**NEW DAY**
*She hadn't completely given up on him. Lucy was, if nothing else, rather persistent when she put her mind to something. Discreetly, she had managed to find out through various sources on the street where he'd disappeared to. There was something strange about the Hilton Hotel--it was like no other building she'd ever laid eyes on before
because it's modern, and it had the appearance of fallen splendour. Once luxurious, but on hard times.
In any case, she'd managed to weasel out of the desk clerk where Jekyll was staying (feminine wiles never failed to gain results, at least for Lucy). It didn't occur to her, as she used the borrowed key to unlock the door, that she was intruding on his privacy.
The room was...a mess. A lot of the mess was scientific thingamajigs that she couldn't make heads or tails of, some of it was because it was a room that had been lived in constantly. As though he almost never left.
She poked around (after closing the door, of course), curious about the strange substances that she spotted in the various containers. Some of them were rather dull in appearance, but others were brightly colored, almost to the point of being lurid. One especially bright one caught her eye: an almost neon red liquid in a slim vial.
"HJ-7?" She said, reading it aloud. HJ had to be his name, but she had no idea what the 7 meant or why it would be labelled that way.
She sniffed it--it didn't really smell like anything--and, glancing around as though afraid she'd be caught, tasted some.
Salty.
It made her think of the ocean, except that unlike ocean water, the salty tasted different. Sort of like this weird concoction Nellie used to make for her, back at the Dregs. Maybe that was it, though why Henry would be keeping booze in weird glass containers was beyond her. Well, he wouldn't mind if she had some, right?
She drank it down in a gulp (it was like a shot, really), and nodded to herself. Maybe a bit more bitter than usual, but it did do that funny warm feeling in her stomach and---
"Gah!"
She dropped the glass, hearing it shatter as it hit the lab table on the way to the floor. She put her hands over her stomach, suddenly feeling horrible shooting pains there the likes of which she hadn't experienced since some ten years ago, when she'd miscarried. The pain soon had her on the floor, writhing a moment before her body finally stilled.
But there was something different about her, now. Something in the way she lay on the floor...
The figure that stood back up wore the same clothes, but her hair was a much darker, richer shade of red, the eyes a smoldering hazel. Her form was different--slimmer, more refined, seemingly. The face had changed, looking more elegent...her movements, graceful.
She glanced down in distaste at what she was wearing.
"God, such hideous attire. How could she have possibly ever thought this something beautiful?"
Such a different voice. The sultry mezzo had been replaced by a breathy, lighter soprano (though it was no less attractive sounding). Her highly cultured accent was the sort one expected from nobility.
Frowning, she left the room, exiting through a side door out of the hotel to avoid questions.
"Paris, ah, Paris. At least you truly see me for what I am."
*And away she was, into the city
*