Chapter 3

Dante had been waiting in the community room for a few hours already, when the front door was opened and nearly a dozen small, hyperactive children rushed into the house and launched a two pronged invasion on the kitchen and community room simultaneously. Overwhelmed by their numbers, Dante laughingly agreed to their terms of surrender, to entertain the masses until dinner time.

After the entrance was clear of the little monsters, a few of the older orphans, who decided to stay and support the orphanage after they started to officially work, entered the building with haggard faces, clearly exhausted after the usual day of mind numbing, repetitive work at the factory. Most of them shuffled deeper into the house, headed to their respective rooms to take a nap before dinner, while a few headed into the kitchen to fulfill their assigned kitchen duties. Only James and the small, cute, freckled faced Alice decided to join Dante in the community room.

While Alice went to play with the children after slipping a small, shy peek at James, the latter took a seat diagonally across from Dante. Despite James’ intentions of holding a serious conversation with Dante, the moment he sat down, a sibling pair of two sisters at the age of three and four respectively, practically jumped him, crawling all over him screeching for attention.

Snickering at the sight of the enormous teen being overwhelmed by the two little harpies, Dante gave James a look that James immediately understood as ‘we’ll talk later’, before he also turned his awareness toward a few children that were waiting with sparkling eyes for Dante to play with them.

Spending the next few hours entertaining the group of children with board games and the occasional storytelling from Dante about the world outside as he imagined it, which the kids loved with a passion, it didn’t take long for the smell of food to start an uproar of growling stomachs and to make any game or story pointless as all the children became fidgety with hunger.

With the smell of food as bait, one by one, the older occupants of the house started to shuffle down into the living areas. With the responsibility of being old and missing the excuse of having spent time caring for the children in the afternoon like Alice and the two seemingly tireless friends, Dante and James, they fulfilled their duties by setting the long dining room table in preparation of the usual dinner.

After the table was set, everyone who could be trusted to carry anything with any amount of weight was sent into the kitchen in single file from one of its entrances, then left with some kind of food out another entrance leading to the dining room. Thus the table was set and everyone had seated themselves in a spot of their convenience, with the older group towards one end and the younger ones at the other. As it was, no one waited for anything and immediately dug into the meal, filling the room with the sounds that normally accompany nearly twenty half starved animals viciously tearing apart their prey.

Considering the speed at which they were eating, it didn’t take long for them to finish and slowly start to relax as conversations began between them.

“So Dante, what did Jared say? Did you get assigned a job?” Asked James, too impatient to wait until later to question Dante about what had transpired in the afternoon.

“He was actually acting a bit odd today, he practically forced me to take a job and said I could take anyone with me. Convenient though.”

“So you are going on another job again? Do we need the money that badly?” Andrew, a random inhabitant of the orphanage asked Dante curiously.

“Yea, we really need to renovate the place for the upcoming cold months. After Dante messed up yesterday and got himself arrested, I had to use my savings so I’m having him take responsibility.” James answered the other boy.

“So when is it?” Asked Gabby, another random person.

“Well actually, we need to go in later tonight to meet up with the client, which makes in itself is already unusual, but with the way Jared was acting, I’m not sure if we should even take the job.” Dante said.

“Was he acting that strange?” James asked.

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“Wait! What do you mean with ‘we’? Who else is going with you?” Alice suddenly butted in slightly panicky.

With a slight frown, James answered, “I’m going with him. We really need every extra chip we can get if we want the place properly repaired and I’m the only other person who has ever done a job besides Dante. If I go, we can get an extra cut of the profit.”

In response, Alice just looked at him and pouted slightly.

With a sigh, James just said, “We won’t get caught, we never have.”

Only slightly mollified, Alice turned away and stared at her plate, a pout still apparent on her face, letting them get back at their conversation.

After a slight pause, Dante answered James’ previous question, “Although he was his usual excitable self, it was obvious that he was in an especially good mood. He was even teasing me a little.”

“So the payoff is going to be that big huh?” James muttered to himself as the frown on his face grew more prominent.

“He refused to tell me anything about it. He said we would get the information tonight, directly from the client.” Dante solemnly answered his friends statement.

“Should we refuse this time around?” James asked.

“Why would you want to refuse? Aren’t you going to get paid a lot for this job?” Asked Andrew in confusion.

“The higher the pay, the harder the job.” Dante replied. “But I don’t think we can refuse this, for some reason Jared wants me to do the job, going so far as to tell the client about me.”

“Shit! What kind of job did you get yourself into, dammit!” James harshly cursed, keeping his voice low enough that the children couldn’t hear him.

“Us.” Dante corrected, slightly amused that James was swearing. “You’re coming with me. I need you to watch my back for this and you already promised to come with me on the next job.”

“I didn’t promise anything.” James retorted. “But by the way things look, you’re going to actually need my help this time around.”

Abruptly standing up, Dante said, “Well James and I need to get ready, we need to be at the shop in about another hour. James, I’m going upstairs to pack a few emergency supplies in case some thing happens. Meet me at the front door in, like, fifteen minutes.”

Not waiting for a reply, Dante did just what he said. Going upstairs to his small single bed room, he opened a medium sized wooden chest at the foot of his bed. Taking out things like lock picks, rope and even a long, sharp, metal shard with a handle, that an acquaintance, who specialized in a much darker line of work, had given him, calling it a ‘knife’. He decided to bring the knife just in case, after all, this whole setup gave him an uneasy feeling.

Putting everything in different hidden pouches all over his body and strapping his knife with it casing onto his lower back, he finished retrieving everything he might need. Looking at his room, he smiled, feeling gratitude towards the other members of the orphanage for giving him the only single room in the whole building. Everyone thought it would be best, considering that he had the highest income among them. That and his odd sleeping pattern, with his night work and stargazing, annoyed the fuck out of everyone who share a room with him.

Going downstairs, he didn’t need to wait long for James to show up, but considering that James had long ago got rid of all the equipment that a person need for these kind of things it took him much longer then Dante had expected.

Engaging in some small talk about their everyday lives, the two headed to the Shop, forcing themselves to relax as much as possible so that they won’t freeze up later if the situation called for them to move quickly.

Arriving at the Shop in the same manner that Dante had earlier in the day, the two of them were being led by the security into a different direction than Jared’s office. Knowing that Jared had probably needed to assure his guest of an escape route, but not wanting to use the ‘secret’ passage in his office, the correctly guessed that they were being brought to one of the many rooms with an entrance into the sewers. Although rare, this wasn’t the first time that the two friends had met with a client, who wanted to meet the people being assigned his high payment task. None of tasks received that way went quite as well as Dante would have preferred, despite telling Alice that they have never been caught, those missions had all been close calls.

This time the mission was bound to be one of the hardest that either of the friends have ever taken on, considering the attitude that Jared had shown, but despite how friendly Jared may seem, if they refused this and not only embarrassed him in front of his client, but possibly causing Jared to loose the profit he would earn if the client decides not to trust him with this job, without a doubt they would end up disappearing like everyone else who has damaged Jared’s income.

Opening the door to the room the security had brought them to, Dante froze. Everything else seemed to fade away into the background as Dante beheld the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He was dazzled by her curly brown hair that dropped below the shoulders, longer and with more individuality than what the anti-conflict and personality law allowed, beautiful brown eyes, something that didn’t exist in the district, as everyone had gray eyes with the occasional blue here and there and her cute, rounded face with the knowing smirk she was giving him.

Not expecting Dante to stop so suddenly at the entrance, James walked right into Dante, causing the later to nearly trip as he stumbled into the room. Blushing a bright red, Dante tried desperately to save some of his dignity and looked toward Jared, waiting to be introduced. In the background James was completely bewildered by Dante and was gaping at the beet red face of his friend.

With a raised eyebrow the brown haired woman asked Jared skeptically, “This is the guy you wanted to recommend me? He doesn’t look all that much.”

Breaking out in a nervous laugh, Jared answered, “Look at him getting all flustered! Can you blame him for being distracted by your beauty? Dante my boy! Come and introduce yourself! And you brought James with you! It’s a pleasure to see you again, we really miss you here. Come! Take a seat, we have much to discuss.”

Still red in the face, Dante faced the woman and stiffly said, “My name is Dante, I’ve been working for Jared for over ten years now. It will be my pleasure working with you on whatever mission you have in mind for us.”

Looking over to James, the woman waited for him to also introduce himself.

“My name is James.” He said stoically, with only the slightest amount of suspicion in his eyes.

With a smile the woman looked at both of them in turn, Dante quickly regaining his composure and James who kept all expression from his face while at the same time keeping himself in the background and then said, “I take what I said back, they will do for the job. My name is Delilah. I am a representative of the rebellion and we need some help stealing a little something from the government. Would you to like to help?”