then, I'm supposed to ask them if they know something about a major attack on the Online Hub," Jason spelled his words slowly.

Kira listened to the man's attempt with a straight face. Then, once he was done, she nodded. "That's exactly right," she smiled, revealing her pearl-like teeth. 

"You guys really love to drive your slaves to the bone," Jason said, releasing a deep sigh. "Well, whatever," he added after a moment, lowering his head and turning silent. 

Their journey to the distant ranch didn't take long. Despite how unpopulated the area was, it still had the dense area of the roads network, a relic from the last world war. 

"It's like the war never came here," Jason muttered, looking through the window. "So beautiful," he added after a moment, observing every last detail of the dense woodlands surrounding them. 

In a sense, this place was one of the last remaining gardens of humanity. Simple and wild, it stood in a stark difference to the concrete puzzles of the human cities. 

"They are watching us," Kira said, keeping her head low as she glanced outside. 

"Huh?" Jason sharply raised his head at the girl, only to feel a cold shiver run down his spine a moment later. 'I shouldn't have done that,' he thought, scolding himself on the spot. 

"Can you read the frequencies?" Kira asked, casually turning her face towards the abducted employee. "I'm not sure if that's just a feeling," she added after a moment, averting her eyes. 

"Sure," Jason muttered softly. He then pulled out a hand-sized device. By grabbing its two, thicker ends, he pulled it to the sides, revealing a thin, see-through foil. Jason fully stretched the ends, eliminating all the bruises and dents on the screen. He then pulled out a pair of thick glasses from his breast pocket and dragged them on his face.

"Give me a short moment," Jason requested as he started to furiously tap his fingers into the see-through panel device. His glasses at first lit up a little, only to dim back down in a mere second. 

'That should be a quick check,' Jason thought, setting up a simple searching program. By fanning out the nearby frequencies, he couldn't tap into the potential connection, but he could easily detect the interference. A sign that some kind of low-key communication was actually going on. 

'And done,' he thought, pushing his finger down to input the instructions. 

But then his finger stopped in the air. 

'This place looks like a damned pre-war sanctuary,' Jason raised his glasses and took a look at the outside. With a glance at the front desk of the car, he confirmed that they still had a few minutes before reaching their destination. 'What if...' he thought, allowing his glasses to fall right back on his nose. 

Then he deleted all the commands he prepared a second ago. 

"Can you hurry up?" Kira asked. A slight nervousness appeared for the first time in her voice. 

'To think that an investigator like her could stress out like that,' Jason thought, rolling his eyes. But this observation only ascertained the man in his sudden enlightenment. 

'What if I check the low-dimension frequencies instead?' Jason thought, opening up one of the few archaic apps he still had on his personal computing device. 

For a moment, the middle-aged technician stared at the screens hidden in his eyes. The words and numbers flashing at his eyes made it slightly hard for the man to move even an inch. 

"We are seriously running out of time," Kira said, nervously moving around in her seat. 

"You won't like what I see," Jason said in a surprisingly calm voice. He took his glasses down and looked at the girl. "They blocked me out," he said, folding his tools and hiding them back in his pockets. 

"What does that mean?" Kira asked, tensing up a little. For the first time, Jason saw her as the young female, barely in the middle of her twenties, faced with the cold reality that she wasn't even aware of. 

"There are tools to block access to the low-dimension frequencies," he said, looking at the girl. "We are against pros."