In casual form, Flynt and Avery stay seated in the back of the truck. On the passenger’s side, Flynt hunches over with his hands on his knees. On the driver’s side, sitting as far from Flynt as possible, Avery sits straight upright, bending her arm over the back of her head. She cranks her body to either side, letting out a series of crackling pops, and she opens her eyes, rests her arms over her knees, and stares down Braellyn in the front seat. Braellyn stares back through wide eyes, a frightened expression, and streams of sweat beating down from her blonde hairline. In her right hand, she holds a pistol up toward Avery with perfect stillness, and, in her left hand, she strokes the skin on the side of her face where her leather beak melds with her face.

  “Uh, Braellyn… How’s it going?”

  Braellyn pushes the gun closer to Avery, squinting her eyes like a hawk. Avery scoffs. In the driver’s seat, the pale woman in the disheveled suit hunches over the steering wheel as if she were keeping it for herself. The truck passes over a bump, shaking up its passengers as they make their way through a forest populated with pine trees draped under a thick sheet of snow. The woman swivels back around, placing one hand upon the steering wheel, correcting the truck’s course. In an instant, she snaps her other hand toward Avery, tapping on Avery’s palm. A thin prism of flesh slides out of Avery’s hand like a window.

  “What the fuck?!”

  Avery glares at the woman, clutching at her fist as it drips with blood. The woman swipes her palm back into place, reinserting the gouged skin. The bleeding stops in an instant.

  “Now! I doubt you’ve seen such a thing as that!”

  Braellyn raises an eyebrow, looking over at the woman.

  “Uh… Yeah, I’ve seen you do that kind of thing before.”

  “Right! I suppose you’ve met me! Although, I haven’t met you.”

  “Well, I killed you guys twice the last time we met… So, you should be pissing yourself right now.”

  “Oh, what nonsense!”

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  The woman reaches over toward the passenger’s side, opens the console, and tears out a paper, which she gives to Braellyn. Braellyn, still holding her pistol toward Avery, hums as she reads the paper. Avery tilts her head up to investigate. It is a menu.

  Still within the forest, the truck pulls into a small town. Scattered about it are small wooden houses, aged and worn. A thin blanket of snow covers the ground, aside from a few cleared-up dirt roads. In the distance, over the treeline, a metropolis towers above all else. The truck halts just outside one of these wooden shacks. Braellyn and the driver step out of the car in unison. Braellyn jerks open Flynt’s door, signaling him out of the car with her gun, while Avery follows the other woman into the house. Still focused on reading her menu, Braellyn leads Flynt into the same house with her gun against his back. The inside of the cramped house is dark, the only source of light pouring in through the windows. The shack contains one room, with a few beds, a rusty stove, moldy armchairs covered in sheets, fitted with splintered floorboards, peeling from the ground. Braellyn rests her menu on a nearby nightstand, and the other woman stands before the group.

  “Alright! I just had the most brilliant plan: I now know how to make use of you two!”

  Avery grimaces at her.

  “Braellyn will keep the two of you here, and I will head into the city, hopefully to get the attention of your boss! I imagine he will want you back.”

  Avery glances wide-eyed at Flynt, before looking back toward the woman.

  “Well… I bet he’s already looking.”

  “Perfect!”

  She laughs a booming, guttural laugh, charges past Flynt and Avery, and slams the door behind her. Moments later, the sound of skidding echoes through the shack, growing weaker until silence overtakes the room. Flynt and Avery stare toward the other side of the room, where Braellyn stands awkwardly. Once more, she raises her arm toward Avery, pointing her gun toward her. With her other hand, she reaches for a dusty shelf nearby, where she retrieves another pistol, pointing it up toward Flynt.

  “Hey, Braellyn… Can I ask you a question?”

  Braellyn hinges her head over toward Avery.

  “How long has your beak been doing that?”

  “How long has my beak been doing what?!”

  “You know… Getting all up on your face. The first time we met, you kept it on with straps and shit, right?”

  “Wow, I hate talking to you. This was a horrible idea.”