Eclipse

Participants:

adam_icon.gif garza_icon.gif

Scene Title Eclipse
Synopsis The past comes back to haunt us when we least expect it.
Date August 21, 2017

Only a handful of clouds block the clean slate of blue skies.

Mount Jefferson looms high over the rest of the landscape, a snow-covered forested peak that blocks out view of the east and the sun tracking its way up into that clear, late morning sky. A cool breeze blows through the pine branches, birds scatter from their roosts, songs filling the air. At the base of Mount Jefferson a temporary camp has been established, consisting of pop-up tents, collapsible metal shelters, and shipping containers. Two enormous helicopters sit in clearings at the mountain base, their quad-rotor designs lingering in the long shadow cast by the mountain. But the camp is miles away, a blurry smudge when viewed between the trunks of towering pines. It rests at the back of two hikers some two thousand feet downhill from the camp in the dense forest.

Pushing a branch out of his way, Adam Monroe is mindful enough to keep it pushed back so the man following him can step through without being struck by it. Antonia Garza squints as he steps from the shadow of dense pine canopy into morning sunlight, looking back over his shoulder at the shadow of the mountain at their backs. He trudges ahead, unzipping his fleece jacket as he walks. "It's going to be warm by the time the sun comes all the way up," Garza grumbles, though Adam only seems to half hear it as he releases the branch and steps in line behind his tall friend.

"I don't much mind it," Adam says. The heat. He'd always made jokes about not minding the heat when he winds up in Hell. He never did really find it all that funny. "How much further?" He asks, changing the subject.

Garza comes to a stop beside a tree, leaning against it as he fishes something out of his jacket pocket. It's a wristwatch, a little heavy and overly large with a digital display. He holds it in one hand, raises it to the air, and scans around his surroundings. After a moment a digital needle appears, and a distant marker. "A hundred feet or so?" Garza says with an uncertain look to Adam. "How does this work?" He asks, brandishing the watch to Adam, who steps over and plucks it out of Garza's hand and straps it to his own wrist.

"Magnets," Adam says dismissively. "It's complicated. I'll explain later."

Right now, he knows they're running against the clock.


Pameila Lake

Near Mount Jefferson

Willamette National Forest

Oregon

August 21

2017

12:49pm


Nestled around the northeastern edge of Pameila Lake, a small tent commune lays hidden within the rolling foothills and deep forest. In the morning hours, small plumes of smoke rise up from fire pits scattered along the beach, children walk along the lakeside, and some wash their clothes in the shallows at the lake's edge. There's a few dogs running loose, men and women sitting under canopy tents with rifles nearby, sweat and grime stained on their faces. Communities like this popped up during the war, following the nuclear cataclysm further north outside of Portland. Now close to a thousand people call this nameless village home, in a land without electricity or modern conveniences. People who have banded together to protect themselves, people who can't even be certain that the war has ended.

The sound of helicopters in the night have put the village ill at ease. A few people from the standing militia have gathered on the north edge of town, discussing the formation of a scouting party to fan out. The settlement's council of overseers is cautious not to over-extend the town's defenses, but no one can argue that the first signs of technology in the Dead Zone in years likely isn't a rescue. One among the militia, a young woman with coal black hair bound in tight curls argues with an older man.

"I'm not saying we do it today, but we should move." She motions toward the forest, then looks back to the gray-haired militia captain with his hand resting nervously on his holstered sidearm, as if trying to intimidate her. "We're in lowland here, we should go west. Go to where there's a vantage point and reset the town."

He doesn't agree. "Cassi, we're hidden here."

cassi_icon.gif

Cassi snorts, throwing her hands up. "Fuck you we're hidden here. If those were government helicopters, they have spotted us with nightvision or thermal optics. We're not safe. We shouldn't even be staying in this valley, we should head north before it gets cold, find the Guardians and— "

"The Guardians aren't going to save us, Cassi!" The militia captain shouts. "We can't trust anyone but ourselves. We've survived this long. We haven't had any trouble, not for a long time. We have our kind here, and that's all we need." Cassi gets more frustrated, taking a step back and throwing her arms in the air. "Don't give me that shit, we've all lost people, and if we go off half-cocked without running a scouting party we're going to— "

"Strangers." Cassi splutters.

"What the fuck are you— " Cassi cuts him off again.

"Strangers." This time she doesn't freeze and breaks into a sprint. Reaching for the gun clipped to her side, Cassi runs across the beach toward the treeline where two unfamiliar faces are emerging from the woods. The militia captain isn't as strong a runner as Cassi is, so instead he's barking up a storm at her back, rallying the militia volunteers to follow her, and then directing the dogs at the camp to begin braying a warning cry. Within moments, the settlement is awash with the sound of howling dogs and shouts of alert. Children are scrambling to their families' tents, others are rushing toward the sight of newcomers emerging from the woods.

Adam and Garza take a diplomatic approach when they arrive, hands up and posture non-threatening. There's a reason why they left everyone else at the base camp before sunrise. They can see guns trained on them at a distance. A boy of fourteen in Adam's periphery has lifted up a column of sand and earth into a hammer-like appendage. Another girl nearby is holding electrical arcs between a cage of her fingers. Another girl just turns invisible and runs back to the tents, leaving obvious footprints in her wake. Garza levels an uncertain look to Adam, then turns his attention back to the crowd gathered to threaten them.

"Stop right there!" Cassi shouts as she closes in, her pistol out and trained on them both. "Drop your— " Cassi looks them up and down, noticing neither man is carrying a weapon. "What— what're you doing here?" She asks next, moving her target from Adam to Garza and back again. Adam, slowly lowering his hands and carefully watching Cassi as he does, scans the crowd of people with abilities. His attention settles back on Cassi, brows furrowed.

"My name is Adam," he says, keenly aware that his presence is drawing in more onlookers. "I work for a private company with our interests as paramount to anything. I'm like you," he says, then motions to Garza. "So is my compatriot Antonio, here."

Cassi brandishes her gun at Adam again. "Hands stay up," she says sharply. Adam reluctantly obliges, raising his hands again. "Turn back around, go back wherever you came from. We don't want whatever your company is selling. This is a closed community."

"We know," Garza chimes in. "Miss, we've been aware of your community for two years. Adam," he gestures to him, "has chosen to leave you all alone. But we're worried that there's a cell of Humanis First that might be in the area, at least six hundred strong. We have some allies up by the mountain, we landed last night and we just want to offer you some protection. There's a dangerous cosmic event coming up and—"

"Bullshit." Cassi quickly spits out, not understanding the weight of what Garza is trying to explain "They're fucked if they attack, we've driven off groups three times that big before. Everybody here?" Cassi says with a motion to the tents, "We're all Evolved. They'd be fuckin' dumb to attack us right now."

"Are you?" Adam says with a crease of his brows. Cassi looks confused, doesn't understand what he's asking. "Are you really Evolved? Right this minute?" He glances down at his watch, then looks back to Cassi. In Adam's periphery, he notices the girl with electricity between her hands starts to notice it flickering and becoming irregular. The boy controlling dirt and sand starts to lose control of his construction and it breaks apart. "You need to trust me…" Adam says urgently.

"Something's coming that's going to get you all killed."


Meanwhile


A cotton swab dabs a bleeding gash on the palm of a young man's hand. A little alcohol makes it sting, but then feel relieved as a cotton pad is placed over the wound and gauze bandaging wrapped around the cut.

"That'll do it," the man taking care of the injury says, looking up to the young man. "Try and stay away from the ruins, most of the buildings are still settling and you'll get worse than a cut." The young man smiles, looking down at his bandaged wound.

"Thank, Doc," the teen says with a smile. "How'd you get so good at this?" He asks, standing up from his chair. The doctor taking care of him smiles, dark eyes going down to the first aid kit he's packaging back up. The doctor laughs to himself, then stands up and claps a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"You'll never guess it," he says with a smile, "but I used to be a Nur— "

Screams and shouts fill the air outside of the triage tent, and the doctor is quick to step in front of his patient, looking to the tent entrance. "Stay here," he says, moving toward the flap. But when the cry of strangers fills the air with howling dogs, he knows this isn't an animal attack. "Stay put, I'm going t—"

"Peter," the boy says, and Peter looks back at him with worried eyes. "Stay safe."

peter_icon.gif


Meanwhile


"What the hell is happening?" Is a common cry from where Adam and Garza are nervously standing as one by one, the powers of all of the Evolved in the camp begin to fail. Guns suddenly take precedence, trained back on Adam and Garza by militia members with multiple orders shouted over one another.

"What'd you do!?" Cassi demands, jabbing her gun forward to Adam as punctuation. Adam says nothing, but instead points upward to the sky, where something has just crested the peak of Mount Jefferson. The sun, and the moon, nearly overlapped. The sky has taken on a murky, darker hue of sunset pink. Blankly, Cassi stares at the nascent eclipse, feeling how it instills her with a lingering sense of both wonder and dread.

Adam, taking a bold step forward says. "I didn't do anything. But that eclipse is the sign Humanis First is waiting for. While we're powerless, here, they're out there ready to strike." Confused voices join in shouts all around Adam, followed by a scream of alarm from the other side of the settlement and a pop of gunfire. Cassi nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears it, pivoting to the noise. All eyes go on that direction, and when the first man in forest camouflage comes out of the woods, screams fill the air along with pops of gunfire.

A few hundred feet away, Peter pushes through a crowd of people fleeing the gunfire. He shoves his way against the current of panic, and when he sees the man with the assault rifle coming out of the woods, taking wild pot-shots at the fleeing crowd Peter throws his weight forward and thrusts a hand out at him and—

—nothing.

It's in that exact moment that Peter sees the eclipse over the mountain.

"Good bye, brother." whispers Hiro, lashing out with steel to wipe away Peter's life as if it were a stain upon the fabric of spacetime.

Except, he doesn't. The blade bites, but only so deep. Not deep enough to kill, and right across Peter's face. Anyone with a good knowledge of what Hiro is capable of (I.E.: Kaito) would know that he just intentionally spared Peter's life rather than take it. But that will definitely leave a gruesome mark. The motion itself occurs so fast it would be forgiveable to assume Hiro used his powers somehow to make it happen quickly, but the way he brings the blade of Takezo Kensei back into a ready position betrays the motion as acutely as Peter's face.

The scream splits the trees, sending birds cascading up into the sky as the sun is blotted out by the moon, the world swallowed up into an eternal darkness which deepens shadows. As Peter's voice rings out into the air, white is stained red, snow trailing with the blood that sprays from his face to the ground below. He staggers back, one hand covering his brow as rivulets of red bleed around his fingers, trailing across the back of his palm before spattering on the snow. Peter draws in a shuddering breath, pulling the hand away from his face as he looks down to the line of blood impressed into his palm.

//He's not regenerating.

In the heavens, a golden ring of fiery hues spread out from the black disc that is the moon's umbra, filtering radiating bands of white through the black of the faintly starlit sky amid the eclipse. Eyes as dark as the moon turn up to Hiro, and Peter's breathing hastens, shoulders rising and falling as blood blurs his vision in one eye.

"No," Peter exhales breathlessly, backpedaling and being swept away by the crowd. Seven more men in fatigues emerge from the treeline, more gunfire, and Peter starts seeing people he's lived with for years toppling onto the sand, struck by blindly fired rounds. He doesn't have a weapon, doesn't even have so much as a pocket knife to defend himself. At some point in the chaos, Peter is thrown to the ground, rolling onto his side and shielding his head from the stampede of fleeing people.

By the time Peter has a clear line of sight again, the gunfire has changed directions. The attackers are firing into the woods, at something — someone — else. There's screams from the treeline, flashes of explosions that rock the high pine boughs and send birds scattering. Confusion sinks in, and Peter can hear the whirring noises of machines in the treeline, right up until four bipedal robots come marching out of the woodline, firing in a phalanx at the human soldiers. Blood darkens the sand, and Peter turns back to where he'd heard the initial cry of strangers and sees Cassi holding someone at gunpoint.

Adam Monroe.

Peter looks out to the torii at the edge of the water. "Who is he, Adam Munroe?" His eyes linger on the small boats passing by the red gate, following their motions against the rippling waves. "All of the Company files on him were blank, save for a brief discussion of his renegeration ability…" Then, as if conversation were triggering past memories, Peter straightens a little. "He's one of the reasons I went to Primatech. I… I painted — etched — the future into a window. In it, was the man who turned out to be Adam, and there… was this symbol as his shadow," makes a motion on the wooden railing with one finger, "The same one… the one my dad used for his law firm."

Kaito, now, chooses to keep his eyes forward as Peter asks of Adam, hands clasping the railing though he doesn't rest his weight against it. "If you know of his power, than you only know the cause of Adam Monroe," he says, gravely, and with ancient disgust that's only barely concealed. "A man who can heal all wounds, who age cannot touch. A shepherd, a visionary, and a dangerous man. He was kept within the confines of the Company for a reason." Now, he slides a glance to Peter. "That symbol… Then you already know. We are all… old friends."

Peter's gaze stays on the water as well, as if trying to see what Kaito sees across the waves, trying to discern just how he picks the right words from the sway of the distant trees, the way the maple leaves fall through the air, and the way the sunlight reflects off of the water. The notion that Adam cannot age strikes Peter, it's something he hadn't even entertained in part, despite his understanding of Claire's gift to him. Eventually, his gaze tracks to Kaito, just as Kaito's tracks to Peter, and his head tilts slowly to the side, mouth beginning to hang open. "What… what do you mean, old friends? I — " He tenses, "You said you knew my mother, back when you first offered to teach me. That — that it was a favor to her. Bennet told me you worked for the Company… but I…" His gaze breaks away, as if the intensity of what Kaito had leveled on his mind were too much to stare directly into. "Did my father work for the Company too?"

The elderly man seems to take a breath as he takes his hands off the railing to look at Peter, even as the younger man looks away. "Your father, your mother, were both a part of Adam Monroe's flock," he says. "As was I. We did not work for the Company, Peter Petrelli — we were its creators. Our aim was to find people like ourselves and change the world." Now he looks away again, this piece of information delivered, towards the torii. "A kindness would be to say that we were misled. I had hoped it would change for the better once Adam was buried but now it is uncertain."

Unlike Kaito's touch to the railing, Peter's hand steadies him from buckling at the knees from what he's been told. His stomach turns into knots; the amount of secrets, deception, and out-right lies that have been told straight to his face over the years. He breathes in and out, slow and heavy breaths, then only upon closing his eyes and drawing in a slow, calming breath does he find the center he needs, and the wherewithall to continue this conversation. "Founders… Founders of the Company." His eyes scan the wood beneath his feet, then lift back up to Kaito. "It all makes so much sense, in… some some weird way. Why the person who took over for Bob was at my father's funeral." His fingers grip the railing tighter, then relax. "That's how Adam's been avoiding us, how he knows so much."

"What did he do, what…" Peter finally looks back to Kaito, it's taken a strong focus to look into that man's gaze, but now that his focus is beyond the water, it is somewhat less like staring into the sun itself. "Why after believing in him so strongly, would it be necessary to lock Adam away. More importantly, how do I find him and put him back?"

"Adam did not want to heal the world as he made us believe," Kaito explains, grimly. "He came to the decision that he wished to purge it. A virus that would destroy everyone but those able to resist it. I am the one that signed the documents necessary to lock Adam away forever so that he could never realize this aim. Thirty years…" He shakes his head a little, gaze unfocusing for a moment as he contemplates the past, contemplates the near future. There is a rueful note to his voice. "Thirty years will not be enough to change the heart of a man like him."

The past comes back to haunt us when we least expect it."

In the chaos of the battle at the camp, Adam hooks an arm around Cassi's shoulders and shields her as he moves to escort her to the treeline. "Ms. Hayes, I would much appreciate it if you came with me. I assure you, my associates are far better equipped to handle the attack and save our brothers and sisters. But you have an important— " Blindsided, Adam is tackled away from Cassi and thrown down into the sand, rolling over an embankment away from Garza and tumbling down a sandy slope to the water's edge.

Gasping, feeling pain, Adam pushes himself up and touches fingertips to his mouth where his teeth cut into his lip. Blood comes away on his hand. Head swimming, Adam remembers he was tackled just in time to receive a swift kick to the side of his head, sending him crashing back down onto the sand. Standing over Adam, Peter Petrelli clenches his hands into fists. "You son of a bitch!" He advances on Adam again, but this time his opponent is ready, and ducks under Peter's kick and tackles his legs, dragging him to the ground. Adam is quick to assert himself, straddling Peter's chest and pinning one of his arms with a knee, delivering a punch square to Peter's forehead hard enough to bounce his head off the sand.

Peter struggles for a moment, wrests one arm free, and reaches up to grab Adam by the throat and throw his weight to the side, reversing the hold. Peter presses a knee into Adam's chest, swings down with two quick punches to the regenerator's jaw and Adam feels each blow with a blistering flare of pain. Gasping for breath, Adam grabs a handful of sand and hurls it in Peter's face, causing the younger man to recoil and stagger back and away. But before Peter can get his bearings, he's struck by a fist in the side, then in the temple, then in the back as Garza advances in with surprising speed.

Peter jostles backward, but the sound of a nearby explosion and gunfire fills the air, diverting everyone's attention to incoming Humanis First operatives battling Adam's machines. "Go after the girl!" Garza shouts, "I'll handle him!" Adam shrugs off his jacket, walking past Garza, pointing to where Cassi was up on the ridge.

"You go, I'll handle this." Adam says confidently, leaving Garza to look nervously between Adam and Peter, then snarl and break away, jogging back up and away from the shoreline. "We're not enemies, Petrelli. You don't understand what's going on here. We're on the same side."

"Are those the same lies you told my father?" Peter spits back, wiping blood from his mouth. Adam rolls his eyes, grimacing, looking frustrated.

"It's a longer story than that— we don't have time for this, Peter. I'm here to save these people, save you." Adam's plea falls on deaf ears, however.

"I don't care why you're here," Peter says flatly, lunging in and taking a swing at Adam who ducks under Peter's right hook, grabs his wrist and flips him over his shoulder onto his back on the ground. Adam takes Peter's ar by the wrist, shoe on his chest, and twists in a sharp jerk that dislocates Peter's shoulder in a single, fluid movement. Peter screams, clutching at his shoulder and then pawing at Adam's leg. Gunfire continues to pop in the distance, shouting and screaming but it's impossible to tell who is winning.

Adam stares down at Peter, blood in his teeth, breathing heavily. He looks up to the eclipse, now at its totality, and feels a pang of dread run through him. "I don't know why I thought I could get through to you, Petrelli," Adam says as he's staring at the eclipse, "you're as stubborn as your— " Adam is cut off as he's struck in the side of the head by a rock. His vision swims, legs give out and he crashes down onto his side in the sand, blood running from the gash at his temple. Peter picks up another rock with his good hand, rolling onto his side, his dislocated arm hanging limp as he crawls over on hands and knees to where Adam lays.

"You tried to kill the world." Peter says through his teeth, bringing the rock down only to have Adam grab his wrist at the last minute. The two struggle in the sand, until Adam pulls back a leg and kicks Peter off of him, launching the younger man back into the shallows. Adam, gasping for breath, slowly pulls himself up to his feet as Peter moves to do the same. The eclipse is reflected in the water around Peter, and Adam spits blood into the sand.

"I didn't." Adam says in a sharp exhalation of breath. "That is a lie that the world was made to believe. I was the one who was betrayed, as the whole bloody world was betrayed!" Wincing, Peter stares at Adam without any recognition to what he'd just said. Instead, he takes a few steps out of the shallows, up into the sand.

"You're a snake," Peter spits back, "you're a manipulator, a liar, and a murderer." Adam, eyes narrowed, looks to have reached his final straw.

"So are you." He says to Peter amid the hail of distant gunfire.

That verbal knife cuts Peter deeper than any wound. He loses himself for a moment, is shaken by the force of that truth, and in that moment he loses his opportunity. When Peter blindly rushes at Adam, punching him square in the jaw, he feels Adam's jaw break from the force of the blow. When Adam staggers back, he reels, bleeding. But then his jaw snaps and pops back into place, crooked teeth straighten, cuts on his lips begin to rapidly heal.

"You'll never get that close again." Adam says quickly, before lunging forward and smashing Peter in the side of the head with an open handed strike.


Hours Later


A startled breath signals Peter's awakening. He lays on his back, floating in the shallows of Pameila Lake. The sun has tracked its way to the western horizon, the sky has started to fill with clouds. The water reflects the sky, clearly. Placidly. Peter draws in a shuddering breath, tries to move but is simply in too much pain to. He looks to his right, to where the tents once were, and finds only trampled sand and signs of a struggle. Making a noise in the back of his throat, Peter closes his eyes and his face contorts into an expression of unrepentant anger. They're gone.

Peter's throat tightens.

His scream echoes through the hills.


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