The Unsafe Safehouse
A safehouse is safe for a single reason: it is safe from anything trying to get in from the outside. Which was why this one sat in a thoroughly miserable stretch of nowhere. Three whole hours out from the station.
"Ma'am. Just a little—just a little slower..."
"I told you, we have to hurry."
Lupin said it around a mouthful, crunching through crisp bread as she hurried her along. If she'd truly wanted to move fast, she ought to have gone easier on the liquor aboard the train.
"If you're broke, say you're broke. Why'd you go and buy every last thing I asked for?"
That, from the woman who had done her threatening without so much as a knife.
"It's all right. If you enjoyed yourself, then that's enough..."
Vatslava, just now, was simply grateful to be alive. That her wallet had died was a genuine pity, but there had been no avoiding it.
My stamina... this is impossible...
Whenever Vatslava sank down onto the ground, Lupin took a full turn around the area and came back from sightseeing the neighborhood. Not a drop of sweat, of course. And from the start she'd been chewing that hard bread just fine, with nothing at all to drink it down.
Crumbs crowded the corners of her mouth and her shirt. She'd clean up once she was finished, surely? She'd spilled so much of it that the pigeons watching from the trees looked ready to come flapping down at any moment.
"What? Where are you looking like th—"
They flew.
"Hk!"
Lupin flung the bread aside and swung her open palm.
Two pigeons shot off like shuttlecocks and buried themselves in the sand a long way off.
Lupin stared in revulsion at the palm stuck with feathers and blood.
"Ugh, pigeons. Ugh. A nest of germs and viruses. Ugh!"
She scrambled down to the sea and scrubbed her hands over and over in the salt water.
Her hatred of pigeons went well past what was reasonable. But once, after surviving a vicious company dinner and collapsing in the street, the things hadn't been satisfied with what she'd thrown up—they'd tried to peck out her eyes. There was no being fond of them, try as she might.
Perhaps worried another might come diving in, Lupin shook herself off like an animal as she climbed the slope.
Vatslava, of course, knew none of that.
A pigeon was an auspicious bird, pressed into service as a mail carrier where other communication failed. And she had done that to them in a single instant.
Survival instinct suggested that staying seated might look insolent, so Vatslava groaned and hauled herself upright. She felt about ready to drop from exhaustion—but that was still better than having her head pop clean off and go flying like the pigeons just now.
"W-we're... almost there, so please listen carefully to what I'm about to explain, and be sure to remember it."
Eyes gone bright and sharp fixed on Vatslava. They belonged to the person who had just flattened two pigeons.
"First, I'll introduce Miss Lupin as my junior. The boss trusts me well enough, so if I say I brought you, he'll probably believe it. Only... things between me and the boss are a little complicated. The odds are fifty-fifty."
"Doable."
Fifty percent. To a gamer seasoned on brutal gacha, that was practically a free pull. More to the point, forcing their way in looked like it would mean a fight. If they could walk in this easily, she'd take it and be grateful.
In a better mood, Lupin granted Vatslava a mercy of her own.
"Remember? I said if you brought me a lead on another treasure chest, I might let you live. If we actually find a real treasure chest, I'll keep that promise. I keep those."
Vatslava was not about to let a thread of mercy that thin slip past her.
If things went on like this, she could hold on to her life. But that only meant avoiding death at Lupin's hands. Let her be mistaken for Lupin's accomplice, and the trafficking ring would not sit quietly. And if the day came when Lupin caused a disaster and slipped neatly away...
"I-I have... one request."
"Say it."
"If something happens after we go inside... would it be all right to treat it as something I knew nothing about?"
A request with her life riding on it. Lupin looked thoroughly unimpressed.
"Why. Is a surprise party waiting in there? Hmm. Being the guest of honor is a little embarrassing..."
"N-no! I'm not saying I dug a trap or anything! The treasure chest is... it's something important to the boss. If you, Miss Lupin, just go putting your hands all over it... something will definitely go wrong..."
"And? What's that got to do with me?"
What request could she possibly make of a woman who knew nothing but treasure chests? In the end Vatslava couldn't hold out, and took her own words back.
"Never mind. Please forget I said anything... hahaha..."
If she wasn't lying, there would be a treasure chest, and if there was a chest, then of course life would follow. Big as she was, she was just as full of fear—exactly like watching an oversized dog milking its aches.
Lupin considered it, briefly. The woman might get in the way. Better to dump her here after all?
No. Leave her and she might run. She hadn't even confirmed the chest was there yet. That wouldn't do. If it wasn't, she'd need someone to squeeze.
Having reached a grand decision, Lupin tossed the words out lightly.
"Well. Fine. I only need to confirm the treasure chest in there, so if something happens, Rava, just say I fooled you too."
The thought that it would be enough so long as she avoided dying at someone else's hands—and the thought that, if there was no chest, everyone including Vatslava would be wiped out anyway. By luck, that lined up exactly with what Vatslava wanted.
"R-really?"
"Yes. I told you I keep those promises. But why the fuss? What exactly is in there?"
"Well... there are a lot of dangerous people inside. The Vladimir brothers, for one..."
Milwi had claimed they'd taken the wrong restorative as children, and not a soul in the trafficking ring had believed him. Stupid bald men, the lot of them—but contrary to how they looked, their physiques were monstrous. Tremendous strength, and tremendous speed.
Hearing this, Lupin snorted.
"Hmm. Dangerous, sure. But more dangerous than a dragon?"
She was only speaking from experience, yet by modern standards those words amounted to declaring she did not fear God Himself.
She isn't actually going to smash the whole trafficking ring, is she?
By now even Vatslava was struggling to gauge the woman's strength. It was hard to dismiss as bluster. There was weight behind everything she said.
Was a real chance coming? Liberation, delivered by Lupin?
...Though a moment ago she had also seemed afraid of pigeons.
Truly, the more you dealt with her, the less you understood her.
"L-let's just go."
Atop the ruins of a collapsed hotel, a sheet of scrap slate still held its shape. What had looked like construction waste waiting to be hauled off opened on its own when Vatslava knocked in a set rhythm—like a secret cave hiding real treasure. For that instant, Lupin's face was bright as a child's.
What the opening door revealed was a narrow earthen culvert, barely wide enough for three people to pass. Inside it was pitch-dark. Nothing could be seen.
"Take my hand. I'll guide you."
Vatslava took Lupin's hand and traced, in her head, the path that led to the safehouse.
Five steps forward. Ten steps to the left...
"Stop."
Go on like that, and the safehouse guards come out to meet you first.
A cold gun muzzle touched the temple of Vatslava, at the front.
"Ryazan."
The challenge was the name of the boss of the branch Vatslava belonged to. The answer was the underboss's name.
"Khovkov."
"The companion?"
"A new recruit. We've come to pay our respects to the boss."
A weak flashlight played over both their faces. Like that, a radio conversation passed between inside and out. It was thick with code, so Lupin couldn't follow a word of it—but it was talk of faces, and of figures.
After a while, the man who had demanded the password spoke.
"Good. You're through. Go straight to the boss."
"Thank you. Much obliged."
Seventeen steps forward, then a stop, and a long hydraulic hiss. A moment later a circular blast door, the sort belonging on a vault, swung outward.
Past the thick threshold, light poured over them. They waited a moment for their eyes to adjust, and the safehouse revealed itself—nothing at all like the rubble outside.
On the left, an armory that doubled as a maintenance bay. In the corner to the right, a pub reserved for the crew. In the broad hall at the center, members loafed about, talking loud. They'd all gotten their hands on some money; each of them wore a flashy accessory or two.
Lupin looked the place over, clicked her tongue, and was just about to go on—
"Well, look who it is. Vatslava! How long's it been!"
A man with a tattooed shoulder and a short mohawk strolled in between the two of them without a hint of hesitation, and—
"Eeeek—!"
—planted both arms boldly across the women's shoulders.
Vatslava, startled half out of her skin, warned him.
"P-p-please take your arm off...!"
Lupin still showed no particular reaction, but her gaze, at least, was fixed straight through the man. It looked as if she might do something at any second.
This man was an officer. Lay a hand on him and it would be a disaster!
"Take it off? So cold. Hey, you're here—let's have a drink. Been a while. Your big brother's buying!"
"Ah. N-no, I'm fi—"
"You little—! Working a bar these days, so our booze isn't good enough for you? Then mix me one yourself. Your cocktail skills get any better?"
While he played up his familiarity with Vatslava in exaggerated motions, his other arm stayed planted on Lupin's shoulder, jostling the whole time.
Sure enough. Lupin's face tightened hard.
"We have business with the boss."
It was, in effect, a final warning. The officer didn't let it lie.
"Oh ho. Mean look in those eyes. Education not finished yet?"
A cheeky new recruit, acting out of turn. Cherished junior or not, even someone close to Vatslava—how was he supposed to let an attitude like that slide? On top of that, his rank sat around the middle if you measured the whole safehouse. Put another way, it was precisely the rank where pride exploded over the fact that you were not, in fact, rock bottom.
He put that exploding pride on display without trimming a bit of it.
"Look at the venom. We're both here to make money, aren't we? You saying you and me are any different? Huh?"
His finger flicked out and pressed—push, push—into Lupin's forehead.
Vatslava's mouth fell open as her eyes darted between his face and Lupin's. No. No. She chanted it inwardly.
"Newbie. You'd better practice bending that neck early. This isn't the kind of place you can take light—"
Crack. Crunch.
"Ghk—?!"
A strange sound, and Vatslava's body pitched sharply forward. A grown man with his head hanging bore down hard on her shoulder. The moment Lupin stepped ahead, the weight eased. The mohawk officer draped across the shoulder was drooling.
What just happened?
Vatslava fell into step at once with Lupin, already walking on.
"If you don't want them getting suspicious, walk naturally."
Lupin's voice, eyes fixed straight ahead, was sharp.
"Otherwise, everyone dies."
