The Kid in Baggy Jeans

The – well, there's really no other word for it, is there? – kid stares up at him from his place on the bench, and John's pretty certain he's going to say no. Then he nods. "Sure, okay, why not."

Steven unfolds himself from the chair, and John can't help but notice that the kid's taller than him by at least half an inch. Weeks of being the gaijin and John's grown used to always being the tallest person in any conversation. He notices too that Steven is favouring his left arm as he stuffs his paperback into his beat-up, beige duffel.

"You know a place?" he asks.

John points to the curving steps halfway down the concourse, where a stairs twists downwards and a mustard and blue neon sign promises drinks to those who follow the arrow down the rabbit hole.

"Works for me," he says, gathers up the duffel and starts walking, doesn't even check back to see if John's coming.

John follows.

Allowed a quiet moment of observation, his eyes fall on the teased out puff of unraveling thread where the duffel's leather strap is stitched to the canvas. The bag's old, seen some use, but looks to be of good quality. Even with half its stitching undone, the strap is in no danger of coming loose. By contrast, everything else the kid has on is cheaply made, but new. His jeans hang off him at the hips, made for a bigger man, and the grey dirt that's been ground into his sneakers hasn't rid them of their new shoe squeak.

He walks slightly hunched over, shoulders ratcheted up around his ears. It's a I wish I wasn't this tall, walk. A nothing to see here, walk. A please, don't notice me, walk. It's the sort of walk John hasn't employed since he was seventeen and coltish and sprouting up like a sapling, before he learned that that sort of self-conscious fumbling is only likely to earn you more attention.

"What are you doing now ?" EOS's voice is acid in his ear. Her last set of plans – the ones to add Kyrano to every watch and terrorist alert list in the eastern hemisphere – disappear from his eye line as she contemplates this newest twist in their game of 'Herd the Dumb Human'. "Are you starting a band? Acquiring a quest party? Shall I put out adverts for a randy wizard and a barbarian priestess to join us?"

John chuckles. Sometimes her command of idiom leaves him glowing with pride. "Only if they can shred on the bass," he says, switching back to Japanese.

"'Scuse me?" The kid half turns, gives him a puzzled look. He's wearing a pair of wire rimmed spectacles, their lenses tinted just the faintest shade of blue and it's hard to know what colour his eyes are beneath them. "D'you say something?"

"No, nothing," says John, "Sorry, private joke."

But he gets the feeling that the kid picked up on the Japanese just as well as he did the Russian.

Interesting.

"This is a distraction."

He lays his fingers over the metal clasp of his messenger bag. Yes.

"It is a mistake. Who is he?

Don't know. Find out.

John's spent a lifetime training to help people in trouble. He's a past master at compiling, categorising and triaging distress, at spotting problems before they begin. He doesn't think it flatters himself to say that he is an expert in his field, the expert in his field, and experts develop instincts, subconscious mental algorithms that allow the processing of data without effort exerted on conscious thought. He couldn't always articulate why he knew IR would need to put more resources into what was predicted to be only a minor earthquake, or that Gordon needed to evacuate the oil rig now though the fire still seemed confined, but he knew to trust his instincts, founded as they were on a bedrock of knowledge and training. Maybe it's those old instincts kicking in, that have pulled his focus to this boy.

Or maybe he's just lonely and wants to share a drink with someone who can't seem to see inside his head.

He follows Steven down the steps into the bar.

It's a small oblong of what might have otherwise been dead space, squeezed between balsa wood walls. There's mellow jazz playing from the speakers. One wall is made up entirely of browned out glass, beyond which lies the runway. The fixtures are all cracked black pleather and chrome.

The bartender chats to a single patron at the end of the bar. Her acrylic nails are painted a shade of dark maroon. They tap a blithe rhythm out on the countertop, but stop as they approach the bar.

"Yes?"

Steven orders two beers. His Russian is rough but solid. He looks a little incensed when the bartender cards him. He produces his passport and John looks away delicately, happy that EOS will catch the details via his body-cam.

A moment later, his credentials scroll across John's HUD.

Steven Jeremy Summers

Nebraska, USA

22

Steven Jeremy Summers pulls a wadded up ball of dollars and rubles out of his pocket and fumbles through his change.

John puts a hand out to stop him. He's been more careful with his money lately, resisting most of EOS's requests just to bump his bank balance by a zero or four lest it draw attention. But for now, at least temporarily, he's back on the TI teat. "Thank you," he says and lays cash on the counter. "No beer. Two glasses of that instead." He points to the top shelf vodka.

There's a sharp ping of reprimand in his ear, which makes him wince. EOS helpfully speeds his EKG across his line of vision, slowing the ribbon down to show him every tachyarrhythmia, every premature atrial complex, every non-sustained run of atrial flutter he's had in the last 24 hours. For extra-emphasis she brings up the rest of his biometrics, highlighting anything outside 95% confidence intervals in red. There is a lot of red.

"Something the matter?" Steven has spotted his flinch.

"Tinnitus," he says, "Nothing to worry about. I'm fine."

"I hope your new friend won't mind mopping you off the floor," she hisses.

The waitress, who is a head shorter than both of them, eyes them and then the distant reaches of the top shelf. "I'll bring it to your table," she says. John lays another bill upon the counter.

They slide into a booth. Steven removes his baseball cap. Beneath it, his hair is ruddy brown, shaped into what would have been a tidy high and tight about two weeks back. There are, John notices, scraggles of ginger in his five o'clock shadow. He rubs his head. "Do you think they do chicken wings?"

"I doubt it very much."

"I should have grabbed breakfast."

There's silence as both of them search for what to say next. John's lost the art of casual conversation with strangers. The usual airport safe zones, "Where'd you come from?" and "Where are you going?" seem like they would be uncomfortable to ask, and even more uncomfortable to answer.

The silence stretches like a rubber band and abruptly snaps back as Steven catches his eye and they both laugh, simultaneously.

"I suppose we could ask about those chicken wings," says John.

"Not much of a conversationalist, is he?" EOS chimes in.

John clears his throat.

"Sort of bovine, in fact."

John clears his throat again.

"Ask him where he got his credentials. They're impeccably forged. All the way back to elementary school in Idaho." She's popping any fragments of the young man's footprint that interest her into his display. A potted history of his life goes by too quick for John to read. "I can't find any digital fingerprint at all."

R -E- A- L?

He's spells it out with his fingers on the chrome edge of the table.

EOS gives a dismissive laugh, the noise of an expert deriding a woeful amateur.

But what's got John on edge is Steven's flicker of attention, carefully curtailed. Even Kyrano hadn't noticed John's tapped out signalling. And while John is reasonably certain that almost no one under the age of 25, who isn't directly related to Jefferson G Tracy, understands Morse anymore, he isn't 100% certain.

Or maybe the kid's just noticing his scars.

He turns his hands over, massages the hashmarks that criss-cross his palms. He should really invest in gloves. "Implanted hardware," he says, by way of explanation. "It's a biofeedback system."

"Yes, I know!" the kid blurts out. "Subcutaneous electromagnets to fine tune interface responsiveness. I've… I've seen something like them before. Is that a micro-transmitter?"

"Hmm?"

Steven tugs his own earlobe.

"Oh." John's surprised. "Yes." In the last couple of weeks he's seen all manner of responses to his piercings, from horror to alarm, to satisfied approval, to bald lust, but the young man's the first person to correctly divine their true purpose.

"Carbon blend?"

"Bio-polymer."

He nods. "Smart. A friend of mine wanted to get one when he was in high-school. But the teachers made him take it out."

The bartender brings their drinks, sets them down on a pair of off-white cocktail napkins.

"Thank you." He gives her another tip as she goes.

Steven picks up his glass and spins the glass of clear liquid

John holds his up too. "Your health."

"Your well-being."

Their glasses clink. They drink.