Underneath The Bartop
///Lost'sForward/// 100 Power Stones = 1 Chapter
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Cain entered the basement of the club. Still stood on the stairway, he untied the scarlet rope adorned over the gourd and lifted off its black cloth. As Cain did so, mist fell from the lip of the gourd and tumbled down the basement's steps.
Cain inspected the |Jug of Mist|. He looked inside it, beneath it, around it — but the jar was neither full nor wet. And yet, mist continuously overflowed from its depths.
The mist was typical; white, thick, and scentless.
Cain breathed in the substance, but as expected, he felt no effect.
He summoned the Relic's description.
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|Jug of Mist's| Description: Endless fog cloaked the streets — veiled in deception — a Spirit's parade.
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'That definitely helps…' Cain sighed.
He knew that the mist must do something, but he didn't know what. Presumably, Cain felt that the mist was some type of poison. What else could be transmitted via mist?
Cain waited for the mist to spread down the staircase. After fifteen minutes of idling, he finally descended into the basement.
When he arrived at the bottom of the steps, another steel door barred his path. The single door had metal bars in the center that Cain could peer through.
With the gourd still in hand, Cain stuck his nose through the metal bars. He looked left and right and on each side a guard sat.
The guards faced each other with each of their backs pressed against cement walls. Cain's nose hovered just above them.
He looked between the two and noticed glossiness in their eyes.
"Hello?" Cain said.
The two guards stood in unison. They turned towards Cain and with a deadpan expression, they replied simultaneously.
"Hello."
Cain looked at the guards, but the guards seemed to look past Cain — their eyes unfocused and staring at the steel door itself.
"Can you… let me in?"
"Yes." The guards replied together.
One of them reached towards their belt, where a keychain of multiple keys lay. Plucking the keychain from his waist, the guard inserted the key into the steel door's lock and turned it.
*click*
The steel door swayed open.
Now, standing no more than three feet apart, Cain and the guards faced each other.
Cain's eyebrow rose.
'What in God's green Earth…?'
Cain waved his hand in front of one of the guard's eyes. Yet, he was met with no response at all — not even pupil dilation.
"Hello?" Cain repeated.
"Hello." The guards spoke as one.
"Do you see me?" Cain asked.
"Yes." x2
"What do I look like?" Cain asked.
But the guard's did not reply.
Cain still held the |Jug of Mist| and so mist was still spilling over into the basement. At this point, a solid layer of mist collected across the floor of the basement and concealed their shoes.
Uncomfortable at the soulless demeanor of the guards, Cain slid his body past them and continued further into the basement. From the door onwards, a corridor proceeded.
At the end of the corridor, two pathways diverged: one went left, the other right.
Cain trudged through the mist and entered the left hall. There, a wooden door stood before him.
Cain turned the door's handle and opened it, but the moment he did so, a foul and pungent odor assaulted his nostrils.
The smell of rot and decay mixed with feces and chlorine. The stench stung Cain's eyes and burned his windpipe — even the air felt caustic.
Cain persevered and pushed the door open. Once he did so, he heard the groans and wails of struggling life.
Beyond the wooden door, human cages were lined against the walls. On the left, women. On the right, men.
The cages were too small to stand in, but from the looks of it, the people contained here were not granted the privilege of energy to begin with.
Cain could tell because in the first cell, the cage to his immediate left, a woman's corpse was ripped apart and strewn open. Her innards were pulled through the cage's bars into the cell beside hers; where another woman lay with her teeth munching her cellmate's flesh.
All of the captives were malnourished. Their ribs were visible, their nails were uncut and sharpened, and their bodies were mutilated.
Across the figures of all of the captives, in fact, signs of abuse appeared prevalent. For some, bruises lathered their body; for others, deep gashes and cuts were sewn together with barnyard twine.
That was the men, however. The women's bodies, not to get too graphic, had been pillaged and torn apart. Large chunks of their hair were missing, cigarette burns littered their flesh, and many of their tongues had been severed.
Cain noticed this gruesome detail while watching the woman in cell two devour the woman in cell one.
Feigning acknowledgment, Cain shut the door. He walked across the hall to the doorway on the right. Like before, he turned the handle and entered the room.
Unlike the last, however, this room contained various screens depicting the inside of the club above. Two men sat in office chairs behind the screens. On their laps, two notebooks were spread open.
"Hello?" Cain asked.
"Hello." x2
'Man this is weird.'
Cain grabbed one of the guard's notebooks. He flipped through its contents.
On each page, a black and white image of a person appeared in the top left with an in-depth profile extending afterwards. Flipping through the pages, Cain suddenly stopped.
He found the woman contained in cell two — the cannibalist.
'Kiara Lopez…' Cain's heart twinged in pain.
In the picture glued to the notebook, she was gorgeous. Irradient, pear-like eyes and clear skin. A strip of freckles danced across her nose. In her picture, she was also smiling. It was a huge smile, unquestionably genuine.
Cain forced his eyes off of Kiara's picture. Instead, he read the rest of her page.
'October 12th - 3245 Carvalha R. 4 Hours. + 12,000 R$'
'January 05th - 1083 Cereja Av. 2 Hours. + 5,000 R$'
'These are her jobs…'
Cain understood very quickly what the records showed — they were her escort dates, but if she were an escort, why was she so battered?
Cain flipped through the notebook some more until a bright notification ignited from the center screen of the countless monitors.
In bold red letters, it read "Potential Candidate Found."
Cain looked around the desk of the security room and found the mouse. He navigated across the screens and clicked the red blurb. Instantly, the screen was replaced with the image of a woman who had just entered the club with a gaggle of her friends.
Of the group, this woman in particular stood out like gold — a reincarnation of the God of beauty Herself.
Meanwhile, the screen continued to play live.
This random goddess and her friends moved towards the bar where they each ordered a drink. On the camera, Cain watched the bartender slip a white powder into one of the drinks. Then, the girls grabbed their glasses and cheersed for whatever occasion.
The beautiful woman drank her drugged concoction.
In under five minutes, visual reactions began to take place. At first, she strutted back and forth looking uncomfortable. Then, she crossed her legs and winced as she clutched her stomach.
She excused herself to the washroom — another place that was unfortunately on camera.
Cain watched the woman barge into an empty stall. She barreled onto the ground and over the toilet. On her knees, she vomited into the toilet of which she gripped onto for dear life.
While puking uncontrollably, the woman's bathroom door pushed open. A man had entered.
He snuck up behind the woman and, with a wet cloth, snuffed her out.
He tossed her limp body over his shoulder and left the bathroom quicker than he arrived.
Cain watched him step outside of the club's back door. He hurried across the parking lot and knocked on the bulkhead doors.
'Shit!' Cain burst out of the security room and exploded up the basement steps.
Without intending to, his leap onto the stairs cracked the concrete floor beneath him. With that leap though, Cain arrived at the top of the staircase in record time.
He slid open the steel lock and, without hesitating, slammed his black arm into the bulkhead doors. The doors exploded open and crashed against the asphalt — a loud boom followed.
Cain grabbed the collar of the kidnapper and pulled him into the basement stairway. He muffled his mouth and prevented his scream. Then, Cain snapped the guard's neck.
He twisted it backwards entirely.
Cain grabbed the girl and shut the doors.
He looked between the barely breathing girl and the dead man. In a moment of clarity, Cain panicked.
'Why'd I take the girl?!'
'Wait!'
'How were they planning on explaining this to her friends?'
Cain ignored the unconscious girl and raced back down the stairs. He returned to the security room and scanned the various monitors within it.
'There!'
Cain saw the woman's friends socializing at the bar. They were laughing leisurely and enjoying their drinks. They behaved as if their friend hadn't been gone for a concerning amount of time.
Then, Cain witnessed a transaction.
The bartender who drugged the beautiful girl's drink, underneath the bartop, slid a wad of bills into the hands of one of the women — the most obviously mature of them, a woman who was at least a decade older than the rest.
This woman grabbed the wad of cash and covertly slipped it into her purse. She leaned over the bartop and grabbed the bartender's forearm. She pulled him closer to her and with her lips now beside his ear, she whispered something to the man.
Then, she left.
She left the club.
Her and the other young girls walked past the bouncers in front and left the premises of the club completely.
Meanwhile, Cain stood in the basement mouth-agape.
'Wha—'
'What did I just witness?'
///LostNoteFound///
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