Titan said nothing as he followed her outside, and looked back at her as she looked up at him. His left eye was still closed tightly.

"If you're interested in what we were discussing earlier, we can go somewhere to talk about it. Um..."

He paused awkwardly for a moment.

"I'm staying at a hotel on the other side of town, there's a pretty nice little restaurant over there if you're hungry.
My buy."

He thumbed the chipper again, then gave her a conspiratorial grin.

"By the way, our good friend Kaufmann probably isn't going to be in business much longer. My boss takes record of wherever I use this thing, and the Bureau of Enforcement loves to investigate how we use our funds, so he's probably gonna get some cops knocking on his door in a few days."

The confusion left Tau's face and she perked up. "Food sounds really good," she said, once again ignoring discussion of a job. "I don't know how much your government friends are gonna find. Kaufmann's legit, as far as I know anyway." As they walked, Tau's pace became slightly unsteady. "He used to be military. His wife, too. They retired a while ago, even before..." She trailed off but then continued. "They retired before I started running. That's how I got my start. Musta been... least a decade ago." Her words began to run together a bit. "My big sis's a runner too. Special agent for Freedom. Been a while since I seen 'er. Oughta send her a mail soon." She looked up at Titan, eyes glazed over. "You got any siblings, Tall Guy?"

Titan stood thoughtfully as Tau talked about Kaufmann. As she asked him about siblings, he visibly winced and looked away for a moment.

"Yeah, I have a few. I mentioned one of them, Tiger."

He kept walking in the direction of the hotel, slowing his pace so that she could keep up with him.

"He's the reason I'm in the Debris. I'm looking for him. I got a message from someone claiming to be him telling me to come here, but well..."

He trailed off. He rested his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, right right right, I remember now. I thought you were looking for a tiger, not a person whose name is Tiger..." Tau stopped dead in her tracks. "Wait, Tiger and Titan? Because... because you're so big?" A short but genuine laugh came from her, surprisingly light for how rough she was the rest of the time. "Well at least it ain't hard to live up to your names," she giggled, then composed herself. "... well what? You don't think it's him?" Tau rushed to catch up to him, suddenly interested.

He grimaced a bit at her jokes.

"I mean we're not technically-It's complicated."

He was silent for a minute or so.

"I don't know if it was him. I hadn't heard from him in a really long time beforehand, but he knew exactly how to contact me. But when I got here, nothing."

He threw his hands up in a sort of shrug.

"I didn't really have anything better to do, so I've kind of just been waiting around in case it really was him."

He put his hands back in his pockets, and found himself lost in thought again. He didn't know much of anything about life in a place like this, but Tiger was different. He didn't think it was likely that he'd been kidnapped or something silly like that. But Tiger wouldn't leave him out to dry like this, and he had no idea who even knew enough about them to impersonate Tiger to get him to come here. And even if so, why?

He swore at the ground, "Where the fuck are you, Thrush?"

He looked up, and saw that they'd arrived in front of his hotel. He sighed, and then gave Tau another warm smile.

"Here we are. The restaurant I was talking about is only a couple doors down. It's about as touristy as it gets around here so the food is pretty good. I like the fish."

Tau shrugged off his words. "Blood don't mean shit. If he's your brother, he's your brother. Any idea why he might be in the Debris?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "If you still have the message, I might know someone who can help. Not for free, though." Her brow was furrowed, seeing Titan's frustrations. But when they came to a stop, she looked up at the hotel. It was noticeably nicer than the section they had previously been in, though shabby and worn-down. She looked to her right and left, finding a well-lit and mostly clean "boulevard" type of corridor. A few signs were visible, with much less flashing and human trafficking. "I don't think I've been to this side before..."

"It's no Neptune Walk, but it's not too bad either."

He beckoned her, and walked down a couple buildings to the restaurant, 'Fruits of Labour'. As they walked inside, he stepped up to the counter and had a short but animated conversation with the hostess. She laughed, and retrieved two thin menus before leading them to a quiet table on the other side of the restaurant. The other tables were very sparsely populated, there were perhaps 6 other people in total. Most of them seemed to be businessmen, furiously browsing things on their Bulletins.

As they sat, Titan smiled at the hostess.

"You know what I want, and I'm buying so don't give my friend here a rough time, Margaret."

He gave Tau a conspiratorial wink.

Tau didn't understand the reference, but nodded in agreement, suddenly worried about appearing ignorant or sheltered. Too late to worry about that now. She followed Titan to the restaurant, a quaint little place that was bigger than it looked from the outside. As Titan spoke to the hostess, Tau lingered in the doorway, feeling awkward and out of place. She trotted after them like a lost puppy, and her stomach growled loudly as Titan said he would be buying. Her face flushed slightly, both at his wink and at her own stomach's betrayal, definitively embarrassed now.

Tau buried her face in the menu. Everything sounded good. She could probably eat at least four people's worth of food, especially on someone else's dime. She struggled with figuring out what she wanted, and the poor hostess-- Margaret, she reminded herself-- had to come back twice before Tau figured out what she wanted. She ordered a large sampler platter and coffee. She kept the menu for the time being, reading and re-reading the appetizing meal descriptions. "I don't usually get a choice in what I eat," she explained sheepishly to Titan. "I've never been starving but the food is always whatever someone else didn't want... Beggars can't be choosers and all that..."

Titan nodded at her as she spoke, swishing some ice water in his mouth.

"I know what you mean. When I was young money was pretty tight, so we kind of had to make do. Don't get me wrong," he added, looking at her, "it was a more well-off place than the Debris, but for the area we were definitely not in the upper echelons of wealth. Regardless, please do eat as much as you want. My allowance is pretty good today."

He allowed himself to get lost in the memory for a moment. Before his job, before the cybernetics, and all that stuff. He shook his head to clear it, and smiled.

"Anyways. I wanted to keep talking to you about this job."

He paused for a moment to make sure she was paying attention.

"So like I said, the jobs vary a lot, and so does the pay for each. But the real kicker is, each of us gets an allowance."

He did some quick math in his head, then continued, "The allowance varies as well, but it tends to average at about 20 thousand a day."

Tau listened to him, sipping her coffee. She felt it warm her insides, and she sighed quietly, rather content. She couldn't remember the last time she felt this safe and free and... happy? Was that the feeling?

Her head flipped up at the word "job"... Tau was eager to earn some money, but doing what? She stared, mouth agape, at the allowance he quoted her. "What the fuck do you do?"

Titan took another sip of ice water, enjoying the cold liquid.

He thought for a moment before answering her question. "Well, it varies a lot. Sometimes we're asked to retrieve something,
or find someone, or transport something or someone." He paused, looking a bit grim. "Occasionally we're asked to do things a bit more dangerous. Cop-type stuff."

We watched her reaction carefully.

Tau seemed interested at first. The job description was basically a runner. But with a hell of a pay raise. Then she understood why.

"I'm not going to kill anyone," she stated bluntly, still unsure if she understood Titan's meaning. "Even with that pay raise, my job with Freedom is hella cushy. I literally had zero problems until... today." Tau grimaced, and drained the rest of her coffee. Her pupils were dilated and she bounced in her seat. "As... uncultured... as the Debris is... I know it well and I'm not scared-- or ashamed-- to live the rest of my life there."

She held up a finger, indicating that she wasn't done talking. But there was a long minute of silence as she gazed thoughtfully across the table. "However... no matter what you might say... I still owe ya. And I want to help you find your brother. But I don't know if that's the kind of job for me."

He nodded, and listened while she spoke.

"We don't ever get assassination jobs, but I understand what you mean. I also want to re-elaborate. You get to pick and choose what jobs you take, and it doesn't affect your allowance in any way."

He smiled and thought about Tiger. His brother had always liked the big dangerous gang-busting missions. Titan went with him occasionally but always preferred quieter things.

"I understand if you're not interested. It's a lot to take in all at once from a stranger."

The first of their food finally arrived, and Titan happily grabbed for a napkin.

"By the way, since we're talking about missing siblings, you haven't heard about anyone named Thrush have you?"

He grabbed a small fried something or other from her side of the table.

Tau squirmed uncomfortably. She ate only a bite off the plate in front of her for now, her appetite suddenly gone. "Haven't heard the name... How many of your siblings are missing?" she asked, the smallest hint of suspicion in her voice. Downing her third cup of coffee, she stared into the empty cup, the cracks seeming to shift and dance before her eyes.

Titan laughed a little bitterly at his drink.

"That's a complicated question."

He looked at her thoughtfully for a minute. For whatever reason, he felt like he could trust her.

"As you know, I'm a cyborg. People like me are pretty rare, especially because of...You know, Earth."

He paused and stirred his water with a straw. The ice had begun to melt in the glass, certainly helped along by his increased body temperature.

"Tiger and Thrush aren't really my siblings, by blood anyway. They're my coworkers. We don't share parents, but we do share a creator."

His expression and body language completely changed, and he worked his hands at the air aimlessly.

"I don't have a lot of memories of him. The time we spent in his care is very blurry to me. He was eventually killed by our current employer."

The ice was melting much faster now. He took another quick drink of the water before it completely lost its cool.

"He wasn't a good man. But yeah. Tiger and Thrush are cyborgs, like I am. Unfortunately for us, a lot of nasty sorts of people tend to take a pretty intense interest in us."

He was silent then for a time. The water was now merely lukewarm rather than ice cold.

The day he was taken from his family by the Creator tended to replay itself over and over in his memories as though it were a song stuck in his head. Even the name he wore, 'the Creator', was perfectly indicative of the kind of man he had been.

He looked up at Tau again finally, and forced a smile.

"Sorry, Thrush did say I was always too eager to dump my tragic history on random people."