Residential Bloc Northern Shopping District, continued...

 

The professor looked down, and then behind himself.
 

“She was just here!”
 

“Well, now she isn’t,” the sergeant said, with a glance at the professor. “Fix that, so we can get out of here.”
From the distance, in the darkness, there came a flash of bluish light, and the sound of a man’s voice — and then another’s — crying out.

The professor and corporal both hefted their longarms, each muttering a choice oath as they ran towards the commotion, glowstones held aloft.
 

They stumbled across the girl standing in a relatively open area, where four tiled pathways met. Sprawled at the carpeted perimeter were three men, in the vests and leathers of one or another of the Inner City’s notorious street gangs. Their gloves were charred, burnt completely through in places, and the beginnings of ugly bruises blossomed on brow and cheek.
 

The men lowered their longarms, and the girl turned slowly their way, wiping at a spot of blood where her lip had split.
 

“You’re hurt!” the professor said, and he knelt before the girl, fishing in his coat pockets for a handkerchief. He wadded it up, and dabbed at the girl’s lip. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
 

The girl shook her head, mashing her lip into his hand as she did so, but showing no sign of discomfort.
 

The corporal inspected the fallen men, and began roughly moving them together. He cast about the racks, finally finding a selection of belts which he used to bind the men’s hands, and then secure them to a large, heavy looking display case.
 

“Those guys got the tar kicked out of them,” the corporal said, as he came back over to the girl. She hadn’t moved, except to take the handkerchief from the professor to hold it to her lip on her own. The corporal gave her a bit of a wide berth, and looked askance at the small hand that the professor had taken in his own.
 

The professor gave her hand a tug. “Come on, we should get back to the sergeant.”

He tugged again when the girl didn’t move. “We—”

The corporal turned a slow circle, his glowstone held high. “Maybe there are more of them,” he said. 

At that, the girl nodded. 

“How many? Where?”

Her hand slipped from that of the professor, and she held up three fingers, glancing up. She turned a half circle, still looking up, and uncurled the remaining two fingers.