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[Like a Bad Penny] Prologue: Shae Mansfield


Gabe OOC

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Blankness...

Somewhere along the line, the body has its triggers. Those signs that demonstrate that it's time to wake up, pure autonomic instinct. For a strange young man, a twinge and a bit of light does the trick.

The twinge, when inspected, comes from pain in the shoulder and upper arm, which is bandaged up plus some cloth as a makeshift tourniquet.

The room he's in is decorated with paraphernalia of World War II, but the bed, drawers and attached bathroom imply this is someone's bedroom.

Honks of rush hour fill the hair, outside is the city... which city though?

Blankness...

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He discovered several things in the first few minutes: he was male, Caucasian, injured on on his left arm and shoulder, and had seven other scars of various lengths, thickness, and age. Once he found the mirror he added blond, violet-eyed, and of average height. His clothes were a bit tattered and none of the others in the closet or around the apartment were the right size for him. A look outside revealed brick walls, a blacktop crossroads half a block down with stoplights on poles on each corner; the decorations inside and the street signs were in English.

What does that tell me?

His shoulder twinged again and he winced, cringing on the wound for a moment. He tried to blink away the pain, his breath falling into a rhythmic pattern that at least distracted him from the pain even if it didn't make it go away. He made a second search of the room, secreting two sturdy knives on his person and grabbing the military-surplus green jacket to pull over his bloody clothes.

A few things about where and when, but not...who...or why.

He made his way to the door, opening it just far enough to get a look outside.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The look showed Shae the kitchen, and the faucet running, as an elderly man with a baseball cap on his head held out a glass for the stream of tap water to fill. Though he wasn't looking in Shae's direction, he apparently heard the door opening.

"Up now, kid? I'm Cory - I found you out cold in the alleyway, so I just wanted to make sure you recovered. The hell with this city - it's going downhill by the minute. You want me to call the police?"

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He blinked twice, then shook his head. "No, no pol...I...I'm sorry. I'm a little confused." His English was pleasant and unaccented, but his throat was dry. He took the glass and sipped cautiously from it. "Thank you. Could...could you tell me where I am, Cory? What city, I mean."

His mind was telling him things about Cory - what he liked to eat, how old he was, what kind of life he lived, the things he would like, how to get him to trust....trust who? Who was he?

He finished the glass quickly after the first three sips and handed it back to Cory. "You found me in the alleyway?"

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cory nodded, although right away Shae recognized that the man was perplexed by his first question. "Yes, son. Bleeding nasty in the shoulder, out cold. I thought some thug or gangbanger went after you... You didn't hit your head out there as well? We're right smack dab in the middle of Chicago."

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Little bits of information floated through his mind about Chicago; he knew where he was in the city now, from the street names he'd glimpsed outside. He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling for any bumps or soft spots on his head. His arm twinged at the shoulder.

"I-I don't have a concussion. I don't think. But," he sighed and shook his head, "everything's fuzzy. It's....I don't really know how to describe it." He did, but something was warning him off of trusting Cory that much - it wasn't personal, he didn't think. That part of him didn't seem to trust anything.

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"Alright," Cory said carefully. "Do you want to go to the hospital-" The ringing of a nearby phone interrupted the elderly man. "Timing, huh? One moment." The veteran made his way over to the phone and picked it up, and started talking, leaving Shae alone for the moment again.

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He eased himself into an easy listening distance of the phone conversation, but let his eyes roam the small room in search of other little clues while he listened in. He didn't want to go to the hospital - that didn't feel right somehow, just like calling the police hadn't felt right.

But what did feel right?

It was kind of Cory to take him in and patch him up, but the fact that he'd been injured probably meant that someone, somewhere, was still trying to injure or kill him - or thought they had. Where did he go from here? He didn't have a name or any idea of who he knew or what he'd been involved in before he'd woken up in Cory's apartment, and he could hardly continue to impose on the man. But he didn't have anywhere to go once he left.

To Cory, the boy looked oddly relaxed, leaning up against the counter and absently chewing on his lip as he thought.

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