A few minutes later, Richie found himself in the corridor of an old brick apartment building. He discreetly followed Chance down the dim, brick lined hallway.
Richie's quarry paused for a moment in front of a brown apartment door. Kneeling down, Chance snatched the newspaper which rested on the doorstep, waiting to be read. Opening the paper, Chance studied the front page as the continued down the hallway. A few doors down, he unlocked the door to apartment 503 on the opposite side of the hallway and entered, clicking the door shut behind him.
Richie crouched in the shadows of the hallway, debating his next move... should he go in now, or wait until later when Chance would be asleep?
The dim light that was partially exposing Richie's face suddenly flickered and died. A black shadow of dark devoured the hallway, plunging Richie into darkness. Richie froze, waiting for the lights to flicker back to life.
When nothing happened, Richie rose -- and then quickly pressed himself up against the wall again as a dark figure, which Richie felt more than saw, emerged from one of the apartments. He silently watched as the darkness-enveloped figure walked down the narrow hallway away from where he was crouched.
Crossing his fingers, Richie slid down the hallway toward Chance's apartment. The door was ajar -- careful not to disturb anything, Richie slipped through the threshold and into the apartment.
Moonlight from a large glass window across the room bathed the modest apartment in ghostly white light. From what Richie could see of the room, it was screaming for a housekeeper... badly. Papers were strewn across the living room, and a grungy kitchen took up space over to the left.
Richie began madly casting about for any signs of the camera with the damning photographs. He rushed into the kitchen and scanned the counter tops. He opened drawers and cabinets, flitting from place to place like a shadow. Memories of his days as a petty thief flooded his memory and instinct took over. Working on a rush of adrenaline, Richie flung open a door adjacent to the kitchen and found -- a developing room.
"Bingo," Richie said, a second before the lights sputtered and flashed back to life, filling the room with an artificial brightness. Grabbing the camera which was lying on the table in the room, Richie whirled and made for the door.
As he did so, pseudo-Immortal sensation thrummed in Richie's mind again, and he whirled around just as Chance burst into the room.
Shaking his head as the vestiges of the sensation wore off, Chance took longer than Richie to recover. After all, Richie was more accustomed to the gut-wrenching thrum of other Immortals and was barely affected by the fainter buzz.
Taking advantage of Chance's disorientation, Richie barged past the trenchcoated figure and into the now relit corridor.
In a mad dash down the hallway, Richie sprinted outside, the camera clutched in his hand. Chance bolted from his apartment and ran after the fleeing Immortal, his trenchcoat billowing behind him as he ran.
Richie fled down the sidewalk, his footfalls scraping on the pavement. Sliding on some stray pebbles of gravel, Richie leapt from the curb and raced out into the street, his heart pounding blood to his pumping extremities.
Richie cast a furtive glance backward and saw no signs of his pursuer. Halting momentarily, Richie heaved a breath for fresh air, allowing the precious element to fill his lungs and accentuate the grinding knot which had developed in his side.
Richie's surprise outweighed the pain as Chance hurled himself at Richie, knocking the Immortal to the pavement. The last sensation Richie remembered before he blacked out was the sting of blacktop burrowing into his face.
Richie swam upward from unconsciousness, leaving the inky black sea of turmoil for a painfully bright light that hit his mind as he opened his eyes. Richie sat up, and his vision immediately blurred.
His head felt as though it were about to explode into a million tiny pieces -- the last remnants of being clobbered at two in the morning. Feeling the base of his skull, Richie fingered a small bump which had almost disappeared, thanks to his enhanced healing.
Blinking his eyes open once again, Richie took stock of his surroundings... a jail cell. Blue painted bars, the paint chipped and worn, served as two walls of the cell. Resting his feet on the ground next to the thin, hard bunk bed, Richie vainly tried to remember last night's events.
He could dimly remember being booked... the blinding flash of the camera, and the pressure of the officer's hand as he rolled Richie's fingers for prints. He must have fallen asleep the minute he was thrown in the cell. But then, Richie's method for recovering from injuries had always been sleeping them off.
Rubbing his face, Richie noticed that the cell was lit in soft, natural light. Sunlight filtered in through the small window at the far end of the cell, above the sink and toilet.
Richie's attention snapped to the cell door as the rusted entrance squealed in protest while a uniformed police officer opened it. The officer wordlessly lead him into a bare room which was decorated solely by a table and a few scattered chairs.
The not-quite-Immortal ring shimmered through Richie's mind again, and Chance entered the room. The trenchcoated figure nodded to the officer, who then stepped just outside the room.
Sitting down in the chair opposite from Richie, Chance studied the young man's face. The stark white walls framed his flaming red-blond hair, and Richie returned Chance's gaze with an expectant, if somewhat defiant, look. Richie leaned back in his chair, tipping it backwards onto two legs.
"So how long are we going to sit here staring at each other?" Richie said finally, breaking the lengthy silence and plopping his chair back down.
"It's "Richie", isn't it?" Chance asked, trying to catch the young man's eye.
"Yea. That's right. And you're Chance," making no effort to disguise the malice in his voice.
"Chance Harper," he said, his voice trailing off.
"And...?" Richie said.
"And... I've decided to drop the charges."
Richie couldn't hide the look of surprise that rippled across his face, "What's in it for you?"he asked warily.
The last time someone had dropped the charges on Richie was almost four years ago when he had seen Duncan and Connor fighting Slan Quince. Richie hadn't yet known about Immortals, let alone that he was destined to become one, and Duncan hadn't wanted Richie telling anyone about what he had seen.
Chance studied Richie's face for a moment longer before answering, "I want to know why I get that weird buzzing in my head whenever you're near."
Richie started to protest, but Chance cut him off, "No, don't try to deny it, I've seen the distracted look you get whenever I enter a room. You feel it too. Now I want to know what it is."
Richie suddenly became fascinated with the floor and wouldn't tear his eyes away from the tiled surface, "I don't know what it is," Richie stated -- and it wasn't totally a lie, either. Chance obviously wasn't an Immortal, the "buzz" didn't feel right. And he wasn't a pre-Immortal; he wouldn't be able to sense Richie if he was.
/Then what the hell is he?/ Richie lamented mentally.
Chance leaned back in his chair and studied the young man. Richie knew more than he was telling, but the twisted, worried expression he wore obviously said that something was going on that Richie didn't understand.
Chance rubbed a hand over his face, wondering what to do. He didn't want to leave the kid in prison -- Chance had been there often enough, and he knew what it was like. Richie didn't *seem* like a criminal, despite the rap sheet the police had shown Chance. He seemed more like someone who had been in the wrong place at the right time, or vice versa, a situation that Chance understood all too uncomfortably well.
Maybe for once, he should trust his luck to work it out -- it always did in the end, anyway. But that lack of control unnerved Chance... then again, it did keep his life interesting. Something would happen, regardless of anything that Chance did or didn't do about Richie.
And then, of course, there was the matter of the photographs...
"Okay, Richie, if you can't tell me about this weird "buzz" at least tell me why you broke into my apartment and stole my camera."
Richie felt like he was being squashed under a two-ton weight. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. Richie squirmed in his seat, which had suddenly become very hot. He wanted to tell Chance... if the guy could feel Immortals, he had a right to know about them. But at the same time, a police station isn't exactly the best place for a full disclosure. Duncan always handled these situations with such ease...
/Of course! Mac!/ the brilliant insight flashed across Richie's mind.
"Okay, Chance," Richie began, "it's um, a bit too complicated to go into right now, but I have a friend of mine, Duncan MacLeod, who might be able to explain."
Chance looked at Richie doubtfully, "You break into my house and steal my camera... and you say it's "complicated?"
A tiny voice at the back of Chance's mind reared up, unbidden..../Let it go Chance, turn around and walk the other way, don't get sidetracked,/ For a brief moment Chance considered letting Richie walk and just forgetting the whole thing had ever happened.
But then something clicked in the back of his mind, and he wanted to figure out what was going on here. Call it his impetuous nature, but Chance Harper wasn't one to simply turn around and walk the other way.
"You haven't sold the pictures, yet, have you?" Richie ventured after Chance's long pause.
"No, I've decided not to sell the pictures to the Examiner -- yet," he added seeing the look to relief that flashed across Richie's face. "Tell me where to meet this "Duncan MacLeod" and we'll see what happens."