Journal of Sociology [S!6] - [Round Two: Ryburg Ritz]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Blake was immediately deposited in some dark room. He was not aware of it but on the other side of the wall on which he leaned his other self was in the exact same situation. Things were going so fast that he didn't really have time to think about what was going on. He was forced to try to go with the flow. If he'd stopped to think maybe he wouldn't have minded that he left his family and his responsibilities behind. He never cared for them all that much anyway. He might have even been grateful to have an opportunity to show his true colours without the fear of life altering consequences. But there was no time for that.

He wasn't sure what to make of the other version of himself. He didn't behave like he did, and well that was probably a good thing. Blake knew he was a bastard. His first thought upon the matter was that he couldn't let the other Blake represent himself as the real Blake and attempt to turn the others against him. It seemed that the best way to do such a thing would be to represent himself as the real Blake and turn the others against the other Blake, and after all this way it was actually true.

A door opened on the other side of the room and there were two people with shirts and ties, one clutching a clipboard, standing in the light that came from it. It was clear that they noticed Blake immediately. There was nothing else in the room other than the huddled shape that was Blake.

“Sir?” one of them asked uncertainly.

Blake let them stew for a moment as he straightened up and reached into his pocket.

“Afraid not.” he said as he withdrew his box-cutter

--------

and a couple of minutes later he stumbled into an empty elevator down the hall from the one his doppelganger was at that moment in time climbing aboard. It was a vague and possibly faulty line of thought that caused him to hit the button for the top floor; a notion that even in a place as fractious as this there had to be one person who was ‘in charge’ so to speak and that he would be found upon the top floors. Alone in the elevator as it started to ascend he regarded himself in the mirror that took up the back wall. He wanted to straighten himself up a little, and indeed he managed to tidy his hair but he was sort of limited for the moment. At least he had rolled his sleeves up beforehand and well, it wasn’t as if wiping away the blood on his hands was going to do anything when he intended to bloody them again so soon.