57. Vesper
VESPER
“Okay,” I start as we all step out of the Disorderly Hotel back into the rotting streets of Smokestack Row the next day. “We have one more Minor Boss left. We take care of this one, we’ve hit every Minor Boss in the three sections.”
Locke nods. “We fightin’ the Major Bosses after this?”
“After we find Dox, that’s the idea,” I reply, wincing. “But I have no idea what to expect for the Major Bosses. I know we get a key from each of them, but . . .”
“Imagine the most difficult Minor Bosses you fought, but multiply it by at least three,” Havoc supplies helpfully. “From what I hear.”
I meet Locke’s eyes. “So, three times worse than the orcas,” I say.
“Or the abominable yeti,” Locke adds, wincing at the memory of how much he had been knocked around by Debbie.
“I liked Debbie,” Stevie declares. “I wish we could have totally met Big Deborah.”
“You’re alone in that,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Little Debbie was hard enough and we only survived that because of your help.”
Stevie giggles, but doesn’t argue.
“I did not enjoy the abominable yeti,” Svetlana adds. “It was much too cold for a summer girl like me.” She flutters her wings briefly, as if shivering. “I prefer we not go back.”
I wince. “Sorry, Svetlana. We have to fight the Major Boss there.”
She groans.
With the thought of the Major Bosses being more difficult than our hardest battles so far plaguing us, we weave deeper into Smokestack Row.
The streets are disgusting no matter where you step, but we try out best to, at least, step around the decomposing bodies and not into them.
The more we cut through the streets, the more this place feels like Dross.
The only difference is the bodies wouldn’t be in the streets.
They’d be picked clean for their resources.
We also have some plumbing in Dross left over from before humanity started to fall.
We have mostly flushable toilets and sometimes running water, though always cold.
Here, they don’t seem to have any of it.
In fact, the horrible smell in the air comes not only from the rotting corpses, but from the buckets of waste that people toss out their windows right into the street.
More than once we almost take one of those buckets to our faces as we walk past, just narrowly jumping back to avoid a suddenly necessary rush back to the safehouse.
We have just over two days until the Harrow Gates open, which means after this Minor Boss, we’ll need to start making our way to the New Babel Gate.
Thankfully, the gate is in the Gilded District and not in Smokestack Row.
I need to be there just in case Dox comes through.
If she’s alive, she’ll be here. I know she will.
If she’s alive.
I haven’t prepared myself for what happens if she doesn’t walk through the Harrow Gate. I refuse to accept it as a possibility. Dox will come through those gates, and if she doesn’t . . .
“You said you fought this Minor Boss before?” I ask Havoc to distract myself from my inner thoughts.
Locke and Stevie are trailing ahead of us, picking their way through the grime to one of the largest warehouses in the middle of Smokestack Row.
That’s where the Minor Boss is housed. Every so often, Locke looks over his shoulder at me to make sure I’m okay and then turns back forward.
He’s gotten more . . . aware of me . . .
since the Disorderly Hotel. His fingers brush more against me at every opportunity.
His eyes linger. Every time his eyes meet mine, my skin flushes as I think about what it is we’re dancing around. Desire. Hunger.
Something else entirely.
On my shoulder, Svetlana dances back and forth, doing her weird praying mantis sway as we walk.
She doesn’t talk much under the guise of not breathing in the fumes, but I also think she’s just genuinely disgusted by this section.
I don’t blame her. If there’d been any part of me that missed Dross—there isn’t—then this place would remind me to hate it.
Even the buildings have a red wash to them because of the red bricks they’re made of.
They’re covered in black coal and grimy, but you can still see the red peeking out.
“I have a few times,” Havoc finally answers as we pick our way over a large pile of bodies. “This is one of the easier ones.”
“So you’ve said,” I say, glancing at him. “What makes it easy?”
“You’ll see,” Havoc replies, meeting my eyes. “I’m not doing the work for you. If I do it, I get the XP.”
While Havoc always offers as few words as possible, he often leaves words hanging in the air.
Reading between the lines is necessary when talking to the Warden, or else you’ll miss something.
Like the fact he can’t fight the Minor Boss because Locke and I need the XP more than he does.
The information between a Tier Two and Tier Three is locked.
I can’t see what the next Tier is or even what all I have to pay.
I can only see the XP requirement. Ten thousand.
Locke’s is the same. We’re going to be grinding for a while to reach the next one.
So, Havoc is correct. He’s already a Tier Three and on his way to a Tier Four.
We’re severely behind him with my one thousand and nine XP.
I sigh. “You’re right, but your delivery needs some work. You always come across as a complete asshole when you say shit like that.”
“I am an asshole,” he grunts. “Thinking deep down I’m not is only going to hurt your feelings.”
“But why are you an asshole?” I ask, raising my brow. “Is it the propaganda?”
His eyes narrow. “What makes you think I’ll answer that question?”
I shrug. “I just can’t figure out if you enjoy being the poster boy or not. You certainly have an inflated ego to match the posters plastered up all over Dross.”
He stops and looks at me. “Posters? As in multiple?”
I stop when he does, frowning at his confusion.
“Yeah. They’re everywhere. Your face painted across them with the words, ‘You could be a legend,’ plastered across it.
Some of them have you fighting. Some of them are just your side profile.
Fresh ones get put up a week before a Harrow Gate is expected to open, so there are years’ worth of your prominent face in some places. ”
He blinks. “They don’t show the grainy video anymore?”
“Oh, they do that, too,” I shrug. “But they realized the quality was so bad, it wasn’t as effective.
We don’t exactly have electricity in Dross, remember?
They have to bring in the weird box that flickers off and on and rarely works.
They stopped working entirely last year for whatever reason, so they went heavier into the posters.
” I frown at him. “You really didn’t know about the posters? ”
“How would I?” he shrugs. “I keep to myself.”
Humming under my breath, I raise my brow at him. “So . . . does that please you . . . or make you angry?”
He scowls. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“No,” I laugh. “Dox often calls me a stubborn ass.”
His expression shifts. “Dox is this friend you’re waiting for?”
I nod. “Yeah. I need to find her.”
Havoc clenches his jaw. “Having loyalties in this place could get you killed.”
I study him. “Isn’t your Glitch literally all about loyalty?”
“Yeah, and it’s almost gotten me killed plenty of times,” he admits. “I learned my lesson. I’m loyal to no one but myself now.”
“Seems awfully lonely,” I murmur.
His eyes flick to me again and then his arm shoots out to grab mine.
He jerks me to his side just before I can step into a pile of decaying organs, saving me the grossness of rotting meat in my boots.
The movement causes me to stumble into him and catch myself with my hand against his chest. The hard muscle there presses against my fingers as they splay out and I swallow as I slowly tilt my head back.
“Thank you,” I breathe.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares down at me, those eyes tracing my face and then dipping down to my lips. We linger like that for what feels like minutes, but is probably only a few seconds.
“Yes,” Svetlana hisses, appearing on my shoulder and doing her little dance. “Now, kiss!” She brings her arms out and in to mimic our heads being pressed together. “Do it. Do it now!”
I laugh and straighten, intending to push away from Havoc, but his arm is wrapped around me and he holds me fast. His strength is much higher than mine, so there’s no hope of forcing my way out, but I don’t exactly hate the position I’m in.
“Kiss her, Legend,” Svetlana declares, her arms in the air.
I can feel Locke’s eyes on us. He must have stopped at Svetlana’s declaration and turned to look. His gaze burns a hole in my back as I stare up at Havoc. I find myself wanting him to kiss me. I want him to dip that arrogant face down and consume me.
But we’re standing in a disgusting street surrounded by rotting corpses.
He seems to realize that as well because he lets me go, letting me straighten finally. “Another time,” he murmurs.
“Pretty presumptuous of you to think there will be another time,” I say, grinning.
“Yes,” he replies, his eyes on mine. That’s it. Nothing else. I’m not sure if he’s saying yes, he’s presumptuous, or yes, there will be another time, but the effect is the same. I grow wet with the implied promise and clear my throat.
“Okay, well, it looks like we’re here,” I rasp, gesturing to a large warehouse building.
“It seems we are,” Havoc agrees, looking up at the building.
“Pity,” Svetlana grumbles near my ear. “He was so close to giving in.”
I chuckle, but don’t respond to her as we all walk inside the warehouse as a group.
Stevie dances around in the air behind us, forever our lantern sentinel it seems. Locke comes to stand beside me and threads his fingers with mine as if to reassure himself I’m real.
Havoc takes up my other side, but he doesn’t reach out to touch me.
He doesn’t reach for his weapon either. Apparently, he really plans to sit this one out.
“He is right,” Cipher pops in. “He does not need the XP. You do. He should not fight this battle for you.”
“Just because he’s right doesn’t mean I have to like it,” I reply while looking around the grimy warehouse.
When we first walk in, I realize the building is multi-story, and the entrance we just came through puts us on one of the middle levels.
We’re immediately on a metal catwalk when we walk inside, the grating beneath our feet sturdy but noisy enough to give me pause.
In Dross, you never walk across catwalks, even if they look whole.
I’ve seen them collapse under the weight of a single person.
But here, the metal isn’t degrading, so it should be fine.
Still, I take small hesitant steps as we move deeper inside, my boots making soft noises against the metal.
I don’t trust it and my heartrate kicks in my throat.
Everywhere we look, there are copper pipes running along the walls, the catwalks, the ceiling, until we’re surrounded by them, until we can’t even see the other catwalks running through the warehouse.
Some of the pipes let off steam at various intervals, trailing up, billowing in large clouds.
The white steam rises, giving the entire warehouse an eerie look as we move along the pathways.
“Stay close,” Havoc orders. “This isn’t the place to wander off.”
“You say that about everything,” I point out.
“And it’s true every time,” he fires back. “Don’t go off on any half-cocked missions. This isn’t Lady Liberty. The Minor Boss isn’t the only threat here.”
As if his words reveal them, movement drags my eyes to the ceiling. My brows furrow as I look closer at what looks like metal pipes, but then . . . they shift, and I realize it’s not just pipes at all.
It’s a creature.
The first one I see is small and spider-like, trailing along the pipes with ease.
The second one is human-sized and shaped. Still, it moves along the pipes with the same jerky motions of the metal spider. I stare at them in horror for a few seconds before Havoc grabs my chin and forces it down.
“Don’t look at them,” he hisses. “Looking at them invites investigation.”
I jerk my eyes away from the creatures and become aware of just how many of them are around us.
I can hear the clinking of their metal legs against the copper pipes as they follow along after us.
They don’t make any other noises. No words.
No calls to each other. But the sound of clinking metal and hissing steam is enough to set my nerves on fire.
“Oh, fuck,” Locke says, his shoulders tense beside me as he tries not to look up. “Are these things the Minor Boss?”
“No,” Havoc says. “Keep moving.”
We do as he says, our boots clacking against the metal grating beneath our feet.
Stevie doesn’t say much, but every now and then he makes a noise of disgust when the pipes let out another burst of steam.
Again, I wonder why he bothers staying with us.
He could be free, but he remains with us despite his new freedom.
I’ll have to ask him when we’re back at a safehouse.
We’re all tense as we move deeper inside the maze of metal pipes, searching for the Minor Boss.
The skittering metal creatures are in the hundreds now as they follow along behind us.
Their metallic movements make a symphony fitting of the setting, only broken up by the hiss of steam and the sound of our boots.
By the time we’re deep inside the warehouse, my heart is beating in the same rhythm, thump-thump-thumping inside my chest as if it too has joined the choir.
My nerves are so on edge, I find myself drawing my Bloodsense Fang and dragging my hyena mask down over my face in preparation for whatever this Minor Boss may be.
My area of perception widens, and I expect it to light up with all the creatures around us.
I feel nothing. No life forces. No warmth. Nothing.
What the fuck are these things?
Suddenly, I wonder what Havoc considers easy, because I’m starting to doubt this Minor Boss will be easy at all.
I should have asked.
He wouldn’t have told me.
What if the metal creatures attack while we’re facing the Minor Boss? What if they all launch themselves toward me and I can’t even sense them?
What if we’re forced to fight off a swarm of them?
“A little further,” Havoc says, directing us forward. “He waits on a large open platform for us just—”
BOSS BATTLE INITIATED: BOIL, BOIL, TOIL, AND TROUBLE
ARE YOU READDDDDDDY TO RUMBLEEEEEE? Because the Boiler King always is. Shut off his power to defeat the King, but be careful. That steam is hot, hot, hot!
The sound of metal grating against metal as it moves echoes loudly around us . . .