“You can’t have it, that’s not how this works.”

“Actually I can have whatever I--” Andrew blinked and found himself back in bed, with a sleeping Yui laying on top of him. Just another weird dream, with an even weirder awakening. He stared at the ceiling, then slowly dropped his gaze to Yui’s face, which was resting on his chest. She looked so peaceful and content like this, as if she had forgotten where she was. Andrew smiled fondly then began petting her face. At this she quickly started to wake up. He brought his hands up to her shoulders and flipped over so that he was on top.

“W-what are you doing, Andr-” He cut her short with a kiss. She tried to pull her head back, but the pillow only gave so much. She looked at him with eyes full of disgust. Andrew made a smacking sound with his lips as he pulled back just enough to talk.

“Do you like getting woken up like this?”

“I don’t think I’m ready for this, Andrew.” She started to squirm underneath him. Andrew gently but firmly grabbed her arms and held them in place.

“You know, we’ve got all day. I’m not opposed to… building up to things.”

“Can we not build up?”

“Oh, so you want to skip straight to sex?

“That’s not what I meant!” She said in a panic.

“What was it you said? You’d do whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t leave you and I was gentle?” He broke into a devious grin, “I’m pretty sure that implicitly includes sex.”

“Andrew, I just met you a few days ago. You’re moving way too fast.”

“Okay, we’ll wait till the end of the day to do it. You’ll have known me for more than a few days then.” He smirked and put a little more weight on her arms.

“That’s not-”

“Of course, if you’re really enthusiastic and affectionate about everything else today I’d be much more amenable to waiting.” She stared at him in disbelief.

“Are you serious?”

“Have I ever lied to you before?”

“N-no I’m not saying you’re lying!”

“Alright great. Just try to fake it until you make it.”

“What does that even-” Andrew leaned in so that their noses touched and exhaled onto her face. She stopped talking and stayed perfectly still. Andrew leaned closer until their lips touched. He closed his eyes and slightly puckered his lips while pressing more firmly. Yui, for her part, laid completely immobile. Her eyes remained open, but stared at a spot far beyond the ceiling. There was absolutely no reaction from her.

“Come on now babe, a slave lays there and takes it, a girlfriend kisses back. Which do you want to be?” Andrew let go of her arms and gently stroked her forehead. Andrew leaned forward again, and this time Yui met his mouth halfway. Their lips touched, and hers reacted as expected in a kiss. She closed her eyes -perhaps a bit tighter than necessary- and did not pull back until Andrew did so himself. Except for her head and neck, her entire body remained in its statuesque stiffness.

“Better, now once more with feeling” For the third time Andrew leaned down, and Yui responded by moving towards him. As their mouths carefully caressed each other, Her hands moved to his body: the right one rested on his waist, like a dancer leading her partner; and the left rested on his chest, as if to push or keep him away, but not exerting enough force to do either. She wasn’t enthusiastic, but at least she didn't seem revolted or terrified. Andrew slowly pulled away, feeling giddy. Yui’s face was flushed, but she kept her gaze locked on him. She started to sit up to kiss him when the doorknob turned.

Andrew rolled off of her and sat up facing the door. Wiseguy and the two guards were standing in the doorway.

“Can’t you see I’m busy here?” Andrew scowled, licking the inside of his lip.

“You’re to report to The Diner immediately for briefing.” He said while looking over Yui’s supine form.

“Hey, look at me if you’re talking to me.” Andrew grabbed the blanket and pulled it over Yui before getting out of bed. “You said it would be two days until briefing.”

“The Merchant said it was two days until you set out on your mission. You’re going to be spending the better part of today preparing for that. You’ll spend the night at The Diner.”

“Alright fine, let me get my shoes on.” He said with exasperation, “Yui, yours are-”

“She’s not coming, there’re to be no distractions during the preparations. Don’t worry, we’ll keep her nice and safe for you.” Andrew could almost feel his pupils shrink as he fixated his stare on Wiseguy. One of the guards looked a little nervous. Wiseguy was unperturbed.

“If you’re done trying to intimidate me we have people waiting for us.” Andrew maintained the look for a few seconds longer, then broke it off to get into his shoes.

The walk to The Diner was conducted almost entirely in silence. Andrew walked in the middle of the group, with Wiseguy in the front and the two guards trailing behind him. The few groups of people they passed along the way gave them total deference, clinging to tunnel walls to let the pass. When they re-entered the cavern Andrew could once again feel the eyes drawn to him. Andrew put on his best grin and waved at the people who seemed particularly interested in him. It was getting tiring to be the captive of honor. Perhaps he'd graduate past that status soon.

As they approached The Diner he noticed two men armed with pistols standing by the entrance. They weren't wearing any armbands or other obvious signs of allegiance. If the sentries around The Diner weren't bothered by them, they probably weren't an immediate threat. Still, Andrew didn't feel like he should turn his back to them for too long. Wiseguy opened the door and motioned for him to follow. Andrew went in behind him and quickly surveyed the scene. Sitting down at the counter next to the secretaries was a slim girl with her head in her hands. She had short auburn hair and was wearing a dark, form fitting surfer's suit, with tears near the elbows and knees. Sam was sitting down at the booth closest to her and shaking his head. An unloaded pistol and makeshift utility belt were spread out before him. Dragon was standing off in a corner with crossed arms.

"Slyvia, tell the Merchant we're here." Wiseguy said to the secretary. She nodded at him and walked to the back room. She returned a few minutes later. "He's almost done. Both of you have a seat. Andrew, I was told to offer you breakfast."

"Pancakes would be nice." She nodded and grabbed an apron off a hook. Andrew sat himself down at an empty booth and watched while she prepared his food. He tried to stare at the back of Sam’s head until he noticed him, but he never turned around. Did Sam regret opening up last night? Or was he all business right now? After a short wait his food was brought out to him. Sylvia went back to her spot at the counter. Andrew carefully applied syrup then started eating chunks of it with his fork. He closed his eyes while he chewed and pretended he was just having a casual lunch back in the regular world. He got tired of that quickly and instead elected to stare at the girl in the wet-suit.

He got very well acquainted with her back side over the course of twenty minutes. Just as he was considering changing seats to get a view of her front, a man walked out of the back room with The Merchant trailing behind. They turned to face each other and shook hands in front of the counter, then the second man exited the building. The Merchant grabbed a stool and sat down in front of the girl.

“Sylvia, begin a new recording.” She nodded and typed something into the laptop. The Merchant rapped his knuckles against the counter in front of the girl. She looked up at him with pleading eyes.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Please, I need my pills.”

“What,” Dragon spoke, “So you don’t get a heart attack when he tells you how bad you fucked up?”

“Dragon, please don’t interrupt. You can be insensitive towards her condition after we’re done here.”

“Sorry boss.” Dragon shuffled around in his spot. The merchant reached in to his pocket and took out a mint tin. She reached out to grab it, but he pulled his hand away.

“Remember the position you’re in and have better manners.” She lowered her head and murmured an apology. He opened the tin and removed a pill, then held it out to her. She took it and popped it in her mouth. “Tell me, is your code name Cowboy?” She looked at him in confusion.

“What?”

“Did I send Gunslinger Sam on that mission?”

“I don’t follow...”

“You see, when I want someone dead and I don’t care about collateral damage, I send Sam. When I need something taken care of discretely I send...”

“Me?”

“Well that’s what I fucking thought!” He slammed his hands on the counter and stood up. “I told you to kill one loner, not an entire fucking Settlement patrol! Do you realize how this makes me look? Lowlife bandits don’t have guns that far up. I’m going to have some hard questions to answer when their next caravan arrives.” She was shaking in fear, struggling to keep looking at him. “And your fucking excuse, ‘I missed’. Maybe you shouldn’t have fucking fired on the guy when he was traveling with them!”

“B-but you only sent me with enough pills for four days. I didn’t have enough time to wait for him to get away from the group.”

“You didn’t have to! You could’ve just waited until they made camp and cut his throat while he slept. At worst you’d have to go a day without medication.”

“B-but I could die.”

“I could have you killed right now too.” He said coldly.

“P-please n-no...”

“I’m giving you one chance to redeem yourself.” He paused for a long moment. “I was going to send you to the Frogman’s area to break into a gun safe. I trust you still remember how to handle a lock.” She nodded anxiously at him. “Well, that’s still your assignment, but in addition, I want you to kill the Frogman.”

“But there’s no way I can do that! You already lost a whole squad to him, not to mention Hound.”

“There’s a chance you can do it, and if you don’t, well I won’t miss you too much. Don’t get too discouraged though, I’m sending a new guy with you. Andrew say hi.”

“Hi. Uh, not so sure I feel so-”

“Great, now that you’ve been introduced to your partner I’m going to give you the day to prep. You’re not bringing the gun with you though, you’ve proven you can’t be trusted with that.”

“But attacking him without a gun is suicide.”

“I’m not really on board with suicide.” Andrew said.

“Andrew, just remember that it’s my men that are guarding your lover. Sylph, I’m going to give you enough beta blockers for four days, and until he’s dead I won’t give you any more.”

“Well, when you put it like that I guess we don’t have any choice other than to work miracles.”

“Precisely. Now Sylph, go have a seat with your new partner. His code name is Psycho Nazi. Debora, the briefing file I prepared please.” The second secretary reached into her messenger bag and pulled out a manila folder. The Merchant handed the folder to Sylph and she walked over to Andrew.

“Psycho Nazi?”

“They didn’t consult me when coming up with that.”

“That’s- That’s not important. We need to study this if we want a chance to survive.” She opened up the manila folder and spread the gray-scale photographs and reports in front of them.

“It sounds like you already know some stuff about this guy. Why don’t you give me a crash course.”

“Alright. So a new path opened up and it led to this really densely packed room place. As usual, all the scavengers went down there to loot the place. The path down was pretty long, more than a day’s journey. As the first parties got closer, they started to see disfigured bodies strewn around the tunnels. It was a bunch of people in pajamas and naked, new arrivals. They went further in and started seeing rooms, and piles of bodies. Soon a guy wearing a rubber frog mask and carrying a gun came out and opened fire. It was a bloodbath. Close to eighty percent of the scavengers died before they could escape. Those that did escape were chased by the Frogman out of the room area. There’s a long straight section of tunnel where he could have easily killed them all, but he didn’t. Survivors reported that he just trained his gun on them and let them leave.”

“Jesus Christ. Why do you think he killed all those people?”

“Common explanation is he was about to pull a mass shooting before he arrived here, so he still wants to kill as many people as possible.”

“That doesn’t explain the not firing on the escapees thing.”

“The guy’s probably crazy, who knows what’s going on his head.”

“So, the Merchant sent a squad of men to deal with him?”

“Yeah. A while back he sent ten riflemen to take him out. They lost half their guys to traps before they even saw him, all but two died in the ensuing shoot out.”

“Fuck.”

“After that, Hound, a departed retainer, went down with a shotgun and a crowbar to try and take him out. Nobody saw him since he left. Recently The Merchant had me go scout out the area. I had a few close calls, but managed to sketch a rough outline of the place and some key objects. I found Hound too. His corpse had a butcher’s knife sticking out of it.”

“So we have to go in there and decommission a killing machine. And if you hadn’t fucked up we’d just have to sneak in and steal some guns?”

“Honestly we’re going to need him dead so I can work on the safe, it’s a very time consuming process.”

“Alright well, studying. Can’t be much worse than a Chem final.”

“Would you kill yourself if you failed that?”

“Hey, I ain’t Asian.” Andrew picked up a stack of papers and started reading through them. Weapon ID’d by Dragon as civilian model AR15, chambered in 7.62. Just great. No wonder he was able to rack up such a high body count. Reports indicate traps involving falling heavy objects, trip wires, blades… It’s worse than a D&D game. All observed rooms had an attached bathroom. Well there’s a useful bit of information. Bathroom’s mean sinks, and sinks mean cleaning supplies underneath. Andrew spent the next hour reading the rest of the reports but failed to find any more useful information. Despite the sheer volume of it, all of the data was from one of the three encounters, so a lot of it was redundant.

Andrew picked up a printed photograph from the bottom of his stack. It was in black and white, as well as horribly over enlarged. Judging from that and the dimensions, it looked like a cellphone photo. It was taken from close to the floor, with half of the shot obscured by the door frame. The rest of the shot was a side angle of a short, well built man in a bulky jacket, carrying a rifle. Andrew held the picture closer to his face and squinted. He could barely make out what seemed like an extra magazine sticking out of a pocket.

For the next few hours Andrew and Sylph took turns quizzing each other on maps of the area until they could accurately draw and describe the known layout by memory. It would definitely prove useful, but none of them mentioned the large unmapped area they might have to go into. The Merchant came by their booth, holding two paper wrapped sandwiches.

“You two seem like you’re thoroughly briefed.” He tossed the sandwiches on the table between them. “Andrew, you’ll get your stick back tomorrow morning when you set out.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few drink coasters that had been cut up into pieces. “Take this. It’s five MP. Use it to buy whatever gear you need from the vendors.” Andrew received it and got out of the booth. He started walking towards the door, then looked over his shoulder. The Merchant was giving Sylph another pill. He stared at her for a moment longer. In the wet-suit she looked pretty cute, though she would probably look even cuter in nothing at all. Perhaps she’d feel indebted to him after the mission. That’d be a good way to start off his harem. Or to die. He opened the door and exited.

Andrew pretended not to notice the gawkers and made his way to the vendors. He looked over a wide array of items. From snacks to porno mags to books, there was everything he didn’t need. After searching though dozens of stalls, he found a sturdy looking stiletto knife. The trader initially tried to sell it to him for five MP, but Andrew was able to talk him down to four. He left that stall feeling smug about his haggling skills, but then realized one MP wouldn’t get him jack shit.

He asked a shopper where he could buy stuff for a single MP and he was directed to a shop at the far end of the arrangement. The owner kept scratching at his hair while talking to him, probably from fleas. Andrew scanned his wares, trying his best to ignore him. Most of it was plastic crap and junk nobody would want in the regular world. But something caught Andrew’s eye. An electronic cooking timer. He went back to The Diner with his purchase, resolved to face death.