Chapter Text
The room buzzed with the hum of four dozen T.V. monitors, like cicadas chirping in the hot, quiet dusk. No sun ever set over Pentagram city, but the bright orange-and-pink hues of day had turned slowly into the soft purple-and-red hues of dusk on the monitor screens– no longer the conditions for Vox to maintain his surveillance of the streets. Vox’s smart-screen head lulled to the side as he entered Sleep Mode. His swivel chair followed the shift of weight to spin around laggardly.
Vox sighed, feeling heavy, as though his body had fused together in the long hours of scrutinizing live surveillance footage. He hadn't sighted his elusive little deer in weeks, and symptoms of withdrawal flirted with him, leaving glitches in his processes and bugs crawling under his chassis. As he pondered the misery of another fruitless hunt, a ding from his phone cut through the symphony of electric whining. Vox’s face flickered back onto his screen as he grudgingly lifted his phone to read the text from an ‘Unknown Number.’
“ve gt info fsr yu i f ur nott busy”
“What???” Vox texted back, “How did you get this number???”
Vox watched the three dots indicate the other’s typing for an excruciatingly long time. He anticipated a paragraph of unintelligible text, but instead he received only one word.
“Lafitte’s”
“Lafitte’s?” Vox repeated back, out loud. A quick Voogle search displayed a little-known speakeasy on the edge of the Cannibal Colony.
“Alstor hre hury”
“Alastor...? Here...? Hurry...!?”
Vox sprung from his chair with a sudden, ungraceful arch of his back, and sprinted towards the door. He collapsed against it with a THUD, peeled himself off as it swung open, and sped down the hall, past the open door to the living room, where his boyfriend sprawled out on the sofa watching soap operas. He paused in the foyer to dress for the chilled night air, and had his blue pin-striped coat half on before his processors caught up with him– “Hold on, idiot: This is obviously a trap.”
Vox froze for a full five seconds. He reluctantly called back the unknown number, but the line pulsed with the annoying tone of a disconnected number. “Well, shit,” Vox thought to himself. He looked back down the hall at the light dancing on the wall from his lover’s television, and weighed the options: he could be walking into a trap… or walking into Alastor. Vox realized his choices had, in reality, the same general outcome.
“Babe,” Vox called down the hall, “If I’m not back tonight, I’m completely fucking dead, okay?”
“Okay, Hun,” Valentino called back to the recently vacated hall.