Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2469

Chapter 2469 World of Abundance

The next morning, Sunny parked his PTV in front of Effie's home in a foul mood. She was standing there with a brown paper bag in her hand, holding the umbrella with the other and yawning. When he opened the door, she climbed in and gave him a reproachful look.

"You're late."

Sunny cursed under his breath.

"Do you know what I had to do on the way here?"

Effie shrugged.

"No idea. Why?"

Sunny gave the steering wheel of the PTV an annoyed push.

"I had to refuel this piece of junk! Again!"

She stared at him in shock.

"What? No way. These things need to be refueled daily?"

He nodded a few times.

"That's what I'm saying! That pungent, flammable fuel? Turns out, they burn through it faster than I burn through essence!"

Effie blinked a couple of times, then shook her head and put on her seatbelt.

"No, but really... daily? What a hassle."

Sunny was inclined to agree.

As they drove to their destination, Effie explained what she managed to salvage from her counterpart's memory last evening. Most of it had to do with police procedures and protocols they had to follow — paperwork, briefing the press, coordinating with other teams, and so on.

"Actually, I already received a phone call from the Captain. There is going to be a press conference tomorrow afternoon, where I am supposed to make a statement to answer a few questions. The journalists are dying to know about the Nihilist and his latest victim — obviously, they are also dying to castigate the Police Department and lament the lack of progress in catching him. I'm the designated punching bag, I guess."

Sunny smiled faintly.

"That should be nothing new for you, though? You've been the propaganda machine's favorite ever since the Forgotten Shore. Remember those posters of you they plastered all around NQSC? The first batch, I mean…"

Effie stared at him for a few moments, then laughed.

"Oh, gods! You saw those? Wow… made an impression, did I?"

Well, her armor certainly did...

Sunny scoffed.

"Some of them took entire facades of huge buildings. You were hard to miss."

She grinned and looked into the window, at the colorful billboards decorating the buildings of Mirage City. They were propaganda posters, as well… only of a different, far more subtle kind. Instead of the government pushing a false narrative onto its citizens to control the population, these were made by private enterprises to manipulate people into consuming their goods.

It was hard to tell which was more invasive. "It is both wonderful and sinister, don't you think?"

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

She pointed to the city outside the window.

"This world… a world of abundance. Of prosperity so extreme and staggering that it has become a problem in and of itself. A world that is based on endless growth, and therefore can never allow itself to slow down — even a little, even for a brief moment, no matter if there is still a reason to rush forward or not."

Sunny remained silent for a few moments, then shrugged.

"To be honest, I am not very familiar with how the world was before the Dark Times. I only know the romantic version of it — the great golden age of humanity before all the problems started, and all that. A lost era of peace and prosperity. People usually talk about this time as some kind of a lost paradise."

Effie smiled.

"I guess it was, for a while. As close to a paradise as we have ever come."

She sighed.

"Of course, the construction of that paradise was financed by borrowing from the future, which ended up causing all those problems to begin with, when the time to pay up arrived. Still… I like it here."

She opened her paper bag and pulled out a small carton painted in brown and white.

"Do you know what this is?"

Sunny almost flinched. That tone, that glint in her eyes — he knew it all too well! It was the look of insatiable avarice and utter obsession… which Sunny himself wore when looking at soul shards and piles of treasure.

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