“Are you awake?”

Nina pushed the blanket off herself as she stifled a yawn. Ignoring the tapping on her bedroom door, she swung her feet off the edge of the bed before standing up.

“Awake,” she mumbled as she took a quick glance in the mirror before looking at the door. About to walk over, she stopped as she heard the lock click before the door quietly opened.

“Huh? You’re awake?” Jade asked as she spotted Nina after sneaking through the door. Slipping what looked like an improvised lock pick into her pocket, she scratched her head and stared at the floor. “Ah, I didn’t hear anything.”

Obviously, Nina thought as she glanced at Jade. Like Julia, Jade had green hair. Jade’s, however, was more of a sea-green colour that fell at random across her shoulders in waves. Wearing a sleeveless blue shirt that matched her currently downturned eyes and a pair or cream shorts, Nina thought Jade might have looked at home at a beach resort.

That was if she removed the two thick brown belts that were strapped around her waist. With one sitting high on each hip before diving down to meet her waistline, the pair of them formed a shallow X shape with a thin silver buckle at the centre. Eyeing the orange armband that was wrapped around her bare bicep, Nina thought about asking what it felt like on bare skin before shelving the thought.

“What is it?” Nina asked.

“Umm, we need to leave in about half an hour, so be ready then,” Jade said as she raised her face to smile at Nina. “Seeya.”

Watching as Jade bounced out the door without giving an explanation as to why she would pick the lock to Nina’s room, Nina sighed before locking it again. She didn’t know if would even be useful anymore, but it still gave her a small sense of comfort. She doubted that it was a common skill amongst the team, and Svanda would probably rather just knock the door down anyway. With the door now locked, she retreated to the bathroom before stepping into the shower.

After leaving The Eye of Iron yesterday afternoon, Reina had shut herself inside her office before spending the next few hours at her desk. Svanda had been kind enough to show Nina where to buy some books, where she had realised that she was rather lucky that the language was shared between Caecus and Neo Luesa. After buying a rather large stack and letting Svanda carry them home along with some food from a streetside stall, she had dropped them in a neat pile on her bedroom floor before opening the first story.

Good writing, Nina thought back on the story as the hot water rained down on her. While Svanda had suggested that she read non-fiction on Neo Luesa and the other six plates, she had rejected the idea of study temporarily in favour of the chance to unwind. A nice book in bed with some takeaway food was probably as close to her old life as she was going to get, so any chance to step away from shooting a gun or dealing with people was something that she very much welcomed.

After reading the evening away and sleeping early, she had found herself where she was now. Reina hadn’t decided to change her mind, agreeing to send her on the job despite the fact that her practice had been cut short yesterday. ‘It shouldn’t be an issue,’ she had said, but Nina didn’t like the word shouldn’t as it wasn’t the word couldn’t.

Stepping out the shower and wrapping a towel around herself, Nina eyed the case which sat on the end of her bed. She knew that she was expected to take the pistol with her for her first job, but she was starting to have other ideas. Instead of walking to the office on a rainy morning with a suitcase, she was supposed to walk out into the unknown with a gun. As though her earlier fears of being twisted into a different person were materializing, she placed the case on the floor and put it out of her mind.

Forget it, she thought as she changed into what Svanda had dubbed her work uniform. Pulling her boots over the maroon pants, she tossed the blue jacket over her shoulder before heading out the door and making her way downstairs. Once she had left, there wasn’t much Reina could do about it anyway. Maybe she’d get scolded, but the odds were that nobody would even realise that she wasn’t carrying it.

The office downstairs was quiet. Jade and Aline stood in silence by one of the usually empty desks, listening to whatever Reina who was sitting there had to say. Hoping that it wasn’t about her, she cleared her throat as she hit the bottom of the stairs. Seeing that Nina had arrived, Reina smiled before glancing at the jacket slung over her shoulder.

“Go and get it,” she said before her attention returned to the duo that stood before her. While Jade and Aline didn’t understand what Reina was talking about, Nina certainly did. Her plan to leave without carrying her gun had been seen through before she even had the chance to say good morning. With a dejected sigh, she walked back to her room before placing the pistol inside the jacket with a spare magazine. Throwing the jacket on, she slinked back downstairs after preparing for the incoming scolding.

“Better,” Reina smiled as though nothing had happened when Nina returned. Not going through a stern lecture first thing in the morning seemed to suit Reina just as much as it suited Nina, much to her delight. Seeing that the three of them were lined up and ready, Reina withdrew small package. Made from a black metal, the rectangular box was around 15 centimeters long and 5 or so centimeters wide. A tiny electronic display with a keypad was placed in the centre of the box, bright blue digits currently ticking over in a seemingly random order.

“One carries the box, one carries the key,” Reina said as she looked at Jade and Aline. “Who’s doing what?”

“Key!” Jade exclaimed as she raised her hand. “Aline will take the box.”

Unlike Jade’s choice of shorts, Aline had opted for a black skirt that sat just above her knees and a striped orange and white hoodie. With deep purple eyes and a short bob of light pink hair that would have matched Nina’s pistol, she had also run matching coloured ribbons in a fishnet pattern up her left leg. Contrary to Nina’s early opinion that she was the more serious of the pair, the black smiley face that had been painted on her right cheek suggested that she might need to adjust her conclusion.

“Fine,” Aline sighed as she took the black container before tucking it away in her jacket. “Is it an electronic key?”

“It is, so turn around,” Reina said to Jade in reply as she picked up what looked to Nina like a barcode scanner. Waiting for Jade to turn around, she pressed the scanner to the back of her neck and pressed a button. “Alright, it’s done. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Jade said as she bounced in the direction of the door. “We’ll take care of Nina, so see you tomorrow sometime.”

Reina waved as she watched the trio leave through the back door before returning to her desk. A wry smile appeared on her face when she remembered the look that Nina had given her when she had been called out. She had suspected from the start that she would try something stupid like not taking the pistol with her, and her blind guess when she had told her to ‘go and get it’ had worked out better than planned.

“Take care, Nina,” she muttered to nobody in particular as she leaned back in her chair in the otherwise empty office.

Oblivious to the details of the exchange that had happened between Reina and Nina, Jade and Aline led the way in a direction that Nina had been before. Passing where Sem the street vendor usually sat, the group stopped slightly further up the road as Jade purchased some pastries filled with spicy meat on a stick.

“Do you usually eat something like this for breakfast?” Nina asked with doubt as she walked next to Jade while nibbling at the pastry. While she found it quite good, it wasn’t something that she would exactly consider a usual fare for the first meal of the day. If she ate as fast as Jade did she would probably be breathing fire.

“It wakes you up,” Jade mumbled through a mouth full of food as she turned a corner which took them down a dim hallway that was relatively empty. Ignoring the interested gazes from the few people that were loitering around, Jade finished her pastry before tossing the stick into a passing bin with a practiced motion. “Ah, we’re here.”

Standing before them was the heavy concrete door that Nina had passed through when she had first arrived. Like the other side, this side of the door was also stenciled with a large ‘JE-22/6-25.’ Pushing the door open, the group was met again by the dim disused stairwell that featured a black chasm in the middle.

“Why is it always so dark in here?” Nina asked as Jade began to tap away on the panel before them.

“It’s illegal to be here, so few people use it,” Aline replied as she leaned over the rail and peered into the darkness below.

“Why is it still activated then?”

Jade paused at the console before turning to Aline. “That’s a good question, do you know?”

“SuTSU use them occasionally. The entrances are usually locked, but someone busted the lock on this floor and it was never replaced.”

Nina looked at Jade in suspicion before leaning over the railing to look down into the central void. The metal stairs that were coated in a combination of flaking red paint and rusted oranges spiraled around the outside of the shaft until they disappeared into the darkness below. It was almost eerie.

“What do normal people use then?” Nina asked before wondering if she had subconsciously categorized herself as abnormal.

“There are elevators.”

“Why don’t we use them then?”

“They scan your armband,” Jade said as she finished entering the commands to configure the central chasm. “It’s not that much of a problem with these identities, but we still don’t want SuTSU to be recording it in case.”

“…how do you get back up then?”

“The stairs,” Jade laughed as she vaulted over the railing into the darkness below, her laughter echoing around the shaft.

“And how many floors is that exactly?” Nina asked Aline.

“Only 95,” she said as she followed Jade over the railing.

I am not looking forward to the return trip, Nina thought as she paused before hauling herself over the railing to follow Jade and Aline into the darkness below.