Location: The sidewalk of a small residential street in Miami
Jack doesn’t get nervous. Where some of the other Syndicate members had taken the news of Benjamin’s murder as a shock, Jack had simply nodded and filed the facts neatly away into his new reality. He’s always been this way with Alma, her judgment the judgment of an unknowable deity, any questionable actions less a sign of her making a mistake than the natural results of unknowable forces moving beyond Jack’s comprehension. Her reasons are, frankly, none of his fucking business; his trust in her is unequivocal and unconditional.
Still, that doesn’t mean he has to like it. Alone at 3AM in his stuffy apartment and the irritation rises like smoke, restlessness vibrating through him like a cellphone on mute. Not at Alma, or at her order to move to this swampy, pointless state, but at goddamn Florida itself. It’s only April, but the muggy air already weighs down his lungs, flattens his hair to his sticky forehead. He spends the night trying to fix the ancient AC in his apartment, filtering through thousands of user manuals like flipping through a magazine at 100x-speed, only to end up with a pile of dusty, plastic parts on the floor, and something leaking into the carpet.
In a fit of desperate, sweaty rage, Jack cuts the sleeves off his damp t-shirt and storms out of the house, head down and brain buzzing like an overfull hive of wasps. Experience tells him that if he doesn’t find something interesting to do, somewhere to put all this goddamn energy, all those stingers will turn back on himself soon.
The fresh air is a start, at least. After a few minutes, the sweat on his skin starts to cool. Air filters in through the armholes of his ridiculous t-shirt and the smell of impending rain rises from the grass around him. Jack silently flickers from streetlight to streetlight, nothing but him and the cicadas out tonight, a solitary dog in the distance letting out a single whine before quieting. Eventually, he takes backup Juul out of his pocket, a bizarre pastel thing with smiling Hello Kitty faces that can’t be Sanrio approved. It appeared on his doorstep one morning years ago, and his best guess is that the thing was one of many byproducts of his early 2016 Ambien Phase, itself just one of many attempts to treat his-- insomnia, or ADHD, or whatever the fuck it is that keeps him up for days on end. Anyway, whatever its origins, the pen had resurfaced from a kitchen drawer during the move and he’d had it on hand ever since, enjoying the feelings of its plasticky rhinestones against his fingertips.
A shadowed figure ahead breaks him out of his thoughts and Jack’s so surprised he stares blanky at them, too taken aback to even scowl. He doesn’t know why he’d assumed he was the only restless soul out in Miami tonight, but it’s still disappointing somehow, to have the evening’s fragile peace shattered so soon. Though, who knows? It’s a weird time to take an innocent stroll. Maybe someone had come to put him out of his misery sooner rather than later.
“If you’re looking to steal something, you’re shit out of luck,” he mumbles, holding up his beat-up purple Motorola Razr in demonstration. The only other thing in his pockets is the key to his apartment, but he’d sooner throw that in the bushes than let someone take all his shit.
