“Let’s Pretend”
Olga’s younger and more receptive sister- “brain fingerprinting”
- treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods
- blue-gray vest with silvery buttons
- even slightly out of the ordinary
Tune in next time part 464 Click Here for Earlier Installments
“Let’s pretend you do need to tell me how dangerous it is,” I grumbled. “I’m tired of riddles, and I’m tired of Jim’s bullshit. I don’t think I actually want him to be devoured by yetis, but maybe if I just don’t have to know one way or the other…”
“So now they’re real yeti?” Doctor Nanna pursed her lips into a duckbilled sneer.
“Cannibal furries, then. I don’t even care anymore. Are they the source of the danger? They only seemed interested in Jim.”
“They are the foot soldiers of Oksana, who is Olga’s younger and more receptive sister.”
I shook my head. “Olga’s the youngest.” And, from personal experience I was sure she set the bar impossibly high for receptivity.
Doctor Nanna shook her head too, mockingly. “Not that Olga. The one who pushed the cart in the room with all the books back at the Academy.”
A chill ran down my spine. There was a reason no one from the Academy ever utters the word “librarian” aloud, and that reason is Olga. She could tell which parts of a book a student had skipped over or misunderstood because, she claimed, our minds left smudgy traces among the words, and this “brain fingerprinting” told her what everyone was reading about, and by extension what everyone was plotting.
“What does Oksana want?” I asked.
“We think she’s throwing a party, and Jim has been forcibly invited. But you must remember that Oksana treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods, and that sooner or later the gavel falls for all of them. Jim knows things. We can’t let him be transferred to the highest bidder.” She gave me a warmer look, but only for a moment. “We’ve already lost too much time. Now, go put on your mountaineering uniform, the one with the blue-gray vest with silvery buttons, and recruit your team without alerting them that this is anything even slightly out of the ordinary.”
bonus points for using them in order