"You mean the ghost girl you suspect is Adele's deceased elder sister?"
"Yeah. She's appeared in a few of my hallucinations and for the first time ever, I actually heard her voice. She asked me how long I'd keep her waiting."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not entirely certain of that either."
"You secretly just want to get in her ghost pants."
"Absolutely not. She oozes freaky psycho vibes. I've been trying to ignore her existence to the best of my abilities since this all started."
"Yet you can't get your mind off of her I bet."
"Are you jealous of her or something?"
"I'm not. Just slightly annoyed."
"That would be jealousy, right?"
"It's not."
"Are you in denial?"
"You think too highly of yourself. You're my employee, it will be troubling for me if your thoughts are diverted from work-related concerns."
"Anyway, forget about the unrelated things for now. We're far away from home so just push thoughts of things like ghost girls to the back of your mind. You can think about those sorts of things when we finish the job we came here to accomplish."
"It would be great if things worked out that way, but even when on a plane far from the origin of everything, weird things are still happening. It doesn't seem like there's any simple way for me to easily escape this."
"I don't care. Just leave it for later. We should hurry up and leave now."
She grabbed my hand and pulled me along out of the airport terminal. We took a shuttle bus which took us to the five-star hotel the pilot mentioned earlier and checked in. When we arrived at our room, we discovered the staff had already delivered our luggage from the plane as a courtesy for our troubles. They were really diligent in accommodating us and trying to placate all the passengers for the little, or should I say, big ass crisis on the plane. Thankfully my laptop was also delivered with our luggage. I'd completely forgotten about it due to the earlier commotion. It was a relief that it had a tag with my information attached to it.
They really worked their asses off to get all this done so quickly. After all, the negative publicity would be terrible for the airline. They were likely trying to downplay it by getting those involved to stay hush on the matter. Even if they were provided with the antivenom immediately, lawsuits wouldn't be out of the question for those who were actually bitten by the snakes.
Once the two of us were settled in, we called for room service and were brought overly lavish meals free of charge all at the expense of the airline. We were really treated like kings and queens.
Naturally, we stuffed ourselves and didn't hold back at all. Both of us were misers to a certain degree, so we definitely weren't chivalrous enough to hold ourselves back when it came to a free meal. Although, I was still surprised by how much she ate.
"Val, where are you fitting all that?"
"My metabolism is significantly higher than normal as a result of my former profession. I can last for long periods of time on the bare minimum, but naturally I'll eat as much as possible when given the opportunity to store up for a long haul."
"Essentially, what you're trying to emphasize to me is no matter how much you eat, you won't get fat?"
"If that's how you want to take it, I can't say you're wrong."
"You always used to eat so little when we were dating before though."
"Well, guys like girls who are mindful of how much they eat, right? Back then I could tell you were more on the shallower side and you'd find it unattractive, so for the sake of my objective, I fit my character to the role. You're a lot different from before and stuff like that doesn't really bother you anymore, right?"
"I can't really say you're wrong. No matter how much you eat, you're still the same Val at the end of the day."
"Exactly! Now that I don't need to hold back, why should I?"
After she said that, she picked up the remote from the desk at the side of the bed and turned on the television. The first thing that came on was the local news. To my shock, the headline read, "Armed terrorist group thwarted through the accidental release of snakes on a plane." I took a deep breath in and quelled the urge I had to retort.
"Val, what does that headline read?"
"It's exactly what you think it reads."
My jaw nearly dropped to the ground in disbelief when I understood it wasn't just my overly active imagination.
"Twelve armed terrorists were found dead today on a plane after being bitten in several locations across their body. The bites were from deadly poisonous snakes that a passenger, now under arrest and being interrogated by local police, had bribed a worker to load onto the plane."
"The worker claims he was completely unaware of the contents of the suspicious package and didn't think it would be something outrageous like deadly poisonous snakes. He stated he received quite a hefty sum and thought it would be an easy way to make some fast cash. The worker has been fired despite the snakes inadvertently saving all the passenger's lives after they were accidentally released and killed the armed terrorist group who'd found a method to bypass airport security's thorough screening checks."
Thorough my ass! How the hell do you let an armed terrorist group of twelve board a plane without anybody being the wiser! Are you bloody daft woman! What the hell is this bullshit propaganda and control over the media? What about the innocent people who were actually bitten by the damned snakes?
Are they trying to use this as damage control to say, thanks to the snakes, your lives were saved? We should be grateful for your damned corrupt employee who let them on? You still let freaking terrorists on board! Don't try to downplay this with a crappy story about how some heroic snakes and a corrupt employee saved our lives.
"Is it okay for me to be annoyed right now?"
"Well, I suppose it's fine to be annoyed with how they're running the story, Mr. Genovese."
"You don't seem upset or surprised about this at all Val."
"I don't? What are you talking about? I'm very surprised."
"Your composure when hearing about terrorists on the plane is abnormal."
"Well, it comes with the job."
"Which one?"
"Both."
"You weren't involved in this, were you?"
"Me? Of course not." She wore a rather mysterious smile that told me otherwise.