#silco mentioned

Sevika came to Silco's office again, as she had been doing often recently, even more often than when he was alive. She'd lost count after the fifth time.

He was gone, but his scent still lingered. His stuff still layed here, though their number was dwindling with each passing day. Sevika didn't know where they were disappearing to, but she knew they wouldn't return, just like their owner, and she knew exactly whose fault it was.

Taking another step, she heard a creak and froze. Floorboard or ceiling beam? Sevika looked up — no visit here had been complete without this ritual — but saw nothing.

Jinx had been here. Perhaps she was here even now. Their paths would cross sooner or later; they had most likely already had in the past few days, but the girl had never openly announced her presence yet . Not out of fear, which she hardly ever felt. Neither from shame, otherwise she wouldn't have risked showing up here at all.

Was she waiting for Sevika to let her guard down, to expose herself to attack? May keep waiting then. Sevika would hardly be able to counter her in a fight without her prosthetic arm, but she wouldn't allow herself to be caught off guard. Not again. She even carried a mask with her, in case Jinx's sick head would get the idea to spray the Gray or some other nasty stuff here again.

Sevika got used to coming fully armed, sometimes even relatively sober, only to sit here for hours, vainly waiting for the corpse that was rotting in the river to return to his chair and give her another load of work.

But the risk was worth it, because outside the stuffy office, she felt even worse.

After staring at the ceiling with a bleary gaze for a moment, Sevika realized she didn't care if there’s anyone present. What should she do, anyway? Leave? No way.

As she approached the sofa and picked up a bottle, only to discover it was almost empty, she heard the sound of metal scraping against wood from above.

Slices of thin iron pipes, suspended on long braids that brushed against the scattered stuff, dragged along the wooden surface.

Against her better judgment, Sevika lowered her gaze to the floor and slowly, almost forcefully inhaled, as if trying to conceal the almost painful anger boiling within her. She had decided, on principle, to kill the girl herself, but she had lived and experienced enough to know that this revenge would bring no relief.

Jinx rolled onto her side, almost hanging over the edge of the ceiling beam.

"You've been..." a hoarse, high-pitched voice broke the silence.

Without waiting for her to continue, Sevika moved forward with a short jerk, barely even feeling her own weight, as if in a dream, and with a small poorly calculated swing, launched the bottle toward the ceiling. The seemingly thick glass shattered into pieces, hitting the beam, but even the smallest shards failed to hit Jinx; most of them fell onto the table and the carpet near the window.

Jinx barely reacted, only staggering slightly and letting out a short moan, somewhere between a grunt and a grin.

As if on purpose, she began to descend from the ceiling uncharacteristically slowly, with a perverse grace.

"As if it weren't obvious you'd screw everything up," Jinx spoke more slowly and quietly than before, but her voice only grew more hoarse, almost with a strangled creak. "Give it a day or two. Without Silco, his goons will scatter like rats from a ship, and you'll drown all alo-..."

"You can't even imagine what you've done," Sevika retreated to the sofa and leaned against the thin armrest. "How much he missed because of you, how much he sacrificed..."

Jinx was laying across the table, her head hanging down and her skinny legs carefully propped up on the edges of the chair back. Glassy, ​​bloodshot pink eyes glowed on her upturned, paper-white face. Without taking her gaze off Sevika, she smirked. Weakly but with the usual mockery.

Sevika didn't want to talk to her, she was sick of her; but her chest once again felt a physical constriction with indignation, and a question, for answer on which she didn't even care, burst forth with her exhalation.

"Why did you do that?" she almost hissed, like a beaten animal. "What did you achieve?"

The smile vanished from Jinx's face. Her shoulders trembled, her eyes widened slightly and stared into space, as if she had once again seen something no one else could see, when a glimmer of realization ran through her like an electric current.

"Way more than you," she replied, wincing angrily, and after a short pause, quickly pushed her elbow off the table to turn over. "You think you'll fill his shoes? Crawling here to whine in between playing commander?" Rising from the table, Jinx picked up the part of the syringe she'd helped Silco use. She rose to her feet and, briefly tearing her gaze away from the object in her hands, glanced askance at Sevika, who had risen from the couch and approached her.

"I'll continue his work," Sevika approached Jinx, walked around the table, snatched the instrument from her hands, and pointed it at her. "Without wasting on such parasites."

"Oh," Jinx watched as Sevika hastily put the syringe back. "So you're better than him? You should have told me right away..." she said in a forced, innocent voice, barely containing a chuckle or a growl, and stepped back. Jinx rounded the chair and grabbed it by the backrest on either side.

"Then why settle for a dull settee? Here," she turned the chair toward Sevika, "is your rightful place. Come on, show how it's done."

Taking another step forward, Sevika moved her gaze from Jinx to the chair. It looked slightly different, though it was hard to discern with the naked eye how. There were cuts in the leather and wood at the edges of the seat, hidden, but not perfectly. The upholstery was no longer symmetrical. There was something inside. Of course, Jinx had put bombs there. What else was to be expected?

Sevika looked at Jinx again, silently questioning. Did Jinx consider her that stupid? Jinx only gave another smirk in response, with a frighteningly sincere glint in her eyes. Those mocking grimaces again...

For a second feigning the appearance of turning away, Sevika kicked one of the chair's legs, knocking Jinx's hands off it. It spun around, revealing several painted bombs connected by a primitive mechanism.

Without a second thought about whether they would detonate right away, she lunged forward, snatched one of them, and hurled it at Jinx, who had flinched back.

Jinx caught the bomb in mid-air and chuckled. She bit her lip in anticipation, briefly meeting her creation's gaze before throwing it back.

The bomb hit the window frame and detonated.

Stunned by the weak but all-too-close explosion and the amount of substances she'd consumed earlier, Sevika barely felt the green shards tearing at her skin, but it was hard not to notice when she was pushed out of the broken window. No less toxic but slightly cooler air hit her back, washing over her fresh wounds, while the remaining glass in the wall bit into her thigh and the only arm she was trying to use to steady herself.