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[braveoff]

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[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?

[braveoff]

In my world it's not exactly like the movies. You're still alive, technically. It's an infection that slows your vitals and requires you to eat brains to stay human... you don't eat for long enough and you'll turn into the kind of monster from the movies, and there's no way back.

[ Hang on, Sam, this is where it gets weirder. ]

I stayed like that for a long time in Hadriel because I could protect people better -- zombies can survive just about anything, and we have an extreme response to adrenaline that makes us stronger and faster. But towards the end of the war there I asked the gods to be normal again. They made me a new body.

[rowd]

Gross, gods.

( even worse than cops, apparently. but he's pulling himself off the counter, and brushing off any bread crumbs from his shirt in the process. )

So aside from the whole brains bullshit, it worked for you. I can do that crap. Survive almost anything and shit.

[braveoff]

They weren't really gods, that's just what the native species of their planet called them. They were aliens with extraordinary abilities.

[ The Hadriel gods were real good to Drake, in any case. ]

Anyway, the brains bullshit is worse than just eating them. You kind of take on traits of the person you ate, get flashes of their life, their death... you can lose track of who you really are, hopping from one brain to another.

[rowd]

Even worse.

( sounds terrible, who would like some fake-gods, sam doesn't even like the all-powerful whatever the fuck beings he's got back home. well. mostly because most of them keep trying to gut him. and the other ones are just overly large assholes running on a power trip. but that's a story for later. )

If you get re-zombified, don't eat my brains.

[braveoff]

I'm not planning on either of those things. And for the record, I never killed anybody to eat.

[rowd]

I'd probably survive it, to be fair.

( a hand raising up to the side of his head, like he's--checking for an old wound. )

I mean, long as you don't fuck up my whole brain. A lil nibble probably won't hurt.

[braveoff]

Unless you can regenerate, not just heal, I think it would hurt. But I'm no neurologist.

[rowd]

I've got shit halfwings that keep insisting on growing back no matter how many times I cut 'em off. And I'm pretty sure I've lost some internal organs at some point and've been fine. But,

( a grin, stupid and easy. )

don't eat my brains. Just in case you get all cold an' brain hungry again.