This Is for Real [Ysmir]

[Clover]

The soldier recognized her. He’d done more than recognize her. He looked right into her eyes and asked her if she’d broken out of the hospital. He knew her case. From months ago. No, years ago. Before she’d been turned. Before she’d met Jesse. No, in fact, it was the very night she met Jesse. Clo could recall the way the asphalt felt under her bare feet, just as she recalled the dampness of the sewers. Her heart had been beating out of her chest. She’d been so disheveled. And Jesse had taken her life. In some ways, he’d saved her; in some ways, he’d damned her. But none of that mattered. The soldier recognized her.

Clo sat in the middle of the floor. She had her journal open, a pen poised to grace the blank sheet of paper, but nothing came to mind. So she doodled. She scribbled misshapen people and dainty little daisies. Each drawing looked like absolute ****, but those drawings meant something to her. She wasn’t an artist, not like Jesse, but she could enjoy art, she could attempt to create art. When she tired of doodling, Clo hooked the pen over the page and tucked her journal into a drawer on the crafting table, one of the ones she kept locked. After that, she took a seat in a chair. Legs hanging over one arm, Clo took her phone from the front right pocket of her jean shorts and tried her hand at composing an email to Athena. Earlier, she’d tried hacking into the police database, but she couldn’t get past the firewall. She just wasn’t a hacker; she just didn’t have the time or the patience. Security. Files. Traces. The whole thing made Clo clench her jaw. She’d almost thrown her tablet across the room, but then she remembered she wasn’t a petulant child and didn’t need to react so strongly. That had been hours ago, before she gave up and attempted to make sense of her jumbled thoughts. That’s what they were, just jumbled thoughts.

She needed to find out why that soldier picked her out of the crowd. He’d been older, probably in his forties, and he’d likely been around during the closure of the mausoleum, but he couldn’t have recalled her case with such clarity unless -- unless, what, Clover? Maybe he had access to the files she’d been trying to uncover. Maybe he knew a guy who knew a guy. She just didn’t know. She needed to know. The thought that hit her next hit with such an intensity that she sat up in her chair, properly, and stared out at the rest of Limbo. What if she broke into the police station itself? But she didn’t know how to hack, so what good would that do, but put her in another poor situation? She lacked the skills she needed to solve the puzzle.

Clover refused to ask Charlie. She refused to ask Marisol. She needed someone else, someone she could trust, even a little, to help with her endeavor. Jersey? Clo stared down at her phone for a long minute, and then she shook her head. Jersey had no business getting involved in such a mess. What if they got caught? Peter wouldn’t like that. More importantly, Clo couldn’t do that to the blonde. She just couldn’t put one of her closest friends in that predicament. She needed someone more than willing to break into a police station and hack into the database from inside. They’d need to take out cops. They’d need to make sure they maintained dispatch. Would Jesse even approve? Of course he would. Besides, she wouldn’t get caught. That was her mantra.

I won’t get caught.

In and out. Second windows. Minute windows. She’d have to act quickly and efficiently. One slip-up meant the whole police force would immediately rally around the station and unload enough bullets to send her right into the shadow realm. She didn’t feel like dying. Dying was most inconvenient. What if she asked Raegan? The woman seemed just as batshit crazy. Maybe they didn’t even need a hacker. Maybe the police files had yet to be uploaded. Harper Rock wasn’t in the dark ages though. Clo pulled up her contacts. Her finger hovered over Sol’s name -- no, it hovered over the word Slut. She just couldn’t press that button. Clo sat in Limbo, deep in thought, waiting for some other alternative to just fall from the sky.

[Ysmir]

The brim of his tyrolean alpine hat pulled low on his brow, Ysmir’s hands shielded his lighter from the brisk clip of wind that blasted the street, sending a blade of icy cold air ripping through the narrow space between two buildings that went unfelt in the heavy fabric of his charcoal grey trench coat. The lamb’s wool coat was warm, or would have been, had he any heat to lend it. Instead, he merely put on the appearance of warmth as he flicked his lighter open, a gout of lame roaring to life with the hiss of the butane valve opening.

The single, flickering flame lit his face with an orange glow, the cigarette between his lips igniting in an instant, its tip an orange ember, a speck in the darkness of the midnight street, the lamp over his head broken at some point in its recent past. A sharp click descended him into darkness again, the flame of the lighter vanishing beneath the zippo’s metal lid, smothering the life from it in an instant.

A sigh left the Swede, his breath carrying an aromatic, smoky scent with it as the tobacco smoke billowed from his lungs, embellished with the vapor from the cold, it made him appear more dragon than man in the dim light of his cigarette. He was a long way from his usual haunt, typically keeping close to home, digging through the underground caverns near their lair from time to time, taking pot shots at the wicked things that lurked in that darkness.

At least here, his mind wasn’t filled with the skittering, scraping rasp of spider-like creatures as they crawled along the walls, doing their best to finish him off down in that deep, dark hole. Had he a mortal spark to concern himself with, he might have been terrified of the things. Little had instilled fear in him, when he had been human, but these things were the stuff of nightmares. He couldn’t think of a more horrific thing in all of cinema that he could come close to comparing to the monsters in that yawning chasm.

The thought of the things brought a shudder to his shoulders as he shook his head, flicking his cigarette and sending a long trail of ash floating to the asphalt at his feet. He was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, he had made a good decision in staying in town after the night he’d had his run in with Marisol. The entire reason he was in this situation was because he’d not had the heart to shoot Cole, as he should have, and now the girl had all but vanished. He’d not seen hide nor hair of the woman since Sol had released her from her custody, and that, he thought, was all for the best. She was free, and that was good.

The things his… whatever you wanted to call Sol… the things that she did to people… it made him sick to watch, even if it was absolutely fascinating. Just to know that she was capable of dominating someone else’s mind, was able to just control them like that… it was heinous, and it was absolutely intriguing. It was taboo, and it had captivated his interest.

More than even that, though, was Raegan.

She was something else entirely, though what, he couldn’t begin to say. Something about her just struck him the right way. She was a puzzle he wanted to pick apart, and put back together. She was more than that, but what more she was, he found himself having trouble explaining, even to himself.

He had been so deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t even realized that he had been walking, much less that he had hopped a train back into Bullwood. How was he always so lost in his own head that the world around him just became a sort of blur? He often found his thoughts more real than the real world… it was troublesome, having a mind with such a complete and awesome power that it overwhelmed itself. He sighed, and scrubbed the heel of his palm against the side of his face. He was close to home, anyway. He could at least pop in, and see who might be around.

He pulled the small, black leather-bound book from his pack and leafed through its pages, filled with the strange symbols and words he didn’t understand, another piece of curiosity for him that, someday, he hoped to unravel, and found the page, outlined with a space for his hand to be placed. As he firmly pressed his palm to the paper and closed his eyes, his form was ripped from reality, only to appear again, standing over the Altar that they all knew as their drop point. It was another set of specific actions, a portal, and a he was home. Inside, he slipped from the portal and moved past the shop, tossing the keeper a few dollars before swiping a box of ammo from the shelf, a custom that had become second nature almost any time he passed one of these little shops. As he popped open the box, inspecting the rounds inside, he all but almost ran right over Clover, a little bit of fancy footwork at the very last second keeping him from colliding into her as she stood playing with her phone. He almost pirouetted on the heel of his boot, spinning out of the way before he fell to his feet again, just barely able to keep from stumbling and falling into the floor.

“Woops, sorry!"