Inks
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Word Count [1700]
His workshop stood dark, lit only by the twin moons and a streetlamp some ways down the street, when Perseus returned. He stared up at the building with apprehension. He felt a bit at a loss, but his thoughts churned, churned, churned. PIA was in pieces in a rucksack slung over his shoulder.
His wrist still ached, where he’d struggled against the woman interrogator's grip. Bruising. Or his imagination. He’d had to check his hand, occasionally, on the way home – it almost felt like the interrogator was still holding on. He could feel the phantoms of her cold fingers, her steely grip, even now.
He’d had a long, cold walk to think on his encounter with the woman. Her questions, his answers, the implications of both. He didn’t know what she’d wanted. He didn’t know what she was. It left an unpleasant chill in the back of his mind.
Perseus looked up and down the narrow, cobblestone street. Quiet. Empty. Even bundled in thick, fur-lined layers, his face burrowed into the thick weave of his scarf, he felt half-frozen. It was that sort of night – brittle and cold, with snow glittering on the rooftops and stamped into a brown slurry down on the street level. The sort of night he wasn’t used to, even now. He came from a place of palm trees and sunny beaches, humid rain and cool, clear waters.
He shivered and hurried to his door. The handle held fast when he made to turn it. Locked.
...Locked?
Oh. Yes. The oculus. He’d – forgotten. Why had he forgotten? Pers chewed on his bottom lip while he dug his key out of a breast pocket. This was the first time he’d needed it since he’d taken residence here; usually, the door remained unlocked. Nevertheless, the key sank cleanly into the lock, and the door came open with a click.
Pers stepped inside, pushed the door shut behind him, and leaned against it, fingers tight around the doorknob. Despite himself, he locked the door and pocketed the key again.
He exhaled a breath he shouldn’t have been holding while he waited for his eyes to adjust to the thick shadows crowding the workshop floor. Then he went around, lighting the oil lanterns hanging over his ground floor workstations. Only once every one was lit did some of the tension ease from his shoulders. Lost in thought, he moved over to the cluster of engineering tables opposite the shop’s front door. He swept a jumble of cables and wires to one side and dropped the rucksack containing PIA’s disassembled parts in the newly-cleared space.
Then he dropped himself onto the nearest stool.
His mind was full of wild, disconnected thoughts – Leidan Halbert, his broken drone, the unpowered oculus, the interrogation, Prenditus – each scrabbling for dominance. He couldn’t focus like this. He needed to...prioritize.
One thing at a time.
First, his workshop was cold. The large, ground-floor forge tucked over by his smithing tables and anvil served two purposes, generally: heating metal and heating Pers’ living space. It was doing neither at the moment. Perseus had many things to do, some of which he couldn’t do while shivering, or with cold-numbed fingers.
The artisan stood, and, with a small sigh, crossed over to the hearth.
Stirring a fire to life didn’t take much. Pers stocked alchemical stones designed to heat flames to temperatures suitable for forging metal. The same fire-starters placed atop a pile of charcoal rocks, plus some tinder from the crate tucked under one of his smithy work benches, and the fire all but started itself. He stood in front of the hearth for a few minutes once the fire was burning, shedding his thicker outer layers. His hat, his scarf, his coat. His gloves, after a moment of hesitation. He flexed his fingers in front of the flames, let the heat work some feeling back into them.
He caught himself staring at his wrist. Stark red marks had started to form where the woman’s fingers had been, although he wasn’t sure if he was surprised they were there, or surprised they weren’t more distinct. They were just...marks. Nothing out of the ordinary. His stomach twisted.
Perseus tugged his sleeve down over the forming bruises and made his way back to his engineering table. He was...curious...about the oculus Leidan Halbert had left, and had quite a lot of thinking to do regarding the man himself, but right now he wanted something familiar to busy his hands with.
He’d been in too much distress, too much of a hurry, to put PIA back in working order after...everything that had happened. In his rush, he’d shoved the disassembled drone into a bag (one of the Conexus officers had given it to him) without any care for the delicate circuitry and wiring that, outside of its housing, was unlikely to have survived the journey home.
Well. It was fine. He’d wanted to do some work on it, anyway, and this would give him something to do while he...processed...everything.
Pers dragged a stool over to the engineering bench and sat down. He started extracting his drone, now in at least a dozen pieces, from the bag with deliberate, careful fingers -- not that it did a lot of good. Once the drone was spread across the table's surface in its entirety, he took stock. He chewed on a thumbnail as he did; an old habit that reared its head when he was feeling...frustrated.
As he'd suspected, some of the parts were unsalvageable. More than a few of the thin, delicate wires had broken in his hurry to get away from the Conexus headquarters, and most of the wiring connecting the drone's sensors to the main housing was damaged beyond any hope of repair. The drone's sensory interface, stored on a complex circuit board, seemed fine, but he'd need to get a look at it under magnification to be sure.
Inside the protective dome of PIA's casing, the outlook was less bleak. Most of the internal mechanisms were intact, meaning Perseus would be able to use them when he rebuilt the drone. First he’d need to finish taking it apart, though.
Pers reached over to grab a pair of precision-work tweezers and a set of magnifying lens, and hesitated halfway.
Unbidden, the memory of that woman leaning over him, pinning him to the interrogation table, hovering behind him, seizing his wrist, bubbled up. He glanced up at the oil lantern overhead, blinked at its warm, steady glow, and thought of a bare bulb shining in his face. His stomach twisted again.
Even if PIA had been online and functioning at the time, it wouldn't have done him any good. The drone’s functions were entirely surveillance-oriented. He’d never felt like he had, back in that interrogation room. Unprepared.
Helpless.
Pers finished collecting the tools he'd need to assess the extent of the drone's damage and finish taking it apart. Expression pensive, he set them all in neat rows off to one side.
Maybe he'd build a new drone, rather than reconstructing PIA. One with a turret.
His hands took up their work, steadier than he'd expected them to be. His hands remembered what to do even when his thoughts were troubled, at least. Pers began taking PIA apart, detaching wires and sensor units, unscrewing circuit boards and processing units, setting the pieces in piles – usable, unusable, uncertain.
The woman had said – had suggested – had insinuated that Leidan Halbert had gotten into trouble he had not anticipated. Was possibly in danger. Serious danger? What was it she had said?
"You think you actually can."
Pers’ brow furrowed, and his hand stilled over a wire.
Somehow, it bothered him. It was... It was the twitch of his fingers when he passed by a smithy and saw a blade with a finish he didn’t recognize. It was the itch on the back of his neck when his mother looked upon his earliest attempts at an enchanting circle. It was – it was just so – frustrating.
Perseus set his tools down and stood. His hands had started to chill again – his furnace was across the room, after all, and had a lot of space to heat. But when he moved, it wasn’t towards the crackling flames on the other side of his work floor. Instead, he stopped in front of his blueprinting table, currently taken up by a large brass box and several diode-like tubes.
The box was an oculus – a rather rare engineering item used to project series' of recorded images on a screen. Several tubes along the box seemed to be housing units for providing a flow of power to the oculus – he’d need terra regia volantis for that. On the other side of the box was an empty port; the diodes that had been secreted away with the oculus seemed like a perfect fit.
Leidan Halbert had left these things behind; likely to serve as clues to his location. He’d expected Perseus(and those other people) to find them. He’d expected them to find him. He’d expected them to help him.
Perseus wasn’t sure how much use the oculus would be; after all, he already had...some idea of where Leidan Halbert must be. But he’d power it and attach the diodes, regardless. If the images contained on those tubes could help, it was worth checking.
Pers turned again, and this time did make his way back to the comforting heat of the fire. He stared into the flames, gaze distant and unfocused. He bit down on his thumbnail again, thinking.
Thinking.
He had a lot of work to do.
.