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The first thing Nikola noticed was that two days into his stay at the boarding house, the proprietor had already worked herself into a state and he hadn't even done anything. On closer inspection on the third day, wherein he spent most of his time in the common areas eavesdropping while he waited for Clemens, he discovered that she was upset over an unsettled debt from a group of boarders. Some traveling actors' organization or some such. Unimportant.
Glancing at his pocketwatch, Nikola pushed the whole thing out of his mind. Clemens was late. Again. At this point, Clemens owed him; he was the entire reason Nikola had come all the way out to San Francisco. Travel was neither cheap nor easy and if Clemens didn't show his face by tomorrow, Nikola was leaving. For New York. Or perhaps back to England for a time. At least Helen would never stand him up like this.
A doctor and a constable moved down the stairs then and Nikola immediately sat up straighter. A female doctor. Here? Her hair was bright red and there was little chance Helen could have come here without his knowledge. If he could have followed this strange woman without drawing undue attention, he would have, but others were moving after her, including a man Nikola had already come to know. He had helped the man procure information, had spoken to him numerous times over these two days. They were not friends, exactly, but neither were they strangers.
Even though Nikola found the man himself strange.
As the man spotted Nikola, he paused. Nikola offered a tiny nod in greeting, one which the other returned. Waiting a short time for the group to leave, Nikola finally stood. Making a show of brushing off his coat and deciding to take a walk, Nikola followed.
It was easy enough to track them. Even if he was not actually familiar with any of them per se, one of them stood out to his heightened senses: never in his life had Nikola smelled anything at all like the man calling himself Data. The man was not organic. That much Nikola knew without a doubt. What he actually was and how he existed were mysteries that would badger him for a long time.
Unfortunately, keeping up with the group and yet remaining unseen proved to be a challenge. For a time, he followed well enough, but by the time he found the cave system they were in, suddenly, most of them simply vanished. It was as though they ceased to exist, and, Nikola realized with a start, Clemens had been among them. Two others remained, along with a muted version of Data's whatever it was smell, though what caught and held Nikola's attention was the blood. There was enough and he was still relatively new enough to being a vampire that the smell nearly overwhelmed him. He spent most of his tracking time fighting his instincts. He would not become a killer like Johnny just because the scent of blood was in the air.
By the time he finally found where the scent had originated, he was watching a scene unfold that he could never have predicted. Not even Nigel's wildest imaginations would have come up with this. HG Wells, perhaps, but in a different way. Time travel. Dimensional hops.
He waited until the bald man -- who looked far too much like Druitt and acted far too much like Watson -- was gone before he moved forward to help.
"You're late," was all he offered to Clemens as he gathered the injured woman in his arms and turned to carry her all the way back to the nearest hospital. This was a secret he would carry with him for a long time to come.
When he heard that Clemens promised to settle the debt at the boarding house, Nikola rolled his eyes. "You owe me."
Clemens owed him for more than just the money or the help, far more than the man would ever know.