#izolat

Sebastian was waiting on someone as the day wound down. Atop a roof, away from the city, quiet. It was where he and Jack typically went to chat about the day’s work. Their spot. This time, he hadn’t called him for anything specific. Was he feeling lonely? It wasn’t like he couldn’t call Elliott up if he wanted. Knowing him, he’d drop everything, even if he was busy. But…Sebastian didn’t want him to drop everything just for him.

Bright green observed a colorful symphony in the sky — deep reds, yellows, oranges as the sun retired behind the far away mountains surrounding Maroa. It was indescribably beautiful, that much Sebastian was certain of, but there was an overarching sadness to it too as all of the warmth of the day dissipated with its retreat. 

…It wasn’t like him to focus on that aspect of it. Maybe he was feeling a little down after all.

The door chimed loud and bright under several fluorescent lights when Vic entered the convenience store.

The devil’s supply of peach rings had been devastated during one of his recent and semi-publicized-on-fumblr Episodes with Tom (and no, it wasn’t all Tom’s fault--let’s just say Vic can rarely leave things at ‘licking,’ especially not peachy treats.) So, he was on the prowl to resupply and see what else the household might need that wasn’t his preferred trash.

There was more to it as well. The talk with Emmett and Axel had left Vic feeling... well, it had left him feeling in a way that had the weariness of not sleeping sitting on his heart like an anchor. Keep a distance. Easy, right? In theory.

Only it hurt every time and Vic wanted to laugh about it because, well, what else do you do? They were right. And why think about how it hurt his feelings when he can’t even do anything with them? No tears. No catharsis. Just a fist in the chest that doesn’t move and a pressure that produces nothing.

Tom was a lot more perceptive than he played at and Vic didn’t think it fair to dump oh your resurrector might be a widdle hurt on him. He had enough to deal with; Vic was responsible for insuring it got easier.

So, anyway: convenience store run. That may have been all it was, but then Vic felt something too familiar ghost over him before he’d touched the door handle. Practice and instinct had him completing the gesture without issue and strolling in.

They were desires--very specific ones. They were ones he recognized in all their eerie, pointed lack of embellishment and focus. They’d drifted along his periphery for weeks now.

His stalker was here.

Mephistopheles had been winding around his feet but had come to a stop. Wide feline eyes looked up at him. Vic eyed the register, did a quick glance-over of the aisles, skirted around to the back and out of sight, whispered a word that had Meph dissolving into smoke and vanishing into his hand, and then reemerged. He caught his reflection in the nearest glass pane and gazed beyond it into the street.

Fine.

Vic pretended to browse for a few minutes before the door chimed once more on his way back out of the store. Boots hit the street on a path he knew well.

Jax opened her eyes.

She could still smell smoke, acrid and leaving a bitter metallic taste in her mouth. The crash site was some distance away now; not as far as she would have liked to go. But the trees here were far apart, and she’d had to walk some of it. It made her anxious. And her head hurt. There was a persistent ringing that only went away when she closed her eyes; and a thick crust of dried blood on the back of her head indicated it would be some time before that stopped.

She was curled in the arms of a oak, though she didn’t know it’s name. To her the bark was odd and tough, the trunk too short, a strange runt of a tree like all the others she’d seen. Jax hardly felt much safer in them than on the ground. But instinct had won out; she refused to sleep on the forest floor.

The alien lifted her head and stared, wide-eyed and impassive, back towards the crash site. Dim commotion could be heard. People had come to look at it. This discomforted her. She might be tracked. She didn’t want to be found yet, even if the barely understood words on her flat light seemed more encouraging than frightening.

Wil stood in the middle of the sidewalk and felt rather stupid.

He checked the scribbled note again, giving an awkward glance up and down the street. According to his phone, and judging by the street signs and business numbers on faded buildings, this was the right spot. But there was...well. Not much here. In fact, nothing was here. It was so empty and nondescript he would hardly have bothered describing it to someone who asked. A lot where certainly nobody lived. 

Was this some weird esoteric prank on Hoax’s part? If so, he felt more miffed than usual--having a fish land in your lap was one thing. But he was out here as it was getting dark, with a heavy tool box and a bag of foam strips, all the way across town, for apparently no reason at all. 

There may have been remnants of confidence granted by her confrontation with Delia but, really, her stubbornness is what brought her here.  She couldn’t deny the logic in Jack’s words but that wasn’t going to stop her from showing up.  Nothing would.

Charlie was a short messy-haired human with no business trying to learn how to sword fight.  She had a button-up shirt on and scuffed jeans, ripped from wear and not style.  Charlie sighed, cupping her neck with a hand.  She recently constructed a scarf from old clothing to hide the scar there.   The tired woman peered around as she followed her GPS. 

Apprehension, fear, a bit of humiliation.  These were the things Charlie was feeling when she approached an abandoned part of town.  She had never been there before but it didn’t surprise her to see dilapidated and worn buildings in this area.  She wondered briefly if this was the result of regulator rule.  You can never be sure.  Another part of her brain ran through different areas she could improve with design. 

Nic grumbled and hissed as they slid down an embankment of dead leaves and slick moss, bare feet digging into the loam to slow their descent. Somewhere beneath them, through the trees, was the service road they used to go into town. Pickings had still been slim, especially now that another larger predator was scaring the game. Nic’s bared teeth stood out in a face gone a little wan, a little tight. Like a wild dog, they tasted the air, hungry and sharp as a knife.

Hmn. Hmm. Something there. Unexpected, the rich smell of a domesticated creature gone fat on grain. Their grimace turned slowly into an unsettling grin. Familiar. 

They didn’t bother changing forms as they stepped onto the road, reflective eyes green and eerie as they caught on the smear of white standing out against dark gravel. Chickens were poor fliers, and poorer still at realizing when a human was a threat. They felt their tongue curl into an anticipatory snarl in their throat. Hunger as keen as a lash. Nic didn’t bother to try and puzzle out what a chicken was doing here, on a service road in the dark dark woods. A fairy tale happenstance to a creature who never cut its teeth on cautionary tales. It clucked and muttered, uneasy, but too stupid to do more than patter away.

Harper tapped at the phone fixed on their handlebars, for perhaps the fifth time in the past ten minutes, as if it just needed to be jostled to give them the right information. The GPS dot hovered over the same delivery address, same stubborn spot on the map, no matter what they did. They’d ridden in several circles around the...block...if you could call it that. And there wasn’t anything here. Just a mostly destroyed loop of asphalt that maybe trucks used to use, old sections of chain link, suspicious bags of garbage under a tree that had seen better days. And a dark property with absolutely nobody waiting on any pizza.