受信箱

[newpest]

武 Лев Ковач

VIDEO | AUDIO | DISCO

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[bcpd]

When she taps lightly at the door with the toe of her boot, it's because she's arrived with full hands: two hastily covered plates of the first food she saw on the buffet line in the dining hall. Whatever else might be true, Kovacs' demand for sustenance came at a decent time.

[newpest]

Kovacs kicks the door back before he opens it, old habit born of living in a neighborhood squirming with skulljump streetpunks and sticky-fingered kobun. It's Ortega, though, it has to be Ortega.

Fuck, she looks amazing.

He focuses on the food. She's right, if she thinks he's trying to avoid the dining hall, the dinner crowds, the smiling cooks and scent of sizzling meat. Fuck, he hates that place sometimes. Mostly when he's not there, and doesn't want to return.

He gestures to a straw mat near the door. "Shoes off." He's in socks, thanks for noticing.

[bcpd]

She looks slightly less pissed off than she was twenty minutes ago, her hair falling out of a messy ponytail, a plate in each hand. And she's trying not to let herself do more than glance up his face for a moment or two. Did he come in with new scars, the same way she did, or did his wounds stay open? (Something with the Reaper, maybe, but the cut in her hand left a thin, raised line, slicing through all the natural wrinkles in her palm.)

"Here." The boots are staying on until he takes the plates so she can unlace them. And while she does, she takes a look around the room. "Just the one room?"

[newpest]

He takes the plates, setting them on the little shokutaku table in his apartment. He sits easily on one of the pillows on the floor.

"Yeah, inmates got it rough," he says, poking at the food. "You got a palace?"

audio

[classifieds]

Hey. Can we talk for a moment? It's about the breach. There's something I need to get off my chest.

[ She's exasperated because she does not want to talk about feelings, and she's pretty sure he doesn't want to talk about them either, and they had a nice little thing going where they just pretended nothing happened. But after her talk with Iris, she feels like she has to. ]

[newpest]

I'm here.

[Encouraging, Kovacs.]

[classifieds]

So, that whole thing was fucked up, right? I've told a few people that now and they look at me like I'm insane. Like being given a completely different life and different family with different memories is just a normal thing and I'm the weirdo for questioning it.

text.

[bcpd]

cabin 404.

[newpest]

[The knock to her door later is with enough quickness that he probably power walked all the way there.]

[bcpd]

[ The door doesn't look like the one to her apartment in Bay City, and the decor inside doesn't match, either - even if it's similar. ]

Hey. Come in. You want anything to drink?

[ You know, because Kristin Ortega's a model hostess. She's in the closest she gets to civilian clothes these days: her work clothes, minus the blazer. ]

Post Fly Incident

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess slides the door closed behind her with a snap, and she lets go of Kovacs’ arm just to stand there, waiting to see if Ortega will try anything. She stays there, watching the shadow leave from the other side of the screen, geared up for a fight she probably wouldn’t win.

That first second where the threat has passed is for breathing again, and then she turns her head to him. Practically inventories him — this man whose body isn’t his own, this man plastered all over the network. She’s not sure what edge she’s on but it feels like a lot of them at once.

“She’s a piece of work,” she says.

There’s concern there, even if sounds more like a what the fuck?

a charming name for it.

[newpest]

The thing is, this isn't the worst he's been hit. Bancroft practically putting a leash and collar on him, that was worse. The Wei Clinic, that was far worse. This is...

He is quiet, retreating into himself. Anger is movement, but everything else gets pulled in backward, hidden between the songspire branches. Dead noise of a dying race.

"Not always like this," he murmurs under his breath, before toeing off his shoes on the little mat by the door. There isn't much to his cabin, but he seems comfortable with it, sitting on the floor before the table. The angles of his long legs point up and out; he doesn't bother to sit respectfully. She wouldn't notice.

A long exhale.

[dog_eat_dog]

Every angry man is the same at first glance, but they all pull back differently. There's the get the fuck out and the I just want to be alone and the it's fine and the this is your fault, and Kovacs being quiet and making excuses feels new in a way that the others would have her running for the hills. Tess lingers at the door for a second and then nudges her own boots off, a thing she has not done in ages unless she was going to bed. She doesn't take her eyes off him. He seems much too big for the room. Out of place.

Makes sense now, though.

She joins him, sitting kitty-corner at the table, legs folded under her on the floor.

"As in she's worse right now, or she's better?"

Audio

[hiddenblade]

[It feels raw to do this mere days after Larry's passing, but he is nothing if not committed to his duties. He does his due diligence, skimming the network for a better impression of the man than his willingness to take out his cock when offended. He finds enough to assemble a picture broader than the one Ortega had painted, but not by much.

The file will wait, at least until they have met.

His voice comes smooth and serious, and heavily accented.]

Salute, Takeshi Kovacs. [Not bad, for a first try.] I am Ezio Auditore. I hope you have seen the network?

[newpest]

Eigo ga hanasenai. Terorisuto tada no.

[hiddenblade]

[A snort. He can pick exactly one word out of that, and it's only because it sounds similar enough that he can pick it out.]

Terrorista? I did not get that impression. Perhaps we could talk about it.

text

[classifieds]

Just giving you a heads-up, I hear your new warden is a real hardass. Be careful.

[newpest]

what have you heard?

[classifieds]

He locked an associate of mine in Zero over basically nothing. Some wardens seem pretty permissive, but not this guy.

[bcpd]

Kovacs?

[newpest]

[The muffled sound of sheets moving as he searches for his phone.]

Yeah?

[bcpd]

[ Steadfastly ignoring the little rustling sounds: ]

You've been on breakfast duty, right? What does the pantry look like?

[hiddenblade]

The absence of any real sense of time on a space ship suits Ezio, a man who has never kept a consistent schedule in his life. As long as he shows up for meals, anything is fine. The body gets as much rest as it pleases, the mind amuses itself with having something to do at all hours. For the first two weeks with Kovacs, it's nice to commit to that irreverent schedule again, having lost the need to show up to cover Larry's breakfast shifts and greenhouse afternoons.

But when two weeks are up, they're gone. There is work to do.

He's waiting for Kovacs by the kitchen door at the end of the breakfast shift, dressed in leathers. Not that they look all that different from his fineries to the untrained eye, but these will do for sport.

[newpest]

Sadly(?), this is one of the (many) days where Kovacs doesn't show up for work. Ezio's warden item will show Kovacs is in his cabin.

[hiddenblade]

Of course. Serves him right, he supposes, for being lenient about checking.

Ezio glances at his hidden blade, seeing invisible words glowing in its casing, and then heads to Kovacs' room, where he knocks with firm purpose.