"Minus the heartbeat," Cassidy mused as he prepared to take his next hit. "...I do still miss that part, sometimes."

Hard to explain. Something about feeling alive.

He took in a long, deep lungful of smoke this time, and followed it up with a couple of smaller puffs for good measure. By the end, his head was wreathed in smoke, and there was a slick feeling in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. Now it'd really start to kick in.

"Fairly peaceful back on Earth, yeah. Other than the occasional rash of vigilante hunters tryin' to chase me down. And honestly, I've no idea how they find me. I was in Vegas, this last time — livin' out a totally normal existence there. Even had a job of sorts. And nobody looks twice if you keep late hours, not in that place. It was bloody perfect. And these wankers, right? They hired me for a bit of sex tourism. Wanted me to take 'em down to Tijuana. Or so I thought. But they start flyin' the plane bloody eastward, don't they? I might've caught on too late if they hadn't left their bonkers-as-hell propaganda where I could stumble across it."

That tale told, he let his head loll against the back of the chair and looked toward Matt across the short space between them.

"Anyways, that is how I ended up in Texas."