ArchivedLogs:Connections to Believe In
| Connections to Believe In | |
|---|---|
You show me yours, I'll show you mine. | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
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2013-02-22 Eleven o' clock at the reservoir. Time to share stories. |
| Location | |
A bitter cold rakes through the naked scrub brush, skimming a weak powder of ice over the sleight dark ice gripping the reservoir like a cataract. Jim's let himself go, by way of the local oak population, his tough hide of rough bark immune to the cold, with one hand crammed in the pocket and the other restlessly running a lighter across the back of his knuckles. A cigarette hangs from the side of his mouth, not yet lit. He watches the ice like he's not sure he trusts it. Probably, he doesn't. Which might also explain why he seems about read to stride down the bank and walk out onto it, for the pure happy fuckery of it. Headlights come first -- they stab a long swathe of light across the tree line. Then gravel's popping under tire treads -- it's an old Chrysler 5th Avenue, black as night. The sort of tank that only stops for a gas station. Figures that Murphy would drive one. He's getting out a second later, huffing out ice as he shuffles in that good, black coat -- it's the one he wears for when he's got a business meeting and needs to look like a good, *proper* detective rather than some guy who just crawled out of the bar. He starts walking toward Jim -- hands shoved so deep in his pockets you might figure he's aiming to tear them. As he gets closer, he squints at the bark. "You ain't plannin' to just fuck off and set down your roots, are you?" he asks. "Maybe meet a nice pretty cyprress, raise a few acorns?" More of that icy mist. "Fuck, it's cold." "Did that once," Jim grunts out towards the water, rough-voiced and off-duty as a old work boot, "Had enough living off the /dirt/ to fill a lifetime." He then turns, eyes cutting through Murphy and on past him, striding towards the old Chrysler to rap his knuckles on the hood, "That ain't what I'm here about. Let's sit in the car before you freeze your brass balls off, mom's fond of 'em. I smoke in there?" "Seriously," Murphy says, just *glaring* at Jim. "You took roo--never-fucking-mind. Yeah, smoke all you want," Murphy says, waving his hand as he treks back toward his car. It's an old one--but it's in surprisingly good condition. A few suspicious looking dents on the front fender, some chipped paint, but he keeps it clean and comfortable. The seats inside look like leather, or some cheap imitation of it. As soon as he's in, he turns the car back on--it kicks over with a dull, angry growl. Heat starts to swell up along his fingertips, taking out the chill that they gathered from only a few seconds outside. "I'll go first," he tells Jim, "because I got a feeling you're gonna blow _my_ story out of the fucking sky." Then: "Military's been using us ever since they noticed we exist. Put a bunch of us in a program called 'Weapon X'. Tried to weaponize us. Some seriously freaky shit. Some I saw, some I just read about. One of the latter -- I shit you not -- they took one freak who could heal from just about anything and _swapped his bones_ out for metal. Dunno if he lived." Murphy goes for his cigarette. "Got sick of it after a while. Met some real life monsters. Decided I wanted out. Laid my eyes on some shit I wasn't supposed to see -- wrote it all down, nice and neat. Put it somewhere safe, then let the brass know that they had two choices: Kill me and have a lot their shit come to light, or let me walk. They picked Door Number 2. And that's it. That's all there is to it." Jim doesn't look like he's listening. He sits in the passenger seat, lighting a cigarette with his eyes reflecting orange glints of the flame, scanning the night outside the window. The silence is thick as poured cement. He streams two gusts of smoke downward through his nostrils. "What's say I've met a few freaks that'd escaped from a place like that. Maybe more than few." His eyes swivel to regard Murphy at a far corner angle. "Don't suppose you got your peepers on any notes about mutant-hunting /murder/ drones." He can say it with a face so straight you could sharpen a knife on it.
"The fella I told you about -- the one who got his bones swapped out for metal. Hell, me. Hell, *everyone* -- we were there *willingly*. We signed up for this shit. Mind you, once we were in, we couldn't walk out. I had to shake the pillars of heaven before they let me walk away.." Eyes narrow, now: "You sayin' there's something going on like that with mutants who _didn't_ sign up for it?" "I'm saying that, yeah." Jim cracks his window to flick ash down the outside of the car door, watching Murphy right back. Tree bark can't account for every rough texture and pitted lines - hard living gets some credit. "How long ago?" "About ten years ago," Murphy says. "Give or take." Murphy's eyebrows grind together--digging. "There's mention of something -- fuck, I thought this was just _horseshit_. One of the debriefs I read talked about some shit in Pennsylvania with a clinic -- human trafficking, kids disappearing. 'Investigate, observe, ensure no foreign interests are involved'," Murphy says, reciting from memory. "It just sounded like horseshit." "That'll happen, you get too cynical," Jim comments dryly. "You forget how to /believe/ in shit." Even if said shit is something no one would /want/ to believe. "This is the whole nine yards. You check into these places, the only way to check out again means stepping over /bodies/." After a long pause, conversationally: "How fast you think you could write me up a copy?" "God *damn* it," Murphy says. And then: "You got a pen and paper?" "It ain't probably gonna help you much, though. It's just a report from an agent investigating the disappearance of one of their marks -- somebody they wanted. When he mentioned this clinic, they debriefed him, told him to go in and dig deeper. I never saw the followup. I figured it was just *spook* shit, you know? Like, 'Hall of Mirrors'. Get into that line of work too long and you start seeing conspiracies everywhere." Then, as if it just occurred to him: "Wait. Fucking WAIT. That document says _kids_, Jim." "Yeah." Jim says grimly, holding his cigarette just in front of his mouth, pinched between a thumb and forefinger, staring at his reflection in the front windsheild. A tendon in the side of his temple tightens in time with a clench of his jaw. "One size fits all, with cages." Rather than anger, Murphy just gets... quiet. For a while. Just staring out the windshield. His eyebrows aren't even pinched -- he has a loose, tired look to him. Then -- slowly, and with very little pleasure -- he at last reaches for his lighter, clinking it open to light the long-overdue cigarette. "Come to think of it, bein' a tree don't sound so bad." Then: "These places still runnin'? You lookin' for 'em?" "Rm." Jim's grunt could be neutral or affirmative. He's quiet for a while, lazily smoking and ignoring the other man. He's long since made himself comfortable with an ankle propped up on a knee and his seat back adjusted to permit a deep slouch. "What're the chances your old friends are keepin' an eye on /you/, y'think?" He asks like it's something he's only mildly curious about. Take it or leave it. "100 percent," Murphy says, and now he sucks that cigarette long and hard, the tip smoldering bright. "But I don't worry about them. If they want me dead, I'll be dead. Truth is, they don't give a shit. I'm small fry. I just remember things. They had people who could --" Murphy shakes his head. "Some real twisted fuckers," he finishes. "Humans _and_ freaks." "If you're gonna hit those places -- I can't help you. I don't rack up body counts anymore. But if you need -- ordinance," Murphy says, as if this last word was *hard* for him, "I know a guy. We ain't on speaking terms anymore, but he don't need to know who you got his number from." "I didn't say /I'm/ doin' a damn thing." Jim says nearly on top of Murphy's answer. "Just snooping, licking my finger and sticking it into sockets, see what sparks." He flicks his cigarette butt out the window, "Though." He drums fingertips, "I'll take whatever help you got, maybe pass it on, if it's needed. I got a few guys I fall back on, I need shit. But if you're fallin' back, you don't say /no/ to having more guys to land on." Even if Jim personally carries. He carries a piece of paper that says he can, too - forgery is an art as old as prostitution. "Getting leafy ain't exactly prime military tactics for a raid. But I got a /mind/ and a good set of ears and eyes. It's these drones I wanna know about." Murphy thinks. It's that look--familiar, eyebrows grinding down, searching his mind. The thing about remembering everything -- there's so *much* you encounter in a day that you just forget about. Snippets of conversations. A brief glance at the TV. A glimpse of a face. Or a news story-- "Daily Bugle. Reports of explosions in the city, unexplained. Credited to a guy in a mask called 'Spider-Dude'. Probably a mutant," Murphy says, and then adds: "I can find out more. I got a few 'friends' in the military tech sector." "And I'll give you the gun-runner's number. He's got some heavy shit. Just don't tell him what you want it for. And _don't_ let it on that you're a mutant. He's hordin' shit for the end of the world. Thinks it's gonna be us against them." "Dude, I've been closeting my greenery since you were learning to remember how to /shave/. You don't gotta tell /me/ not to flaunt it." Jim grins. At lease, he grins on /one/ side of his mouth. The other is frowning. "Spider-Dude. Huh. I'll look into it - you see what you can dig up with your tech guys." His hand lands on the door handle, still watching the water outside. "Something tells me things're only gonna get more interesting from here out." "Yeah, you take the guy who sounds like he's part of a beach-bum harley gang, and _I'll_ take the murder-drones," Murphy says, although he doesn't sound like he's complaining. Then: "Nothing's interesting, Jim. It's all just the goddamn same." A pause, before he adds--contradicting himself: "Mutant hunting murder-drones are new, though. Huh." Then, as Jim reaches for the door: "Be careful out there." And just in case Jim thinks Murphy's getting soft: "Termite season." | |
