Note: Figured I'd just submit this first rather than wait until I got around to finishing the whole scene. Largely because while I have a rough idea of what might happen, I'm not entirely sure what I expect Threads to do, himself.
Date: 08/06 Tuesday
Time: 10:48 PM
Weather: Cloudy
Location: Materion Square
PC: Threads
He watched as the person walked away from the building, as the wisps of dark Ether seemed to settle on his frame and into his pattern. Black tendrils rarely bode well, and Threads was aware that this case was no exception.
Trouble, it seemed, was easy to find if you knew where to look.
Threads trailed the man as he walked to the car park; he seemed agitated, muttering to himself under his breath, his fist clenched about the briefcase he carried. The man was dressed in a business suit, and walked with a slight swagger that suggested he was used to suits. In his free hand he held a Blackberry that he was furiously typing on. The man seemed very ill-at-ease, although Threads was unsure if it was the confirmation bias talking.
But in another moment the feeling of unease had died down enough that Threads was aware something was wrong. The man visibly relaxed as he opened the door of his car and stepped inside, tossing the Blackberry into the passenger seat. He had sent a message, presumably: what the message was, however, was something that Threads wanted to find out. Steeling himself, he stepped in front of the car as the man stepped on the gas; he felt the car rush through him and his hand tightened around the sympathy of the phone as he grabbed at it in passing.
The-
Threads reeled as he felt a sharp pain lance through his body: it was all the worse given that he hadn't felt any such sensation for quite a while: even Lazarus' death grip had nothing on the sudden, searing feeling that caused him to stagger away from the car, the phone falling back into the material passenger seat.
"What..."
He flexed his fingers as he watched the car speed away, examining his hand for signs of burn marks that he was half-convinced would be there. His palm felt as though it had been cauterized. But there was nothing, and Threads was well-aware that the acute pain he had felt meant that the meaning attached to the phone was no longer merely a person's.
It was definitely trouble.
He turned back to the quiet facade of Eden Organization. Despite his observational prowess, he realized even before opening his book that he knew close to nothing about them. They were into green energy in a big way, apparently, and had come to Pebbleton for a quiet place to fund their research, including testing of offshore wind farms, but that was it. It wasn't even definite.
He approached the foyer of the building, lit only by two pinpricks of light which were its smoke detectors: most of the light came from the lamp posts in the park some thirty meters away. He disliked darkness almost as much as he disliked the rain. The edge of the lamps' dim glow might as well have been a wall against which he had no real desire to cross over. The simple glass double doors belied the tendrils he'd seen just a moment ago; it would be more prudent, on the whole, he thought, not to enter at all.
With that in mind, he decided to see what he could glean without going in. As he circled the building, he realized that not all the lights were turned off: specifically, there were three windows, each on a different level and different facing, where light still streamed out. Carelessness, but it also meant that Threads was now afforded some other means of gathering information.
Threads didn't like to fly, or even float. It wasn't like he felt the ground beneath his feet, but they still tended to the ground out of habit. Floating in the air, unsupported, reminded him of his abnormality and the problems he had with it. Among those, of course, was the thought that he was dead. But then why would he care about anything?
If he was dead, there was nothing he
could live for; certainly not the sacrifices others had made for him, and that probably hurt most of all.
But now he was floating up the side of the building, doing his best to ignore the distance between himself and the ground. It was unnerving every time, regardless of how he knew he wouldn't fall, and that it would be of little consequence if he did. The windows that passed him on his vertical ascent loomed at him, and the one motivation that kept him going was the one question.
Why-
Threads was cut off mid-thought as a writhing tendril of shadow reached out of a window and wrapped itself about his arm with alarming alacrity. He gasped in surprise, then in pain as its touch seemed to corrode his flesh. For only the third time in his life, he panicked, instinctively trying to pull the whip-like appendage off of him, then recoiling as his other hand came away with the same burning sensation.
"Aagh! What is-"
As he noticed more whip-like appendages snake out the other windows around him, he felt a cold sense of fear through his frame. There was something big here: something he hadn't ever noticed because of all the people. As his mind struggled to function, he channeled Ether into his scarf, which apparently excited the tendrils as they shuddered and moved in closer on his location.
Though dark burdens regret does bring
The soul's faint candles hold at bay
As a ripple of energy washed over his frame, the tendrils flailed for a moment, as though the entity controlling them had suddenly gone blind. Threads hastily took the opportunity to pull himself away from the walls, then watched as the tendrils probed the air a moment more (one of them actually coming within feet of him) before sinking back into the darkness of the building.
Hovering some forty feet from the building, Threads was panting, only partly aware of the fact that he didn't actually need to breathe. At this point it was more of a coping mechanism than anything. This was more trouble than he'd bargained for and then some. There was something terribly wrong with Eden Organization.