That was almost a disaster, III.

[Adam Compton] Adam looks around the trashed office, putting his palm to his face and mashing it around in a physical expression of frustration. The stubble of his well trimmed and maintained facial hair whispering against his palm. He groans once, and then peers between his splayed fingers at the room again. As though it might have cleaned itself while he had his eyes shut. No such luck. "Where is I dream of Genie when you need her?" Stepping over a mess of books and papers, he shakes his head. "You know what? Fuck it." He shakes his head again more vehemently. "No. We aren't cleaning this up." He looks at Kage, his gray blue eyes wide, expressive. "You don't want to clean this up right?" He's hoping she's not that girl. The one that would insist upon it. She might notice that her other question goes ignored. [Kage] Did It Hurt When You Were Book!Slapped ? The Stamina Roll! [Kage] "No." A beat. "Nor do I want to be hauled in front of a judge for - well, whatever you get for trashing an ex-boss's office." Kage offers Adam a half-smile, and she touches her eyebrow; lifts her chin (arrogance) and looks at her fingers, as if she expects to see blood. There's nothing; she's as whole as a pie in the sky when the moon's at harvest full. So she buries her fingers in her hair, instead. "But I'd just as soon touch nothing except the safe." Another beat, and Kage turns to more fully face Adam -- to look at him as if he were a piece of paper, with words just waiting to be read. She noticed, about the other question. [Adam Compton] "As far as I'm concerned... it was like this when we got here." He looks around the room, then toward the safe with a nod. "Or fine when we left. Whichever flies better." He could pull it off too. Lying. Though when he says he didn't do it, and neither did Kage, it won't be a lie. The best lies are always half truths. "So lets get what we came for and get out of here before old Welly makes an encore performance." He glances toward the door, his features leary. The only sign that he's recently had the living shit scared out of him. Otherwise, he looks as right as rain. His cheeks are flushed, and he moves with an almost unbridled energy. "When we leave." He turns back toward her, a dark blond brow arched. "Lets take the stairs." [Kage] "And why would we take the stairs, hmm?" Kage inhales, deep. Then she stirs herself into action: the safe, the date that the Library of Alexandria burned down -- not a very secret password, in her opinion, and she withdraws a dossier of information. There are other things in the safe -- a few more folders, a manuscript, and some money. A lot of money, actually. Kage does not take any of that. [Adam Compton] "Why not?" He's moving to the door, twisting the knob and peering into the hallway with a glance back at her over his shoulder. His body language says hurry please. He pauses then, peering back into the hall, then looking back toward Kage, his pale eyes narrowed. "Is Mr. Wellington still in here?" His tongue darts out to wet his lips briefly before disappearing again. [Kage] Kage thumbs through the dossier, then takes another look around the office. They do not know this, but should everything go well for another party, interested in present in Wellington's office, it may even get cleaned up after all; somebody, after all, had gone to pains to put everything back as near exactly right as possible before. Adam knew that; he at least suspected. "Is there still a mysterious stranger in the stairwell?" The dossier goes into her bag, and her bag goes onto her shoulder; then she fixes her gaze forward, turning off the lamps as she goes, darkness again. Natural darkness, not ghost-ridden; nothing haunted here. When Kage comes abreast of Adam, steps out of the office into the hall, she gives him a look of cool appraisal -- he'd been hit by a couple books. He could have a concussion . . . and be about to pass out, or make some horrendous decision that would drag her down in its squidlike tentacles of doom, or . . . [Adam Compton] He watches her with a quick shake of his head, and steps out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. He starts toward the elevator, and then looks on to the stairwell. Pausing, he glances back at the elevator before looking down at Kage, his expression a mingling of amusement and annoyance. "Hold up a second." He takes a deep breath, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows and closes his eyes. He looks for a moment like he needs a bathroom, stat, and then his eyes flutter open again. [Which way is better? Stairs, or elevator? Entropy!] [Adam Compton] "Stairs." He bypasses the elevators as though there were an out of order sign on their doors. "Definately the stairs." [Kage] The woman does not look around while she holds up a second. She looks at Adam, and the door to the stairs; she does not look around lest she see Wellington, planted in the middle of the hall, unable to interact, a cold spot in the air. She does not look around lest she see bad luck in the corners, seeping out of the cracks, and by seeing it, attract its attention. She looks at Adam, and he may expect her to argue or ask why again once he reaffirms that the stairwell is the way to go. But she doesn't. "Fine." The stairs aren't appealing. It's an old building, so they have that old stair smell, and they fold in on themselves, with landings at each floor. They're on floor seven, remember, so that's six landings before they're back in the lobby, where the security guard is probably considering the merits of bestirring himself to see where the it's only going to take five minutes couple has gotten to. [Adam Compton] Fine. She says, and he smiles his boyishly charming smile as he holds the door open for her. "Ladies first." His smile becomes a grin as he follows her into the stairwell and they start down. "This really seems like a lot of hassle for something that should have been pretty routine." He's musing to himself as they take the stairs one at a time. Glancing randomly over the railing at the flights below, and even pausing once to peer upward into the upper floors. "You get the feeling that there's something else going on here right?" He glances at the back of her head as they continue down. [Kage] Ah, chivalry. Well, Launcelot was also a liar, and so is the Devil; everybody knows he's courteous. Kage gives Adam's smile a look of muted humor, and her incuriousity does not extend to the stairwell; one might even say she listens for a while to the way the echos bounce around the ceiling, bat-winged little things, ghosts of noise. "I get the feeling that 'suspicious' is the safest attitude to adopt right now, yes." The stairwell gives Kage's low smooth voice an ethereal quality, and they could be speaking inside the coridoors of a drowned city, or ruins; dampened. "And oh, I've adopted it." "I want to know what's going on," she says, almost offhanded. But it's really a question, of sorts; it's really a probe, and she pauses, a hand on the railing, to look over her shoulder at Adam. [Adam Compton] He looks down at her, coming to a stop as she does. "What?" His eye widen in mock surprise and he rolls his shoulder in a slow shrug. "Why didn't you ask your friend Wellington back there? I'd have done it, but I might have aimed the question in the wrong direction." He smirks, shaking his head as he steps around her and starts down the stairs again. "I want to know what's going on as much as you do Miss Jakes." And that, is the Gods honest. [Kage] "Because if he knew what was going on, and ended up dead because of it, I'd like to know what's going on from a different angle then Welly did." Muted. "Because," she hesitates. "Oh, because he only remembered his name and his shape because you talked him into it." He'll gain ground; his legs are longer, the stairs are easier. Kage's descent is a slow sashay, a careful, gravity-driven fall. "So, this man. In the stairwell. Why do you think he has anything to do with - ?" [Adam Compton] "He's the reason we're taking the stairs." He glances back over his shoulder at Kage coming to the next landing, and pausing briefly to wait for her to catch up a few steps. "He was messing with the elevator." Matter of factly. Then he's on the move again, taking the stairs two at a time. "Somebody moves stuff around in that office, and somebody hopped in the elevator just before we got there." He walks, and talks. Multi tasker extraordinaire. "I'd be willing to bet the guy in the stairwell is that somebody." [Kage] "Then we need to find that guy," she says, simply enough. "I wonder if - " and her steps slow, just long enough for her to scope out the corners. There are no security cams in the stairwell, however. It's not that kind of building. "No. Maybe you can sweet talk the security guard into telling us if anybody else left." [Adam Compton] Sweet talk. He snorts derision, with a mild chuckle. "He doesn't look like the kind of guy that would be fooled by my femenine wyles." A glance over his shoulder again at her. "Maybe you can give it a try." If she'll recall, Adam barely got them by the front desk without having ti whip out his warrant. "Why don't you conjure up Mr. Wellington and see if he can't give us some insight into who the mysterious man in the stairwell is?" He casts a knowing smile over his shoulder at her and chuckles again as they reach the main floor. [Kage] What The Heck Is That Knowing Smile For, Mister Compton, And In Fact, How Are You, Really! Percept + Awareness-since-it's-Empathy-whatever roll. [Kage] "You'd let a little thing like maybe not being his type stop you from trying?" Mild, and maybe a little distracted. "Adam Compton, I hardly know you." Of course, the truth is she really doesn't know Adam Compton. Not at all well. And what she knows of him doesn't make her think that she's going to get any closer to knowing him, whatever that means. A liar, see; a man with more than one life. How many? She doesn't push the point, because if Adam doesn't feel confident enough to question the security guard, well, she'd rather he didn't; she'd rather that she did it. She wishes, not for the first time, that she had what she thinks of as Fugue. She is, also, frowning at Adam's last suggestion -- and at the smugness in his smile. "He's not a dog. I can't whistle. I didn't conjure him to begin with. I do ... I think I do intend on ... mm." Reverie. Then, "Wait a moment." And she turns Adam by the shoulders to face her, and does a quick touch-up, makes his dishevellment less ... dishevelled. "There. You look less like your ass was kicked by a bookcase now." [Adam Compton] She is mid-undishevellment as he smiles down at her, standing straight and tall as she adjusts him, a boyish twinkle in his pale gray blue eyes. "Thanks." His brows dart upward playfully, as he reaches for the door and tugs it open. He doesn't say it this time, but he motions her through first in a gentlemanly fashion. Amusement washing the confusion and uncertainty of the night away easily enough, as far as his features are concerned. All in all, he cannot wait to get back to his apartment to delve into one of his many lives. This one made up of methamphetamines and the like. "One thing though... " He waits until she turns toward him, a smile still on his handsome features. "I could have taken that bookcase if the lights were on."