Chapter 61 - The Brass Key

The guest room on the second floor was silent at eight o'clock on Thursday morning.

Nicole sat on the edge of the pocket-spring mattress, fully dressed in her tailored black lizard-skin coat and dark denim trousers, her flexible boots laced tight around her ankles. Her narrow rucksack holding Elen's brass lockbox rested on the floor beside her feet, ready to be slung over her shoulders.

Under the agreement struck the previous afternoon, she was supposed to catch the elevated tram back to Canal Five the moment the quartermaster cleared their scrip.

Yet the girl remained sitting there.

She stared down at the clean pine floorboards, over at the cast-iron radiator maintaining the room's gentle warmth, and at the polished brass latch of the open door.

Downstairs, the heavy thud of bare feet hit the basalt flagstones of the workshop, accompanied by the metallic ring of a massive blade being drawn from a wall mount.

Nicole picked her pack up from the floor, slung the strap over her left shoulder, and walked down the timber staircase with soundless footsteps.

In the spacious workshop, Maria stood in the center of the slag cobblestone courtyard, testing the six-and-a-half-foot blade of her new Black Boiler Steel Greatsword.

The six-foot-three girl held the forty-eight-pound weapon with only her right hand, working through slow wrist rotations to calibrate her balance to the dark steel's center of gravity. The metal kicked up a deep drone on every revolution, cleaving the morning breeze with crushing stability.

Dante sat on a stool at the oak workbench, an array of culling permits spread across the wood beside his open notebook.

He lifted his gray eyes as the sole of Nicole's boot cleared the final stair tread.

"Tea is in the kettle on the stove," Dante said, gesturing with his black pen toward the corner of the shop. "Malt bread and cheese are in the cupboard."

Nicole paused at the base of the stairs.

She didn't move toward the stove, nor did she head for the iron street gate. She walked slowly toward the oak bench, stopping two paces from Dante, hands tucked into the pockets of her scaled coat.

She drew air through her nose, the chitin mandibles beneath her cheeks clicking with faint hesitation before she spoke.

"My rent at that flophouse in Canal Five expires today at noon," she began, her voice clear, though dialed back from her usual sharp huntress cadence.

Maria checked her swing out in the courtyard, resting the dark steel tip against the cobblestones, watching the girl through the open workshop door.

"And?" Maria called from the yard, her deep voice carrying across the stones. "Going to renew your moldy straw mattress with your leftover cut?"

"No," Nicole turned her face toward Maria, then looked back down at Dante at the bench. "I want to stay here."

Dante's expression didn't shift. He set his pen down on the grid paper, folded his arms over his chest, and waited for her terms.

Nicole hitched her pack strap over her shoulder, her amber slit-pupils meeting Dante's gaze with steady resolve.

"I know the underbelly of this city better than any street mercenary," Nicole laid out her pitch, her fingers curling inside her pockets. "I know which sewer conduits are patrolled by sulfur hounds, I know which armorers fence stolen metal without tipping the watch, and I know how to disarm old Legion traps in the aqueducts. You two bring heavy mass damage and crowd-control spells, but you're too loud to run delicate reconnaissance without tripping garrison alarms."

She took half a step forward, leaning slightly toward the workbench.

"My objective matches yours: Containment Sector Zero. I want to know who ordered my mother burned inside that Citadel office. If we run sanitation bounties together, we scour sectors twice as fast. I'll pay one hundred and eighty scrip a month for the room upstairs, and I'll cover a third of the household rations and coal."

Silence hung over the basalt workshop for several seconds.

Maria let out a short chuckle through her nose, resting her forearms across the pommel of the two-meter greatsword rooted in the courtyard stones.

"One hundred and eighty scrip is dirt cheap for a private room with running hot water, girl," Maria remarked, her voice dry and amused. "Your repeating crossbow doesn't miss, though, and you haul meat sacks without whining about the mud. Works for me. Beats hiring some drunken scout out of a tavern who bolts at the first roar."

Dante processed the variables with his customary analytical detachment.

Nicole's presence in the party plugged the exact tactical deficiency he had logged during their descent into Conduit Seven: stealth reconnaissance, mechanical trap disarming, and sustained piercing damage backed by silver and phosphorus bolts. Operating as a three-person fireteam between Level 20 and 22, their contract completion rate with the permit bureau would double, dramatically accelerating their experience gains toward the Level 50 benchmark.

"From an operational perspective, your integration is the most efficient course," Dante said, drawing his heavy brass keyring from the inner pocket of his heat-resistant leather vest.

He unlooped a solid brass key stamped with the number forty-two on its head, laying the piece onto the oak workbench.

"This opens the street gate and the workshop's double doors," Dante slid the metal toward her. "The upstairs room is yours. If you need bench space to maintain your crossbow or dress your daggers, the rear counter is open."

Nicole looked down at the key on the wood.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She reached her bare right hand out to take the cold metal.

As her fingers closed over the key, the knuckles of her hand brushed against the side of Dante's palm, which still rested on the edge of the brass head.

The contact lasted less than half a second.

Dante paid the casual brush of skin no mind, drawing his hand back to retrieve his black pen.

Nicole, however, jerked her fingers back with a sudden twitch, as though the brass had burned red-hot.

Her four amber eyes widened by a fraction, her vertical pupils snapping tight in a rapid spasm. A faint flush of crimson surged across her pale cheekbones, rushing to the tips of her pointed ears beneath her close-cropped dark hair.

She clamped her fingers over the key so hard the edges bit into her palm, letting out a dry cough to clear her suddenly locked throat.

"Thank you, Dante," her voice pitched slightly higher than her usual tone, her gaze darting down toward the basalt floor. "I'll... look after the key."

Out in the center of the courtyard, Maria froze her hands on the sword pommel.

The six-foot-three vanguard narrowed her brown eyes, taking in the sudden crimson staining the huntress's neck and the flustered, awkward haste with which Nicole jammed the key into her scaled coat pocket.

A sharp, dangerous smirk began tugging at the corners of Maria's lips.

......

Retrieving Nicole's remaining kit from Canal Five took less than an hour.

The room she had leased inside the Pipe Flophouse was a damp twenty-square-foot crawlspace beneath an endlessly hissing steam conduit, furnished only with a moldy straw mat on the floor and two wooden crates holding armor tools and spare crossbow parts.

They packed everything into a single reinforced canvas duffel.

On the return walk through the black dirt lanes of the Third District, Nicole walked glued to Dante's right flank.

She kept her hands buried in her jacket pockets, but her posture had shed its earlier defensive chill. She cast sideways glances at the youth's profile every two corners, asking questions about the mechanics of ether spellcraft and how he managed to calculate parabolic trajectories without consulting paper charts.

"The algorithm is branded directly into the soul matrix," Dante explained casually, gesturing with his right index finger where the brass focus ring caught the light. "Standard human biology has processing ceilings, but with thirty-four Intelligence, the system resolves atmospheric density and drag vectors in milliseconds. It's simply a matter of not forcing Mana through uncalibrated channels."

Nicole listened to every word with near-childish focus, offering quick nods and soft murmurs of genuine admiration that set the small chitin plates along her jaw vibrating beneath her lip.

"You think remarkably fast, Dante," she murmured, a gentle warmth brightening the gold flecks in her amber eyes. "I've never seen anyone calculate firing solutions like that without a field artillery rule."

Dante shrugged, quietly pleased by the objective recognition of his methodology.

"It is merely proper technique."

Maria trailed two paces behind them, carrying Nicole's duffel over her left shoulder as easily as a folded coat.

The Sentinel eyed their backs through narrowed lids, slowly shaking her head with pure, unvarnished mockery.

Look at this fool.

She looks like that girl back in high school staring at the varsity captain during recess.

Maria let out a silent scoff through her nose, lengthening her heavy stride to keep pace with the pair.

......

Once back inside townhouse forty-two, Nicole headed straight upstairs to unload her tool crates into the guest room's built-in wardrobe.

Dante went down to the ground-floor washroom to shovel fresh coal into the water heater's firebox.

Maria took the timber stairs at an unhurried pace, stopping in the doorway of the room where Nicole was lining up bottles of crossbow maintenance oil across the small nightstand.

Maria leaned her broad shoulders against the oak frame, folding her arms over her iron cuirass, her six-foot-three silhouette blocking almost the entire exit.

Nicole paused with a tin of grease in hand, sensing the heavy shadow falling across the bed.

She turned her head slowly, regarding Maria through four narrowed amber eyes set in a defensive squint.

"What is it?" Nicole asked, her voice snapping back into its trench-hardened bite.

Maria let out a short chuckle, tilting her head to the side with a look brimming with sheer provocation.

"You're fast at putting bolts through monster skulls, girl," Maria said in a low, teasing drawl. "You're a complete disaster at hiding what's bouncing around inside that horned head of yours, though."

Nicole knitted her brows, the two small bone nubs at her hairline tensing beneath her dark bangs.

"Hiding what?"

"The drool pooling in your mouth when Dante handed you that brass key this morning," Maria uncrossed her arms, planting a heavy hand on her hip with a wide grin that bared all her teeth. "You nearly had another hyperventilation fit just because the bighead's finger brushed your glove. And you spent the entire march down Canal Five staring at him like he was a fresh pastry in a bakery window."

Nicole's pale face caught fire in that exact second.

A violent crimson flooded the huntress's cheeks, bleeding down her jaw and making her chitin mandibles snap in a frantic twitch of absolute social panic.

"Have you lost your damn mind, you giant?!" Nicole backed two steps, her voice spiking two octaves as she pointed the tin of grease at Maria like a throwing weapon. "I wasn't staring at anything! He was simply polite and... and competent! He assisted with the ropes and returned my mother's documents!"

"Competent..." Maria echoed the word in a dragged-out, mocking purr, barking out a booming laugh that shook the floorboards of the bedroom. "Sure. Very competent. The kid has nine Strength, weighs less than my new greatsword, and spends all day buried in notebooks running long division. Good luck getting that block of stone to notice you're a woman before we hit Level 50, though. Dante only sees Mana counts and dart trajectories."

Nicole clamped her teeth together until her chitin joints ached, her pointed ears burning bright scarlet as she jammed the grease tin into the drawer with unnecessary violence.

"Shut up, Maria!" she hissed through clenched teeth, unable to meet the vanguard's eyes. "I am here for Sector Zero! That is all!"

"Uh-huh. Sure you are." Maria pivoted down the hall with heavy steps, laughing aloud as her boots took the timber stairs toward the workshop. "Tell that yarn to the intake sergeant, maybe he'll buy it!"

Nicole stood frozen in the middle of the room for ten unbroken seconds, breathing hard through her nose with both hands pressed over her scorching cheeks, cursing in three separate gutter dialects at the absolute lack of tact possessed by that two-hundred-pound Sentinel.

Down on the ground floor, Dante laid the final hunting permit contract across the clean oak workbench.

He had the southern wall map spread over the timber, three plates of hot food portioned out, and three mugs of root tea poured.

The party now counted three registered operators, twelve thousand scrip locked in their iron box, and a trench huntress who knew every stone of this empire sleeping on the second floor.

The machinery was assembled, and the grind for the levels needed to breach the Citadel's subterranean shaft was officially ready to launch.