Chapter 13: 13

Once she got out there to get looking offline he wasn't hard to find. There he was, hiding in a railway underpass with greasy hair and ratty clothes, holding an old paperback and a half-eaten apple.

He scrambled back as soon as he heard them coming – Maxine didn't do anything to disguise the heavy clump clump of her steps to see what he would do. Standard panic, until he looked up and saw them, and then his eyes got wide and he threw up his hands and yelled, "Stay back!"

The apple rolled into a puddle.

"So, alien prince, we meet again," Maxine said, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice.

To her left Tori was looking on with a severe expression, arms crosses in that ridiculous expensive coat. She probably looked a lot more intimidating than Maxine did in her standard black outfit, an eyebrow raised in the same wry expression she always reverted.

"I've moved on," he said, waving his hands about like that would make them go away. "I don't do any of those things anymore."

"I can tell," Maxine said.

He didn't look like he was using his power to sneak into a government agency. If he were, surely he would be more clean. Not that he looked, or smelled, too awful, so maybe he had a place to stay, or at the least was sneaking into the local swimming pool to use the showers.

"I don't trust him," Tori said.

"What's to trust," Maxine said.

He looked at the apple, face falling. Maxine, not generally moved to great emotion, actually felt sorry for him.

"I think I saw one of your people where they shouldn't be. What are the odds they've come here for you?" she asked.

"Why would they come here for me?" he asked. "They exiled me here!"

Maxine looked over to get Tori's reaction, but she appeared unmoved, still posing like the enforcers in mafia films. That was probably better than the poses they had to do on the show back in the day, more useful in general, but not in that moment.

"Here's a better question," Maxine said, stepping forward to get a better look at their old nemesis. He was wary, which she considered reasonable, and looked ready to fight if he had to. She could use that. "I might have a job for you as a consultant on an investigation I'm doing. Do you want to sleep on my couch?"

He and Tori yelling in surprise at the same time did make her laugh.

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