27. Locke #3
I consider arguing just for the sake of it, but ultimately, Vesper seems to be absorbing the warmth and we could use whatever this spa package is. Svetlana seems to know what it is at least.
“Do you happen to have anything for frostbit limbs?” Vesper asks him when he goes to prepare our packages.
“Of course,” he says, reaching for a small bottle under the counter and setting it on top.
“How much?” she asks, opening her inventory. “I have seventeen—”
“For you, nothing,” the man interrupts.
Vesper frowns. “What? Why?”
The man’s eye twitches, like he wants to say something else. “For you, nothing,” he repeats.
“I can pay, though,” Vesper reasons. But she closes her inventory.
“For you, nothing,” he repeats, as if he’s physically incapable of a different answer. He pauses for three seconds and then seems to remember his role. “Right this way. We have robes for the two humans, and slippers for the tenodera sinensis. You’ll find this place is the lap of luxury.”
That’s how, five minutes later, I find myself in a plushy white robe walking in plastic slippers towards a large, shallow pool in the ground.
The water is clear and steam billows off of it from the cold hitting the heat.
Vesper is already sitting in the pool with her head tilted back against the edge as she absorbs the heat.
Svetlana sits on her shoulder, only her head sticking out of the water as she seems to do the same.
“Hot springs,” she says as I hang my robe on the nearby hook and sink into the water before she opens her eyes.
The heat envelopes me and I sigh as I sink in up to my chin. Yeah, Svetlana was right. We needed this, but I’m certainly not going to tell her that.
“They’re amazing, aren’t they?” she continues, opening her eyes to look at me. “Don’t forget to put that potion on your feet when we get out.”
She hadn’t even tried to put it away in her inventory, saving it all for me. It could be used later for something else, if she gets too cold again. Instead, she makes sure I don’t forget to use it.
“I won’t,” I reassure her. “I enjoy having feet.”
If I lost them, I’d be a liability. It would be a death sentence in this place, and I don’t plan on leaving Vesper in the Harrow alone.
I pop open my map again as I rest my head back against the edge. Beneath the water, my knee brushes against Vesper’s and I forget what I’m looking at again. I clear my throat, and realize I’ve been staring at the map for too long.
“There’s a Minor Boss here,” I say. “We’re not prepared to fight something in this cold, but my strength is higher than yours, so I’ll be an asset.”
“We don’t even know what we’ll be fighting yet,” she points out.
“Doesn’t matter,” I counter. “I can crush it.”
She rolls her eyes, but it’s Svetlana who says, “Men. Always thinking with their fists instead of their brains. Their fists and their cocks.” She meets my eyes. “Nothing in between.”
I take offense to her words and narrow my eyes on the bug.
Vesper laughs at the look on my face. “You’re gonna have to get used to her,” she tells me.
“‘Have to’ are strong words,” I grumble before settling deeper into the water.
Above us, there are more of those televisions we’d seen in the other safehouses. They’re static right now, the black and white fuzz moving, but as we look at it, the picture starts to clear and the news anchor comes on again.
“Good evening, Players and Harrowfolk. My name is Ken and this is the HBS Nightly News,” he begins, the line the same as last time, the same perky tone used as if the line is perfectly rehearsed.
“We have some amazing highlights from today, as well as some juicy intimate moments between some of our favorite players.”
The screen cuts to gruesome scenes of various players butchering each other.
The father from the first broadcast we’d seen, the one who had abandoned the mother of his child, appears on the screen.
He’s still in the snow, wearing a large bulky jacket now.
We watch as he comes across what appears to be an NPC out in the snow near a small building.
The woman offers him a quest, but before she can get her words out, he launches himself at her.
He attacks the NPC, and I watch, disgusted, as he drags her into the small building and disappears.
I clamp my mouth shut tightly as the scene cuts to inside the building, and force myself to watch the horror of a man taking what he wants from a woman who can’t object.
She just repeats her quest line over and over again, tears running down her face.
“Now, we bring you some of your favorites,” Ken pops back in. “You voted and we deliver. Our two lovebirds seem to be bonding over their shared warmth.”
Somehow, I’m still surprised to see a video of Vesper and I nestled together in the sleeping bag despite his words. We’re both sleeping. Neither one of us had noticed cameras in the cave. I’m awake in the image, my eyes focused on Vesper, my arms wrapped around her tightly as I watch her sleep.
I flush across from her and closes my eyes, not wanting to see her reaction to it in case it isn’t a good one.
“Your local legend is up to his antics again,” the broadcaster continues. “Havoc fought it out with a local gangster group and came out on top, as expected. He still has not expressed any interest in leaving the Harrow.”
Vesper frowns at the image of the man on the screen, her eyes tracing the face both of us have seen in the propaganda posters hung all over Dross.
“Somehow, it didn’t even cross my mind we’d be in the same place as Havoc,” Vesper says.
Havoc is a legend, one that Luxe dangles over us like a scrap of food. He entered the Harrow years ago, but instead of fighting to get out, he stayed. He lives within the Harrow, keeping to himself, coming out for whatever reason every now and then to cause chaos and be used for further propaganda.
“Everyone knows him,” I say. “But I don’t know anything else about him other than his name and how long he’s been here.”
“Me neither,” Vesper admits. Her eyes stay trained on the television as it shows Havoc fighting a bunch of men in strange outfits.
Long after my hands start to raisin and my body aches ease, I finally stand from the hot spring and dry myself off. Her eyes burn holes in my skin.
“We should get some rest,” I say as I tug my clothes back on. “The guy at the desk that’s following us around said two rooms have been prepared for us.”
She watches me carefully as I turn my back to her. “Two rooms is good.”
I nod and tug my shirt on. I have to clamp my lips shut to keep the question from slipping out.
Wanna come to my room instead?
I keep it to myself. After all, I still have my frostbit feet to tend to. Something that’s very not sexy. And the first time I initiate something like that, I want to be in tip top shape.
She deserves nothing less.