A soft chuckle lingered in the dusty sunbeams as Dell picked himself up, cussing under his breath. "Get where I can see ya," he snapped at the thin air, and in turn the thin air became flesh. It rippled and sighed, and then melted into a crisp navy suit with matching tie. Wearing the suit was a man narrow as a razor and just as sharp on the edges. He held himself with enviable dignity and care. His profile was hawklike, and like a hawk he was hooded: a dark blue balaclava covered his face, leaving only his mouth and sharp blue eyes exposed. His arms were folded casually across his chest, a fine cigarette hanging from the fingers of his right hand, and he stood with his back to Dell, inspecting the blueprints that hung from the walls above the workbenches.

Dell brushed off his pants, his face dark as thunder. "I damn well asked y'all ta quit that Invisible Man hogwash 'round here."

The man half-turned, offering him a knowing smile. "That may be so, but I made no promises." He turned back to inspect the gray machine on the paper-strewn bench now, and tapped it with the back of a gloved knuckle experimentally. When it did nothing, he lost interest. "Keeping busy, I trust?" he said, slipping out a sleek tin box from within his suit. He opened it in a practiced motion, revealing the cigarettes within, and offered it to Dell, who sighed and took one.

"Can't complain," Dell answered, sticking it behind his ear like a pencil. He ignored the way the man wrinkled his nose at the action. "Spose you're off heistin' papers?"

"You could say that," the man said, snapping the case shut and returning it to his pocket. "But you know why I am here, of course." His words were laced with some impenetrable mixture of European influences, elegant and reserved.

"'Course I know. Same thing every time, isn't it? Clear off that." Dell motioned him off with the wrench, hovering over the machine perhaps a little too protectively. "Sure don't need you jinxing it … Tell 'im, what's his name, Blutarch, tell Blutarch I'm almost finished."

The man leaned back against the bench, watching Dell as he fretted over the machine like a mother hen. "You do realize you are on a deadline, don't you, Conagher?"

"The blueprints ain't exactly straightforward even with the cipher, and that's not countin' the improvements an' stabilizations," said Dell, brushing cigarette ash from the workbench. "Can't rush these things."

"Our esteemed employer thinks otherwise." The man put his cigarette to his lips and drew from it as Dell crouched down beneath the bench. "The last time I came your implication was that it would only be another month."

Finding what he was looking for, Dell came back up holding a heavy metal toolbox, and set it down on the bench with a bang. A screw fell from the machine's guts to the wood and draft paper, landing with an echoing clatter. "And that was before we were both shuffled off to another three-week excursion in New Mexico," he said, pinning down the screw with his thumb before it could roll away. "Bit hard to work on it when I'm fightin' for my life."

"And yet you are working on this … toy?"

Dell's expression soured. "It's a gun, Mr. Bond, and it will be covering your sorry transparent hide here in a few weeks. Don't tell me how ta do my job. Y'all don't see me tellin' you how to go around stalkin' people, do ya?" He shook his head, fitting the screw back into place in a delicate motion. "The machine, it'll get done. It's almost done as it is, just needs some fine-tunin'." His words were lined with exasperation, and he had to stop a moment to get his patience back. Damn spook always wound him up. Crookeder than a dog's hind leg. "Wouldn't want to send 'our esteemed employer' a faulty immortality machine, now would I?"

The man rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "It is on your head, either way. I am just a messenger."

"I'd say you're a bit more than that," Dell answered, dropping his eyes his guest's right sleeve before pulling his safety goggles down over them.

Following his gaze, the man smirked. "I suppose you could."

Dell went back to work. The man watched him for a time as he dismantled the gun into a collection of parts, eyes half-lidded in boredom. After a few minutes of this, when his cigarette had burned down to the filter, he said, "How is your, ah, friend, then? Unharmed, I hope?"

Dell paused in midtwist of his wrench. "Jus' how long you been sneakin' around?"

"Long enough," the man smiled. He paused, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with the heel of one patent-leather shoe. "He—she?—was spying on you."

"Sounds about right."

"Who are they?"

"I reckon that's none of your business."

"On the contrary," said the man. "I think you will find that there is very little which is not my business."

Dell grunted in answer, and returned his attention to his work. The gun lay in pieces on the bench, now; Dell had done this so many times by now it was second nature. He cast over the parts, searching—ah. There was the bit he needed: the radar looked knocked out of joint.

His uninvited company took to wandering around the garage, lifting tarps and poking his aquiline nose into dusty corners. Dell ignored him. He'd yet to muck anything up, and there wasn't anything he could snoop his way into. The radar needed his full attention, anyway.

All was quiet for a time until something tucked away into a corner gave a sharp warning beep as the man in blue passed it. He stopped in his tracks, instantly tense. When nothing happened, he relaxed. A contemplative hmm reached Dell's ears, and the man turned glanced over his shoulder at him. "You keep the sentry built? Even here?"

Dell turned the wrench on the replaced gauge in the radar. "Seemed like a good idea. I got you creepin' around after all, the other one might try showin' up one day too. Feels better havin' her around anyway."

The man made an unimpressed noise. "The sappers still work outside of Teufort."

Turning, Dell leaned back on the bench and tipped his goggles and hardhat up to better admire his creation: the four-foot-tall, black-and-blue contraption resting on its tripod, visible over the man's shoulder. Both its sleek barrels were trained on the man in blue, but it soon ceased to pay him any attention, going at ease. Dell had disabled its sweeping behavior after it had knocked the shelves around it off the walls for the third time. "Yeah, but would he really be expectin' to see her out here?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not," the man said, brushing off his suit. "Only a second-level model?"

"Wouldn't let me take the rocket launchers home."

"Ah. Of course. Tell me, laborer, would you describe yourself as 'paranoid' at all?"

"Just enough," Dell said, smiling to himself as he turned back to his work.

The door eased open, and the arsonist didn't hear it.

Her head hurt. More than usual, at least. Dizzy, which was new. But she'd gotten up on shaky legs after the immediate nausea had gone away anyway, just to give the metaphorical finger to Conagher, and managed to raid his bookshelf: everything he'd left for her was trash, nonfiction, or technical manuals for devices she wasn't interested in. She would have preferred to go right back out there and try figuring out where Shark was, but the pounding, angry pain in her skull had forbidden it.

So now she was back on the couch, mask firmly in place and buried in something promising-looking she'd found on the shelf. It was new, just out that year, with a shiny cover and the name Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

It was an odd book, so far, but enjoyable, and more importantly not too long. Reading anything for more than a few minutes now gave her a migrane. Not that she had much reading material these days, anyway. Newspapers and garbage labels, mostly. It surprised her that she remembered how to read, really. She'd forgotten so much.

She was two chapters in and just about to join Rick Deckard on his way to his job when the dog, which had planted itself in the middle of the carpet to give her soulful looks and lick itself, stood. If that was all it had done, she wouldn't have noticed. But it got up in a stiff-legged way, its head low and its pointed satellite ears up, toward the doorway. The arsonist froze, her eyes darting up to the gap in the wall that led from living room to kitchen, where the front door was. From here, she couldn't see more than the edge of the table, and a few cupboards, and half of a window. The door was out of her line of sight.

The dog growled, and she heard the door shut gently. Quiet footsteps followed, and then stopped. A few seconds passed, and the dog relaxed. It padded forward, cautious still, and she put down the book. The animal paused in the doorway, tail wagging now. She could see a human knee sticking out from behind the wall, by the dog's head, and a gloved hand reached out to scratch a furry ear. Neither belonged to Dell Conagher.

She found herself casting about for a weapon, anything hard and sturdy. Nothing was in easy reach, and her host had hidden away the little cast-iron statue she'd attacked him with the other week. (She couldn't really remember why she'd done that, only that she had—and it had been important, but she wasn't sure why.) Before she could do anything else, though, the man who was not Dell Conagher stood up and stepped into the room.

He was lean and wiry, dressed to kill. He wore something over his face that showed only his eyes and mouth, and for a brief moment she understood the apprehension a mask brought with it, the apprehension she brought with her wherever she went. The dog had gone back to its place on the carpet, and the man looked down at it with a wry smile. He held a unlit cigarette in one hand. "I have often found it is well worth befriending dogs, if at all possible. What do you think?"

It took her a few seconds to find her tongue. "Who the fuck are you?"

The masked man made his way over to Conagher's big armchair, sitting down lightly. He crossed one leg over the other, relaxing."No one you need to be concerned with." he said easily. "I am but one of Mr. Conagher's … coworkers." Coworkers. The arsonist glared at him. What the hell kind of job did Conagher do to work with someone like this? He had the kind of accent she had only ever heard on television. "Who might you be?"

"Nobody."

He tilted his head, smirking. "Turnabout is fair play," he conceded. He fished out a lighter from his pocket (she came to attention immediately. Foreign model, Zippo-sized, brushed metal), and cupped his hand around the flame as he put it to the cigarette. Glancing up, he asked, "How rude of me—may I offer you one?" As he said it, he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a plain gray cigarette case, opening it smoothly with one hand. He held it out as far as his arm could go, like he worried about getting to close to her. Inside lay six sleek rolls of paper and tobbacco beneath a thin metal band.

The nicotine craving slammed into her like a brick, making her head pound and her bones itch. When was the last time she'd had a smoke? There was certainly nothing to smoke around here, she'd checked everything Conagher didn't have nailed down, and some of the things he did.

When, then? She knew she'd had one just before she got into town, before she'd run into Conagher and his shotgun. Or she … she almost knew. Had she accepted one off of the freckled-drunk-redheaded Irishman on the Greyhound? Or the box of Lucky Strikes, had that been what the teenager with the blotchy face pressed into her hands as she sat in a hungry daze outside the run-down drug store?

But then, the Lucky Strikes had vanished shortly after that. No box, she couldn't even remember smoking them. Maybe she had imagined them. Those people, had they even been real? She'd found herself talking to air before, convinced that a moment ago someone was speaking to her.

Pushing it out of her mind in a flash of anger, she reached out to snatch three of the proffered straights from the case. They were solid and real beneath her gloved fingers, and she thought nothing of the man's raised eyebrows at her greed. He had offered. Clearly he could afford it. Letting her hands linger a moment over their smooth surfaces, she stowed them in her jacket. Her fingers shook, she wanted them so badly, but—no. Later. Couldn't very well enjoy them now. Later.

Apparently, he decided not to say anything, snapping the case shut and returning it to his breast pocket. "I could not help but notice your ill-fated attempt at espionage," he said. She went stiff, staring at the ground. The dog was watching her. "May I ask why?"

"No."

"Ah," he said. "I will ask it anyway. Why?"

"…took something of mine." Her own voice startled her. She hadn't meant to tell him. Why did she do that?

His brow lifted in curiosity. "Hm. I knew Mr. Conagher to be many things, but a thief is not one of them. What did he take from you?"

The arsonist swallowed. "Something important." Important. Vital, even. Shark was all she had. (Shark the flamethrower. Even she knew that was crazy.)

"How unkind." But that was all he said, and she didn't say anything back.

At some point he had leaned forward, elbows on knees. He was studying her now, more intense than before, and when that occured to her she felt her heartrate skyrocket. Why was he doing that. Why was he, he, he needed to stop, he needed to stop now. But he didn't, and they simply sat there in silence: him with his cigarette and her with her skeleton suddenly so rigid as to be fused into one piece. He wouldn't leave. Why wouldn't he leave? At least Conagher left her alone. A momentary surge of appreciation for the old man breathed through her. It vanished as quickly as it came.

"Funny company he keeps, isn't it?" the man said at last. "Masked, the pair of us."

No. No more. She was leaving. The arsonist stood up, and stopped short when the blood rushed to her still-aching head. The man said something as she put both hands to her pounding temples, but she couldn't make it out.

To her displeasure she found that going anywhere was out of the question. Sitting had left her feeling steadier than she really was. She leaned against the arm of the couch, arms folded, willing her head to stop spinning. The whole time the man only eyed her curiously. "Where's Conagher?" she managed, a few seconds later.

The man neatly steepled his knife-edge hands. "Working, I believe."

"Garage?"

"Naturally."

"What're you doing in here, then?" she said, voice dripping venom.

The man in blue chuckled and took the cigarette from his mouth, grinding it out casually in a plate left on the side table. "I have already spoken with him, and as I could discern you were likely 'laid up' after your fall, I thought I would come and … introduce myself." He gave her a conspiratorial sort of look. "Mr. Conagher isn't terribly sociable, I am sure you have noticed. The fact he has a guest at all is something of an event."

It made her skin crawl to admit, even to herself, that he was right. No one had come calling on Conagher in the last two weeks. Not that she knew anything about house guests, but. Ugh. This was horseshit.

"Why do you wear that thing?" the man asked suddenly, those sharp eyes on her again. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. "The filtre, the mask. Broken. Looks uncomfortable. Unless it is a fashion statement … ?"

"Piss off," she said, her voice a gunshot, making the dog's ears whip upright. Twice in one day about the mask, fuck. Why did they always want to know? The mask was a mask was a mask, she wasn't hiding anything.

Nevermind the fact that's what a mask was for, hiding.

The man held up both hands in a show of peace. "Merely an inquiry. Kindly don't fall, won't you?" he said, eyeing her shaky knees. "I would almost feel obliged to help you up, and you might be carrying something."

"I have double tuberculosis and half-a-dozen strains of rabies," she sneered automatically, sinking back onto the couch. "Bite me."

"I'll have to decline." he chuckled. When he stood up, she flinched. He made no notice, or pretended not to. "Well, Nobody," he said, brushing off his suit, "Enchanté. I shall take my leave of you. Best of luck with the rabies, and in your future spying endeavors—though, on second thought, that is perhaps best left to us professionals."

He flashed her a smirk as sharp and sleek as he was, a smirk that drove her up a wall just looking at it. He adjusted his tie, gave her a nod, and—

Vanished.

He melted out of sight, turned to nothing, disappeared in a shimmer of blue light, and the arsonist, still dizzy and weak, could only stare at where he had stood.

She forced herself to her feet again, tripped over the dog, and landed halfway on her knees onto Dell's chair. The smell of smoke hung in the air. The cigarette the man had finished still lay on the plate, and the ones she had taken from him were still in her pocket when she scrambled to find them. If they were there, and they were, they were, she hadn't imagined the whole thing. She couldn't have.

But people, real people, didn't just disappear into thin air.

Hallucinations, on the other hand, did.

Her brain felt full of static. Slowly, she picked herself back up and returned to the couch, one of the cigarettes clenched tightly in her fist. The nicotine craving was howling at her, she needed that cigarette, but it was all the evidence she had. Cigarettes didn't come out of nowhere, Dell didn't smoke, he'd told her so himself. The man in the blue suit was the only one she could have gotten them from.

And an hour or so later, Dell came back with a cigarette of the same brand as the ones in her pocket between his lips.