Page 128 of Drift

Ill. Everything about this place played so subtly with… illness.

Ava’skind of illness.

“You comin’?”

Stood next to Jan, West paused and looked down at him where the stairs split in two. The fired redness to her hair offered the same startling contrast to the otherwise white setting, but a different feel came with it, especially with the gentle smile she shared down.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m coming.”

“Actually, he’s with me for a moment.”

Drift glanced back over his shoulder. Martin stood leaning against a door that headed back towards the kitchen Jan had brought them through, and it threw him how he hadn’t heard him come into the reception hall.

“Am I now.” Drift didn’t like how that sounded like an order, not offer.

Martin glanced his way, then headed on up to Jan and whispered something in his ear. As Jan frowned at him and nodded, Martin whispered something West’s way and held out his hand.

After a moment, not looking happy, West shifted and tugged out her phone. She thumbed through it for something, then handed the phone to Martin before looking briefly down at Drift.

A touch of fingertips to West’s lips, a touch to her heart also came his way, an apology, and Drift frowned as she turned and followed Jan upstairs.

“C’mon.” As he headed back down, Martin nodded back the way he’d come. “Jan’s showing West the cinema, so, us, we’ll get… snacks.Kitchen seems a good place for that, right? These… snacks?”

Drift eyed how Martin still held West’s phone.

“Yeah,” he said stiffly. “Kitchen… snacks. Usually a good place to start.”

Martin headed back the way he’d come, and jaw tightening, Drift followed.

With a smile behind him, Jan pushed on through to the cinema suite, then held the door for West to come on through. “So.” He waited for her to head over to the Vivendi cinema reclining chairs and start to run a distracted touch over the black leather before he spoke. “This is the, well, cinema.”

West half-smiled back at him, her look too distracted, lost, and none of it centred on what ran under her touch. “I know we’ve been split up for a reason,” she said softly. “This your double-tap? You and Martin, you want to talk Drift because you’ve already seen Drift’s too used to passing through crews and giving out nothing when it comes to… Ava?”

Yeah, she was sharp, maybe a little angered with the double-tap and how Martin had taken her phone from her, leaving her no way out. Jan knew about the penned-in feeling that could come with the manor, but from what Martin had whispered in his ear, although he’d caught his and Gray’s conversation over the CCTV at the end there—it was really needed now.

Taking out his phone, he went over and offered it to her. “Biometric,” he said gently. “If you need to make a call, I’ll unlock it for you. But yeah, I’d like to talk to you, if that’s okay?” He dipped his head, searching her eyes. “Because this virus on the streets, you’ve got to know by now that whoever’s behind the Night-crawlers and Ava only targets people with disorders. So the question is… why give it to Drift?”

West didn’t say anything for a moment, then—“This… talk. Does it go both ways? Me with Drift, you with… Martin. His dad.”

Oh… Jan knew that look: it had stared back at him often enough in the mirror.

Care plans.

The need to know all family history in order to keep safe….

To keep sane.

Why did West need to keep sane around… Drift?

Giving a sniff, Drift took time to glance around the kitchen this time as he lingered back by the doorway.

The setup itself was far beyond Jackson’s normal, yet not at the same time. Despite the classy look to the rest of the manor, this place was definitely the most lived in. The large oak dining table looked like it had been carefully extracted from somewhere else and came with wear and tear that had taken decades. A photo sat out of place by the microwave, suit jacket on the back of a chair, a newspaper on the table… a deck of cards that had seen many a hand played close to it, and someone in here liked cooking. One side was dedicated to almost every appliance going: dual air fryer, both a stand and hand mixer, ice cream maker, pancake machine, and this round thing amongst others that looked like an indoor pizza oven. He hadn’t seen staffbeyond the security at the gate, and with how this felt like a personal space for Jan and Gray, it seemed that cooking wasn’t ever delegated to staff.

But whoever liked to cook, it wasn’t Martin. He stood sorting through a cupboard above the sink, then switched to the one next to it and came out with some… oven cleaner.

Drift rested against the doorframe. “You usually offer chemicals as a snack?”

Martin glanced back his way. “Not usually my style,” he said softly. “Watch out for Light, though. Could make napalm out of bone dust, that kid.” A wink. It looked like he pissed around, yet didn’t at the same time, and that only made Drift shift more uneasily.

---