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 A flash of gold light faded from the car interior, leaving the man before Jess looking deflated. Arthur Centino sighed from the middle of their assorted collection of debris. The robotic hand had been the best find, but the rest was a scattering of battered and pulverized office equipment. A burned and bent USB. What must have once been a coffee cup handle. The ripped remnants of some sort of high end fabric. A crushed taser with teeth marks. What might have been pink parasol made of steel. Everything coated in a sickly looking layer of concrete dust. The man shook his head and clenched the one leather glove he had removed in a white knuckled grip. He'd offered very little explanation to his conspirator, so Jess had the lunchtime entertainment of watching the blond cautiously touch all of their finds one by one. He'd been hesitant, almost reluctant, at first, but had increased in speed and resolve with each new item. Whatever had happened, it wasn't a victory. Jessica, somewhat bemused, watched Arthur, her eyebrows coming together as he clutched the glove. She finally broke the silence they'd been sitting in. "Listen, I know you're into some hippie shit because I have literally seen you drink kombucha, but what the fuck are you doing?" Despite the actual words, this was offered almost gently, perhaps to interrupt something she felt was becoming too intense. Arthur responded with a slow blink, as if clearing clouds from his mind. It took him a moment to refocus. Jess received a soft laugh as Arthur visibly unclenched, coming back to his usual ease. "You know, I'd never thought about what this all looks like from the outside." Another laugh. Watching Arthur reorient himself had deepened Jessica's frown to something more along the lines of concerned and dubious. "What what looks like?" she asked, a little pointedly - a person who did not enjoy feeling like she was missing the point. "Oh," he said with a self-critical shake of his head. "Right. I've got psychometry plus the luck." Jessica closed her eyes and vented a breath through her nose. "Please pretend some of us don't have every mutant power indexed in our heads." Arthur wiggled his fingers. "I can see memories on objects," his look drifted to somewhere else as he explained, "the past, sometimes the future. Just the strong stuff, really, like how I now know what it feels like to be attacked by a cougar." "Fucking Sharon," Jessica muttered as her brain processed - the other thing. "Memories on objects. That sounds - inconvenient." She slid a glance toward him, down to the glove in his hands, her expression shuttered. "See anything useful?" Another sigh through clenched teeth. "Just panic and fear, and only a handful of imprints. I was hoping for more." "I figured." Jess lifted a shoulder, but her disappointment showed anyway, in the twist of her mouth and the way she looked back down at her own hands. "I figured. Considering the level of that demolition and the organization it'd take to kidnap more than a dozen kids." |
