His fingers, white and delicate, two legs strolling left to right the transparent glass of the meeting room. Up and down. Down and up. Evaluating the height. It would probably end up in a potential collateral damage…

— John.

No reaction.

— Carl…

The man’s eyes were fixated somewhere far. Anywhere, really…
As he would do, here and there, every morning, one hand in the inside pocket of his suit, searching for something he forgot to bring, the other grabbing air around, avid and ravenous, pulling the invisible to devour it in its whole.

Sometimes, there would be a shine in the depth of his pupil, buried there to eventually light up. For a second, no more…

— Adam !

In this moment, it had been shouting. Maybe praying for attention. Reality being they were scared of him. Of what he could do. The way he would change lives in their overall, and how it seemed to never affect him. Immune in a remote space, detachable panel in a wall of an inaccessible empty room, he would hide there until the feelings are gone, usually a minute, neither more nor less.

— SAUL !

This time around, he turned his back to the bay-window.
That’s not his name. He never knew his name, they would say. As if it was a matter of fact, a ”goes with the package”, ”all included” part of the character. A way to describe him as an entity out of what imagination would allow. And rumors went fast his direction. He couldn’t retain it for long, busy carrying his own suitcases. He was given all animal names, a beast, a wraith, the last thing you would ever see… And one could say, he was sort of the elephant in the room.

The other just handed it over like it was no cost to spare. A cardboard envelope, the usual pictures… To bag as a souvenir. The green paper too. For a strange and awkward stained seemingly sparkle of air, in a trice, his hands joined cold as a remorseless winter, two icebergs of eternal snow. His mind stopped on the sight of it, as he caught up to an elderly reminiscence. Words put in a melody. It went on repeat, in the scene he briefly saw. A man holding a knife, gently whistling. The color of his eyes, a pale green, fathomless, no… no depth to it. In a modern bathroom, equipped with every tool you would see in a perfect house, the ones sold at prizes not even reachable through years of honest work. He would look at the bathtub, throw the knife in. Fill with water. Grab the knife back, pull the bath plug from the sink. Go back and forth while it was emptying, wash his hands… And start again. The radio post, standing fierce and proud on a chair, spat out the deformed tunes of this wicked song.

”Close… your eyes and hide… to feel… alive.
Olive overlay over the night sky, lays down my mind…”

Just the two of these sentences. The rest would be blur, a humming, a something stifled to a stretch, a murmur. With the melody repeating each and after every time the lever of the valve would get back to its original position, recommencing the loop.

The other snapped into the air, irritated.

— Dane.
Focus.
You have to focus for once.

Blue glasses. Strange color for someone in this business. That would be his name for now. An other aspect of vapor, this whole society was just vapor over a lake, hiding what it really was.

— It’s not often we require, your… services.

True. They had met only two times. This being the second.

— Yann.
They told us to tell you what it could be.

A look at the pictures. Spotless grey. Familiar faces.
Waiting for further information, he stared blindly at the two blue tainted circles.

— I thought it would require a little bit of knows how.
But it wouldn’t take you much time.
Consider it as a routine test…

Blue glasses shrugged in his navy blue suit, then followed :

— To check if your dusty bones haven’t rusted yet.