Hunter: the Vigil - I Left My Soul in San Francisco - Luke Chen - Prelude [Restart]

~ He screamed.

He screamed loud, and long, tossing the box against the opposite wall of the alley while shooting up to standing, grabbing at his hair and pulling to try and hurt himself enough to shut up.

" What the #$%&!!! WHAT THE ACTUAL #$%&!!!"

How ... How was it, ... How the f*ck was it still MOVING!?

Luke stuck the top of his hand into his mouth and bit down, hard, still screaming through the attempt to muffle himself while he drew blood from his skin. Once he had something else to focus on, he winced and shook his hand out, swearing profusely while pacing back and forth in the alleyway. He kept looking back to the package, back to this ... this thing.

It made no sense. Nothing made sense. The World Did Not Make Sense.

And the .. .The Ghost, thing. Had it not asked for this? How did it know!? What did it want with it ... What did the Triads want with it!?

" I am in so #$%&ing deep ... I did not drink nearly enough in my entire life for this ..."

Luke doubled over for a moment, feeling vomit rising up from his stomach, but he managed to swallow it back down and sank to his knees.

He didn't know what to do.

He had no clue what to do. Who to trust? Who to go to?

... Home. He wanted to go back to his apartment.




But he couldn't leave the box.

With trepidation, Luke scooped up the box again, making sure it was still secure. Its weight felt like a metric ton now, he could feel it moving as he stuffed it into his jacket (where before he had not at all).

" Goddamnit ... Goddamn everything."

He stowed the package away, including its grisly, Lovecraftian contents, and tried to just ... not think. Not think about it, as he trekked back to go find his motorcycle and get home unnoticed before this got any worse.

" God #$%&ing damnit ..." ~

To his surprise, Luke gets home without any further incident. Paranoid, and understandably so, Luke checks behind every door and opens every drawer and container to ensure that nothing jumps out at him. Everything seems calm. Seems.

The box, hastily taped back together, sits on the kitchen table. It almost mocks Luke. Begging him to do something about all of this.

~ The strongest thing he had in the house was unfortunately a bottle of wine from his birthday a few weeks ago. It was a dry, bitter red that he absolutely hated, and Luke was sitting in his small kitchen drinking it straight from the bottle, having already polished off half of it.

" What the hell are you?"

He stared into the box, demanding an answer of it. Hell, it could beat, there's nothing saying it couldn't talk at the moment. Anything was possible.

" What have I gotten myself into ..."

He drank from the bottle again, wincing and practically gagging on the taste. He hated it. He hated that wine so much, and had only kept it because it was a gift from Vivian. He may have loved his sister very much, but she had no taste when it came to alcohol. Not like Alex and Sam, at least.

Alex and Sam. Sonofa ...
If he didn't do something with the package, the Triads were going to be pissed at his wayward cousins. Possibly pissed enough to do something bad.

But what the hell did the Triads want with a goddamn beating heart!?!

" I have to get rid of this thing. I have to ..."

Wo Yeh. The thought hit him hard. Yeh wanted the box, he ... he had seemed to know something about it. And Lu Wong had told him not to talk to Yeh about this, that he ... he had been removed from The Triads? Maybe ...

Maybe Yeh knew more. And if the Chinese mafia was going to get involved in hearts and whatever the hell else happened tonight, maybe ... Maybe Yeh was more trustworthy than Wong. Maybe.

Another drink of bitter wine. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts to Yeh's number. Or, at least, the last number he had for Yeh.

" Worth a shot."

He dialed the number, standing finally and pouring the rest of the wine down the drain.

Luke never took his eyes off of that box. ~

Surprisingly, Wo Yeh answers at the number Luke calls. There is a definite pause after Yeh answers.

OOC: To make this easier, we'll use some shorthand.

To Luke still having possession of the package... "Sounds dangerous. You shouldn't have it anymore. It's... well, if you know what it is, I can't believe you still have it."

To Luke knowing about the beating heart... "Ha ha. So, the temptation to open the package was too great. I understand. Now that you know, what do you plan to do with it?"

To Luke wanting to get rid of it... "You should get rid of it. If it was me, I'd destroy it. The thing you have is too evil to let it continue to survive."

About the ghost... "I can't say I'm surprised that stuff like ghosts started appearing. Did they want the heart back? You know, I wonder if the heart belonged to one of those ghosts."

About delivering the heart to the Triads... "It's not the Triads who want the heart. They are the middle man. Someone... something else is the buyer. But if the Triads know what you have, they are more likely to kill you on the spot than take delivery. My understanding is that there's a time limit on this delivery. Maybe the heart goes bad. I don't know."

Luke thanked Yeh when they were done and hung up, letting the phone slip through his fingers and drop onto the table. He sat and continued to stare at the box, drinking his dry wine, wondering.

Pondering.

The Triads did not want the heart. Well, that was good, at least. The Triads may have been into drugs, smuggling narcotics and people, sex trafficking, murder, and gods knew what else, but at least they weren't into ... this.

What the hell even was this. Yeh hadn't explained jack, not really, just that it needed to be dealt with.

To that degree, Yeh was probably right. But how?

He drank some more. Thought of it.

It was clearly unnatural. Clearly ... wrong in some way. Disturbing and twisted. It didn't belong here, it didn't belong anywhere. His head swam with wine, but Luke was still coherent enough to kick his chair back and stumble over to his kitchen counter, drawing a large knife from the wooden block by his stovetop and coming back over to the box and its despicable contents.

He sat there. Stared. Gripped the handle of the crude weapon until his knuckles were white.

... Yeh had said it belonged to the apparition he had seen. A ghost, a gui. His culture taught that such creatures, though to be feared, were also to be respected.

But that was madness! A ghost!? It couldn't have been real, shouldn't have been real. He was hallucinating.

But that heart was still beating. Luke could clearly see that. And if the heart was moving, maybe ... maybe the idea of ghosts was not so far-fetched.

" I have to get ridofit," he told himself aloud, trying to work up the will to just pierce the sickening muscle and be done with it.

But he couldn't. The Ghost at the Hilton had wanted it, and that knowledge burned in Luke's mind. He couldn't give it back to The Triads, not if he now knew that his life was pretty much forfeit if they knew he was the one who had carried this abomination.

But the Ghost.

Maybe the Ghost could... Find Peace, or whatever it was that spirits did. Maybe it really was the heart of a specter. Nothing and everything sounded insane to him at the moment, and Luke really didn't want grisly blood all over his new knife.

" I'll take it back," he resolved, breathing slowly outwards to try and calm himself, " I'll take it back to the gui."

He threw the knife back into the block, grabbed his jacket, dumped the wine bottle on the counter and headed out the door with the box tucked back in his pocket.

Couldn't take the bike, though. Would have to walk. Walk back to the Hilton and complete his damn delivery.

To a Ghost.

San Francisco had gotten weird.

Luke takes a walk down the dark alley adjacent to where he lives. He has to check, several times, to ensure that the package was still tucked away on his person. It was there, and he could still feel it beating.

Before Luke was through the alley, it gets even darker. This was not normal.

"Give us the heart," an eerie voice says.

Luke turns towards the source of the voice and sees three "humanoid" figures, within mist, in the darkness of that alley.

Starting to feel the wine even more, Luke realized he had already faced down weirder things tonight and so puffed his shoulders up at this trio.

Perhaps unwisely. There was still a chill that made the hairs across his body stand up, but he tried to banish it from his mind. While he didn't take the package out of his jacket, Luke did reach into the coat ... to his other pocket, where he kept his gun.

" What are you, eh? Néih haih bīndouh yàhn a?"

He didn't care what language he used: Luke wanted some damn answers before this night was over. ~