It took both Henry and Layla a minute to reorient themselves

and

figure out exactly

where

in the building they'd crashed into.

Had this happened before the Shroud came down, it would have been an easy question to answer; just another open-concept cubicle farm like all the rest in the building. And if things had remained that way, there was no doubt in his mind that all they would have needed to do would be to take the nearest aisle straight towards the center of the building, and they'd reach the main stairwell and elevators before they even knew it.

But, as always, a lot had changed in those months. Since then, the Gentleman's Club's efforts to reconstruct the interior into a both an outpost – and then later, a stronghold – had been both extensive and very thorough. Scrap wood, rubble, old furniture… all of it found a purpose in providing layered protection and concealment from the outside world, hidden from the prying eyes of the monsters roaming the streets looking for their next victim.

The two of them crept forward slowly towards the darkened, criss-crossing passages between the various roadblocks strewn about. The further they moved in, the dimmer the pale moonlight from the outside got, forcing them both to rely more and more on their other senses to progress.

Looking for faint shifting in the inky blobs they could see, listening intently for any signs of life or fighting up further ahead. Neither of them dared speak a word to each other, they were on too high alert for that now.

Home field advantage was very much a real concept. It just wouldn't do to give Guillaume another thing to capitalize on by being careless and rushing forward on top of everything else.

Henry wiped a bead of sweat from his brow absently, the brief rustle of clothing against his scalp sounding deafening compared to the silence that surrounded them. Looking further in, the world appeared practically invisible, leaving the echoes of faintly whirring ventilation, leaky pipes and other micro-noises to fill in the vast majority of the picture of what lay in front of them.

The only thing he could make out was the faint outline of Layla in front of him from the glow made by his crystal. At their feet, thin wisps of mist trickled in from the crater smashed through the exterior office wall, carried further inward by the gentle breeze towards where the air lay more still.

He followed nervously behind Layla, checking over his looted gear he'd managed to grab in their rush to escape while he waited for the all-clear sign. It was a task that proved somewhat difficult due to the extremely limited light he had to work with, but… it was just barely doable. And by his count, he also had more at his disposal than he'd had access to for the entire trip up until this point, too.

About 2 magazines of submachine gun ammo, and a handful of Fire crystals so small they'd probably only serve to refill a lighter. Here's hoping we aren't going loud anytime soon…

...In truth, his arsenal still left much to be desired. But, something is still better than nothing.

A tap on his shoulder jolted him back to reality. His arms tensed a little as his head jerked back up, but when he realized it was just Layla giving him a thumbs-up to indicate it was safe to proceed, he managed to relax just a hair.

Only a hair, though. He gave a quick two nods of his head, and the two of them crept forward into the darkness on their own.

Every second that passed without seeing another soul only drove him further into nervous fits. How weren't there entire squads of armed guards swarming them right now? They'd crashed a bloody minivan through the wall, for Christ's sake.

Their cover should have been blown long ago, and to be honest he wasn't sure if it hadn't been already. They could be as quiet as they wanted to, and for all they knew there were thugs waiting just around the next corner hoping to catch them off guard. Or the next corner. Or the corner after that.

So why haven't they? Where did they all go?

Every other time, this place should have been crawling with them. It had been crawling with them, not even five minutes ago, just before the Knights had showed up. Had they all gone to ground in hopes of going unnoticed by the wolves? Surely those beasts would have stumbled upon at least one hiding place by now. Surely there'd be some screaming as the wolves pawed through the lower floors and found a handful of poor souls more unfortunate than they were.

And yet, when they turned another corner, all they found was some hastily discarded equipment, a shoddy nest of blankets and pillows on the floor, and the flickering remnants of a disposable light talisman.

Henry double and triple-checked the room before entering, but the whole thing was completely abandoned. The space was clearly lived in… and very recently, too. But the residents had up and vanished to somewhere else.

A sharp-looking combat knife lay on top of a nearby desk, unattended but in pristine condition. Who leaves a perfectly good weapon like that behind? What was the rush that someone couldn't quick grab it on the way out?

He pocketed it immediately, and it slid neatly into the sheath on his belt where his old one had been before its confis-

Wait. No. There was a knife there already, he belatedly realized. This body had never been tied up, never lost its knife in the first place.

That's right… I remember now…

He'd surgically reattached himself just a bare few hours ago. Had he always been sweating this much?

Well… guess I have a second knife… man, I could really use a glass of water…

He slid the spare blade in between his belt and his pants, having nowhere else to go with it for the moment that gave him easy access. It took him two attempts more than it should have.

Come on, Henry, pull yourself together! You're just one slip-up away from being dead meat for good. You're not going to let that happen after everything, are you?

The hilt finally dropped into place, and he paused. Closed his eyes. Deep breath in… and out.

He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter and gritted his teeth, trying to will himself back to a sense of focus. Calm. He needed to stay calm. They'd run into someone eventually, and he needed to be ready for it.

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Hopefully Layla wasn't as close to wigging out as he was right now. He should have been off resting his way through these side effects hours ago. Like so many other things in his life currently, he just hadn't had the time to properly recover.

He felt better, but not quite right. He tried again. Deep breath in… and out.

Something tells me that this is as good as I'm going to get…

Slowly, wearily, he opened his eyes again. The dancing shadows on the wall greeted him, the subtle variations in the room's light levels from one moment to the next playing tricks on his mind every time he least expected them.

That settled it. Time to move on.

Layla had already moved on ahead a bit by the time he was as close to ready as he could muster. Being the last one out, he crunched the last sputtering remnants of the light talisman under his shoe, killing the meager illumination remaining. So that it wouldn't give them away with a flickering shadow on the wall, or something equally stupid, he told himself. And it was partially true.

Now, what else… ah, right.

After thinking a little bit longer about it, he wrapped a loose scrap of cloth from the mess of blankets on the ground to cover the dim glow of his crystal, too. The process ended up being a bit laborious, and he couldn't quite hide it completely… but it was better than nothing.

He shuffled his feet ever so slightly as he walked, and caught up to the corner his partner was busy checking, and without a word they made their way deeper into the belly of the beast.

< -|- -|- >

Henry almost breathed a sigh of relief when they stumbled across the first group of bandits they'd seen since breaking in. He didn't, of course; that would have given them both away in an instant, but the sentiment remained nonetheless.

For as sensory deprived as he was feeling right now, the dim light from the two thugs' talismans and the hushed tones they spoke in felt practically like a worldwide announcement to him, right now. In reality, they were barely louder than a bat flapping its wings in an attic. To himself and Layla eavesdropping in, their voices could be heard loud and clear.

"Why'd it have to be us that the boss chose to sweep the lower levels…", one grumbled to the other from the far side of the wall.

"Hey, you know how it is. Sometimes, you just get unlucky, and you either have to suck up an' do it, or beat someone weaker 'til they do it for you. An' lately, you might have noticed, the weak 'uns have been droppin' like flies."

Both Henry and Layla froze stock still. Taking slow, drawn out breaths, doing everything in their power to not give away their position as the low-power Light Domain magic bounced soft rays off the doorway to the next room.

"But, still," they continued, one raising his voice ever so slightly. "We only just pulled back far enough up the tower to properly entrench against the random Knight skirmishers that chased us up there in the first place. Surely there's a few more sneakin' around trying to hide from the werewolves s'much as we are…"

"If you're so worried about Knights, pipe down and watch for spears. I'm not lookin' to lose a leg today."

A thin spool of haze leaked quietly from Layla's fingertips, circulating in the air above the palm of her hand and slowly condensing to a finer and finer point. Slowly. Painstakingly carefully. So as to not let a single fleck of mana go to waste as heat, light, or sound that would give them away.

Guess he was following her lead, then. Didn't have much in the way of nonlethal options, but the knives were at least mostly silent if he did this right.

Please don't come this way… I don't want to be seeing your faces tonight when I go to sleep…

"Whatever…", said one of the grunts. "Let's just figure out what smashed into that wall a few minutes ago and get the hell back to the stairs. These empty bunks are givin' me the creeps."

And just like that, the two turned away, the light on the wall fading from view as they headed in what must have been a more direct approach towards where they had entered from. Layla's control on the fog orb faded, allowing the mist to disperse gently as the cloud slowly reabsorbed back into her skin.

They sat hunched in that corner for a full minute before daring to make a move of their own. When they finally peered around the corner, there was no sign left of them. Only the same dark interior they'd seen a thousand times over fumbling around in the dark as they had been.

Despite knowing which way they'd gone, the idea that they could be anywhere still managed to worm its way into his thoughts.

He pushed his fears aside. At least now, they had a direction to head in. This room had only three doorways in it, one where they'd came from and one where the Club's scouts had gone. Meaning that door number 3 led to the stairwell.

Gingerly, Henry finally let go of the hilt of his knife. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding it in a white-knuckle grip. His breath shuddered as he remembered to exhale, too.

Now that they were in the final stretch, they decided to pick up the pace a little. Random twists and turns were becoming fewer and further between as they reached closer and closer to the edge of the building where they were situated, something which he himself was extremely glad for.

They'd been playing 'what's in the scary dark maze' for far longer than he would have wanted. Already there'd been a solid ten minutes of them aimlessly wandering, only making progress by warrant of finding every other dead end first. It was like trying to cut the head off of a hydra – find one branch of path that finally ended, you still had at least a handful and a half of other options you hadn't tried yet. Each of which was liable to have its own forks you just hadn't encountered yet.

So, good news, a lot of their aimless searching was behind them, now. The guards before had cleanly let slip that Guillaume was hiding somewhere on the upper floors, probably past the halfway point where the elevator shafts switched up, he reckoned. That's where he'd put his first line of defense, if he was making this building into a panic room after everything had gone wrong.

Sure, he'd hide nooks and crannies on every floor of the building, just in case, but with the current scenario that was what struck him as the most logical, pragmatic option. And Guillaume, in spite of some momentary outbursts of anger when things didn't go his way, was still the most logical, pragmatic man Henry knew.

Bad news… he'd taken other sensible measures and had his put up barricades on the other side of the door. Neither of them touched it, not wanting to alert anyone who might be on the far side waiting for an intrusion… but they could plainly see the wood bracing through the safety glass. Red emergency lighting seeped through the cracks between the door and the brace from beyond, casting burnt-bronze highlights on them as they carefully peered in from their position hidden nearby.

No way he'd be able to get through that. Layla might be capable of doing so, but definitely not quietly. With the power out to at least this floor and likely the rest of the lower half, the elevator was out of commission, too. Making their options extremely limited.

Carefully, he leaned in close to her and began whispering.

"What do we do about this?"

She shrugged slowly. "We could always wait for those two to come back."

"Might work," he admitted. "But then who's to say they aren't greeted by their friends on the other side and then we have four guys to deal with and a small window to do it in. At that point, we might as well just pretend to be them…"

"… it all boils down to not having the full picture," she finished. "Shit."

Henry nodded in agreement. "Let's make that Plan B."

"Alright, but what's Plan A, then?"

"…Working on that… Only ways up are either the stairway or the elevator, and-"

A thought occurred to him.

Back in his old flat, there'd been an elevator, too. Never worked, but it had been there. There'd been a bit of a tall tale the landlord passed down on his first day when he'd gotten the tour, that shortly after he'd acquired the property, some homeless guy had snuck into the shaft and climbed onto the top of the cabin via the service ladder to have a place to stay.

When he'd finally gotten around to getting someone who could fix it, the technician had nearly been scared half to death finding someone already there, and had been nearly shanked twice before the cops had arrived to clear the squatter out. "But we don't have any problems like that anymore," the landlord had finished. "No free rides around here! Ah, not that you need to worry about that, I'm sure."

And how right he'd been about that. Absolute rent hound, the prick. Probably wolf chow by now. Henry wasn't missing him for a moment.

But the idea of a service ladder in the elevator shaft did sound enticing enough…

"How in the mood are you for a climb?", he asked Layla.

"What, do you want to scale the building from the outside or something?"

"Um… no? There's a perfectly good way up the elevator shaft, after all…"

"Oh, the service ladder? That's…"

She trailed off, causing Henry to raise an eyebrow and press her on the issue.

"What? That's what, exactly?"

"Well, it's… shockingly sensible of you, surprisingly."

He frowned, scratching his head as he took in her words.

"...I'm not that bad, am I?"

All he got back was a pointed look.

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