Detective Khayne placed his hand on the DNA scanner, and the door to his cramped apartment hissed open. He took off his coat and tossed it apathetically onto the back of his LZ-chair. It was only after looking up towards the screen door and the balcony beyond, that he noticed the intruder sitting in the armchair opposite the LZ, from there it was simplicity itself to also notice the mercenary tags the reptilian wore around his neck, and the gun that he was pointing in Khayne's direction, the weapon gripped firmly in the lizard's cybernetic claw.
"Sit down." The Tyznn growled, guesturing with the gun towards the LZ across from him.
"I'm not going to give you any trouble." Khayne said wearily. It was the truth. He had just spent the past 36 hours without sleep to solve a serial murder case. Whatever this merc had to say, Khayne just wanted to get it over with so that the big lizard would leave, and Khayne could pass out in the chair while watching the cityscape, his favourite spot to be. But before that, he needed a krogdamn drink. "Just let me grab a drink first," he said slowly making his way towards the kitchenette, hands where the cyborg merc could see them with his two left side photoreceptors, which glinted red as they tracked Khayne's every movement and vital signs. Seeing that Khayne was apparently telling the truth, due to his heart rate not accelerating in preperation for a struggle, the merc relaxed somewhat, and Khayne hid his relief. "Can I get you something?" He asked, as if the intruder were nothing more than an old chum, here to catch up and regale him with tales of wild adventures and alien tail.
"Tirallian brandy if you have it." The merc said, his two cybernetic eyes not leaving Khayne as the Humari opened the wine keeper and pulled some half-empty bottles out of their aging fields. He poured the stranger a glass of Tirallian brandy, and then a glass of Terran Guiraud for himself. Taking the glass from the detective's hand with his free claw, the gun never wavering from his quarry, the reptilian's acute nostrils tasted the air.
"Vintige." He said approvingly. "Under other circumstances I would applaud your tastes, Humari."
"I only put the Tirellian in stasis." Khayne explained. "I prefer to age it naturally. The keeper just doesn't do it the same. Something off with the acidity." The mercenary nodded approvingly, sipping from the glass with the dexterity of a man well-practiced in manipulating delicate objects with metal claws designed for disembowlment.
"So what's this about?" Khayne asked, after taking a sip of his own Guiraud, enjoying the earthy taste and the sudden spark of acidity that came just before the long, cooling finish. "The Dworgen case? Is Farash still after me? I told that sonofakrog that he wouldn't get a damn thing out of me." The merc shrugged. An oddly human guesture for a Tyznnian. He had worked with Terrans enough to pick up a few habits it seemed. Khayne filed that away for later.
"Dunno who Farash is, but I'm here as a messenger."
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"So deliver it. You have my full attention." The merc sipped his wine again, and Khayne detected a miniscule shudder of pleasure in the man's spines on the back of his skull, one a human or any alien that relied on sight would have missed. The Humari, while blind, were exceptionally gifted in reading the body language of other species. Their incredibly abnormal intelligence, combined with their heightened senses of smell and hearing, allowed them to percieve unspoken cues via changes in posture or the rise and fall of pitch over the course of a sentence. Some of the more ignorant and conspiracy-driven attributed the Humari's natural abilities to psionic powers, kept secret from the rest of the galaxy in order to leverage them to attain undeserved privilege and wealth. This was of course, a load of blaggash, as if the Humari had been gifted in that sense, they most certainly wouldn't need the galactic economy to effecively rule the galaxy.
The merc set his glass down, his gun still aimed at Khayne, and spoke.
"Events of a certain nature are about to unfold." He said, his voice developing a slight hiss as his heart rate accelerated slightly, out of a somewhat childish eagerness to keep the hyper-intelligent alien in front of him hanging on his every word. "You will find yourself involved in these events, due to circumstances beyond your control. For your own sake, and the sake of anything and anyone you give a frek about, my employer wishes for you to draw the logical conclusion, and end your involvement in these events there."
Khayne downed the last of his wine from the glass, having picked it up and continued drinking as the messenger spoke. He stared, or rather, turned his face towards the glass in his hand, twirling it idly as the reptilian mercenary awaited his response.
"Well if that's all your employer asks, I'll be happy to oblige." He said, not taking his non-existant eyes off the ornate piece of glasswork in his hand. The lizard chuckled, a low, gravelly sound, and his mouth opened to reveal long and pointed teeth like that of a deep-sea fish, almost like exccessivly long claws emerging from his gums. "See that you do. My employer is well aware of your reputation detective." He stood up, the gun still not having left Khayne. "For your own sake, this time it really would be better for you to do what you're told." With the press of a button on his wristcom, the window behind him opened, and he backed towards it. Suddenly Khayne realized exactly how he had gotten in. Someone had given him the building's security codes.
He watched as the mercenary backed up to the large window, swinging one leg over the sill, still pointing the gun at him, while his other left arm gripped the pane, which had extended out into the Babylonian night. The two right arms of the merc gripping the sill and the other window pane, still closed, for balance.
"Enjoy that wine detective." The merc said. "You'll need it to help you sleep tonight." With that, he dropped. The apparent suicide actually surprised Khayne, and he rushed to the window just in time to spot the merc activate his cloaking field, and he detected the faint smell of burning Temryl, as the mercenary ignited his hoverpack and jetted off into the smoggy sunrise that had begun to peek over the horizon, shining dully through the polluted air. Khayne stood there for what could have been minutes or seconds, contemplating which of his former arrests were most likely to send a Tyznnian merc to deliver a blackmail threat, when his com implant buzzed. With an oath that would have made his mother blush, he opened the line with a single thought.
Yes? A strange voice, female and human by the sounds of it, echoed in his brain, the com implant bypassing his ear to feed electrical signals directly to his brain, sending his own thoughts through the link to feed them directly into their implant.
Detective Khayne? It's a pleasure to meet you sir.
Dispense with the formalities. You wouldn't be calling me if something hadn't happened. What is it?
After a moment where the woman on the other end proccessed the implications of his exceptionally cold reply, her thoughts came back to him.
Murder. 384 Terrigan Towers. Only a few hours old.
With a mighty sigh that he didn't send through the comlink, Khayne leaned his head back and sent a brief reply before closing the line.
Be there in an hour.