“My head...”

Prying her eyelids open with reluctance, Nina was met with a green wall. Trying to ignore what felt like a percussion band practice going on in her head, she stared at the wall in confusion.

Oh, couch. Paying attention to the rest of her body, she realised that she way in fact lying down. Reluctant to move, the wall before her materialized as the back cushions of the couch she was lying on.

Where?

Her mind going backwards, she thought about what had happened. Meeting Sem, heading to the Talewood Arms, going to The Sandbell with Hala and Cross, ordering food and drink…

Being told about SuTSU, feeling dejected…

Drinking all the ale on the table…

Pulling out the rest of her money to the delight of Hala and Cross…

Naztra’s knowing smile as she carried away empty glass after empty glass…

And that was it. The memories cut there as though she had been hit over the head, and judging by how she felt, it wouldn’t have been too farfetched. Squinting to block the morning sunlight that poured through the windows, she rolled over to see that she was in a familiar place.

A pile of magazines sat on the coffee table which was surrounded by the green couch. On the other side of the room, an unattended counter was covered with loose paperwork which featured a wilting plant and a rusting bell. The blue interior, she knew, matched the façade of the building’s exterior.

It was the shabby-looking reception room of The Cloud Orchestra.

Hauling herself from the couch, she noted the blanket that had been draped over her before heading across the room. After quickly inspecting the counter and noting the layer of dust upon the paperwork, she made her way down the corridor that she had been down the day before. Reaching the door to the room where she had sat with Euris and Reina, she grabbed the handle. Finding it locked, her eyes turned to the heavy steel door that sat at the top of the stairs. Making her way up to the door, she read the small sign which had been hung there.

Staff Only.

With a sigh, she knocked on the door, finding that it felt more like the entrance to a bank vault than a door. After waiting for five minutes, knocking three times in the process, she gave up and returned to the reception room. Although it was quiet, she could still hear signs of life from the street as people moved past the building.

How does this place function if nobody is here to receive customers? She thought to herself as she sat on the couch, idly beginning to organize the sprawling collection of magazines that covered the coffee table. After she had finished organizing the magazines and had folded the blanket, she turned her attention to the front desk and moved towards it, stopping when her eyes passed over the rusted bell on the counter. Thinking that it couldn’t hurt, she pressed the bell before picking up the first of many loose papers on the counter and had only put three pages together before she heard the heavy steel door at the top of the stairs open with a series of clunking noises.

“Hiiii, sorry, we’re not open yet but… Oh, it’s you.”

Nina looked up to see Saela standing in the doorway. Dressed as she had been the day before, Saela gave Nina’s hungover appearance a quick look before folding her arms.

“What do you want?”

Stunned at her cold attitude, Nina gave her a wry smile. “Umm, did someone here help me out last night? I don’t remember coming back.”

“Nope, thank those girls from Dari Corp. Anything else?”

Despite Saela’s cute stature, her attitude had completely turned. The small girl who was struggling to guide herself through the sky with a dedicated attitude just yesterday now seemed like a child of ice.

“Would I be able to speak to Reina then?”

Without responding, Saela turned on her heel and disappeared down the hallway. The fact that Nina couldn’t hear the heavy door close indicated to her that Reina would probably be coming. Quickly attempting to fix her hair without a mirror, she sat to attention on the couch and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long as Reina soon appeared from behind the counter. With her wine coloured hair tied up over a black lab coat, Nina watched her bare feet padding across the floor. Although the business-like feeling from the day before had been replaced by a casual air, Reina’s charm was still evident.

Sitting down on the couch across from her, Reina’s eyes swept over the organized pile of magazines without a flicker of emotion. It wasn’t until her eyes met Nina’s that a smile appeared on her face as she leaned back on the sofa before crossing one leg over the other.

“You wanted to see me?”

Putting on a brave face, Nina thought for a moment before looking back at her.

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

A gentle laugh escaped Reina’s lips as she looked at Nina with amusement.

“Tell you what?”

“That you weren’t responsible for me falling through.”

Reina seemed to think for a minute before pausing as Saela appeared from the door with a tray. As she approached, Nina saw that two teacups sat upon it with a teapot. Watching in silence as Saela set the tray down, Reina gave her a curt nod before sighing as Saela once again disappeared down the hallway.

“Don’t mind her, she’s just stubborn sometimes,” Reina said with a smile as she poured two cups of tea with a practiced motion. Admiring the elegant technique, Nina shook her head before accepting the tea Reina was offering her.

“So, why didn’t you tell me?”

Reina smiled before sipping the tea. Setting it down, she looked at Nina with an interested gaze.

“If I had told you, would you have believed me?”

Pausing for a moment, Nina shook her head. “No.”

“Well then, you just answered the question for yourself,” Reina said as she gazed into her cup. Nina felt that the aura surrounding her was still there, but it had morphed into a gentler form. If yesterday she was an army general, today she felt like the matriarch of a clan.

“Who are Hala and Cross?”

Reina laughed at the question. “You spent all night with them and you didn’t even ask?” The mischievous hint of a smile from the day before had crept back onto her face as Nina’s gaze drifted across to some dust dancing in a beam of light. She concentrated on the particles as she rifled through the events in her head from the night before, but still drew a blank.

About to give up, Saela’s comment from before came to mind.

“Dari Corp,” she recalled.

“Mmm, that’s right,” Reina said as she poured more tea. Tilting the pot in Nina’s direction, she set it down as Nina shook her head. “You didn’t learn anything else?”

“No.” Nina’s reply was weak, as though she knew that she should have asked more questions. She had initially left this very room the day before in search of answers, but had easily become sidetracked once only the surface had been scratched. She had been tossed into this world like a newborn child, ignorant to everything and with only one person to cling to, yet she had instead drowned herself. Not only in the ale last night, but also in the stream of events that began as soon as Sem had called out to her, following others that she had never met before as though it were natural.

She wondered if she had been dropped a notch in Reina’s eyes, then was surprised when she realised that she was concerned about whether she had or hadn’t. Like yesterday, she felt as though Reina could see through her, while she couldn’t see anything in the other direction. Despite giving her the answers that she was asking for, Reina seemed to give away little more.

“Dari Corp is a small organization that moves things through many of the buildings on this plate,” Reina said as she looked past Nina to the window behind her. “For instance, we are in JE-22 right now, on the 6th layer. If you want to send something to for instance JT-12, they can arrange it.”

“So they’re like a courier service.”

“They are, yes,” Reina smiled. “But a normal courier service can only do so much. Sometimes you want something moved through a checkpoint with no questions, or maybe you want to move something to a level higher than a normal service would allow you to.” Pointing through the ceiling as though pointing to the top of the tower, Reina paused. “If you have any other questions about them, maybe you can ask them themselves. You should already know where to find them.”

Nina stewed on the information as she sipped her tea. Noting that it was actually quite nice, Hala and Cross were pictured in her mind.

Smugglers, huh?

Reina had glossed over it, but anyone with common sense could determine that doing things ‘outside’ what a normal service could do was probably illegal. Thinking about the pair’s explanation before about how Reina had ‘saved’ her, she concluded that The Cloud Orchestra were probably not so clean themselves.

“So what does your Cloud Orchestra do?”

“Oh, are you interested?”

“I guess so,” Nina replied. Her pockets were empty after last night’s adventure and she didn’t have any other plan right now. Seeking out Hala and Cross was a thought that she quickly extinguished. Just the fact that they had dropped her back here was enough of an indicator on their opinion.

“We do quite a lot,” Reina smiled. “Courier work is also included, but we do other odd jobs too. We have a rather diverse team, as you have probably realised already. We aren’t a branch though. This is the entire group, right here.”

“You run errands?” Nina asked. Reina had usually kept her cards close, but this description was beyond vague. According to this description, they did pretty much anything.

Finishing her tea, Reina placed the cup on the table before looking up.

“The Cloud Orchestra is less about the things we do, and more about the places we do them. It’s true that Dari Corp can move a package from JE-22 to JT-12,” Reina paused as she crossed her arms.

“But we can move a package from JE-22 to your home on Caecus.”