Maybe tonight, she'd cursed more times than she usually would. But who was going to blame her, this situation was really f*cked up. She should've caught on to the lingering threads of suspicion when Allegra had offered they'd both have separate rooms. Maybe if she hadn't been so desperate and so focused on their final escape from the hands of those despicable monsters, she would've realized it made no sense at all to have separate rooms. If only she had not clouded and ignored those blazing signs, she wouldn't have been searching around for which room, they'd kept her sister. Lara, where the hell are you.
If this sh*t show was all planned, then she had to waste more time trying to escape the infinite amount of security cameras hidden within the walls and up above those distant roofs.
Where could Lara possibly be? Think Lois think, damn it! F*cking bloody hell! No, no she couldn't, she couldn't panic now, not now, not when she barely has enough time to plan a good escape. She has to find Lara as soon as she can.
The guest rooms, she had noticed how the down floors seemed to be a public unit , they'll never keep her there. The building had so few stories. She'd been wiser to count how many. There were six floors. The first and second a pub and a standard showcase platform. The third was where they'd been led to, to have their dinner, there were no guest rooms when she'd taken a subtle look before. And maybe she hadn't wanted to disappoint Allegra by showing her distrust but she was proud her instincts had done a good job at spotting the clues.
Now she'd narrowed the possibilities to the fifth and sixth floors. Where would she keep the other sister if she was in Allegra's shoes? She liked to believe the gleam in their eyes would allow her share a piece of that lethal vixen's brain. Lara was no less a threat than she was, they're surely not the type to belittle an opponent. Overthink it, yes, surely maybe. .. That'd explain the numerous cameras and the idea to drug them into deep unknowing sleep. They wouldn't keep Lara so far from their sights. And if Allegra and her Darcen companion owned this structure which she was sure they did, then she'd throw more chips on the fact that they occupied the very last floor, the sixth floor. There should be a guest room on the sixth floor that has her drugged sister.
What she couldn't understand though was why they'd kept her on the fifth floor, sure it was only separated by several spiralling steps from the sixth floor. But how could such attentive hunters be so careless. She was a slave keeper. She knew how dangerous it is to let a slave out of your sight. The chances of them escaping was way too high to be ignored. Those slaves were desperate, their desperation leaked from their search for freedom and most at times their measly attempts to escape the cells only got them killed. And tonight she was also a desperate runner and maybe she was escaping from something far worse than a slave keeper, but she was also far stronger than a slave. It just made no sense to keep her down here. Did they assume she's less of a threat than Lara was? What if they'd done that to make it easier for the crazed twin brothers to find her sister faster when they came. Maybe Gordon wasn't going to come for her. Maybe they'd only had eyes for her sister all along. As she thought, Gordon was a wild card, surely he wasn't gonna have any use for a girl he'd met on the dealers street. That guy would probably do just fine on his own. And really, she didn't want to find out what other side there was to that shrouded coin. Any slave keeper would be greatly frustrated to find a slave had escaped under his watch. Maybe, to the Darcens that's what their bride's were. Slaves, slaves that only belonged to them. Theirs to destroy, theirs to rip apart into shreds and theirs to hunt. And if truly those brothers were coming to find her sister, if her assumptions were right and that she had been kept away to be collected by those uncontrollably beasts, then she had to run, she had to trust her gamble and find her sister. She thanked the heavens for getting her demon off her back, she was glad she didn't have to deal with another deranged Darcen, if Gordon didn't care to find her, then that's a demon off her back, a damned good luck and an answered prayer. Now all she had to do was save her sister. And somehow, she felt they'd probably given her a greater dose of the sedative.
Lois looked up the several dozens of spiralling steps that'd lead her to Lara. She couldn't take the elevator, after all, who knows what other traps they'd install there in that enclosed space. With a silent sigh, she let off some of her clawing frustrations. The fear of being mistaken, of taking the wrong turn, of being too late and surely of being caught. That would be the worst that could happen. She wouldn't know how to deal with two hunters if Allegra and her lethal husband decided to go extreme and set triggering traps down the floors of this resort. Most of all she was scared she didn't have enough time to find her way around all their carefully laid traps. She had all the skills and knowledge to escape those little traps . A skill she'd learnt as a scout in Kantama. What she wasn't sure of was whether or not those skills were enough to ensure they both survived.
No, she couldn't let her nerves catch up to her now, one slip and that'd be the end of them and their maa would never forgive her if they do meet again. At the moment, the worse that could happen was trigger a hidden trap and get herself caught. Those two hunters would surely not let them out their sights then, not until they've made the delivery.
After a thorough check on the floors, she took a deliberate step, no nasty traps no triggers. She'd found nothing suspicious while she run the checks on the floors before, there were no suspiciously thin lined projections or wires, nothing. And maybe she was being paranoid but when she took the next step and found the same silence, she felt her gut churn, something was definitely wrong. Surely they hadn't been so unsuspecting of her, had they?
But she had no time to dawdle, she could feel the skies loose their stars, morning was going to find her soon, and if by then they hadn't made it far away from Ac-ra, she knew they'll be doomed.
Maintaining her slow paced steps and careful checks, she made it to the sixth floor. However, she couldn't yet heave a sigh of relief. The sludged gooey feeling had returned. She could sense it, and damn, would she like to blame it on her paranoia and just move on. But she knew where that desperation had gotten them. She wasn't going to let the red blaring lights be shrouded by her haste once again.
There was no traps down those stairs, the only probable reason could only be one thing. They were probably guarding Lara's doors themselves. Maybe, that's why her instincts were a spiralling mess at the moment. Reaching down to the pockets of the loose pants she'd thrown on in her haste, she felt the cold metallic comfort of her tiny companion. Now that she thinks of it, she felt so foolish to have trusted that nothing was going to go wrong and how quickly she had given up all their snatched weapons when Allegra asked them to. Damned proclamation that a home should never house weapons. She wasn't so sure now that this was their home at all. Ac-ra was a sunny place and those two looked like they'd been running from the sun their entire lives.
Anyway a tiny dagger was better than nothing.
Holding her breath and softening her steps, she clutched the tiny sharp weapon tight in her hands, whatever was on the other side of those walls, she was ready for it. Or maybe... not so much