Goodbye cab…and good riddance. Riley stepped out of the vehicle almost before it stopped and didn’t bother to tip the cabbie. The cop and the chick in the front could deal with that when they got wherever they were going. The guy had been mediocre at best anyway.

She went to shut the door, and nearly slammed it on the lawyer, who was getting out behind her. Oh right. She’d gained a lawyer. She released the door and started walking towards the steps to her building. If he wanted to come in, he had to keep up. What was it the cop had said? He needed a place to stay. Riley had kept her mouth shut in the cab…but she was anything but thrilled. She didn’t take people to her place…and she definitely didn’t let them stay there. Especially not lawyers in tattered shirts.

When the cab finally drove off, and Riley was working at getting her key into the lobby door, she looked over her shoulder at Aurum. The last few minutes of the cab ride had been silent on her end, and he’d had plenty of questions. A few glances around to make sure they were alone, and Riley started to speak.

”Next time you get me into a cab with the shadiest looking people on the planet…try to keep your mouth shut about things that could make the situation worse. If I’d thought we should talk about it all in front of them…I’d have talked about it more.”

The lock turned and they were admitted into the lobby. The apartment building was older, and had no concierge or doorman, just stairs and an elevator older than God. Riley beelined for the thing, she was in heels and her feet were killing her. ”Are you coming?” she called in Aurum’s direction, without much patience and less sympathy at the moment for his mental state.

She'd been quiet to him the rest of the trip, slammed a door in his face, tried to outpace him towards the door, and generally ignored him as much as humanly possible. She was still ignoring him. It didn't take a rocket physicist to realize she was mad. And she had every right to be, didn't she? He didn't like the situation any more than her. The cop had told him to hang low. He'd told to cop to hang low before that. The cop had literally parroted a point back to him... and Riley'd had no choice in the matter about having to deal with it all. He was pissed. She was pissed. Everyone was pissed. It was certainly not the right atmosphere for cheery conversations.

He stopped behind Riley as she fumbled for her key. The night air was cold. He tried not to hug himself for warmth. She looked at him. And then, the hostility started... and boy, was there a lot.

Aurum didn't get a chance to respond indignantly to any accusations. The key turned. The door clicked open. She moved fast in heels, faster than he could have done. By the time he was through the door, she was already nearly to the elevator.

>>”Are you coming?” She asked, in a tone that sounded less concerned about him keeping up, but more about punishing him for moving too slow.

"Yeah, yeah..." He said, sighing to himself. "I don't like this any more than you do, okay? Can we at least not tear each others heads off." It wasn't a question or a request. It was a demand. He stepped into the elevator after her. The doors closed behind him.

Why did he have to be so damn pitiful? Riley almost wanted to yell at him for it. Yell at him for thatt and a hundred other things that really weren’t his fault, but dammit someone needed yelled at. This has been a good day…a good day and now Riley couldn’t help but think that she was knee deep in something that smelled like absolute crap.

Aurum followed her into the elevator and Riley glared at the corner for a minute, wondering why she was so furious about the whole situation. She turned and looked at her companion in the elevator and tried not to be even angrier about the state he was in. He spoke, and as the doors shut and the gears ground to life Riley leaned back against the wall.

”You really don’t remember a thing do you?” she said, staring at the numbers as they lit up. Three…four….she was on the sixth.

”All the stuff with Lonnie… everything we figured out?” There it was again…that disappointment, that frustration. Why? Why did Aurum not remembering that make her so mad? And why hadn’t the elevator doors opened yet?

Riley looked up. The numbers had stopped…so had the grinding of the gears.

”You have got to be kidding me.” she said, then kicked the wall of the elevator.

Awesome. Now her foot hurt too.

>>”You really don’t remember a thing do you?” ”All the stuff with Lonnie… everything we figured out?”

All she got was a vacant stare. ... and then, a hurt foot.

Aurum looked up at the numbers. The elevator wasn't moving anymore. A lot of coarse language bubbled up in the back of his mind. "The perfect way to cap off a perfect day..." He muttered to himself.

Aurum pressed the palm of his hand against his face and slumped back against the side of the elevator, sliding down with a sigh. He shook his bowed head, then glanced up to let his eyes settle on Riley. Another sigh.

Riley was in heels, and a skirt…a tight skirt, and now her foot hurt. Aurum obviously didn’t remember anything, and the elevator was stuck. What the hell else? Seriously.

Riley opened the little door and grabbed the red handset, speaking quickly to the operator who answered on the other end. Help would be there soon…excellent. She hung up the phone and reevaluated the situation.

Aurum was on the floor. God he looked pathetic…and a little beaten up…and really tired. Riley sighed, then carefully slid down the floor. ”You’re going to help me get back up.” she said…not the least bit nervous that the elevator had suddenly stopped. This was the second time she’d been stuck in an elevator…and the experience simply wasn’t that scary.

This time was a little different though.

”What the hell happened to you?” she asked, ”You might as well tell me…we’re going to be here a while.”

What happened to him? Hadn't he already told her? Damn. He'd have to say it again. "I woke up in the dark, handcuffed to those two you saw me with, in the back of a moving vehicle, with none of my stuff. Got elbowed, dragged around, and whipcracked onto a door on the highway, out of that vehicle... got scratched up. The cop cut the cuffs with some water. We found you. I don't even know how all of this happened, and," he reached the pinacle of his point. "Whatever it was probably had to do with something I was working on, and you won't even tell me what that was. Everything clear yet?"

He crossed his arms, grumpy, tired, annoyed, and still ticked. Not that she deserved all the ire... but... she'd sure gotten it.

"What about you. What nice day did we ruin for you? You're certainly dressed pretty." HIs voice was toneless. It wasn't a pick-up line. Just a statement. She must've come from work.

She listened, eyebrows raising at the tone Aurum’s voice took on as he continued the story. Sure he’d given her bits and pieces along the way, but nothing good enough to give a complete picture. He’d been kidnapped, alongside a cop and the chick who’d been in the front of the car, and it was probably because of something he’d been working on.

Aurum’s tone became that of a petulant six year old at that point and he complained about the lack of information she’d given him. Riley couldn’t help it, she rolled her eyes and huffed a little. She turned to glare at him and snap about what an idiot he was being.

Then he said she looked pretty.

Damn vanity…she sighed.

”Aurum. You’ve never acted like a complete moron before…please don’t start doing it now.” she said.

” I didn’t say anything about what we’d been working on because you knew the people in that cab as well as I did which was…not at all. You don’t know that they’re good guys…”

She sighed again and covered her face with her hands before dropping them and telling the story, ”We’d found out that Lonnie was running drugs with Andrea Hart…we figured it out all on our own…we were going to bring him down.”

Was that what had caused this situation? If it was…why hadn’t she been involved?

”They didn’t react very well to what I am…so I got suspicious.” …and scared…but she wasn’t about to tell the lawyer that.

As to his other question, ”I had a job today…a nice one.” she said, dropping her eyes to her hands in her lap. ”Paid for my ride home and everything…and said they’d pass my name around.” she shrugged. It really wasn’t that big of a deal.

Was he... acting like a moron, for wanting her to clue him in on some key details? If so, then morons were pretty smart people. They were dumb enough to want all the facts.

Apparently, Riley hadn't shared those facts because she'd had no idea if she could trust the occupants of the cab. Fair enough.

Then, she told him just what they'd been working on. He blinked. "Lonnie?" And Andrea Hart? What. What did his boss and magician lady have to do with each other, or running drugs? And they were going to bring him down... and put him out of his apprenticeship. "I'm going to need more to go on than that..." Aurum said slowly.

Riley topped off the information sharing session with a statement that forced an eyebrow-raise. What she was...? "I'll need more on that, too..."

She had come from a job. "Okay. Good." What else was there to say to that?

He wanted more information. Of course he did. Riley sighed, ”I’m going to have to go through every stinking detail…aren’t I?”

She took a moment to gather her thoughts, there really wasn’t anything else to do in the elevator…and he really did seem clueless. ”You didn’t hit your head or anything….right?” she asked, not that she was concerned…but they were stuck in an elevator.

”I was working for Andrea…you know, magicians assistant and all that. I started to figure some stuff out. I uh…wanted you to know what kind of guy you were working for...if our previous conversations hadn’t been enough.” That was plenty on that subject…if he couldn’t remember, Riley would leave out all her gloating and snide comments. ”We dug a little deeper, together, and…found a whole lot more. Complete with a vanishing cabinet.”

”That’s why I was worried about talking…I don’t know who they were.” she said, frowning and wondering if all this detective nonsense was making her paranoid. Oh well.

The second thing he needed to know more about…Riley gaped for a minute, then let her head fall back against the elevator wall. It didn’t necessarily feel good and she cursed a little louder than under her breath. Aurum hadn’t ever known that tidbit.

”You know how they were talking about an “adapted” in the cab?” she said, avoiding eye contact. ”Well. That’s me.”

She didn’t expand, maybe she would later…maybe not. That was enough for now though….she sighed and kept her eyes anywhere but on Aurum. .

”Anything coming back yet?”

Would she have to go through every stinking detail? "Yeah," Aurum said firmly. She would. And had he hit his head? "Yeah..." The words came out weaker this time. "Maybe. I fell out of a moving truck. It's entirely possible..." Why? Was he not making sense? He kept feeling like he was flipping channels here. One second, serious, a little bit angry, the next, more understanding, appreciative. Emotional whiplash. That's what this was. If only she'd settle on being mad at him or nice to him, and wouldn't dance between the two. He didn't know whether to yell at her to tell him, or ask nicely. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Finally, she told him. Gears turned in his head as he listened, moving wheels and sliding things into place.

She had been working with Hart. As a magician's assistant. In one of those glittery outfits with feathers, no doubt. Getting sawed in half. Or pulling rabbits from hats.

What.

She'd come to him? She'd come... to him? Was he hearing things correctly? She'd wanted to find out what kind of guy his boss was, and she'd come to him... and he'd helped her? Well... at least that made sense. Sort of.

Aurum frowned.

He'd helped her do what? Investigate? Dig up dirt on his own boss? But obviously... they'd done a bad job. Something about that stunk. He wouldn't have been that sloppy, would he? Aurum didn't get the chance to ponder that detail long. She kept on keeping on, and brought up the cab.

She'd had a reason for keeping things hush. Had he been stupid? Was he just Mister Stupid now? Getting himself caught, putting her in danger, being a general idiot... hrm. Nothing was coming back to him on any of that. Especially not the... "Adapted?" He stared at her. She looked slightly to the left...

Adapted

The word hung in the air along with everything else that had been said. Riley sighed, she could feel his eyes on her and she didn’t know how to react. Riley’s initial reaction was to snap, and she actually huffed a bit before realizing that she was taking things out on Aurum again that weren’t his fault. Her words weren’t sharp when they came out now, they were soft and directed at the same corner of the elevator she’d been staring at for some time now.

”Yeah. That’s the name for someone like me.” she said, pursing her lips at how pitiful the words sounded. She firmed herself out and her next words came out stronger, more clear, ”I’m a freakier freak than the forest of freaks we walk through every day Aurum.”

She looked at him now, made rare eye contact, ”If you were a mutant, right now your super powers wouldn’t be worth squat.”

”But you’re not.” She shrugged her shoulders, then leaned towards him, hands reaching out, ”Now let me see your head. I’m not doctor, but I know what a bump looks like. I don’t want to wait for the maintenance guys with a corpse.”

Okay... now she was calling herself a freak. A weirdo. Different. Beyond the norm, outside any rational description. Getting down on herself.

He was stupid. Stupid, for somehow with a single question bringing this tide of self-loathing to wash over the lady. First, she'd been mad, then calm, a little bit annoyed, then rational. Helpful, even. But now... now, she was huffing, and calling herself names, and looking him in the eye when she said them. And... suddenly, being too nice.

Aurum shied away from her reach, looking at her uncertainly. Cautiously. "So, wait. You came... to me. And I got us into all of this deep shit." He wanted to get that one point clear before she started playing doctor. Since when did Riley play doctor anyways? Or Magician's assistant. Or someone who cared about his well-being... this was kind of freaking him out.

Riley’s hands hovered for a second when Aurum shied away from her touch, and then they slowly dropped back into her lap. He didn’t want her to touch him. Riley wished she knew why that stung so bad as she busied her hands with smoothing non-existent wrinkles from her skirt. She really shouldn’t have been surprised, she decided. It was an abnormality.

Aurum spoke, and Riley shrugged her shoulders. It occurred to her that she could take advantage of the lawyer’s obviously diminished mental state and make herself out to be the good guy, but for some reason it just didn’t seem that fun. Besides, she was as eager to change the subject as he apparently was.

”I don’t know if that’s what this is all about…but you remember other things…” she let the thought trail off. ”I mean…you don’t remember any of it. None of the sneaking, none of the investigating.”

Riley looked at her hands again, ”We’d figured so much out.”

”The real question is…why you, and not me?”

The question lingered and Riley tried to think on it, lifting her eyes from her lap for a moment before sighing and looking back over at Aurum, ”PS, Lonnie is a creep.”

Crap... she looked disappointed. Had he messed up again? He was failing all over the place today. Geez. Suddenly, his question from before didn't matter as much as correcting whatever misunderstanding had just taken place. But she was already answering, and he was already listening, and everything was so messed up.

So messed up... and she was so weak-looking, suddenly. Where was the Riley that could beat the crap out of him in a debate. The woman who was opinionated and didn't back down, who had a bit of self respect and didn't take crap from anyone. Where was... crap.

Aurum blinked.

>>”PS, Lonnie is a creep.”

"I think I just remembered something." Aurum stared at her.

Aurum looked as blank as Riley felt at the moment and she sighed, running a hand through her loose curls and trying to figure out what she could do. Why was she so off her game? Why wasn’t she laying into Aurum? Why was she still so damn upset about the fact that he’d moved away from her hands…and that he couldn’t remember anything…and why wasn’t she more upset about the fact that someone was obviously out to get them over this whole Lonnie thing. This was bullshit. There…that felt better…a bit of vinegar was flowing through her veins again, and when Aurum spoke up, she rose an eyebrow in his general direction.

”What? That Lonnie is a creep? You should have known that for ages.”