04-05-2014, 08:38 AM
"Wrong door, sweetheart',"
Jaxen said as he sat up in bed.
The girl to whom he spoke closed the door she'd began to enter, which happened to lead to the closet rather than the bathroom. She turned. Poor thing had that drunk, wet glaze to her eyes. In the dim light her skin was a curtain of brown silk, her hair black as the night sky.
"To the left. Your other left. Watch out for that shoe-,"
she did well for navigating a veritable obstacle course of clothes strewn everywhere. "Keep going. There you go,"
he said. Once directed to the correct door, she sealed herself inside the bathroom beyond, and Jaxen started to punch out the pillows behind him and comfortably sit up to check the news on his Wallet, but when he glanced up between pillow-punches he saw more than he'd intended through the glass panel of the bathroom door.
"Close the door all the way!"
He yelled. She turned, realized the sheet of glass hadn't been activated in the jamb, and hastily shoved it into place. It immediately frosted over, and she disappeared into a dim silhouette. Thank God. That was more than he ever wanted to see in his life.
He sank his head into the pillows, stretching contentedly. In blinking at the ceiling, his view eventually rolled to the decoration mounted, and seemingly floating, on the wall above the headboard. It was one of his relics, a memento to remember Voxel Adam's, Jaxen's thieving alter-ego, escapades through the Imperial Treasury of Austria. That trip had been meant to collect only the Crown Prince's coronation sword, but while the weapon was quite nice, the Ainkurn had been an impulse swipe. He'd never considered it of all the Treasury's inventory, but when he saw it, he found himself spellbound in its presence, and had to have it. No negotiation. No consideration. It was going to come home. While the Crown Prince's sword was hidden away in his vault of collectibles, safe from any eyes but his, this one stayed close.
The thing was longer than he was tall. It was bone smooth, and dense in a way more like marble than granite. The history books attributed it to the horn of a unicorn, but Jaxen shuddered to imagine a beast whose skull was large enough to wield a spear like that from its forehead. Rational men attributed it to the tusk of a narwhal, an enormous whale like creature found only in arctic seas. Also something Jaxen was uninterested in meeting face to face. But Jaxen bought neither story. This was no fossil. Nor was it unicorn. But it was -- something.
His Wallet beeped an alert. He rolled, sheets twisting around him as he did, and swiped it from the table. The algorithm hacking into the Baccarat's secret servers downtown had downloaded a new file, but Jaxen was smart enough to not open the document on such an insecure device as a Wallet. He'd need to be at the workstation. He did scroll through the file addresses, though. Several caught his attention:
Gods_known
Gods_suspect
Gods_Eliminated
He heard the bathroom door open, and a woman crawled back in bed. Her skin was warm and soft against his. She smelled of having freshened up.
"Feel better?"
He asked without interest in the answer. Instead, he opened up a subdirectory beneath 'Gods_known.' She murmured a reply then burrowed under the blankets, and while Jaxen stretched out his legs for her ease, he didn't lower the Wallet.
Dozens and dozens of files cascaded through the scroll. Men, women, foreign and domestic. Names he couldn't pronounce. Names that sounded distinctly Russian. He was itching to open one of the files, but the distraction under the sheets kept him from sprinting off to the secure workstation. He was on the verge of procrastinating at least another half-hour, until he saw his own name.
"What the fuck?!"
He said and jerked forward off the pillow. His playdate pulled the sheet back and looked up at him worriedly.
"Did I hurt you?"
She asked.
Jaxen didn't answer. He just stared at the screen, mind racing to integrate this new discovery into everything else he'd assimilated these past few weeks.
The girl shrugged, but Jaxen stopped her before she disappeared again.
"Not now."
In moments he was on his feet and tying the drawstring of a pair of pants around his hips. "I'll call you a cab-,"
he said only to cut himself off when he realized she'd already passed out in the twist of sheets, like a baby bird in the nest.
He left her to sleep it off. He had work to do.
Edited by Jaxen Marveet, Apr 5 2014, 09:52 PM.
Jaxen said as he sat up in bed.
The girl to whom he spoke closed the door she'd began to enter, which happened to lead to the closet rather than the bathroom. She turned. Poor thing had that drunk, wet glaze to her eyes. In the dim light her skin was a curtain of brown silk, her hair black as the night sky.
"To the left. Your other left. Watch out for that shoe-,"
she did well for navigating a veritable obstacle course of clothes strewn everywhere. "Keep going. There you go,"
he said. Once directed to the correct door, she sealed herself inside the bathroom beyond, and Jaxen started to punch out the pillows behind him and comfortably sit up to check the news on his Wallet, but when he glanced up between pillow-punches he saw more than he'd intended through the glass panel of the bathroom door.
"Close the door all the way!"
He yelled. She turned, realized the sheet of glass hadn't been activated in the jamb, and hastily shoved it into place. It immediately frosted over, and she disappeared into a dim silhouette. Thank God. That was more than he ever wanted to see in his life.
He sank his head into the pillows, stretching contentedly. In blinking at the ceiling, his view eventually rolled to the decoration mounted, and seemingly floating, on the wall above the headboard. It was one of his relics, a memento to remember Voxel Adam's, Jaxen's thieving alter-ego, escapades through the Imperial Treasury of Austria. That trip had been meant to collect only the Crown Prince's coronation sword, but while the weapon was quite nice, the Ainkurn had been an impulse swipe. He'd never considered it of all the Treasury's inventory, but when he saw it, he found himself spellbound in its presence, and had to have it. No negotiation. No consideration. It was going to come home. While the Crown Prince's sword was hidden away in his vault of collectibles, safe from any eyes but his, this one stayed close.
The thing was longer than he was tall. It was bone smooth, and dense in a way more like marble than granite. The history books attributed it to the horn of a unicorn, but Jaxen shuddered to imagine a beast whose skull was large enough to wield a spear like that from its forehead. Rational men attributed it to the tusk of a narwhal, an enormous whale like creature found only in arctic seas. Also something Jaxen was uninterested in meeting face to face. But Jaxen bought neither story. This was no fossil. Nor was it unicorn. But it was -- something.
His Wallet beeped an alert. He rolled, sheets twisting around him as he did, and swiped it from the table. The algorithm hacking into the Baccarat's secret servers downtown had downloaded a new file, but Jaxen was smart enough to not open the document on such an insecure device as a Wallet. He'd need to be at the workstation. He did scroll through the file addresses, though. Several caught his attention:
Gods_known
Gods_suspect
Gods_Eliminated
He heard the bathroom door open, and a woman crawled back in bed. Her skin was warm and soft against his. She smelled of having freshened up.
"Feel better?"
He asked without interest in the answer. Instead, he opened up a subdirectory beneath 'Gods_known.' She murmured a reply then burrowed under the blankets, and while Jaxen stretched out his legs for her ease, he didn't lower the Wallet.
Dozens and dozens of files cascaded through the scroll. Men, women, foreign and domestic. Names he couldn't pronounce. Names that sounded distinctly Russian. He was itching to open one of the files, but the distraction under the sheets kept him from sprinting off to the secure workstation. He was on the verge of procrastinating at least another half-hour, until he saw his own name.
"What the fuck?!"
He said and jerked forward off the pillow. His playdate pulled the sheet back and looked up at him worriedly.
"Did I hurt you?"
She asked.
Jaxen didn't answer. He just stared at the screen, mind racing to integrate this new discovery into everything else he'd assimilated these past few weeks.
The girl shrugged, but Jaxen stopped her before she disappeared again.
"Not now."
In moments he was on his feet and tying the drawstring of a pair of pants around his hips. "I'll call you a cab-,"
he said only to cut himself off when he realized she'd already passed out in the twist of sheets, like a baby bird in the nest.
He left her to sleep it off. He had work to do.
Edited by Jaxen Marveet, Apr 5 2014, 09:52 PM.