Welcome to Gaia! ::

It wasn’t that Fionnghal couldn’t give him specifics--she could, albeit broken specifics, fleeting, spread out over infuriating gaps. It was that the specifics were so frequently unhelpful. They were signs without context; they were dates without places or the names of streets without the names of cities to place them in.

In the case of Zeke, at least, the specifics could be teased out into a larger picture. He was looking at it now, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shithole apartment of which the clone was irrationally proud: neatly-kept and reeking of pot smoke and cigarettes, the latter of which Taym was himself contributing.

Something was wrong. He’d been sure--he’d been positive--that he’d find the place occupied, and he’d spent ten minutes getting up his nerve before picking the lock and letting himself in with Fiona already in his hands and he’d found--

--nothing. The pot smell was stale and old, and Zeke had lined up a week’s worth of clothes in a way that Taym found unsettlingly, distressingly familiar, and they weren’t used up right. Something was wrong because the place was vacant and Zeke would never leave the place vacant right before a drop was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be here, gathering its wits and having a last smoke and rehearsing snarky commentary to deploy on its liason.

Taym sat on the floor shuffling notebook pages and scribbled-on post-it notes and prepaid phones (and, disturbingly, the floorplans and surveyor’s maps of a half-dozen high schools all over the country, and one in London) into his satchel. There was information here, even if it wasn’t. Not much of it--Zeke had few obligations in a business sense and kept most of the information in its head, where Taym had already been able to rake his fingers through it--but enough to give him some idea of where to look next.

There could have been any number of explanations for the thing’s absence, but with a dead-certain intuition that he hoped was superstition and not some sort of lingering link Taym knew, somehow, that he would not be getting his hands on Zeke any time soon. He’d ask H. If he had to he’d ask Caelius. And if neither of them knew and his next capture couldn’t turn up any information either, well--there were methods--

Fiona shifted uneasily, a silent plea: don’t make me do it again. Don’t do it to yourself again. But he would, both of them knew it, if it was that or failure.

He’d gone into this restless and aching and trembling for a fight and for action, and what he’d gotten instead was a heap of paperwork and personal effects, if you could call them that. There was a brand new copy of The Catcher in the Rye (the Zeke that Taym could remember didn’t want to read; that was Ezekiel’s forte. Had been. And now it had gone out and bought a brand new copy of The Catcher in the Rye). The margins were filled up with notes, and they vacillated between exhilarated exclamation points and sheer confusion. A sense of alienation and self-righteousness and a fierce love of its own youth Zeke could grasp and revel in, but the idea of personal obligation, of moral duty, of protectiveness and empathy--these had stymied it. Its conflict was writ in tiny cramped steady letters. They looked unlike Taym’s own handwriting--shapes constructed from the same raw components by some other builder--and this shook him with a relief so intense that when he’d realized they were Zeke’s notes he’d had to sit down.

He read and re-read and re-read Zeke’s confused commentary to himself on the dog-eared pages where Mr. Antolini explains nobility, and it was so unlike his own when he’d first read the book, thirteen years old and conflicted. It read hollow, he decided, and he wasn’t sure whether he really thought that it did or if it was easier to think so. Phony, he thought grimly.

He’d gone into this desperate for a fight and victory. He shouldered his newly-heavy bag and he ran over the crystallized memory Fiona had given him: day of the week, time, place.

Maybe Zeke would be there. He knew it wouldn’t be. But he told himself: maybe. And if it wasn’t, something else would be.

He'd made a note of those laid-out clothes back at Zeke's apartment.

He tucked his scarf around to hide as much of the new ink as possible, and pulled Zeke's own fingerless gloves over the bleeding bird, the line of script.

And then he waited and watched in silence, still uncertain of the best course of action. He waited until the creature seemed restless and uneasy, and even then he thought of turning back. He knew very little--snippets of familiarity that weren't his own--but he knew enough to think I can take it if something goes wrong and little enough to convince himself to believe it.

And then he pulled up his hood, drawing it down low, tucking his chin. There was nothing to be done about the beard and for a minute Taym silently and enthusiastically cursed America and her goddamned preferences, but it was nothing that couldn't--hopefully--be worked around. There were a half-dozen others he could pretend to be, if the disguise of the shadows wasn't enough.

So when he approached it was bent over a cigarette, face hidden, and of course it was easy, too easy, to slip into the body language, the tone. All cocky self-assured certainty, all pantherine slink.

"Sorry I'm late," he exhaled. "Can't chat, in a ******** hurry."

Old? Goddammit. ******** you too, scary stranger.

"Makes me look like a ********' hobo," he groused, giving his chin an irritable scratch as though still getting accustomed to the itch. "An old hobo. Let me know if you got any leads on that ********," he added, an acerbic little joke, "because the sooner I can shave it the ******** off the better."

He made an impatient gesture, a gimme-gimme opening and closing of his hand. "Anything new?"

The look he gave it was dripping with condescension and irritation, delivered around another drag, shoving the candies in his pocket.

He attempted to think quickly.

"Yeah," he said, the sarcasm smothered on as thickly as Zeke ever had in the fragmented memories he had. "Took a day off and got down on one knee with a calling card and played the ******** courier for you, winged shoes and everything. <********>, do you think I've had time for that s**t?" He made an agitated movement of his hand. "I'll do it next time I see her. Unless," he said, abruptly suspicious and irate, "you've changed your mind or something. I don't have time to revise your ******** missives, either, so you better be sure as ******** what you want me to say."

He waved his hand, like he was waving off his own smoke. "Listen," he said, and this, too--that tone that he was suddenly doing someone a huge favor when he was only fulfilling already-made promises; the sense that he was giving someone a gift by providing a deadline after failing to meet the first one--felt familiar in a way that made him ill. "Can you come back here tomorrow, same time? And I'll let you know what she ********' says," he added with a snigger. And then, a little more brightly: "Or hell, come talk to her yourself, if you don't wanna wait. She's already gonna be riding my a** about why I'm late, you can explain to her why that ******** is. In human words and all." No snigger this time, just a sudden, appraising look. "Your call."

A noise of absolute impatience exploded out of Taym and it was only half an act. <******** do you think I'm risking my neck to drag you out there if it's not OK?" He made a waving movement of his hands, unsettled by its eyes, and then started rooting through his bag. "Whether you're going or not turn the ******** around. Told me I'm not supposed to let anyone watch me do this." An irritated noise through his teeth, again, and he flicked his cigarette off into the shadows and made a vague offer of his elbow. "If you're going to not be a p***y and seize this opportunity then grab hold."

His fingers closed around the trapping gun, still hidden in his bag, and the other hand reached up towards the pendant. "And don't panic, either. s**t's weird over there right now and she's going to be pissed as ******** if you come in there freaking out, so don't blow it."

"Keep your eyes closed," he said roughly. "She'll get pissed if you see more than she wants you to. Don't open them until I tell you to."

And he leaned away and whispered, as quietly as he could, deus ex machina.

And on the other side, he yanked the trapping gun out of his bag and leveled it at his guest's back, just in case it did not adhere to its promises and Taym's demands.

DESPITE THE HORRIBLE GUILT HIS PLAYER IS EXPERIENCING Taym felt no remorse, no sense of wrongdoing, as he guided his blind and unexpected guest past the suddenly-alert infirmary staff present, gesturing with his chin to pull a random intermediate into line with him just in case something went awry and giving her a look that said: shut the ******** up. "Eyes still closed," he said. "Don't ******** this up for me."

"Almost there," he said after a few steps, in the same conversational, snippy, teenage a*****e voice. "Don't ******** up and call the mall the maul. You're gonna have to wait a minute," he added, "because we've got business first."

The trip to lab lockup felt interminable. "They're gonna make you wait here," he said. "Be patient. Maybe rehearse your ********' case."

He would have given his kingdom for someone who spoke sign language. As it was he found himself signing anyway, out of instinct, as he mouthed the words silently: "It doesn't know where it is. Might fight once it finds out. Lock it up."