Nathaniel 'Creepster Hermit' Porter (techmech) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-10-27 11:44:00 |
|
|||
The light outside was distracting, and Nate kept blinking, trying to cut through the glare. He hadn’t been outside during the day in - Faram, was it a week now? but Cian needed a new set up, and Nate owed him. Besides, the gambler paid pretty well, and more gold was always worth having. It’d taken him longer than it should have to find the right equipment for the job. He’d been slowly moving his things out of Riyeko’s workshop ever since he’d moved in to his own place, keeping the gems safe, and hadn’t had the chance to organise much. He’d found the spiders, though, and a few more unpleasant surprises for anyone dumb enough to break into a crime lord’s building. The stairs were exactly as he remembered, dank and blessedly dark. He kept one hand against the wall, trailing it along as he climbed. It was a good thing Cian had left him a path in. He didn’t think he was up to exercising his very basic ninja skills in trying to climb to the roof, especially in broad daylight. He kept getting… distracted, especially at the most inconvenient times. And there was Cian’s door. One hand gripping at his elbow, he raised the other to the wood and knocked. It was good for all parties concerned that things were starting to quiet down in the Tenements -- and at the Docks. Any more, and Cian wasn’t going to be responsible for his own actions. Why was everything such a fucking wreck lately? He’d been sleeping in his office or bringing work home for weeks. Just because his business wasn’t strictly (read: at all) legal didn’t mean he could run it lackadaisically; there were ledgers to balance (two sets -- one for the official and legal lines of business, one for everything else), employees to replace, and day to day decisions to be made. At least, he thought with a sigh, setting the file aside and raking a hand back through his hair, he’d gotten this place habitable again. Water Street had not been an enjoyable experience. He hadn’t been keeping an eye on the time, but when the knock came, he knew he must have been at it for at least two hours. Nate was rarely late, at least, in his dealings with Cian. A wise habit, and one that he valued in his employees. He had a double door now, metal on the inside, wood out onto the landing; he turned the three locks and swung first the inner, then the outer door open. Crap security, but he was working on it -- right now, in fact. “Hey, kid.” Even in the faint illumination of the stairwell, he looked pale. Cian noted the fact, tucked it away for later. “Come in.” “Hey,” he said, and smiled, meeting Cian’s eyes. It had been a while. Something in the back of his head - don’t challenge him, get him to pay us first, then just ask, I’ll kick his balls out through his spine - didn’t like that, though, so he dropped his gaze to the floor. It looked different to how he remembered, but then, the whole place had been wrecked. Might’s well put in a new floor. Before the silence could stretch out too long, Nate asked “You want to start here?” The door looked pretty solid, but the lock was nothing special. Then again, if they were trying to get in this way, whoever it was would’ve already had to force their way through the whole building. So maybe this lock didn’t matter too much. “All the way up first,” he said, letting Nate in and closing the door behind him. “Roof door’s set the same as before. Six windows now instead of seven. The set-ups more or less the same.” New furniture, but still plain and in dark colors. He’d moved a few things around (or rather, let the employees he’d roped into taking care of things put them wherever they liked before making minute adjustments), but it didn’t look terribly different from before. Almost as though nothing had happened. “Make yourself at home.” By which he meant that he wouldn’t watch over the kid’s shoulder while he worked. This was more or less rote; he knew how the system worked, and it was sufficient for his needs. He just needed a new one. “No security on any of the doors or windows right now. What’s left of the things I used on Water Street’s on the kitchen counter. Feel free to scrap, reuse, whatever works best for you.” A beat of silence as he considered -- with almost anyone else he’d just let it go, but -- “You sick?” “Six..?” How did you lose a window? Nate shook his head. He felt like his brain was made of cotton wool - it’d been days since he’d had any real amount of sleep. Eh. It didn’t matter. Six, seven, he’d put enough supplies in his sack to wire up a round dozen if he needed to. Might have to ration out the spiders if it went that high, though. “What?” Nate asked, distracted as he rooted around in the leftover half-wrecked security systems. Man, that spider had survived completely intact - chance was a weird thing sometimes. He found another that’d cracked open, tiny gleams of magicite spilling out of its broken shell. Little bits of riches, full of delicious magic. “Sick? No, not - I’m fine.” He wasn’t sick. No sneezing or pain or anything like that. He felt - strong, really, at least in body. It was his mind that was the problem. Felt like his own thoughts were slipping through his fingers. Wasn’t like Cian could do anything about that, though. “I had the north wall rebuilt without a window,” he said absently. He hadn’t really needed it -- daylight was replaceable with magicite lighting, and security was easiest when the number of entrances was minimized. He was halfway to the staircase leading up to the roof entrance before the boy answered his question. You don’t look fine, he almost said, but shrugged it off. He wouldn’t be the first young man to pretend he was perfectly well in the face of something so undignified as a head cold. He had a potion around somewhere -- he’d just give it to the kid along with his payment, and that would be that. Up to him if he took it at that point -- he was a kid, sure, but not so young that he needed decisions made for him. “Let’s get started, then.” He went up the stairs, swung open the door at the top to let the bright autumn sun in, along with a cool wind. Ugh, sunlight. Nate winced, but followed Cian up anyway. He knew this place pretty well, after living here for a handful of months and installing security tech for even longer, so it wasn’t like he needed to look around all that much. Maybe he should get one of those thin fabric blindfolds the monks practiced with, block out everything except basic shapes… That’d really freak Cian out, though, and he didn’t exactly want people on the street thinking he was blind. He blinked repeatedly. “Same set-up, yeah?” It was worthwhile to put some defences on the roof itself, but most of them would concentrate on the actual entrances to Cian’s place. “I know what I’m about.” No need for Cian to hang around while he worked, after all. Cian gave him a look that held equal parts concern and annoyance as he repeated, “As I said, more or less the same. Stay clear of the bike.” That had its own security, built in by the mechanic who had modified the engine. “Otherwise, I’ll get out of your hair.” With that, he turned and headed back down the stairs. Once in the apartment proper, he went straight to the kitchen cabinet -- most people stocked dishes or dry goods; he stocked potions and poultices -- and started rummaging around for the cold potion. Wouldn’t want the kid so hazy that he fucked up his work, after all. Nate’d more been asking whether Cian wanted any tweaks to where he was putting the defenses, but it didn’t really matter. He got to work, setting out traps on the most obvious climb points & putting spiders under a few different corners. As much as he’d love to get a closer look at the bike - so much chrome, so shiny! - he knew better than to risk it. That thing had bite. Wiring the door itself took a little longer. Traps always worked better when they weren’t seen before they were tripped, after all, and the door was an obvious choke point. He clipped connectors into the frame and the base of the door, with a twinned alarm that’d go downstairs, then slotted a little electric-release gem inside the edge of the lock, precisely where a set of picks would rest. He’d have to remember to given Cian the switch for that one. A spider for inside the lintel, and he was ready to head back down the gloriously dark stairs. He’d found the potion and slipped it into his pocket by the time Nate reappeared, looking a bit pale but alert enough. He guessed if he wound up with a head full of cotton in the next few days, he’d know whom to blame. “All set up there?” he asked. “Windows in the bedroom, two in the living area, kitchen, office, and bathroom.” The one in the bathroom was tiny but then, who knew? There were some small adults out there, and stupid kids. He thought the kids in the Tenements knew better, but you didn’t get as far as he had on assumptions of safety. “Front door,” he continued, “back door behind the bookcase in the office. No other entrances. False wall in the bedroom closet, safe and weapons case behind there.” It was unlikely anyone would get that far into his space uninvited, but he’d had lovers try to kill -- or rob -- him before, too. Layout sounded a bit different than before, but nothing huge had changed. “This mean I can wire up the back door some more?” Nate asked. When it’d been in his bedroom, Cian had been leery of anything that might trigger unexpectedly. Possibly sudden hallucinogen exposure put a damper on an evening. Might as well get to work. Nate pulled out another lockguard and started setting it into the nearest window as he asked. To be honest, he was a bit of the opinion that anyone willing to dangle from the side of a tall building while picking the lock on a window was probably stupid enough to deserve the shock and subsequent fall - seriously, some people had to go for the most complicated solution. Whatever happened to ‘wrap rock in cloth, smash window, reach in and open it’. Of course, then they’d get hit with something nasty when they triggered the pressure sensor in the sill, but it was the spirit of the thing. “As long as I can get out of it quickly, do whatever you like,” Cian said. “A master disarm of some sort, maybe, if you can manage it.” This new layout gave him a bit of leeway that he hadn’t had in the old one. But when he’d originally had this place built the first time, he hadn’t fully known what he needed. The silver lining on this clusterfuck, he guessed -- this new version of the space would be easier to use, not to mention harder to breach. Seeing that Nate was well occupied, he retrieved his file and went across the room to the couch, sprawling there and opening it in his lap. He had work enough to get through that he wouldn’t be challenged to keep himself busy while the machinist worked. “Let me know when you’re done up here,” he said, before attempting once again to concentrate on the ledgers. Nate tilted his head. A master disarm? “Sure, I can do that. It’ll take some work though.” Best to put in the standard defenses for now, and come back once he had the chance to key up enough sympathetic magicite and install it all. Even if he couldn’t key up multiple sympathies with the same stones, he could see how to use multiple sets of paired stones in a master control. Something protested inside him at the thought of parting with quite that much of his hoarded supplies of magicite, but he pushed it down. This was Cian, he was good for gold, and always payed what things were worth. It wasn’t like he collected the gems for the sake of it. They were only as useful as the things he could make with them. The rest of the space took a fair amount of delicate work, but nothing that Nate hadn’t done before. He wrapped up the last stun dart shooter behind the fake wall before the sun could sink behind the buildings outside, and he headed back to Cian’s study. “‘m heading out,” Nate said, leaning in the doorway. His head was pounding again. Maybe he could stop by a food cart before heading home, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Either way, it’d be good to add a bit more gold to his hidden stash. Cian looked up from the papers littering his desk -- he’d relocated into the study some time after this room’s defenses had been finished -- and nodded in assent. “Money’s on the table,” he said, “along with a sandwich and a potion.” He could manage that much, anyway, and he’d made one for himself earlier, so why the hell not? “Eat the sandwich, drink the potion, and go sleep for ten hours. Can you see yourself out? I’m in the middle of something.” The amount of trust contained in those few sentences was enormous, though he didn’t think of it that way. The kid had designed his defenses -- if he was going to try doing something stupid, Cian was at a disadvantage to start with. Might as well let him lock up after himself. The sandwich and potion, well. “Consider the potion -- and the ten hours -- boss’ orders.” Dammit. Nate froze momentarily, up against the door. Stupid, to forget how observant Cian could be - but it was okay. He hadn’t noticed how wrong Nate really was. If he had, no way would he have let Nate know all his home’s vulnerable points, given him free access to the rooms without supervision. Still. This was too risky. Cian was distracted by something today, but there was no way he’d be able to keep fooling the man. He couldn’t come back here. Not until he’d fixed himself, at least. There were many things that Nate could live with, but really breaking Cian’s faith in him, however cynical it might be - that he couldn’t do. Nate nodded. “Yeah. Sure thing.” He gathered the things and, head ducked, saw himself out. |