章節 6: Welcome to the Zoo (II)

It was the bang of a door that brought Jet out of his game-induced focus. Jumping a little in his seat from the surprise of it, he looked away from his phone and directed his gaze to the door.

There stood a man, at least two meters tall, bulky and with large muscles. His face was angry and his brows furrowed, with his eyes glaring daggers at anybody that dared to meet his sight. Huffing angrily, the man stalked into the lounge and threw himself down on one of the already occupied sofas, making it creak in protest. Hali, who was the person already sitting on it, frowned and snapped a, "Careful!" at him.

"Oh shut it!" the man hissed back at her viciously.

It took the man approximately ten minutes to realize that Jet wasn't a familiar face and when he did, he furrowed his dark brows even further together — which just made him look even angrier — and demanded, "Who are you?"

Jet quirked an eyebrow and smiled in amusement as he answered, "Jet Flynn. You?"

"Hmph!" the man sneered at him. "Like I need to answer you."

Instead of getting angry like the man clearly wanted him to, Jet just shrugged his shoulder and went back to his game. It was getting to the point where it was starting to become interesting, so he didn't care if the man wanted to pick a fight with him or something.

Silence covered the room like a blanket. The only thing that could be heard was the tapping on phones and the spinning of the ceiling fan.

Boredom defeated him within short order.

"I'm gonna go explore." he declared to the room at large and abruptly stood up.

Nobody gave him a second glance, except another humph from the man that had refused to give him his name. Jet rolled his eyes at the guy's pointless hostility and made his way between the coffee tables and sofas. After giving it a bare moment of thought, he wandered in the direction of the staircase.

"Wait."

Jet turned around and quirked his eyebrow in question at Mitya, who had proceeded to stand up as well. "What?"

The man rounded the sofa and stopped beside him. "There is a keypad at the top of stairs."

"Oh, that's okay." Jet said and waved his hand. "I already know the code."

Mitya furrowed his eyebrows in confusion and asked, "How?"

"Well, I am a fortune-teller. It has to be good for something." Jet smiled at Mitya and started walking again. The stairs were hidden in a corner of the room, and not in direct line of sight from the entrance door.

Like Mitya said, at the top of the stairs was an electronic keypad. Now, Jet did not actually know the code, as he wasn't an actual real fortune-teller, but he assumed it was the same code as the one to the boss's office. Most people were lazy beings that only bothered to remember one code, and used it for everything.

As Jet had suspected, the code he entered worked flawlessly.

Smiling, he pushed open the door and entered a long hallway.

It was very easy to tell that the hallway did not belong to the rest of the house, in part because it was made of different material, and in part because the café only had the one floor. There was no second storey.

Jet rose an eyebrow and entered the hallway without hesitation.

It was dark, and absolutely silent.

His footsteps echoed in the long hallway, the only light the one coming from flickering lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at even intervals.

A musky, trapped scent filled the air.

Sensing a mystery, Jet didn't hesitate to follow the only path the hallway had laid out.

It was one of his many personal failings. He let his curiosity take the lead too many times.

Jet ran his hand over the wall as he walked. The bumpy dark red plaster was torn and dusty, and the paintings that littered the walls like candy were all faded, old things. They had very clearly not gotten the maintenance that they required.

He hummed under his breath as he wandered, the song echoing just like his steps. It made the hallway seem even more eerie than it already had, not that this bothered him. Jet would never have been able to make a successful career as a scammer in todays society if he didn't have nerves of steel. Very little managed to scare him nowadays.

Not like when he had first started out as a teenager, and the littlest thing could make him scream. Those were some pretty embarrassing memories.

He would really rather not think about it.

Eventually, his walking brought him to a door.

It was a large, old-fashioned gothic door, pitch black and with black handles. There was a large keyhole, but Jet didn't see how that would matter, when he was certain this door had a magical lock as well. He could pick locks as well as the next scammer, but — due to his lack of magical abilities — could not pick magical ones.

Nevertheless, he shrugged his shoulders and tried the handle. Just because there was a lock, it didn't mean that it was locked.

His eyebrow rose when the door opened inward without any trouble. Really, who would leave a place like this unlocked? He knew what he thought, but that didn't mean that he actually believed it. Only a fool would leave a place like this — obviously of at least some worth — unlocked.

But it wasn't his part to scold people for their idiocy, least of all when it was to his benefit.

He walked through the door.

The lighting almost blinded him.

Unlike the hallway, which had been dark and dreary, this room was almost absurdly bright.

All of the walls were painted white, the floor was a shining pale marble and there were hundreds of lamps hanging from the ceiling, lighting up every nook and cranny. Jet furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, moving further into the room. The sparse furniture — a single bed and desk, plus chair — were just as white as the rest of it.

"Wow..." he couldn't keep himself from voicing his wonder. He had never seen anything like this, and trust him, he had seen a lot of things.

"WHO IS THERE?"

The voice was so distinctly inhuman, so out of touch with his reality, that it grated on his very nerves. It felt like nails were dragging on a chalkboard right next to him. It was loud and quiet at once, unfathomable in its depths and it dragged his soul under a sea of power. Jet winced and pressed his hands over his ears, more uncomfortable than he had been in years.

There was just something about this voice... something about the way it sounded, that made him know, with absolute certainty, that this voice wasn't meant for human ears.

It wouldn't surprise him if he dropped dead just from hearing it.

Nonetheless, he also knew that it would only get worse if he didn't respond.

"My name is Jet Flynn."

And he really needed to stop giving his real name to mysterious beings.

"HOW DID YOU COME TO ENTER HERE?"

Jet smiled disarmingly at thin air. "I walked in through the door."

From the voice alone, it was impossible to assign it a gender. Jet waited for ta reply while he pretended like his eardrums weren't about to burst.

Finally, after minuets of waiting, the voice spoke again.

"LEAVE."

Thinking that this was probably a really good idea, he turned around to do just that and then stopped cold in his tracks. "Ah..." he scratched at his neck and smiled sheepishly. "The door seems to have disappeared."

"THERE." the voice said harshly and then the door magically reappeared. Literally. "NOW GO."

"Okay, okay, I'm going." Jet reassured them and hurried slowly over to the door, that opened before he even reached. "You know..." he started. "if you really want to keep people out, you should think about actually locking the door."

"IT WAS LOCKED."

"Ah... then I don't have an explanation." Jet stated and walked through the open doorway. He reappeared in the same hallway, just as dreary and dark as it was before.

The door closed with a loud BANG behind him.

"So..." Jet spoke to himself and leaned against the door. "What am I suppose to do now?"

Nobody answered him.

After resting his hearing for several minutes, he pushed off from the door and started walking in the same direction he came from. Might as well go back and find Mitya, now that he was bored and his ears had finally stopped ringing.

The path back was straightforward and easy, so he managed to find his way back without any trouble. Granted, he was pretty sure that he was briefly in another country for a few minutes there, and at one point, he saw an old pharaoh walking in another direction, but these were all occupational hazards that he was well aware of. Hallucinations — both auditory and visual ones — was nothing uncommon.

Back at the door that was connected to his reality, Jet pressed in the same code again in another keypad — really, at this point, it was getting kind of ridiculous — and the door opened with no hassle. Grinning in accomplishment, and at the fact that he had gotten out with limbs, life, and sanity intact, Jet walked through it and found himself at the top of the stairs.

He rose an eyebrow and quirked his lips in a smile. Walking easily down the stairs, he found himself in the same place he had left. This time, it was significantly emptier, only Mitya still in the room.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Mitya asked harshly, his thick brows scrunched together.

Jet nodded and smiled at him. "Yes. It was most interesting."

For a second, Mitya looked confused before he smothered the expression and it smoothed out into the normal stoic look. "Good." the man nodded and stood up to walk.

"Come with me."

Jet followed after him without uttering any words to the contrary and they walked out to another hallway. In this one, there was another door, once more with an electronic lock. Jet watched on as Mitya once more used the same code. He didn't quite manage to contain his puff of laughter at that, and he waved away Mitya's suspicion when the man looked sharply back at him.

They emerged at the back of the building, and Jet was guessing it was the actual same building, as he didn't have the magical senses necessary to be able to make sure of it. It was the same color tone as the rest of café, done up in homey colors and with a relaxed atmosphere.

As they followed the corridor, they passed many doors, all of them with actual physical locks. So they weren't complete idiots then. Good to know.

Well, it would take Jet maybe two minutes to pick the locks, but out of respect for his new coworkers, he wouldn't. And besides, they would doubtlessly be able to sense his disturbance of their personal space if he tried anything.

Better to just leave it be and, you know, not get killed.

That seemed like a very good plan.

"Here." Mitya said and stopped in front of a light wooden door. It looked like a perfectly ordinary door, the kind found in any home, and Jet was relieved that at least he wouldn't have to fake some knowledge about magical doors. "This is your room."

Jet stepped forward and put his hand on the handle. It refused to move. Sighing, he turned back to Mitya and asked, "The key?"

For a moment, it looked as if Mitya didn't have any clue what he was talking about. Then he reached into an inner pocket of his cloak and pulled out a fairly new looking silver key and asked Jet, "Is this needed?"

At this, Jet burst out laughing. He couldn't stop himself.

By the time he finally managed to stop, he was leaning on the door and looking up at Mitya. "Yeah, it's needed."