Late Nights at Cafe Escape

Part 5

"The dawctoahs," Kody had said. Unfortunately, Alex did not understand what he meant by that word. 

Kody got off his barstool. "Follow me, mate," he instructed Alex, who cravenly followed him across the cafe, until they were in front of a wide, black door with a tiny, covered window. 

Kody let out a breath before nervously knocking at the door thrice. The door window opened up into a narrow slit, just enough to see the mouth of the person standing behind. 

"Password?" the person demanded.

Kody stepped in front of the window and hesitated for a moment, trying to recollect the password. 

"Um, yrun?"

The window immediately shut, followed by sounds of metal gears turning, before the doors were unlocked and opened. Kody gave Alex a glance, both of them anxiously stepped into the room through the heavy doors.

The interiors of the room were starkly different from those of the cafe. The cafe seemed warm and inviting, while this secret room had a red hue all around. The walls were covered with velvet red wallpaper, lit up only by a couple of golden sconces. The air was tinged with smoke and smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. The only furniture items in the room were a coat rack, off of which several stethoscopes were hung, and a huge round poker table in the centre of the room, circled by several chairs.

"Oh," Alex thought. "Kody meant 'the doctors'!"

A few of the chairs around the poker table were occupied and Alex recognised them easily. She had often hung out with the doctors in the cafe, but she had never set foot into their secret hideout previously. 

"Hy, guys. Haow is it gaowin?" Kody asked them.

The tallest woman on the table, sitting with her feet propped up on the edge of the table, wearing a thick tiger fur coat and large translucent yellow glasses took a long swig off her cigarette before replying to Kody. "The market is doing well," she said. "The demand and prices for organs have never been better."

"Is that so?" asked a short woman sitting right in front her, wearing a very expensive looking suit and a fedora. "If the market is so good to you these days, then how come your bets, and your pockets, are getting smaller and smaller? Perhaps the great Doctor Ramu doesn't get as many organ orders anymore after she ended up having to trade away her own heart."

Ramu swiftly dropped her legs off the table before sitting up straight, and staring intently at the short woman. "You take that back, Ash. Or you might end up losing a limb or two in tonight's game," Ramu threatened her.

Ash chuckled before putting her cards down. "I know better than to get on your bad side, Ramu. I fold."

"Are you guys done with your shitty game?" a curly-haired woman, standing near the table, with a bottle of beer in her hand, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a thick silver Cuban chain. She turned to the woman in front of her, who was wearing a white tank top and a green bandana, equipped with brass knuckles, and said, "Nikka, can you please tell them to wind up? We've got a shipment to collect soon, and black-market organs don't quite patiently wait for you at the airport if you're running late."

Nikka didn't say a word, but just walked over to the table, grabbed all the jewellery that was up for the gamble, and handed them all over to a timid looking man standing in the corner of the room. "Here, Deb, go put all this gold in the locker in Light's office." Deb nodded and scrambled away with the goods."

"So," Tria started. "What brings you here, Kody?"

-x-