Far from Grace / 2 /

Today was one of the days were Jonathan was too hungry to go home before eating. Before he picked up the concessions for himself and his neighbors, he decided to grab a quick bite to eat. The food was engineered to taste good, but it seemed like the concessions in Bleak Barrow were always expired or just cheap. All anyone could pick was between the three S's; Savory, sweet, or spicy. Beyond that, everything tasted the same. It was still protein though, it was still sustenance and everyone needed to eat.

As Jonathan was halfway through a savory burger, a pair entered Concessions and he immediately pegged them as out of place. Their suits were new, their shoes were clean, and they were well groomed. There were outlines in their suits were compact pistols pressed against their frame. No one that lived in Bleak Barrow looked that nice. No one in Bleak Barrow cared to conceal if they had a weapon to carry. They scouted the mess hall and then radioed to someone.

Jonathan realized they were security and that they had given the All Clear. He started to feel like making an exit, but before he could two more clean suits arrived. At their arrival, the original two clean suits moved across the mess hall to the other exit and boxed in who ever they were after. Jonathan was kicking himself for not leaving, but he only realized how hard he should be kicking when a fifth clean suit walked in. If the clean suits that blocked the exacts were a standard above Bleak Barrow, this man was royalty above them. He was the same age as Jonathan but he walked with purpose, he walked with power.

As he sat down across from Jonathan, James Rook smiled wide, "Hello, partner."

Jonathan did not smile. Rook vanished. Not even Moira had been able to tell him where Rook had gone. Now that Jonathan had fallen, Rook was back and cleaner than possible. "What brings you to Bleak Barrow, Rook?"

"You." Rook smiled in a way that he never smiled before, which is to say that in the entire time they had been partners, Jonathan had never seen Rook smile. He had seen frowns, furrowed brows, thin lipped lines of frustration or anger, but not a single smile.

Whatever his old partner was selling, Jonathan was not going to buy it. Rook was like a ghost back from the dead. "I've been here for months. Why come now?"

"You were blacklisted. It took a smart guy behind a screen tracking Net-chatter this long to pin down your location. With how tight lipped the Security Force is about former members, it was nearly impossible. We had to track rumors of the protectors of the hopeless, hoping it would be you. When you saved that old lady two weeks ago, we finally found you. The moment they told me where you were, well… here I am."

Jonathan nodded, "What happened to you, Rook?"

"What do you mean, partner?"

"The night of the blackout, you were called up and you never came back. Never sent word. The guys thought you were dead. That you saw something you shouldn't have and they silenced you for it."

Rook took a deep breath and shrugged, "Mostly true. Mostly true. In fact, they were going to kill me over it, but I played my cards carefully. I thought to myself, what would Johnny do? And hey I made it through the other side of that dark tunnel."

"Rook, why are you here?"

"I had a rough go of it about two months ago… after you were fired. I may have let slip that I wasn't the only one there that night." Rook shrugged, "Sorry about that. They were going to send someone to silence you, but I got under their skin and put a different thought in their heads. Send me, send me to take you in. You'll have to go through a dark tunnel of your own, but then we can work together again, what do you say, partner?"

"I got blacklisted Rook, Golden Lion Enterprises is not going to take me back."

Rook laughed a broken laugh, "Oh, Johnny, I don't technically work for Golden Lion."