Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Tin Man 'verse. Nothing and no one. Because (at the moment) I'm playing only with the Sci-Fi original characters.
He thought he would have been feeling anticipation as he neared the brothel. Not for the same reason as the brothel's numerous and varied clientele. But anticipation all the same, that he was finally going to get his revenge.
Instead he felt a gnawing hollow in his stomach. Something about the situation didn't feel right. It didn't feel like he'd hoped it would, like he'd imagined for so long.
When he walked inside the 'establishment' (what the hell kind of place doesn't have a front door anyway?) he almost immediately had to hide his face as a pair of Longcoats stomped down the hallway towards him. The vapor-addled prostitute in the pink tried to get his attention, a futile move, even if he'd come to the place for that purpose. She wasn't exactly his type.
With a finger to his lips, he urged her to be quiet. Her heavily made up eyes with their dilated pupils blinked slowly. Then resting against the wall, she just watched him.
He heard the voice of Zero's favorite bedmate from the other side of the glass door. One hand gripped the doorknob, clenching his teeth in a grimace at the extremely (to his ears) loud click of the door opening.
For a moment he froze. That niggling voice at the back of his mind was now screaming at him to give up on vengeance and help DG. But he was too close. Relentlessly, he pushed the feeling back, and charged into the room without a further thought.
Instead of catching Zero with his pants down, literally, the only thing in the room was the woman clothed only in a towel. He demanded answers, all the while his eyes darted around the steam-filled room. As if his enemy was just hiding and would appear if he stared at the room long enough.
The woman helpfully explained that Zero had left early. And that he knew DG was in Central City.
Cain stared at her, feeling as if the bottom dropped suddenly out of his stomach, certain that if he looked down he would see a gaping hole in his belly. Some sort of physical manifestation of his mingled shock, guilt and horror.
He'd known leaving DG would end horribly. He'd known it! But instead, he'd left her unprotected in a dangerous city, with even more dangerous people baying for her blood. He might as well have thrown a kitten into the shifting sands of the Great Desert.
Damn it, he had to get to her before Zero did.