Page 30 of Solo Stan
“CYPHR’s got me, a straight B-minus student, doing homework for fun on a Friday night,” Elias mused.
Dakarai glanced at Elias from the corner of his eye. “Focus.”
Clearing his throat and rolling his shoulders, Elias examinedthe clue for a moment. Running his finger down the left side of the words, he noticed the first letter of each line. “Does ‘Dalton’ mean anything to you?”
Dakarai lit up. “The Dalton is a hotel maybe five minutes away where you can see the whole city from the rooftop,” he said. “We’d have to walk fast, but we can probably make it within the ten minutes. Want to go?”
Hereallydid.
15
Kai
9:18 p.m.
Kai’s shins burned as he and Elias speed-walked through the warehouse district of the city, past the converted industrial buildings. They had stark, angular designs with square brick exteriors and tall windows. The streetlights cast an eerie light on the building facades, giving them a haunting quality. Despite their harsh appearance, however, a romantic radiance emanated from a number of the windows.
Keeping his eye on the clock, Kai led them through the square, Elias quietly in tow. The hotel was only a few blocks from the theater and the restaurant where they’d eaten. Finally, they arrived, panting, desperate to get into the air-conditioning.
Elias opened his mouth to speak as he passed Kai, but Kai quickly put up a finger to silence him. “Whatever joke you’re going to make about me taking you to a hotel, just save it. It’s not going to be funny, and I’m not going to laugh.”
Surprised, Elias snorted. “Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel special,” he said in an exaggerated Southern accent.
“Are you mocking me?”
“Yes.”
“Just get inside,” Kai urged, shooing Elias along.
A small group resembling the same sort of dejected and aimless concertgoers that had been left outside the Heritage Playhouse earlier crowded around one of the check-in desks. After a brief exchange with the concierge, the group hurriedly headed toward the elevator as Elias and Kai approached the counter.
“CYPHR!” Elias barked at the concierge while Kai massaged his sore legs.
The concierge recoiled slightly. “Do you have a reservation?” he asked. Noticing their confusion, he cleared his throat and rephrased. “Under what name is your reservation?”
Kai turned to Elias. “We were supposed to name him to get to the top. Why didn’t that work?”
“Naming me to get to the top,” Elias murmured to himself, over and over again like a mantra, until suddenly his eyes widened and shone with excitement. “What’s CYPHR’s real name?” he practically yelled.
“Christopher Duke Kenney?”
The employee gave a small smile, then handed Kai a key card and pointed to the same elevator where the last group had gone.
Clearly proud of himself, Elias skated past Kai with his chin held high. Kai followed Elias into the elevator and rolled his eyes, but there was no malice behind it. The corner of his lip twitched with amusement he was reluctant to fully show.
Elias rested against the stainless-steel wall of the elevator, his arms crossed indignantly over his chest. “Are you going to scan the card, or do you just want to stand here and stare at each other until our time runs down?” he asked, one of his smug little dimples poking out.
“Maybe I just wanted to be in the elevator with you,” Kai said,mocking Elias’s accent. He stretched across Elias to reach the elevator controls with the card. Number nine lit up, and the elevator jerked into motion. Kai held Elias’s gaze as he leaned against the wall as well, their matched eagerness to get to the top filling the small space. There was only about a minute and thirty seconds to spare and no way to make the elevator go any faster.
Despite wanting to bolt from the elevator when it got to the ninth floor, Kai let Elias go first.
He watched as Elias fumbled through his phone looking for The Kindness Project app, then aimed his front-facing camera at the both of them, adjusting it to capture as much of the sky above them as possible as well. Kai went to put an arm around Elias’s shoulder but thought better of it—it felt too familiar, too friendly. He reached for the waist instead, but that didn’t feel right, either, so he ended up stuffing his free hand in his pocket. They both tilted their heads back, gazed upward, andclick.
Relief instantly set in when they were greeted in the app by a small envelope icon that bounced before opening to reveal a single number:1.
“Hm, a zero and now a one. What does it mean?” Kai wondered aloud.
“Is it a point system?” Elias asked. “I didn’t know we were getting graded on this.”
