Bystander - Hide and Seek - pg 54-79

Autumn, 2032

The bus station was slowly beginning to fill with people.  Commuters, bus drivers and other travelers moving to or from the city, employees from the connecting strip mall and teenagers from the local school coming to get food and fad-items, or just to skate or hang out, were slowly gathering together to form clumps of humanity that brought life to what would otherwise be cold concrete slabs and buildings.  A paper fluttered in the wind, discarded, wondering if, after twenty years of recovery, the "Mumbai Sunrise" would spark another round of nuclear exchange on the already devastated Asian continent.

Coming down out of the hills about the small outpost of modern civilization, a distinctive, old bus started rattling along the hills.  By unspoken agreement, most of the people about the station and its connected stores glanced purposefully away from the dusty, white vehicle.  Only a few curiosity seekers, many of them teenagers, turned their heads to see the aging vehicle creak and clatter to a calm stop at the long platform built to accept the busses of various organizations and companies.

At least three of the onlookers were more interested in what was being carried by the old bus than the rest of the people there, though they didn't even seem to even register much of the vehicles arrival.

Genevive Robles, dressed in the uniform of an obscure bus company lounged wearily at one of the tables bolted down about the parking lot and station.  To most appearances, she was just another off-shift bus driver, either in her thirties or a youthful forty, waiting for a ride home or else for her bus to arrive so she could start her shift.  Her head was nodding forward as she blinked wearily and yawned, giving most the impression of someone tired after a long day.  Very few would notice the small bit of flesh-colored plastic set into her left ear.

"Looks like the guest is arriving," she said calmly, after apparently falling asleep and letting her head droop forward.  "Remember, this is observation only.  We are not to interfere with any bystanders unless absolutely necessary."

"We've got it," a tiny voice answered, drifting momentarily up from the plastic in Robles ear.

It was an answer that was echoed by an average looking man struggling with a newspaper against the late spring wind.  He wore a rumpled looking business suit and checked his watch occasionally, when the wind gave him the opportunity, and seemed to be trying to keep more aware of the arrival and departure announcements than the bloody contents of today's headlines, just like any other commuter riding into the city proper would be.

"Just gotta make sure the babe makes it to the party," he nodded.  "What sort of trouble could a kid this age be?"

"That kid stayed off the grid for most of her life, Castor," Robles noted.  "Don't underestimate her.  I wouldn't even be surprised if she's not on this bus."

"Come on, Sergeant," Grant responded.  "It's the only way into town.  She'd either take that or hit the wilds."

The third individual wasn't anywhere obvious or in the open.  Sightseer had already secreted himself into whatever post he'd found most suitable.  While both Grant and Robles were skilled at blending in with the civilians, Sightseer would have stood out like a sore thumb.  There was something about him that just made the man seem to be different from others somehow, and people noticed.

"The target is on the platform," he said quietly.

"I see her," Grant confirmed.  "Looks like she bought that dress a cup size or two ago."

"Mind out of the gutter," Robles snapped.

Sightseer paused a moment to shift his position to keep a better eye on the girl, as he did so, he missed the young woman in her thread-bare and ill-fitting dress sweep her gaze up and across the scene, surveying the open air which she'd probably missed over the last few years.  For a moment, she paused in her motion and seemed to linger upon the tall sign-tower that marked the entrance to the station and listed the stores in the strip mall.

The tower where Sightseer had placed himself was the only place where he could get a good view on the entire scene.

When Sightseer looked down again, however, the objective of this little mission was already taking in the stores in the area and Grant was watching her but keeping his distance and Robles was still in her position.  This girl should have been coming into Robles' sight any moment now.

Meanwhile, the girl was walking and idly counting off some list with one hand as she gestured toward various stores with the other.  On one, she pointed toward the small clothing shop.  On two, she pointed toward the bookstore a bit further down.  After that she started moving again, passing into Robles field of vision.

"I see her now," Robles said into her transmitter.  "Younger than I expected."

"Too young, she'd have to have been a minor when she went in," Sightseer said in disapproval.  "There had to be a better option than this."

As he spoke, the girl paused, seemed to remember something and counted off three before pointing to one of the fast food stores.

"The prison was the only public place set up to handle peak offenders," Robles commented.  "Do you trust the not-so private ones with a minor?"

"Not as far as I could throw them," Grant noted.

Lucretia paused at the clothing store, unaware of this conversation over her youth and situation, and merged into the small crowd of people that had already opened the door and were moving in.

"Lost her," Sightseer said as the swirl of people swallowed her up.

"Same here," Robles agreed in a routine tone.  "Following her in, Grant?"

"On it," Grant said, pushing his way into the store.

Inside, there was a small host of carousels holding shirts, skirts and pants ahead of rows upon rows of taller racks for full-length dresses and the like.  Upon entering the store and clearing the initial shopper choked portion, Grant caught a glimpse of long silver hair twirling into one of the rows further back.  

He stepped forward quickly, trying to close some of the distance without appearing too obvious.  Few people paid much attention to him.  He was just another shopper with nothing to really point him out as anything else and the other people were too busy with their own affairs to pay such a person any attention.

The watcher reached the row he'd seen the girl vanish down, but a  quick glance told him that there was no one there.  Stepping up his pace a bit, he turned down the row of dresses, all of them floor length, long-sleeved affairs with high-necklines.  They weren't the sort of clothing most girls Lucretia's age would be interested in, and apparently someone agreed.

"What are you looking at those things for?" a voice asked from the other side of the row of dresses.

"I need a new dress," Lucretia said in her unusual mode of speech, blending aspects of two separate foreign accents into it.  It was an easy to recognize sound.

Grant leaned closer to the clothing to be able to get a glimpse of his target through the intervening fabric.  Pushing aside some of the items of clothing, he cleared a path to the next row just as someone began to disturb it from the other side.

Immediately, he let the dresses fall back against each other and turned his back toward them.  Almost instantly, he felt them pushing against his body before bending back and took a step forward to add some more normal distance between him and the rack.

"Those are grandmother dresses, are you kidding?" another young girl's voice asked.  "What guy is going to look at you twice in that?"

"If you need to show skin to turn up the heat," Lucretia said dismissively.  "You aren't doing it right."

"What does that mean?" the first girl demanded.

"That's for me to know," Lucretia said saucily.  "And for you two to try to find out.  That is if you really want to."

"Uhh, we have to be going," one of them said very nervously.

There was a clattering sound as the other tripped over a sale-sign and struggled to her feet.  The sound of their footsteps impacting softly against the carpeted store floor carried easily to Grant, telling him that they were in a hurry to get away from Lucretia.  He held still a moment, listening as a dress was taken off the rack.

"Shimatta, they've started shaking it young," Lucretia said with obvious distaste.

Grant listened nervously, wondering just who Lucretia was talking to.

"Not one to talk though," Lucretia said in a side comment.  "That door got pushed open earlier than either of them will manage."

Grant was flushing bright red as the woman on the other side of the dresses proceeded to talk in a very frank manner about things that Grant usually ended up discussing with other guys.  The thought that she knew he was there filtered through his mind, but he couldn't see how that was possible.  There was nothing about empathic talent in the file she had about her, and he couldn't feel anything he was trained to recognize as mental intrusion.

"People are just so easy to read," Lucretia's voice said again.  This time she was moving toward the end of the rack.
Grant started moving to come around the corner to get a view of her again.

The man stopped just before a pale form glided in front of his vision at the end of the row, carrying a dress and heading for the dressing rooms.  Taking a few swift, quiet steps, he passed out of the row into the walkway on the side, near the store's wall and watched Lucretia turn into the dressing rooms.

"Grant," Robles voice came to him.  "Can you give us a status report out here?"

"She took a dress off the rack and is going to the dressing rooms," Grant said.

"Understood," Robles said.  "She's not supposed to be meeting the old man for another couple of hours, guess we'll be have an exciting time watching her shop until then."

"Speaking of the old man," Sightseer said.  "Since when does he work for Washington State Parole Board?"

"Since the powers that be decided to see if parole works any better on peaks than it does on the rest of us," Robles said.  "Which brings us to today's baby sitting assignment."

"The job pays," Grant noted practically.

He looked for a place to keep a watch on the dressing rooms without being where he would be obviously watching them.  It meant browsing around the area in a rather repetitive pattern.  Eventually, the employees would probably get curious, but he didn't expect the girl to be in there with just the one dress that long.  In his movement, the dressing room left his line of sight for only a brief moment.

The minutes started to drag on as Sightseer watched the strip mall from his sniper's nest in the sign tower.  He'd brought his weapon in case there was any trouble, but the worst he expected to deal with was the chill that wasn't winter yet, but was very much wanting to be winter.  Even now, he could feel the cold rising around him.  

A sneaking suspicion told him that the flap he'd worked open early this morning was opening again now and grimaced, not wanting to leave his post during the op, just in case something happened.  Of course, a similar half-opened entry point had gotten him almost killed once before.

A cold breeze over the back of his neck, like the breath of a ghost, finally convinced him.

"I think my exit got loose," Sightseer said.  "Moving to secure before someone notices, will be out of position for a little bit."

"Understood, Sightseer," Robles said, yawning and trying to play it off as another crafted bit of her weary driver act.

Turning about, Sightseer looked to check the section of paneling he'd set up and saw it closed tight.  Suspicious now, he glanced around, stepping as lightly as possible on the girders and beams in the tower, he looked about to see where the draft was coming from.  He looked downward, but couldn't see anything there.

Another cold breath passed over his skin, and he turned about, rifle ready and only caught a shimmer of reflected light.  Arching his head up he caught a glimpse of an open hatch above and then the small rod he'd moved his foot to in his haste snapped underneath him.

Twisting at the beginning of his fall, his head slammed against another piece of metal and everything started to twist on a separate axis.  The entire fall from that point seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if the angels in the psalm were indeed bearing him down as gently as they could.  He barely even felt the impact with the solid ground.

"What was that?" Robles voice came over the transmitter, slurring through the shock of Sightseer's fall.  "Everybody report."

"I'm fine in here," Grant said.  "Nothing's happening."

"Sightseer?" Robles asked as the sniper groggily tried to get to his feet.  "Sightseer, what's your status?"

"I'm fine," he said finally.  "Took a fall."

Glancing upward toward his position, more than ten meters from where he now unsteadily stood, he wondered why he wasn't dead.  Then he squinted a bit and looked further up, trying to remember if the hatch up there had been closed before his fall.

"Do you need to step down?" the pseudo-bus driver asked.

"Already did, thanks," Sightseer said as he shook off the dizziness and started to climb back up to his position.

"Not funny," Robles grumbled.

"I thought it was funny," Grant said.

"You're not the one that would have to tell the old man we lost someone on this assignment," Robles said.

Grant would have responded but then Lucretia pushed past him on her way to the front, almost but not quiet brushing against him.  He flinched in surprise, cursing himself for not noticing her coming out of the dressing rooms.  He moved to follow her carefully, hoping that the girl wouldn't notice the man she'd just passed was now following her.

She was wearing one of the new dresses she'd taken off the shelves, a light blue, pseudo-Victorian thing that made it look somewhat as if the girl was heading off to play a part in a Sherlock Holmes dramatization.

"She's on the move," he said quickly.

"Sightseer, are you sure you're fine to go?" Robles asked.

"Like you said, it's just a baby-sitting job," Sightseer said.  "I'm fine."

Grant moved to a slower pace as he walked out, sparing a glance as Lucretia placed on the counter the three dresses she'd carried there and handed the price tag for the one she was wearing over.

"What about the clothing you came in with?" the cashier asked Lucretia, looking about the small girl to see where it was.

"I left it in the changing room," she said.  "Sell it, trash it, burn it, I don't care."

"Okay," the cashier said, giving the flippant girl a sideways look.

Grant didn't hear the rest of the conversation as he slipped out of the building to get into a new position.

It didn't take long for the silver-haired girl to step out into the light again and preen for a moment in her simple, but distinctively styled new dress.  She took in a breath and looked about as if she had been let out of the prison now instead of hours ago.  She playfully caressed the fabric of her new dress and hugged herself before jumping and twisting about in a three-hundred-sixty degree spin before landing lightly again upon her feet.

"That's a girl who really likes her dresses," Sightseer said.

"One of these days, Robles is going to have to explain why women go so ga-ga over that stuff," Grant added.

"The sort of 'explanation' you're looking for is only going to happen in your dreams," Robles said.

"Yeah, but I have a good imagination," Grant snickered.

"Uh huh, Sightseer?" Robles asked.

"I can't take him out, Sergeant," Sightseer answered before Robles could ask.  "He's not in the mission specs you gave us."

"Damn it," Robles sighed dramatically.  "Grant, she's heading into the bookstore."

"Yeah," Grant said slowly.

"What is it?" Robles asked.

"She sort of pushed right past me in the clothing store," Grant said.

"And you don't want to risk being made," Robles said, rolling her eyes.  "I'm heading in."

She stood up and stretched out some of the kinks that had developed in her muscles after sitting for so long.  She skipped ahead a bit and reached the small bookstore in a couple of brief seconds and stepped inside.  Lucretia didn't appear immediately and Robles moved to scan through the shelves.

The first thing she checked were the shelves of novels, but the silver-haired girl didn't appear there.  It was only a brief change of facing, however, before she found Lucretia sitting cross-legged on the floor in the history section, the breeze from the air conditioner playing about her dress and long hair in such a way to make it look almost like she was sitting on a half-inch of air rather than the floor.

There was a science-fiction novel to her side, so she'd apparently already been through that section, probably just long enough to glimpse novels and pick one up.  Now she was sorting through what many would consider heftier material.  Currently in her hand was one of Ambrose's World War II books and she was skimming through the pages, obviously judging what she was reading.

Nodding, Lucretia set that book down and placed the smaller sci-fi novel on top of the history text.  Then she went back to scanning the titles on the shelves in front of her.  Her fingers danced over a translation of Caesar's writings, and then her eyes jumped to a treatise on the Revolutionary War.  Before she could grasp that, she caught sight of a book about the Magna Carta.  

"Like a kid in a candy store," Robles said.

"Stare all you want," Lucretia said without looking around.  "Been awhile since I made a show for anyone."

"Oh, excuse me," Robles said, embarrassed at being noticed.  "It's just a surprise to see someone your age take an interest in history."

"Sergeant, did you just make contact with her?" Sightseer asked through his radio.

"And isn't it my fucking business what I find interesting?" Lucretia asked casually.  "Am I supposed to be reading some little romance book about soft caresses and ruby words."

"Do you mind if I don't mention this job when I'm looking for the next one?" Grant asked sarcastically.  Robles rolled her eyes at the comment.

"I suppose I'm with you there," Robles said, hoping to get the girl to go back to ignoring her.  "But I'm not sure I'd find the politics behind the Magna Carta all that interesting.  I'd be more interested in a book on the War of the Roses itself."

"You're the one in uniform," Lucretia said, shrugging as she grabbed her chosen books and stood up more smoothly than Robles thought was possible.   Turning around  "Oh, hmm, thought you were a cop."

Wondering if she'd been made, Robles stepped aside as Lucretia moved to the cash register, stopping for a moment to grab a dictionary from the reference shelves.

"Okay, she's coming out of the store now," Robles informed the other two.  "Everybody got an eye on the exit?"

"Yeah," Grant said.

"Of course," was Sightseer's own reaction.

Robles nodded and started to browse a little as Lucretia reached the door of the bookstore and turned around to wave at her with a smirk.  Then she walked out, straight into a crowd of people that had come off of a bus just moments before and Robles lost sight of her.

"She's out, do either of you have her?" Robles asked.

"Huh?" Grant said.  "I didn't see a hint of her leaving your building."

"I saw her hit the crowd," Sightseer said.  "Then I lost her, the crowd's small and thinning out….but she's not part of it apparently."

"Are you saying we lost her?" Robles asked.

"We lost her," Sightseer agreed.  "I'm looking where I can, but she's not anywhere I can see."

"Fine, let's do a circuit, low key," she instructed.  "If we still can't find her.  We'll call the old man."

****

It was a quarter of an hour later when a ringing came from the cell phone of a tall, dark man sitting alone in the corner of a bar that was just about filled with police officers of various sorts.  He calmly picked it up and listened to the other end, looking away from the chair across from him and towards the wall for a moment.

"This is Novak," the old man said calmly.  

As he turned about, he felt a trickle, almost not there, take a moment to look over him and analyze what he was.  Glancing about, he caught a shimmer of silver among the tableau of activity for just a brief moment before it vanished.  He frowned briefly, realizing that she had picked up on his glance.  
Either he was losing more of his edge than he'd thought…

…or the girl was immensely sensitive to being watched.

He listened to Robles reporting the way things had happened and waited for the woman to finish.  He smiled briefly as something barely brushed past him, pushing his jacket a bare inch inward.

Then he took a risk.

"She's sitting down right now," he said.  "Thank you, Sergeant."  He clipped the phone closed as he turned to look at the young woman who now appeared to be sitting across from him.

A closer look told him that there was no chair under her and he arched an eyebrow at the amount of physical strength and endurance it must take to hold that position so flawlessly smooth.  She even somehow managed to get the posture of someone lounging back, arms hooking over a non-existent chair back in a manner that put her ample chest on good display, even under the folds of her high-necked dress.

It was a paradoxical image mixing traditional, sophisticated modesty and blatant, raw sexuality that brought an ironic smirk to Novak's face as he took it in.  The small pile of books on the table certainly added to the ill-fitting pieces of Lucretia's visible character.

The surprise in her face was already nearly faded away by the time he noticed it
with a hint of relief.  What remained was a sense of irreverent, disrespectful challenge that almost completely covered the caution that was underneath.  A bare flick of an eye towards the window told him that she was checking exits already.  Then she met his look solidly, again for just a moment and winked before raising a hand to rub at her eye.

Maybe she caught something in her eye, but maybe she was flaunting the fact that she knew he was reading her.

Eric had first taken the assignment to act as her parole officer as nothing more than a way of humoring an old operative that was on the downhill slope.  The file had indicated a common street rat: a runaway teen turned living ghost.  He hadn't expected this.

Now she mimicked her seated position and made him ask questions with only a second's worth of gestures and motions.  The old man was going to have to be very cautious on this one.  She had more potential than he could have hoped for, and it wouldn't do to ruin that potential by being unable to handle her.

"Sgt Robles wants to thank you for the exercise," Eric said to her calmly.  "Now shall we get on to the work at hand?"

"You're my parole officer, right?" Lucretia asked with a hint of boredom, though her eyes spoke of moderate anxiety instead.  "What am I doing meeting you….here?"

Lucretia looked around the restaurant they were in, gesturing idly, filled wall to wall with off-duty cops of one stripe or another.  Her expression was one of obvious irritation that was not even partially faked, at least as far as Eric could tell.  There was no real hate or anger though, not like some juvenile offenders had upon turning eighteen.

"They serve an excellent steak here," Eric said simply.  "Tomorrow we'll take care of the paper work and such like in the office, but tonight I thought you'd appreciate someone treating you to a dinner on your first day out."

"And your friends at the train station?" Lucretia asked.

The older man paused a moment to consider how to state what he had to tell her.  The full-out truth wouldn't do, nor was she likely to believe it.  Though, perhaps a grain of truth would work.

"We have to arrange to protect bystanders," he said finally.

Lucretia practically snorted in response and rolled her eyes.

"The bystander can't be helped," she said in a half-dismissive tone that, along with her phrasing made Eric more than a little curious.

As he wondered just what meaning of "bystander" Lucretia had understood, a waitress walked up wearily, notepad in hand.  For a moment, the silver-haired girl's eyes wandered to the waitress and took in her face and form before turning back to Eric upon deciding that there was no threat there.

"Your treat?" Lucretia asked.

"Yes," Eric said hesitantly.

"Do you make steak tartar in this hole?" Lucretia asked eliciting a minute flinch from the old man sitting across from her.

"Listen, girl," the waitress said immediately.  "You'll get a lot better service if you drop that attitude right now.  You don't go around calling the Calm Night a hole?"

"Whatever," Lucretia said.  "Can I get the dish or not?"

"I can get you a rare steak," the waitress said.

"I need it cold," Lucretia said, eyeing Novak cautiously.  "I prefer raw."

"She'll freeze it for you," the old man said, interrupting the waitress's response.  "Miss Lucretia here has a metabolism that doesn't accept heat very well."

"We can't just serve raw meat," the waitress said.  "The health department would have our license quicker than you can blink."

"Shimatta," Lucretia snapped loudly.  "I've eaten rabid dogs before!  I don't get sick.  Just give me the steak and a beer and I'll be fine."

"Whatever you say," the waitress said, rolling her eyes as she started to write down the order.  "Is she old enough to drink?"

"Make it a crème soda," Novak said.

"Cream s…merde!" Lucretia snapped loudly straightening her back and starting to lean forward.

"Watch your language, young lady," Novak said seriously, stepping up and around the table to lay a calming hand on her shoulder.  "Your age might be…"  

The girl twisted away from the motion subtly, not seeming to get out of her non-existent "seat", but almost instantly, giving him a warning glance as she did.  He stepped back, giving her more space and sat down, calmly and coolly, noticing the silver-haired girl watching him the entire time.

"My apologies," he said coolly.  "It was out of line.  In any case, a cold steak and cream soda for the girl and a medium rare porterhouse and a ginger ale for me."

"Right," she said.  "I'll get right on that, behave yourself."

The silence that followed was palpable and seemed to suck the sound of surrounding speech slowly away from their section of the room.  Novak wasn't quite certain how long it had lasted, no more than a few seconds, he hoped.  He glanced to Lucretia's books again and took in the titles for a moment.

"Ambrose," he noted.  "D-Day is a good book.  It does a very good job of accurately describing the battles."

Lucretia looked at the book questionably for a moment.

"Is that all it goes into?" she asked sharply, picking it up and starting to flip through it for a moment.  Her pose of sitting never seemed to suffer, however.

"Actually, it starts with a lot of history on Eisenhauer and Rommel," Novak said, he noted that she looked up at that and seemed to relax a little bit.  Her eyes moved oddly as she read, pausing for long or short stretches as if waiting for something before moving again.

"Dyslexia," she muttered off-handedly, as if reading his mind.

"I've read the file," Novak said, not commenting further.  "I'm impressed you're so interested in reading despite that."

"Eh, wasn't always there," she muttered, shrugging as she strained for a moment for a memory she felt was there but could never reach.

Eric leaned forward, wondering if that was another dodge on her part, or something else.  The file's report on her education showed a GED and about a hundred hours of semi-random college classes with a spotty grade point average.   It could be she didn't know dyslexia was genetic and always present.  So what did that say about her real problem with words on a page?

"Yeah, there's some stuff in here about getting shit together too," she noted.  The girl looked up then to notice Novak's disapproving stare and rolled her eyes.  "Getting things together, that good for you, old man?"

"That'll be fine," he said as the drinks came.  "What do you think of Montgomery, out of curiosity?"

"Hmph, couldn't take it when things go wrong," she said, shaking her head.  "Worthless lump of…"

"He stopped Rommel in North Africa," Novak said simply.

"You've got to be sh…" she grimaced as she paused, "…kidding me."

"There's a book by Nigel Hamilton," Eric said in a suggestive tone as Lucretia paid attention, nodding.  "It covers both his successes and his mistakes."

As they continued to speak, he reached his hands in his pocket and pulled out three plastic cards.  Glancing at them momentarily, he slipped them back into his pocket and hoped that his people wouldn't find a need for their driver's licenses for a bit.

****

Lucretia awoke with a snap, feet immediately pulling down under her, nearly touching the floor, and mouth closing shut with a swallowed shriek that failed to escape into the air.  Loose, flying hair hid her eyes from easy view, settling quietly, hanging down past her face as it looked toward the floor of the plain hotel room that she was waking up in.

The next motion was much more casual and slow.

The pale girl's hand slowly reached up to her forehead, accompanied by an annoyed snort.  Throwing her head back, the shrouding hair revealed an alert, if moderately confused face.  She used her hands to comb through the tangle of her hair for a moment, making sure to pull her braids forward of her shoulders again.  Then they reached down to smooth down the dress she'd apparently spent the entire night in, noting that her knots had not been tampered with.  So she'd never been out of her new dress.

The room she was in was a small motel room, of a type she'd stayed in many times before, usually without the motel staff knowing it or as the guest of a guest.  The blanket, currently under her feet, was scattered over the floor, as if it had been kicked over, but that was the only sign of debris in the room.  There was no smell of alcohol or sweat or steel walls or anything else that she was familiar with.

It was just a simple motel room with an adjoining door leading to the next room.

In her own room, there wasn't a trace of heat more than the ambient, but in the rooms to either side, she could see people.  On one side, people were sleeping soundly, as anybody sane would at…

She glanced at a clock and took a moment to read the display at just after five o'clock in the morning.

The silver-haired woman glanced again towards one of the walls, the wall on the left of the entrance, where the adjoining door stood locked.  Past that wall, someone was sitting against the wall.  She could see the warmth seeping through to her side of the wall.

Irritably, she knocked on the wall between them.

"Hey," she said.  "Is that you over there?"

The figure against the wall stood up and stepped away from it, becoming quickly hard to see as the distance increased.  She frowned irritably and knocked again, rattling some dust from off the bad art the wall was hung with.

"Just so you know," Lucretia said loudly.  "That was my first night out in three fucking years and I got neither drunk nor laid."

There was no response from the figure on the other side of the wall and Lucretia rolled her eyes as she walked to the door and opened her side and found herself facing another door leading into the next room.  She didn't have to test it to know that it was locked, that only made sense.  Just as it made sense that they hadn't locked her door.

Looking about her and taking account of the feel of the air, she knew that she had more than enough strength at hand to almost shrug through the door, but that would be a problem, besides the kind of locks on these doors were easier to get past than that.  A smirk flashed over her face as she flexed her fingers and bent to something she hadn't practiced much of in recent years.

It was long past time to get back into practice.

The silver-haired ex-con was through the door in less time than it took to list the steps of the process in her head.  Standing there on the other side wasn't the tall, elderly black man she was expecting.  Instead, she found the sniper from the train station.

There was a moment of silence as he took in her appearance and she looked about, expecting to see the other two of his team in the room.  

Then she paused as memories of the previous night came to her.  It was odd, she wasn't used to having memories of what she did at night, not that didn't involve steel bars, at least.  Alcohol had this tendency to make things go pleasantly away.  Sometimes that meant some irritating rediscoveries later, but for the most part it meant she could just let most things lie in the past.

Right now Lucretia wasn't having that benefit.  She remembered the discussions in the restaurant last night and struggling to stay awake long enough to go…somewhere.  She didn't have a clear idea of where, just somewhere to sleep for the night.  She was remembering leaving the restaurant, but not under her own power.

"Eldon, right?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

"Sightseer," he said.

"It says Eldon on your license," she said.  "Eldon Dwyer?"  She rolled her eyes and shook her head a moment as she said the name.

"What's it say on your birth certificate," Sightseer asked in return.

"Tell me if you find it," was her quick answer, then she pointed back to the room she'd woken up in.  "You carried me here, didn't you?"

"The old man didn't think leaving you asleep at the restaurant would be the best thing," Sightseer said, crossing his arms.

Lucretia just seemed to be staring at him as if trying to figure something out.  He'd been expecting something along the lines of a sarcastic comment or a dismissal, not the careful and confused scrutiny she was showing now.

"You just left me in there," she said slowly in disbelief.

"No," Sightseer said firmly, still not entirely happy that this kid so thoroughly played him and the rest of his team members.  As he spoke, she seemed to tense up and prepare herself for something.  "I'm right next door, so we didn't just leave you anywhere."

The confusion returned, strangely enough, but then she shook her head out and shrugged.

"Whatever," she said, waving off the conversation as she came to the decision that they were still going to try and keep tabs on her.  "Isn't there something I'm supposed to sign or something."

"As you commented earlier," the sniper commented.  "It's a bit early for most government offices to be running right now.  Robles is going to be coming by to drive you in when the old man has everything ready."

"Tch, I'm going to be treated like une petite fille?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"Considering yesterday?" he asked.

"Play games with me, and I'll play games with you," she snapped back.  "And you can't outplay me.  So knock when she gets here."

"Just one question," Sightseer asked as she was turning her back.  She shrugged without turning around, continuing to slowly and sensually move back to her room.  "How did you sleep?"

She paused for half a second before continuing on.

"As good as ever," she said simply, shrugging it aside as she closed the door behind her and he listened to the second door shut and lock behind her.

Lucretia put the conversation and any sort of serious analysis away, quickly found her purchases from yesterday.  The books were on the nightstand and the dresses were laid on the dresser next to the TV.  Moving toward them, she bent over at an unlikely angle as she picked through the dresses, choosing one.

There was a pseudo-Chinese dress that she looked over for a moment.  She liked the lotus flower print that the purple and white dress was decorated with.  It was definitely a exotic number with those wide sleeves to hide her hands in.  Some enterprising individual had built the equivalent of a wonder-bra into the torso too, which would really boost her appearance, and give a good amount of support as well.

Lucretia received, in many ways, the best of both worlds when her parents conceived her, most of the time her sort of measurements only showed up in the minds of fantasy artists and she was well aware of it.  She'd met women with more slender and graceful frames, and women with bigger chests, but she'd not yet met any woman with quite her combination of frame and chest.

Thinking it through, however, she didn't want to go with that dress today.  It would probably provoke reactions that would make everything slow down to an irritating level.  Besides, while it gave her chest the illusion of an extra cup size, the cut wouldn't do anything but swaddle what she had from the waist down.  She wanted to get some thread and needle to fix that before she wore it.

Besides, she'd worn the Victorian dress yesterday and this would have been another semi-traditional look.  She couldn't do that twice in a row.  With that in mind, she skipped over the green poodle-skirt and sweater combination and went right on to the third outfit with a short, musical titter of laughter.

Given what she had to do today, she felt it was more than appropriate.

A smile firmly on her face, Lucretia lightly slipped into the small bathroom to have a good, cleansing shower to start her day.

Sergeant Robles clipped her cell-phone closed as she walked up to the door to the hotel room that her charge was supposed to be in, assuming she didn't decide to go out on her own again, that is.  The memory of yesterday's fiasco in trying to follow the girl brought a quick roll of the eye from the veteran soldier.

Sightseer's reports on the girl said that she'd been rather peeved about the way things had turned out this morning.  Robles could somewhat understand that reasoning behind why.  Given two years of imprisonment and another year in a peak research-center-slash-clinic, Robles assumed she'd be a bit starved for alcohol and sex as well.  Then the door opened to reveal Lucretia in her chosen outfit and the beleaguered mercenary couldn't help but unleash a long, frustrated sigh.

"Qu'est que c'est?" Lucretia asked, shrugging her shoulders expressively.  "I couldn't have done too much to piss you off yet.  The sun's barely up."

The mercenary looked over Lucretia's outfit again, wondering if the girl really had no idea what the problem was.  Somehow, Robles doubted that, but the look in her face was mostly just one of sheer boredom and impatience.  She had to admit that the outfit did look sexy, possibly even cute, but the obvious theme was just so severely inappropriate.

The outfit was characterized by horizontal white and black stripes.  There was a long skirt that would easily hide her feet and skin while catching in the wind to press against those parts of her that most deserved display.  The nearly-skin-tight blouse was a bit tight about her chest, but not so much so that she felt it was uncomfortable.  Over that, she wore a long, orange blouse with sleeves that didn't reach her elbows, but a hem that fluttered about her mid-thigh.  Completing the look on top was a simple cap, also in black and white, down from which her hair hung free, aside from the two braids, still tied in Norse knots, coming down in front of her ears and resting on her chest.

"Novak is waiting for us," she said rolling her eyes and gesturing toward her car.

The 2011 Tourney had been a revolutionary design when it had come out, making use of new discoveries to add a recycling feature to the basic hydrogen cell design, converting some of the water byproduct back into hydrogen to refill the cell.  Unfortunately, the technologies involved, mostly in composites and alloys, were far too expensive for mass production.  

Few could afford what was meant to be a vehicle for the general population, and by the time the revolutionary design could be supported economically, technologies had moved past it, and there was no reason to go back to it.

As production stopped on it, the cost of maintenance started to go up sharply, which meant that it tended to require a lot of expense.  The amount of paper it consumed in receipts and bills, in combination with the considerably sized round bump between the seats and the trunk as well as the six-wheeled frame gave the vehicle a unique nickname.

"C'est une termite?" Lucretia asked, blinking.

"Yes, it's a termite," Genevive said.

Genevive's termite was appropriately white in color.

Lucretia glanced at the compact car and arched an eye, hairs imperceptibly rising at the thought of being inside it, but she shrugged it off and started for the door, arms stretching out as she yawned carelessly.

"Got your license?" Lucretia asked over her shoulder, predictably grinning.

"Funny," Robles said as she put the key into her car's lock.  "Give me a moment to…" she looked up at the sound of an opening car door and saw Lucretia stepping into her vehicle.  "…unlock the door."

As she stepped into the car, the silver-haired lock-pick was casually shifting about in the seat, trying to find the most comfortable spot.  Robles knew from experience that it was a lost cause.  It was best just to get used to the way it was, because shifting about didn't make anything more comfortable.

"Quit squirming about," she said.  "Just put on the seat belt and sit down."

"I don't need a seat belt," she said.

"In my car you do," Robles insisted firmly.

"It's not comfortable," Lucretia protested.

"It's not supposed to be comfortable," the mercenary insisted.  "It's supposed to keep you in your seat."

"Shimatta," Lucretia snapped.  "The kind of car accident I have to worry about isn't going to be helped by seat-belts."

"Who's worried about you?" Robles said.  "I'm worried about my car!  Parts for this thing are hard to come by."

Lucretia glared at her for a long moment and then reached over her shoulder, to grab the belt's buckle and pull it down and across her body to snap it into the receiving end with a widening of the eyes that Robles would have taken as a flinch if it weren't for the attitude-filled hand gestures that accompanied it.

Nodding and rolling her eyes, Robles set the engine to running with a tinny rev and a blast of heated air that did draw a flinch from Lucretia as she twisted her hand and face away from the fans.

Robles quickly reached to her environment controls and switched the heater over to the air-conditioner before turning to grab Lucretia's hand and see if any damage had been done.  She had enough time to see an angry, red mark on her pale skin before the girl snatched her hand away.

"Je suis bien," she said, pointing to her face where the red mark there was already fading away.  "Can we go?"

"Ever consider that you're too vocal about your problems with heat?" Robles asked as she put the care into gear and started out into the parking lot and then the street.

"It hurts," Lucretia said, looking at her in disbelief.  "Why would I want to keep it secret?  So that more accidents like that can happen."

"And most everyone that matters knows that now," Robles said, gratified to know that the girl knew that the incident was an accident.

"Let them know," Lucretia said, shrugging as she pulled at the seat belt to keep it down and away from her throat.  That just brought it scraping against her chest, however, and she had to shift it again.

"Do you mind if I ask a personal question?" Robles asked.

"Like the last one?" Lucretia asked as they pulled into traffic.

"No," Robles said tightly.

"Go ahead," Lucretia said, turning to look out the window.

"What's your cup-size?" the mercenary asked.

Lucretia smirked and slowly turned her head to eye Robles in speculation.

"Take me out for some drinks and you can measure them inch by inch if you want," the girl said saucily, laughing as Robles flushed brightly for a moment and looked away.

"Not my thing," Robles snapped quickly.

"Then why were you asking?" Lucretia asked tartly.  

"You have somewhere around a D-cup or C-cup," Robles said quickly, "and I wouldn't put you as weighing more than a hundred and twenty pounds."

"Hundred and twelve, usually," Lucretia said off-handedly.  "I blame it on reading a lot of comic books, the gravity-defying art warped my physical development."

"How do you lug those things around without getting a back-ache?" Robles said, laughing at Lucretia's comment about her build.

"Because I could lift this car if I had to," Lucretia said simply, giving Robles a semi-frustrated look.  "Makes my little bit of extra-baggage up front about as heavy as crap in comparison."

"Well, at least you have the comic book strength to match the comic book build," Robles commented, drawing a laugh and smile from Lucretia.

There wasn't much more road until they reached the parole office, and soon, Lucretia was walking between rows of desks towards her parole officer's desk while being watched every step of the way.

"Usually," Novak said dryly as Lucretia approached him, tapping his fingers on the book he'd brought with him.  "People that have just gotten out of prison try to avoid calling attention to the fact that they were ever in it."

"I am not that usual," Lucretia said with a tone of voice that seemed proper, a self-satisfied smile on her face completed the faux-prisoner outfit as she sat, still not using a chair, legs crossed and hands folded over her upper knee coquettishly.