[Visual] [Location- Random Warehouse]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

The tablet briefly displays a skewed glimpse of what looks like a makeshift science lab inside a large empty warehouse-- the emphasis on makeshift. A few library books stacked on surfaces, spines bearing titles like Chemistry for Students and Practical Science. There's bits of pipe, a sink, projects scattered in phases of half-completed.

Paul Smecker rights the tablet, and takes a breath. In one hand he has a pair of safety goggles, which he sets down on the counter with a level of care that is a marked contrast from the last time he made a broadcast.

"Hey, Taxon," he says after several awkward seconds. "I don't know how many people got a chance to know her, but Alexis Castle's gone."

He pauses, opens his mouth as if to say something else, then just shakes his head and presses the button to end the call.

Paul stands there a moment in the silence of the warehouse, then sets a plastic bag full of supplies down on the counter. No need for them now. Class for Alexis has been canceled, permanently.

Comments

[location] some twenty minutes later

[hasaheart]

It's a feeling Cain knows too well; the pang of sudden emptiness after someone disappears from Taxon. Horrendous as it can be, downright unfair and rubbing your nose in it, no matter how much you loathe the place and the aliens that brought you here, it's damn hard to feel glad when someone gets to go home.

Home.

Up until just a week ago, Cain thought it was a euphemism for death or worse at the hands of the aliens, but after his talk with Fitz he isn't at all so certain anymore. Whether Fitz's case was a fluke or simply how things actually worked, Cain doesn't know. Either way, it doesn't change the pang of loss when someone you were getting to know suddenly isn't there anymore.

He still doesn't know what he feels about the prospect of coming home after talking with Fitz, but he knows one thing. Sometimes it isn't about words, or even feelings: it's about the things you do for your friends when they're in a bad place.

Cain may not have gotten the chance (or taken it) to know Miss Castle better, but that doesn't mean she didn't matter. It doesn't take away from the fact Paul knew her well enough. Doesn't mean she wasn't one of the sweetest kids around. Smart, too.

~*~

When he finds Paul, he comes bearing two Styrofoam cups of coffee - one black, one latte-twist-of-lemon-sweet-n'-low - and a heavy heart.

[location- a city park]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul's sitting on a bench in one of the city's many parks, smoking-- not too far away from the warehouse, but he hadn't wanted to stay in the room. The tablet leads Cain to his location anyway.

He looks up when Wyatt approaches, shades his eyes with one hand against the glare of the sun and squints at the other man.

"Hi, cowboy," Paul says tonelessly. His eyes flick to the coffee cups; he snorts.

"Did you booze up mine?"

[hasaheart]

Fucking weather.

Wyatt shrugs, taking a seat beside the other man - close enough that their knees touch - and hands him his coffee drink. Now that he's here, he isn't sure what to say, if anything at all.

"Wasn't sure you'd want it. Brought a flask instead." This is punctuated by a soft pat to his breast pocket.

[smecker.livejournal.com]

The heat's brutal but at the moment Paul welcomes it. He can sit and bake and not think too much.

He leans back against the bench when Wyatt sits down next to him, takes the coffee in one hand and has another drag on his cigarette with the other. Paul leans his head back and breathes out the smoke at the bright summer-blue sky overhead, deciding not to ask for the flask just yet.

"How's your day going?"

[hasaheart]

A wordless grunt is the only response Paul gets while Wyatt takes off the plastic lid and sips his coffee. "Sad to hear Miss Castle's gone."

It somehow doesn't seem adequate. Doesn't feel right to talk about her like this - behind her back, without her knowledge, when she's not here anymore. And, perhaps even more to the point, he isn't sure what he can say to take the edge off what seems to him like a pretty shitty day. Well, there's one thing, but Gods know how much actual good it'll do.

He might as well give it a shot, hope for the best. "Talked to Fitz last week. Seems 'going home' isn't a euphemism after all... This is his second tour of the place, says he went home in the interim--"

And this is the bit he doesn't at all know how to process. "And he didn't remember one thing about Taxon while he wasn't here."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul glances over at that, arches a brow a little, then looks back out over the park.

"Evidence for the going home scenario, then," Paul says with a shrug. "I'm not surprised about the memory wipe though. They have the power to change us however they want-- cleaning this place from our memories is probably a chump change parlor trick."

He sighs, stretches out his legs, leans back on the bench to stare at the hot sky overhead.

"Whatthefuckever."

[hasaheart]

It seems so useless. To be brought here solely for the purpose of entertaining a bunch of self proclaimed higher beings, and no matter the good that comes out of it, no matter what you learn, what progress you make from surviving the never ending crap hitting the fan...

And if/when you get to go home, you don't get to remember it. All the shit, and you don't even get to keep your memories.

Paul goes home, who knows if he'll even survive. Cain saw his bloodied shirt when he first arrived here, and that amount of blood you don't get from 'just a flesh wound'.

He goes home...and he won't even get to keep the memories.

Wyatt takes a deep breath, looks over, and pushes the dark thoughts away. Paul's got enough on his mind to have to deal with more crap.

"Anything I can do to make you feel better?"

[ voice ]

[gotcouplings.livejournal.com]

[ Unhappy mechanic is unhappy. ]

Thanks for...makin' the announcement.

[ voice ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Fucking city, huh.

[ voice ]

[gotcouplings.livejournal.com]

Couldn't've put it better if I tried. Gorram bunch of tā mā de tóu aliens.

[ voice ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure what you just said, but I'll go on context of your tone and assume it sums up my feelings too.



It's probably just as well for her she's not here. It is no goddamn place for a teenager.

[ voice ]

[gotcouplings.livejournal.com]

Can only imagine it must.

Ain't a place for anybody, at times. But it's better she's home with family than stuck here with hamsters who spend more time spillin' their coffee than actually doin' anything.

[ voice ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's that. What language were you speaking there?

[ visual ]

[cametolife]

Alexis Castle had been girl she remembered Agent Smecker suggesting she get acquainted with. Liz had kept an eye out for her on the tablets, too timid to directly approach her through the more private message systems, but hadn't seen her. She supposes this is why.

"That's good, right? She got sent back home?"

She wasn't entirely sure what happened to people when they left Taxon.

[ visual ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul shrugs. He won't sugarcoat anything just for the sake of making someone feel better; never been his style.

"Depends on if you believe that that's what happens," he answers brusquely. "It's a popular theory. The simple fact of it is that we don't know. We don't know how they bring us here, we don't know where we go when they get bored of their toys. 'Home' is the most appealing, comforting option, yes."

[ visual ]

[cametolife]

Liz appreciates a lack of sugarcoating. She can handle the truth, no matter how harsh. It's lies she hates, and she loathes the fact that keeping Max's secret makes her a hypocrite in that, but it's not safe. Sometimes lies were necessary, but one should tell the truth when they could and it didn't put people's lives on the line.

"I guess that helps people deal with the loss better," she offers. "Someone said that there were people here who've been here for close to two years. All that time and our captors haven't given us any sort of reason for being here?"

[ visual ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Not that I'm aware of," he says with a headshake. "One thing you may come to realize about this place is that we're pretty shit, pardon my French, at sharing important information with each other. So maybe someone's had a personal revelation from the aliens and hasn't bothered to make an announcement, beats me."

He runs a hand through his hair, staring out at the park a moment, before jerking himself back to the conversation.

"--which, while we're on the topic of shitty information sharing: do you know we have vampires in residence, and do you know we had zombies attack a few months ago, and a giant fu-- a giant dragon flying around? These things only seem to get told to newcomers when they're already in the f- freaking midst of a life-threatening situation."

[ visual ]

[cametolife]

"Maybe there needs to be some sort of welcoming committee, someone who has all that information on file..." Which is mostly her just talking to herself, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea. If someone had handed her a how-to guide, for lack of a better term, when she first got here, she probably would've been able to stand on her own two feet sooner rather than later.

At the mention of vampires, her eyes go wide. Zombies? Couldn't be. A dragon? And here she thought aliens were her biggest problem.

"--r-really? Those things are really here?"

[ visual ]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, it'd be a splendid idea," Paul says with a rictus grin. "You want to be the one to make it?

"The lack of information-sharing is the problem, again. People come, people go, experiences don't get recorded or shared. I think I'd been here a month before someone mentioned vampires, and that was in casual conversation.

"I've heard several times that there's a welcoming brochure in the works. I've also been here..." he has to pause, start to count to himself. "...eight months? Nine? And have yet to hear of any progress being made on it either."

He sighs, rubs at the back of his neck, then nods ruefully at her next words.

"Yes, really. So far the zombies and the dragon seem to be one-shots, but you should know that dangerous shit can and does happen here. If something dangerous happens, try and tell other people about it using the tablet, and try and get somewhere safe-- preferably with an escort."

[Visual]

[painsinger.livejournal.com]

Some of that looks almost like Lissandra's alchemical laboratory equipment, but so much of it is beyond Stefen. If Alexis could ever have made heads or tails of that, she must have been even more brilliant than she was letting on. Lissandra had always seemed that way, too, though a little more standoffish about it. She was a good Herald, certainly, and one of their best Mages (and not to mention far older than he was), so she deserved it a little, but still...

"She's gone?" He wasn't really sure how to feel about that, either. Glad on the one hand that she was able to get out and (hopefully) go back home, concerned on the other that the first friend that he had here was gone now. And how long would it be before everyone else he was just starting to get to know vanished?

"Am I supposed to say 'good luck' or 'thank the gods'?"

[Visual]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Beats the fuck out of me," Paul answers with a shrug to the words from a man he doesn't know yet.

"If you subscribe to the theory that she gets to go home with a lollipop and no memory of this place, then sure, be thankful on her behalf. Whatever floats your personal rowboat, kid."

[Visual]

[painsinger.livejournal.com]

It took a few moments longer than it really should have for Stefen to puzzle any of that out, but then, he still wasn't used to the idea of so many people from so many different places and times even. The choice of language was different, and some things, apparently, meant the opposite of what they were supposed to...

To a Bard who made his career out of knowing what words meant, this was unsettlingly confusing.

"Then Lady Bless she stay safe." It was the best he could do from here.

[Visual]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul Smecker doesn't know who 'the lady' is, but he understands ritual and religion, or something close to it, when he hears it. Before Taxon this would have gotten a smirk from him, a snide wisecrack.

Now he just nods, tiredly. "Why not? She can use whatever blessings are available, and so can we all I'm sure."

[Visual]

[painsinger.livejournal.com]

Stefen had never exactly been religious, but there always the expressions, the oaths, the wishes. He didn't know if it would help, but it could and why not try anything that might give an advantage?

"Here's to hoping that she's listening around here, then."

[Visual]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Paul sighs, and rubs at the bridge of his nose. "And any other gods who are listening. Have we met, by the way? I'm Paul Smecker, former atheist."

A little grim humor at himself there.