A pipe was attached to the building with thick iron bands set every five feet or so to hold it in place. The Dom was lucky enough to have pipes, unlike anywhere else in the Stacks, but the sight was still somewhat foreign to her. Without a second thought, Aina reached over and grabbed the pipe as tightly as she could. She shifted her body out of the vent halfway, then withdrew a single leg and placed her foot on one of the iron bands, and then the next leg.

She climbed as fast as she could, her back burning with the exertion, Kohl’s voice in her head screaming, Stop being weak!

The third floor’s window came into view. Peering over, she saw an empty hallway. Freeing one hand from the pipe, she anchored herself in place, then withdrew a knife to cut open the screen so a hole appeared big enough for her to squeeze through. She grabbed onto the window ledge, removed her legs from the pipe and for one horrifying second dangled in the air before hauling herself up to sit on the ledge.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead, but before she could take another breath to calm her nerves, a hand latched on to her shoulder and yanked her off the windowsill.

Dropping to the floor, she head-butted the person behind her. Their nose cracked. They tried to call out, but she spun around and punched the guard in the jaw, knocking him unconscious, the blades between her knuckles leaving bloody marks all over his face.

She took a moment to listen. Gunshots still fired from somewhere, which meant Teo was doing fine. This hallway was less lavish than the one downstairs. The walls were a pale beige color. Detailed carved wooden panels sat above doorways with lamplight glinting off their smooth finishes.

The carpet muffled her footsteps as she walked down the hall. At the corner, she crouched and quieted her breaths. An empty floor spread away ahead, and on the right, only visible if she peered around the corner very carefully, was a door with three guards standing outside it. Just then, someone about her age was escorted into the room, and it was locked behind him. It wasn’t her mark, so it must have been his younger brother, Ryuu Hirai. Perhaps they were both inside.

Careful not to prick her fingers, she withdrew a small blowgun and four poison darts. She placed one in the blowgun. She blew into it, replaced the dart, and repeated until all three guards fell to the ground unmoving with darts in their necks—the effects would last several minutes, giving her all the time she needed. Placing the last dart between her teeth, she moved forward.

A rough grunt sounded behind her. Whipping around, hands going to her knives, she saw Teo knock out a guard who’d been creeping up on her.

“You go in. I’ll keep watch,” he said, his hands covered in someone else’s blood as he dropped the guard to the floor. “That was his younger brother who went in, so he must be hiding there too.”