Strange, how the houses look exactly all the same. And you're just a slave like me…
Sometime around three in the morning a beat-up '87 Dodge Dakota parks somewhere in southern Chicago, in a neighborhood more dominated by "For Sale - Bank Foreclosure" signs than anything else, and discharges one passenger. He walks around the front of the truck to the driver's side, cutting through the yellow of the headlights, and offers his hand to the man at the wheel.
"Thanks."
The driver clasps his hand with a smile, and says "Write if you need anything," before he rolls up the window again and pulls away. His tires mutter against the unswept road, and he turns onto the roads leading him back around to the main streets and eventually the highway. The blue of his Indiana plates fades rapidly into the night.
Behind him, the man he's left behind looks around the neighborhood, then walks three blocks to the nearest all-night gas station and buys one of every newspaper and tabloid they carry.
Reading them under the light of a streetlamp gives his journal time to adjust to the local network, and reading through half a year's worth of posts takes longer.
By the time dawn breaks he's wandering through the outskirts of Chicago proper, with a posture and a cant to his gait that look almost perfectly genuine for a day laborer between jobs. It's not the brash confidence he once displayed, not the predatory stride he had more recently, but that's the point, after all - while a few people sharing the same face isn't unheard of in Chicago, a few people sharing the same face and the exact same physical mannerisms is a harder sell. And while he doesn't know for a fact that there is still or ever was a manhunt on for him...
He's wearing a black denim jacket, white shirt and blue jeans, a black baseball cap that reads US STEEL in white lettering across the front. Nothing traceable. Nothing like the stuff he usually favors, and if that's not enough, the guy who dropped him off schooled him on a pretty convincing New York accent and gave him all he needed for a backstory involving a Rift in Manhattan. ('99. Caused a bit of a panic, from what he hears; dumped maybe fifty wanderers through before it closed up, and like just about everywhere in this world, the residents decided to pretend it had never happened.)
Even so, he's staying away from the territories he knows are dangerous. There won't be any trips to Navy Pier, any jaunts through Grant Park - not while he's walking on two legs, at least. The Conrad, the Gauche and the Kashtta Tower mark neighborhoods he's not eager to visit. He's come back to Chicago after two months' absence because Chicago is where he needs to be if he's going to get anywhere in this world, and he's not content to let Torchwood cycle through a few generations of employees before he tries to take it.
He's keeping one ear to the ground, both eyes open, and fake identification and a pistol which he doesn't intend to use hidden on his person, but there is one ex-Time Agent (Agency ID 462O1) on the streets of Chicago again.
"Thanks."
The driver clasps his hand with a smile, and says "Write if you need anything," before he rolls up the window again and pulls away. His tires mutter against the unswept road, and he turns onto the roads leading him back around to the main streets and eventually the highway. The blue of his Indiana plates fades rapidly into the night.
Behind him, the man he's left behind looks around the neighborhood, then walks three blocks to the nearest all-night gas station and buys one of every newspaper and tabloid they carry.
Reading them under the light of a streetlamp gives his journal time to adjust to the local network, and reading through half a year's worth of posts takes longer.
By the time dawn breaks he's wandering through the outskirts of Chicago proper, with a posture and a cant to his gait that look almost perfectly genuine for a day laborer between jobs. It's not the brash confidence he once displayed, not the predatory stride he had more recently, but that's the point, after all - while a few people sharing the same face isn't unheard of in Chicago, a few people sharing the same face and the exact same physical mannerisms is a harder sell. And while he doesn't know for a fact that there is still or ever was a manhunt on for him...
He's wearing a black denim jacket, white shirt and blue jeans, a black baseball cap that reads US STEEL in white lettering across the front. Nothing traceable. Nothing like the stuff he usually favors, and if that's not enough, the guy who dropped him off schooled him on a pretty convincing New York accent and gave him all he needed for a backstory involving a Rift in Manhattan. ('99. Caused a bit of a panic, from what he hears; dumped maybe fifty wanderers through before it closed up, and like just about everywhere in this world, the residents decided to pretend it had never happened.)
Even so, he's staying away from the territories he knows are dangerous. There won't be any trips to Navy Pier, any jaunts through Grant Park - not while he's walking on two legs, at least. The Conrad, the Gauche and the Kashtta Tower mark neighborhoods he's not eager to visit. He's come back to Chicago after two months' absence because Chicago is where he needs to be if he's going to get anywhere in this world, and he's not content to let Torchwood cycle through a few generations of employees before he tries to take it.
He's keeping one ear to the ground, both eyes open, and fake identification and a pistol which he doesn't intend to use hidden on his person, but there is one ex-Time Agent (Agency ID 462O1) on the streets of Chicago again.