The Red Nights

Lina and Matteo prepared to leave the office. After he revealed her the date the army of undeads would come, she just commented a little bit and changed the subject. She convinced him to help finishing all the work she had to do on that day, that is why they finished earlier than her usual.

In fact this work was concerning him a little bit because it was about the refugees. Knowing that their hometowns were crossing a crisis path, she was pretty sure that even if the war would end up in the upcoming days they might not be able to go back up the slope as the town would be too much damaged and they might lose many of their relatives who stayed there to fight .

She then decided that it would be preferable to make Stainfall their new home by offering them the lifestyle they couldn't find in their previous hometowns. Even though it could be considered that the city she was leading was far in a good condition compared to the others, they were not doing as well as it could be thought . The remaining population after the night of the tragedy was not enough to rebuild the city, at least they only had the necessary resources to survive ; there was an hospital which was still working with the minimum of staffers needed, there were some farms where they could find enough food to satisfy all Stainfall's population and even more than that and some people who were struggling to ensure that there was no problem in the other domains .

However to say the truth, there were many lacks and in order to fill these gaps, Lina was working to have the help of the refugees. She started her researches to collect the competencies of any single of them and after finishing that she intended to affect each of them at their corresponding jobs.

There were too many refugees they had to collect their data so that morning she just had the time to initiate the first part of her plan with the few files she had with the help of Matteo . They achieved to find a corresponding job for each them and they even had the time to redact and send to them letters in which they asked them if they would like to the work they had been offered .

" Do you think they will accept it ? " Matteo asked to Lina while she was arranging the remaining files for the last time before she left. She stood up after she finished , picked up her bag " Why not, there is no reason to refuse such work proposition , and if they want to refuse they would not have the choice, they must know that we will not continue to feed them for free , they will have to get money if they want to have some food in their plates "

" I don't talk about that " Matteo said " do you think they will accept to stay living here ? "

Lina gazed at him " Yes I do , before they were living in unsafe place where they were all times scared to be killed or r.a.p.ed. They were living in a constant danger since that sinister night , I think this town is the only place they could somehow find peace and security , their hometowns are linked with too many bad souvenirs " she said " I cannot promise them that they will obtain the life they used to live before the tragedy, however they can begin a new one " .

Matteo became gloomy " You are talking as if there was no probability for us and this city to be destroyed the next week ". " Until now you can't still believe in us , right? " Lina directly asked him.

Matteo stuttered " no ... I mean ... it is not like I don't trust you... that is not what I wanted to say ... " , she lifted her hand to hold him on " Let me tell you something, when the three of us are on something we rarely fail . Thanks to whom do you this city is so safe ? Natasha and I contributed greatly to make his job less difficult without us he would have fought endlessly . And I repeat just the three of us we did it while entire cities failed. So for god sake get faith in us , we will definitely protect this town once again. "

They left the office and Lina got Matteo a drive to Natasha's house, she told him that she would come for the reunion after she passed by her home. So she headed back and there she just took a shower and changed her clothes before she left her house . On the way she passed by Saidu's restaurant, her favorite but also one of the four restaurants in the city which were still opened.

" Hi chief " she saluted Mr. Saidu the owner of the restaurant. " Hey Miss Lina, how are you? " He greeted her as well " Still in love with our hero ? "

" Firstly I'm the one true city hero , secondly yes I do still love him he is too hot and thirdly my job became a little too exhausting " Lina responded. What made the chief laugh as loudly as it would be possible for a human " still so funny. So I will tell you too that I'm the hottest guy in here no matter what my wife says " , they both started laughing together and it passed several seconds before they calmed down.

" Well so what do you want today? Since you don't like eating the same foods everyday it's almost impossible to predict what you would order " Saidu asked.

Lina smiled " before telling you I would want to discuss about something ". She then began to tell him about her idea of offering jobs to refugees in order to integrate them well into their society and also to permit the reopening of many abandoned businesses. She also explained to him that she had already started the investigation of the competencies of each of them and in the domain of catering she had already found two . So she asked whether it would be for him to help them getting their marks .

The chief took a moment to think and he asked " so you are asking to help my future rivals getting their marks in the field of catering, huh ? " . " Is it too pretentious of me ?" Lina asked with a little voice , as she thought it was too much to tell him to help them. However Saidu smiled and shook his head " not at all, it is in the opposite a very idea to let them inherit the old businesses which remained closed until now, so of course I will gladly help them . And anyway I know that no matter what happens this restaurant of mine will remain your favorite one "

" You're right, no matter what you will always be my favorite cook " Lina said joyfully, she then ordered a plate of Maafe for four people to take away and borrowed it to Natasha's house.

When she arrived, Matteo was in the living room and was reading, he told her that Natasha was taking a shower upstairs and he added " She also ordered me , if you came before she finished, to not let you go up " .

" Are you even able to stop me if intended to go up ? " Lina asked provocatively. Matteo gazed at her a little while and sighed " No I don't think I could stop you so do as you please " , she smiled , laid the food down on the table and discreetly headed up when Jamal was entering in the house. He found Matteo on the sofa but no one else .

" Where are the others? " he firstly asked, but the boy did not respond to him , he just lifted his finger up as to tell him to hold on . So Jamal waited and few seconds later they heard a very loud scream from upstairs followed by " What the hell are you doing here !!? Stop pulling on my towel ! " , they heard loud steps which was meaning that someone was running they were followed by the loud sounds of a door which had been closed and locked furiously. What left Jamal a bit confused.

Few minutes later the women were going down the stairs they came to join the guys in the living room . Natasha was red of anger while behind her Lina was smiling happily like a little girl of 8 years who had succeeded to make a joke to someone older than her. Natasha stopped before Matteo and crossed her arms still angry " I told you to stop her when she comes " .

" And I tried, I tried my best to stop her, but she was just too strong for me " Matteo tried to defend himself .

Natasha stared at him for a while and moved to go sitting in the other side of the room still furious. Jamal turned to Lina who was still smiling like nothing happened , he sighed, moved to the kitchen and came back with plates , forks and spoons. " Anyway, let's eat before starting to talk about why we came today, OK ? " , as no one objected, he gave out the plates to everyone and opened the box which contained the food.

Natasha smelled the food smell and asked Lina " Saidu's Maafe? " who just nodded to confirm it " Okay you win, I forgive you for this time " she added before she started to fill her plate . Matteo shyly raised his hand and asked " what is a Maafe? "

" It is also known as groundnut stew , a typical African food. Try it , I promise it is very delicious " Jamal responded , " like all what chief Saidu cooks " Natasha and Lina repeated together .

So they took their time eating before Lina exposed to them her plan to win the war against the mysterious shadow's army. Once they all finished, she started by telling them when the army should come, of course she didn't just give them the date . She started by the beginning, how they proceeded with Matteo's power to obtain the answers until the end .

When she finished everyone was quiet for a while as they were surely stunned by the short time they had , then Jamal began by " You never told me that you knew how to hypnotize someone ?" . Lina smiled " a woman never reveals all her secrets ".

" So what do you think we should do, the time we have is a bit too short, right? Do you think you will have the time to make up your plan before that? " He asked and she responded directly " Yeah I think it would be tough but we will definitely have the time to make it , let me explain it to all of you "