EXSILIUM - contact.

[hostage]

UNIT№409



_“ Hey, it's me. Wait for the thing. _”

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[payback]

[A blank pause.]

I want to know exactly what you did and everything it entails and if you're planning on keeping it up here and if not why were you worried about Edgeworth or are you.

[To start.]

[hostage]

[Now he picks his head up and looks back over at Rin.]

What, seriously?

[payback]

Yeah! I'm always serious!

[hostage]

Now? You want me to give you my whole comic book villain speech right now?

[payback]

Why not?

[hostage]

I'm sick! Did you like not notice?

[payback]

Oh, sore throat?

[hostage]

Withdrawal. That asshole wouldn't take anything.

[payback]

Why can't you just take some now?

[hostage]

[He puts his head down again and mumbles something.]

[payback]

[She comes over and with few qualms gives him a hard jab in the ribs.]

Speak up.

[hostage]

I said I'm trying to stay clean.

[payback]

Oh.

Well, that's good.

[hostage]

[It won't work. He knows that. That's half the reason he goes back to hiding his face.]

[payback]

Hey, wait a second... didn't you tell me you could cut it off whenever you wanted?

[hostage]

Yeah, I can.

[payback]

Mmm. [Suspicious, but she at least relents this much. Though she kind of has nothing to say. The silence weighs for a second and then weighs less. She's okay with letting it drag a little.]

[hostage]

What?

[Say what you mean, Rin!!!]

[payback]

How many lies have you told? Or just glossed over? [Let's not talk about how many things she cheerfully glosses over herself]

[hostage]

I'm not lying.

[But this is important, so he picks himself up and stands up straight. Much as his muscles are screaming for him to lie down and rest, he needs to face her and be taken seriously for once.]

The drugs just help me deal, okay, with all this shit. I ain't like all you people here. Most my life, all I had to worry about was paying my electricity bills and whether I wanted to pick up McDonald's or pizza for dinner. Then things got all screwed up and now people wanna kill me and I'm a thousand years in the future with a bunch of superheroes and aliens. You know what that makes me wanna do? It makes me wanna hide under my bed and never come out. I woke up this morning and I couldn't even tell myself what was the point in keeping on breathing. And I reminded myself there's people who love me and I gotta breathe for them. But guess what - I didn't have those people before. I didn't have 'em for the longest time. Alls I had was the meth. So that's why I made it, that's why I had it on me that time you jumped me, that's why I kept taking it every day.

I can stop. I have stopped, and I'll do it again. But I never said it was easy. I'm sick with it and I'm sick without it. There's just a whole lot of bouncing between what kind of sick I feel like being. The meth makes me a little crazy - I know you saw it. I know. Now you're gonna see me down instead, and you and your buddy Edgeworth can laugh about how pathetic I am.

[He shakes his head, pacing around.]

And now you wanna know... You wanna know what I did? I did this. I got thousands of customers addicted just like this. Yeah, I'm still doing it. Edgeworth knows it, too. I told him all about it. Hell, I said it in court. 'cause there ain't no laws against it, and cooking's all I know. The meth is all I know. That's it. So as long as there ain't no law stopping me, that's what I got to give this place. Somebody wants the product, I provide it. Edgeworth don't like it, he can kiss my ass. I told him so.

So am I worried about him? Well, I know he hates my guts. I mean, people are asking for poison and I'm selling it to 'em, so he thinks that's as good as me going around killing people. Did I shoot that guy down in the red light district? No. But he thinks I did, and he thinks I got away with it like I'm getting away with slinging crystal, and he wants to string me up 'cause of it. He told me as much.

But am I worried? You're thinking, like, am I gonna get to him first, right? Am I gonna get him before he gets me?

[Jesse shakes his head again, emphatically.]

I know I deserve what he wants to give me. I know if everything's right in the world, my place is hanged up by a noose somewhere. I ain't worried about the day God comes and sends me to hell. It just ain't time yet. Edgeworth's got his work cut out for him. And me, I still got people I'm supposed to keep breathing for.

[payback]

[She does listen to all this. Staring at him with that bald evaluating look that shouldn't seem strange coming from her; he ought to have got it before, everyone does. Whether or not she judges him repulsive or heroic for that doesn't even really show. It's just like she put the look on her face and then left it, forgot about it.

She hardly has a speech to equal his. Not at all, in any way.]

So what's your plan then? What are you going to do now? Are you going to stop? There's tons of people here. Learn to do something else!

[hostage]

[Of course she doesn't have a speech like his. It's easy to ask questions. A lot harder to answer them. He throws his hands up.]

I don't know! I don't have a plan. What else am I supposed to do? Build shit? Bake cookies? I mean, I do all that stuff, but that's not what the Initiative brought me here for. I'm good in the lab. That's where they want me.

[payback]

... If this stuff is so bad then why?

[hostage]

[Jesse glances around for a second. It's a funny habit, something stuck with him. He's looking for cameras, and he lowers his voice as he steps forward, like he expects the place to be bugged.]

It's not bad. It's not all bad, I mean. There's some things it's good for. I mean, I don't know... Maybe the Initiative's not even thinking like that. Maybe they just like it the way I do. But armies in my world used to use it.

[payback]

Mm...

[Oh, Initiative. You are so skeezy and sleazy and utterly not on the level sometimes, it's no wonder no one trusts you. Rin ducks her head, pinches her lower lip between thumb and forefinger a little, a thinking habit that developed who-knows-where. Then she glances back up at Jesse again and just watches him. She says nothing, waits instead to see if he'll fill up the silence.]