Objects in the rear view mirror are further than they seem [Mood]

Some time had passed since Alexander had left the solitude of the motel room.  He had left it in much the same state as it had been when he’d arrived, although anything perishable would have been tossed in the trash on the way out.  Whatever passes for housekeeping would pass through at some point, righting whatever was left.  Other than whatever remnants of his resonance that lingered in the walls, it would almost be as if he’d never been there.

He had returned home, but it had only been a flying visit.  Long enough to pack some bits and pieces into a backpack, change into his biker gear, toss a few frozen mice out onto the balcony for the owl that was perched and slumbering on its safety rail, and collect his bike.  He wasn’t vanishing without trace, at some attempt to disappear out of fear of being found and captured again.  He had told those who had come to visit him of his plans.

Other than a monthly phone call home, he had lost contact with his previous life in Seattle.  No, this wasn’t escape.  This was a road trip home, to catch up with family and old friends, and to live a perfectly normal life for a short while.  His mother had been surprised when he’d knocked on the front door as the light of sunset was fading into darkness, but he had been welcomed in without question or reservation or doubt.  It had been the same story when he’d caught up with the guys from his old station, blowing the dust and cobwebs off the friendships that had been built on the streets. 

Time had passed, and it was almost tempting to move back.  Life had been so much simpler.  But it wasn’t the place that had become complicated.   He had.  That kind of complication wasn’t something that you could get away from, unless you intended to run forever.  Alexander had time to think in the days where he’d sped along road and highway, miles of asphalt passing under his tyres.  Hours to consider his options: to disappear and try to carve out a new life somewhere, or to reclaim the life that was still stuck in some kind of limbo in Denver. 

The prospect of running and hiding away in some dead end town, moving on before anybody got suspicious about the weird things that tended to follow their kind around didn’t appeal.  It wasn’t an option he was really considering, but it was the memory of his Seeking that finalised the decision.  He wasn’t going to let his life be caged by the fear of what might happen.  There had been a push to change, to work towards something.  Maybe to build and create, or maybe just to protect and defend. 

We have so much work to do.

It had been hard to leave, but Seattle wasn’t his life any more.  He’d started to notice the distance between him and his friends.  Their lives had grown in different directions, each person changing in subtle ways.  There were people that he was closer to now in Denver.  And those are the people he returns to.

Alexander had timed his return to the city intentionally.  His route passed through the mountains and he stopped in a rest area before the sun rose.  Bike parked, Alex sat himself on the top of a picnic bench and dug out a flask of coffee from his backpack, now sat on the ground against the leg of the bench.  He poured out a cup and leant back to wait. 

It didn’t take long for him to find a little wonder in the world.

Then it was time to return.

Home.

Searching II [Mood]

The time?  Is somewhere between 2 and 5am, any more than that doesn’t really matter.  Hell, even that doesn’t really matter.

The place?  Downtown.  Where the main clubs turn the lights up and close the doors at 2am, other after-hours clubs step in to take over.  Omega is just such a club.  Three floors, three different DJs running at once, three completely different moods.  Want something modern?  Something from the 80’s?  Something less tied by time as the sound and the beat that runs through it?  Well, this is your lucky night.

The place?  Somewhere in the middle of the dancefloor, where the dance DJ is doing a pretty good job of riding the crowd.  It’s crowded, but then would it really be anything else as a Friday night slides into a Saturday morning?  It’s crowded, so there isn’t much space between people.  For the more academically-inclined, this could be a study in Brownian motion.  Body meets body, each has its movement reflected and deflected.  There’s no dancing around handbags.  The house lights are dark, but coloured lights and lasers and diffuse smoke are enough to see by.

Somewhere in that crowd is Alex.  Somewhere in that crowd is a man with black combats (red stripes scattered over the legs), with a t-shirt tucked into the back and a bottle of water sticking out of a pocket.  He dances, arms overhead with glow sticks, bare torso slicked with perspiration.  The room is warm, with the body heat of so many bodies being so active, so close together.  Warm enough for the odour of fresh sweat to mingle with deodorant and alcohol and dry ice and cigarette-smoke pulled in on other clothes and cleaning products and countless other scents.

The music track changes, but it’s pretty seamless.  There’s no dead air, no jarring transition from one track to another.  A cheer goes up, but is quickly drowned out by the rising volume and tempo from the music.

Alex notices, but it’s more of a subliminal thing than a conscious change that alters the flow of his movement.  The DJ may be riding the crowd tonight, but Alex is riding the music.  The music, the beat, the movement.  Maybe Sera was right and this is his ritual.  His way of finding the part of himself that has proven so elusive over the past years.  Maybe this is something he will consider later.

For now, though, all there is is the music and the dance, the crowd and the combination of sensations that settles his conscious, considering, questioning mind.  For now, it’s just him and the part of the universe that this opens up to him.

For now, there is still no sign of anything changing inside him.

But, for now, that doesn’t matter.

Searching [Mood]

You've got to start looking, though.

It’s mid-afternoon, but the light streaming in through the balcony door makes it seem later. Rather than the bright, clear light of day, this is the warmer, tired light that flows over the mountains as the sun makes its slow descent towards the horizon. The air outside is cold – so cold – but fresh and clear. Good mountain air. The air inside is cool, but much warmer than outside. Warm enough for Alexander to be perched on the sofa in shorts and a tshirt.

Perhaps it was time to start looking at certain things in a different way. His Awakening had just kinda happened. He hadn’t come up with any reason for why it happened when and where it had. He’d returned to the same stretch of road – the smashed mirror and the black rubber streak from the truck tyres were fairly reliable landmarks at the time – and hadn’t seen, or felt, anything different to the rest of the highway. The voices he’s heard had never returned. His dreams had never returned to that snowy version of Pike Place. It had just been one of those things. Maybe his Avatar – or the part of him that was his Avatar – had decided that it was just the right time, the right place.

He’d ask, but that particular entity had been rather... absent ever since.

Alexander had assumed that maybe the changes that he’d seen in the others – the Seekings – had just happened too. And so he had waited. And waited. And become more frustrated and constrained by his limitations. He could have done more if he had just been… Better? Stronger? Only he hadn’t been. He hadn’t been able to look back at the campsite, or at the murder scene. He hadn’t been able to hold onto the spirit of Kozlowski, hadn’t been able to do more than see him fade across the barrier between their worlds – the physical and the spirit. Hadn’t been able to get an answer to who did this to you?

So maybe it was time to actually Seek. Whatever the hell that meant to him. Sera had given some ideas and it was probably time – well past time – to try. And this is what bring him here, now.

The only real sound in the apartment is music coming from Alex’s phone. It’s been running through a playlist of dance music. The music has all been without lyrics, but it has all had a noticeable beat thumping through it. It’s the kind of music that he loses himself in during those nights out, when the music and the crowd take over and his conscious mind takes a back seat and just lets him be

He’d started out in something approximating the lotus position, one leg cross over the top of the other. That had become uncomfortable. So he’d shifted a little, perching on the edge of the couch with crossed legs. And he’d tried. He’d tried to meditate. He’d tried to lose himself in the music. He’d tried and tried and tried and… Nothing had happened. No epiphany, no moment of inspiration. Nothing that felt anything other than the couch under his ass and the cool air on his skin and the sound in his ears.

So he slumps back on the couch, kicking his legs out and resting them on the coffee table. The music plays on, but now he’s staring out of the window at the mountains.

This isn’t working.

It Flows [Mood]

First, Car 12 had arrived. The door had locked itself behind him, something he hadn’t noticed on his entrance to the apartment. They had hammered on the door, calling out their presence and identity, until he’d popped the lock from the inside and let them in. The homicide detectives had followed, with the CSI’s hot on their heels. He’d been pulled outside, where squad cars and vans with various markings had gathered, adding their blue and red strobes to the street lighting. Other officers canvassed the neighbours, the apartment below who had called in the original noise complaint.

The detectives had wanted to know what he’d seen, what he’s heard, what he’d done. The CSI’s had wanted his boots and uniform, to eliminate him from any trace evidence they might be able to find. He’d answered what he could, but a lot of his answers were simply ‘I don’t know’. Some because he really didn’t, others because he couldn’t. He couldn’t say that he felt that this was just the beginning, that there was some quirk of fate pointing at another murder. He could say that he’d felt the presence of someone else there, something of their Work.

Eventually, Alex had made it back to station. First stop is to get showered and changed out of the paper overalls and disposable shoes that he’d been given. He showers, letting the water run hot and the stall fill with steam before he gets in. He just stands there, feeling the water flow over him. He knows there’s more to the world. He’s barely scraping the surface, but it’s enough to know that there’s so much more. He’d seen it – Kalen and Sera looking back through time. Lucy calling to ghosts and spirits. Others doing more than just watching from the side lines.

He gathers his will and pushes and pushes and pushes, trying and reaching and grasping for more than he has before. He feels more, seconds dividing into fractions, dividing and dividing and dividing, until he feels each sliver of time run over him like the water from the shower. He tries, scrabbling at the boundaries of the effect trying to find some way to extend it further. Some way to change the flow. Speed it up, slow it down, and even stop it. He’d done it before. He knew that he could do it again. He swings a hand against the wall of the stall, intimately aware of the exact moment that the contact is made. But none of it is enough.

Alex balls up his hands, resting them on the wall and resting his forehead on them. A man had been murdered and he’d been next to useless in discovering anything more than he’d been gutted. There had been that resonance. That was something to look into. But all he could do now was sit and wait for the reports to start flowing into the computer system.

How long he stands there isn’t important, but it is something he’s acutely aware of. He stays until the frustration fades, and the memories of the body stayed at rest until he thought of them. He stays until he gets dried, dressed, and goes to make his own – slightly redacted – addition to the stack of data that the case was going to build.

-----
Alex
[Arete, sensing time. TN4, -1 practiced]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alex
[Extending.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alex
[Last one]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

the devil
HDub here!

Alex
*waves madly*

Alex
*points up*

the devil
Ooooh! Lookit!

Alex
All ready for one mood post, just needed someone to make sure I wasn't making them up.  Tongue

Wonderful [Mood]

Winter is a time for slowing, for dormancy, for rest.  Plants die off, their seeds waiting for the oncoming spring to continue the new cycle of life.  Animals go into hibernation, sleeping away the harshest parts of the year.  People become less adventurous, especially near mountains.  It gets too cold for most people to find the wilderness a pleasant place to be.  Many still seek relatively-safe adventure up on the groomed and pisted slopes of the mountain ranges, where there’s a warm bed and warm alcohol waiting at the end of the day.

To some people there is still an appeal of the mountains and forests when the snow is falling and rivers have frozen.  To some, there’s peace to be found away from the city, away from the light pollution, away from the noise and the chaos and the people.  Peace that is sometimes in short supply.

Which brings us to the middle of nowhere in late evening.  The sun has long set and the full moon lies low in the sky.  There is little cloud to obscure the view of the stars, and a hard frost is already starting to settle on the softer snow on the ground.  A trail of footprints leads up to a shallow cave in the mountainside.  A tent has been set up inside, protected from the worst of the elements and keeping what remains away from any occupants.  A small fire circle has been set up to one side of the cave mouth, keeping the firewood dry and allowing the smoke to drift away harmlessly.  A bedroll has been laid out in the tent and a well-insulated sleeping bag has been unrolled on top of it. 

Alexander sits just inside the cave leaning back against the opposite wall from the fire.  The only sound is the quiet crackle of the fire as the wood that had earlier been tucked away inside the cave to dry slowly burned.  The air is still – a lull in the weather bringing a strange serenity to the area.  The world, at least for a few frozen moments, feels at peace.

His thoughts had wondered in the time that he’s been sat here.  From his old life in Seattle and the things that had been lost and left behind.  To the new life and his career in the force, where that could possibly lead.  To the Awakened life and what it had brought him.  Things come to mind and pass on, fluttering away like… like snow in a breeze. 

Eventually, though, even that snow ends. 

So he sits there watching the fire, mind emptying of thought and worry and need.  All there is, in this place and in this moment, is Alexander and the fire.  Somewhere there’s a memory from high school, a memory that the air and the wood and the heat from the flint and steel he’d used created it.  Another memory that this fire will always be here and Alexander will always be watching it, like he’d always be sat by another fire with Kalen and Sera.  Again, the thoughts drift away from conscious thought.

The flames dance and flicker and shift over the wood as it chars and blackens and turns to ash.  Yellow turns to red as the air over the fire cools in the wintry air.  The view behind the fire dances as the heat haze distorts the air, drawing upwards over the centre of the fire and drifting downwards again as it cools. 

Time passes, although Alexander would never be able to quantify it.  It’s still night when he looks away, although clouds have blown in and masked the stars from view.  The fire is still burning but has died right down, needing fuel before it fades away into nothing.  He shifts, feeling his cold muscles complaining as he pushes up from the ground to walk over to the wood stack to resurrect the flame.  He pauses mid-step, looking again at the fire.  There’s a nagging feeling of something… forgotten?  Yet to be learned?  But the feeling passes as soon as it arrives.  He throws some more wood onto the fire, feeding it enough to last the rest of the night, before ducking into the tent to settle down to sleep.

******

Everything changes so quickly.  There’s a storm.  Wind dredges up snow from the ground, adding it to the sharp flecks of ice that swirl in from the sky.  All is white.  His exposed skin stings where the frozen water hits it, cooling and burning at the same time.  He pulls up his collar, shrugging down into his coat, as he walks.  There’s something familiar about it all.  And there’s something he’s looking for in the storm.  There’s a voice drowned out by the wind, just on the edge of hearing.  He seems to be getting closer, almost close enough to distinguish the words. 

Almost.

******

Alexander sits up suddenly, still wrapped in the sleeping bag that he’d drifted off to sleep in.  He shakes himself free and opens up the front of the tent.  Nothing has changed.  It’s still night, the sky has clouded over but is otherwise calm.  The fire…  The fire seems to be...  More colourful?  More intense?  More… More?

He moves to crouch by the fire, holding his hands out to feel the heat radiating off the still-burning wood.  The nagging feeling returns, a feeling that there’s something he’s forgotten and just on the verge of remembering.  The sensation of warm air flowing around his fingers seems to…  Remind him?

Alexander’s senses extend in some way and the patterns of thermal energy around the fire become clear.  The radiation from the burning fuel.  The eddies of heat convection in the air.  The conduction of heat through the stone in the floor of the cave.  It’s almost like realising that you have more than one eye to see through, and having it gives everything… depth.  He looks down at his hand and watches the lines of heat curl up into the cold air, fading as it cools to the ambient air temperature just as the deepening of his vision fades.

Some had told him once: You need to see the world. Look for things. Take it apart and put it back together and feel the way it moves inside you, again and again and again.  He remembers the advice, even when it was hard to accept that his world had shifted sideways.  Here had been times when it would have been easier to put away the new toys and shut it all out, go back to his old life and try to forget any of the weirdness had ever happened.  But didn’t that way lie insanity?  Or worse?

So, now, he walks out of the cave and into the wind that had blown up outside.  It was nowhere near the intensity of the memory of the storm, but it was enough.  Arms stretched out wide, he feels the way the air blows over him and...  and this time he pushed his will against reality.  It bends and, for a few moments, his eyes open to the kinetic energy of the moving air.  Lines of force appear in the air, for those few moment, it’s beautiful. 

Wonderful.

******

Alexander

[Arete, sensing Forces, +1 diff for the first time, -1 for taking time.  Be gentle, dice roller.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (7) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

Woot!

ix

Yay!  Witnessed!

*****

Vesta

[Arete, Sensing the kinetic energy of the wind, +1 first time, -1 taking time]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

ix

Witnessed!

Time [Mood]

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

The day is irrelevant. The time? The sun has yet to reach its zenith but there won’t be long to wait. Late morning, then. The sky? Is clear. Blue. Gorgeous.

The place, then. That would be a little more relevant. The place is somewhere to the east of Denver, along route 287. The place is, looking at it, pretty nondescript. There isn’t really any reason to stop here; it’s just one point of many points along the route between Montana and Texas. Its only real purpose is to hold the points on either side apart.

There is something of interest, though. A bike, parked up at the side of the road. No, parked well off the road. Trucks hurtle past here. Occasionally their drivers aren’t paying much attention, or they’ve fallen asleep, so there’s a risk of accidents. Of falling under the wheels and...

There is a bike, safely parked. Its paintwork and metalwork, previously scratched and scraped after it slid along the asphalt here, repaired and shining like new. The bike’s rider is also nearby, also safely away from the edge of the road and warily checking each way. Just in case. A jacket hangs off one of the handlebars and a helmet occupies the saddle. The bike’s rider is sat in the dirt, dust covering his boots and leather trousers. He’s sat watching, although there’s nothing much to see. Not now, and not even to those who have the ability to see what was there before.

He’s here to think. Did he expect to find anything here? Not really. There was some shredded tyre half-buried in the dirt, but that was all. There’s no thread hanging in the air, tying this world to the other side. No voices calling to him, luring him in. Asking him why he won’t help. Help how? He still doesn’t know who that voice was, where she was, what she wanted him to do. Only that she’d been quiet ever since. Maybe she had been a spirit, attracted when he’d woken up and torn the hole open between the worlds.

He’s here to think. How long has he been here? He neither knows nor cares. How long will he stay? He doesn’t know that either.

He watches. There’s the occasional vehicle passing by. Swirls of dust thrown up by their passing, dancing in the breeze until the individual grains lose their fight with gravity and fall to the ground. There are the leaves of the plants eking out an existence here, swaying in the breeze and the backdraught.

Time flows.

And it does flow, like a stream. It follows its well-worn path, moving ever onwards. Only hadn’t he already proved to himself that it’s not a completely irresistible force. He had frozen time. Accidentally, unintentionally, uncontrollably. It had stopped flowing around him. Then Sera and Kalen had shown that it’s possible to look at what had already flowed past, even if it was centuries ago. They’d all seen the death of the Archmage Anastasius some 500 years before, trapped all alone in a corner of the Umbra. (The thought of being alone for so long... How long before his hope of discovery and rescue faded? How long until the only thing he had left was to give up the last of his life to create the Sending that would become The Message so that his remains could be recovered and put to rest?)

How to do it, how it works, is still beyond him. But he does know that he has the potential to do it again. At some point in the future. If he survives that long.

So he sits there, absent-mindedly running dust through his fingers while he watches the effects of the flow of time around him. Someone had told him: You need to see the world. Look for things. Take it apart and put it back together and feel the way if moves inside you, again and again and again. He told her that he would try. So he is here, trying.

It starts with feeling of the sand through his fingers. Again and again and again. The way the grains move, react, flow. Watching the little piles build and spread as more of it falls before he scoops it up and does it again. Again and again and again until he’s no longer concentrating on it, until it’s almost muscle and sensory memory. Then it’s trying to open himself up to what’s around him. Trying to feel the flow of that stream against him, around him, through him. Trying to reach out and find what there is to grasp, even if he doesn’t know how to take hold of it yet.

He tries. He feels what he can feel.

And he feels each second, minute, hour as they flow by. He’s standing in the stream and he feels its passage.

Vesta @ 12:43PM

[So we're trying to Sense Time. Coincidental, TN4. Taking time, -1. And throwing in a WP, because they're there to burn]

Roll: 1 d10 TN3 (9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ix @ 12:45PM

Witnessed!  

Fine [Mood]

How many years since you found yourself

Staring at an endless sky?

Unaware of yourself

Who you are and where you're going...

The ice is still there, freezing, frozen.  Life goes on, passes by Alexander. People come, people go.  Some show concern that he’s a little quieter than he was, a little more distant.  A little colder.  They ask if he’s ok. 

I’m fine. 

They’ve made the effort and they’re let off the hook with the rather unenthusiastic answer.  Perhaps there’s an unvoiced sigh of relief.  But, really, would he be able to tell any of his colleagues what is really bothering him.  Or the little old lady in the flat next door?  The barista at his regular coffee stop?  At best, they wouldn’t understand.  At worst, those faceless men in black that he’d been warned about could come visiting. 

So he’s fine.

Alexander looks out and down.  The sky is blue and clear and endless from his vantage point.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet below.  Mountains leading to foothills leading to city leading to plains.  Not a cloud in the sky to spoil the view.  It’s breath-taking.  As is the cold wind at that height.  So much life going on down there.  People working and playing, loving, hurting, dying, being born.  Most in their own shared, sheltered view of the world.  Only seeing the surface, completely unaware of what’s going on below.  Or, on the rare occasion when they’re confronted with the unseen depths of the world, finding ways to rationalise and explain it away.

The deaths by the reservoir?  A popular theory is a serial killer, even though a cause of death couldn’t be really be found for the victims.  But there was that tip-off, wasn’t there?  That had to be the murderer, right?  Animal attacks?  Toxic fumes from chemical dumping nearby?  Conspiracy theories about experimentation in some black-ops lab buried away in the mountain somewhere?  If only they knew.

If they knew then something could be done about it.  But that’s just not going to happen.  So it’s down to those who do know to do something about it.

Those who can, or will, anyway.

He has doubts.  He has fears that he hasn’t talked to anyone about.  Will he hold back next time?  He doesn’t know.  Has no way of knowing until it happens. 

But he’s been afraid before, and it hasn’t stopped him.  He may have puked his guts up afterwards, but he didn’t freeze up. 

And it’s time now.

He shoves up and forwards, pushing himself off his perch.

And suddenly there’s nothing but him and the sky and the ground.  All the other thoughts he might have had stream away behind him.

Somewhere behind, a cord catches.  It pulls the parachute strapped to Alexander’s back out of its packaging.  With a breathtaking jerk his descent slows and gives him the opportunity to fly.

To be.

To feel again.  And there’s a biggest smile on Alexander’s face as he experiments with the controls on his parachute – turning, slowing before shooting off again at speed. 

He’s free.

...Only living

Only breathing

Losing all sense of time...

Indeterminate Cause Pt 2 [Mood]

Investigations take time, especially those where there is so little actual information to go on.  A number of bodies were found and recovered.  All were studied, autopsied, tested, and examined.  Blood, skin, residue, fibre, and hair samples all taken and analysed.  Again and again, the medical examiner’s office returned the same finding.

Cause of death: indeterminate.

Even the man who had been neatly sliced in half had already been dead when it had happened.  No cause of death, no weapon, no motive, no suspect.  No idea what had happened to all those people.

The mundane world, at least, has no idea.

Earth to earth

The mood is sombre, and the only sound is that of footsteps along the gravel path.  A small procession of people, dressed mostly in black, move towards a waiting priest.  Several seats have been laid out, for those who may need them.  The group is met by a waiting man, dressed in black with a white collar.  They assemble to watch, to listen, and to remember.

A gentle breeze causes the trees to sway, the clouds in the sky to drift along.  Otherwise there is little movement.  The single man is speaking, reading from a book held in his hands.  Or at least the book is held, and he recites without reading.  Some of the others are crying.  Some hold each other for comfort.  One or two try to keep their emotions under control, not wanting to give in and let their sorrow show. 

Ashes to ashes

The monologue is brief, unheard from a distance.  And it’s at a distance that Alexander is standing.  Matching the others, he’s also dressed in black.  He doesn’t really know the person that the others are saying their goodbyes to.  There was a name on a piece of ID, date of birth, address.  The photo on the driver’s licence showing her in her prime.  Before a spirit of corruption had ended her.

He stands, watching, unwatched.  He’s far enough away that the group’s focus, along with his tendency to blend into the background, leave him unnoticed.  He watches the family and the close friends, watches their reaction.  Watches as the coffin is slowly lowered into the ground.  Watches as each person takes their turn to throw a little soil, or the flower they had brought with them, into the grave.  Watches as they begin to drift off, to head elsewhere to celebrate her life and mourn their loss.  Watches as others come to remove the chairs and the other paraphernalia that is no longer needed, and watches as they walk away with the priest. 

It’s then that he approaches.  Others will be along shortly to begin the work of filling the grave, leaving its occupant to her eternal rest.  He takes a little of the soil himself, then throws in onto the coffin.  Something is pulled from his jacket pocket – a driver’s licence.  This, too, is thrown into the grave.

Alexander speaks quietly, not that there’s anyone around to hear.  It just feels right to do so.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.  I hope you find your rest, and that your family find some peace.” 

That done, he turns and walks away.  This isn’t the first of these funerals that he’s appeared at, and it won’t be the last.  Not until all the victims of the spirit have been interred.

Dust to dust

I know you like books [Mood]

Back in room 203.  Everything mostly the same from the previous visit.  Kalen has been moved slightly – bed sores are not good things, the blanket a washed-out green rather than the well-washed white it was before, the blinds pulled up to let what little light remains of the day into the room, the TV left on as quiet background noise set to a different channel.  The water jug next to the bed remains untouched.  Kalen’s eyes remain closed, although his breathing stays at the slow, deep rate that it has been for the past… days?  Weeks now? 

The same chair is pulled up to the side of the bed and Alexander settles down in it.  Where Sid was given a plant, Kalen is given something else.  Time, and the contents of a book.  It’s pulled out of a messenger bag that has been set on the floor next to the chair and appears to be new, judging by the lack of creasing along the spine.

“I don’t know what I can do to help you.  But I know you like books, so…”  the sentence trails off as he flicks through the first few pages of contents, imprints, titles, getting to the actual text.  He starts reading, on the off-chance that there’s anything of Kalen in his body to hear.

“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:-- it was the black kitten’s fault entirely…” 

And so, Alice travels through the looking-glass.

I appreciate you trying [Mood]

In another room, elsewhere in the hospital, Sid lies sleeping.  Her body, at least.  Dim light shines in through the window as the city is pelted with a summer storm thrown off the mountains, and a dull drumming on the window panes is the only sound in the room.  Although Alexander doesn’t really know Sid, he’s still come to visit her.  This time there’s a small gift – a small potted cactus sitting on the window sill.  Something that shouldn’t cause any concerns about the ‘no flowers’ rule being broken.  Something a little different that – hopefully – she’ll like when – hopefully – she wakes up again.

Getting here had taken a little more work than Kalen had.

*-*-*-*-*

Alexander had tried tracking her down after his second visit to see Kalen.  Although he’d only ever been introduced to Sid by that single name, the note from Grace gave a couple of other possibilities.  Sid or Amelia Weston.  The receptionist at the front desk had tried to help, but there’s only so much that can be done when you don’t have the right name for someone.

He was stood on the opposite side of the reception desk to the middle-aged woman dealing with enquiries and pointing people in various directions on that particular morning.  Her blonde-and-gray hair were held back in a tight bun, make up scrupulously applied.  Experience dealing with members of the public not getting the answer they want, meant that he was getting nowhere fast.

“I’m sure she’s here.  A friend asked me to check in on her and she definitely said this hospital.  Can you check again?  She’d either be listed under Sid or Amelia Weston.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there is nobody here with that surname, and I can’t just go fishing for everybody with those first names.  Have you tried the other hospitals in the area?”  She looked up at Alexander, knitting her fingers together and resting them on the desk in front of the keyboard.

“She came in at the same time as the other caught in… whatever it was that happened in that club.”  Alexander sighs, resigned to where the conversation is inevitably headed – nowhere.

“I’m sorry, sir.  But we didn’t take all of the casualties that night.  Our ED just wouldn’t have been able to handle them all.  All I can think is that she ended up somewhere else.  If you’ll excuse me…” She turned away, pressing a button on the quietly ringing phone next to her keyboard.  “University of Colorado Hospital…”  

Before he turned from the desk, Alexander said quietly, “I appreciate you trying, thank you.”  The receptionist looked up, gave a quick nod, and then returned her attention to her PC.

*-*-*-*-*

There is more than one way to skin a cat, though.


The mystery of so many people going comatose at the same time is something that is going to get looked into.  The police, and possibly other more sinister organisations, are going to take an interest in the circumstances.  The police, in particular, looking for evidence of drug-related activity that could have turned bad.  A dangerous new drug on the street?  A new dealer, mixing something already known with something different?

For those with the means of access, getting a peek at various reports isn’t too difficult.  But the investigation into blood results, forensic screening, toxicological and biochemical examinations of the various – known – substances in the club aren’t where Alexander look.  He was looking for something much, much simpler.  A list of casualties and where they had been taken.  A simple list, put together on the night when it had all happened as person after person was assessed by EMTs and paramedics, checked for ID, then transported to one of the receiving hospitals.

It’s a simple matter of deduction from there:
The number of Amelia’s – none.
The number of Sid’s – two.
The number of Sid’s taken to UCH – one.  White.  Female.  About the right age.

One Sid Rhodes.

*-*-*-*-*

And so here he is.  Potted cactus on the windowsill. Chair pulled up to the bedside again.  Quietly watching, just for a little while.  Then he leaves to visit Kalen again.  There’s a little something for him too.


vesta @ 3:26PM
[Int+Inv]
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

I don't know if I can be what you want me to be [Mood]

There are many ways of opening doors, especially those that would normally be barred.  Keys, picks, stealth.  Knowing the right person, the right handshake, the right words.  The right bluff.  Or the right uniform.  It’s well after normal visiting hours when Alexander walks into the hospital.  It’s not hard to find the right room and the guarding nurse at the main desk is perhaps a little easier to get around for someone in uniform than random people walking in off the street.  It’s part of the unspoken deal between some of the public services – I’ll keep you safe, you put me back together again after.

“Room 306.  I’d say try not to wake him, but...”  The nurse shrugs, shakes her head sadly and then points the way down the corridor.

He finds Kalen asleep, unrousable, in a hospital bed.   The room lights are low and the monitoring equipment at the head end of the bed throws a little extra light into the room, making Kalen look paler than he really is.  The plastic tube from a drip disappears under the sheet.  The equipment is silent in its watch over its charge.

There’s an empty chair to one side, which Alexander moves over to the side of the bed.  He sits on it, then crosses his arms on the bed rails and rests his chin on them.  “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

He stays there, quietly watching the comatose man.  Eventually Alexander starts to feel sleepy, feels the drag of his eyelids downwards.  He stands, returns the chair to its original spot, then moves to the door.  He pauses under the frame and looks back at Kalen’s still form.  Says quietly, “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”

A few more heartbeats pass and he leaves quietly.

Indeterminate cause [Mood]

Alexander sits on his couch, watching the TV.  Warm sunlight streams in through the uncovered windows but the chill in the room doesn’t really seem to fade.  A half-finished mug of coffee sits on the coffee table, long since cold.  The TV doesn’t get turned on often, but today there is something specific he wants to see.  He’s flicking between the local news channel and stops on one of them as the news ticker at the bottom shows:

Breaking News: Several bodies found at South Platte Reservoir after anonymous tipoff.

The footage cuts from a politician trying to dodge accusations of a certain indiscretion with a certain lady of indeterminate repute to an area of forest near a large body of water.  Several police cars and vans are parked nearby, lights throwing red and blue streaks through the undergrowth.  Tape, guarded by beat cops, cordons off a large area.  The cameraman can’t get close enough to pick up much in the way of detail, but several paper-suited CSIs are hovering near one obviously-dead body.  Others move between their van and a cave by the waterline, carrying various pieces of evidence-gathering equipment.  A couple of detectives – obvious from their lack of uniform but their presence beyond the cordon – speak to one unformed officer to one side.  Presumably the first on scene.  Officially on scene, anyway.

*-*-*-*-*

Alexander had been far away when the call had been made, out at some ramshackle Ma-and-Pa diner in the middle of the Colorado plains.  The ride there had taken a good while - time which he would normally have revelled in the pleasure of mile after mile of asphalt passing underneath him.  There was no thrill of adrenaline this time, no breaking of the speed limits on the long, straight, unpatrolled areas; only ice inside.  He pulled up outside, the engine of the bike dying out with one last roar, and headed inside while pulling off his helmet.  Alexander sat at the counter and ordered a coffee.  His appetite had been somewhat lacking recently and the thought of eating just then turned his stomach.  Other than the Ma, nobody else was in the place.  It was between what could have been the breakfast and lunchtime rushes, assuming the place ever had them.

The cloth bag was laid on the counter and opened up.  Alexander fished through the contents without pulling them out, not letting Ma see what they were.  The names of the dead were read again, to be remembered.  Having barely touched the coffee, Alexander waited for Ma to head back out in the kitchen.  He grabbed the bag and returned it to a pocket, then moved over to the payphone in the corner.  The payphone receiver wasn’t picked up straight away, though.  Instead, Alexander pulled out his mobile phone and opened up a newly-installed app.  Although not massively technical, he knew enough to find and install useful software on his phone.  It had never crossed his mind that he’d need something like this, though.  He tapped away on the mobile’s flat surface, stopping a couple of times to revise what he’d typed.  Only then had he picked up the payphone receiver and dialled.  The ringing ended after a few moments and a female voice asked,

“Denver Police, which department please?”

Alexander tapped a button on his mobile and held the phone up to the payphone receiver, letting the synthetic female voice tell its pre-programmed tale.

“Look at South Platte Reservoir.  The victims are there.  You will not hear from me again.”

The receiver was replaced as soon as the message had been delivered, and Alexander moved back to where his coffee was sitting on the counter.  He threw a few bucks on the counter and walked out, an engine roared and then faded away into the background shortly after.

*-*-*-*-*

Alexander stays sat on the couch watching the footage.  The only difference is that he pulls his legs up and hugs them, feet flat on the couch.  The contents of the cloth bag have been spread out on the table.

He sits there, rocking gently.

The Morning After [Mood]

How long since he was found on the road to nowhere?  Hours, probably.  Or it could be days.  After being found by Sera, after normality started re-establishing itself, he came home.  Countless questions, all condensed down into a single “what now?” were left to one side as he slept.  What was her name, Natalee?  She’d given him a lift home, bike stashed in the back of her pickup, and stayed with him.  Stayed, because Sera was worried – he’d been ready to throw himself off the precipice, and it was the mix of blind luck wrecking his ankle (not all bad, then) and her pulling him back that saved him.  He wasn’t at that stage any more, though.  Overwhelmed by everything, but exhausted too.  Exhausted enough to sleep.  So after pointing out where things (kitchen, bathroom, smoke on the balcony if you need to), he crashed out on the couch.

Time passed in that strange way it has while you sleep.  Hours can pass, yet it only feels like moments ago that you drifted off.  There may have been dreams, but they were the usual dreams of the unconscious mind sorting out its filing.  The ones that fade away as soon as your eyes open.  No storms.  No voices.  Alexander opens his eyes and sees Dan  (Dan?  From the club?  Yeah, that was him.) asleep in the armchair.  He must have taken over from Natalee at some point.  A laptop sits on his lap, headphones on, and the screensaver throws multicoloured light across his face.  The man’s chest rises and falls slowly as he sleeps.

The lights in the room are off, but the faint light of sunrise is slowly creeping into the room.  Dim, flat light lies across the surfaces.  At some point while he’s been sleeping, someone has put a blanket over him.  He sits up and pulls it around him.  Stands, fetches a glass of water from the kitchen, and then moves out onto the balcony.  He slides the door closed behind him, keeping the heat inside.

It’s cold.  The sun isn’t high enough yet to let much warmth to the world, and yesterday’s heat has long since radiated away into the night.  He sits back in a chair, wrapping the blanket tighter around him.  Feet go up onto the railing.  So, the world has changed.  Only it hasn’t, has it?  He’s the one that’s changed.  Awakened, she said.  Seeing things with his eyes wide open, rather than half closed to the real potential out there.  Or in him.  Such an easy mistake to make – thinking that it’s the world that’s been turned upside down.

So who is he?  Has he ever really had an answer to that.  Life has never had much of a direction.  School was alright – plenty to get involved with, but nothing to really give any kind of purpose.  A run of dead-end, low-paid jobs: instantly forgettable experiences as a faceless wage slave, someone of no interest to anyone.  Joining the police was a start to finding direction.  It felt good to help people, when there was the chance to.  To serve.  When there wasn’t grief for the uniform, or mountains of administration and paperwork.  Getting criminals off the street.  Trying to give what support he could to the victims.  It all felt right.

Is that something he could build on?  He settles back and watches the shadows vanish from the mountains as the sun continues its rise into the sky.  While he’s watching, there’s a flutter of wings on the edge of the balcony.  The owl has landed.  There’s a look of recognition between two of them, just as the owl settles down and starts preening a wing.

Inside, Alexander’s phone buzzes.  A message from Sera, suggesting they meet in the park later in the day.

Order from Chaos [Mood]

The flat is full of boxes. Cartons. Piles of things waiting to be put away, at least when there's somewhere to store it all. A box in the kitchen has been broken open, so there is at least a working kettle, coffee maker, and toaster. A stop by a grocery store on the way into town has provided milk, coffee, bread, and some other bits and pieces. A pack of beer has been opened and left on a worktop, one bottle missing. Some basic toiletries - toothbrush, hairbrush, shower gel, towel - have been liberated from their cardboard prison and placed in the bathroom. There’s no bed as yet, so there will be a few nights making the most of a collapsible camp bed. That's no major hardship.

But the flat is a couple of hours and several miles behind and below. Somewhere in the hills above Golden, Alexander is walking. Heading somewhere in particular? No. Running away from something? That’s a little more complicated. But he’s here simply for the pleasure of walking. Being somewhere new. Outdoors. Enjoying being alone. Watching the sky as it changes from its vibrant blue into the yellows and golds of sunset.

Alexander stops at the top of a slope, where the rock is solid and relatively flat. He turns and sits, looking down across the city. Everything seems so small. A constellation of stars flaring to life, trapped between the mountains and the plains. Ant trails of light crawling between them, keeping the city alive and buzzing with energy.

He pulls the bottle of beer from his rucksack and pops the cap.

"To fresh starts." Alexander toasts the city, and the new beginning it has to offer. The past is another city.

Another state.

Another life.

He keeps watch as the sun slides down behind the Rockies, and the golden sunset fades away into the dark of night. He doesn’t keep track of how long he’s there for, but eventually he makes his way... home.