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| Scene Title | Fear |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The Office of Exterior Investigations learns the truth. |
| Date | February 27, 2021 |
A fluorescent light buzzes in the ceiling.
Shifting awkwardly in her seat, Erica Kravid folds her hands in her lap and looks up at the man standing across the desk from her. Arthur Petrelli cuts an intimidating silhouette under the best circumstances, his presence amplified by the threat of his power and influence. He levels a look down at Kravid, then sighs out his nose.
"I expected to have a report from the drones today," Arthur says, his shoulders sagging in disappointment. "But we haven't even gotten the damn machine up and running yet, so I have to fly you out here to New York to impress upon you the importance of our work and get an update from you in person. You see. Because I feel like, remotely, there's a certain disconnect between my expectations and your lacking performance."
Arthur isn't the first man to treat Erica this way, to be dismissive of her talents because they are not vibrant or self-evident. Her jaw sets, tongue presses against the back of her teeth, and she carefully chooses her words. "It's an issue of power, Arthur. You've read the reports."
"You have a nuclear reactor that can power a city sitting below that facility," Arthur says with a wave of his hand toward the wall, indicating a place far away. "I'm not asking you to send a battleship through, I'm asking you to send a particle through a doorway the size of a pea. I thought we worked the power issue out six months ago?"
Erica feels herself slouching under the weight of his accusations and sits up a straight. When she sees Arthur it isn't a man who understands the work she's doing, the work the researchers are doing, the conditions her team is operating in. She sees a man who has come to expect everything to be delivered to him on a plate when he asks for it. She is both disappointed and delighted that she has been so far unable to.
"This is a compartmentalized project, Arthur." Kravid says in her defense. "There's only so much of me to go around."
Arthur huffs out a laugh and looks to the door. He says nothing, and yet someone on the other side knows to come in. When Erica meets Pete Varlane's eyes, the hair on the back of her neck stands up. Pete offers her a cocksure smile draped over the swagger of a man who has lived a life very similar to Arthur. Her stomach turns.
"It's funny you should say that," Arthur says as he leans over to put both his hands flat on the desk, looming over Kravid. "Because Pete here is going to help with that problem."
Ten Years Later
Department of Homeland Security Holding Facility
Washington KC
Prime Timeline
February 27th
2021
A fluorescent light buzzes in the ceiling.
Shifting awkwardly in her seat, Erica Kravid folds her hands in her lap and looks up at the man standing across the metal desk from her. She rubs at her wrists, still feeling the bite of restraints even though they've been removed. Agent Gates paces around behind the desk, but it's the other man in the room that has Erica's full attention: Michel Harris.
"You're a clone?" Harris asks, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Kravid snorts and the sound turns into a laugh as she shakes her head.
"No." Kravid says, pulling up her hair over her right ear. She turns her head to show Harris her neck, then taps her right index finger at a crescent-shaped scar behind her ear. "I'm the donor."
Harris and Gates exchange a look between one-another, and Gates continues to remain silent as Harris continues the interrogation. "So Pete Varlane, under Arthur Petrelli's orders, extracted a piece of your brain tissue and was able to make a functional clone of you."
"That's correct," Erica says, letting her hair fall back over her ear. "We worked in two separate facilities. My clone resumed work on the particle accelerator at Mount Natazhat in Alaska, while I was moved to the Geopoint Scientific Enclosure in Colorado."
"And what year was this?" Gates asks.
"2011. The cloning happened around April." Erica answers smoothly.
Gates and Harris once again share a look between one-another. "April?" Gates looks down to the metal desk, then back up to Kravid. "This was before the MTA bus incident in November?" Kravid's response is a silent nod. "How long was Pinehearst working with the Looking Glass technology?"
"Since late 2010," Kravid says without needing to think about it. "I don't know when Arthur first became aware of its existence, but it was not long after Pinehearst consolidated power and overthrew the Company. Work was already being done in Natazhat at the time, from my understanding." She raises one brow slowly, looking between the agents. "Someone else started the work, Arthur merely co-opted it."
"Wait." Gates says with sudden urgency. "The Company was performing work on Looking Glass?"
"No."
"Then, who?" Gates presses.
"I don't know. Someone who was able to keep their work secret from both the Company and Pinehearst. Arthur was able to steamroll the whole operation. The research notes I had were attributed to Company documentation that was pulled from classified archives, as well as the testimony of an agent codenamed Melchior, who Arthur questioned at length." Kravid continues, slowly spreading her hands.
Gates takes a deep breath and sits back down in his seat across from Erica. "And what was Melchior's status, last you knew?"
"Dead." She answers quickly. "Last I heard Arthur had been trying to hollow him out like a ripe pumpkin; telepathically, anyway. I don't think he got everything, Pines took his own life."
Harris doesn't sit, but he watches Kravid closely as she talks. His right pinkie stump moves to a steady rhythm, keeping a regular beat to a song stuck in his head. "Did you know Kara Prince?"
Kravid looks up at Harris. "You mean Price?"
"Sure." Harris replies. "So, you knew her?"
Kravid nods, then looks for a moment at Gates before returning her attention to Harris. "She worked directly for Arthur. She was an expressive technician, facility failsafe. She possessed some sort of spatio-temporal power that allowed her to manipulate… I don't know, reality?"
"And what do you know of her whereabouts?" Harris inquires.
"She survived, as did my clone." Kravid says thoughtfully. "From what I understand over my correspondences with my double is that she and Ms. Price survived the destruction of Natazhat during a spatio-temporal anomaly and wound up in this timeline, but they did not stick together."
"And why is that?" Harris continues.
"I don't know." Kravid lies, looking Harris straight in the eye. "I don't trust easily, Mr. Harris. Not others, and especially not myself."
Harris can't help but laugh at that, an honest and amused thing. "I hear you," he says quietly. "So my question, then, is how did you get to this timeline if you weren't at Natazhat?"
"That's a longer story," Kravid says with a rise of one brow.
Gates folds his hands in front of himself. "I think we have time." To which Kravid replies with a soft sigh, slouching back against her chair.
"So we do."
Four Years Earlier
The Geopoint Scientific Enclosure
Outside Boulder, Colorado
Bright Timeline
June 13th
2017
Automatic gunfire tears through the hallway, separating chunks of concrete and conductive metal from the square pylons in the long chamber. Spooled tendrils of power conduits snake across the floor, soldiers in black armor carefully treading over them so as to not trip and leave themselves open.
«Did Goodman just— » Whatever the British officer in the black armor was about to say is cut short as he takes a round to the chest, sending him staggering back as ferromagnetic plates harden to absorb the shock of the flattened round. «Fuck these bloody fucks!» James Woods swings his assault rifle around and checks his right, then dashes ahead to where one of his comrades is ducked behind another column. «We have t’get the fuck out’f here before the self destruct goes off. Canfield— »
Screams fill the air, Woods’, Canfield’s, every single member of the security force fighting off the highly organized attackers. The screams don’t come because of small arms fire, or an explosion, or anything so physical. Instead, it comes as a creepy black haze that slithers through solid objects like snakes. The screams are strangled, anguished, rasping, and then silent. Woods falls backwards and away from the pillar, but when he hits the ground his armor comes apart because there is no one inside the suit.
His empty helmet rolls to a stop at a woman’s booted foot, a trail of ash and crumbling bones between it and his headless armor.
Erica Kravid looks down at the helmet at her feet, then up to the motly crew of attackers filing into the room with rifles drawn. Her breathing hastens, hands raised. She drops her phone to the concrete and it bounces twice before landing face up in the floor. A half-composed text visible:
To: Taylor
I love y
"Down on the fucking ground, now!" One of the attackers shouts as he storms forward. Kravid doesn't even have time to comply before Joshua Lang grabs her by the collar and forces her down onto her knees and presses the warm muzzle of his rifle to the side of her head. She can't help but hiccup back a sob at the sensation, her vision blurry with tears, music clinging to her upper lip and forming a bubble at her right nostril.
The other paramiltary figures move in. One of them, a man who walks with a pronounced limp, kicks some of the black ANCILIA armor apart with his good leg. Ashes and fragments of bone fall out of the greaves. He in turn looks back to a dark-haired woman walking in without so much as a gun or body armor. Her simple flats scuff across the concrete floor as she approaches. Erica looks into her blue eyes and sees only malice, only hate.
"Good evening," Kazimir Volken says behind Eileen Gray's teeth. Those cold blue eyes track to the triangular frame behind Kravid, spooling with wires and rimed in frost. When those cold blue eyes settle back on Kravid she feels a chill roll down her spine. "Do you know how to operate this machine?"
Kravid nods, gasping for breath as she does. At her right, a short, balding man in a black uniform bends down to pick up the helmet that landed at her feet. He turns it upside down, shaking the fragments of James Woods' skull out of it. The bald man says nothing as he tucks the helmet under his arm, then looks to Kazimir.
"Good. We're going to take a trip, then. You, us," Kazimir says as he motions to his team, "and we have some precious cargo we'll need to bring with us as well." To emphasize his point, Kazimir steps aside to reveal the last member of their team walking in with a small group of frightened children. Adelle Varlane holds the hand of a man in a piecemeal black uniform whose face is concealed behind a balaclava. Manuel Ruiz follows alongside, holding the masked man's hand.
Erica's heart drops into the pit of her stomach as she looks back up to Kazimir. "Do you understand?" He asks her with a threat in his voice.
"Yes," Kravid whispers.
"I do."
Present Day
Prime Timeline
"So you came through with Eileen Gray and her team," Gates says, glancing to Harris before returning his attention to Kravid, "and once you go here they just… let you go?"
Kravid tilts her head to the side. "Not as such."
"I'd like you to elaborate on that." Gates says without blinking. Kravid looks away from his unflinching stare to her lap.
"First," Kravid says as she leans forward, "let me ask you a question." Gates raises one brow and Harris fixes him with a concerned look. Gates motions to Kravid, indicating that she has the floor. "In all your research about that day, about what happened at Geopoint…" She sits back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. "How many of her people do you think Gray had with her when she came to this timeline?"
Gates doesn't blink. He doesn't flinch. He breathes in deeply through his nose, then slowly exhales. "Three," he says with a seed of doubt now planted at the back of his mind. The stories from Sedro-Wolley indicated as much, though. There were four horsemen.
Kravid's mouth turns up into a smile.
"Wrong."
This is her power.