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[braveoff]

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[rowd]

He'll be dead in a couple years. Not as in, I'm a couple years ahead and remember him dying or some shit. But as in his body's falling apart and there ain't shit anyone there can do about it.

( darker than he'd really planned on going during this visit but whatever. he's here now. )

Was hoping we could just figure shit out here, 's too damn bad it didn't pan out.

Grilled is fine.

[braveoff]

[ Drake assembles the sandwich quietly as Sam talks, his sympathy rising. It really is too damn bad, he thinks, and wonders if he should continue to commiserate or just let Sam get it out, let that stand on its own. ]

You want to talk about him? Tell me what he's like?

[rowd]

Nah. Told you more already than I'd told near anyone else.

( how's that for trust building? not that it really matters, since bram is gone. )

Puts me right back to square one though.

[braveoff]

[ Oh. Damn. Drake didn't expect that either. He's at a bit of a loss, just flipping the sandwich in the pan until Sam speaks again. ]

Square one? How do you mean?

[rowd]

If he was still here, I'd've been fine staying here. Now that he's gone? I gotta find a way back to that hellhole.

( so. square one. back to fucking with the system until he finds a weak spot he can exploit and get into the nitty gritty details of how shit here works. )

[braveoff]

Easier said than done, yeah.

[ He's been there, too. But he wonders... ]

Any leads so far?

[rowd]

Nope, nada. Nothing.

( very unhelpful, but it's about as far as he's gotten also. no leads. there's the guy who made duplicity, but sam hasn't found a way to access him yet. )

Locals are very unhelpful.

[braveoff]

That's for sure. And I'm guessing you've talked to everybody who's been here for years already, right?

[ He slides Sam's sandwich onto a plate for him, flicking off the stove. Here you go, buddy. ]

[rowd]

No.

( but he does reach to snatch the sandwich off his plate, takes a messy bite out of it before he finishes his answer around a mouthful, )

I'm shit at people.

[braveoff]

[ Drake sets the plate down on the counter next to Sam and leans back to consider him. ]

Why do you say that?

[rowd]

I had my people back home, right? A few friends and shit. Most've what we did was talk shit constantly and beat the crap out of each other for fun. Then there was Bram. Who's the exact opposite of every other fucking person I'd ever spent more than two seconds around without wanting to rip out their guts through their assholes,

( he's getting to his point, but he's taking another bite first. )

People're complicated. I don't give a shit about just fucking around with 'em at parties or whatever, but fucking up my chance at getting information out of 'em by being the dickbag I am ain't on my game plan. So I haven't gone hunting 'em down yet.

[braveoff]

I could help you.

[ It slips out before Drake really thinks about it, but even when he does it just makes sense. ]

We can come up with some questions and I'll track 'em down and get the answers. This is sort of what I did back home.

[rowd]

What'd you do back home?

( another piece of the drake puzzle that he's been working on solving for a while. )

[braveoff]

[ There's a good chance that he's about to get shit for this, but he's not gonna lie either. He shrugs. ]

I was an undercover cop.

[rowd]

Oh.

( another bite. slow, like he's considering how he wants to respond to that before, )

Gross.

[braveoff]

Yeah, that's about what I expected. But depending on how you look at it I was either really good or really bad.

[rowd]

I mean--apparently you're fucking dead or some shit, right? So.

[braveoff]

[ Well, not anymore, but Drake huffs softly. There's no amusement in it. ]

Work doesn't have much to do with how I died.

[rowd]

How'd you kick it?

( this is a perfectly appropriate conversation to have over a sandwich, right. )

[braveoff]

The answer is human experimentation, but how we get there is kind of complicated.

[ Sam doesn't respond, just eating his sandwich, but for lack of anything else to talk about Drake shrugs and goes on. ]

I knew this guy from my time in prison, Pogo. He was a dealer... called me one night from the trunk of a car and I heard him get executed. But he told me what he was seeing out the tail light while he was in there, so I knew where he was buried. He had something on him that night, a bad batch of drugs that had caused a massacre. Or that's what I thought.

Anyway, looking into it I got shot. Almost didn't make it, but the guys who wanted the leftover drugs brought me to somebody who was able to turn me into a zombie so I didn't just die.

[ You still with him, Sam? And no, he's not shitting you. ]

[rowd]

( drake talks enough that he can scarf the rest of his sandwich down without feeling fucking awkward just sitting up here, so thanks for the opening, he'll definitely take it.

by the time he finishes, sam's shoving the last little corner of crust into his mouth and chewing it down. he's mostly pretending to focus down on the sandwich itself, but the word zombie gets his attention, and, well. )

A zombie. No shit?

[braveoff]

No shit. It's fucking awful, honestly. And this is where it gets complicated, but you don't need to know how it happened -- honestly I'm a little muddy on the details myself since I was frozen for most of it. But ultimately I wound up in a cell in a research lab where they were experimenting on zombies.

[ He crosses his arms, remembering. ]

They told us we were being used to test a cure, but the people who came back to the cells after getting it weren't people anymore. Last thing I remember is the shot.

[rowd]

Well, shit. That sucks.

( doesn't really cover how much it sucks but. he's guessing drake doesn't really need his sympathy. he looks like he's fine. if he isn't fine, he's good at faking it. )

So, like. A brain-eating zombie, or?

[braveoff]

[ He isn't exactly fine, but he can talk about it now that he's human again -- safe. ]

That's kinda the defining characteristic of zombiedom.

[rowd]

Only zombies I know of are from movies and shit. And those like to overexaggerate.

( just saying. )

And now you're--what, just a normal ol' human again?