The Second Layer

Chapter 3: Lily

Chapter 3: Lily

Lily and the rest of the team made their way through the dark building. A couple more rooms and they'd be at the stairs leading to the large basement where their boss Derek Vanning, the leader of their kind in this city, resided. Traveling through the front door and the rest of the building to reach the stairs was the long way, but they didn't have much choice in the matter. The set of stairs in the back alley was off-limits. The door at the bottom of those stairs was kept locked at all times. And past that door was only a small antechamber on the opposite side of which was a second door, electronically sealed, with an electronic pad resting beside it that required a code to unlock the door. Of course, neither door would've posed much problem to any freak intent on getting in, but if anyone did break past those two doors, Vanning would literally have their heads for it. He could be really paranoid sometimes.

The team finally reached and quickly descended the stairs, leading into a dark, musty, sparsely furnished room. It was hard for Lily to believe sometimes that a guy of Vanning's power and influence lived in a place like this, but she was wise enough never to mention that to Vanning's face. He seemed content with the place, and though it might seem strange to Lily, Vanning wasn't the sort of guy you wanted to risk insulting.

As they strode through the room, they could already sense him. They knew where he was. As they stepped out of the room and into a small hallway though Lily had to pause for a second as the pounding in her head intensified. The headache was bad, and getting worse, worse than the last time. But then, with every time she used the vision, they got worse. It would probably only take a few more uses before the nosebleeds began to accompany the headaches, and then several more times after that before blood would even leak from her ears as well, and the headaches would be so bad that she wouldn't be able to move and she'd feel like she was going insane from the sheer agony of it. That was the way it had been the first time. When she got home she'd have to call the number she'd been given. It was time to ask for help.

Fighting back the pain for now though, she finally strode forward and through another door across the hall. She had to quicken her steps to catch up to the other four, who were already nearing a throne which sat in the center of the room. It was the only furniture in the entire room, and even the throne itself had very little in the way of ornamentation.

The man sitting on the throne was rather imposing. Around 6'6" when standing, with dark brown hair, equally dark eyes, and a rough face, Derek Vanning had a way of glaring at people that almost always caused them to shrink away from him. And that was just with humans. The freaks of the city knew just how incredibly powerful he was. Most likely the second strongest freak in the entire region. His unattractiveness and lousy personality ensured that Vanning would never be loved by the freaks he ruled over in this city, but he was respected, and he was feared, and those two things seemed to be all that Vanning cared about.

As the five of them came to a stop just in front of the throne, Lily noticed a large bag seated beside the throne itself. Even without seeing inside, she knew what it contained. Vanning always used bags like that.

"Is it done?" Vanning asked, focusing his attention on Evan.

"Yes sir. The only two remaining copies of the video are in these," Evan said, once more extracting the USB memory sticks from his coat and holding them out to Vanning, who took them from him.

"In that case, here's your payment for the month," Vanning said, reaching down to grasp the bag and sliding it over to them before making a dismissive motion with his hand. "I don't have anything more for you to do tonight, but I'll call you when I need you."

"Yes sir," Evan said, before reaching down to pick up the bag. It would hold one hundred thousand dollars, which is what the team got every month, evenly split five ways. Lily didn't know about the others, but she didn't do this for the money, though. Oh, the money was nice, but had she been willing to allow certain people she knew of the chance to make use of her vision, they'd have been willing to pay her one hundred times what she made on this team. Of course, giving humans the chance to use her powers would've been a death sentence in and of itself. But even ignoring that, the reason she was on this team was still survival, plain and simple.