Nem, lying down on the floor, face and clothes bloodied and dirty, was desperately trying not to laugh. Three people in a row had almost tripped on his body attempting to follow the two teenagers, then they started grouping around him, talking.
"What the hell, those kids ran like... so fast man."
"Yeah... Shit I almost kissed the floor, man. Who put that kid there ?"
"Oy, lads, you think this is a game or something ? Get the random people away from here alright ?" Somebody with a bit of authority seemed to attempt to get the situation under control.
"Who said that, you think I'll just... Oh, Matt how are you doing man ? We got this for you no problem." This one first sounded drunk and arrogant but ended up with a meek and frightened attitude.
"Do you think we're going to catch those two ?"
"Nah, man, have you seen the guys going after them, they wouldn't even catch a snail if it was escaping." The man snorted in contempt. "Matt, are we getting this one to the usual place or directly to the headquarters ?"
Nem suddenly had the impression that a lot of people were looking at him, but he didn't make any movements.
"Let's tie up the kid in the headquarters for now, I heard we're getting busy tonight but this is free money after all." Nem felt a rough and sweaty hand on his face, cleaning up a bit of the blood. Fortunately, it didn't last. "This one looks like he'll fetch a good price with the old bastards back at the office, take care not to kill him."
Nem had no idea what this "office" was referring to, but he really didn't believe he wanted to find out. At least not by going there himself.
'Well, everything seems to be going fine for now...' Nem suddenly stopped thinking. 'Shit, I hope I didn't jinx myself !'
Thankfully, Nem's concerns turned out to be unfounded, mostly. Nem's body was put on a large man's shoulder like a potato bag, and was carried to the headquarters, which wasn't far at all, of course. Nem took advantage of his strange position to open his eyes a little right before coming inside the building.
He could see the empty ground, marked by many footprints. When he attempted to slowly raise his head, the person carrying him suddenly entered the building and closed the door, which faintly banged on Nem's head.
'Gods dammit ! I almost shouted in reflex. See if I'm going to kill you as well motherfucker !' Being a sheep being carried inside a wolf's nest, Nem wasn't very forgiving of surprises, especially painful ones.
Of course, he was a sheep with particularly sharp teeth and claws...
The men, however, didn't notice anything, even the one directly carrying Nem, and continued to chat about women, alcohol and food. Truly simple men.
Nem, seeing nobody capable of looking at his face from this angle, kept his eyes half-opened to try and memorize the layout of the building. He was unlikely to really succeed, but determined to try at least.
'This place is not very complicated, there are five different buildings all connected together in a complete all, with just a common yard in the center. This should be easy as long as I can locate Big Kor fast, I can probably kill him quickly before escaping.'
'Unless they have guns of course. In that case, I'll just try something else.'
For now, Nem couldn't see any rifles or anything that was considered a ranged weapon at all. They didn't even have crossbows, only knives, old longswords and wooden spears. They were also more exotic and cheap weapons such as hammers, table legs and other fun little toys.
Still, Nem could only see as much as his current position allowed him to, which meant that if some thugs were positioned on top of buildings as guards, he wouldn't be able to spot them at all, not even mentioning their weapons.
'For now, let's be very careful... There are a lot of those guys here after all.'
Big Kor had already put the word out that they would be some work tonight, and although not everyone was there yet, as it was still the middle of the afternoon, the headquarters were still very active.
Being a gang with secret support from the Church of Peace and great recent success from the last year, as well as being positioned in a very "young" neighborhood, there were truly a lot of members. Nem had no way to know it, but there were actually barely half of the direct members here at this time, and the place was bustling with life.
'I guess I'll have to be smart this time, there is no way I can escape from all those people if I'm not prepared, even if they don't have guns.' The reality of what he was attempting to do was slowly making its way into Nem's mind...
Fortunately, he was still a bit crazy.
'Well, I'll just have to make do with what I got, I suppose.' His brain started to kick into high speed, making a few preliminary plans based on guesses relating to Big Kor's position.
'I hope there is a basement, it's best if it's a large one...'
In Nem's case, every single person here that saw him would probably try to restrain him, or he would need to be very convincing. It wasn't an impossible task at all, though, especially considering that these were all dumb and often drunk young thugs. In any case, having a place like a basement to hide or even possibly move in would be quite nice.
At this moment, when Nem's mind was filled with ways to move around undetected and to deceive the people here, a voice that Nem identified as Matt suddenly said :
"Just tie the kid up in the boss's room, I think I'll just forget about it otherwise. Maybe he'll want to have some fun with him too..." The end of the sentence, pronounced just loud enough so Nem and the others could hear it, made chills run through his spine.
'What in the Gods ?! This Carl actually use this kind of bastard to kidnap children for the Church of Peace ?' Nem's mind was filled with the faces of the orphans in the monastery and what they could have possibly gone through if they originated from Lunhart. 'I think I'm gonna be sick again.'
His throat made a few internal movements, but he successfully hid it from the large man carrying him.
'Wait, this is good ! Very good !' Only then did Nem realize that all his plans were likely to be useless. This whole operation could be way easier than he thought...
The only problem was that it put Nem in a very passive position, and he wasn't quite sure he liked that very much...
While he was thinking of what to do, Nem was led into a large room, which reminded him of the old noble's bedchamber. There was a large baldaquin bed with expensive fabric and half-transparent white curtains, a small wooden table, nightstand and a medium-sized bookshelf that contained no books at all. There was a somewhat nice-looking oil painting representing a table full of fruits of different colors, which seemed to be the current artistic movement in this era, and its frame was coated with a golden color which really went baldy with the green walls.
Nem had a bit of trouble understanding what the guy decorating this room was going for, but it seemed like he really enjoyed money.
'I suppose this is the place. I should close my eyes and be careful of my movement now.'
As soon as he did that, Nem was roughly thrown on the floor, and someone put his back against one of the bed's legs in a sitting position.
"Alright, I'll just go ahead and tie the kid up, you guys can leave. Tell the boss if you see him that they are something waiting for him in his room."
"Yeah, alright." A few voices answered Matt from outside the door, and Nem could hear them leave with heavy and uneven footsteps.
'Should I kill him, just in case ?' Nem was now very close to the man named Matt, and he could even hear the sound of his respiration and smell his body odor. It wasn't very good at all, by the way, but Nem was already used to those nefarious smells. In Lunhart, hygiene was simply a word that they didn't use, even most of the ladies were relatively dirty and smelly.
It was one of the reasons why Nem always could tell when the people here were just trying to imitate the style of the Red Empire despite him never traveling outside of Sydai even in Tom's memories. In the cities of Sydai, people valued appearances and had knowledge of the benefits of showers and baths. In fact, the environment there was more akin to ancient Rome than the renaissance era, and there were many public baths for people of the middle class. Nem was pretty sure it was the case for most places inside the Red Empire and the Holy Kingdom as well, but those countries were so big that it was impossible to really expect a common standard of culture.
'Nah, it'll just make everything more annoying... I'm here to kill Big Kor and make them panic until they can't even remember they had something planned for tonight. If Big Kor comes back to his room to see blood everywhere, it'll make things a lot more complicated, and I don't have any safe way to kill this guy without popping an artery.'
In the end, Nem let his two hands get tied up behind his back with a rough and thick rope. Matt, wasn't delicate at all and made the knot clearly more tight than necessary, but Nem acted as if nothing had happened and he was still knocked out.
After that was done, Matt stood up and stayed in this position for a few seconds, making Nem wonder if he was admiring his work or planning something else. Then he heard a long sigh, and Matt walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Judging by the sound, there wasn't any lock on the door, or at least not from the outside.
Nem waited a while until the footsteps faded into the multiple sounds of the headquarters, and a finally opened his eyes.
'Time to get those claws to work.'