Hell Hath No Fury - Book One

Prison Break

The Scorned Woman had dropped anchor behind the cover of a group of small rocky islands a few miles off the port of Drokian Lorest, the unofficial capital of Safriti that was named after its founder. This port city served as a base for many Baethan officials of both diplomatic, political, and military arenas. The person who acted as the delegate for Safriti when doing business with The Center, Kirion Lorest, lived in Drokian and he was the person that was of most interest to them. Inside his office would be logs of his meetings, letters to and from The Center, and important documents that would most certainly be of use to them going forward.

The manifests they had picked up were not easy to piece together. There were patterns, sure, but nothing that could be definitively pointed to as proof of anything. Names that appeared over and over could have just been crews following a certain route. If the information they sought was not retrieved, it wasn't the end of the world. Combined with several of the other logs and manifests other pirates would find they could piece together an idea of what The Center was working with. But this information retrieval mission would give them a major advantage against The Center and it was their top priority to see it completed.

It was going to be a risky mission, where their lives would be on the line more so than they had been at any other point in the journey. The complex where Kirion lived and worked was massive. Out of the many structures within the complex, his office was the largest one and also the largest building in all of Safriti which would make navigating the building difficult. Not only did Kirion base his operations out of that complex, but many other important political figures in the region did also too. Theo and Cooker would be navigating a maze of dangers trying to infiltrate one of the most important offices in all of Efriti. They would have no backup, just Theo and Cooker with a few crew members keeping a lookout outside the complex to know if things went awry.

Cooker hadn't slept. She had crawled out of the bed and left Tuni and Theo to cuddle close to each other in her absence. Dawn was about to break out over the horizon and the deck was empty, most everyone had shuffled off to bed once the anchor had been dropped. She was nervous, more nervous than she had been in several lengths. Usually, when big shit happened they had a lot more people involved. This time, it was all going to be riding on her.

Theo was good at lock picking, she could give the average thief a run for their money, but Cooker was the expert. The locks and obstructions they would face in the complex would be harder than any of the security they had encountered on the journey there, which meant the success of this mission was going to fall on Cooker's ability to open what needed to be opened. Which was fine, it was totally fine; Cooker could absolutely work well under pressure. Except at the thought of said pressure, she felt like she was going to keel over and throw up. Her nerves had been frazzled as of late and when her body and mind were sober like it was then, the effects of those nerves were worsened.

Cooker was staring at the rising sun, legs crisscrossed atop of a crate on deck. She was staying on deck as accountability for herself. If she were to go to her own room or the library, where she would be alone, Cooker would no longer be sober. It was taking everything in her power not to just go to her room and drink up the bottle of rum that was under her bed. Or take some loli. Or really, do anything to get her feelings under control. There was a constant cloud of impending doom that was over her and that didn't bode well for the mission. Thoughts of Avery, Xyra, Theo, Uncilo, the pirate war, her brother, and the upcoming rebellion were always swirling around and it took a great many substances to get her to a point where she was relaxed, where everything was out of mind. She craved that feeling of relaxation, her body urging her to let go of the shackles that came with not being drunk or high all of the time.

But alas, Cooker was about to embark on a heist, in which Theo was counting on her, which meant that she couldn't go to her room to drink, snort, or smoke. But her hands were shaking and her stomach was in knots and she felt like ripping what little hair she had out of her skull. Her brain was taunting her, telling her that she needed substances. Telling her that the mission would fail without it. She was not good enough to do it by herself.