SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-three ━ vice in plastic shells

Mia forced herself to look away in the same breath that she willed her fists to unclench. Focus, she told herself, the faster you find what you're looking for, the less time you'll have to spend in here.

And that seemed to be all the motivation she needed to look up above the crowd and try to spot at least the vague direction in which she should be heading to reach the bar, next to which she remembered the stairs in Rory's picture should be located. For a brief moment, she thought she had spotted some bright blue glow on top of one of the scaffolding platforms above the moving spotlights, but since after averting her eyes in order to not get blinded by the club light system, the blue spot in the dark was gone, she dismissed the elation in her heartbeat for either an optical illusion or an aggravation of her slowly growing madness since losing Connor.

Soon, she feared, she would start seeing him everywhere, not just in their car or in the corner of her eye while driving. Maybe she'll grow mad enough to see him on those scaffolding platforms, or right there with her, in the crowd, just a couple steps ahead, constantly out of her reach.

Mia didn't bother fooling herself with claiming she hadn't started walking in the direction she did because she hoped she'd meet one of these hallucinations and confirm to herself that she still remembered Connor's face without it being lifeless and destroyed. It would have been easy to excuse herself and her now chronic state of missing him, by thinking she was walking towards the bar, but it wasn't until she reached it that she knew she had accidentally chosen the right direction. Maybe her subconscious remembered the wavy path she took on drunker nights in college; that certainly made more sense than her soul's choice of believing Connor was still there, helping her move their case along.

As soon as she approached the bar, Mia made herself some room between two men drinking there and waved the bartender over. "One mojito, please," she shouted her order — shouting being the only way one could communicate in nightclubs ruled by the loudness of music aiming to overshadow the noise of the mind — for the only drink she's ever had at bars since she was of legal age to seek some alcoholic relief every once in a blue moon.

Drinking was not why Mia was there, leaning over the counter though. Ordering a drink was a short term investment to make her posture seem like she was just eager for her beverage, rather than trying to peak through the tall window fixture to the side of the bar, offering her a glimpse at the stairs she was looking for, spiraling upwards. There was an office like observation point above the bar, and a whole maintenance area a level above the nightclub client floor, where their goods got stored in the dark. If the sign on the door next to the club was to be believed, that is — 'No access'.

Sliding a bill across the counter for the drink that was dropped in front of her promptly, Mia kept looking at the door. There was an electronic security lock besides it, one that she believed she should be able to bypass with the EMP jammer she improvised with that component from Connor.

With a bit of luck, she thought, she'll find a quiet and hopefully not populated deposit upstairs. But the mere sight of those blinds pulled over the observation office's large windows gave her a bad feeling about what she was about to walk herself into.

Biting nervously onto the inside of her bottom lip, even at the cost of soon lapping her tongue over a tender spot bleeding a taste of iron into her mouth, Mia waited for the bartender to be distracted at the very opposite side of the bar before slipping away from the two men flanking her and from her untouched drink she didn't trust enough to even consider taking a swing of liquid courage from. One of the men, the one that thought in his disgusting drunkenness that she wouldn't notice him smelling her hair, turned to look after her, shouting about her drink, but she didn't look back. Counting fully on the crowd effect covering for her, she kept her back turned to the bar and dropped her shoulder to lean on the wall, right besides the door and its security implement.