Accession || Ongoing ||

Seven: Are You Assuming That I Don't Know My Makeup Supplies?

Alyxia and Farron walked into the room an hour later to see Reiley standing over a map of roughworld Regis, a calculating look on her face. The single light source in the room cast shadows on her face, making the young ex-lieutenant seem more brooding than usual. It was plain to see that Reiley Griffin was in one of her strategic moods again, though Alyxia had not really been around the room to witness them.

"You cleaned the room," Reiley announced, still focusing on the map. Without even looking up, she had detected their presence. "Congratulations. You survived."

"You cleaned the room?" Farron repeated, an incredulous smile on his face. "That's great!" Even though Alyxia was a little offended by the statement, Alyxia accepted the compliment with a shrug and a smile.

"How do people do this for a living?" Alyxia wondered aloud as she massaged her sore arms. "Props to them." She was aware of how privileged (or prissy, as Reiley would have put it) she sounded, but she simply could not help it.

"Here, let me do that," Farron said as he took her hand in his Without warning her, he started to massage her arm, unaware of how red her face was turning. Alyxia felt that she would burst with excitement and held in a scream of whatever it was that she was feeling. 

"Can you put that off for later?" Reiley said, audibly gritting her teeth, pulling Alyxia out of Dreamworld. 

Suddenly embarrassed, Alyxia rushed over to where Reiley stood and looked at some lines that had been drawn on the map. She couldn't make head or tail of it, so she looked to Reiley for guidance.

"She's changed the patrol routes," Reiley explained. "Made them more widespread. The blue lines-" She gestured to the map- "-are the routes which the roughworld patrol used to follow up until now. The white lines are the areas which I've seen them go to so far." Alyxia could see that the blue and white lines diverged in many areas, with the white lines snaking through more roads and covering a larger area than the blue lines.

Reiley pointed to the Hipster on the map with her foot. Alyxia could see that the white lines converged at the spot where Reiley was pointing. "We're in much more danger than I thought," Reiley admitted, ashamed that her previous thoughts were wrong.

She then brought out a smaller map from her pocket, showing the Hipster in detail. By this time Farron had joined them. Grabbing the map from Reiley's hand, Farron spread it out on the floor and started to place dots of white ink on various places on the map.

"When we were on our way back, I'm pretty sure I saw patrol officers at these places." Farron stated, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "Judging by the map scale, they have at least a 500 metre radius from our alley."

Alyxia saw that the patrols were quite close to the place where Farron had marked 'base'. She felt a sudden chill run down her spine, knowing that the officers were so close to their hideout. What if they were discovered?

"But Reiley was right, they're giving this place a wide berth," Alyxia said, trying to be positive. "Are those their permanent positions, or do they change?"

"We don't know for sure," Farron admitted. "But maybe we'll be able to find out tomorrow."

"There's not going to be a tomorrow," Alyxia reminded him. "We've got a bounty on our heads, remember? What are we going to do?"

"I've been thinking about that," Reiley said. " We have no choice but to get out there, even with us being wanted. We have to branch out and contact people if we have any hope of survival, both short and long term."

"That means disguises and aliases," Alyxia recalled, remembering something Reiley had said a while back. "If we can get out of the 500 metre radius unnoticed, they won't be able to trace us with the right disguises."