▽ ʟɪᴠɪɴ' ᴏɴ ᴀ ᴘʀᴀʏᴇʀ

[Jameson Dade]

Closed to James Carpenter

Low risk, high reward.

That was how Dr. Ozymandias (lovingly called Ozzy) had described the potential heist at Carpenter Corp. He had also said that it had very little visible security, but that there were rumours of potentially highly profitable items out of sight. That wasn’t really how Jameson thought. He tended to tackle places that looked like they had something he might want. Jewel stores, obvious chemical factories that made volatile and dangerous substances behind closed doors. He wasn’t really an idea guy, not in that way at least. He was the sort who stuck to something and became good at it through bumbling his way through and figuring out what worked by repeatedly making mistakes and then eventually finding a nice long streak of good luck.

He also tended to take Ozzy’s advice because the former psychotherapist turned thrall had his ear to the ground about that sort of thing, where Jameson tended to hide himself away for days at a time tinkering with new gadgets (his latest obsession), binging on blood, weed (usually at the same time), and chocolate covered pretzels (another obsession). He had been in the middle of working the last tiny screw into a pair of cuffs when he’d gotten the notification on his pager. It was the sort still occasionally used in hospitals, but which had fallen out of wider general use since the invention of the cellphone. Slightly more primitive technology, and for that reason beneath the radar. It had a set of grid co-ordinates, which lined up to a specific building on Harper Rock’s map.

Jameson didn’t bother at the time if only because he’d been doing delicate work, a pair of stolen watch maker’s glasses strapped to his head. He had only just modified the magnification with a few lenses and was squinting through them, so it hadn’t seemed practical to put his latest toy down.

An hour later though, he was ready to go.

In that time, he’d put Ozzy on speaker whilst getting dressed, so the man could brief him on the exact details. By the time Jameson was done strapping his utility belt on, he looked significantly more like a professional thief than he had when he’d first started breaking and entering a few weeks before. He probably could have stuck to shitty little stores with only a little bit of good merch and bad security, but he’d found almost immediately that he loved the rush he got when he made it out of a high stakes game with something valuable in hand. It was why he wasn’t exactly sure about this Carpenter Corp place. Less protected didn’t necessarily mean better, devil-may-care as that might have been as a life philosophy.

He got to the building a short time later, his night vision goggles slipped into place right as he was entering. They had been purchase off of one of the many black market rings that seemed to thrive in Harper Rock, and then heavily modified to pick up heat signatures. They could swap to normal vision in a pinch, if there was a sudden burst of light, and were wired directly to self-combusting motion sensors that were dispensed by one of the cuffs he had made only just that night. He felt a little over-dressed for what it was, but he figured the location would provide for a nice dry run of his latest gear. Better to have hiccups somewhere where the stakes weren’t so high than when he was in the middle of trying to lift the Hope Diamond.

He also wore a cat suit made from a polymer that negated his already minimal heat signature and didn’t transfer fingerprints. It was heat and tear resistant, as well as durable. It zipped up from his groin and was pitch black so as to blend into the darkness well. There were sensors in the fingertips that made picking mechanical locks easier. Over that he wore a comfortable pair of sneakers (because running the **** away was an important part of his job), a hoodie to cover his hair and obscure his features, and a pair of Bluetooth headphones loaded for the moment with Pink and Bon Jovi.

His utility belt had quick dispense pouches for knockout and smoke bombs as well as BnE scramblers in a pouch on one hip, and a false alarm on the other hip to balance the weight out. Attached to the belt were a multi-tool (glass cutter, screwdriver, wrench etc), adhesive spray, and a mister. He wore a backpack which essentially just contained a deck of tarot cards comprised only of The Hanged Man (his signature), and a rope with a hook at the end. Most of the space there was devoted to whatever he planned to steal. A necklace of occultation hung around his neck, and his cuffs themselves had a trigger that either popped a concealable blade or miniature automatic weapon into his hand. He had only ever had to use them a couple of times, but he liked having options when he was face with a bad situation.

When he got inside, it was almost exactly as Ozzy had described it. The problem was that Jameson had no clue what was of any worth. “WOAH we’re halfway there! Woahhhh, livin on a prayer!” He didn’t see much need to be careful (not that it would have stopped him from singing even if he did, or at least humming). He quickly nabbed a few things that looked like they were both high tech and like they could fit into his backpack. If it turned out to be a bust, he would find out later. For the moment, they could go into his loot room, which was essentially an enormous pile of stuff he’d collected that he had yet to sell (really it had sprawled out of the room and dotted his entire apartment by this point).

He was gone as quickly a he’d come.

[James Carpenter]

James Michael Carpenter (not his real name) was something of a legend in New York. Nobody was quite sure what he looked like or where he lived or how it was he had risen to the very peak of a notoriously cut throat criminal underground. Some people said he didn't exist at all and was the working of some other criminal looking to keep the attention off themselves, but there seemed to be enough evidence to the contrary to convince people that there really was a shadowy figure at the top of the food chain. He had been connected with a string of murders through DNA, CCTV and other supposedly iron clad methods of conviction, though somehow the evidence always disappeared before anything ever made it to court... Then his mugshots would disappear, too, leaving him once again a faceless mystery. He had the police in his pocket, of course, that much was obvious, but more unusual was that other gangs in the city steered well clear of his operation. Perhaps his reputation for violence and an apparent complete lack of mercy for those who crossed him preceded him; whatever it was, something kept encroachment onto his territory to an absolute minimum. It was said that those who inadvertently overstepped the line around him killed themselves before he could get his sadistic hands on them, such was the fear of what would become of them if he did.

The truth was a very different beast indeed.

Mikey Gallo (almost his real name) was an unassuming looking man who might have been in his twenties or thirties, depending on the light and who spent his time tinkering with computers. That was how he had made his money - by fixing and upgrading computers and teaching people how to use them. He had his own little shop selling knick knacks and doodads, but that had all been before he took off to Canada. Nobody back home was quite sure why he had decided to go to the middle of nowhere, but the popular theory was that he'd met some girl through one of his internet chat rooms and taken off to meet her. He'd phoned home often and visited on occasion, so the people back home remained content that he was safe and happy, the same Mikey who had left.

He wasn't the same Mikey these days, though. Not since his mother had got sick and he'd been called home on a more long term basis. That had been months ago and he had stayed faithfully at his mother's side the whole time, taking care of her as best as he could when her health began to decline more and more rapidly. No expense had been spared, either, with doctors, nurses, carers and all manner of other help being brought in to make things easier and more comfortable for her, but eventually it had all got too much and then she was... Gone. It seemed to have robbed something from him when she passed, as if all the life had been drained out of him. Those who saw him invariably commented on how pale he looked, that he never ate, barely left the house and yet stayed up all night long staring into space or taking apart a computer only to put it back together again without altering or fixing anything. People were starting to talk about getting him some help when, just like last time, he had up and disappeared in the middle of the night and nobody seemed to know where he had gone or why. Back to his Canadian woman, perhaps?

The truth was far less romantic.

Silent alarms had rung out as soon as the laser beams had been broken and the CCTV feed had kicked in within his mind, showing a shadowy figure moving through the building and stealing... At random it looked like, but enough of it was valuable and enough of it was potentially dangerous to be worth noting and the invasion on his territory seemed to shake the young man into action once more, dragging him out of his New York haunt and onto an overnight flight back to Harper Rock, Canada to begin to arduous, necessary task of finding out who had taken something from him and making their life hell for it.

And, brilliantly, they'd even left him a clue to go on. There couldn't be many people out there depositing tarot cards after their exploits. An amateur move, he thought, and all too easily traceable. Much better to leave nothing behind than something guaranteed to draw attention and create a link between different crime scenes. Finding out where they were stealing from and what they were taking would be the first step, if seemed.

[Jameson Dade]

“**** you.” The words were spoken lowly, in a harsh and uneven tone, as if the one saying them was worried that he was being listened in on. “Look, I lost a few bets and now I owe some guys and I was really counting on you making a desposit yesterday. I bought myself an extra couple of days, but if I don’t pay up, I’m fucked.” That was Jameson’s father, always shuffling the responsibility for his shortcomings and wrongdoings off on his son’s head.

A brief line of tension appeared between the Allurist’s brows even as he sat a little straighter in his seat. There was a screen with his dad’s face on it in front of him and a telephone pressed up against his ear. Just getting special permission to see his father after regular prison visiting hours had been a chore, one that he’d had to once again enlist the aid of his thrall in order to accomplish. It miffed him just a tiny bit that his father didn’t appreciate the time he put into seeing him or that it was his money that went to feeding the ungrateful asshole while he was locked away. The charge had been for distribution of illegal substances. Drugs. It was a drug rich family environment that had eventually lead to Jameson’s being an addict in the first place.

“How did you even go into debt in here?” He asked, his tone mild rather than frosty. Much as he might have disliked his father’s selfish behavior, he couldn’t help but want to take care of him. That was how he had been raised. You took care of the people in your family or your tribe, even if they didn’t always treat you right. That was just humanity, the give and take between people, the memories and the little moments of pleasure that could only be found in common with the living.

“We wager commissary .” The older man explained hesitantly. He had the same blond hair as Jameson although in a lighter shade, mingled with strands of white along the temples. They could have been the same person if not for that key difference, the age. And Jameson’s father had a cleft chin which had lovingly earned him the name ‘buttface’ on no few occasions from his child.

“So let me get this straight. I put my money into your account. You buy up a bunch of food for yourself, food that I am happy to help you get because you’re my dad, and you use it as bargaining chips for…” The look that the elder male shot him was enough to silence the undead youth. It wasn’t angry, just sad. A little lost. Jameson frowned and then offered up a breath in the form of a sigh before he moved to stand, phone in hand. “I’ll make the transfer tonight as soon as I get home. I should be leaving now anyway.”

And with that he left, because he was angry at the man but couldn’t show that to him. His father was in prison, he was already paying a price for his crimes and didn’t need more. Jameson didn’t approve, but he had his freedom.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have money either. On the contrary, he had more than he knew what to do with. The bank account associated with his father’s commissary had to be legitimate, same for the one connected to the rent he paid for his mother, which meant that he had to be very careful with the funds he put in. You see, he could only deposit so much at a time, and only so much a month before the bank was obligated on a federal level to begin closely paying attention to what was going on with his income. And his job, on paper, a gas station worker. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself, so it was an inconvenience he had to deal with.

He kept the rest of his cash at his house, stacked neatly into bundles in what was supposed to be his linen closet. It was actually full to the top and he was going to have to think of some way to store his hard won cash when it hit the point that it all no longer fit.

By the time he got home, he was emotionally exhausted (confrontation of any type tended to take it out of him almost immediately), and wanted to just sprawl on his sofa, maybe invite Robin over to get high. He was greeted at the entrance by Bucket, his golden retriever who had been lovingly name after the time Jameson had put a bucket on his head and watched the then pup run around like a crazed animal. That had been about a year before, shortly after Jameson had gotten out of rehab and decided he was going to get his life on track.

The dog came barreling towards him the moment the door was open and all but crashed into the Allurist who ended up leaning to give the big lug a hug. Bucket jumped up and immediately began to lick over the vampire’s face, covering it in a layer of saliva that had Jameson laughing almost immediately. He never had been good at teaching his pet not to jump up on people. Or…really any tricks. He didn’t really have the follow through to make it work. But once the pooch was done showing Jay how happy he was that his owner was home, the door was shut behind them and plans were changed as quickly as they had been made (which was common for Jameson). He ended up dropping his phone onto the coffee table atop a pile of recently acquired goods, some of which were from Carpenter Corp (one of them was being used as a coaster), and then he just dropped onto his couch.

Maybe there was something good on Netflix. Was there something he was meant to be doing? It nagged at his mind but that feeling passed quickly enough.