”Who the @!#$ do you think you are? Filling MY house with those smelling, rancid losers? This used to be a LUXURY apartment once, NOT a pigsty!”, Helena’s voice cut through the thin walls between the kitchen and the living room, and Riv poured himself another glass of whisky, rubbing his stubble growth with the other hand. A second later he heard Helena scream, and the sound of breaking glass.
Again.
And again.
Cormac rushed out of the kitchen, his cheeks red, muttering under his breath. Helena rushed after him, grabbing his sleeve. “You no good son of a dog! However did I get pregnant with YOU? You worthless ball of slime, wastelander mongrel dog!”.
Cormac tore loose and ran into the bathroom, quickly locking the door. Helena curled into a ball, screaming at the top of her lungs. “I hate you, I HATE YOU!”
Riv shifted uncomfortably, pulling the crystal glass protectively closer, guarding the content, sipping carefully. Helena had changed, no doubt of that. She was fat with child, five months pregnant. He could not miss the cookie crumbles in the cleavage of her night gown, nor the plush of her cheeks. Where she five months ago was the embodiment of man’s desire, she was now a fat, angry cow.
Helena turned to walk when she noticed Riv looking disdainfully at her. She glared at him, her eyes dark and foreboding. Riv felt the urge to enter the bathroom as well. A short sprint was followed by rapid knocking. Cormac was quick to let him in, shutting the door with considerable strength, multiple times, to truly demonstrate his frustration.
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LaForge sat unseen in a corner of the corridor outside. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Focus was important.
The argument within the apartment did not escape her attention, but it mattered little. In the time she had lived here, the last of her neighbors had moved out. They were respectable citizens, and tolerating the pleasure slave in the luxury apartment was bad enough. Having rabble of questionable origin stalk the hallways and scream like madmen was intolerable. When continuous raids by security forces failed to unveil any illegal activities in the woman’s apartment, they could do nothing. Unfortunately for them, Colonel Anderson, Helena’s former owner and sponsor, had built a secret room in his favorite concubine’s room. It came in handy, she had to confess that. The other tenants had tried to remove her once, but then it turned out she was pregnant, and with an important member of the Compound council as the father apparent. Their request was quickly disregarded, and champagne and chocolate had been bountiful since that. Helena was price breeding material, or so it seemed.
She listened in to the song of the ether, the voices on the wind. There were so many, their messages seemingly important by the sound of their voices. Slavers, merchants, prostitutes, families and friends talking merged into one with encrypted messages and streams of data being exchanged. But there was a continuous discord, an undercurrent she could not quite place. It made the hair on her semi-translucent skin stand up.
[ooc]13 can sense wireless / radio traffic with her sensory organs. She views them differently, for it seems like a song to her. The voices of the ether, singing in harmony (and sometimes in a chaotic cacophony)[/ooc]
Then she heard footsteps, and, like a quiet whisper, Experiment 13 melded into the shadows; faded from view.
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Kiph sat on the sill, dangling his feet. Thirty floors below him, he saw the ground, people moving about like little ants. He touched their minds with his, then he froze. Someone down there was studying him. Through the eyes of the spectator he saw a crossbow being raised, steadily aiming at him.
He rolled back, bounced over the bed and landed on his feet in a crouch. There was a heavy thud, chalk dust falling like snow. Looking up, Kiph saw the bolt in the ceiling. It had crushed through a plasterboard ceiling tile and was stuck in an air duct.
The fatebringer inhaled sharply. On the bolt someone had written tiny letters. Fatescript. An assassination target. He put an armchair on the bed, climbed atop the wobbling chair and yanked at the bolt until it came loose.
Client withheld by order of Master Loett
Target Information:
Ardakaus Serosh
Male
Spymaster of Rouge Tower
Resides in the Tower of the Scientist
Note: Wears Armashield Corp. Personal Shield Mark IV
Note: Hidden miniature flamethrowers in his sleeves
“I hate you! I hate you!”, Helena was screaming down below.
****************************************
Wesknife was in character. He wore a Cantonese rich red robe, in the style currently in fashion among the rich of Rouge Tower. Down his left side was golden embroidery of the scorching of Blastside, the Scientist in his tower, his hands up, shielding the rest of town. In his left hand was a single long stemmed rose, in his right a bottle of exclusive champagne. His taken identity liked pregnant women. Liked to have them, liked to slap them around. But that was not his objective here. No, he was here to get help. The visit to the expensive prostitute was just a cover up. He was here to recruit allies.
Three rapid knocks on the door. Feverish activity inside. Seconds of waiting, then he was led inside by the pregnant prostitute. He smiled at her, she held his hands, accepted the rose and the bottle. He sat down in the sofa. There were something wet next to him. He touched it, sniffed it. Whisky. Someone had just spilled a few drops of whisky in the sofa. Not the prostitute, she was sober and her breath fresh. There were more people here.
Then Helena came out of the kitchen again, quickly closing the door behind her. She had objected heavily at first, said she was pregnant, but the credits he offered were too good to pass up, and so she had accepted in the end.
He looked at the woman. She was pretty in spite of her weight, though she looked somewhat ashamed of her condition.
[ooc]Dark_dragon, valadaar, Murometz and EchoMirage. You are all present. Kiph is upstairs, but he knows someone is with Helena downstairs. 13 is in the corridor outside, or he could have snuck in after Wesknife. Riv, you are with Cormac in the bathroom, but he door is thin and you can easily listen in on the conversation.[/ooc]