Pocket Dungeon 2, page 13
I debated bringing my crystal with me, but in the end, I thought it would be safer back in the apartment with Iris. I nodded to Yasha to indicate that she should follow me before I slowly started to creep from my room.
She followed closely behind me, and I could feel her breath on the back of my neck as we moved in slow, deliberate steps behind the back of the couch and toward the front door.
The living room was bathed in darkness, and the only light that illuminated the space was the faint glow from the light on the refrigerator a few feet away in the kitchen.
Iris was passed out on the couch, and it was the most peaceful I thought I had ever seen her. Her blonde hair was fanned out in a messy shag over the pillow at one end of the couch, and her legs were tucked up under one of the blankets.
I had to fight the urge to simply stare at her and take her in with all of her sharpened, hardened edges sanded away, but we didn’t have time for something like that.
I was torn between the idea of simply walking to the building and taking my bike, and in the end, I decided it was smartest to take my bike, because it meant we could make a hasty retreat if we had to. I wasn’t planning on needing to do it, but it was always better to be safe than sorry, and I would stick to that mindset.
Our helmets were on the island in the kitchen, and I made a quick detour to grab both of them. I was about to leave then, when something else occurred to me. I might not have wanted to take Iris with us to scope out Harper’s building, but I didn’t want her to wake in a panic, either.
I pulled a pen and a pad of paper out of one of the drawers on the island and quickly jotted down a note letting her know where we were going. I set it on the island propped up against her own helmet so she could see it easily if she woke up.
Then, with that taken care of, I made my way over to the front door and slipped outside with Yasha in tow.
Once I had the door to the apartment securely closed and locked once more, I let out a low sigh.
“Here,” I told Yasha and passed her the helmet. “We’re taking the bike.”
“Good,” she said. “I enjoy the bike. I imagine it is what flying feels like.”
A small smile danced across my face as the two of us made our way through the apartment building and toward the attached parking garage.
“So do I,” I said. “It’s part of why I wanted a motorcycle in the first place. That and I was able to fix one up for cheaper than I could buy a car. That might change soon, though. It’s not the most conducive to have three people riding on a motorcycle at one time.”
“I do not see a problem with it,” Yasha said as we turned into the garage. “We all fit on it.”
“Barely.” I grinned and pulled my helmet on over my head. I waited for Yasha to do the same before I slung one leg over my motorcycle and got settled.
A few seconds later, I felt the familiar weight of Yasha settling in behind me on the bike. She tightened her arms around my waist and pressed in close to my back.
The feeling sent a wave of heat through my body, but we didn’t have time to make good on that notion right now. If things went well, and we didn’t like, die or something as we staked out the building, then maybe we could, but for now, I had a job to do.
As soon as I was certain that Yasha was secure on the bike behind me, I revved the engine and peeled out of the garage.
The city air had chilled even further since our date earlier, and now without the brightness of the sun, the wind cut me straight to the bone. Yasha pressed herself even closer to me, which I hadn’t even thought was possible, as if she wanted to get warmer.
I should have told her to grab a coat, and I made a note to bring that up to her later. She was from a desert planet, of course she wasn’t used to grabbing coats. We would have to get her a nice one soon, but that would have to wait for a while longer.
The streets weren’t empty, despite the fact that it was nearly one in the morning, but they had cleared out some from earlier in the day, and I didn’t have any issue finding a parking spot along the sidewalk a block away from Harper’s record business.
I kicked down the bike’s kickstand and turned the engine off. I felt Yasha shifting behind me as she pulled off her helmet.
“Why did we not park closer?” she asked. “The building is that way, is it not?”
I couldn’t see where she pointed, because I was in the process of removing my own helmet, but I imagined it was in the correct direction.
“You’re right,” I told her. “But I don’t want anyone who is working at the building right now to see my bike. I also don’t want any potential security cameras to pick us up.”
“Ah, that makes much more sense,” Yasha said. “You are very wise.”
“Thanks, now come on,” I said. “Let’s get a move on.”
Yasha dismounted the bike first and slid her helmet into the compartment underneath the seat, where I placed mine as well. She smoothed out her skirt, and before we could get going, I shed my leather jacket and passed it to her.
“Here,” I said. “I should have told you to take a jacket with you before you left. You can wear mine.”
Yasha blinked at me, and her slitted pupils went wide enough to nearly swallow up all the gold in her irises.
“You will let me wear your jacket?” she asked. She said it like it was some sort of grand gesture, instead of something I thought I should have done from the get-go.
“Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re cold.”
She pulled the leather jacket on, and it dwarfed her petite frame, which was an adorable sight in and of itself. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her in my clothes.
“You are very kind,” she said. “And noble. You are always proving to me how noble you are.”
“I don’t think I’m that noble, but who am I to argue with you?” I joked. “Now let’s go.”
The air was even colder now that I was without my leather jacket, but I found that it didn’t bother me all that much as Yasha and I walked down the sidewalk in the direction of Harper’s building. The adrenaline in my body was doing wonders to keep me warm, and I could feel my heart rate picking up as we turned the corner and finally faced the record label’s building.
It didn’t look any different than it had a few hours before, but there was something about it that made it seem all that much more ominous without the sun to illuminate the scene. Maybe it was just the fact that I had some idea of the type of man Harper was, or maybe it was just because I had literally seen people leaving the building with guns earlier.
You know what, it was probably that one.
“What do we do now?” Yasha asked. “Do we head over there?”
She made a move, as if she was going to walk across the street right now, and had I not caught her sleeve and pulled her back toward me, I was afraid she would have done exactly that.
“Not quite,” I said. “Stay close to me. We need to keep an eye on the building to see if there’s anything suspicious, but we don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves. Just standing here will probably make someone curious about what we’re doing, which is the last thing we want right now.”
“I thought that the last thing we wanted was to be shot?” Yasha said, a little too loudly for my tastes. The street wasn’t nearly as busy as it had been, but it wasn’t entirely deserted, either.
“Let’s not say that so loud,” I said quickly. “But you aren’t wrong. Uh… Here. Come over here.”
I motioned for her to follow me as I gestured toward a bench that sat along the side of one of the buildings that lined our side of the street. It looked like it was some sort of bank building, and I was honestly a little surprised that there was even a bench at all.
Usually, businesses didn’t have those sorts of things out front in the city to try and dissuade unhoused people from setting up camp, but I’d take the stroke of luck where I could find it.
Yasha and I sat down on the bench, and I pulled her in close to my side. If anyone walked past us, they would have just seen a young couple snuggling close together.
“What do we do now?” Yasha whispered, and I appreciated her attempts to keep attention on us low.
“We watch the building,” I said. “And look for any sign of something suspicious going on.”
“Right,” Yasha said. “Okay.”
She turned her face in the direction of the building and rested her head on my shoulder. I was glad that she had come with me, not only for the added warmth of another body, or the fact that she had better senses than me, but because I was glad that I had the company.
There were no signs of anyone going in and out of the building, despite the frenetic signs of life that it had shown a few hours before, but that didn’t mean something wasn’t going on.
We were just going to have to wait and see. If nothing happened for a few hours, then we could just call it a night and head home. I would have to come up with a new plan from there, but for now, all we had to do was watch.
Time dragged past us far slower than I would have liked, and I eventually lost track of how long we had been sitting outside in the cold staring at the building across the street.
Nothing had changed the entire time we were there. No one had come in or out, and there hadn’t been any signs of life inside, either. I hadn’t seen a single light turn on. And in fact, the entire building was dark.
My body was cold as ice, and I had started to fantasize about what it would be like to fully submerge myself in boiling water like a lobster when the first sign of literally anything happened.
“Wes,” Yasha hissed my name, and I snapped back to attention. My eyes had still been on the building, but I had been majorly preoccupied with my lobster dreams. “What is that?”
She pointed to the building, and I followed the line of her finger.
I sucked in a low breath through my teeth as I saw movement for the first time since we had staked ourselves out across the street. I doubted I would have even noticed it in the first place if it wasn’t for Yasha’s heightened senses, and even with her warning, I still had to squint and strain my eyes to make certain what it was I was seeing.
But there was definitely something moving behind the tinted glass of the revolving door on the inside of the building. Which meant the building hadn’t been empty after all.
“I think it’s a person,” I whispered. “Can you make anything out? Your eyesight is better than mine.”
Yasha moved from her nestled position against my side, and I immediately missed her warmth. But she leaned forward and cocked her head to the side. Her ears twitched slightly, and I wondered if she was actually able to hear anything that was going on across the street from all the way over here.
If she was, that would be massively impressive.
“I think it is a man,” she said. “I cannot be sure, but it looks too big to be a woman.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked and leaned closer to her, as if that would improve my eyesight. I could definitely make out the person-sized shape in the doorway now, but it didn’t have any more definition than a bunch of dark shadows. Damn, I wish I had some of my gear from the dungeons in real life, that would make all of this much easier.
“I cannot tell much,” Yasha murmured. “But it appears he is waving his arms? I think he may be speaking with someone. He does not appear happy.”
My brow furrowed as I tried to peer closer to no avail. It still looked like nothing but blobs in the darkness. But suddenly, I caught sight of a movement in the door.
“Shit!” I hissed. “I think he’s coming out.”
Yasha turned her wide eyes on me. “What do we do?”
“Act casual,” I said. “Don’t make it obvious we’re watching.”
There wasn’t anything to hide behind, other than a light pole which would have been too slapstick even for how absurd this scenario already was, so we remained on the bench and tried not to make our staring blatantly clear.
The door to the side of the revolving door swung outward with a harsh swing, and a man came stumbling out. It looked as if he had been shoved backward through the door, because he was facing the building still as he stumbled back up to his feet.
He wasn’t dressed in a way that set off any immediate alarm bells, though I wasn’t certain what that would have looked like anyway. At the very least, he didn’t have any visible weapons on his person as he straightened up his jacket.
The strange man cast his eyes around like a prey animal, and even with my lack of night vision, I was able to see that something was amiss with his behavior. He looked sickly and pale in the mercurial yellow light of the lamppost overhead, and when he turned in my direction, I saw that his face was coated in a thin sheen of sweat.
Not only that, but his eyes were wide with an undeniable sort of fear.
“I think we should try and talk to him,” I said.
“What?” Yasha sounded surprised. “I thought we did not want him to know that we are watching?”
“That was the original plan,” I agreed. “But there’s something off about this. I don’t think he wants anything to do with whatever is going on in there, and I think that means he might be on our side.”
“We have a side?” Yasha asked. “I do not understand.”
“It means that I think he might not like Harper, either,” I said. It was all speculation, but it was more than founded. Whatever had just happened to the man in that building, he didn’t look like he was a fan.
He hadn’t moved from his spot on the sidewalk in front of the building, and now that he was a little easier to see, I could tell he was on his phone. His hands were shaking as his fingers moved rapidly over the keys.
If we wanted to try and talk to him, this was the perfect window of opportunity before he disappeared to go back to god only knew where.
“Come on,” I said to Yasha. I stood up from the bench and reached down to help her up to her feet as well. I cast my eyes in either direction to make sure we weren’t about to get plowed over by a fucking car, and then I jogged across the street with Yasha in tow.
In theory, it was a good plan.
But in practice, as soon as the man realized someone was approaching him, he looked up from his phone with a look of sheer, absolute panic on his face. And then he started to run.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
The man took off like a shot in the opposite direction of where we were standing. He turned the corner and disappeared into the nearest alleyway before I could even figure out what to do next. But, well, we really only had one option.
I didn’t say anything else before I broke out in a sprint of my own to chase after the man. My limbs felt sluggish and slow after having been seated outside in the cold for so long, but as soon as my adrenaline kicked in, I picked up the pace and started to run as fast as I could.
I could hear the sound of Yasha’s feet slapping against the pavement as she started to run after me, and it was only a few seconds before she matched my pace. Despite the fact I had much longer legs than the fox-woman, she was quick as hell and matched me step for step as we barreled after the man.
His head start hadn’t gotten him much extra distance, and by the time we turned another corner after him, we were only a handful of yards away. He ran like his life depended on it, and only looked back as if to make sure he was still being followed.
But even though it was clear he was giving it everything he had, the man wasn’t nearly as fast as me or Yasha. And so, when he turned another corner into another definitely disgusting alleyway, we were right on his heels.
The alleyway was narrow and dark, and it smelled overwhelmingly of cat piss. A large dumpster overflowing with trash from the Chinese restaurant in the building next door was the only thing of note in the alley itself, that and the fact it was a dead end.
The man whipped around to face us in a blind panic as soon as it became clear that he didn’t have anywhere else to go. His chest rose and fell in a rapid staccato as he sucked in air through his open, panting mouth. He looked even more rumpled up close, and I noticed for the first time that there was a dark, violently purple bruise blooming under his left eye.
Even in the darkness of the alley, I could see the sallowness in his skin, and his face was gaunt. With the strange shadows being cast over him, he looked downright ghoulish.
His clothes hung off his body like they were a size too big, and I noticed he was favoring his right side more than his left, like he was injured.
“What do you want from me?” the man shouted. His voice wavered in fear, and he took another step back from us. He was practically inside the dumpster at that point, but apparently that was preferable to being any closer to the two of us than absolutely necessary in his mind.
“Easy.” I held my hands out in front of me and spoke in a low, gentle tone. It was strangely reminiscent of trying to soothe a startled horse. Or at least I assumed that’s what it was like. I had never been around horses, but that’s always what people did in the movies.
Unlike the horses in the movies however, the man in front of us didn’t whinny, calm down, then eat an apple out of the palm of my hand while I kept my fingers flat so he couldn’t nip.
Instead, he reached into his pocket with a fumbling, unsteady hand and whipped out a small pocketknife. He flipped out the blade with shaking fingers, but that was all it took.
At the sight of the weapon, Yasha’s entire body went tense, and then the fox-woman lunged at the man.
She moved faster than she should have been able to, especially in her long skirt and my bulky leather jacket, but one second she was by my side, and the next, she had knocked the man to the ground.
She straddled his chest and held the blade he had brandished in our direction to his throat. Her lips were pulled back in a threatening snarl that showed off her sharpened canines. The air felt charged with electricity, and it took me a second to shake myself out of my daze before I ran toward her.
“Yasha!” I shouted. “Don’t hurt him!”
“Please!” the man yelled as well. “Don’t hurt me! I’m sorry! Please get up!”
