Chapter Text
“Are… are you kidding me?! He said that it would be unlocked…” you found yourself muttering quietly as you tugged on the locked door in front of you while simultaneously trying to keep a firm grip on the somewhat large glass jar in your free hand. Maybe there’s another door on the other side of the building? But then why did he tell me to go to the door in the front specifically, never mind the fact that all these warehouses in this area kinda look the same…
Taking another look around, you finally dropped your hand away from the padlock and signed in defeat before moving to crouch down on the ground, your legs already exhausted from your escapades from earlier at that chemical plant you had been paid to break into. Maybe I just have the wrong location? Oh well, it’s not that cold out, I don’t have a key or anything to pick this lock, and this place seems to be abandoned anyway, so I guess I can just hold out till morning after all, just to see if that guy will actually show up like they said he would, I guess. Either way, I think I’ll just go ahead and set this down here, you thought to yourself in resignation as you took the jar of God knows only what you had in your hand and put it on the ground beside you. “Besides,” you muttered as you reached into your front shirt pocket to grab a cigarette as well as your lighter before lighting one up, “it’s not like I have anywhere else to go for the night anyway…”
You see, you being the petty grunt that you were, had been bouncing back and forth doing odd jobs for local gangs and cartels after loosing the somewhat cushy accounting job you were currently dearly missing months ago via some gambling debts. In other words, after your 21st birthday a few months ago, you had had one too many at the behest of your so – called friends and coworkers at the time who had decided to throw you a surprise party at some local strip club you couldn’t even begin to remember the name of. Said party eventually ended up out of hand, and you as well as your former friends and coworkers soon found yourselves headed over to a local casino where, after getting in deep with some card sharks, you quickly found yourself jobless, homeless, and most importantly penniless just a few months afterwards. Some party, you thought to yourself now as you sat on the cold concrete beneath your ass bitterly reminiscing on times of old. Then again, maybe if you hadn’t been born an only child with no surviving family to speak of who also hadn’t lost her parents just a couple of days before said 21st birthday you might not have found yourself in messes like the one you were currently in.
To be fair though, at the time you had taken your current job, it had seemed fairly cut and dry. After completing your previous job (which had involved you going undercover at a shady strip club as a waitress to gain some ‘vital info’ on some ongoing gang war you could care less about), you had been contacted directly by one of the old card sharks who you still owed quite a bit of money to and who you weren’t exactly in a position to say no to, said he wanted you to do the job because he trusted you and only you to do it or some shit like that. That said, at the time, again since you had no way to turn his offer down, you had thought it was going to be easy (or at least much easier than some other jobs you had done since you had been forced into organized crime against your will): all you had to do was go to a certain chemical plant, go into the plant’s reserves in the laboratory towards the back corner on the right on the 3rd floor, and grab the large bottle labeled Ganicane (whatever the hell that was) before going to an abandoned warehouse nearby where you were supposed to meet up with some guy dressed in a grey suit in the morning to exchange the drug/chemicals for your cut of the profit (apparently the drug was going to be sold on the black market in a few months and the card shark and his gang had wanted to get a sample of the real stuff so they could make a knockoff of the formula to sell or something like that). You weren’t 100% sure what their plans were, and you honestly didn’t care. Indeed, all you cared about at the moment, like most nights you were working nowadays, was not getting double crossed and left to die with nobody to miss you and no witnesses to report your corpse before whoever did you in disposed of the body~ Which, of course, is why when you saw what appeared to be a man dressed in a suit approaching you from a decent distance away from where you were sitting coming closer, you felt your blood run cold as you quickly put out your smoke, all the while secretly praying that this was the guy you were supposed to meet and not some random guy looking to make your life harder for you than it already was. Unfortunately, such good luck didn’t seem to be in your deck of cards for the night…
“Hey, hey you! Yeah you, don’t move, this is private property and I have a good mind to call security on you kid,” the man in the black suit had started in on you as he closed the distance between the two of you faster than you could begin to even think about. Damn it, you thought to yourself bitterly as you grabbed the jar next to you and began to spring to your feet, already ready to not put up a fight and flee, that bastard’s too tall, there’s no way in hell I’d be able to take him! But then again, who the hell is he?! He’s wearing black, not grey, so this must really not be the right warehouse after all, and I guess he must be the owner or something like that? Shit, why couldn’t I have just made the trade in a brightly lit hotel room instead of in the dead of night, with no witnesses around, and some shady looking guy getting closer to me…
“Err, wait, mister, I was, like, just resting after getting back from a party or something~ Please don’t call the cops or anything like that, I’ll be going now, ok?” you said in the most nonchalant tone you could muster, although given your current situation (as well as the fact that the closer the man seemed to get to you the worse your fear began to grow in response), your dialogue came out far more warbled than you would have liked. Unfortunately, said man seemed to pick up on your strangled tone all too well, since after a few more seconds of you standing in place and staring at him like a deer in the headlights while griping onto the jar in your hands for dear life until your knuckles turned almost as pale as him (all the while contemplating throwing the damn thing at him), you felt a chill run down your spine as a smirk crossed his face. However, what was even more disconcerting about the whole situation was that, now that he was standing directly in front of you under what little light there was coming from the small, dim lantern above the two of you, you could clearly make out his face and were immediately struck with the thought that you had seen him before. But how though? He looked so damn familiar, like you had seen him in the papers or something like that, and yet you swore up and down that you had never met him face to face before in your life. However, given your luck, he was probably some creep in a rival gang other than the one that card shark was associated with, and after hearing about your mission, said rival gang had probably sent him out to hunt you down and kill you. Yeah, something like that.
At the very least, you hoped, your death would be swift and painless (although given how he was looking at you right now, he was probably the type to give you the exact opposite kind of death then what you were wishing for..)
“Huh, is that right? Next I suppose you’re going to tell me that you got lost on your way to the bathroom?” the man said feigning a look of pity before his expression quickly changed to manic glee as a rather large grin split his face almost clear in two. “Get over here, and I might just consider going easy on you.”
Looking him up and down (as well as taking into account he could easily reach out and grab your arms if you tried to make a run for it at this point), you held back tears as you silently nodded your head and closed the little space between the both of you, cursing yourself for just standing there like a fucking coward earlier as he had approached you when you had had plenty of time to make a break for it. Maybe, since you were being compliant and everything, he really would make your death quick and painless after all? Still gripping the jar in your hands like a lifeline, you looked down at your feet before flinching as the stranger grabbed you by the shoulders and ordered you to look at him so he could ask you a few questions.
“What’s a kid like you doing in a place like this? The truth this time, please. Also, maybe try using your normal tone when talking, that valley girl accent was terrible, and I have a headache.”
“I, um, I was just trying to find a place to stay for the night. I went out drinking with some friends earlier as their designated driver, but we got into a fight, so they decided to take off with the car anyway. We were staying at a hotel nearby, and I had left my keys and my purse in the car, so I couldn't get back into our room and thought I would just sit here to decide what to do next because I thought this warehouse was abandoned…”
“I see. And, by any chance, you wouldn’t happen to remember the names of both this so – called bar and hotel, would you?”
“…no,” you muttered softly, flinching once more as you felt the man’s grip on your shoulders tighten significantly despite his still cheery tone of voice.
“Right. So, you just lied to me again, didn’t you? Look kid, I’m only trying to help here; I mean, it’s late out, and a young lady like yourself should be more careful all alone. You never know what kind of monsters might be out here this late at night, right? So just go ahead and tell me the truth, I promise it won’t kill you,” the man said as the grin on his face only seemed to grow wider. “At least, that is, depending on your next answer, it might not.”
Eyes widening in horror, you couldn’t help the whimper that slipped past your lips from escaping as you closed your eyes, tears finally starting to wash onto your cheeks when an ear-piercing ringing sound rang out in the uncomfortable silence following the man’s thinly veiled threat. Trying your best to not wet yourself as you felt the man’s grip become more iron – like in response to said ringing, you tried to calm down as you heard him click his tongue in annoyance before you saw him reluctantly remove one hand from your shoulder to reach into his pocket for what appeared to be a cell phone, all the while shooting you a death glare that made one message clear as day to you: try anything while I answer this phone call and you will not live much longer to regret it.
“Hello? Oh! H-hey there Lamp, how is everything? Huh? Yes, yes, I am at the warehouse just like you asked me to be. No, no, everything is okay, everything is where it is supposed to be just as the report you sent specified. What?! What do you mean you’re still coming down here?! I told you everything was okay, there’s no need to worry about anything,” the man stated firmly, his once ominous tone starting to falter as he became more and more flustered. Confused at his 180 change in demeanor, you took this opportunity while he was distracted by the man on the other line (as well as his grip beginning to falter) to finally look at him properly in what little light there was, a mistake you would probably regret later. After all, while one might have argued that you should have taken this opportunity to book it and/or chuck the jar at him first and THEN book it, the lanky bastard still towered over you significantly and would most likely chuck the phone the minute you got out of his grip, only to then, of course, kill you, leaving your efforts all for nothing. That said, at the very least if you stayed and took better mental notes on his appearance, on the off chance you ACTUALLY were able to get away (or he very unlikely decided to let you go once you told him the truth about what you were really doing there when he hung up the phone), you would have enough concrete details to give to the police/that card shark guy so that they could attempt to catch the man with the phone/keep the man with the phone away from you in the future.
With that in mind, you steeled your nerves in case he caught you looking at him while still on the phone, and tried to look at his face as discreetly as possible, only to be surprised that, once he wasn’t grinning at you like some maniac, he was actually nice looking? Maybe even cute/decent in a seedy, skeevy kind of way? With eerily pale skin that oddly complemented his raven black, curly hair with equally black eyes, coupled, of course, with his all-black wardrobe (which up close seemed to look rather expensive and leagues above what you would ever be able to afford in this life) and dark, shadowing circles under his eyes, you felt both your fears reaffirmed as well as a small blush cross your checks. Yeah, no, this shady guy was definitely a criminal, and you would be genuinely surprised if you turned out to be wrong, should you end up surviving the night that is…
“Wait, let me get this straight, you want me to still host the fight tonight AND keep the girl with me?! How on Earth am I supposed to do that?! You should see her Lamp, this kid looks shady as hell, and she has this, um, jar with her and I don’t know what’s in it and…” the man’s voice finally cut through the silence (i.e. you were knocked out of your intense train of thought by him suddenly shouting for seemingly no reason), only for a confused look to cross the raven haired man’s face as he caught you staring at him. Mortified, indeed, that he had caught you red handed, you quickly looked away in embarrassment as you felt your checks begin to turn pinker than before. Somewhere along the line, when you had started taking in his features you had kinda sorta tuned out his and the man on the other line’s conversation, and so were only worried that the former had caught you staring at him as opposed to pissed that he of all people had had the nerve to refer to you as some ‘shady creep’ when you heard his tone rise. Unfortunately, while that statement about you being a creep may have potentially held some weight in the moment had you actually heard it in the first place, the previous comments about how this Lamp person wanted to keep you in the company of the man in front of you longer would have been much more pressing. However, much like a certain sign that you had briefly glanced at earlier when you had first entered the gate leading to this warehouse stating something along the lines of ‘Trespassers will be violated on sight,’ you did not pay attention to said comments either. Thus, while still stewing in your embarrassed state, you only had yourself to blame for not being more perceptive to the phone conversation you should have been eavesdropping on as you felt the jar snatched out of your hands without resistance before cold steel wrapped itself around your wrists (which were themselves previously wrapped around your back), followed by the man in front of you picking you up unceremoniously off your feet like you weighed less than nothing so he could carry you inside the door you had previously tried to unlock before all this shit started.
Well, you thought to yourself numbly unable to think of anything else of meaning in the moment, at the very least my death won’t be too far off now, I think…