Big thanks to my incredible beta-reader, Yonshii for her invaluable input. I also thought it would be better to write shorter episodes in order to have a more even flow of chapters. Ideas? Prompts perhaps? Feel free to tell me what you would like to see!
"It's 2027 and people still think that voluntary poisoning is the cool thing to do."
Adam noticed Malik had stepped out of the cockpit and was standing beside him, her face was thinly veiled behind the passing wall of smoke that was slowly crumbling into the blackness of night air. The process was hastened by her hand slapping the air, clearing the line of sight between her and Jensen.
"My lungs are like a car engine, cycling poisonous gases without causing harm to myself." Jensen noted in a factual voice as he took yet another drag of the burning roll of tolerable toxin.
"Figured as much, but what about those of us that don't have super-lungs, Jensen?" Malik asked as she leaned against the hull of the VTOL, never breaking eye contact. Well, "eye contact" with Jensen was a tricky thing, what with the shades that were apparently glued to his eyes. Technically they were grafted into his skin, but he rarely retracted them anyway, so glue wasn't totally out of the question.
Adam shrugged. He looked at his shoes for a moment.
"Stand a safe distance away?" He half-heartedly answered.
Malik sighed.
"Adam, you do enough of the distancing thing already. Or don't you think we notice that if you're not in your office, you're in your apartment?" Malik crossed her arms with a knowing face as she was leaning against her VTOL.
Jensen sighed, producing more grey smoke that dissolved into the inky blackness that was the night sky.
"I prefer to not get in the way." Jensen murmured as he stared at the skyscraper ahead of him. Sarif HQ was always such a matchstick at night.
"Y'know, people feel safer when chief of security is roaming the halls like the other mortals." Faridah chuckled.
"Maybe."
"Which is why..."
Malik reached over to Jensen to pluck the seed of isolation from his metal fingers to hold it within her gloved ones. She held it up to him for him to see, like a professor at a biology dissection. The smoke was still spiralling upwards in a fading carousel, always blending itself with the cold night air like a weak dab of white into a massive bowl of black paint. It wasn't very noticeable after the start, but it was there. The white dab would linger to sully the pure, unaltered black for quite some time. The thought that you would take away something like that to replace with a toxin always sickened her. It was sad really. Adam didn't need any more of it.
"You don't need this." Malik said as she flicked the bundle of chemicals away from their standing position.
Adam followed the downward arc of the smoke as it landed with a pit-pat as it struck against the concrete. He looked at the small column of white, rising and disappearing, rising and disappearing in a steady flow.
He pushed against the VTOL to make his way towards the smoke. He looked down at the thing, Malik couldn't see his expression with his back to her, but she didn't need to. What mattered was that he snuffed the flow of smoke with his foot.
As he walked back, Malik thought that perhaps Jensen was wearing a ghost of a smile upon his mouth, then again, that could have been the helipad's floodlights playing tricks on her.
Then again, it didn't really matter.
He could start painting a better picture now.
A few days afterwards, Malik saw Jensen walk around the various floors of Sarif HQ. He really did try to look busy, the truth is that he looked incredibly awkward as he leaned against the railings with something of a determined face.
Malik stopped at her office door to wave at Jensen who was on the third floor.
He waved back with a satisfied smile.
The PA system suddenly sung. "Adam Jensen and Faridah Malik to the Helipad. Adam Jensen and Faridah Malik to the helipad."
On their way to the VTOL to meet Sarif, Malik happily noticed that Adam wasn't carrying the familiar box of cigarettes in his pocket.