Ally

In the dim orange haze permeating the room, Amina's removal of the hood was more symbolic than much else. That she had short straight hair cut just below her jawline was all the new information her gesture revealed.

"I'm Frank," pleased to meet you too... We should probably hurry."

And when we stepped back out into the more luminous parts of the maze she immediately retreated beneath the cowl.

My brilliant idea concerning a means of covering our tracks turned out to be spot on. We found a computer hooked into the library inventory system not ten paces away from where I had snatched the Star Trek Role-Playing camera bludgeoning tool in the hardback section. As an official employee, my access codes gave me access to some extra features, and to our relief, the virtual insides of the library were every bit as poorly maintained - outright poorly conceived as its haphazardly disposed real life guts. I found the very same video feed that was working the display at the receptionist's post, and was able to skip the cameras until one turned up with an error message. From there it was possible to identify which directory that eye had been recording to. I found the footage, and saw Amina enter and punch the light bulb to smithereens with her bare fist.

"Um," I turned to look at her, peering under the hood. "You didn't hurt yourself did you?"

She peered back at me, one green eye coming into view. Her light brown skin blushed almost purple. "I'm OK," she said, extending her hand from inside the cloak, it had several reddish streaks across the fingers. "Just a little bruised."

So Amina had at least some recent Terran origins, I noted, turning back the screen. There did my own silhouette appear, a large rectangular shape in one hand. The feed cut short. "And off you go," I said, deleting the file at last, "Into nothing. Mission accomplished, let's get out of here."

We exited the library without incident, Rosie was nowhere to be seen, nor did we cross paths with any other person working in the maze. In hope of working there at least long enough to observe the stripper in presumably an exaggerated version of her base mental disposition, I prayed she would fail to notice my absence.

"Now what's your plan?" the shape asked as we stepped outside, now bathed in the deep orange glow of the street lamps. "You can't hide me in a cupboard, can you?"

Barely 20 past 6 pm the early winter night was now fully set in, the endless snow falling from an inky blackness above, not a hint of the heavy clouds above anymore. People continued to flow through the area from the station, trudging awkwardly through inches and inches on the ground. One last tractor bus passed by, its steel tracks beginning to skid on an icy crust forming in the middle of the road, a blinking message on its side read "no longer taking passengers". Still the same insane dress code was in application. A woman's breasts bounced with each stomping step she took forcing her way through the snow. To Amina's question I answered "That would be convenient, wouldn't it?"

Instead I led her into deep into town. We needed to find a place for her to stay, at least one night, dirt cheap, and a bit isolated if possible. We could regroup and find a better solution in the morning, with a whole day ahead of us, instead of the freezing night. The City was so huge and its range of different environments so vast that I thought something must exist to suit our needs at least once. I was even willing to take her down into the Burrows, but it never came to that, thankfully.

It took more than an hour for our continuing streak of luck to manifest. We had tried dozens and dozens of every place remotely like a hotel or a room to let only to keep butting up against a combination of unfortunate circumstances, the obvious being sex-related safety concerns and secondly our shared state of being dirt poor. Finally we wandered into old town, a vast area of the City surviving from centuries ago built with primitive materials, houses all cramped, awkwardly shaped, and the streets with paved roads. Here had fared better against the weather than elsewhere, so much less volume was open to the sky that not nearly as much snow could reach the ground. There were whole square metres here and there where you could see the naked stone surface of the pavement. Here we spotted the entrance to an inn of some infamy, such that its name was not unfamiliar to me. It was a huge wooden door whose outer face was carved as the face of an irate mountain troll, under a sign that read "The Broken Drum".

Stepping inside, and down a tiny stairway we found the place was built partially underground. At the far end of the main hall another huge wooden door opened sideways allowing entry to people climbing up from somewhere. Here were regulars from both the surface and denizens of the labyrinthine caverns below. Here everyone was strange, from far away places, I recognized southerners looking especially frigid even under several layers of heavy wool and furs. I even spotted a few full-blooded Terran refugees, judging from their attitude. One old man, his skin alabaster white, appeared to move in slow motion, afraid to crush his beer mug like a hollow eggshell.

Most important of all, although the women did brazenly exhibit their breasts and genitals, there was nowhere near the same unbridled frenzy to fuck left and right. Amina was welcomed without the slightest comment on her modest appearance, and I was sent on my way after symbolically handing over what little shrapnel I had on me.