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Curfew, currently, was two hours unsupervised to go out and back from the apartment -- and whatever fun Lazarus could fit into this allotted time and the money he'd been given was, to sum up Stroud's guidelines, up to his own cleverness and creativity. The first day, he'd taken what he'd been given and stretched his budget with all the subtlety of firing a rubber band, ordering as much very cheap, very alcoholic liquor as he possibly could before he ran out of money and had to stagger his way back. While, in the short term, this had easily been the most gratifying experience he could remember ever having, ultimately, there had been some prohibitive drawbacks. Most memorably chilling had been the vague memory of arriving back at the apartment, deeply soused, and stepping out of the elevator only to very nearly get into a fistfight with Stroud's elaborate stained glass panel because 'the a*****e wouldn't get out of his way' even when he flung repeated insults at it. Mercifully, he'd ended up passing out on the floor next to the installation without having indulged in fisticuffs against an unarmed object, but his near brush with immeasurable suffering had been enough to scare him, if not sober, then sensible. On future outings, he'd learned to be more strategic.

This time, he was on his walk back (walking cost time, but saved about thirty dollars in cab fare and tips), groceries on one arm -- some from the liquor store, some not -- and looked down just in time to very narrowly avoid stepping on someone's pair of eyeglasses. A shortened stride solved the problem, and a quick genuflection to pick them up; then, rising, he pivoted to look around: not because it was very likely that someone was just standing around, glassesless, but because it was a sort of natural habit when one had a found treasure with a missing owner.

Lazarus was alarmed to find not some telltale Mister Magoo wandering into lampposts in the near distance, but a shabby, frighteningly underdressed young man curled against the wall of the bus shelter to his left.

His heart drummed fearfully in his chest, heavy beats like the pounding of a conscience trying against all learned wisdom to assert itself. The situation was odd and unnatural -- a kid out in mid-winter with no coat, sleeping without even trying to sneak into a Barnes & Noble or something -- and one side of Lazarus, the well-tempered side that he relied upon to get him through most situations, warned that this was weird, looked like Negaverse energy draining, and was entirely too coincidental at this hour, along this route, not to be some kind of horrifying test or experiment of Stroud's, to see what he'd do. That side of him suggested that he should forgo pity and take no risks, leave the sleeping young man to freeze to death, and go back to the apartment and make himself bananas foster like he'd planned.

The other side of him, piping up in bitterly whispering counterpoint, asked if he was really going to leave a stranger to his death just on the off chance that Stroud might have been watching, when all it took to intervene was a quick shake of the arm.

It was a good question, unfortunately. He wasted three minutes of his two hours just standing there, deciding how much of a shitty person he was going to be today.

Ultimately, though, he thought, ah, hell, and knelt alongside the sleeping young man, setting his paper bag down alongside. This one looked -- high school dropout? College, maybe? Run away from home? Queer kids had to, sometimes, lacking resources if their family cut them off, and wound up penniless in a city like this -- Well, there was no point in speculating. Deep sleep in a place like this, as cold as this, suggested soft sounds and light touches wouldn't bring the young man awake; Lazarus put a hand to a worryingly cold shoulder and gave a careful, firm shake.

"Hey, buddy, you okay?"

Not quite homeless, then -- or if he was, it was still pretty recent. People didn't come awake confused and alarmed like that if they were accustomed to waking up hunkered down streetside, warding the chill with a plastic wall and a poster for Liam Neeson's next angry dad rampage.

His eyes were vivid, far more orange than one really expected from a brown; the kind of eyes few people had, the ones you expected might glow under blacklight -- they wanted for indigo shadow and mascara to set them off properly, but had instead clean lids and lashes pale enough to look snowflaked. They stuck in the mind, like being stared at by a jack o'lantern.

"Pretty soundly, too," Lazarus agreed, unable to help a faint smile at the sleepy statement of the obvious. Noting the tell-tale floor-patting, he held out the missing glasses by the stems. "Give it a minute, let the cobwebs clear out."

A stolen glance at a nearby streetpost confirmed the next: "We're at the corner of Cypress and Brandock. Do you remember if you missed your bus?"

It didn't seem likely -- he had no coat -- but it was bound to be a less fundamentally threatening question than do you live near here?, so it made for a better opener.

'Cobwebs never do, completely, right now.'

Don't I know the feeling, Lazarus thought. But probably not in the way you mean.

His memory, for how utterly obliterated it had been, remained very nearly intact in a way that was depressing and painful to think about. He had the experience and knowledge bank, theoretically, of a grown man, late-twenties: he knew that Liam Neeson did vengeful dad films and that bananas foster needed rum and brown sugar, and exactly how to mix the right martini for the right customer. But the human being standing in the middle of all that knowledge had been completely removed, as neatly as a surgeon removing a tumor. The mental connections that would've provided when he'd seen a Liam Neeson movie or where he'd learned to cook bananas foster or -- as he'd learned too late -- that he did not, in fact, like martinis -- were all missing. Knowledge existed detached from human feeling; I have two daughters rang as hollow as I wear a size ten shoe. The only actual sadness he felt was in knowing that there was some emotion that was supposed to be there, that wasn't -- that had been taken from him and couldn't be given back.

But cobwebs, for the boy at the bus depot, probably didn't mean what they meant for Lazarus. They probably meant something run of the mill and medical -- or someone had been draining his energy on a constant basis without him realizing.

"A little far if you're thinking of walking back from here," he admitted, unbuttoning the leather-trimmed heavy wool of the coat Stroud had picked out. "Especially in your shirtsleeves. Here, borrow mine and warm up for a few minutes. I'll keep my eyes out for a cab, get you a warm ride where you're going."

The glasses tucked thoughtlessly away in his breast pocket were interesting, as details went. If he needed them, it wasn't for everyday vision, obviously: but why wander around in his reading glasses with no book? It didn't seem likely that some opportunistic thief had come by and filched Anna Karenina and then been on their merry way. Signs pointed to some kind of abnormality.

(Signs pointed to energy draining -- pointed to Stroud -- pointed to almost certain humiliation when he failed whatever this test was -- pointed to every reason to disengage from this encounter and go away, and definitely not spend the few bills' worth of remaining cash in his pocket -- that he'd exerted so much willpower to save -- on paying this stranger's cab fare home. Signs pointed to all this; but desperation and loneliness said instead this is a real human being with no ulterior motives and you've been wanting to talk to one for so long.) So Lazarus gave into the craving and tried to offer the downy-haired man his coat.

"Seems like you had a hell of an episode," he assessed with vague concern. "We've got to be past finals season now, so if this is school-related, you're falling a bit behind the curve," he joked without particular rancor. "Any chance you're trying to quit a smoking habit? I hear Chantix has some pretty severe sleep-walking side effects, might cause something like this."

A city dweller, then, probably -- but if so, not necessarily one from this city all his life, or at least not familiar with the streets in this part of town. Cabs in a city like D.C. were as ubiquitous as fleas on a stray dog's a**; but, for someone accustomed to city living, walking and public transit, they were just as well invisible.

You're still out of it -- and either avoiding my prying, or it's not making it through whatever haze you're in. Is that common for energy draining? The prisoners weren't like this. It settled at least one thing, though: Lazarus was definitely not giving this guy a splash of rum, no matter how much it might help warm him up. Not with the odds that he was on something, either legal or illegal.

(Besides, it was his rum. He would've sooner climbed inside the coat with this stranger naked and shared body heat than part with hard-won alcohol. Being honest.)

Lazarus stood, too. He still had his gloves and scarf, so he wasn't faring too badly in the winter cold. He wound the latter a little more securely around his neck, but his cashmere sweater was already doing most of the job at holding in his warmth, and being in good shape lent good circulation.

"The city's a dangerous place these days," he agreed quietly. "They say the crime rate's way up -- but that's mostly violent crime, not petty." They say the homeless rate's way down, in fact. But I can't exactly talk about why. "Look -- do me a favor, ask someone to keep an eye on you from now on, okay? Something like this happens again, you could lose more than your wallet."

He stole a glance back at the street, eyes peeled for telltale roof lights and smiley-face yellow. It took a minute to remember that he had a name he could give in answer to his companion's question. He looked back, blinked for a moment, then recovered in time to put out a hand. "Lazarus Klein," he said -- and if the name didn't feel very familiar in his mind, well, neither did Eli Bell. It was all hollow. What was real was meeting someone, a real person he could talk to for a few minutes without a Negaverse agenda, and not have to think of as an enemy, a jailer, or a sacrificial lamb. This was what he'd earned with all his attentiveness and good behavior: the chance to be a normal person for a few minutes a day. When he smiled, it was an unfamiliar feeling, but broad and genuine. "You?"

Lazarus immediately yanked his hand back like Quenton's was on fire, staggered two frightened steps backwards. Terror struck like a knife slipped between two ribs, at the name. He spun.

Street corners, windows, balconies. Passing cars. He looked for her face in doorways, too, on rooftops -- sure that a half-turn would find Stroud and her blood-curdling smile. Where, where are you, you b***h, where the ******** are you -- why -- I don't understand --

His frantic spinning revealed no sign of Stroud, though. No -- the first place he found her was hidden, blurred echoes, in the planes of this Quenton's face. It was there now when he looked, past the striking little-match-girl flames of gold eyes, beyond the long scar that lent tragic character to such a young, patrician face. The family resemblance was there, in paleness and in high, sharpened features, in the lean-bodied limbs like a whippet. In curious, scholarly speech patterns -- and the incision of picking out a smell on the collar of a jacket and asking, with deadly precision, is this your cologne?

There she was, and wasn't. Lazarus wanted to be sick. His lungs were tight, breath as rapid as his ******** both of you," he hissed in breathy stops and starts, going for his grocery bag like it was some kind of a shield. "Give me back my coat. ******** class="quote">

He's mocking me, Lazarus thought with a curious feeling of remove. He's in on the joke -- plan -- scheme -- and they're going to have a good laugh together about it, he and her.

God, what do you want?! What do you want from me?

Sweat was prickling the back of his neck. It seemed to take ages to reach his outstretched coat, yank it away, and then longer to scurry backward out of critical distance and into something safer for flight

He felt far off. Quenton seemed far off, too -- as if seen from a thousand yards out, down the barrel of a gun. He sounded impatient, Lazarus decided. Irritable. Sarcastic. Stroud didn't like it when Lazarus had setbacks. Quenton wouldn't like it either.

Lazarus wasn't behaving. He wasn't being clever or useful, or sensible. He was forgetting his hard-won lessons, and it was getting so hard to breathe, and if he was fragile and stupid enough to fall for this, to fall apart for it, then he deserved to. Something this easily broken was too weak to survive on its own.

This was all wrong. He was so scared, and he couldn't find the empty place he usually went to to not feel things. It was like he was sitting there already, away somewhere, but his body refused to listen and stop having some kind of insane episode. Like somewhere, brakes had been cut. He couldn't breathe.

"I'm sorry I spoke out of turn," he wheezed frantically, coat and grocery bag clutched to his chest. "Please may I go."

Quenton invoked Stroud's name like a curse, like a threat. Maybe a test. Lazarus didn't know, he -- he didn't know. This man was a stranger, and however old he was, Stroud had sent him. He was her blood relation. Lazarus didn't want to deal with him, not when he was finally getting used to her. There was a pecking order, and Stroud was in charge and Lazarus wasn't, and all he had to do was behave as he was told, and learn well, and stay pretty and clever, and wasn't that very easy, after all? Hadn't it at least been simple?

Lazarus didn't know this Quenton. He didn't know what the pale young man might want from him, or what Lazarus was expected to give. He didn't know what arrangements the Marinus family might've made about Lazarus. And the question was confusing -- it must be a test.

"She's been helping me out," he gave the politic answer, his voice still breathy with the fear he might suffocate. "Till I get back on my feet."

Please, he wanted to say. If I don't hurry, I'll be late, soon. Please. But his mind told him that might be part of the test, his responsibility to find a way to settle his affairs with the second Marinus and make it back in time. And Quenton's impassive face suggested no nature any softer than Stroud's, where accepting failure was concerned.

He didn't know what to do, couldn't think, couldn't breathe.

What do you want?!