ArchivedLogs:Code Blue

Code Blue
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Jim	2014-09-08 '
Location <NYC> The Roost - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
The second level of this house takes up less floor space than the ground floor, owing largely to the open sweep of balcony that overlooks half the home below. Up here the floors are in natural hardwood, polished and smooth. At one side of the balcony, again, a door leads over to the adjacent unit in the house. One door off the balcony leads to a quiet office space, with a wide metal-and-glass desk, long sofa and armchair opposite a large pair of bookshelves. A tall glass door in the large windows on the back wall leads out to a wide outdoor balcony overlooking the river. The second door leads to Dusk's bedroom, dominated by greens and greys. He has finally actually gotten himself a /proper/ bed to pair with his dresser and bookshelf, king-sized and settled low to the ground onto a solid wood base with a number of drawers built into it. His desk holds the desktop -- somewhat literally. The desk /itself/, with see-through glass body and softly glowing lights inside, has been configured to /be/ the computer case. Closer inspection of a pair of small decorative aquariums sitting to either side of its three monitors finds them to /also/ be computer cases, their inner workings submerged in a pale blue liquid on a bed of aquarium pebbles alongside plastic plants and little plastic castles or fake coral. In this bedroom, too, a door leads out to the same balcony outside. Capping off the balcony at its other end is a guest bedroom, large wood-frame bed with a small end table, dresser, a hammock-chair hanging from the ceiling in a corner, a desk by the window. Outside the windows the bright flash of police flashers is finally vanishing. Much like the rest of the Commons, Geekhaus looks like a storm has hit it -- there's a little bit of post-zombiepocalypse feel to the way the house has been marauded though for all the place has been turned inside /out/ there's at least nothing missing. At the moment Dusk is in his room looking /just/ a little bit furious as he slides his very carefully crafted computer-desk back into its place against the wall, crouching down to open up part of its see-through case and repair some of the damage that has been done to it by Rough Handling. As usual at home he's only barely dressed, a ragged pair of cutoff jean shorts and no shirt; his wings twitch in restless agitation against his back as he works. One wing flicks out sharply to shove aside laundry where a hamper has been overturned and strewn across his floor. A pair of shirts fly across the room to splat against the opposite wall as though they have /offended/ him. One shirt does anyway; the other fwumps against Jim's unflinching shoulder mid-meander into Dusk's room, thumbs hooked off the belt loops of his ratty kilt, eyes semi-squinted up and spine in a hunched forward lean like a man that's been walking too long through a dust storm. Apparently the likeliest outcome for a man that's just spent the past few hours wandering from house to garden to /next/ house watching infant daughter frisked, nominal Woman of his Life frisked, infant PLANTS frisked and then possibly invalid nominal Man of his Life frisked in relentless sequence. Still in kilt, but now barefoot and stripped down to undershirt, he wastes little on preamble, uttering through his teeth, "Anything broken?" While /shaking/ out Dusk's shirt and… FOLDING it. Like it has some sort sort of spine he'd like to break. In answer, Dusk stretches his wing out again to twitch aside the sheets on his bed -- beneath the mattress has been knifed open. "Cuz yeah the chances of me inviting that --" He censors whatever descriptor he was /going/ to give, finishing instead, "... her into my bed are /so/ high. This computer'll live. Not sure about my laptop yet. They goddamn /trashed/ Flicker's shit, he's not even home to --" He hisses a breath out sharply between his teeth, and pushes his tongue up beneath his upper lip as he carefully closes his computer again and turns it back on. "S'your place like?" "Surprised they didn't strip search everyone. She could have fucking fit in my god damn pocket back when she was --," Jim sit on the side of the ruined bed hard. "Can't really speak for Ash. But I don't really have a lot to /toss/." Jim shrugs, mouth twisted with disgust, "Not that they didn't give it their all. Churned up my fucking dirt," a finger jabs out before Dusk beats him to it, "Which sounds like the kinda shit you ought a buy a man a fucking /dinner/ for first.." The folded shirt gets tossed to Dusk's bed and Jim snatches up the second, for lack of anything else to do. Vindictive folding ensues, his eyes and tone lowered. "...Darkroom got it worse. Bad enough I'mma have to explain to a client I'm behind because my complex got raided by the cops. But some of the shots from Thailand. .. ffff." He scrubs hard at the back of his head. Dusk exhales a sharp snort, head dipping with a wry kind of amusement. It fades into just a grimace at the mention of the ruined photos. "Fuckers." His brows crease, wings drooping against his lap as he turns his stool right-way-up where it's been upturned and sits down at his computer desk. "Should see what they did to Jax's studio. No respect for --" His cheeks puff out, fingers raking through his hair. It leaves the thick black locks in a disheveled mess after he's logged in when he spins back around to face Jim. "... and didn't even find her, for all that. She poked her head out of whatever hole she crawled into, yet?" "No." Jim stares - maybe exhausted. Hard to say. Just rubbing slowly at his thick neck. "No respect..." It's hard to say about which he's speaking, as it leads into, "No one downstairs had seen her. Not once, since--," almost this trails off but too much ethereal dialog apparently gives Jim indigestion because he bites out, "Since she fucking /died/. Should have just /stayed/- eugh." He crams a fist into the slit of the bed. Maybe he's looking for Dusk's porn stash. "What freaks /me/ out about all this is, for how easy those guys could just walk in like that? What if they'd been the /real/ fucking SWAT team. Or god damn... HAMMER. They'd have been in our fucking homes guns blazing before we even knew what was on us. That /scares/ me, man. All our security measures to keep us safe and they used the god damn front door." "Honestly, dude, the space between the front gates and the courtyards -- or, fuck, the space between the /road/ and /anyone's/ back door -- you can cross that in about three seconds at a sprint. I don't think there's an alert system on earth that's going to give the kind of heads-up you need for a fucking /strike/ team." Dusk frowns, pulling up security footage of the night on his many monitors, starting to scroll slowly through the video of the police ransacking the Commons. "Suppose someone should go check on her now that she's stood back and let them fuck us all over." "Or even then, not like we can have a rapid mobilization without knowing whether or not it's just another cop raid unless we /want/ a fucking shoot out," Jim gets nasal when he's irritated - not at Dusk, not seemingly at anything really. It's almost casual. "You can tell me every reason why there's not a damn thing we can do about it and I'll give you a few dozen more. I'm still not gonna like it. Maybe that fucking crazy-asshole firebug that burned down the Themis house /has/ something." He says 'has' with enough energy it inspires him to /stand/ up again, to go lean over Dusk's to watch the household carnage, an elbow propped on the edge of the vampire's shoulder. Just… frowning blankly. "...yeah." PAT. On Dusk's bare shoulder. Standing semi-behind the other man, it's hard to see his face, but the odd thick chug of his plant-pulse has a deep, heavy-duty increase of weighty intensity. "I'll be looking." Second PAT. "She's never done all that well /alone/, though. So. If she's not in the tunnels, and she hasn't gotten back with her old /posh/ blood family…" The third pat just… leaves the hand there. "Maybe he does." Dusk's lips twitch up into a thin-grim smile at the mention of burning down Themis, for a moment a /pleased/ note to his voice. "I mean, I don't know. This system is meant to watch for, like, fucking. Break-ins, not the /cops/ barging in with a warrant. Any team with /serious/ firepower --" He shakes his head, huffing out a slow breath as he watches the footage. The rest of Jim's commentary on Nox just draws a completely /blank/ look from Dusk, though. He tips his gaze up towards the other man with an uncomprehending frown, a flat: "Huh?" The scarred-dented skin around Jim's eyes is squinched up in a narrow tangle of crow's feet when he's looked up at. Still for a long moment, and then tightens his jaw and shakes his head, "Nothing. Probably. Just my fucking brain making noises. Probably do me just as well if it was still half burnt sawdust most the time." Said more passingly, sharpening when he adds, "--christ, we'd need a whole fucking coded /system/ of warnings to even scratch the surface. Like the fucking terrorist-codes at the post office. Yellow, orange, red--," his eyes follow a pair of police men stepping up and walking directly through one of the garden boxes across Dusk's screen, one side of his nose wrinkling. "/Blue/." "What?" Dusk is still just lost, here, rubbing his hand against his cheek and turning back to look at the screens. "... I just meant go knock on her damn door, tell her it's safe to. Well. Not that she's been coming out much /anyway/." His elbow rests on the desk, chin propped in one hand as his fingertips rub absently against his scruffy short beard. "I'm not," he says regretfully, "really sure my coding chops are quite up to. I don't know. Distinguishing pigs from HAMMER from a fucking. Lynch mob." "Dude, I don't know how you do any of this shit." Jim sounds disgusted for /different/ reasons now, his gaze briefly encompassing not just the surveillance but also the laptop and computer desk along with it, "I just kinda take your damn word on it." There's another pause - watching strangers tear apart the familiar environs of the Commons hypnotic in a way. Adds, "...guess they're pretty handy the way they all come intruding color-coded by /uniform/. How fine detail can this shit get? Tell the difference between a badge on blue and a set of HAMMER-grade body armor?" He clicks his teeth nearly in wince, "Sorry, I don't even know how to fucking ask this shit. Who, uh," c'mon, Jim, just go for it, use the WORDS, "coded this shit to start with?" "Can get pretty -- hmm." Dusk presses his teeth down against his lip. "Actually I'm not /sure/ about the level of granularity when it comes to shit like uniforms. I know B's drones can tell zombies from people so he -- she obviously knows some shit when it comes to, uh, motion capture. Gait recognition. But this --" His fingers flick towards the screen, lips compressing tightly for a moment. "Doug wrote the base program I work off. He's better than I am at that kind of thing, I'm really more of the. Infrastructure guy." Jim's mouth thins, the telltale cluster of muscles in the side of his jaw shifting like he's inwardly kicking himself and isn't entirely sure in what /direction/ yet. And mutters after unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth with another quieter click, "Could ask him." Commented breezily. "Could ask him," Dusk agrees, slow and thoughtful. His fingers drum lightly against the surface of his desk, eyes fixed on the footage as it scrolls back and back and back. Eventually he stands, tapping at keys to turn off his screen and lock it. "But first some goddamn coffee. And maybe we can talk about what it is I'll even be asking."