Micah Castro Braden // Doctor Watson, I presume (acatalyst) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-04-28 13:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | dr. watson, irene adler, jim hawkins |
Who: Micah and Iris (with assistance from our favorite pirate!hacker, Russell)
What: Taking down the cameras (Completed log)
Where: 804 and beyond
When: A few days before the Transformation plot
Warnings: None
Iris had enough with these cameras. She had played nice, done small alterations to the ones pointed at her window, and she could do much to avoid the ones at the end of the hall, but that wasn't the point. She would not be tracked, and she would not be watched for no reason. Whether or not she had anything to do or anywhere to go had absolutely no bearing on the matter. Besides, she could barely sleep as it was. The moon kept on coming, and the days kept on getting longer, and the mornings kept coming earlier. Iris was tired of being tired and it made her irritable and more willing to take risks every moment that passed.
This was definitely a risk. She was aware of that. She was aware of how tired she was, and she knew it made her more prone to mistakes, but she did not have the time to decide when to make a move. Now was the window, and tomorrow or the day after she would have to work or sleep, whichever she had more time for.
Iris timed her entrance precisely. She left the building early and came back with a grocery bag of what looked like food items. When 11:29 ticked by, Iris was just on the edge of the stair, in the gap between cameras pointed at the second floor and the third. She tied the bag off onto her wrist, caught the edge of a banister, and pulled herself up--literally hand over hand--to the next floor. Each camera had a very small window of blank space where the banister met with the landing, and she could enter each space and spring up to the next one as long as she did it fast--and nobody came down the stairs. If she'd had more prep work, she would have loosened a few well-positioned lightbulbs, used the fire escape for part of the way, and set up a distraction to make that window wider. She would make do with what she had, and if someone was watching the cameras, she was counting on them looking at the blank ones, and not at what happened to the woman walking down the second floor hallway.
The lock to 804 was relatively new, she discovered, and it would have taxed her skill significantly, especially in the dark--but the door wasn't locked. She hesitated, but set her jaw and pushed into the room, shutting it behind her with a soft click and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light available.
In 202, Micah just settled in for sleep. The day had been long, and he was exhausted. He'd worked out, taken a hot shower, and he'd fallen asleep as soon as his head had hit the pillow. What woke him, just 29 minutes later, wasn't a nightmare; it something much more real than that.
This newfound ability he had recently acquired popped up when he least expected it, and it ranged from the mundane (knowing what car was going to be parked in the first parking spot at work) to the extraordinary (knowing a boy's body was in a white wicker trunk in the catacombs). At first, he'd brushed it off, but as the ability became more and more refined, he had more and more trouble discounting it.
Now, at 11:25, he'd woken from a sound slumber with the knowledge that Iris was in an apartment on the eighth floor. He had no clue what she was doing there, whether she was scared or happy, sad or tired. He didn't even know if she'd been invited there. All he knew, was that she was there. She was there, and there was a hook hanging from the center of the ceiling somewhere within the space.
He was on his feet in an instant, his heart pounding, and he didn't bother with a shirt or shoes. He left the door of 202 wide open, and he ran up the stairs in track pants and grey socks. He didn't know how long she'd been there (the things he knew didn't come with any sort of timestamp, that he'd been able to figure out), or how she was. He just knew she was there, in 804.
804, like the other apartments in the building was just as seemingly unassuming and innocent regardless of who or what it housed. The door was normal. Its frame was normal. There was nothing about it that could give off the hints that perverse absurdity lay within. Entering, one could see the machinations of a mad man who had only the surveillance of an entire building to cling to in the frayed moments of sanity, his way of finding justice for those he lost. The technology was modern enough, not too far out of place in the first movie of The Matrix. A good ten or so tvs to show the live feed of the cameras that were constantly recording, constantly taking note of the seemingly unimportant lives of the tenants. Other people had been here as well. How or why was unknown.
Iris noted the televisions, which did not surprise her. The setup, that of a well-versed amateur, did not surprise her either. It matched the quality of the equipment she had seen so far. She looked away from them almost immediately, missing any movement beyond the empty stair, and turned her eyes around the rest of the apartment, leaving the first bedroom for the second. The hook, in particular, caught her eye, but it made her feel sick, so she looked away to see what else there was. She wished she hadn't.
Micah's footsteps were heavy on the stairs, and his approach could be heard before he'd gotten anywhere near the door of 804. By the time he'd reached the landing of the eighth floor, the entire floor was shrouded in darkness, and he wondered if this was one of the blackouts that was mentioned on the forums. That thought lasted only a moment, because somehow he knew that wasn't the case. Iris had something to do with the lights.
He clenched his jaw, and he reached back for the non-existent gun at his back. Shit. In his hurry to leave 202, he'd forgotten to arm himself (something completely foreign to him), and he cursed again as he stopped in front of the door in the darken hall. He couldn't see the number, but he knew this was the right apartment, and he pressed his back to the wall beside the door as he slid his arm over it and pushed it open.
Iris heard the noises and the sounds, and she saw a shadow coming down the hallway toward the fourth door, and kept herself from panicking with a hard clench of will that should not have been so hard to find. Hide. Did the apartment have to be so bare? There wasn't even any furniture to hide behind, and even the tower of displays wasn't enough to conceal her in any stretch of the imagination.
In the end, she chose a door, and when the rectangle of extremely dim light from the stairway at the ninth floor spread across the living room, she realized it was the one with the hook. Fuck. Of course it was the one with the hook.
Micah pushed the door slowly, unsure of what he would find inside. He wished for his stupid ability to show up now, when he needed it, but it didn't. He was on his own.
The door creaked open slowly, and when it was flat open, Micah plunged into the even darker space that was the apartment. It took his eyes a moment to focus, and he kept his back to the wall until they did. Once he could see shapes, the slight glow of computer screens, he edged around toward a door. Once his hand reached the door knob to the room, he shoved it open, and he saw the hook in his mind's eye as clearly as if the room had been brightly lit, even as he pressed back against the wall beside it and waited for any attack or gunfire. He was positioned to take anyone out who came out of the room. They'd be flat on their back if they so much as crossed that threshold.
Iris knew better than to hold her breath, if she gasped, then she would be heard. She hadn't had to hide like this in a long time, and there was a really good reason she wasn't into burglary. She breathed light and quiet, and she reached into her sleeve and pulled out the knife. Rather than turning and flipping it open, she slowly eased the blade open and the two handles together to fit into her palm.
She listened, and she waited.
Micah was patient. Iris wasn't yelling or hurt. If she was here, and if she was being held in the room beyond, he knew better than to think that barging in there, unarmed, was going to help her in any way. He listened, and he thought he heard a slightly swish of movement, but the silence that followed made him question his senses. It'd been too long since he'd been in battle.
He set his mind to running scenarios and options, and he finally decided on a noise tactic. It was simplistic, but it might give him just enough of the upper hand to make a move. He removed the bracelet on his wrist so quietly, that it didn't make a sound, and he carefully threw it up and over the door frame, so that it landed in a jangling pile on the other side of him; if the person in the room (oh, he knew there was someone in the room) fell for the trick, they'd thick he was on the other side of the door frame.
He waited.
She knew the minute that she moved (a quick twitch out from behind the door, a shadow moving free of the swinging wood) that it was a mistake. That wasn't the sound of someone moving, that was the sound of something falling, and if the watcher didn't realize there was an intruder, he would have turned the fucking lights on. It was a bit late for that, though.
The hint of movement was all he needed. He moved faster than someone his size should be able to, and he reached out one arm for the shadow. He kept his body turned away, in case the person did have a weapon, and instead of grabbing, he crossed his arm across their chest, even as he swept their feet with one of his own.
A hand came out from the dark and caught Iris by the elbow. It wasn't her knife hand, but she fell back anyway, and when she thought to jerk upward against the thumb she realized he had too much height on her to manage it. She yanked back with a surge of adrenaline-fueled fear, and got out of the way enough to avoid the kick--or so she thought, until it got her in the back of the knee and she fell with an unintentional cry of surprise and pain. Still trapped, she brought her knife hand around automatically, and the moving parts made a soft hiss against each other as she turned it blade down and slashed sideways over her opposite arm. It wasn't even a significant wound, but she wanted him to let her go so she could come around get him in the gut with it. Iris was cornered now, and it was kill or be killed.
As soon he moved, he captured the familiar scent that was wholly Iris. It was mingled with the smell of fear (familiar to any doctor, even if they tried to claim it didn't exist), but it was unmistakably her. As soon as he realized who he was dealing with, his movements moved from attack to defense. If she was scared, she'd injure first and ask questions later, he knew; he had no doubt about her defensive skills, even if she did refuse to shoot a gun. Still, the realization came too late to keep her from falling to the ground, and he underestimated the fact that she would correct for his preemptive move to avoid any weapon she held by moving out of range.
The slice to his arm was nothing to a man used to being in the thick of guerrilla combat, where even physicians picked up arms when required, but he knew that her next move would be an incapacitating one. He did the only thing he could to keep that from happening; he didn't let her go. He pinned her completely with his weight, using the surprise to grab for her wrists, in an effort to pressure her into dropping the knife with his grip. "Me vas a matar?" he asked, even as his fingers closed on the delicate bones of her wrists.
That stupid scent had got her into trouble before. Micah was definitely not so distinctive, and to Iris all men were half-enemy to begin with, so it was not so much of a stretch that she was actually fighting for her life. She realized that he wasn't going to try to dodge or retreat from a lethal blade to the stomach at the same moment she realized she wasn't going to be able to turn fast enough to deliver it. In comparison with her strength and size, his weight was crushing, and it was absolutely impossible to move for the split second she needed it.
The knife, a slick butterfly knife that was most definitely illegal in several states, clattered to the ground. The panic took over almost immediately, and she drove her heel down into the ground to try to get some leverage to throw her hip up--when the Spanish sank in. "What?" she was too scattered to try to put the definition together, and rather than putting together some coherent defense, she pulled against the grip on her wrists instead.
The words hadn't really mattered, so he didn't bother repeating them. He'd only spoken in Spanish because it was the easiest way (he hoped) to get her to stop trying to kill him, to jog her recognition. He grabbed for her discarded blade with one hand, then he let go of her and rolled onto his back immediately after. He had her weapon, and he was risking that being enough to keep him safe around her. He moved as fast as he could to give her space back to her, and he looked over at her from his spot on the floor. "Just us?" he asked, because he hadn't seen a sign of any other intruders in the apartment, which meant he'd just come up here to save her from breaking and entering. He chuckled at the thought.
Iris sat up and retreated against the wall, pushing with her heels until she had it against her back. "I--think so." Her voice was shaking, but that's because she was shaking. She held onto her elbows to try to make it stop. "Micah, you stupid son of a bitch." There wasn't any malice there, she just said it, and looked at the ground. "What the hell are you doing here?" The butterfly knife had a scuffed black handle, and there was nothing ladylike about it. Iris herself was in material in varying shades of off-gray, the kind that would blend properly in dim light, the leggings skin-tight cotton but the rest of it just close fitting around waist and torso. Clothes she could move in.
He lifted the blade high in the air above him, and he tried to examine it as best he could in the dark. He had no lighter to see the detailing in the knife, but he could tell that it was scuffed and well used with the exploration of his fingers alone. Once he was done, he tipped his head back and looked at her. He was carefully waiting for her to stop shaking before he approached her. Even her voice was shaking, so he used that as a guide to the rest of her. "I thought you needed my help," he said, even though he suspected it would anger her. Anger was better than fear, and he'd take it any day where she was concerned.
She was taking very deep, even breaths, and staring at the floor rather than at him. The shaking abated, slowly. Her mind came back as the panic receded, and when the blade caught the light, it glimmered in her eye and she looked up at him from under one brow. "How did you know I was here?" She kept the distrust out of her voice by making it very flat. It didn't occur to her to be angry yet, it would probably come after the fear stopped. This place smelled like blood.
"It started with the Watson change," he admitted, sliding the blade back to her along the wood floor without moving. "It has absolutely no scientific pattern, no feelings associated with it, no knowledge of any sort. I just know things about crime scenes at times, and about people at times." He was still lying on the floor, flat on his back, and he pointed up at the hook. He was in a completely vulnerable position, having given up the knife, and it was a very intentional decision on his part, to give her all the power in the darkened room; his confession gave him power enough, or he suspected she would interpret it that way. He motioned up at the hook. "That's what probably did it," he added, because crime knowledge seemed to come more often than other things. "Assuming it wasn't used to hang a piñata."
Iris looked up without meaning to, and looked back down immediately. She stopped the knife with a foot, pressing the sole down on the blade, before she picked it up. Holding it in one palm, she produced what looked like a tissue out of a pocket, wiped it off, and then, in two quick out-and-in movements of her wrist, allowed the handle to swing open and then over the blade. It disappeared into her sleeve, where she had something like a cuff that held it in place. "Do something about your arm before you bleed in here," she said, in the same quiet, flat tone. "The cops will be here eventually and they're not going to like what they see." She wasn't sure she believed him about this miraculous new ability, and the prospect frightened her in a very different way. What if Micah knew she was here because he had been here, or because he had been watching?
She got up, silent on her feet, and stood still for a minute, trying to decide whether or not to move.
He didn't move. He had just craned his head back to watch the knife get sheathed up her sleeve (after removal of his prints, of course), and he'd looked down at the insignificant (if sharp) slice on his arm. "Seeing as I didn't put on a shirt before coming to rescue you, that might be hard," he said, finally sitting up. He wasn't going to use a sock, not after it had been on this floor, and his track pants weren't made of an tearable fabric. "I guess that means we look around," he said. He still didn't move toward her; sensing her uncertainty. Instead, he reached up and touched the end of the hook. "He didn't kill anyone," he told Iris, turning to look at her then. He chuckled and shrugged a moment later, because he knew she was going to ask more questions, but he didn't have any answers. It didn't work that way.
"Who?" She just stared at him through the dark, eyes gray and shining, and she held a lot back from them. She was aware that distrust came easier than belief, but at the same time caution had never killed her. She kept thinking about the look he'd given her on the fire escape, though. She could be wrong, and maybe it was another strange tale thing. He just knew. Okay. Right.
She reached behind the door and retrieved her bag. The noisy plastic grocery bag was in a knot inside it, and the blank dark canvas was stronger as well as a bit more in the way of camouflage. She could put it over her shoulder. After that she stood a moment longer, and then decided, drifted closer. "I told you I don't need rescuing. Give me your arm." She pulled out another tissue--though it was actually a cloth, a little longer and thicker, like a handkerchief.
"You're risking fingerprints by using that on me," he told her, and he held out his arm, entertained at the notion of anyone other than himself patching him up. "What makes you think anyone's going to come in here looking for your prints?" he asked, then he looked over his shoulder. "Or were you just looking to take out the camera from here?" he paused, ran the apartment list through his mind. "The old Van Helsing lived here," he said. (He didn't remember Emil's name, so much as his story). He looked back at her, and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You need watching, Iris. You like to do stupid shit."
"They won't be looking for me, but they'd still find me anyway. I try to stay out of trouble, regardless of what you might think." She didn't actually patch him up; more like tied the cloth around his arm so he wouldn't drip any blood, and none too gently, either. "Someone has been in here a lot more recently than that." She pushed his arm away and turned her back on the horrible room, exiting back out into the living room. A moment later she produced a penlight that created a focused beam, and with it she went back to the wall of television screens, inspecting the set up and the recording equipment, looking for transmission lines, anything to indicate the recordings were being sent elsewhere.
Instead she found an automatic set up that produced burned video DVDs, presumably for relocation elsewhere. Her expression only got darker.
He walked up behind her, readjusting the makeshift tourniquet on his arm, and his gaze skated over the equipment. It lingered on the burner, and he looked at her in the glow of the screens. "It was set up to monitor in here, but someone else is using it and burning copies?" he asked, sounding disbelieving about that last bit of information. "That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen," he said, and he pulled back the chair and sat down in front of the screens, looking to see where all the cameras pointed. Unlike Iris, he wasn't worried about whoever was in this room. What was the peeping tom going to do? Call the cops?
If there was a struggle, someone might call the cops, and at that point it didn't matter what the resident of 804 did, the problem was that she would then be involved. More than anything, Iris did not want to be involved in anything. "Micah, get away from there." She scowled, but did not expect him to respond. A moment later her attention (and the penlight) was distracted by a pile of small paper scattered in the center of the floor. She moved that way, tipped her head at the alarming number of locks and deadbolts on the door, and then, shrugging, turned one, and then another. If she'd done that before Micah had arrived, he wouldn't have gotten in--but her intent before Micah had arrived had been a silent, undetectable visit. The hook and the recording DVDs had changed that.
She crouched to inspect the pieces of paper.
He didn't respond to her order that he move away, but he did follow the movement of the penlight. When she starting sliding the deadbolts shut, he took the opportunity to look around the cork padded rooms. Torture? Maybe the person who used this room was the person who had committed the attacks. He stood, even as she began inspecting the paper, and went to look in the apartment's other room. Empty, save for some old, stained blankets of the floor. He stood there a second, a photograph catching his attention beneath the edge of the blankets. He picked it up, looked at it, and returned to Iris and her pieces of paper.
He handed the photograph over. "It's old, covered with dust. What did you find?" he asked, using her penlight to see the photograph better.
Iris, who had been holding the penlight between clamped lips, looked up briefly when he approached and went back to what she was doing. Patiently, she turned over bits of paper, one by one, finding the ones that had writing and connecting directional tears where she could. It was resolving into something, but slowly. "Someone tore something up. No dust, paper is new, so recent." She took the photo, stared at it a minute, and handed it back. She had no conclusion for it, and didn't venture to make one. "I want to know what it is. I also want those cameras down. I don't like them." She turned over another piece of paper, light unwavering.
Micah looked back at the equipment. "You think the paper belongs to whoever is using the equipment." It was rhetorical, not a question, and he wandered back to the screens and stared at them. There weren't sufficient screens for the number of cameras he'd seen in the building, which didn't surprise him at all. He sat back down in the chair and started making a mental note of all the camera locations as they flickered by. "Are we going to actually disable cameras, mamita? Because messing with the software isn't a permanent solution."
"I don't know if it belongs to anyone," she answered, still watching the note come together until she had the little puzzle pieces in a row and the typed message stood out in the hard cone of light. Be seeing you. Iris felt her heart clench, and had to remind herself that this note was not for her. Probably. She waved a hand over it, and the pieces tumbled quickly all over the floor. She joined Micah at the table. "Yes, but I want this taken out first so it's not recording when I take them down." Simply.
She looked under the table at the little generator that had kicked in when the power had gone out. Bastard. "Unless you think it might be better to leave them up." The hard electric light leeched the little color out of her eyes, and her gaze shone speculatively out at him.
His response was immediate and certain. "No," he said, and he knelt down in front of the computer CPU and reached behind it for the cables. "Do you think it's Anonymous? It would explain how he saw Ella leave the building," he explained, then he looked up. "Is there anything pointing to the catacombs?" he asked her, not standing up to check it himself. Instead, he looked down at the note. "Want to tell me what that said? Or am I going to have to piece it together?"
"There's one in the lobby in the nook facing the entrance behind the stair," she said, without looking at the screens. She bent down with him and dragged the computer out after he freed it from the cables. Without hesitating, she pulled the side of the case off, yanked at the CPU until it came free in her hand, and put it in her bag. "It said, 'be seeing you,'" she added, still not looking up.
Sliding back behind the televisions, she unplugged them and then pulled out a recently-acquired Bic lighter. She started melting cords--and she'd leave them there for the next person to try to plug them in, too.
He sat back on his heels, and he watched her work, and he only glanced down at the paper on the floor once before deciding on a theory about what was going on in her mind. "Iris, there is no reason to think that any of this, including that note, is for you. There isn't any substantive proof, nothing to corroborate the hypothesis," he told her. Don't worry so much, mamita.
"I know that." She said it hard and short, and that was the end of that conversation. The smoke of melting plastic curled up toward the ceiling and she let the lighter die in the palm of her hand as she straightened up. The computer case was put back together; the cords arranged behind the television screens. This person was going to be in for a very unfortunate surprise when they tried to plug in the screens, or when they tried to boot the computer up.
She glanced down at her watch, a cheap little thing that had a slight digital glow. "Are you coming?" She headed for the door, skirting the torn paper.
He shook his head, even as he stood and followed her. "I'm coming, and we need to get you doing something that isn't so damn stressful all the time. Get your mind off things," he said as he walked. He expected her to snap at him, to correct him; that was fine. It would get her mind off cameras and computers. "Want me to just pull them all down? The cameras? I can reach them," he offered.
"You can't reach them all," she countered, almost grimly. "Just the ones in the halls. There are more in the lobby, and in the outside alleyways, on the other buildings. Just get the ones in the hall, and do it now while he's not in there." She absolutely ignored the criticisms of her activity. She had a goddamn butterfly knife up her sleeve. He had enough nerve that it didn't warrant response. She started turning the deadbolts.
He didn't argue with her; Micah knew not to argue when he didn't absolutely need to win. He didn't need to win this one. "Go back to 206, and I'll meet you there once I'm done," he said, and he walked ahead of her and down the hall, reaching up and pulling the camera there free from its wires and crooking a brow at her before he threw it down and stomped it. "Want it for a memento?"
"No. Leave it." She disappeared down the stairs, bag over her shoulder, face impassive.
He stomped on the camera, taking his anger out on the thing which had made her so worried since he'd met her, and then he methodically went to the roof and worked his way down, destroying the cameras on each floor (taking note of the multitude of them on the Penthouse level). By the time he finished on the first floor, a half hour had passed, and he was breathing hard from exertion and speed by the time he ran back up to the second floor. He didn't use the door to 206, even though it would have been safe now. He used the fire escape, and he tried to lift the glass without knocking.
"Move." Her voice came from above, not inside. She sounded a little breathless, and no wonder; she was hanging from the fire escape above, the bag dangling off her back. The soles of her black cloth shoes were cheap yellow rubber, but apparently they did the trick. The camera in the corner of the building across the way was gone, and the ones in the lobby were too--though she had not left them for others to discover, habit.
Micah moved, though he reached up and held her waist on instinct, helping her find the escape with her feet (rubber soles or no). "No one taught you about women, did they? They cook, and get fake nails that cost 20 dollars to fill every two weeks, and they shop, and they gossip. They don't climb buildings, Iris," he said, the worry in his voice belying the reason for the rant. "Coño."
She let him lower her down to the grate, chest moving quickly as her lungs tried to compensate for the effort. "Funny, looks like I managed just fine."
He gave her a look, and he reached past her for the window again, pulling it up for her to enter the apartment. "How many left?"
"There's one in the decoration of the ceiling where the pillars meet the roof in the lobby, but I'm going to need something to break the plaster. I think that's it, if I caught them all." Sliding past him, she went inside, one leg after another.
"I'll shoot that one down. Wait here," he offered, and he didn't follow her in. Instead, he started closing the window behind her. Decision made; the man was on the job.
Iris turned back and caught the window. "Idiota," she snapped. "Don't fire a gun in the building! People will panic!"
He grinned at her, all dimples. "I have a silencer, mamita."
She reached through the window to prevent him from closing it, and caught his arm. "No. Save the ballistics for when we really need something shot." Iris believed in keeping a trail as clean as possible, and that way you didn't have to backtrack over evidence that might expose you six months later.
Micah looked down at her hand on his bare arm, and he relented. "Fine, but you're patching me up, since you caused the damage," he said, and he climbed through the window into 206. He hadn't bothered to grab a shirt when he was in 202, and his arm was streaked with dried blood.
Iris released him at once and backed away as he stood up. She had thought he would at least stop to pick up a shirt before he showed up, but apparently she was wrong. Micah had a very impressive body, and she almost wished--well. Nevermind. She looked away, ducking out of the bag and dropping it on the sofa. "Your place would be better for that. I don't have any first aid or anything like that." She didn't feel the least bit guilty about slicing his arm open. In fact, she felt quite pleased she hadn't done much worse.
"My couch is also more comfortable," he said, "and so is my bed." He grinned, and he nodded toward the window. "Come on, mi ladronita. I think you can scale a fire escape after that display," he said. He stopped to look at her clothing. "You can change into something more comfortable," he said, and he shot her another look that was meant to be infuriating.
That got him a glare. "I wear it because it is comfortable." She refused to address the bed comment. It would just make it worse. She sighed and leaned one thigh against the back of the couch. "You're a doctor, I think you can manage a little cut on your own."
He let the grin slip away into something natural and honest. "I was worried about you, Iris. Humor me and sit on the couch for an hour and let my heart stop racing, while knowing you aren't off doing something completamente estupido."
"Well, you'd know something stupid from something that isn't," she said, testily. Lord, she was in a mood. She even winced at what she'd said when she heard it. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she let it out in one long sigh and then said, "Fine. But you know, we can go down the hall, now." She went and picked up her bag again.
"Are you going to carry that everywhere?" he asked with a quirk of his brow. Her mood was evident, and he understood it (somewhat). He'd surprised her, scared her, and made her doubt her trust in him, all of which led to a cranky woman. He was good with cranky women; he wasn't worried.
"Just shut up, Micah, or I'll find another apartment on the other side of the city." She pushed through her door and waited on the other side for him to get the hell out of her apartment.
He didn't even crack a smile as he stepped into the hall and crossed his arms over his bare chest. "Dancing. That's what you need," he said. And then he smiled.
"Absolutely out of the question." She refused to look at the arms, because he was just dangling candy so she would cooperate. She shut the door and put her key in, turning the deadbolt into place.
"I was telling the man on the roof he had to get security put in. You do too," he said, watching her lock the deadbolts. "And what's wrong with dancing?" he asked, though he already suspected he know what she would say was wrong with dancing. He wanted to hear it from her own lips, though, and he turned to walk down the hall, waiting on her before he moved toward 202.
"Mind your own business." It was a good answer for all of his comments and questions. His arrogance, while still harmless, was starting to irk. Maybe only today. She was tired of feeling vulnerable all the time, and if she damn well felt like overcompensating, she would. She removed the key and dropped it into her bag.
He quirked a brow at the sharpness of her response, but he wisely stayed quiet for the short walk to his apartment. It was unlocked, just as he'd left it in his hurry to climb to her fire escape, and he pushed the door open for her, and he waited before following her inside. The apartment smelled like it always did, but he'd started to clear out some of the items left behind by the previous tenant, and the living room was bare (compared to the last time she'd been inside). He closed and locked the door behind her, and he silently walked to the bedroom and slipped on white undershirt. His hand went to his wrist, noticing the forgotten bracelet for the first time. He'd go get it once he put on a colada of coffee for them. He went to the kitchen, and he pulled out a cafetera Cubana, and he turned on the stove. He did it all in perfect silence.
For her part, Iris went inside the apartment and after a brief look from wall to wall, sat down in the exact center of his couch, put her bag on her lap, and hunched a little back into the cushions. She looked over the counter once to see what he was doing, but seeing the outline of the pot, she relaxed again and sat back. At least she hadn't gotten so far in that she couldn't get out. She could just sit here, let Micah have his protective fit, and then go home.
He set the coffee to percolate, and he didn't bother grabbing a gun (so as not to worry her). "Make sure this doesn't boil over?" he asked, and he started walking for the door. "I forgot something. Give me two minutes," he said, reaching for the doorknob and pulling the door open.
Iris got up. "Where are you going?" She hadn't meant to say it, and should have known better than to get invested in whatever the hell he was doing, but too late. She caught her bag as it rolled off her lap.
His gaze went to that bag, and he stopped, weighing the price of delaying against the price of making a deal. "Tell me what's in the bag, and I'll tell you where I'm going," he said simply. Information for information; nothing more than that.
Iris stopped moving and her expression went static, all signs that she was thinking it over without letting anything through to betray how the process was going. After several seconds of thought, she sat back down on the couch. Gripping the bottom of the canvas, she grabbed the shape of a familiar object through the bottom and then tipped it, spilling several items out over the table while the one she wanted stayed in the bag in her hand. She rolled the canvas casually back onto her lap to hide that it still held something.
A black box with a small antenna attached to a battery. A pocket knife, second-hand. A leather case of lockpicks. A pair of disposable surgical gloves. Her apartment key on its ring. A small plastic sandwich bag, clear, stuffed with cotton to muffle the sound of a few white pills, unmarked. Her cellphone, off. The grocery bag she'd walked into the lobby with, tied into a knot so the plastic wouldn't rustle. About four more of those plain white squares of linen she'd used on his arm, folded. The yellow plastic Bic lighter she'd used on the cords.
The only thing in the bag that seemed worthy of the deathgrip she kept on it were the pills, and he reached for them and held one up in front of his face. His gaze slid over to the bag, so casually placed in her lap, and then he looked back at the pill. Instead of asking what it was, he walked into the kitchen, where the coffee had finished percolating in the delay, and he set the pill on the counter. He poured out two coladitas of the dark, aromatic liquid, sweetened and frothed it, then he looked at her as he lifted the pill between two fingers, clearly intending to swallow it.
She watched him carefully, showing nothing except a slight frown, and when he moved she dropped the bag on the couch (still in a little heap to hide the shape of the remaining contents) to see what he was doing. "They're caffeine pills," she said, looking at the pill in his fingers and then at him. "You're going to be twitching for the next few hours if you take it with that."
He lifted the pill to his tongue, and he chased it down with a sip of coffee, and he waited to see if she panicked.
Iris took a deep breath and sighed. "I don't know whether that was very trusting, or very suspicious." She drifted forward to take her coffee, shaking her head.
He grinned at her, and he looked back at the discarded bag as he finished downing the tiny cup of coffee, which looked ridiculous in his large hand. "It just means you have something in that bag that you didn't dump out," he said with a knowing, dimpled grin. He put his cup on the counter. "And I have a bracelet to get from 804," he said, keeping his promise of telling her where he was going.
He didn't really need the caffeine pills, drinking it like that. Iris, who had a hell of a poker face, did not look back over her shoulder to check that the bag was still there. She just looked at him. When he mentioned the bracelet, she let her eyes fall down to his wrist and then back up. "That's what you threw? You left it?" This was so wildly unprofessional, that Iris just blinked in astonishment. She hadn't remembered it either.
He almost laughed at her astonished blink, but he managed not to. Instead, he chucked her lightly under the chin. "Worried about me?" he asked, though he was sure she'd say no, even if she was. He turned for the door, and he pulled it open. "You can hide whatever's in that bag while I'm gone," he told her before disappearing into the hall.
Iris didn't bother. She picked up all her things, put them back in the bag with the damn tracker, and slipped out of 206 on the way back to her apartment. She'd listen for the sound of his door to make sure he got home, but she wanted a scalding shower and some sleep. Not necessarily in that order.