1 year ago
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BANG.
Olive was ripped from her sleep from the sound of doors shutting and closing in quick succession, followed by footsteps racing down the hall. Frozen by shock and uncertainty, she listened for only a second before she heard the heavy front door slam in and what sounded like a dozen pairs of boots stomp in, accompanied by deep shouting and the crashing of furniture and other belongings being destroyed. Without a second thought, she leapt out of bed and ran to her door to see what was going on. She whipped her door open to find her mother hurrying down the hall with her arms full of unfamiliar papers and strange objects.
"Mom? What's going on?" she whispered towards her mother's hunched figure, trying not to alarm whoever was invading her home. Her mother's head whipped around to face her and she dashed almost inhumanly toward Olive.
"Leave. Now. Or they'll catch you," her mother hissed, her eyes alight with fear and something else that Olive didn't recognize. "Out your balcony. Go!" Before she could speak, Olive's mother shoved her back into her room and, with a final glance, whispered "If we live, we'll find each other." With that, she pulled Olive's door shut and disappeared.
After a moment of shocked hesitation, Olive turned away from the door and set into action. Knowing she didn't have time to change, she ripped what clothes she could fit into her pack from her wardrobe and pulled a jacket over her pajamas. Hearing the thundering footsteps and muffled shouting travel up the stairs, she pulled on her boots and slipped through her glass balcony doors. Climbing over the ornate railing, her last glance into her lifelong home was of blurred enforcers busting through her bedroom door as she slid down her balcony and tumbled into the lamplit streets of Piltover.
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Now
Olive slipped quietly across a familiar alleyway in the Undercity, sticking to the shadows and praying that she ran into no one. After the night she lost her once plentiful life in topside, her luck had only gone south. Rumors about her mother's corruption and alleged betrayal of the high houses and individuals of Piltover only needed a night to spread before Olive couldn't escape them. Afraid of being apprehended by enforcers as well (or worse), she fled to the Undercity. It would never be safe, but she knew that here no one could recognize her or what her family had done.
In the past year, Olive had scraped her way by in the Undercity, always working odd jobs and barely slipping under people's noses when things went south. She had her fair share of cuts and bruises, but as long as she was alive or at least not wildly broken, she was persistent in continuing her investigation into what really happened to her mother that night. Most of the work she did involved shady dealings that she traded for information, but so far, she'd been met with snarky remarks and vague statements alluding to what *may* have happened.
Maybe this job will be different.
All she had to do was make a small - albeit strange - delivery; how hard could it be? She slipped past buildings and snuck around brawling groups and staggering shimmer addicts to the low, almost invisible basement building that she was delivering to. Peeking through the smoky window, she could see almost nothing besides a decrepit wooden door and a sign warning others not to enter. Maybe I can just leave it at the door and move on? She wondered - but sighed when she remembered she had specific instructions to drop it off with the receiver. If she were a native to the Lanes, she might have had the insight to just leave the package at the door anyways and do her best to evade the consequences later. But even after a year of fighting her way through the darkness, she still couldn't abandon the manners and instruction obsessed habits that her upbringing had given her.
Grumbling, Olive wrenched open the outer door and paused at the wooden one inside, considering whether or not to knock. Deciding it was best to not catch the inhabitant off guard, she knocked heavily on the door and stood back in case they came out swinging. Not much to her surprise, the door was ripped open by a hulking figure with enraged eyes and the smelliest breath Olive had encountered yet. Gulping, she held up the package and mustered up the courage to speak.
"From Achlan," she squeaked, ready to drop it and run at a moment's notice. Don't get her wrong, she could hold her own if she needed too - but she'd rather not need to in this instance. The large creature, who Achlan, her employer, had identified as 'A big lug of a man' grunted and took the package with one large gruff hand. Frozen, Olive just let him take it and continued to stare at his gnarled face.
"Need anything else, pipsqueak?" The man growled, looking almost murderous at the fact that Olive had apparently overstayed her welcome. Sputtering an apology, Olive backed up a few feet before turning and running the opposite direction, heart thundering in her chest just from the thought of spending any more time in that dusty doorway.
Olive ran as fast as she could through the lanes towards her employer's main camp, scaling a few walls (with some struggling) and launching herself across gaps between buildings that would usually send her stomach turning. Finally, she caught a glimpse of the crooked stack of buildings that her destination inhabited. She slid down the roof and shambled wall of the building she had been perched on, and tried to look confident as she strode towards the building that seemed rather looming when she really looked at it. On the ground floor stood the Undercity's iconic brothel, a haram of substances and lust that constantly hung in the air in and around it. Olive really tried to avoid the place simply so she wouldn't be lured in by the promise of payment, but for this job, she needed to go inside to access the stairwell to the upper floors.
Taking a deep breath, Olive avoided the eyes of the few people lurking outside and pulled open the door, slipping inside and rushing towards the stair at as fast of a pace she could go without looking suspicious. She almost made it before a smooth, husky voice called out to her.
"Hey miss...you look awfully lonely over there; leaving in such a rush?" The masked man called, stalking towards her with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
"Yes, I am leaving, actually," Olive replied, her breathing shallow as she tried to continue on without making eye contact.
"Ah ah ah," The man continued, reaching out to snatch her wrist before she had a chance to slip away. "You're really going to leave a paying customer unsatisfied?" he asked with a smirk.
"I don't work here," Olive hissed in reply, trying to snatch away her arm; the man's grip was surprisingly strong for his lanky build.
"Oi!" A deeper voice suddenly called, causing both of them to whip their heads towards the stairwell. "She's with me."
Olive recognized her employer instantly and shocked even herself with how relieved she was to see him. The masked man released her wrist immediately, muttering a nervous apology and slinking away into another room of the brothel. Olive had never been so thankful for such a terrifying man's nerve-wracking effects.
"You, up here," The large man on the stairs grunted, gesturing towards Olive. Nodding, she scampered up the rickety wooden stairs after his thudding footsteps. Upon reaching his door, he opened it gruffly and didn't bother to check if Olive made it inside or was even following him. Reaching a large desk littered with objects, the man sat down and faced Olive with an unimpressed look on his face.
Her employer was an almost ogre-like man with bulging muscles and strange bumps littering his green-tinged skin. They called him Achlan, and by now, Olive had heard enough rumors to know why his name and his looming presence sent people scattering.
"You finish the job?" He asked, seeming rather bored.
"Yes, sir," Olive said, the words seeming to jolt out of her almost trembling mouth.
"Good. You may leave," He replied, waving his hand toward the door and looking down at his desk.
"I'm sorry, but my payment..." Olive stuttered with her eyes to the ground.
"Ah yes, you're the one that wanted information. Strange request. Let's see, you want to know about Eleanor Whitlock, yes?"
She nodded a response.
"Something tells me you already know plenty about her family history...so why come to me? Surely you've tried to do some sleuthing on your own."
"Yes, sir, but if you could just tell me something — anything you know," She pleaded in a quavering voice. For a few moments, there was silence.
Then Achlan spoke.
"Stillwater Hold, inmate 516."
Olive was struck speechless. In a daze, she walked down the stairs and out to the street, paying no mind to anything, or anyone, around her. Stillwater Hold? What could an inmate there possibly know about her mother?
What if...No. Olive refused to even suspect that her mother could have ended up in jail. She'd had to face a lot of things in the past year, but even now she couldn't face the thought of it. Clenching her fists, she let her anxiety turn into anger, and was basically boiling by the time she reached the one place she knew she could get information about Stillwater - The Last Drop.
The neon glow emanating from the gigantic eye hit Olive's vision before she even spotted the building. The run-down and rather nasty bar was a common watering hole for residents of the Undercity, and no matter how hard she tried, that didn't exclude Olive. Her ears were flooded with noise when she opened the groaning door, and she held back a wince at the stench of alcohol and body odor. Making a beeline for the bar itself, she slid into an empty stool and waited for the familiar bartender to turn toward her.
"Olive, what can I do you for?" The dark, broad-shouldered bartender asked, a small smile whispering on his lips.
"I'm not drinking tonight, Grint," Olive replied with a serious face. "I need advice." Leaning in closer, she waited for him to do the same before continuing.
"Say I wanted to find a certain prisoner at Stillwater...Could I, you know, do it?" She asked in a lowered voice. Grint almost laughed.
"Not unless you want to get thrown in there with them! My advice, if you want to see anyone in that hellhole, you better be ready to stage a full break-in. Not that they're expecting anyone to break in — who in their right mind would want to get in there? Except you, of course." He chuckled and shook his head like Olive was presenting some ridiculous idea. She wasn't.
"And how would I go about breaking in?"
Avoid the light, find a back door, don't get caught. Those were the instructions Grint gave her before being pulled away by other customers at The Last Drop. How Olive was going to pull this off, she wasn't sure — but she'd be damned if she let another clue go unsearched. Taking a deep breath, she started carefully navigating her way around the jagged rocks of the island that Stillwater inhabited. She hissed like she had just been stung when the searchlight nearly grazed her calf. She went to hell in a handbasket alone just to get to the island, and that supposedly wasn't even the hardest part. Eventually, she reached the tall, intimidating building and started to scout it for entrance points.
Shit.
The only point of entry she could find besides the very obvious front doors was a second story window that seemed like she would need about five more years of rock climbing experience for. But time wasn't going to slow down for her to figure out another plan, so she latched her hands and feet into whatever holds she could find and started to climb.
How in the world she did it, Olive wasn't sure, but climb the wall she did. The window was, of course, locked, but it was nothing that a lock pick and a little elbow grease couldn't take care of. Within minutes, the window was open, and Olive was in. Seconds later she regretted every life decision she ever made when she spotted a gigantic guard sitting no more than 20 feet away. That is, until she heard him snoring. Her breathing started again and, after a moment to check that he was truly asleep, Olive began creeping towards him as slow as she could stand to go. Upon approaching the guard, she noticed a ring of keys on his belt. Isn't that a little too obvious? Olive wondered, but hey — she wasn't one to pass up such an opportunity. Her fingers made quick work of the key ring, and within seconds, the keys were in her hands. Now she just had to figure out which cell was 516's.
Initially, Olive figured that 516 must be on the 5th floor, considering that the inmates on the floor she was on seemed to all reside within the 100s. But the higher she went, the lower the numbers got; until she made a frustrating realization. The higher the number, the lower the floor — which meant that inmate 516 must be quite a bit underground. After kicking herself for wasting time, Olive descended floors until she reached what appeared to be the lowest floor, and the home of inmates listed in the 500s. Most of the cells down here seemed to be empty, and as she passed more and more cells, the unexpected sound of fists hitting concrete started to echo in her ears. Her blood chilled, and of course, it was only fitting that as she drew closer and closer, the light started to dissipate, the length of the hallway started to shorten, and the pounding only grew louder.
"Hello?" Olive called barely above a whisper towards the cell marked 516. The fists stopped. Olive came to a nervous stop in front of the cell door, fiddling with the keys in her hands. She caught sight of flashes of dark pink hair and heavily tattooed skin. The occupant tilted their head slightly towards Olive, exposing an angular face with a scarred lip.
"Who the hell are you?"
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Aaaaah! That's the end of the first chapter! If anyone reads this, I hope you liked it :) I'm literally kicking my feet and giggling writing this story, so I truly hope other people enjoy it as much as I do. The next chapter will be out shortly! Don't forget to vote and comment!