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They sometimes tell con-men to wear something eyecatching, or to grow a mustache. The theory is that people will remember only the horn-rimmed glasses, only the ostentatious ring, only the soup-catcher. The rest of the face will exist only as an abstraction on the periphery of memory. People only remember the striking things, the broadest strokes.

If this theory holds true then Taym probably existed in a lot of people's memories as a straggly three-week beard that badly wanted looking after, a skeletal face lurking somewhere behind it. That was how he'd stumbled out of the pod, and it hadn't taken much--just the power going out--to restore him to it. The beard--or rather Taym--was currently suspended over a table in the cafeteria.

He had a book open, elbows propped up and hands across his forehead, but he hadn't turned a page for a long few minutes. He was a motionless spot in the comings-and-goings, an opened MRE sitting untouched at one elbow. Taym was wasting food. No one who looked like Taym did had any right to be ignoring calories, but he did anyway.

He had forgotten what he was reading. He was mentally composing a series of meals, tormenting himself silently with the thoughts of Stilton on pears, and dark chocolate and orange peel, and balsamic reduction drizzled over strawberries. Thinking about food kept him from thinking about cigarettes or himself, the two things he certainly did not want on his mind at the moment.

Taym, always wary of being seen, of being addressed, did not usually allow himself to lose track of his surroundings in public. But this was a compelling distraction. He mentally smeared chèvre onto a translucent-thin slice of roasted beet and silently hated whoever had first deemed an MRE edible.

He jumped--Taym always jumped--when Rep sat down, because despite the obvious audible clues of someone approaching Taym never assumed anyone would seek out his company, not even for the purposes of antagonism.

He felt a stir in his head that was, he knew, Fiona doing something akin to scrambling into red alert mode. The vague image of a sleepy pilot suddenly realizing he was losing altitude and frantically scrabbling for the controls flitted irrepressibly across his mind, but he didn't bother calling her out. His attention was elsewhere.

He didn't want Rep in his personal space. He didn't want anyone there, but Rep being there was far worse than just about any other situation he could come up with. His instinct was to lean away--which in fact he did, for a split second, cringing back with his shoulders hunched up into the coat he'd started to feel was a sort of armor, an invisibility shield. But the idea of letting Rep gall him into moving was too much for his fragile ego, so instead he fixed him with a flat stare, a canine stare, and without raising his voice he said: "Something wrong with... any of the two dozen or so seats over there?" And his elbow indicated the other side of the room. His hands were flat on the book's open pages, possessively: a stupid, hollow gesture of ownership. He was reading The Idiot. It wasn't even his. He'd scrounged it out of a largely-disappointing box of non-research books in the library.

Conversely, Fiona was all soothing noises and meaningless attempts to smooth down Taym's hackles. Dealing with an angry dog does not come easily to a deer. She was doing poorly.

He hated himself for it, but he looked away first: deliberately, slowly, but unmistakably away. He wet his lips and hated himself for that, too, and dropped his eyes back down to the pages when he answered.

"Being a ******** a*****e, you should give it a try. Probably you're not ready for Dostoyevsky yet, but maybe we can scrounge up a copy of The Cat in the Hat for you to struggle through." Not the most witty repartee, but Taym wasn't particularly interested in originality at the moment.

Possessive hold or not, the book was swept out of Taym's hands easily, unhesitatingly. He wasn't about to get into a stupid game of tug of war. The act of relinquishing it easily was in its own way an act of defiance. Rep had tried to take it from him, so he'd practically given it to him instead, letting go of it instantly.

He tipped his head back to suck in a silent breath, eyes roving the far wall while he filtered through Fiona's urgent warnings. And then, very deliberately, he half-turned to fold his hands together on the table, to face him, and to level the stare again.

"What do you want, exactly? Not literature, I'm assuming, so please enlighten me." It was the last thing he wanted to ask. Memories were still fresh enough to sting. But not asking was out of the question.

Fiona was a sudden absence. Taym had always thought blood running cold was a figure of speech. The chill that shot through him was followed instantly by a slow rage that would have been a welcome feeling had he the fortitude to act on it. His eyes had drifted down to watch in dull horror as Rep shredded the book but they snapped back up, now.

A sudden, minute rise and fall of his bird-cage chest. That was it, besides the abrupt tension in his jaw.

"That's a rich ******** charge coming from the trick who's doing it for free. Twice over, from what I understand."

Goddammit everyone's weapon was cooler than his.

His hands had started shaking again. The word psychosomatic ghosted through his consciousness. Fiona was a cluster of nervous energy, wordless and shapeless but present once more, as he twisted the cold ring around his finger with his thumb.

Several thoughts lined up in a split second slowed down by absolute terror: watching a guy put his weapon's blade through his hand, watching another knife sink into his side and come up bloodless, the newbie-Hunter lectures, the thought that he'd come here to die which he was, suddenly and horrifyingly, not very sure of at all. The thought that he'd lose this fight, if he let it turn into a fight. The thought that he could probably outrun him, probably, because Taym could outrun a lot of people, if he wasn't running far. That he could only outrun him if he didn't get put on his a** first.

He pushed the ring gently around his finger with his thumb, and he watched Rep warily, and his voice was thin and strained and breathless but it was level. "What kind of punishment do they level for pulling your weapon on another Hunter?" he asked quietly. His entire body was tense, poised, but he didn't move. He felt like moving would be as stupid as breaking into a run when a dog was growling at you. "I mean, even if the end result's the same for me, I'm curious what'll happen to you." A shot in the dark. A feeble bluff. Best he had.

One of Taym's hands raked through his hair. It was a stupid, meaningless gesture, and he did it so that there'd be movement around his fixed stare, so that maybe Rep wouldn't notice the fact that his other hand was sliding under the table. Probably he'd notice anyway, but Fionnghal was small and discreet, small enough to press up against the bottom of the table, and for once Taym was vaguely grateful for having been saddled with a weapon that felt like a toy next to a thing like Tracey. The hilt was cool in his hand and utterly failed to be reassuring. The thought of running made him sick. The thought of facing Rep and that axe made him sicker.

He drew out the bluff, feet sliding slowly out from under the table as he readied himself to dart away, fairly vibrating with nervous energy and his breath measured and deep. "Deus doesn't recruit drug addicts," he said. They'd meant that as a warning. He'd held onto it like a ******** totem. "So there's yours. What am I taking back, exactly? You put a ring on a finger." He thought of Jordan. Even aside from the obvious issues Taym was having a huge problem coming up with anything that Jordan could possibly see in someone like Rep.

He heard it. He heard the panic creep in, and it felt like being plunged abruptly into icy water. He felt suddenly very awake, very much in his own body, and his fingers tightened around the knife under the table. Where terror receded, suicidal anger crept in. His voice was shaking, but there was no fear in it. Just barely-leashed rage.

"What are you going to do when someone walks in here and sees you threatening an unarmed Hunter?" The question was apparently rhetorical because he didn't even pause to breathe. "As for the rest, well, you know what they say about looks being deceiving," he said tightly, and he barked a little laugh. "Never woulda guessed about you, after all."