#but listen i cannot tell you how much I love Zaide

[pertinax--loculos]

Absent That Night -- Excerpt

In which Latrell takes the opportunity to conduct his own thread of investigation. OR Meet Zaide guys help i accidentally made myself a new favourite character ahaha D: Wordcount: 1297 CW: smoking, cursing, vague threats I suppose? (I’m not great at these, let me know if I’m missing anything oops.) *** Gun on his hip, underneath the untucked shirt. Latrell held his breath as the man stalked past his hiding spot, but his heavy-lidded eyes never moved Latrell’s way. His gaze was fixed ahead. Purposeful.

And walking out of the Warren? Definitely Associate.

Latrell waited until the man was a decent distance past him, then stepped out of the storage room and raised his voice. “Trouble you for a moment of your time?”

The Associate spun, hand going to his waist. Latrell’s breath caught sticky in his throat, but he stayed still, hands open by his sides, expression neutral. He let the stranger examine him, saw the once-over make his conclusion jump to agent, then exhaled slowly as the Associate’s hand dropped smoothly from his holster. He continued the movement to cross his arms, eyebrows lowering a fraction.

“Anything I can do for our vaunted Law Enforcement Agency,” he said.

The amenability was unexpected, but not strictly speaking surprising. The reason the Association maintained its stranglehold on the city was its ability to outfox any and all forms of justice, and acting cooperative — and ignorant — was the easiest way to do that. Particularly when an individual was stopped on the street for no apparent reason.

Latrell gave himself a second to breathe, and fashioned his tone into remote professionalism. Let just a touch of nerves filter through, emphasise his discomfort and hopefully the implication he wasn’t altogether experienced. “I’ve been sent to do some research into a suspect our Homicide Division is looking into. I was hoping you might know of him. Man calls himself Nox?”

The Associate’s features slid into a smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Got you out doing busywork, huh?”

“I go wherever they ask me too,” Latrell said, stiffly. He paired it with the slightest jut of his chin.

The Associate stepped forward, slow, nonthreatening. Latrell tensed anyway, only partly out of commitment to his charade.

“Yes, well, obedience is key in your line of work.” There was the slightest twinge of an accent in the man’s voice, maybe foreign, maybe just from a city far away from the one they were now in. Latrell didn’t have a good enough ear to tell. “Let you in on a secret, though — either your bosses are hazing you, or they want you dead.”

If Latrell actually had been a green agent, the words would’ve been extremely effective. Even as it was, he felt his stomach drop with the finality of the statement, a curl of dread accompanying the rush of adrenaline to his veins.

But experience let him keep his expression dispassionate, and his questioning on track. “So you do know of this Nox person?”

One of the Associate’s brows lifted. He’d thrown him. Good. Though his voice was still smooth when he said, “Of course. Everybody knows of Nox.”

Latrell waited. Realised that might provide too much insight into his actual identity, and prompted, “And?”

“From what I hear?” The Associate’s smile returned. It was not a comforting expression. “He’s a bit of a… freak.”

Latrell’s skin prickled. The word didn’t seem candid as much as carefully chosen. All implications and connotations included.

He kept his voice even when he said, “Care to elaborate?”

The Associate shrugged, uncrossing his arms in the same movement. “I mean, nobody really knows him. Just rumours, mostly.”

“I thought all you people knew each other.”

“We do.” The smile returned, and Latrell finally pinned down what was so discomforting about it; it was cultivated, like a copy of an expression the Associate had only seen, practised in the mirror. Or a twist of features brought about by the strings of a marionette. He’d never wanted the comforting weight of his handgun against his shoulder more. “Which is probably why nobody really knows much about Nox. He’s not an Associate.”

Latrell lifted his eyebrows. “Come again?”

It was a theory he’d bandied about, of course, something he’d even considered likely. But to have it confirmed — and by an Associate who, he was more and more convinced with every passing moment, had to be in the upper echelons of the organisation — was something else. That made it fact. That made it real.

That made it evidence.

“Someone like Nox…” The Associate held up one hand a little, palm out, as he fished in his back pocket with the other. It didn’t stop Latrell tensing, and the tension didn’t ease until the stranger flipped open the thin, square case he’d retrieved and revealed a neat line of cigarettes. He placed one between his canines, spoke as he swapped the shiny case for a lighter. “…you don’t invite him into a brotherhood like ours. Too risky.”

“How so?” The words fell out of Latrell’s mouth without consideration, transfixed as he was by the flickering flame of the Associate’s lighter, the glowing coal that flared at the tip of his cigarette, the stream of smoke that dissipated into the damp air as he exhaled between his teeth.

“He’s got a history,” the Associate said between drags, as if that was all the explanation necessary.

It wasn’t, but Latrell wasn’t inclined to push. He also was less and less inclined to spend much longer around this man.

But he did have one more question.

“So why is it that you work with him?”

The wires twitched the smile back onto the man’s face. “Unfortunately, he’s very good at what he does. Even if he seems to have developed a taste for blood recently.” Drag, pause, exhale. In a mutter: “About time he did something interesting.” Then, finally, back to Latrell; “And he has very high-powered friends.”

Latrell dropped his green-agent facade entirely. He wasn’t convinced that the Associate had been fooled to begin with, and he rather thought it would put him in less danger. “The Marks.”

The Associate tapped ash off the end of his cigarette, wires pulling taught enough to bare his teeth. “The Marks.”

Questions rushed to Latrell’s mind; why do you call them friends and how many of them does he know and how many of them are there? But he beat them all back. Ice prickled beneath the dampness of his jacket, and something about the Associate’s languorous gaze increasingly made him feel although he was standing in crosshairs.

“I appreciate your cooperation.” He thought about stepping back, but doing so would take him further away from his escape route, the retreat back to no-man’s-land which necessitated walking past the Associate.

“Oh, any time.” The man placed the cigarette back between his teeth as he pulled out a sleek black phone; his eyes finally dropped from Latrell as he moved towards the warehouse that bordered the Warren. “I wish you luck on your assignment.”

He couldn’t know that Latrell was not actually on any assignment. It sure sounded like he did.

“Thanks,” he said as he started forward, hugging the building opposite, keeping as much distance as possible between them in the narrow valley carved by the railway lines.

He’d just started to relax, his stride lengthening into a more comfortable rhythm, when the Associate called out to him.

“Oh, and Agent?”

Latrell glanced over his shoulder, slowing a little. He didn’t stop, couldn’t quite convince his feet to do so.

Whatever puppeteer controlled the Associate’s face manipulated the wires into a grave expression. But one failed at the corner of the Associate’s mouth, and it curved up just a fraction.

“I wouldn’t recommend working with people you don’t know. Perhaps next time, you should investigate them first.”

Latrell’s heart tripped, faltered, picked up from its stumble at a racing pace. Surely the slam of it against his breastbone would be audible across the distance between them.

He managed a nod — stiff, jerky, not at all convincing — before he turned tail and fled.