Salem awoke halfway into the night with a strange sense of forboding. Sending out bugs, he sought to alleviate the irritating feeling.
Searching the room, he found nothing different. Sending a bug out of the room, he saw the two men who had been trailing them before quietly talking.
"I should get the red-eyed one." The guy on the left said. "You get the green-eyed one."
"How about we switch halfway through?" The other one proposed. "And I'll start with the green-eyed one."
The two continued to argue.
Salem sighed silently and sent a bug up each of their legs across their backs and to their necks. Transforming them into his favorite assassination tool, he beheaded them both and recycled their bodies before they hit the ground.
Salem checked to make sure neither of the girls had awoken during his impromptu assassinations and settled back in to sleep.
....
The next morning, Salem awoke to a knocking at the door.
Salem shook Ruby awake as Alina had awoken at the same time he did.
Before opening the door, Salem recycled the black metal covering and the bed before mussing the sheets with a nanobot hand to make it seem like they had slept there.
Directing the two girls to change in the corner that would be blocked by the door, he opened it and greeted the hotel owner who had been knocking.
"What do you need?" Salem asked.
"You have two hours to vacate the room." He said, his eyes hungering for a glimpse of the girls. "Where are the two you came in with?"
Salem glanced to his right and saw the girls were putting on their coats.
"To my right." He said, gesturing.
The hotel owner seemed dissapointed when they came from the corner fully clothed.
"I hope to see you, your coin, and your girls again." The hotel owner said and left.
"MY girls?" Salem muttered. "Why does he think they belong to me, like objects?"
Something about this entire world seemed off.
Alina heard his muttering and gave him a hug.
"That's just how some people think." She said. "But you don't think that way, so it shouldn't matter what he thinks."
Salem looked at her strangely. "That didn't exactly make sense." He said.
She shrugged. "It made more sense in my head than when I said it aloud."
"Fair enough." Salem chuckled. "Let's go and explore."
They left the building and wandered aimlessly for a while before coming across a shop that piqued Ruby's and Salem's interest.
It was a mechanic shop that sold little trinkets that behaved like a learning A.I. from Salem's previous life.
Ruby was going to ask to buy one when she saw Salem's look as he picked one up and decided against asking for one.
"I think you could make one better." Ruby said.
"I could certainly make them with more volatile learning algorithms." Salem said. "But that can be argued to be both better and worse at once."
Ruby had no clue what that meant so she played along and left the shop with him, making a mental note to ask him about it later.
As they continued exploring, Salem saw a man pointing a gun at a girl no older than six. Salem went to intervene, but before he could, he watched the man pull the trigger.
The crowd didn't even react to the body. People were clearly alarmed by the gunshot, but had no qualms stepping ovet the dead body of a young child.
As the three of them watched, the man walked towards the corpse of the little girl as he unbuckled his belt.