Assassination is a dish best served braised in soy sauce and garnished with thinly-sliced scallions.

I stepped out into the whipping wet wind, ready to shake off a hard two hours up in the Control Room. And it's a misnomer, really. I can't even control myself from waking up facedown in a puddle of my own drool after fifteen minutes of the place. But I guess we're not here to talk about that.

I spilled out of the library and down the steps, headed straight home to kick up my heels in conscientious objection towards the unexpected rainstorm. Fumbling abortively for a cigarette, the sudden breeze slapped a few errant drops across my glasses with maddeningly coquettish disdain for my habit. So I thrust my hands dejectedly into my pockets. Apparently hard enough to unseat one of my headphones. But something didn't feel right about that.

Something was an assassin.

A secondary but equally salient something would be the sock in his hand, still snapping back in recoil after greeting the back of my head at point-blank. Everything fell back together, a shattering whiskey tumbler in reverse. Of course he didn't show up in Main Lab right as I punched in just because he had a break between classes. He chatted with me earlier inside, pointedly avoiding mention of why, specifically, he was in the lab while not on shift. He smiled big and bright as he did so. Jackals always smile biggest when they've got you cornered.

I nodded twice, hard, out of my reverie. But I suppose I shouldn't claim all the credit for this abrupt snap to attention. James was the one to get things going with two quick comments from his wrist. The sock is his answer for everything. And I still haven't figured out whethere that makes him a brute or an extremely efficient argumentor. Either way, I was starting to come around to his point of view.

A lot of things were starting to make sense, actually. A hard rain was falling. The heels of my socks were moist, and the cuffs of my pants were beyond the reach of euphemism. They were damned wet. I floated for a bit, as a plaintive pop refrain piped through my headphones with gentle insistence, "'Cause I'm fall, fall-falling for you... I'm fall, fall-falling for you." Me too, darlin'. Sure is nice that someone put the lights out.

-Eric

Postscript:
FUCK I FORGOT ABOUT THE ASSASSINS GAME AND GOT KILLED LIKE A FUCKING FOOL AFTER WORK YESTERDAY GOD DAMN IT.