The Haven Hotel

Trouble

Dominic is in my room when I get back to Central. Two other officers have joined him and all three of them are armed. They're in the middle of a heated discussion before I walk in and I can hear their hushed tones hissing through the door before I open it. When I enter the room they stop talking and stare at me. 

"You shouldn't have left." Dominic says. The officers are positioned in various places around the room; Dominic is next to the bed, one is in the kitchen, and one is leaning against the bathroom door. 

"Where were you?" The one by the bathroom door straightens up and puts a hand against his holstered pistol as if I couldn't see it already.

"We received word that you were plotting against citizens of the Haven." Dominic says when I don't answer. 

"I didn't plot against any citizens." I reply. Technically, that's true; my stilted conversations couldn't be called plotting and the hunter and his soldiers are not citizens of the Haven, but I say that like a lie and so they treat me like a liar.

"You spoke about attacking some people who are under the Haven's care." Dominic says. Earlier I thought he was stupid but now there's a sharpness in his eyes that hints at intelligence. "Usually that's a crime punishable by exile."

"So am I being exiled?" I think of the city outside and wonder how I will survive when I get thrown out into the monstrous wild populated by scavengers and corpses. 

Dominic shakes his head and I sigh inwardly. "The girl needs you. Chief wants the girl to stay here, safe and healthy."

"Then are you just here to intimidate me?"

"No." The man who was at the bathroom door is moving closer to me. "We're here to punish you."

I shuffle towards the man who said that and I reach for his weapon. Before my hand can touch it something hard and cold slams into my face and creates an instant bruise on my left cheek. I stumble aside but save myself from falling, then turn to face the barrel of the loaded gun with which an officer just smacked me. The woman who hit me moved fast; the kitchen is several meters away and I didn't see her move at all before I did. 

"How far did you think you were gonna get with that?" Dominic asks. He's the only person in here who has stayed in place. "I mean, even if you took Van Stenis's gun and killed all of us you'd only make your life worse. You can't fight the Haven."

"What do you want?" I look over my shoulder for a second and out of my peripheral vision I see the woman move forward again. This time I dodge the pistol when she swings it at my head and she almost falls over my shoulder. I push her and kick the soft spot behind her knee and she goes sprawling to the ground, then I shove the man's pistol back in its holster and headbutt him in the mouth. The feeling of warm blood on my forehead, together with the mixture of shock and anger in Van Stenis's eyes, brings a smile to my face; maybe I'll be punished for this later, but they can get their punishment right now. 

The man jerks his head back and his body follows. He throws an instinctive punch which I dodge easily. I'm about to hit him again when a gunshot sounds right next to my ear. The bullet embeds itself in the floor in front of me and I follow it to the ground, my ears ringing with the thought that I might be permanently deaf in my left ear running through my mind. I feel blood for the second time, now it's trickling out of my ear. I touch the lobe and discover that the skin isn't broken; something was damaged by the sound alone. 

"Next shot goes in your knee." Dominic says into my functioning ear. I don't respond to that, nor do I respond when someone kicks me in the ribs, nor when someone else punches the back of my head. Over the next several minutes I receive a thorough beating everywhere but my face and having to restrain myself hurts more than every single strike I take.