David and Goliath [Kendal]

[Aleksei Vovk (DELETED 10076)]

The silence that cloaked the interior of Comedia was cathedral-like. The sort of silence that stifles, hangs incomplete. More like an ouroboros, in that it seemed to seethe and cycle; tense, not with anticipation, but the unnerving sense that someone has entered the room minutes ahead of their guest, invited or otherwise. It was, in short, the sensation of being watched. While a degree of paranoia could be argued as healthy, it was ultimately a luxury. Something sheltered members of society congratulated themselves for, patting themselves on the back for being ‘astute.’ Intuitive. Self-sabotage. Leks, however, was aware that he was being watched. It wasn’t a “feeling;” those were, at best, a clever way of lying to yourself. He didn’t trust those were, at best, a clever way of lying to yourself. He rarely respected feelings. Results, however, well. The margin for error was considerably less.

His gaze was steady as it swept the darkened interior of the floor. It was a heist. Of sorts. It had taken the better part of four months to put the modest theft in motion. Another three weeks to make sense of the fragmented intel he'd received. It was far from perfect. Flawed. Normally, he'd have dismissed the plan outright. Ambition was a fickle lover, quick to turn a cool cheek towards those who fell from her favor. Luck was a filthy word. A whore with leprosy. He'd shed the word from his vocabulary, if it had ever existed at all.

Even so. Ambition had smiled. And he'd considered. The risk outweighed the reward. The layout of Comedia was more of an incomplete blueprint, the outline a rough, smudged sketch in his mind's eye. He'd wanted a challenge. He'd been careful to establish a failsafe. The Crows had been given their instructions. His second - heir apparent to the modern throne, as it were - knew the expectation. If he went missing for weeks at a time, for months, he would assume control of all assets.

Leks would be presumed dead, never to be mentioned again. Unmourned, like the predecessor before him. Failure was undeserving of a legacy. As were those who chased fools gold. The glint of monochrome light caught his gaze as his eyes adjusted. His hand rose, thumb brushing against the cool, sleek surface of the infrared LED laser pointer he palmed. It was solid in his hand, the brushed metal texture smooth against the pad of his thumb.

He compressed the button a moment later, a thin arc of light striking the lens of the camera. It was a temporary blind. It would mask his face, not his presence. The lensflare would only last for as long as he kept his aim steady. He'd thought of writing a video loop, displaying the same empty room at a steady frame rate. There hadn't been time. Worse, he didn't have the option to control the override remotely. Even if he had, it would have alerted any security worth their salt within ten minutes or less.

He moved quickly from one room to the next. From one floor to the next. He couldn't hope to blind all of the cameras, and so he didn't try. He was pressed for time as it was. He only paused once he reached the upper floor he sought. His steps closed, cautious, as he entered the room. If his intel was solid, the armory should hold the relic he sought. If he succeeded, it'd net a tidy sum on the blackmarket. Assuming, of course, he forewent keeping it as a trophy.

[Kendal]

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠
Everything was black. Pitch black darkness without a single shred of shimmer to illuminate any evidence of matter in the room. There was something about the darkness that illuminated every other sense. From far away, muffled noises of tires ripping over concrete could be heard, punctuated every now and again with the abrupt calls of agitated drivers and their eager horns. Even beyond that, somewhere, there was music playing, which could only be detected by the thumping bass that seemed to reverberate off of the walls and floors and ceilings, really all forms of surfaces available. And even further beyond the sounds of the vehicles as the rhythm, the sediments of bass settling at the very bottom of the urban symphony, was the distant call of wolves, the lyricists that made up the nightly soundtrack to an evening in Harper Rock. What you might consider the vocals that tied everything else together in an uneasy beat. What a strange place it was, a mix of metal and earth, old and new. A rift in the fabric of reality. Or so it seemed. It could be argued often times that reality was quite strange in itself.

A quick flutter revealed lights flashing across the ceiling, beacons from the same vehicles of he same agitated drivers. They strips of gold danced across the stucco before fading away to nothingness, only to be replaced with an identical stream of light, following the same exact motion like faithful clockwork. A new tone had joined in on the melody. It was a steady artificial noise, a muted sort of clicking that seemed to go on and on and on, getting louder with each passing second. It didn't sound real. Soon enough another sliver of a rhythm creeped into the tone, drowning out the steady beat with something more pleasant to the ears. It flowed, diving in and out of the clicking like a thin needle painting a seam across French silk. Just as the rhythm started to make headway, other similar flutter ribbons of varying pitches joined until it was undeniably clear what was resonating through the room.

Kendal Baxter had, at some point in the evening, fallen asleep on his couch. Strewn across his coffee table were newspapers from across Canada. Thick red lines circled various articles. Some reds were underlined. Other were underlined twice. On top of the pile was magazine, opened to a glossy page that caught the light from the roving cars out on the street; it showed the image of a building that looked to be made of turquoise glass. A building so brilliant in its shine that it could be a crown jewel.

His vision adjusted to the darkness of his living room and hen the most visually prominent thing in it. The lit up screen of his phone. It took Baxter a second to even adjust to the fact that he was indeed at home before he reached out to pick up the device. As with all his contacts, there was no picture attached to the caller ID but the name would be that of a blond vampire, likely wringing his hands on the other end of the line. Primavera played on for a few seconds at the thought before he finally received the called from the other man and moved to a stand.

"What is it?"

[Aleksei Vovk (DELETED 10076)]

He looked, for all the world, like a displaced businessman as he searched for the nearest surface. One who’d grown disoriented after hours, swallowed by labyrinthine hallways. A modern day Theseus without his ball of twine. He gripped what appeared to be, on the surface, a thin, tactical briefcase; sleek and matte in color. The image was marred, however, as he settled the object onto the nearest table, before thumbing open the clasps of the loadout case. The sound was crisp in the silence; muted by some nameless grace. The textured felt that lined the interior was the shade of charcoal, gleaming faintly in the absence of light. A half-sunken imprint to the immediate right held his focus, its edges clean. Precise. Not unlike the unsullied edges of a recent grave. He reached inside it a moment later, carefully retrieving the necessary tools for his task. The first of which resembled a wireless power brick; compact with blunt edges that arrested its shape, forcing it to hover between rectangular and square, fully committed to neither. A smaller power circuit, the width of a pack of gum joined its twin a moment later.

He paused long enough to connect them, before removing the third and final piece. It was vise-like; the design meant to operate similar to a wall mount for a television. His pace was deceptive, fluid and smooth. His hands were steady, deft in their assembly despite the urgency that colored his movements. Once satisfied, he reached into his pocket, removing a smartphone from it. Its virgin surface gleamed, devoid of blemishes or wear. A burner phone, for all intents and purposes. Its purpose, however, was specific. He swept his thumb across the unlock screen. The screen illuminated a heartbeat later, greeting him with a dull sheen. The readout was more appropriate for the early 80’s; the background was a distorted, hazy sort of black. A blank field awaited input. It was not far removed from its mainframe ancestors; deceptively simplistic, but alive with a wealth of information, if you knew the appropriate codes.

He swept the autodialer from the table a moment later, cradling it in his hands as he approached the impassive face of the vault’s door. He pressed the dialer against the cool surface, aligning it so that it rested both above and below the locking mechanism, taking a moment to tighten it into place. Once satisfied, he quickly keyed in a command, fingers tapping a quick rhythm against the phone’s keyboard. The screen illuminated, numbers rapidly cycling on the screen. Pausing. Cycling. There were thousands of combinations - endless possibilities. He would have to trust that the automatic dialer would, given enough eventuality, stumble across the right one. It would be naïve, however, to assume time was on his side. Time was luck’s domain.

[Kendal]

It was only a matter of time. Long before he'd set his sights on business, when he'd picked up his first relic and awakened a sleeping beast inside him, he knew that his new obsession would eventually pique the wrong kind of interest. Still, his thirst for rarities was stronger than his foresight. So it wasn't entirely shocking when he'd heard, on the other end of the line, that someone had tripped an alarm in Comedia. It wasn't the usual system, but a secondary failsafe that alerted Baxter's vampiric thrall directly, which told Baxter that whoever his visitor was was someone who knew how to disarm his airtight security. Renato had sounded nervous on the phone. Baxter's private collection was likely the one thing in the world he'd live and die for. It was his one true love and to breach the threshold and invade the space where it was displayed was grounds for a quick execution. But more than anything Baxter was curious. After all, a cat always toys with a mouse before devouring it.

He fixed the cuff of his jacket as he made his way around the corner. The streetlights set a wash of warm colour over the cool blue tones brought on by the night sky and bits of dirty snow clung to parts of the pavement, unwilling to let go and welcome the year's spring months to blossom, glistening in the parts that had melted and grew stiff again with the kiss of the frigid winter air. Renato had asked him what to do, mentioned that their company had found the vault. Nothing, Baxter had told him, taking the Telepath by surprise. Baxter didn't ever just do nothing.

It was well after Comedia had closed for the day, at nearly four in the morning. Still, the lights that wrapped the old cathedral up in an eerie neon glow were shining bright, casting their shades of pinks and reds and purples on the building's exterior. And he was a flicker of motion that passed under their glow. He made his way around to the back of the venue, using his key to unlock the back door that led him straight underground. Instinct sang of confrontation, of swift reprimand. It was a kneejerk reaction. Someone was encroaching on his coveted property with what was a high chance of wanting to reap from his spoils. That wasn't an offense that would fly by under his keen radar. And yet... instead of heading down to the vault, Baxter took the stairs up to his office, unlocking the door and stepping inside. He wanted to see what sort of mouse his trap had lured in before humouring it with a game.

[Aleksei Vovk (DELETED 10076)]

The numbers had long since lost meaning. It was a steady stream, too rapid to make sense of, never pausing. There was a space of a breath - a lull - as the automated system cross referenced the code, rejecting each failure when the lock failed to disengage. It was difficult to tell how much time had passed; to quantify the number of minutes that edged the night to a close. Leks had not been idle. He’d spent the better part of an hour carefully retreading the handful of exits he’d encountered, committing them, however sparse in number, to memory. A grim half-smile curved his lips. He would be fortunate, he supposed, to slip away unnoticed. Such was the stuff of Hollywood fairytales. A pleasant fiction that undermined the harsher realities of the world; chief among them, that there were consequences to every action, however well intentioned. It was, he knew, unlikely that his presence hadn’t been noticed, if not acted on, given the late hour.

The allure of the trap to any creature was how seemingly easy the bait was to obtain. It was only a failure when one failed to see the situation for what it was. He was under no delusion that it would be half as easy to leave as it had been getting in. There was a pause; a heaviness to the silence. There was an anemic sound as the autodialer settled on the correct combination, signaling its accomplishment with the barest brightening of its screen before a pneumatic, dry hiss followed, indicating the weakening of the vault’s seal. An unreadable expression flickered across his features; coy in the way the corner of his lips lifted imperceptibly, not unlike the thin lipped, indulgent smile of a parent who could no longer feign surprise at a progeny’s success. He reached for the handle a moment later, fingers curling around it gingerly before drawing the door open.

There was a pale illumination along the rows; as if the items nestled within were godtouched, emitting a thin halo of light as if unable to contain their bounty of potential. It would be easy to lose himself among their rank the way a bibliophile might drown themselves within the stacks of Beinecke. But no. There was one specific relic above them all he’d come hunting for. His steps were measured as he stalked the length of the vault, his gaze sharp, half-wary as it drifted from one item to the next, shrugging off the impulse to linger. He found what he was looking for within the space of ten minutes.

The Deft Fencer’s Jacket was the most recent commodity to pick up chatter within certain rarified circles. There was no hesitation as he reached for it.

[Kendal]

The blue light from the screen of his computer illuminated Baxter's face as he sat back and watched his visitor crack open the lock to the vault's door. He was playing a game of chicken with his own restraints; how much longer could he take this shadowy figure intruding own his personal belongings before he snapped? Renato did always say he needed more patience. What better way to train that than a voyeuristic little game? It was equal parts infuriating and titillating to watch an outsider strolling through his domain like they had been given a royal invite. The temptation to call in the Valkyries were nipping at his heels, fingers tapping over the arm of his chair as they itched to reach for his phone to call Dawn. It would be a quick takedown. Quick and painless. For Baxter, at the very least. But he held off as the intruder stepped inside the vault.

It was a curious sight, to actually see the figure (who could now, in the light, be made out to be possibly male) rifling through his things. Sure, he wasn't actually pawing at them like some greedy petty thief. This was a creature that was seasoned in the art of burglary and he'd clearly come in for something specific. What the male picked would tell Baxter more about him so he watched with a keen eye. Eenie meenie miney mo… Ah, the Deft Fencer's Jacket. It was an interesting choice. It had been Baxter's first acquire, long before the foundations of Comedia had been laid out on a blueprint in his mind. It was what had awakened his addiction, an almost feral need to collect more and more relics. The plan had originally been to sell them at a high prices put he couldn't bring himself to part with the rare pieces. Still, the fact that the Jacket was chosen was indeed telling. This was a jacket that drew the attention of a particular ilk of people, those that didn't mind getting a little blood on their hands.

Baxter gave it a second. He watched as the man reached out and just before his fingers could graze the material, when his fingertips were a hair's width away, he grabbed his phone to pull up an application, tapping in a code that caused all the lights in the vault to shut off, leaving his mouse in complete darkness. The screen of his computer was now illuminated in an ungodly viridian, shapes and figures picked up the camera outlined in a high contrast black against it. It was likely now that his company couldn't see anything but Baxter could still see everything. But his interest in watching from afar had long since waned and he got up, grabbing his phone to transfer the video feed to the device, watching idly as he strolled from his desk to the safe in his office, pulling out a decanter from within its chilled interior and pouring the crimson from within into a tumbler. He drained the immortal blood in one go. There were several other containers in the cooler, all labelled neatly courtesy of Renato Devin. This particular sample was known and tested to sharpen his senses, which was really all he needed for the time being.

He set the decanter back inside the cooler and shut the door, eyes on the screen of his phone as he walked out of the office and headed down to where his treasury and his newfound company was.

[Aleksei Vovk (DELETED 10076)]

He scarcely had time to appreciate the cut of the fabric before the power cut. The darkness was absolute - its fall as abrupt as a curtain, prematurely signaling the end of an act. Leks paused, his fingers absently tightening on the sleeve. There was a subtle give to the material; a softness that suggested use at some distant point in time, though not wear. It was similar to the sensation of a well loved leather jacket; given enough years, the material would soften, thinning at the shoulders. He stilled, not unlike a snake emerging from a premature thaw, briefly disoriented, struck blind as his pupils expanded with a degree of speed that would likely have been unsettling to most, adjusting to the absence of light. His senses unfurled; deprived of sight, each jostled for dominance in an effort to compensate. The tragedy of the moment was that none of those things occurred nearly rapidly enough for his tastes. It had been four days since he’d last accepted a donation - a tactful, if inaccurate descriptor for the sort of exchanges that enabled him to move as he did. There was a sluggishness to the normally honed senses; a subtle dullness that caused his lip to curl in annoyance.

It was far too late to rectify his negligence. At least, for the current moment. He drew in a breath, a smile that could almost be described as serene - or at least concerning in its displaced satisfaction - curving his lips, before his fingers fisted the sleeve of the jacket. He yanked sharply, pulling it free of its display, before pivoting on his heel and turning. Counter-intuitively, he made no move towards the exit. Instead, he withdrew, further in among the rows of the vault itself, his footsteps muffled, nearly silent. His steps were measured; nearly heel to toe in the effort to silence the feedback from the soles of his boots, to muffle the barest echo they might create. It wasn’t exactly sporting. It shouldn’t have intrigued him.

It was borderline indulgent, the idle flirtation with the challenge Baxter had presented. It was ill-advised. A pointless risk. The self-evaluation did little to stop him from weaving almost lazily towards the vault’s entrance, one hand idly dropping to release the clasp that fastened the sheath at his waist. His palm closed around the handle that protruded, but made no move to free the weapon. He would wait for the opportunity to present itself. For the moment, he was content to weave through the murk, carefully avoiding brushing against anything that might give his position away.

[Kendal]

The foreign but familiar blood rippled through his veins causing an all-too-common sensation to rise to the surface. The pain something that could be easily overlooked but it was the discomfort that came with it that was undeniable. It was like his two aspects were at constant war; the blood of the Paladin, the essence of purity and holy redemption with the hatred of all things ungodly, and the blood of the Thief, gleefully sharing the same blood as the ungodly creatures that Paladins swore to decimate. It presented him with a dichotomous situation, like trying to sew together two opposites as distant as the Northern and Southern magnetic poles to create one unified structure. It was like mixing water and oil, nearly impossible to make a homogenous solution out of. The immortal, powerful ichor had agitated his existing vitae and now it was that same blood, thicker and heavier, that was settling under the rush of the invasive, foreign one, allowing the latter to be expunged by the Blood Paladin's system. Both aspects were powerful and that had been their selling point. Balancing them wasn't easy but good things rarely came easily.

He slid out of his shoes as he approached the flight of stairs leading to the basement of the venue, fingers unbuttoning his jacket and draping it over the railing before he made his way down, disappearing into the shadows that awaited him below the ground level. At his current state, courtesy of Every, he would be able to become one with the shadows for two hours and that would be more than enough time, he wagered. He didn't know what waited for him beyond the door to his safe. It could be one of the undead, it could be human.

He could remember a time with he was ten years old. It was in the months between spring and summer when the rain from the previous weeks had finally begun to trickle away to nothingness, leaving the grass lush and soft beneath his muddied feet with sprouts of Queen Anne's Lace and dots of bright Cinquefoil spread out over the loamy field behind St. Michael's. He'd been looking for worms to put in his jar to take back to Sister Agnes so she could put them in her garden. He'd been an eager, careless child, more concerned with earning the woman's good grace than aware of his surroundings. In his haste, he'd managed to disrupt a wasp who'd stung him in a way that had felt like betrayal to the young boy. The pain was significant and his fury was imminent. That afternoon Baxter didn't find worms for Agnes' garden. Instead, from that day onward, his mason jar became the lonely cell of his new wasp captive. He'd spend hours watching it. The wasp seemed more agitated than ever, at first, flying in circles, bumping against the glass walls of its cage but as the days went on, it seemed to grow weaker. Less feisty. Did bugs have hope, if so did they lose hope? Did they fear? Did they dread death like humans did? He could remember wondering, eyes bright and wide as he watched the specimen in its last hours, laying on its side, twitching. Still. He didn't dare open the lid. What if it was a ruse? What if the wasp escaped the second it felt fresh air?

The door to the vault was pushed closed as he stepped inside, locking automatically with the telltale sounds of mechanical gears turning.

He didn't need to speak to his new wasp to contact him.

Like what you see?

* Note: Mindspeak

[Aleksei Vovk (DELETED 10076)]

There are moments, throughout one’s life, that are instinctual. Moments of lingering, primal impulse that encourage a species to thrive; solely responsible for the fight or flight response that ensures its survival. Leks didn’t seem to possess those instincts, whether by some flawed genetic design or something else. As a result, the sound of tumblers sliding home within their housing - a smooth, rolling note that ended with a vaguely muted click should have inspired something Oh, there was a flash of adrenaline; an undeniable kick to his pulse that would have been telling to a member of the undead - but that was all. It was brief. Too brief. Not unlike the cresting, ghostly white line of a heart monitor abruptly going flat. What it wasn't was the frantic drum of a cornered creature, heartbeat rapid and erratic inside its chest.

He turned abruptly, retracing his steps with an air of indifference. Whether or not it was feigned was another matter, impossible to guess with any degree of accuracy. The goal was to let Baxter think he was comfortable with the situation. To lull him into thinking that he hadn’t planned to go in that direction. The ultimate goal, of course, was to see who would make an error first. He wasn’t naive; he was, at the back of his mind, keenly aware that the only true exit had been barred. Well. This calls for creativity. His steps were still measured and silent as he abruptly turned to his left, slipping between the gap of two display cases.

The voice that filled his head was both expected and not. To his credit, however, he didn’t flinch. The results were, nonetheless, fascinating in their own right. Telling. His thoughts cycled, abruptly switching to a measured arithmetic, calculating numbers - 700, 900, a 1,000 - making each of them divisible by 3. It was not the most effective of mental shields, but it kept his stream of consciousness present and dominant. It buried all but the most surface thoughts, overloading any attempts to pry with a bland, useless stream of data. Tsk. It’s rude to pry. The admonishment was a dry stray thought. You’re later than I expected you’d be.

He paused, lips quirking slightly. Mm. There was a silence that stretched for several heartbeats. I appreciate the dedication almost as much as your tastes. There was another pause, half a heartbeat shorter than the first. I hope finding a replacement won’t be too much trouble.

[Kendal]

Darkness was never something that bothered Baxter. While people imagined monsters lurking in the shadows where they couldn't be seen, he was well aware that monsters were just as capable of hiding in plain sight. And with that being the case, what was the point of fearing the darkness? If the stuff of nightmares could be just as tangible as flesh and just as present as a heartbeat, then wasn't that a more frightening thought? Wasn't the ability to camouflage against the backdrop of a loving home with the ruse of being a kind caregiver more terrifying than fanged beastie that drank blood to sustain itself? What, of the two, was crueler? The monster that presented itself as a monster or the one that appeared to be human? If anything, if bogies could use the shadows to hide, then so could he. Everything was the same when there was no light because if you couldn't see it, how could you know what it was? Most people feared that unknown variable. Baxter found comfort in it.

The connection to his now-imprisoned visitor was made and he was able to send his greeting to him. However, no sooner had he done so, did he catch wind of a plethora of numbers and formulas clogging the clear route he'd created. Baxter had never been a fan of maths. He chuckled under his breath. His company was raising a shield to keep him out of his thoughts. He had no intention of reading him. He wasn't even sure if he could as he'd never sought that sort of a thing from people. He didn't want to crack them open and blatantly see what made them tick. That was no fun. That wasn't nearly as rewarding as working for it.

Isn't it more rude to not greet a guest?

The mention of being late made him grin and he took his first steps into the vault.

Oh, were you waiting for me?

He knew the room like the back of his hand. It wasn't just of his design, he had helped build it with his own two hands. He knew exactly where everything was. He knew if he reached out to his left in the next seven forward paces, his hand would grip the handle to the safe where he kept his most exquisite of short blades, gifts from a highly talented undead friend. But he had no intention of causing ripples. It was intriguing already that his visitor wasn't in a state of panic. As wagered, this one was a rare sort of thief. He was certainly clever. And that was Baxter first point of interest. He certainly couldn't have him be too clever. His bare feet moved silently over the cool tile as he sent a barrage of thoughts to the man's mind to confuse him.

I could say the same for your loved ones.