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Somehow, Caroline had managed to get her hands on a fairly large quantity of discarded decks. She'd either pulled off some sort of bizarre card heist, waited until the decks were rotated, or bribed someone with something other than coins - whatever the case, she was sitting at the far end of the bar with a small plastic bin of them, opening each pack with great care, taking the 9s out of the decks with even greater care, and separating each 9 of Hearts from the other 9s with the sort of touch that one might expect of someone who was handling diamonds.

Even if it wasn't very clear what she was doing or why she was doing it, there was no denying that she was obviously taking this incredibly seriously.

The presence of company was always preferable, even when she was doing sensitive work like this. She enjoyed the attention, and it was never really a distraction - just another little game within a game to play with. A glance out of the corner of her eye gave her a glimpse of something refreshingly new, especially in this sort of setting; a grin quirked at one corner of her lips, and she returned her attention to the cards.

"Is it too easy to assume that you prefer ones and zeroes?" she asked, tapping the end of a deck on the bar a few times. Once its edges were evened out again, she let the cards spread out into her hands, and held the fanned deck in his direction.

It was markedly de-nined.

"None of those in a game of cards." She blinked, staring at the faceless mask without any indication that she found it anything other than entirely normal. "And everyone has a favorite. Or they're lying. Are you lying?"

Judging from her expression, it looked very much like Caroline didn't believe him in the slightest when he said that it wasn't his favorite. Numbers were always so deliberate, and chosen names were even more so. An overlap said so much about a person, and despite his claim otherwise, she'd already come to her own conclusion.

"Hello then, Eights," she greeted him with a toothy smile, leaving him with the three cards as she gathered up the rest of the deck and set it aside. "I'm Caroline, or Nine if you'd prefer. Sometimes I do."

Her eyes pulled away from him as she began working on her deconstruction of another deck.

"Do you come here often? Or just often enough to participate in your own hostage situation?"