The Hotel at the End of Time

Chapter 4 - Vain hates Arthur, like, so much.

Vain screamed. She clamped both hands over her mouth. Her body trembled and her breath came in short bursts.

"What. The. Fuck," she whispered.

She pulled her knees close to her chest and hugged them. An odor like rotten fruit permeated the filthy alleyway she now found herself in. Where was the Wyatt that tumbled off the roof with her? Was this a different alley? A different building? Why was it now broad daylight? It had been dusk when she fell.

Why wasn't she dead? Although she wasn't an expert in how much it took to liquify a falling human, five stories seemed like the upper limit. Both she and the Wyatt should be sloppy puddles of goo; and yet she felt perfectly healthy, if a little shook up.

She inspected her body, looking for injuries. Nothing. Last night, a hangnail irritated her. Now, no hangnail. She focused on her hangnail-less thumb, trying to puzzle through the implications. Something was wrong.

She stood on shaky legs, using the dumpster beside her for support. A wave of dizziness hit and she leaned against the cold and tacky metal, ignoring the smell of garbage and cat urine.

Where was she? More importantly, where was Roman?

Through the link they shared, she reached out for his presence. It seemed distant. Not top-of-the-roof distant, but hundreds-of-miles-away distant. It was as thin and soft as it had ever been. Nothing about that made sense, but the important thing was that the link still existed. If she sensed him, that meant he was alive.

Her stomach clenched, heavy with guilt. It had been her idea to take them to the roof. Only the Wyatt was supposed to topple over the edge, not both of them.

The Padlock.

She still gripped it in her hand. She hadn't even noticed. Typically, the Padlock hummed. Now, it was only cold metal, devoid of any energy. An ordinary thing.

It was also open.

She shivered. She and Roman had been trying to open the stupid thing for a year. They didn't know what it did, but if Arthur wanted it, that was good enough for them. If they could coax it open, perhaps it would lead them to a cache of powerful items or a secret safe. What else could that word scratched into the side mean?

She sighed. All this power at her fingertips, but barely any understanding of how to use it. Through the years they had spent as prisoners in the Hotel, no one bothered to teach them anything. Arthur only used them as solar panels; things he could draw energy from. Energy that he'd dump into the storage device in the center of the Hotel. He didn't like them using their abilities without his permission, and punishment waited for those who disobeyed.

Focus. Time to regroup.

Pro: She was not dead. A feather in her cap, given that she had plummeted off a five-story building.

Pro: She had escaped the Wyatts and was safe. For the moment.

Pro: Roman, judging by the comforting knot of awareness lodged in her brain, was still alive.

Con: He didn't seem to be anywhere close. Given how faint his presence was, he might very well be on the other side of the world.

Con: The Padlock was possibly broken.

Throughout Vain's life, or what little of it she could recall, people had told her that her plans were 'dangerous' or 'insane' or 'dangerously insane'. That was the point, though. Safe and easy plans had safe and easy results. Enormous risks; big payoffs. It's how she got them out of the Hotel and how she'd kept them away from the Wyatts. She was used to stress.

Honestly, though, a day where she flipped off a roof only to wake up in a pile of garbage in a weird alley with a broken magical object—that was stressful, even by her standards.