You tap out a response, your fingerprints leaving little smudges in the condensation. You fuck up and hit a few wrong keys. Tap the backspace key once or twice before you decide you don't even care.
[wgat do you wsnt?]
You hesitate over it for a second before you shrug and hit send. It's not like you could fuck up anything else today. This? Mysterious voice on the end of the line? Just a drop of water in a big, sloshing, overflowing bucket. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all. You rest your forehead against the shower wall. The cheap tile cool and slick against the skin. You hear other stalls start up around you. The groan of pipes. The hiss of water. The temperature slowly starts to rise, inching up by degrees. Steam forms as currents of cold air cross the warmer haze.
You don't even know these people. You barely know anybody in this entire fucking country. You reach for a bottle of shampoo (you think it's shampoo) and squirt a mess of scented goop into your palm. You're halfway through working it into your scalp, the motions slow, robotic, habit more than anything, when you feel the PDA vibrate in your other hand. You glance at it. Water beading on your chest, sleeting down your shoulders. You absently wipe a few fat droplets off the screen. They break and spread instead, leaving little rainbow trails across the glass.
[You're really cynical aren't you? So young to be so suspicious! (Better watch yourself or you'll get lines!) But seriously I don't...I don't want anything really. I've been watching you for awhile. I don't have much to do but watch. I guess if I had to pick a cause it'd be my own selfish curiosity, heh. I've been alone a lot recently; I'm sort of lonely and you seem sort of interesting. I'd like you to keep being interesting.]
You consider for a second. Too tired to be...repulsed or paranoid or whatever it is you're supposed to be this time. The inside of your head feels like it's scrubbed clean. Little rivulets drip from your scarlet bangs, suds cling to your thighs.
[fuck off. dn't call again.]
Your PDA buzzes almost instantly. You grimace; exhale, a fine spray of passing through your lips. Flash evaporating into tongues of steam. Frustration slowly fades. There's a cold, brittle feeling in your gut.
[Your name is Christoph Esser. You were born and raised in the UCAS, graduated from University of Michigan's Global Securities program. Employed by Black Turtle CorpSec, a subsidiary of Ares Asia, to provide physical security for Sze Thaumatech. You're a Drake. A dragon-crafted soldier-weapon. You've been claimed by a patron. Did you know: they're afraid of you? The people hunting you, the ones who tasked the Firewatch team to kick your door down. The ones writing Glowworm's checks. The ones who sent the Ten River Seoulpa Ring to the warehouse. I've been listening to their chatter. They think you're acting on Lofwyr's behalf; Lofwyr or Lung.]
Your reply comes quick, clumsy. [mnot]
[Are you sure? This city, it's all wrapped up in layers. Layers and layers of flesh and skin around a rotten apple core. Everything filtered through proxies and servants, everything done in the shadows. Some of the layers don't even know what the others are doing anymore heh. They're just guessing and it's all devolving. Dissociating. I've been watching and listening, I've seen a lot. Heard a lot. And I-]
The message scrolls up. You see the reply pending icon pulsing, ready.
[...heh. Like I said. Really I'm just sort of lonely. Makes me talk too much. I'll leave you be for now but do me a favor and hang on to this PDA okay? I'll be in touch. You're interesting and you seem good. And I want to help you keep doing interesting things.]
Ivory suds swirl around the shiny drain. Vanishing through the grate.
[ok]
The message box closes out. You thumb through the screens, navigating more by stylizing Samsung icons than by the Hangul text. You hit the settings toolkit. Scroll down to the picture of a keyboard. Open it. The menu slides out and you press the receiver to your lips; murmuring, hoping you won't be heard over the water.
"English."
The screens revolve. The text squirms and shifts. You thumb through to the security page, reset the password. You turn to set the phone on a little shelf beside you. Pause. There's a splotch of tacky blood on the back, from the previous owner. You rub it out with your thumb. It just smears across the case.
...Did you just make a friend? It's not like being a cryptic name on a screen is a barrier to anything anymore. Not in this brave new smoking ruin of a life you have.
In the background the other showers have stopped. You hear footsteps passing your stall; a mechanical whir and the soft padding of human feet. You linger a few minutes more, letting the water scour your skin. The Drake, for once, is quiet. Sated. You shut off the shower and start toweling yourself dry. Wrapping it around your waist, gingerly bunching up your ruined clothes under one arm. Your own blood, ganger blood, mingled together. Forming scarlet crusts on the material and caking the fabric in crimson. You tuck both PDA's beneath the bundle, one pressed against the other, and step out of the shower.
The hatchway opens, segmented portions folding away. Fenrir steps inside the bathroom; craning his head to clear the doorway. He sees you and stops. You see him and stop. The pair of you rooted to the slippery tile, warily watching each other. Lips gradually peeling back to show teeth. Your hackles raising-
You shake yourself and feel a hundred aches and bruises cry out in response. It has about the same effect as a bucket of icewater to the face. You make to walk past him. He holds out a hand. Fingers splayed; a brawny arm made of stone and steel cable warding your way. You stop.
"That was stupid." His voice is so deep you can almost feel it buzzing in your chest. Maybe earlier, maybe a week ago, you would have rolled over. Went belly up. And you're too tired to really care. Too worn down to be really, properly angry or afraid.
"Okay." You don't even have it in you to disagree.
He tilts his head, studying you with smoky grey eyes. Clawed gauntlets come to his collar. He tugs something, some switch you can't see, and you hear the hiss of detaching seals. You see bars and mechanized clasps retract along his ribs. The soft whirring of tiny servos as seams open up in his suit. He pulls. His breastplate comes away with a heavy, sucking sound, as it it were submerged in mud. He sets it by the side, by his own shower. You cough at the sour smell of old sweat. Trying not to gag at the heavy, musky, reek. There's a softer layer of skintight padding across his chest. Simple and functional mesh, stretching across the hard planes of his body.
"I saw what happened to your arm. I don't know what you are." He says bluntly. "It's not my concern." Backplate off too, set beside it's paired piece. You see prongs and interface spikes retracting on the underside. Twin rows of thorns collapsing back. He touches his claws to small sockets on the back of his helm. The stylized wolf-helm, all long snout and jagged teeth, splits along the jaw with a soft pneumatic rush. Decoupling from his collar. He tugs it off.
Black lips, pointed ears, a muzzle to match the mask. Grey-black fur, a man's eyes, a monster's fangs. You can see where the human face was broken and bent out. Fused into a wolf's jaws. See the scars and shiny marks where the skin healed. Where he was stiched back together.
"But I know what you're like."
Claws press against your fingertips, your teeth grind against your cheeks. A skeletal smile. The Loup-Garou just huffs. Baring yellowed fangs in response, black nose wet and flaring. You can't tell if the smile's supposed to be mocking or threatening.
A little of a. A little of b.
He turns his head. Shouldering past, arms and legs still clad in urban-camo plate. You flinch away, catch a glimpse of the side of his skull. A set of slender white scars curving across the bone, almost like claw marks but too thin, too precise: cerebral cybernetics. He pauses at the threshold, just past the drawn curtain.
"Watch your step."
You don't start shivering until the bathroom door clinks closed behind you.
The common area is quiet. Half-familiar furniture reduced to darkened shapes in the gloom. The recessed lamps have been shut off leaving only the dull orange light strips in the corners to soften the shadows. But there's still the night. Moonlight shines through the central, domed, skylight. A tarnished silver shine; faded and stained. Everyone's already gone to their quarters, tired from the run you guess. Jiaolong said that there would be a strategic debrief in the morning. Discussing what was learned, where to go from here, and the like. You're already dreading it.
There's a few packages of clothes in your room. Shirts and shorts and underwear stacked in the drawers, some still wrapped in plastic. You hang your towel on a coat hook and tug on a pair of boxer-briefs. You turn to your cot, you hesitate as you see the jacket you got from the alleyway, piled carelessly over the foot. You shoulder it, press the collar to your nose. The downy insides are soft against your red-rubbed skin. The outside laced with a few tears from shrapnel. You can still faintly smell the smoke. Emil yawns from his spot between your pillows and pads over to meet you, to nuzzle your hand. You stroke his head, listen to him purr for a second. You're just about to climb into bed when there's a knock on the door. You freeze, eyeing the covers longingly.
You pad over to the door and open it.
Jiaolong's on the other side, loose t-shirt and sweats. Hair still wet from the shower. "Hey uh...just doing the rounds before everybody crashes for the night. Mind if I come in?"
If he cares at all about the absolutely filthy look you're giving him he doesn't say. You wordlessly step back, opening the way from him to come into your closet of a room. Emil gives a little whining chirp and jumps to the floor. Trolling over to nuzzle and lick his shins. Jumping up, planting black-booted legs on his thigh. Jiaolong leans down, gently scratches him behind the ears. Emil's tongue lolls in happiness.
"...you're not okay." Jiaolong says. It's not a question.
"What gave it away?"
He cracks a smile at that. Not as cocky as the first time you saw him. Not quite as confident as he was in the warehouse. "Well not to put too fine a point on it but when I met you you seemed like a pretty sweet, sorta sad guy. And I don't think I was wrong, heh. But Fenrir told me that most of the Seoulpa casualties were your doing. And you were pretty fucked up when we finally got to you. So..."
"So?"
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"...Look." Even tired, even worn down, he's absolutely beautiful. The rumpled, mussed up hair looks like a deliberate affectation. His smile a sly, half-seductive thing. He wears his clothes like he's modeling them and you, you hate him a little for it. For looking so together even after everything that's happened. "Do you want the truth? We're all in a tiny, tiny, boat on a big-ass sea. There are things below us and clouds in the sky. I'm in charge because nobody else really wants to be and my team's pretty much exclusively surly military types nursing dark secrets at this point. And the only one who wasn't was a spy so, y'know, that should have tipped me off maybe."
You rub your eyes, cracking a dark little smirk at that because, y'know, what else can you do?
"We're not getting out of this any time soon," he says, "and the tortured outcast stuff can only hold up so long. I just don't want to come in here in the morning and find out you've painted the ceiling red. Yeah?"
"Yeah." Your voice is soft. Fragile. "...Heh. Was kinda cheesy. But I liked the sea image."
"Really?" And his smile looks a little more genuine, a little warmer. "Might have to tweak it a bit for Fenrir."
"Heh."
"So want to talk? Doesn't have to be about tonight, just whatever's eating at you."
[ ] Tell him about what you used to do. About how you're adjusting. It's been...a little rocky.
[ ] Tell him about where you came from. About how you grew up. It'd help him understand.
[ ] Tell him about the Drake. Not in so many words but let him know how different you are.
[ ] Don't confide in him. Tell him you're fine. Go to sleep instead.
[ ] Write In.
