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Jintesh took the time to go home, shower, sleep, and then eat something before he did anything else. But once he'd recovered and got his mind back on track, he sat down in front of his datathread and put a thread out to Laran. He wanted information.

"Hey, Jin! How's it going? I was going to say goodbye to you at the party but we couldn't find you." Laran's easy grin was knowing, and Jin blushed. But he grinned back.

"I was.. indisposed."

"Yeah, I know how it goes. Glad you had fun."

"Me too. You and Rhys enjoy the rest of the night?"

"Sure thing. Ya know she hates me dragging her out, but she always has fun once she gets there."

"Yeah. The classic hacker." Jin grinned, and Laran laughed.

"She fits it perfect. Hey, what're you doing tonight? Want to come for dinner? I'm cooking."

"You? Boy, don't know if I'd dare eat it," Jin teased, but he knew Laran was a good cook. "Sure, that'd be great. Gotta ask you some stuff, too."

"Ahh, it's never just threading for the hell of it, eh?" Laran chuckled as Jin tried not to look guilty. "No problem. Drop by about eight and I'll not only tell you whatever you need to know, I'll fill your stomach, too."

"Thanks, Laran." Jin appreciated the offer. He felt guilty for not keeping in better touch with Laran, and it did seem lately that he was only ever calling the dj to get information. And he didn't want it to be that way. "I'll see you then, okay?"

"Gotcha. Don't be late or it'll burn!" Laran grinned and cut the thread.

Jintesh was right on time, and Laran opened the door moments after he knocked.

"Hey, you've got perfect timing, it's just about ready to serve." The dj grinned and opened the door wider.

"My stomach knows what's best," Jin replied as he stepped into the little apartment. He glanced around; Rhys was sitting in a chair in the corner, her body relaxed, her eyes closed. He saw the kit on her lap and grinned.

"Spinning up until it's on the table, eh?"

"Hey, you know how these obsessions go." Laran beckoned him towards the kitchen. "Come help me serve it up and then I'll get her."

They had the food served quickly, and Jin sighed happily at the smells; he always forgot just how good real food was until he was having it. He carried the last two plates out to the low table they ate from, and then Laran was leaning over Rhys, tapping her kit's viewscreen. A moment later she came alive, stretching and looking about the room. She spied Jintesh and acknowledged his presence with a quick nod.

"Dinner for three? I'm starved." She kissed Laran on the cheek and strode across the room to the table.

"You're not the only one," Laran replied, as his stomach growled softly. "Let's eat!"

They chatted about little things over dinner, until Laran remembered that Jin had wanted to ask him something. Jin paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, trying to figure out where to start.

"I want ... hmm. I want to know everything you know about Haze. How it's made, what's in it. Who made it first. Why it's still around." He stuffed the fork in his mouth and looked up at Laran, wondering what he would think.

"Everything? Well." Laran raised an eyebrow, glancing at Rhys. "Rhys probably knows that stuff better than me. But tell me something first, Jin. You said you'd explain Krispin's Haze addiction to me when you were sober. What is there to explain? I'm curious."

"Krispin." Jin shook his head with a rueful smile. "You probably won't believe it, but.. well, he has these genetic defects that he was born with."

"Defects?" Laran's expression was disbelieving, and Jin held up his hand.

"Defects. He only has one eye, and he has a mental problem. Basically, he has these moodswings that he has no control over. One minute he'll be happy, the next minute furiously angry, or really depressed, or.. all these extremes. He can't do anything but put up with them. And he's found that Haze tends to dampen them, so they don't happen as often, and they're not quite so extreme. And before you tell me it's bullshit, let me tell you I've seen it happen."

"Wild moodswings." Laran was frowning slightly. "It sounds so.. far fetched. Since when have there been defects like that? They monitor people so regularly --"

"It's possible." Rhys' calm voice interrupted, and they both turned to her in surprise. "The corps covered most of it up, but when the chemwars were at their peak, some of the more insidious biospores got into the city. They did a clampdown, but they didn't pay as much attention to the slums. And they didn't bother much to check for contamination afterwards. You know it's easy enough to get out of the monitoring, if you really want to. If they found out you'd been infected, what would they do? In the slums, more than likely they'd kill you. And slumdwellers know that very well."

"The chemwars." Jin tried to remember what he knew about them. "They were, what, thirty or fourty years ago?"

"Thirty three. People forget quick. And biospores are nasty things. They fuck you up for good. If Krispin's mother was infected, I'm surprised he wasn't a hideously deformed freak."

"He probably seemed it to some." Jin grimaced, thinking of the empty eye socket.

"Good point." Rhys leaned forward. "You know that all drugs have a base of opicin, right?"

"Yeah." Jin blinked at the sudden shift in conversation, his mind still on the chemwars, but it was standard for Rhys; her mind moved fast, and she expected others to be able to keep up.

"And the addicts drugs all use opicin strains thirty-five to fifty-eight. Haze's base is forty-three b. On top of that it's got neuros, liphid, genera, and a liberal splash of seronin. Now, Haze is the only drug that uses that particular strain of opicin. Which of course leads to the theory that the opicin is what causes the brain deterioration. But the catch is this; substitute it with any other strain, including forty-three and forty-three a, and what you get is an absolute waste of time and money. It does nothing. If anything, it makes you depressed. You follow?"

"So they know what causes the bad effects, but they can't do anything to stop it?" Jin frowned, trying to think. "Why don't they just use something else?"

"Go ask the addicts. Who knows. They swear there's no high that matches it. They're probably right. If it's eating your brain, it's probably making a fantastic mess of you in the process." Rhys shrugged her shoulders.

"Damn." Jin had been hoping to find an easy way around Krispin's problem. But he supposed if it had been easy, someone would've done it already. Nobody wanted to be reduced to mindlessness, no matter how good the high was.

"I wonder what part of Haze it is that helps Krispin's moodswings," Laran mused. "If it's the opicin, you can't do much about it. But if it's the particular mix of the stuff on top, then maybe he could mix it with a different strain and just skip the high. Get his high from a safer drug instead."

"You think?" Jin's eyes widened as he thought about it. Laran was right. Krispin didn't need to get high from Haze. All he needed was the calming of his moodswings. "I wonder if he's tried it already."

"You never know. He may not have thought about it. Not everyone studies the chem side of things." Laran grinned. "All you need is Rhys' brain to solve the problem."

Rhys snorted. "Things are never that easy. You know what the streetsleepers say about Haze, don't you Jin?"

"Laran said they think it's a corp job."

"Yeah. How long's Krispin been on it?" Her eyes were dark, thoughtful.

"Y'know, I have no idea."

"I wonder how long it took him to find it. What's he like, aside from the moodswings? Jumpy? Forgetful? Clumsy? Sluggish?"

"Not Krispin." Jin shook his head, then shrugged. "He's as lively as they come, and his mind's sharp. He's not losing it yet."

"Haze starts to make itself known about four or five years into the addiction. It's a slow worker, but once you start to lose it, you're done. It's too late to quit."

"Four years.." Jin tried to imagine a seventeen year old Krispin. "Taisho's known him for three. I don't know if he was on the Haze for all of that, though." He started to worry. If Krispin had indeed been on it that long -- or longer -- then the effects could start to show sooner than he wanted to think about them.

"You ever find out why he's so elusive on the looms?"

"Oh!" Jintesh had been so caught up in Krispin's life, and Krispin's problems, that he had completely forgotten the boy's complete non-existance, as it were, on the looms. "I forgot about that. I'll have to ask him." He paused, something making a connection in his head. "Y'know.." He looked at Laran, wondering how much he dared tell of Krispin's private life. But Laran was his best friend. He trusted Laran with everything, and Rhys as well.

"What's up, Jin?" Laran had been reclining against the wall, but now he sat forward.

"He does this.. disappearing thing every so often." Jin looked down at his hands, feeling awkward. "He just vanishes for a couple of days without warning. And then turns up again like nothing's happened. But he won't ever tell where he was. And yesterday.." He remembered Krispin, struggling and screaming, and he shivered. He didn't want to relate that experience.

"Yesterday?"

"He had a pretty bad moodswing. Even though he'd just had Haze. He said he thought he knew what it was, but he couldn't tell us, and he had to go away for a few days. The disappearing thing again." Jin squeezed his hands together. He missed Krispin. Laran and Rhys had kept his mind occupied, but in the end, it was Krispin he wanted near. And not knowing where the boy was, or how he was, made it worse.

"He's gone? Now?"

"Yeah."

"Damn, Jin." Laran shook his head, his expression sympathetic. "You sure know how to pick 'em."

"You're telling me."

"Jin," Rhys was running her hands through her hair, a sign that she was thinking hard. "Those jobs on Krispin's identity.. I could crack them easy enough. I could find out who's putting them there. And if you find out who, then it's not much more to find out why."

"You think it's related?" Jin wanted confirmation, even though he was thinking the same thing himself.

"Sure. You don't cover up a defective slum kid's identity for no reason. And a slum kid doesn't go wandering and not tell the people closest to him why for no reason, either."

Jin shuddered. He wondered just what the hell Krispin was caught up in, that made him so important to hide, and that made him so reluctant to talk. Suddenly he didn't want to be where he was anymore. He didn't want to talk about Krispin's secrets, Krispin's problems; he just wanted to curl up and find a way to switch off. Shut down his brain before he got really scared. Because he was starting to already.

"I think I need to go home." He rose to his feet, and Laran stood up as well.

"Jin.." The dj looked worried now. "Are you..?"

"I'm okay. I just need to stop thinking." He turned towards the door, then paused. "Thanks for dinner. And thanks for the help, Rhys."

"No problem. Listen, Jin, if you want to sleep at all.." Rhys was digging around in her pockets, and a moment later she produced a tab of pills. "Easy sleep, no bad dreams, no thinking. And it's not drugs, either."

"Thanks. I might try that." Jin took the proffered tab and pocketed it, glad that Rhys had things like this.. and glad that she'd remembered his dislike of taking drugs, too. He headed out the door again, Laran close on his heels.

"I'll thread you when I find something useful," Rhys called after him.

"And thread me if you need anything," Laran added, his dark eyes full of worry.

"I will." Jin managed a grin. "But you know me."

"I know. That's why I'm telling you twice over. I don't care if you think you'll be bothering me with it -- trust me when I say that you won't. You don't have to carry the whole damn world on your shoulders, Jin."

"Hey, somebody's got to." Jin shook his head. "Don't worry. I'm not so stupid; if I think I'm too fucked up, I'll let you know. Now let me go home and sleep."

"Okay." But Laran looked uneasy all the same. Jin gave him a wan smile, and a wave, and headed down the stairs before the dj could stop him again. He wanted to scream, to cry, to hit something hard; he wanted to hide in a corner and find a way to escape the world. He was scared, so scared that Krispin was involved in something dangerous, something that was going to do him more harm than Haze itself. If it affected his life so much that he ran to it when his moods went wrong, if it was so powerful that he would submit his own eye to it without caring, how could Jin fight that? How could Jin protect him from that? And did Krispin want to be protected from it?

Jin bit his tongue, hard, focusing on the pain. He concentrated on nothing more than that until he was safely home, and then he downed two of Rhys' pills and fell into bed, fully dressed. He lay there, counting the bolts in the ceiling until the sleep overcame him, and he was glad to submit to it.

The soft but insistent tone of the datathread woke Jintesh, and he sat up, head groggy. It had been several days since he'd talked to Rhys and Laran, and he'd spent them avoiding his thoughts. He'd spun wildly, making up stories, making up games, daring his limited hacking abilities, and wondering if Rhys was finding out anything useful. But he'd concentrated very hard on not thinking about Krispin. And he'd made good use of Rhys' pills.

Now the thread had woken him, and he stumbled to answer it, his mind still trying to break out of the morning stupor that the pills gave him. He pressed the answer button and rubbed at his sleepy eyes.

"Tesh!" Krispin's lyrical voice leaped out at him, and he dropped his hands, staring at the threadscreen.

"Krispin?" He rubbed his eyes again to make sure he really was awake. He was. Krispin's face was pale, and his eyes looked as tired as Jintesh's felt, but he was beaming broadly.

"I'm back! Did you miss me? Are you awake enough yet?" Krispin's giggle was a welcome sound to Jin, and he felt the numbness in his mind easing up.

"Damn, yes. Are you.. okay? You sound okay."

"Of course! Everything is fine." Krispin pulled a silly face at him. "How awake are you? Can you come out and see me?"

"Awake.. yeah, always awake enough to see you." Jintesh rubbed at his hair. "Where are you?"

"Outside!" Krispin laughed. "Right outside. Just come down the stairs."

"Ah, sure." Jintesh was still too confused and sleepy to wonder why Krispin was threading him from outside rather than coming up to see him. "Just let me wash my face."

"Don't take too long, then. I'm waiting!" And with that, Krispin cut the thread. Jin staggered to his feet, mind reeling. Krispin was back. And he was okay! Jin felt a grin spreading across his face.

"Yeah!" He ran into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face until it woke him up a little more. He hastily pulled his boots on, glad that he'd taken to sleeping in his clothes. Then he was dashing out the door, almost forgetting to close it. He took the stairs two at a time, and burst through the building's front entrance, leaving it to slam shut.

"Tesh!" Krispin's small figure leapt at him from behind, arms wrapping around his waist. He spun about, catching Krispin, and pulled the boy towards him, embracing him, caressing him, breathing deeply of the familiar scent.

"Krispin, I was so worried. I'm so glad you're back." He tangled his fingers in Krispin's hair, turning the pale face to look up at him.

"I'm pretty glad to be back, too." Krispin was still beaming, his eyes lit up. Jintesh lowered his face, bringing his lips close to Krispin's, and pressed a gentle kiss upon them, tasting his soft breath, submerging himself in the boy's presence. Adoring being so near to him again.

Then Krispin pulled back slightly, moving his lips across Jin's cheek, feathering gentle kisses up to his ear. "I brought you a surprise," he whispered, his voice teasing.

"Surprise?"

"Yeah. Turn around." Krispin's hands on Jin's waist tugged him, and he allowed himself to be turned, facing the street. Krispin's silver and green streambike was parked in front of him, and next to it stood another streambike, this one black all over and gleaming, looking as if it had never been ridden. And it probably hadn't.

Jin felt his jaw drop in surprise, all his questioning thoughts vanishing at the sight of the bike. Surely not..?

"You like?" Krispin came around from behind him, moving over to the black bike. He ran his fingers along its seat. "You looked like you were having so much fun when I was teaching you to ride mine.. and I figured you need some transport. And it's black!"

"Krispin.." Jin stepped forward, reaching out to touch the bike as well, to prove to himself that it was real. "I.." He'd never been given such an extravagant gift before. Extravagant! How could Krispin afford such a thing? Crustacean might've signed a deal with the corps, but he doubted a single credit would be coming through until they started making discs. "It's beautiful, but how can you afford it?" The bike was beautiful. He ran his hands along the gleaming body, and felt a raised design. He knelt to look properly and saw a raven in flight, its wide wings twisting along the side of the bike, matt against the black's gloss. A raven, just like his avatar.

"Don't you worry about that. I got my connections." Krispin winked at him, his expression smug and satisfied. "So long as you like it."

"I love it!" Jintesh stood again, pulling Krispin back into his arms. "You're wonderful." He smothered Krispin's face with kisses, until the boy was laughing and struggling out of his arms.

"Don't go all mushy on me!"

"Fine, fine." Jin let go, but he was grinning. "Damn, Krispin, please tell me you didn't go broke or sell all your worldy possessions or something to get this."

"It's okay, I told you." Krispin patted the bike reassuringly. "I pulled some favours I was owed. You wanna take it for a ride? See how soon we can get some grime on that gleaming surface? I know a good place to practice."

"Sure." Jin swung himself up onto the bike, then paused. "I've never had transport before. Yours locks with your prints, right?"

"Yup. You gotta register this one to recognise yours." Krispin reached up and pointed to the display panel. "Just there. Tell it to register you, and then press your hand where it says. Then it's locked to run to you only."

Jin did as he was told and watched his fingerprints being analysed by the streambike. Then the panel flashed him the okay, and he was ready to ride.

"Let's go! I'll lead the way; I'll be slow till you get used to it. The place isn't far. Couple of old warehouses the streamriders took over years ago for races and practice. It's usually pretty empty this time of day."

"Got it. Let's ride already!" He leaned forward over the bike -- his bike -- and followed as Krispin peeled out into the street. He called this slow? Jin grinned as he sped up to keep on Krispin's tail. He'd learnt enough from Krispin to be able to maneuver the bike on the wide streets, and as the wind roared past his ears, he gave into the wild laughter bubbling up inside, and ignored the worried little voice that had plagued him for the last few days. What was wrong could come later; Krispin was back, Krispin was okay, and damn, this was fun!