Slumber Party at Alex's Place

Venisha produces six glasses from an upper cabinet and skirts around Alexander. "If you want to join in, once the borscht no longer needs close attention," she says to Stake before joining Anya and Chance. "Anything good, or is the good doctor's taste in alcohol much like his taste in books?"

"I have no idea what his taste in books is like, and I'm probably the wrong person to ask about good liquor. I don't drink alcohol for the taste. Just pull something high proof for me, I doubt I'll have to drink that much."

eta: Anya smiles sweetly back at Chance, taking no offense at his annoyance, before she plops on the couch. "See, that was the wrong question. The right choice would have been to just ask someone truth or dare. But now you've opened yourself up to be targeted. Fortunately, I am both kind and generous, so instead: Venisha! Truth or dare?"

Dr Stake quickly finishes the preparation work of briefly roasting, then slicing the beets and getting the stock boiling with the ingredients. "Don't worry, initial parts go quickly. Soon will have to remove the onion and slice it, add sauerkraut, sugar, but these things will happen quickly. Shouldn't be interrupting game much."

Anya gnaws on her fingernails for a second as she thinks. "Ok. You wake up in the middle of the night, alone, with no idea where you are. What's the scariest thing you could hear?"

Anya's eyes widen with horrified respect as Venisha answers her question. She snags a shot of whiskey and hurriedly drinks it.

"I'll go easier on you. Why are you in the UK, after being in the United States and India?"

Alex sips his coffee. "After everything that happened, I needed to go somewhere. There were far too many bad memories in Kolkata, and too much of a chance that someone might realize who I was. There wasn't anyone left in America for me; no siblings, mother died while I was in the medical program and dad died while I was away. My few friends were either part of the Union or hadn't seen me in years, and all of them were Sleepers. Plus, a dead man can't suddenly start practicing in an ER."

He sits his coffee down and continues. "Mandeep...ah, the man most responsible for my Awakening, he managed to figure out a way to start transferring my identity a piece at a time, to make it look like it was being adopted as a cover for some agent. But I needed to go somewhere huge, preferably with a decent Euthanatos presence and a complex health care system I could work in without being too noticed. Plus, I can only speak English. My dad was so Americanized I only learned a handful of Greek, and all the gurus I trained with spent so much time training foreigners that I really never got enough exposure to any of the dialects to learn more than the basics. I could probably speak Hindi and Bengali like a second grader with a speech impediment. So London made the most sense. I think that pretty much answers it all."