Sid leaves Quin's cell block and begins heading up the stairs. The music becomes progressively louder as she goes higher.
What a downer. I went in there to lighten up my mood, but I ended up in a worse mood after all. What was I even expecting from him? I'm the one who got his ass locked up in the first place.
The scene of the four of them on the road, joking around with each other, flashes through her mind.
She scratches her head, furious with herself for thinking about that.
You fool.
She reaches the deck, and there is a party going on there, if you can even call it that.
The people actually dancing while doing drugs are the most moderate thing there. In one circle, there is a ring of people cheering on two prisoners as they beat each other to death. There are others having open intercourse with themselves and the clearly shackled prisoners. At the side of the boat, there are even those using a makeshift fishing hook made of a metal pole and a rope, with a man dangling off the edge of it into the open water in claims of fishing for a leviathan.
But it is just torture.
These people, with the looks on their faces, did not resemble anything human. After the fall of civilization, they had let go of everything and given in to their impulses.
Sid avoids eye contact with everyone as she walks towards a pagoda in the center of the deck.
Beneath it was the ship's steering cabin.
She enters it and sits down in the captain's chair. She takes a large breath, releasing all the tension she felt from walking through the midst of the people partying.
Sid sits in the captain's seat, staring at the sea, mesmerized by its calmness and peace.
Then she begins to reminisce about a time when she was younger.
She was sitting on the shoulders of a big man, playing with his hair and laughing as they stood on a beach looking over the sea.
Little Sid's eyes begin to sparkle upon sighting a boat out in the distance. She starts flailing about in excitement, trying to get him to look.
"Papa, see, see, see! It's a boat. On the water, Papa, it's a boat!"
"Yes, I can see it," he says in a soft tone matching her excitement. "Do you like boats?"
"Yes, I do," she responds.
"Then Papa will get you one."
"Huh?"
She strains to look at his face, wanting him to elaborate.
He picks her off his shoulders and holds her in front of his face.
"Yes. Papa will get you a boat just like that when you get older."
The little girl bursts through the seams with excitement, jumping about while she is being held. The man was clearly prepared for that, having held her out at a distance beforehand.
Sid, at present, cracks a small smile, remembering this.
But her moment of peaceful reminiscing is cut short when someone barges through the door.
She turns around, about to yell, when she sees who it is and stops herself before she says something she will regret.
Walking in is the same man from her flashbacks, with two women by his side.
She springs up from her seat immediately to greet him.
"Boss, it's good to see you."
She bows her head a bit, with one hand behind it, and begins speaking like a suck-up.
"You look great today, Boss, as always. What brings you here to see me?"
In total contrast to the way he spoke to her in her memories, he begins speaking.
"I heard you were able to bring in something interesting yesterday."
"Yes. A girl. She was able to see the monsters before anyone else."
He doesn't seem amused. "And what is so special about that?" he asks her, disappointed and losing interest.
"Uhm... heehee, well, she could be invaluable when we are going out to find more people. Being able to detect the monsters will mean we have fewer casualties."
"What's wrong with a little casualties? We can just get more people. These monsters are nothing to be feared that we need to avoid them. Or are you saying we should run?"
"No! No," Sid refutes quickly.
"Then what other news do you have?"
Bewildered and not knowing what to say in response, Sid just remains there quietly, thinking up something to say that will save her skin.
"Uhm, that's right. Their base. She said she came from a base of survivors. We can get the location of all her buddies out of her and get them."
"More survivors, you say?"
His eyes immediately perk up.
"You should have started with that."
Joyfully, he walks up to her and gives her a kiss on the forehead, to which she blushes.
"Great job. Now I want you to find the location of their base from her and go out and capture them. I'll put you in charge of the unit that goes out."
"Uh, yes, sir."
"Keep up the great work, Laila, and you might get a promotion."
He grabs the two women with him by their butts as he leads them out.
Immediately after he leaves, the smile on Sid's face vanishes.
Under her breath, in a tone only audible to her, she mutters,
"My name is Sid."
Getting those thoughts out of her mind, she stands up and opens a cabinet next to her in it is a knife, it had a red dragon engraved on it's blade and a green dragon engraved on it's hilt.
She sighed unhappy with what she had to do before picking it up.
"I'm sorry, Anna, but it looks like your luck just got a lot worse."
She exits the cabin, looking up at the pagoda to see the boss frolicking around with a lot of women.
A sight all to common for her.
She pulls her eyes away from them and continues to the stairs, heading upwards.
Sid, you fool.
She lets out another heavy sigh, a clear sign that she is shoving all her feelings down.