The Right Thing to Do

[Nox]

Nox had stood in the study for a while after Elyse left. He hadn't felt Dorian touch his arm and when he looked at the other man he saw concern. Nox shook it away and put on a happy smile. "Let's go.
The smile covered the confusion on the inside. He'd lied to himself for so any years. Was he lying to himself now to make things look right with what happened with Jay.

His memories conflicted with the modified ones he'd always told himself. He did remember his sister though, her smile when he told her about his night after the concert. That smile was real. He knew it because he rarely saw it. They didn't have a happy life after their mother had died.

Dorian drove to the precinct. He was oddly quiet. He didn't say anything, Nox didn't say anything. It was a good thing. Inside the passenger seat Nox knew his smile had faded to reflect his dour mood. But once it stopped he put on his smile and stepped out. "Let's get this over with."


Dorian looked at him and frowned. "This isn't some joke Nox."


Nox laughed. "Sure it is, Dorian. I'm about to turn myself in to the human police for killing a monster they will undoubtedly tell me was human. And if I'm right, others are dead too and I'm going to get the blame for it. Which is why you just paled right now. Cause I'm right. I'm taking the fall for the Atharim. Best fucking joke in the world."
Nox grinned at Dorian but there was heat in his eyes. Not only was he Atharim, he was a god. And now the whole world was going to know. Teach him right for saving people. Nox sighed and lead Dorian into the building.

Once inside Nox had every intention of stepping up to the front desk and saying 'I need to confess a murder.' but Dorian took his arm and tugged him away from that desk and down into a different hall.

Somewhere in the back/basement somewhere in the bowels of the precinct building Dorian put him in a small room with a metal table, two chairs, all of which were bolted to the floor. There was a two way mirror against the wall facing Nox, when he sat down farthest from the door. There was a camera in the corner opposite the door. "I'm going to go get someone else, since I know you."
Dorian said as he slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

Nox sighed. Dorian didn't want to be the one to question him. He didn't blame him, but Nox had seen enough television to know how this went. Dorian hadn't cuffed him to the table, which was obviously something they could do. Not that their piddly handcuffs would stop Nox if he truly wanted to make a mess of things. Which he didn't. Nox waited patiently for someone to join him in his own private hell. It's not like he didn't have plenty of things to think about with his jumbled memories, the nights activities with Jay, Sage's come on, his utter failure as a boyfriend. There was plenty to think about.


Edited by Nox, Apr 27 2017, 04:14 PM.

[Dorian]

Dorian went in search of the Cap. Or Ivan, Alex would do too. Any of those three to sit down and coax the truth out of Nox. He knew the story. He knew the truth. He knew what Nox would keep from the police. He brought Nox in because it was the right thing to do for his career. The boy seemed upset about taking the fall for the Atharim, but he had a lot of other things on his mind as well... Dorian couldn't even begin to imagine.

Dorian found Alex in her office and waggled a finger at her to follow. "I have a guy I need you to read."
He smiled and took her to the room off the interogation room and pointed inside. "He's a suspect in an investigation. I want to see if the Cap or Ivan or someone wants to question him, since he's a friend of Cruz'"
It wasn't exactly a lie. He and Cruz were friends.

[Alex]

Dorian pulled Alex into one of their interrogation rooms. Once Alex looked in the room she immediately recognized the boy. He was one of Sebastian's friends from the first night they'd met. Alex pointed at the boy on the other side of the window. "He's a channeler. I've seen him before."


Dorian looked at her with a feigned smile. "I know."
That was all Dorian said as he walked out of the room in search of the cap or someone to interrogate this boy - this channeler. Alex didn't like the idea that this boy would do what Dane Greogry could. They both seemed innocent enough, but the destruction Bas had rained down of Ivan. She didn't want to have to deal with this all over again.

Alex readied a sedative from her bag in her office and found herself opening the interrogation room. The boy didn't even look up from his contemplative state staring at his hands. Alex hated doing it, but she opened herself to his feelings. Loss, sadness, hurt, confusion, relief. There was no feeling of remorse, if he was here to confess he wasn't feeling guilty for murdering an innocent life. That set Alex's blood to boiling.

Alex approached with the needle out and was about to say something when he looked up. There was a flair of panic and fear before he was gone from her sense. The chair he had been sitting in was the only thing that had kept him from scrambling away from her. He would have tipped it over if it weren't bolted to the ground instead of being tangled in the metal bars of the table and legs. He was clearly panicking trying to get away. Alex tried to get closer to him but there was a solid wall in front of her...

Alex ran her fingers along the smooth surface and wondered what he was doing. He could have flung her across the room like Dane. Yet he only kept her away from him. "Calm down. I'm not going to hurt you."



Edited by Alex, Apr 28 2017, 11:25 AM.

[Ivan Sarkozy]

Vanya threw the cold water in his face to try to wake himself up. Or at least to get his face to wake up. His head pounded. Not from too much booze, though there had been some of that. Well, maybe a bit more than that. He knocked off late and Sergei had called and a drink at the club had turned into more than he bargained for.

Maybe he was looking to run away. Or bury himself. To relax and pretend the world hadn't just exploded. For at least a moment anyway, jeez, thanks mom for all the nagging! Anyway. Where was he? Oh yeah. Head hurt driving to work. Trying to figure out where the fuck everything was supposed to go now that channelers (and isn't that such a great word. 'Oooooh.....look! We're channeling dead people! Or some mysterious power!!!.' Whoever the genius was who came up with that term was a first grade moron. Way to emphasize our differences, tardo!!! Channelers. Fuckign joke.) ANYWAY, where was he again? Oh yeah. Driving to work. Head hurts. Doesn't like the term channelers. Gotcha. Back to reality.

So he gets to work and gets all sitimitiated when it's clear that something big is up. Vega is practically up his ass with info. To be fair. He is his partner. But that pounding in his head...fuck!!! Anyway. His words only make the pain more. Good? Bad? Ivan doesn't know anymore. He knows that he has a job to do.

So he finds himself walking in to the interrogation room with Dr. Pirozzi (Alex to her friends) and Nox, of house Nox. For a moment he smiled at Alex and couldn't help the feelings of lust that washed through. Not like it was his fault. She was hot on a level that most women would never imagine. And he was irritated at Zo. Had up and disappeared in one of her environmental causes without so much as a call. A spike of anger flashed. More than a spike. He missed her deeply. And so he Alex only drew his attention.

The other person- Nox, only drew his attention because he was clear scared. There was a syringe and Alex was trying to calm him down. The room emanated the power and a wall was clearly in place. Ivan swallowed his headache and lust down and tried to go for the calm.

"Hey. Hold On! Calm down. Nox. I'm on your side. It's me! No one is gonna hurt you."
He purposely did not start to....channel. To show he was serious.

[Nox]

Nox sat lost in his thoughts, trying to unscramble the truth from the lies he told himself. He was getting no where. The countless memories that flooded in that countered everything he'd thought of himself. It wasn't just a one off thing. Had he been noticing boys as a kid? Why had Aurora kept quiet? Surely she'd have loved the fodder? But he was distracted when his wallet beeped. A message for Jay. He was hesitant to read it. But he did look at it.

His reply was sent quickly. Nox didn't think Jay would go back to Dorian's but he offered it none-the-less. But the tunnels would work, and would be safer than even Dorian's place. There was no risk to burning down Dorian's house there.

Nox closed his eyes and was about to drift into his memories again when Jay's second text went off. Jay didn't live in Moscow, he was an American, and he'd just come from Africa. Of course he knew nothing of the tunnels. Nox sent Jay the mapping software for his wallet, so he could use the map he'd made of the first level plus street level. He'd find the entrances and could do with it what he wanted.

Nox didn't get a chance to drift back into his memories, as a woman with brown hair, and green eyes walked in. They were so close to Aria's that he almost smiled but he saw what was in her hand and the panic that came when there were needles around set in. Nox's first instinct was to throw up a wall to stop her progression, and then flee. The fucking chair didn't move when he jumped back and there was likely going to be a several bruises on his body because of it.

Panic makes you do stupid things and getting tangled in the immovable objects that were legs and chairs was pretty stupid. A second body entered the room, and Nox found it was a familiar face, and he was trying to calm him down. "I don't care how fucking dangerous you think I am, you won't stick me with that."
Nox took several deep breathes and put his hands on the arms of the chair in a death grip, he was going to calm down. "I could have flung it from your hands, boiled the contents and burst the container. I could do any number of things to you or it that I wanted. I threw up a wall. My first instinct."


The woman sighed. "You are here to confess to a murder you committed. Or is Dorian lying and you are wasting our time?"


Nox shook his head. "I didn't murder anyone. I did my job."
Nox pulled up the sleeve of his left arm. "I am Atharim. One of those hunters the Ascendancy mentioned."
He said the words and let it sink in.... he was a god AND Atharim. No matter how calm he might be speaking now, his body was tense and fear coursed through his body and the wall stood in place.

[Alex]

The rage in which the word Atharim made Alex pound against the wall of air without thinking what emotions it conveyed. "You people killed my sister. You hunt my father and he's missing. My brother went looking for him and can't find him. What the fuck did you do him?"


Alex opened up her sheilds and found nothing with the boy, he was still doing something with that power. She was helpless against it's power, she couldn't read him, she couldn't sedate him. She could do nothing... So Alex did the only thing she could, she pushed the sedative into Ivan's capable hands. "I will not listen to the lies he will speak. He's worse than a criminal - there is no telling how many of his own people he's killed just to hide what he is."
Alex stormed out of the room and knew her job might be on the line. But she wouldn't sit by while they had an Atharim in their custody. He needed to hang for the atrocities of his kind.

[Ivan Sarkozy]

Alex's voice was a knife that cut through his had, making it pound all the more. More than that, though, he felt shock. He'd never seen Alex lose it like this. She was pounding on the that wall Nox had made.

And then, before he could stop her, her words actually penetrated and made sense to him. Atharim had killed her family. It all made sense. And suddenly she was thrusting something at him and stalking out. He was looking at the closing door. The storm had left him stunned.

He looked down at his hands and saw a syringe and frowned for a moment before remember what it was for. His stomach was a little queasy and not simply from the hangover he was nursing. No. Drugs to keep someone sedated enough to keep them from channeling (stupid word!). No, he didn't like that....but then again, what could they do? Until they found a way to stop channelers (rolling eyes, now) from doing something dangerous with their power, their hands were tied.

Still, he knew he didn't need it with Nox. He put the syringe down on the table but didn't let it go completely as he sat down. Idly he rolled it back and forth. He'd known Nox was Atharim- knew what that meant. But it was different now. Or at least felt different. The difference between hearing of a crash that killed someone versus actually dealing the with the family who lost a loved one. It hit closer to home.

[color=light blue]"I know you didn't kill Alex's family."[/color] He did, mostly. He was pretty good at reading people and Nox definitely came across as exactly what he seemed- conflicted and impulsive at the moment. Course it could be an act. People did that. Still, on the whole, he was sure. "But your...people did."
Dorian's people too. This working with Atharim was going to change everything.

"Sit sit. I'm not gonna get a crick in my neck staring up at you. No one is gonna stick you with this. So relax."
First calm the situation down before you begin going in the direction you want. Rapport. Trust. Empathy. All standard tools to get the person talking with their defenses down.

Except that from what Vega told him, this was and wasn't a crime. A man was dead, yes. But he was more than a man. Or less. (This was so fubar'ed it was ridiculous. The department really needed to start defining these things. What was a crime and what was self-defense? The law makers were going to be up to their armpits figuring all this out.) And there were two victims, both murdered.

His voice was calm and his smile friendly. "Just relax. Tell me what happened."

[Nox]

The woman... no Aria's sister, that's why she was looking for her father - he was dead. Aria killed him. Fuck! I'm so screwed. She left in a huff, leaving Nox alone with Ivan. He wasn't sure this was any better an idea than Dorian questioning him. At least with Dorian he knew where he stood, with Ivan, he looked all cop and didn't understand their world. That was why Dorian chose him, that and the fact that he could subdue Nox he was certain of that.

But the problem was, Ivan was a baby compared to him, he'd just learned how to touch the fucking power, he couldn't out think Nox. Nox knew it was a lot ego talking but he'd shown him how to do what he did, he didn't know anything.

Nox sighed and sat down but his eyes never left the syringe sitting on the table while Ivan idly played with it. He dropped the power and the wall fell with a silent pop as it vanished from the room. "I went to the Methos concert with two friends. Sage and Dorian's son, Cruz. The girls all stayed home."
Maybe if they hadn't Nox wouldn't have hooked up with Jay later that night, fuck this was a mess!

"Inside I looked up and saw all the weaves that the boy was using to make the Aurora Borealis on the ceiling. It was pretty. We sat down in our seats. I'd seen a strange guy outside, dead eyes he was stalking a teenage girl. I didn't think anything of it, strange people all the time. But when we sat down she was a few rows in front and he was watching her. Then the lights went out but the music kept playing just as loud as it had been. That was when I noticed that there was a chill of a female wielding the power somewhere. But I didn't have time to think about anything there was a scream from the general vicinity of the teenage girl. Me and the guy next to me went to check it out. We stumbled over her bodyguard, his head was at a weird angle. But I knew he was dead I didn't even check and kept moving towards the red head I'd seen outside. I saw he held the girl and I got in front of him to distract him. The other guy was behind it. I taunted it. The girl was flung to the side with a huge chunk taken out of her neck and blood was everywhere. It came at me. I used a weave of air and shived it from the base of it's chin to it's head. It collapsed on me. At some point in our rough and tumble it grabbed me and left a bruise. But it fell and the other guy tugged it off me and then he took off with the girl back behind the stage. Didn't need the girl being accosted while she was bleeding like that I gave him the address of the nearest urgent care clinic and that's where I assumed they went. I cut off the head of the strzyga. I needed to separate the two and I was going to take it with me but the police showed up and I needed a distraction. So I wove a box of air and lit the body on fire and then lit the head and threw it so I didn't have to stick around so I didn't have to do this. It was a messy job, but I had to get out so I didn't get pinned with the two murders of the gods. Yet here I am doing the right thing because Dorian knows I killed the one in the audience. I didn't kill the other two. I took off through the back of the stage and once I was out I pulled the earth up in front of the door so no one could follow me through the door. Then I went home to Dorian's. Slept in the basement."

[Ivan Sarkozy]

Ivan listened to Nox's account even as he tucked away little pieces of information for later. Female channelers give off a chill? A strzyga? Why did the head have to come off? All questions he wanted answers to.

The story made sense but he still had to do his job. Except that the rules were all jacked up now. Still, he put the syringe down off to the side of the table. Nox was clearly worried about it and it had done its job. "Ok. So, self defense. The....strzyga? It had the girl and killed her and came at you. Did it kill the other...gods?"
It felt weird to say that. Wrong. "The other channelers? Could the girl channel?"


He hoped it was the creature. Hoped, and yet somehow he doubted it. Too coincidental that both- maybe even three- victims were channelers. These Atharim were a problem. He needed to talk to the Cap. Or better yet Drayson. Might as well go for the hat-trick and see if Ascendancy will see me. It wasn't a bad idea. They needed a protocol for dealing with these Atharim.

He just hoped that he wouldn't get fobbed off on that prick DuBois. Hoped...but doubted it wouldn't happen.

[Nox]

Nox sighed. "No. It didn't kill the girl. It threw the girl to the side when I taunted it. She is safe and sound to my knowledge. The guy who tried to help took her out the back. I told him to take her to an urgent care clinic two bridges up from the concert hall."


This was ridiculous. "The strzyga was in the audience before the lights and sound went out. How could it kill the reborn gods with Methos if it was up front and they were likely back stage?"
I wasn't going to use the idiodic term.

Nox leaned back in the chair, his eyes still on the syringe. "Look. I'm not an idiot and what I'm about to say is going to make things worse for me. But what the fuck. If I were going to do this. If I really wanted to kill two gods in the middle of a concert this is what I'd do. I'd set off small charge that blew the main power, and the secondary power at the same time. We work best under cover of dark. We work in the shadows. I'd have two men. They'd go out near simultaneously as the lights died. But it didn't quite go down like that. The man died, then the woman died. I killed the strzyga out front after both had stopped already. The creature didn't attack until after the man's light show went out. Then the sound went out and you could hear her scream. I was here to see Methos with my friends. I didn't want to be swept up in this shit."


Nox remembered the last question. "To my knowledge the girl the strzyga had couldn't channel. They don't eat gods. I could tell you something that does. Scares the fuck out of me."