1-

 

At a glance, Locke Morningside was just another wandering post-Service young man. His shaggy hair was a dirty black, his shoulders were hunched, and his old Issued jacket and pants were faded and worn. The only extraordinary thing a glance might reveal was the firm green shirt under his jacket, its irregularly tall, clingy collar reaching about halfway up his neck.

 

But, Locke Morningside was as far from average as imaginable.

 

Further, closer observation would reveal maroon eyes in a downcast roguish face. The red trim and epaulets on his Issued jacket marked him a Major, although the bare strips of red fabric on his shoulders claimed no decorations, no rank, and no division, effectively declaring either a rather dangerous anti-Conflict stance, or an even more dangerous lack of money. The black satin stripe down the outer sides of his faded black pants were the sign of a decorated expert. The single piece of jewelry he wore- a clear, thin and incredibly tight ring on his middle left finger stood out without explanation, dully glinting in the streetlamp’s flickering light, and the lit cigarette held deftly between his right fingers heralded the occasional shroud of tainted gray smoke which quickly escaped his fragile, shuddering mouth as he walked briskly down yet another crumbling city street in Vascun, Tormiad.

 

Locke could easily feel the approaching winter as he continued down the road, maroon eyes ambling across the lofty buildings’ windows. Jarim the old metalworker passed him, and they shared a nod, Locke taking another quick drag of his cigarette for the warmth more than anything else. A few steps later and the heat was gone with the slight nipping breeze. His arms wrapped around each other, rubbing in a feeble attempt to evade the weather.

 

“I hate being cold,” he muttered, his eyes soon latching onto the ideal window. A subtle smirk bloomed on his face.

 

With a sudden grace that should have seemed misplaced on his hunched form, he slunk into the nearby alley, eyes still hooked on the half-open window above as he scaled the nearby wooden boxes. With grizzled old Jarim long gone, Locke hooked his hands on the rusty balcony, executing a pull-up to get himself onto the second story. Idly wiping his hands on the brick building, he examined the ascent to his target, finally deeming his judgment sound and grabbing onto the nearest brick seam.

 

He practically scrambled up the crumbling bricks, finding every overhang and crevice he could use to his advantage and exploiting it to the extreme, scaling the wall and hooking his still-tarnished fingers on the open blue windowsill, determined to clean it up later when he wasn’t hanging from nailed, rotting wood about twenty feet in the air. With a muted grunt he pulled himself inside, giving the inhabitant a silent smirk of thanks for keeping the window ajar as his feet cleared his unorthodox entryway.

 

Soundless feet trod into the apartment from the apparently spare bedroom (which he had gathered from the inhuman cleanliness of the area- Locke had broken into many, many apartments in his lifetime and nothing commonly lived in was ever that newly-pressed and sanitary, especially in a district like his in a city like Vascun). The hall was equally pristine, untarnished walls equally unornamented, and the hardwood floors (pricey) were flawless, not a single scrape or smudge on their surface.

 

He frowned. Someone obviously lived here, true, but what kind of person left an entire section of their apartment sanitized and untouched? The walls were an oppressive white that only made the hardwood floors that much impressive, the ceiling was dismally simplistic, and Locke couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness that pervaded the area. And all through his exploration he took inventory of the belongings, judging their value versus weight, price versus precious qualities.

 

Locke knew the moment that he stepped into the actual living space. The floors, although newly washed, showed signs of old stains clinging to life no matter how long or hard their owner scrubbed. The walls were obviously repainted several times, and a few cheerful blue prints of flowers and mountains hung limply around the walls of the living room.

 

And as soon as his eyes swiveled over to the eating nook, Locke Morningside realized that regardless of well-honed intuition, he had definitely chosen the wrong window that night.

 

Blood made an easy trail towards the figure hunched on the table, leading from the front door (they had time to close it?) to the wooden chair a body was bowed over. The back of the corpse’s beige shirt was soaked in blood, managing to weep down the dark brown (and very flattering) pants and dripping into the pool below the chair.

 

Locke, despite every intelligent idea in his brain, found himself staring at the body’s motionless face, a distinctly elegant, pale appearance seeping from the youthful head just like the blood which he was ignoring. Even though the dead body was inescapably beautiful, it was also undeniably male, harsher lines to his body than any woman Locke had met. And all that hair, silky white-silver locks that got into his (DEAD) face and trailed all the way down to his lower back, tied loosely near the end with what could only be seen as a dull, dark red bandage.

 

Also lying on the table was a stained trench coat that had once been a pristine white. Blood was liberally pooled on the inside, and a long, wide brown stain that looked like mud stretched from the middle of the back all the way to the coat’s end. Locke found himself glaring at it- there were no holes, so the man couldn’t have been killed while wearing it. But then, why was there blood in it? Had the man been stabbed in the back and then put on his dirty coat? That made no sense…and the streak had to be from the ground, so he’d been wearing it outside recently, at least…

 

Frowning, Locke turned back towards the dead owner of the coat-

 

-only to see turquoise eyes looking back at him nonchalantly, head still resting against his bloody arms and a small, amused smile on chiseled lips.

 

“Can I help you?” The corpse asked.

 

Locke scrambled backwards, running into a white wall and not caring for a moment that he was screaming and pointing at the dead body, because he was DEAD and corpses did not talk or open their eyes or smile at him like that.

 

He decided right then that he hadn’t just picked the wrong window. He’d chosen the wrong street, district, and side of the river too. Possibly wrong city, princip and continent too, since there was most likely no way to kill a man who could come back to life.

 

The corpse raised his head, and Locke could see dried blood still clinging to his elegant chin. “Relax,” the dead body that wasn’t so dead anymore said.

 

And all he could do was stare, voice too hoarse to shout, as the not-corpse sat up and began to stretch out his arms, all the while his clear turquoise eyes never moving from Locke. The thief could feel the unspoken danger radiating from the man…who, surprisingly, appeared to be around his own age, maybe a little older. He shared the same biological youth as Locke, yet those disturbingly affecting eyes seemed ancient.

 

Locke suddenly had a blinding moment of clarity. He’d broken into a sterile apartment with a corpse in it, and now said corpse was looking him over and giving him breathing advice, apparently…

 

“What the hell do you mean, relax?!” Locke shouted, the moment gone in a puff of confusion and paranoia. “You came back to life! How the hell can I relax when a DEAD MAN’S LEERING AT ME!”

 

Said dead man blinked at him, and then chuckled. “I’m not dead.”

 

“Coulda fooled me,” Locke snapped, swinging his arms wide. “You’re soaked in blood!”

 

A faint frown touched the man’s face, and he glanced down.

 

Locke grabbed the opportunity and bolted from the room, well aware of the black streaks the soles of his shoes were leaving on the once-pristine wood floors as he skidded into the spare bedroom, slamming the door behind him with full knowledge it would probably stop the corpse for a second at best. He wrenched his entry window fully open, and without looking back or down he leapt out the window just as the door crashed open.

 

The breeze whistled past him as he fell, and before he understood what he was truly doing Locke had turned to glare into the corpse’s startled face…only to see the corpse leaping out of the window after him, that same soft smile on his lips. It was impossible- nobody would be foolish enough to follow him on a twenty-foot descent with nothing but cobblestone to land on…

 

Fear clenched his stomach, and as his feet made contact with the ground, Locke’s eyes flashed a burning, glowing red.

 

The air around him blasted outwards, an invisible sphere of pressure flaring out from Locke and smashing the corpse into the brick wall. The discharge dissipated as it expanded, and as the ripple of power faded, the dark-haired thief found himself staring at the panting, bloody, but definitely alive man collapsed against the side of his own apartment building, hunched over and still looking at Locke with those piercing turquoise eyes.

 

It wasn’t anger, or surprise, that lay in the not-corpse’s eyes. If anything, it was amused acceptance, and he still had that same soft smile on his lips.

 

Locke, however, stared at the bloody, longhaired man for a moment. He knew that a blast like that would kill most people- this man didn’t have a single visible bruise on him. “What ARE you?”

 

The dead man paused for a moment. “Just go,” he finally rasped out, voice hurried and obviously pained. “Run. Shadows will be here soon.”

 

“Heh,” Locke smirked, head tilting to the side as he began to back out of the alley. “For a corpse, you’re pretty interesting.” Barely realizing he was doing it, he bowed his head, keeping his eyes matched with the still-panting figure against the wall. “Locke Morningside. I didn’t steal anything, you know.”

 

“Flirt later, run now,” the corpse chuckled, only to start coughing long, heaving coughs, holding a shaking hand on the soiled stonework of the ground to anchor his already bloody body.

 

A part of him actually wanted to stay, even though he knew there wasn’t a thing he could do to help the rasping dead man. Instead, he nodded at the man whose eyes had never left him. “See you, Undead.”

 

With the tugging sensation of nearing Shadows pressing on him, Locke ran off into the streets of Vascun, trying to ignore the aching, foreign sensation of guilt gnawing at him for leaving the dead man injured and defenseless in the back of an alley that would soon be crawling with Shadows.

 

And then, five blocks later, he got a hold of himself, and laughed, trying to ignore how desperate it sounded.