Walter stepped back to look for a sign on the building. The only thing he found was a single line etched into the large pane of glass:

TALLY INC - YOUR ELECTION HQ

That narrowed it down. Walter knew how Molly felt about politics, no way would she have followed Cat in there. Besides, hadn’t that ticket guy said something about a pub?

He turned and squeezed through the crowd, passing the dark alley to see what the other building was. The first thing he noticed was all the neon lights in the windows, the glowing tubes bent into the shapes of frothy mugs and gigantic bottles. Definitely a pub.

A cluster of figures stumbled out the front door—Humans and otherwise—somehow staying upright by clinging to their fellow drunks. Walter frowned at them. He waited for the group to pass before ducking through the entrance and into a small foyer, where he found a second set of double-doors. These were slathered with posters for upcoming events and hand-scrawled pages put up by people selling things. A half-dozen flash drives dangled from the ends of the latter, no doubt loaded with product pictures and info. Walter considered stealing a few—he knew how to wipe and unlock them for general use—then remembered he had an entire sock drawer full of them on Parsona.

He thumped the Wadi one more time before pushing the doors open and stepping into the pub. The blatting traffic and yelling from outside were immediately replaced with a smoky, clamorous din that somehow managed to be worse. A wall of large shouting aliens—Humans mostly—crowded a bar running the length of one wall. The rest of the place was filled with small tables surrounded by clusters of mismatched chairs, but nobody seemed to be sitting in them. Much of the furniture had been pushed aside to create a clearing where another raucous crowd stood in a vibrating mass. Pushing and yelling, holding their beers aloft and splashing their neighbors, it looked like a bunch of Palan pirates gambling on a game of Rats.

Walter stepped closer, trying to peek between the forest of legs, but they were too dense. He went to one of the tables instead and pushed aside the collection of empties and smoldering ashtrays. Using one of the chairs, he stepped to the top of the table and took a quick look at the center of the group, trying to sate his curiosity quickly before one of the barmaids told him to get down.

It was a fight. A big man was beating on a little one, the latter’s face so covered in blue blood he couldn’t even make out its race. He tried to remember how many species bled blue as the little one’s head whipped around from a heavy blow, the crack of bone-on-bone coming just before another roar from the crowd. Long hair flew out in an arc, blonde with streaks of light blue.