Well, you're where you should be all the time...

[sarkraticmethod]

If someone were to find themself walking along the length of Navy Pier, they’d probably be far too enchanted by the sights and distracted by the throngs of faceless people to notice one young man weaving in and out of the crowd unless they were paying close attention to the fact that he wasn’t so much weaving as vanishing into thin air and then

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[sarkraticmethod]

Sark merely shrugs, turning his attention back to the water, but still keeping the other man slightly in his periphreal vision. "My apologies," he replies flatly. "It's just that I've seen stranger things than men surviving after jumping off buildings, so it wouldn't have surprised me."

A suitcase neutron bomb made in the 14th Century fully capable of causing human beings to spontaneously combust, for example. Really, there are very few things stranger than what Sloane can manage to dredge up from Rambaldi's texts.

"But I suppose the two of us are quite at one with strange things, aren't we?" He turns back to him, expression blank. "Clearly, you've already noted my ability as I've noted yours, which I suppose, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, means that we share one common thing between us... The Rift."

No sense keeping that a secret. He'd be hard-pressed to lie to a human lie detector (one he clearly can't fake his way through like an actual lie detector), and it was bound to come up eventually. Best to just clear the air and get that out of the way.

[definitivestep]

"Right," Sam says, with a faint chuckle. "The Rift. That one's new even for my subconscious." Maybe the Rift is what a suicide attempt instead of an accident gets him, but how was he to know that? Or maybe it's all just random, whatever his crazy brain happens to be thinking of at the time. This is all much too complicated for Sam's liking, either way.

"You don't live at the hotel, though. I'd know you. Different Rift, or just a different part of the same one?"

[sarkraticmethod]

"It is a bit unsettling, I'll admit, but I've never been one for being uprooted from whatever I'm considering a home currently without my consent."

As far as his tone is concerned, he might as well have been a bored teenager complaining that his parents dragged him on some boring vacation as opposed to being dragged through a Rift.

He purses his lips a bit, thinking. "The same one, I suspect. If there's more than one, I'm not aware of it."

Calisto wouldn't leave that out. He knows full-well she probably doesn't tell him everything, but that would have been too important to leave out.

"But really, how would you ever know if I wasn't one of those wandering souls living at the hotel. From what I hear, it's getting crowded. Or are you really perceptive enough to keep your eyes on every single living thing in that building?"

[definitivestep]

Sam himself doesn't have that many attachments to his world - thus the trying to leave it - but he'd really rather he ended up in a make-believe world that's familiar, not... here.

He smiles slightly derisively at the question. "It's my job to be perceptive. I think I would have heard about someone who can turn invisible at will. After all, everyone gets fair warning about the girl who walks through walls. But even if not... I think I would have noticed someone like you, Mr... What was it?"

[sarkraticmethod]

"And what sort of job would that be exactly?" He asks even if he's got an idea in his head. Very few types of people make it their job to be perceptive and he's clearly not two of them.

"Sark. Julian Sark," he responds without really thinking about it. It doesn't bother him as much as he should, stating his real name as casually as all that. "And I suppose you have a point, although people like myself don't stand out in crowds, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for you."

Perceptive, indeed.

[definitivestep]

Sam somewhat expected him to lie about his name, and is a little surprised to feel no pain when he does - he'd braced himself for it.

"My job doesn't exactly matter here anymore. I'm a long way from home." And he tends to pay more attention to people like Sark than those who do stand out in crowds. The people like Sark are the ones more likely to start shooting. Set off a bomb. Or just deliver a single gunshot to the head in a dark alley.

Sam doesn't trust people like Sark in the least.

[sarkraticmethod]

"Aren't we all?" He asks, the little flicker of a smile returning. "Although if it doesn't matter, then why are you still standing here?"

Sark knows the tension that comes from people who expect him to do something heinous at the drop of a hat- that wall of untrust that builds the longer he goes without doing anything to make someone need to shoot at him. He gets it off Sydney, off Vaughn, off Jack... Most everyone in the CIA that he's ever had to deal with.

He gets it off him too, so it's just as well that he doesn't actually have the means to do anything heinous. Somehow that's more amusing to him than actually having a bomb set to blow the pier to hell if he so wished or a concealed weapon in his jacket pocket.

"Well, I told you my name and I clearly didn't lie about it, since you're still standing." He has little faith in most people's resistence to pain. People bending to pain is something universally accepted in his world, even if that's just as true of him as any other person. "It's only fair that you tell me yours."

[definitivestep]

"DI Sam Tyler," he says, without commenting on the 'still standing' remark. He doesn't even know why he adds the "DI", except that it's a habit by now, and when he returned to 2006, he never could remember that he was the DCI there, not just the DI, trailing along at Gene Hunt's heels...

"Nice to meet you."

[sarkraticmethod]

"And the reason your job doesn't mean much here presents itself," he notes, more to drive that particular point home than anything else. Not that it needs to be driven home, he just felt like saying it.

And the smile is back, a bit clearer now, mocking almost. "I assure you DI Tyler that the pleasure is all mine."

He'll insist on calling him that too. Even Sydney is 'Agent Bristow' when he wants to mock her.

[definitivestep]

Sam snorts at the use of his title. He's got all the worst mockery from one of the best. You get verbally abused enough by Gene Hunt, you become more or less immune to everything else.

"I'm sure. Should I ask your job? Or do you have one?" Here, or in his own world. Either way... he'd like to know something about who this Sark is, and just what he might have to watch out for. Given all the talk lately about not leaving the hotel alone under any circumstances...

[sarkraticmethod]

He seriously ponders the right answer to that question, because cheerfully saying that you're a terrorist is a perfect way to turn a conversation to bullets and pain... And what kind of terrorist goes around calling himself a terrorist anyway? It's so vulgar.

"My job, simply put, is whatever my current employer asks me to do," he explains finally. "No more, no less."

It's really the truest description of what he does that he can think of, and just saying that takes a lot less time to explain than telling him, 'I used to be a leading operative for a crime syndicate headed by a former KGB agent and now I work for a demon who makes her look like Judy Garland.'

It's all about simplicity and not the fact that saying all of that is liable to get him shot or something of that nature. Really.

[definitivestep]

Sam raises an eyebrow now, just a little, and studies the man with obvious distaste. That was so very much not what he wanted to hear... but he was half expecting it nevertheless. Half the time, terrorists are a large part of what his department's concerned with. In his original time, at least. Not quite so much in 1973, unless it's the IRA.

"My favorite," he says drily. "I guess I'll be seeing you around, then."

[sarkraticmethod]

"Oh I'm sure you will," he smirks back. "Provided that I actually want you to see me."

And he's gone, vanished from sight, although not for very long. Just long enough to get out of the open and away from the crowds (and Sam). One problem with this ability of his (and probably the real reason why he kept flickering in and out when he was experimenting earlier, despite what he kept telling himself) is that he can't hold it for very long before his concentration breaks.

No matter. He'll get right eventually. Given DI Tyler's clearly sharp eyes, he's going to want to stay out of sight if he's going to get anything done.... But despite that, it does feel oddly invigorating to have incited something of a chase. It's almost like being back in his world again.

[definitivestep]

Sam tenses a little as he vanishes, because he doesn't like the idea of not being able to keep an eye on someone like Sark. He waits until he's fairly certain he's gone, and then lets out a slow breath, turning away, and back to the hotel.

Well, this is going to be interesting, at the very least, something to keep him occupied. He's not sure whether he's glad for that, or a little daunted at the prospect, because with Sam's luck... This could turn out very, very badly for him.