About forty-five minutes passed while Colette was in the station, searching as far as her mind could take her with her mirage ability. She saw different things, the interesting landscape of the area from above, the security personnel and other organizers at the square all at work. She saw various people scanning the vicinity with their gear for anything suspicious and wondered why they didn't notice the bomb that would go off. She remembered Mercedes telling her of supernatural things that existed in the world, but she never said more than that.
"Haah!" Colette sighed. She raised her head and opened her eyes for the first time in almost an hour to see people roaming the station. She had positioned herself in a sleeping posture, her head down on her folded arms which rested on her laps while she sat, looking through the present. She brought out her phone to check the time and saw it was 1:27pm. 'I need to get a watch as well now it seems,' she thought to herself. Her seemingly checking the time more often than she'll normally do seemed to have made it a necessity for her to get one. She stood up from the bench and headed out of the station, feeling tired. She boarded a cab and headed straight to the restaurant.
Fee hours passed and Mercedes found herself quite busy in the hospital. She had already done a call run with the ambulance team to an accident site where a woman fell down a staircase, carrying out the emergency procedure before prepping the victim for transport, she also had to be present in the OT because the patient needed immediate surgery. She was done at 6:06pm in the evening, looking a bit fatigued but still with some vigour, afterall she knew what complex things she had to pull of that day, or she would spend days on end at the hospital, working – if she didn't prevent tragedy, that is. She freshened up and within thirty minutes was ready to leave the restaurant. She left her Mercedes Benz parked in the hospital's carpark and took a taxi to the dealership cum mechanic workshop where her mechanic worked.
It was 6:45 on her phone when she checked the time after she arrived the shop. There were old model cars parked infront of the place – Volkswagen Beetles and some old model Firs mistake were more. She went into the shop.
"Lyre!" Mercedes called out the name of the mechanic .
"Hey there Mercedes, what's up now, got a problem with the car just now?" The mechanic replied. He was working at the engine compartment of a car when Mercedes called out his name. "Just a moment," he said as he withdrew from the car and picked up a towel from a bench nearby to clean his greasy hands before heading to Mercedes.
"What brings you here today eh, thought you travelled or something for the holiday."
"Aah, I always have work to do at the hospital, and I also just got another work to finish today, so you see, no time to relax," Mercedes said while smiling at him.
"Well take care then, I reckon a good rest will do you some good, especially cus of your work you know," he said.
"Hmnm, maybe if things go well, I'll take a leave off from work for maybe two weeks, drive around till the car breaks down and bring it here to be fixed so you can drive it around when you finish the work like you own it." Both of them laughed.
"Speaking of the car, where is it?"
"Oh, I didn't come with it, I actually came for something else," Mercedes said.
"Oh? What could that be?" Lyre asked as he folded his arms.
"Came to get an oldie."
"An oldie?" He asked as he strained his face.
"An old car with no satellite connections or digital functions, preferably analog."
"Ooh, are you asking for a nice vintage here? What happened to the Benz?" Lyre asked, looking rather amused. "And why would you need a vintage eh?"
"Well, for…just felt like getting one, kinda loving em these days you know," Mercedes said with a half smile. She had to atleast put some efforts in her persuasion because she knew Lyre liked vintage cars, and didn't want to give a bad impression. Lyre led her out of the workshop to the front yard where various cars were parked while they continued their discussions. Some of the cars had For Sale signs written on small plastic boards placed on them, while others were just run-down vehicles parked outside. Mercedes was led around the vehicles for sale, and there were barely any road-worthy vehicles there. She could only make out two Volkswagen Beetles and an old Ford Mustang which wee in manageable conditions, but the others were simply rundown vehicles. She spotted an old Chevrolet Camaro and went over to it. The paint had worn off, revealing patchy gradients of ash and black all over, and had a crack on its wind shield. Mercedes checked the time on her watch and saw it was now past seven.
"Ok Lyre I'm gonna take this one," she said.
"Hmm, just like that eh?" Lyre replied.
"Yep, wasn't really specific on what I needed, and this one looks like it'll do, even if it looks run down…does it still work?"
"Oh tea…hey Jones! Get the key to the Camaro 67'," Lyre shouted towards his workshop.
"It's a Chevrolet alright," Mercedes said.
"Yea it is," Lyre replied, "and it's one of the best vintages to come out of them, and still looks like the modern version a great deal!"
"Hmnm," Mercedes hummed. A boy in his late teens approached moments later with a key and handed it to Lyre, before heading back to the shop.
"Let's start her up," Lyre said. He opened the car and dusted the driver's seat before sitting in it, then started the engine. It took three trials for the car to start, and it did so with quite the blast – both exhausts behind the car wildly firing soot and making loud noticed, before settling to a lesser noise. He got out of the car while it was still on and headed over to Mercedes, who thrust some bills to his chest. Lyre smiled as he took the bills and counted them, whistling as he finished.
"That's a lot yo," he said while staring at her with eyes wide open. Mercedes took the keys from him and headed to the car.
"I'll come get the paperwork later," she said.
"No worries, they're in the car, just wait, lemme sign the receipt, wouldn't want you running into the cops," Lyre said.
"Hmnm," Mercedes grinned to herself, that was exactly what she planned on doing. "Alright then be fast, I've got to be somewhere now."
Lyre jugged into the workshop and picked up the invoice book on a cupboard. He filled the information on a slip and rushed back out to meet Mercedes, who sighed and filled her name where she was supposed to, and collected the slip from him and put it in the glove compartment in the dashboard, before driving out of the workshop and into the sunset.
Colette found herself once again helping out with her family attending to the guests who had booked the reservation, but every now and again was getting lost in her thoughts. Clement kept tapping her on the counter to concentrate, and he had to do most of the duty attending to the guests because of his sister's state.
"Yo sis, you sure aren't well, why not go relax in the changing room, I'll manage here," he said to her. Colette stared at Clement, and then looked away.
"No worries, I'm just thinking of stuff that's going to happen…or that may not…" She wandered away again.
"Grr, you really are hopeless, Clement said as he went back to work. Colette had been constantly thinking of what Mercedes was doing, and also trying to think of a better solution to the problem at hand. She and Mercedes had seen they couldn't stop the bomb, so they had sought to make sure people evacuated the square before it went off, with only moments to the new year, but Colette wondered why Mercedes didn't plan to do make such a catastrophe few hours before the gathering, afterall, the security would then be tighter. 'Perhaps no time to think of a better plan, or what could it be? It first sounded like she wanted to die in the crash, but that was just me mistaken…she planned to survive, and that part of the night provided her with good cover,' Colette thought to herself. She also wondered how the detonation would occur given the man she had aged up previously wasn't with the detonator, but then, the woman with him was absent at the time of the explosion. 'Perhaps she was with the detonator,' Colette thought to herself. But it all just wasn't making enough sense to her.
Soon it was 9:00pm, and just as Colette expected, Mia released her and Clement to go early to the square, much to Clement's amusement, given Colette had hinted earlier in the day that their mother was going to release them early.
"Haah, a long tough night ahead," Colette said to herself as she left the changing room, ready to hit the road with Clement.