Only a Game

Room 5

Inej shivered as a gust of wind hit her. She pulled the sleeves of her sweater down further, covering her fingers, and peered below at the figure in billowing red.

"You okay up there?" Nina shouted up, her hands cupped around her mouth. The wind was blowing her brown hair around her face, and Nina had been repeatedly pushing it away for the better part of an hour.

"I'm fine. Are you sure you don't want to come up here? I could find a less treacherous route," Inej suggested.

"And get even colder? Yeah, no thank you."

A smile crept onto Inej's face. She'd missed Nina and their talks. For all their differences, she truly considered Nina to be her dearest friend, the one who probably understood her best. Inej leapt to another roof, softening her knees to take the impact.

Inej surveyed the brick structure on her right. Some sort of shed, maybe? She looked over the side and signaled to Nina that she was fine and needed to check something out. Hand signals were commonly used among the Dregs, particularly on jobs.

Inej jangled the lock on the door. It was relatively uncomplicated—Kaz could have cracked it in half the time it would take her. She pushed her braid aside and plucked out the lock picks she kept in her side pocket, slipping them into the lock.

After a solid three minutes of fumbling with the lock, a satisfying click sounded and she creaked the door open, the knife Kaz had lent her at the ready.

The brick room was bigger than she expected and when she stepped in, the first thing she noticed was the smell.

Inej's breathing turned to rasps, her hand slipping from the knob and falling to her side, limp. A second later, she dropped to the floor. The scent of the Peacock's perfume enveloped her, trapping her in a cocoon.

----

Wylan peered through the glass of the shop. It looked to be owned by some sort of alchemist, but there was no one inside, as far as he could tell.

"Do we just take what we want?" Jesper asked, leaning against the brick wall of the store, unconsciously stroking his revolvers.

"I don't have any money to leave. But by the looks of this place, nobody's gonna miss the equipment," Wylan answered.

Jesper pushed off the wall and knocked on the door, waiting a few moments to see if anyone would open up. He shook his head and tried the knob. As soon as Jesper's hand touched it, the door swung open and banged on the side of the wall, leaving a sizable dent.

"Oops?"

Wylan took a step through the threshold tentatively, almost expecting something to push him back out. He felt Jesper grab his hand and looked back to give him a small smile.

"Okay, let's get what we need and get out of here. I don't like the feeling of this place," Jesper started rifling through the shelves on the wall, taking occasional glances at the list he'd created with Wylan's instructions.

"Are you gonna keep staring at me, Wy, or are you going to help me look?"

Wylan felt his cheeks heat up and he turned away from the smirk displayed on Jesper's turned face. He grabbed a bottle of acid and swished it around in the glass.

"Have you both found what you're looking for?"

Wylan whirled around, almost dropping the bottle he was grasping. Jesper had his revolvers ready in his hands.

"What's wrong, boys? You look as if you've seen a ghost," an old woman dressed completely in black smiled at them from behind the front counter.

"Do you own this shop?" Wylan asked hesitantly.