As sweat began pooling on her, Jenny made a mental note to call maintenance as she entered the room. Vegas weather was never merciful, and keep the AC going was a cardinal rule. But that would have to wait - there were bigger problems.<br/><br/>Living in Sin City had generally inured her to the sight of monumental architecture, but generally one expected to see large buildings as one was going<em>into</em>the city. Seeing something like that from the inside looking out was quite a different matter. And it was big. The Ring extended from about Sloan in the south and Hoover Dam in the East, over to Red Rock Canyon in the West and Nellis up north, so for something to be seen from out there - pretty damn huge.<br/><br/>And even if someone could put something like that up in a day, there was also the fact that it was<em>outside</em>the Ring of Thorns.<br/><br/>Which left the other question. Why her? OK, so people knew her. She got things done. But Jenny was still just another cocktail waitress downstairs. The Mirage, hell<em>every</em>place in Vegas had management personnel devoted to making guys like this happy. For all she knew, Steve Wynn himself might take this guy's calls. But that came back to another of Vegas's fundamental rules - keep the Whales happy. Creepy or not, this guy would probably tip her enough to make the next two payments on her house. So she just put on her best smile and answered, "Sure, I'll look into it." After all, what was the worst that could happen? She'd drive out into the desert, take a look at the thing from the other side of the Ring, and then drive back, right?<br/><br/>And so twenty minutes later, that's exactly what she did. At least the driving into the desert part. The ease with which she had gotten permission to leave her shift was almost unnerving. Perhaps the guy<em>did</em>call Steve. But she wasn't going to complain about that. She had to stop about a mile out as she hit the line of abandoned cars on the I-15 from when the Ring shot up.  Canteen in hand, she walked the rest of the way to the thorns. To be honest, up close the monument didn't look that much different than it did from the 30th floor of the Mirage; just a lot bigger. The Stratosphere certainly didn't hold the record for the tallest building west of the Mississippi any longer. Besides, if she was going to be surprised, she might as well have been done so by the Ring of Thorns, which had just done something it hadn't done for anyone else - at least as far as she knew - since its sudden eruption out of the desert.<br/><br/>It opened.<br/><br/>Jenny didn't know what to make of this, but she figured that if the Ring was making a door, she should probably go through. Of course, once she was on the other side, it dawned on her that if it closed again, she'd definitely be on the wrong side of the thorny wall in the middle of the desert. "Well, if you're gonna bet, better go all in..." she muttered to herself, and passed between two of the columns to see what the site might be hiding inside.