[color=gray][h3][sup][sup]Connie spun and lunged and grasped before he even knew something (some-[i]one[/i]) had touched him. But his fist closed around empty air; he stared only at a crumbling concrete wall, naked but for black-and-yellow guide stripes, a film of dust and greyish road soot. He stood there petrified a moment, dazed, knowing where he was but not how he had got there. Curling the fist in toward his chest, he peered down the ramp; saw McGlinn glaring up at him, radio unlatched from his chest rig, mealwormy lips muttering this or that request for backup to some other unit elsewhere in the city. McGlinn had the nerve to be shaking his head, acting like [i]Connie[/i] was the stupid one in all this, like [i]he[/i] was the one to be jeered at and pitied, some kind of escaped circus act. But the voice for the time had gone still, banishing itself back into the dusty attics of his mind. He did not dare to think it dead—never dead—but maybe dormant for a little while, leaving him to steep in the relative silence of the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs, the whistle of a cool desert wind between the alleys and the colonnades. Mocking him with that silence: needling him with the question of when it might see fit again to break it. To wrest away from him all that fragile control, all that delicately balanced, teetering peace. To remind him whose urges mattered here. Whose lusts.

The Brujah tried to leave but found himself transfixed to the spot via his left hand; jerked it free and as cold night air stung its way into fresh open wounds the nerves began to sing. He looked down at the crumbs of concrete, the flecks of yellow paint worked down into the abrasions, the scratches, the gashes. The skin of his fingertips sheared away, most of the nails broken off, some debrided entirely. Then he noticed the crater left behind in the nearby bollard, the chunk ripped away from it in a five-fingered, distinctly human pattern.

Fuck.

"Hey."

Again it had come from behind him—a tap to his shoulder and a whisper low and sultry—but Connie reeled again, and again he clutched at a fistful of empty air and again he'd given McGlinn cause to gawk up at street level and wonder what that bullheaded, unwashed moron was doing now.

"Whoa, whoa," cooed the disembodied voice, "it's just me. It's me. You alright? You cool?"

Only then did Connie think to look back toward the police cruiser and its partition. Its [i]empty[/i] partition. He sighed a raggèd sigh; cupped his tattered fingers, shoved the ruin of his fist down into his moleskin jacket's flap pocket. He could deal with it later, when knitting it up again would not risk the knives in his stomach growing even sharper, even more insatiable. Knee bouncing, his more intact hand fidgeting, clenching. "Just jumpy. Not fucking helping, by the way."

"Then how about some good news?" said the Malkavian, his tones boyish and full of vocal fry, especially at that pressed, urgent volume which said he wanted no one else to hear him, wanted not to break Obfuscate. "The parking attendant didn't know anything useful, which means he didn't see them. But just in case, I already, uh—sent him home for you."

And Connie had just been thinking to track that attendant down and lead him away to a stairwell for a 'private interview.' Blunt the edges a bit. "Right. Thanks, Jules. Couldn't do it without you."

He could practically hear Julian Prince's self-satisfied, gormless smile, even without Auspex. "I also went ahead and liberated him of the CCTV footage," beamed the Malkavian, his timbres quivering somewhat as he struggled to contain his excitement. "I've already uploaded it to your MDT."

"Where do you find the time?"

A giggle. "I had a very good distraction."

"Oh. You're welcome, I guess."

"Don't take too long browsing through it," Prince warned. "Chief Esparza is on his way. Oh, and Connie?"

But the Brujah, unsure of where to nod, where to halfheartedly salute, where to gesture his thanks, had simply dipped his head in something of an acknowledgement, and burrowed the second hand into its corresponding pocket, and started edging away toward his vehicle.[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]