Title: The $50 Escape – No Questions Asked

The roads had narrowed to nothing.

TF141 moved like whispers through fractured towns and war-stained paths—quiet, deliberate, unreadable. No safehouse remained unburned. No contact returned their calls. Shepherd’s betrayal lingered behind every closed door, and even those who owed them now whispered them away.

Alejandro and Rodolfo kept pace down a market alley lined with enchantments twitching under the wind. Price and Ghost moved ahead, heads low, Gaz scanning corners like they were made of gun barrels.

Roach touched the side of a splintered brick wall and disappeared—reappearing twenty feet ahead beside Soap, who grunted and vaulted off an awning like he was born airborne. Krueger was already gone, slipping through shadows too thin for anyone else. Nikto followed, and two civilians turned down a side street without realizing they’d done it out of fear.

At the end of the block stood a stall. Crooked wood. Hand-painted lettering.

"$50 a night for your dream hotel (+10 to decide the outside scenery)"

No one spoke at first. The girl behind the stand looked up—a child, silver-haired, calm. Her hands rested in her lap, unmoving.

“What do you think?” Gaz muttered.

Laswell eyed the setup. “No runes. No trace. Nothing automated.”

Kamarov tapped his ear—no echoes on any frequency. Nikolai leaned toward the stall like it might bite. Farah narrowed her eyes at the horizon; no patrols, no watchers. Just stillness.

Price stepped forward. “You serious?”

The girl nodded once, saying nothing else.

And then it happened.

She raised her hand.

A seam split in the air behind her—quiet, clean, impossible. Light folded wrong. Space bent. A gateway opened to somewhere that didn’t shimmer or roar. It just pulsed, vast and waiting.

Soap cursed under his breath. Ghost’s posture shifted—he didn’t like what he couldn’t read. Rodolfo instinctively stepped in front of Farah. Krueger reappeared, unreadable. Nikto stared without blinking.

Price didn’t hesitate. He placed a card on the table.

$100,000.

The girl blinked. “It’s only fifty.”

“We’ll stay longer than you think,” Price said.

No further questions.

She turned and stepped into the breach with one warning.

"Don't panic when you feel like you're falling, you're not, there's just literally nothing there."

TF141 followed.

Inside, it wasn’t just another place.

It was unmarked. Unseen.
And for once, unafraid.

They didn’t ask how it worked.
They just needed it to hold.

And it did.