About two weeks later, in a motel at Accra, the capital of Ghana, a country in the west on the African coast and neighbor to his home country, being on the west of the later, Lucas could be seen coming out of the shower while feeling some negative emotions as demonstrated by the scowl on his face.
While there might be many different reasons for the face he was making, like the hygiene not being the best in the room he rented and even worse in the bathroom, preventing him from really enjoying his shower in spite of the condition of his body, that was not really likely.
First of all, he was in a hurry to get home and make arrangements and secondly, his life was on a countdown so he couldn't relax.
The only possible explanation then was if he, by some means, managed to empirically observe the approaching fatality he must struggle against to keep his life.
Looking around the bathroom, the balance on the ground was apparently the most obvious object that could have served that purpose.
After all, he used to look normal, not packed with muscles nor burly but at least he had enough flesh on the bones, weighing more than 70 kg, not like now when he looked like he grew up starving.
F*ck, he had a good mother that would have done anything to make him have a full stomach and not go hungry. If not, why would he want to help his family so much before leaving and trying to survive instead of immediately starting to work on eliminating the Damocles sword above his head?
So, he must have used the balance in the previous stops of his journey after he rejoined civilization and observed his unstoppable descent into the abyss to be so negatively affected by the results.
The room he was occupying was simple, not really big with a bed, a desk and an armchair. As said previously, the hygiene was average or below, but since going to a five stars hotel would have defeated his goal of staying as low-key as a dead person should be, he could only make do with the shabby lodging even if he now had the means for better.
The said means were precisely in the bags on the bed. There were two square duffel bags with the pay for his job in the desert. They were the way he asked, with different currencies. To avoid troubles, everything inside was covered by him using aluminum foil.
Beside them, there was a backpack with some clothes he bought to replace his ugly and dirty desert outfits and a laptop to do some research on the net and help in planning.
Speaking of his pay, after he had taken the second objective of the mission, the hostage Samantha Monroe, to the meeting point, he had smoothly exchanged her with the money with no flying device in the vicinity as he previously demanded.
After all, before cutting the communication with his employers, he had shown them the portable rocket launcher he took from the terrorists supplies. That subtle threat certainly contributed to their honesty during the conclusion of the deal.
After checking the payment and finding that his requirements have been met, quite thoughtfully at that since the bills numbers were irregular irrespective of the currency, he had watched them leave after reassuring the girl by letting her talk to someone, her father most probably.
He had then driven the car generously sponsored by the late terrorists and went north at full throttle.
Hours later, when the night was advanced enough, he stopped, changed his clothes to another set he took from the town, put the money in a new cloth bag and added a map on top.
Actually, everything he was taking with himself was taken from the terrorists, even the handgun that he was now putting in his belt, a 9 mm with a suppressor, was a different one he took from the supplies in the town.
He had wanted to avoid anything that could have been used to locate him and who knew what could have been bugged. He even checked all the bills and had been thinking about ways to rid himself of them.
Once he was done changing, taking what could be taken and abandoning what should be, he had set fire to the car and buried himself with the bag in a dune less than one hundred meters away.
He had never planned from the beginning to leave the desert with the car. As soon as he had made contact with people, he had already started planning how to lose possible trackers.
Thankfully, since he had woken up, he hadn't needed to eat or drink. While that changed once he went outside of the desert, at that time, it had allowed him to stay like that for three days before coming out and leaving with a smile of satisfaction at his counterintelligence shenanigans.
He didn't know if he had gotten the result he wanted but since he had not been trained for that he could only wing it and hope for the best.
Resuming his journey home, he had then taken many more days before coming back to civilization, granted that it was easier with a map after calculating his position with the town as a mark.
He found a place, cleaned himself, changed his clothes and became a handsome skinny guy, almost like a normal living person and not a desert ghost.
Then, not being able to take a plane since he was dead(he didn't even have his papers nor any for the matter), he put on a hat, wore sunglasses with a big fake beard and took the land transport for a few more days all the way to Accra, his last stop before home.
It was the long route, compared to going through Nigeria directly from the desert, and it was all to confuse any possible nosy individual.
Finally, last night, he took this room on the east side of the city to take a rest and make plans. After all, since he had left the desert, he had stopped enjoying the perks of the desert such as unlimited energy like a perpetual motion machine(person).