Castaway

Disobey

Chapter Notes

Thank you so much as always for all the lovely feedback! Chapter title credit goes to Kate Havnevik. Enjoy!

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12:52 a.m. They sit in the dark on the sixth day. Intel finally came through on her request for more information on both Omar Bakkal, the basilisk victim, and Asaiah Möbius, their mysterious, absentee C.E.O.

"No known next of kin to notify; no nothing," Chloe mutters as she runs the beam of her flashlight down the page. Despite his youthful appearance, Omar had lived a long and gainful life with zero social connections whatsoever. He made a modest living running a specialty bookstore, which had no listed employees other than himself. He paid his taxes on time. Never had any bad interactions with the law. Nothing. Intel had checked into the names of his mother and father — listed on his birth certificate — and had found them both to be deceased for decades. No more info could be gleaned of Omar's family tree.

She frowns, looking over at Lucifer. "Is that normal? For basilisks to be so alone?"

"As much as I delight in being your go-to encyclopedia superno, I'm no biologist, Detective," Lucifer replies with a gallic shrug. "I've little interest in such things. All I know is that, proportionally speaking, very few have ever ended up damned."

Nodding, she turns her attention back to the report.

The idea that Omar Bakkal would have no known next-of-kin that needed to be notified of his death — no friends; not even some distant aunt or related-by-a-fraying-thread third cousin — makes her chest feel tight.

She hears a liquid slosh beside her. Lucifer taking a swig again. With Amenadiel gone, Lucifer is alone, now, too. Maybe, not like Omar, who, for all intents and purposes, seems to have been truly solitary. At least, Lucifer has friends, but by his own admission, making actual friendships with humans is a recent development.

She closes the manila folder containing the report on Omar and sets it aside with a regretful look. Popping the handle end of her flashlight into her mouth so she has two hands free, she cracks open the report on Asaiah Möbius, resting it against the steering wheel, careful not to put too much pressure on the horn. Whoever assembled this report paper-clipped Asaiah's mugshot to the top sheet, and his yellow eyes stare back at her with such rapacious intensity, she shudders. She yanks the photo away from the paperclip and sets it aside with Omar's particulars.

Then, she reads.

Her frown deepens and deepens the closer she gets to the end of the page.

"This... can't be right," she says, voice distorted by the flashlight. She shuffles the papers in the report, looking for what surely must be elsewhere, but there's nothing elsewhere. The report is really that short. "This is..."

"What?" Lucifer says, seat squeaking as he shifts to peer over her shoulder. 

"Lucifer... this guy is like you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean not like you, like you," she rushes to say at his offended tone. "Just... his paper history only goes back a certain amount, and then it just... stops."

"Well, that is curious," Lucifer says. The vanilla and sandalwood scent of his cologne sharpens as he leans closer, close enough that she can feel the heat radiating from his body. "How far back does our dear Mr. Möbius exist, precisely?"