There Will Be Blood - X-RX
Bass reverberated throughout the club, the electronic drums sending a tremor through Sebastian's feet as he kept to the walls. He wore a plain expression, exchanging glances with the usual creatures of the night who prowled Nar Shadaa, all the while maintaining his distance from them. As Sebastian slunk towards the back of the club, he hit his wrist device and displayed a projection of the cipher he had followed there. The numbers, when decrypted, read the name of a man, who Sebastian had found after cracking a prior series of codes leading to the location of the club. With the holo-projection hovering above his wrist, he took a breath and hesitantly approached one of the waitresses, then exhaled and waited for her to respond. The music was too loud for her to notice him, so Sebastian resorted to tugging at her sleeve, which seemed to make her annoyed as much as it made him uncomfortable.
"The kark do you want, nerd?" The pink haired woman spat. She appeared to have been talking to another guest, which Sebastian soon realized he had interrupted.
"I'm looking for a man named Kiri Forund, is he here?" Sebastian asked, offering the woman no smile, just a question. He pointed to the projection on his wrist device, which displayed the image of a male Rodian, along with the name Sebastian had decrypted. A few seconds passed and the woman only stared at him dumbly, so he stared back and pointed persistently to the image.
"He's out back." The woman said and flicked back one of the pink, plastic tubes which made up her head of hair. With a nod, she shoved past Sebastian and continued her conversation.
Satisfied, Sebastian shut off the projection and walked to the back door of the club. Wearing his usual black T-shirt with the equation on the front, he appeared almost conspicuous in his army pants and combat boots, when he would have blended in fairly well anywhere else. Amidst a throng of glowsticks and plastic hair, he stood out, so he made his presence as quiet as possible as he walked to the door.
Upon shoving it open, he heard a feint scream in the distance, which he supposed was not uncommon on Nar Shaddaa, but as he pressed onward down the alleyway, he saw that Forund had already been found. Blood, as real as Sebastian's own, sprayed the narrow walls of the alleyway, where the corpse of a male Rodian was slumped. Withdrawing a breath, Sebastian gasped and cupped his mouth in horror.
Sebastian had seen death on the battlefields when he operated the comms back in Sith space, but very few times had he seen a corpse up close and he was still not accustomed to the sight. Recoiling into the wall, he held back his breakfast, just as his eyes fell over the figure of another man, who was standing on the opposite side of the alleyway, his features obscured by a helmet. Sebastian lowered his hand from his mouth, then stepped forward.
"Hello." Was all he managed to say. "Do you know what happened here?" He asked, scratching his head in thought. Just as he looked down, the lights from the club flickered, to reveal something written on the dead Rodian's hand. "Hang on a second." Before the man could answer, Sebastian leaned down and knocked aside the hand on the corpse, adjusting his glasses to read the message.
"Ha!" He exclaimed, his disgust having swiftly turned to elation.
Written on the hand of the Rodian, was the first part of the next cipher Sebastian needed to solve to find the next clue. When he turned over the other hand, he found the next part. Hitting his wrist device, he brought up the screen and typed out both parts of the cipher, which endeavored to solve when he got the chance. Hopefully, what he found next may be a lead to the person who was leaving behind the clues, and now, as it would seem, the corpse.
"I followed the ciphers here, did you?" Sebastian looked up and asked the man, his voice holding a ring of childlike fascination. He did not suppose that the man had stumbled upon the corpse by chance, but rather, that he had also followed the string of codes left by an anonymous user on the darker side of the holonet. As he typed, the screen of Sebastian's wrist device reflected in his glasses.
[member="Kal Gast"]
