Participants:
| Scene Title | Jamais Vu |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | At Elmhurst Hospital, Isaac Faulkner wakes up to receive an explanation about what happened to him … for hopefully the last time. |
| Date | January 30, 2020 |
Whatever the hell cocktail had been injected into Geneva Stevenson and Isaac Faulkner was taking its time in wearing off.
After they'd been brought back to the mainland, the two had been brought immediately to Elmhurst Hospital. The amount of time that's passed, if it's been anything significant, is a haze and blur almost beyond comprehension. The two share a room, the feet of their beds facing each other on opposite sides, while two other beds sit empty by the sides of them. There's a curtain able to be drawn between the rows for privacy, but the only one drawn is the one by the door.
The spread of agents after such a large bust was thin, leaving need for even the junior agents to assist. Emily Epstein wasn't much for the title, but she embraced it fully in volunteering to watch over both the victims they'd recovered. She wasn't the only one here, but she was in the room. Legs crossed, a book opened in her lap, she sits with her back to the door, facing the beds.
Enough time has passed her fingers no longer have the tremble of adrenaline as they turn the page, but neither does she lose herself in the reading. Every time she hears footsteps pass by the door, every time one of the machines in the room emits a tone, her eyes flash up and her ears turn to the sound.
As awareness slowly coalesces from the stygian abyss of dreamless sleep, the first thing that Isaac Faulkner is really conscious of is the feel of the bed he's resting on. Firmer, smaller than normal. Not his normal bed, then; it must be the smaller one he'd occupied as a much younger version of himself.
He must be back there, then, living with his uncle again. It'll be time for breakfast soon, probably. That's not so bad, really. A bit lonely, but better than… whatever he'd been dreaming before. He can't quite put that together, but he knows it'd been a bad dream. For a few minutes, he's content with that, drifting lazily, formlessly, through his own unconscious.
Awareness continues to grow, though, crystallizing and sharpening as perceptions filter in. That noise he hears in the background — a steady beeping. The kind of sound you hear in the background in, say, a hospital.
Wait.
Is he in a hospital?
It's that half-formed thought that serves as the tipping point, shredding the last of the shroud of sleepy contentment his mind had been wrapped in and dumping Isaac Faulkner unceremoniously into full consciousness.
He lays still and silent and unmoving for a moment longer, taking in everything he can without opening his eyes; after a few moments of this, he concludes that yes, he most likely is in a hospital.
Why is he in a hospital?
The last thing he remembers is running, flying through the night as he often does, and then…
… then…
…something had happened. He's able to dredge up a scant handful of scraps of memory and tattered impressions, but nothing coherent. He remembers… falling.
Maybe he'd taken a fall while he'd been running, then? A bad fall, one with enough momentum and height behind it, could certainly land him in a hospital. There's a brief flutter of fear at that, a kaleidoscope of butterflies twitching their wings in the pit of his stomach. Carefully — oh so carefully — he twitches his fingers just the slightest bit, then his toes. Both move at his command, and the fear he'd been feeling recedes. No spine mangling injury, then. That's a relief.
Another fear rises almost as swiftly as that one is laid to rest, though. Had the Book Club come after him? Immediately, he reaches out, tries to touch the shadow beneath the palm of his hand… and finds nothing. Feels nothing.
Shit.
The butterflies flutter their wings again, and he takes a deep breath. Alright then. No shadows to watch his back. That's good to know. He tells himself that, anyway, because dwelling on the fact that his ability is suddenly not taking calls is probably not going to be helpful at this point. Okay. So he has no ability… but he's in a hospital?
Odd, that. From what he's seen, if the Book Club had come after him, he'd have been more likely to wake up in a morgue than a hospital. Some nasty little voice in the back of his head tries to say something about organ harvesting, but he squashes it; there's a difference between theorycrafting and delusional hysteria… though if he keeps on chasing his thoughts around the inside of his skull for much longer, there's a good chance he's going to wind up sliding into the latter. Time to do something else, then… like maybe gather some more information to put this situation into context.
Faulkner opens his eyes.
Yes, he is definitely in a hospital room. Nothing surprising there. What is surprising is that he isn't alone.
There's another bed in here, and someone in it; he doesn't recognize her and can't tell much about her, though, other than that she still seems to be out of it. There's a third person in the room, though, sitting by the door — a blonde girl, reading a book. No one he knows; interesting, that, especially when combined with the presence of the other patient. A friend of hers, perhaps? Or… something else?
One way to find out.
"Nnm," is all he gets out on his first try, and as he takes a deep breath to try and do a bit better, he becomes conscious of a distant pain — in his side, mostly, but also on his leg. Maybe he had taken a fall, though it doesn't feel like broken bones or even bruising… it feels more like a burn than anything else.
Wait, how did he get burned? One more mystery to add to the pile. Later.
He clears his throat and tries again, and this time he succeeds in producing something like speech. "Excuse me, miss. This is… nnn… going to sound odd, but… I don't suppose you could tell me how I got here?"
When Emily sits upright, it reveals the coat she'd been leaning back against. The fabric shifts in a hush, and the S E lettering on the arm of it goes visible. She closes the book, using her thumb as a bookmark, looking Isaac over with a silent, studious flick of her blue eyes. She leans forward, forearms resting on the top of her knees.
Her expression shifts from studious to solemn. "I don't suppose you could tell me how many more times you're going to wake up and ask the same question," she answers so softly maybe she didn't mean to speak at all. Just because she thought he wouldn't remember this interaction either didn't give her the right to smart off, after all.
Not after everything they'd been through.
"My name is Emily Epstein. I'm with SESA." she explains at a more conversational level, her tone calm. "You're safe— You're in the New York Safe Zone at Elmhurst Hospital. You were kidnapped, both of you." Her gaze flits to the other bed, lingering for a moment with a softening of her gaze.
The bed Isaac rests in is double-layered in thin blankets, an IV hooked to his arm. When his hand moves, the backs of his knuckles graze the fabric cushion of a velcro cuff attached to the bed. It lays undone, shoved to the side, but wasn't removed from the bed. Maybe it wasn't supposed to have been removed at all.
Emily's expression is unreadable as she looks back to Faulkner. "You were rescued roughly… four hours ago. Brought here by helicopter. You've been in and out of it." Her lips firm into a small smile. "Hopefully this is the time that information takes?"
There’s a rap of knuckles softly on the door before Lance steps into the room; he’s had time to change and shower since the raid, as much to decompress as anything, and he’s wearing a fresh suit. SESA name badge clipped to a pocket of the suit jacket, his tie slightly crooked. He’s never really gotten the hang of them yet.
“Hey,” he greets, lingering in the doorway as he takes in the scene, worry in his eyes and expression.
For Geneva, the transition back to the waking world is much murkier and much less peaceable than it had been for Faulkner. No premature awakenings, even unremembered ones, arise during that completely opaque cavity of time to furnish her with any solace. No discernible storylines write themselves into the cracks of her mindscape, whether rational or otherwise: only terrifying gray shapes that condense and then liquefy in a quagmire of nightmare, over and over.
When the late sleeper finally slits open her eyelids, the world that filters in is limned by a cold, thorny corona of light and physical discomfort. But only a moment or two later, like water being forcefully shunted out of the side of a pool, an impressive portion of the lingering befuddlement of sedation is driven out by the freshly rapid onset of panic— a feeling precipitated by the discovery of the nylon restraints securing her wrists to either side of the bed.
She jerks, but the motion is weak. And of course, she is thoroughly restrained.
Her voice, which croaks out despite the force that she attempts to inject behind the effort, is terse and tremulous and uncertain.
"What—"
Isaac is paying attention when the blonde speaks; if he hadn't, he'd likely have missed her murmur. How many more times, she'd asked.
Interesting.
That implies that he's asked the same question before, and more than once. Isaac doesn't remember asking any such questions… but then, he doesn't remember ending up in here, either.
There's a faint stir of emotion when she mentions she's from SESA, something that's part wariness and part… something else, too faint and faded for him to place. He frowns intently, considering… and it's at that moment that he notices the velcro cuff — the one which is notably not securing his wrist to the bed.
That, too, is interesting. The cuff is a small but not insignificant bit of circumstantial evidence that supports the blonde as trustworthy — if the cuff had been fastened, he surely would have said something about it, hence it now being unfastened.
Although circumstantial evidence can be planted. Perhaps she's truly devious and that's what she wants him to think… though he's disinclined to believe it.
Which leaves him to consider her story as the truth — at least for the moment. It's a hard pill to swallow. Unsettling. He doesn't remember being kidnapped… any more than he remembers asking her questions before. "Let's hope," he says, mustering a small smile of his own.
It's at that point that two other things happen. The first is that yet another visitor slips in — and at this one's arrival, Isaac's expression flattens. Crooked tie. Ugh. He's actually opening his mouth to say something when the second thing happens — a sharp rattle from the other bed.
Looks like Sleeping Beauty's decided to join them. He's about to say something to that effect, but… he's on uncertain footing at the moment, and that makes him pause to consider his words long enough for something else to sink in: Naptime Princess over there doesn't just look bleary — she looks like she's on the verge of a panic attack. So for the second time in a minute, he bottles his snark, glancing over at Emily and her (crooked tie uuuugh) sidekick. You're up, SESA.
Emily takes in Isaac's apparent calm with a strengthening of her small smile. Good. This was better than some of the other hellos. The sound of someone at the door brings her expression to momentarily turn severe, even defensive, before she realizes who it is letting themselves in. "Lance," she greets him with some relief, quiet, as though not to wake Geneva.
But it seems she already is anyway.
The groggy onset of panic is something she's familiar with, one that takes her attention immediately to the other girl. Emily's thumb slides out of place and her book is set aside entirely as she stands, jeans and a gray tee in contrast to Lance's more put-together state. She takes a step closer to the end of the bed, voice softened and familiar in comparison to how she'd greeted Isaac.
"Gene— Gene, you're okay. Everything's okay." Her brow knits for just a moment as she's struck with the realization this isn't the first time she's witnessed Geneva wake up in the hospital. God, she hopes it's the last. "Just breathe, okay? Relax." There's a soothing aura behind the request as she tries to hold Geneva's gaze, a focus to her that definitely wasn't present in her elevator-pitch explanation given to Isaac.
She doesn't expect Geneva will be calm, though.
“Hey, man. Sorry about the whole— pew pew, sleepy time, those drugs were doing a serious number on— “ Lance’s apology to Isaac, however, is cut off as there’s that sudden jerk from Geneva’s arm trying to get free from her restraints.
In the blink of an eye he’s on the other side of the bed from Emily, reaching out to cover her hand with his own. She’s negated, of course, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t hurt herself in the process of trying to break free. “Easy, Gene, easy… it’s me, Lance. You’re in the hospital, you’re safe, just— relax, like Em said.”
An apologetic glance over at the other man in his bed, then he’s re-focusing on Geneva. Of the two, she’s the more personal concern at the moment.
"Em? Lance—?"
Very jerkily from her pillow, Gene lolls her entire head to one side, taking in the full appearance of the occupant of the bed next to hers even as he peers briefly back at her.
Whatever she sees in that face, whatever broken memories her subconscious does or does not offer up to her, she seems— uneasily and immediately driven to return her attention to the two much more familiar faces in the room. Though an involuntarily severe exhale bursts out of her chest once these are sufficiently back in focus, she does not appear to actually be calming down in any fashion.
Or trying to relax.
There is a softly muffled rattling of fabric clasps being pulled taut against metal bars as Geneva attempts to arc her body inwards, to sit up. To move either of her feet, now discovered to be similarly restrained.
None of these things are things that she can do.
“…….Why the fuck am I tied down?!?"
Hm. Interesting. If nothing else, Crooked Tie — or Lance, Isaac supposes — has shed a bit of light on something.
Isaac had had an almost immediate dislike of Lance on sight — probably an overreaction for a crooked tie. Now he knows why. Apparently Lance had been kind enough to shoot him with tranquilizers. Maybe it had been justified, maybe it hadn't, but Isaac, for his part, seems to have had strong feelings about the matter.
Not that it matters, because the SESA Squad have now seen that Naptime Princess is awake, aaaand off they go, blasting off at the speed of light, leaving him forgotten. He wonders, absently, if they'd notice if he slipped out of bed and snuck out right now; he's feeling hungry, and he's sure he could find the cafeteria eventually. Probably better not to try it, though. he doesn't want to get tranqed again.
Isaac is starting to suspect that he just might be carrying a grudge here.
Well. Whatever. Naptime Princess is a case of personal interest to both of them, it seems. Charming. It also seems like she wants nothing to do with him. Fair enough. The sight of her flailing around is giving him a headache. He sighs and leans back against his pillow a bit, waiting for Team SESA to either calm her down or knock her out and steal her Pokemon, one of the two.
The monitor by Geneva's bedside begins pinging as her heartrate continues to climb. Emily's eyes flash to Lance's for a moment, then to the door. Just as quickly, she looks back to Geneva.
"Gene, look at me," she pleads with quiet insistence, her heart invisibly beating with an echo of the adrenaline Geneva's does. "You have to relax, or the nurses come in here, and they give you something to make you relax. You breathe— you calm down— and they don't come in and we can get rid of those. Just … work with us here."
Emily looks back over her shoulder at Isaac, then shifts so she's better faced between the two, even though one of them has already heard this. "You were kidnapped and drugged up. SESA found you— we found you— during an operation to break up an illegal fighting ring." Her voice is steady, despite the crease in her brow, the crack in her brave face that hints at how disturbed she was by it all. "A racket where Expressives were kidnapped and forcibly pitted against each other."
Lance’s response to the fellow Lighthouse orphan is less pleading and more blunt than Emily’s.
“Because you’re in a fucking hospital after getting drugged out of your brains and turned into a murderous berserker,” he states, his fingers closing over Geneva’s hand in a reassuring squeeze, “Just chill out and we’ll open the cuffs, alright? You’re negated right now so don’t try and use your power, it’ll give you a huge goddamn headache probably.”
He’s not sure if that’s true, but it sounds right!
"…Oh my actual god." It's difficult to say whether it's due to Emily's cajoling, Lance's bluntness, or (likely) some working combination of both but.
Thlumff. Geneva's head falls right back into the give of her waiting pillow, and she lets out an intensely questioning laugh that is apparently aimed straight up towards the ceiling. Her adrenaline loses some of its immediate aggressive edge but does not fade, instead channeling itself laterally into the energy of a vibrant, much more undirected disbelief.
"Jesus fuckin' Christ you guys. Tell me this is some kind of prank." Prank? Yes? No? Please?
Mister Redheaded Fuckface reclining over in the other bed doesn't escape her ire, either, probably unhelped by the fact that she's already noticed that he isn't restrained the way she is. One of her resting hands clenches inside its cuff, knuckles turning white atop the stretched skin, before balling all the way into a fist.
"And who in the everloving fuck’s he?"
For a moment Isaac doesn't speak, doesn't move, just regards the platinum haired woman with an even expression. Several different responses suggest themselves and are summarily discarded — as much as Isaac is a firm believer in repaying rudeness with appropriate levels of sarcasm and ridicule, the fact is that she's apparently been through the same bullshit he has. He'll take the high road. This time.
"My name is Isaac," he says, pitching his voice to be just loud enough that the woman in the other bed can hear him, if she listens. "And if your next question is 'what in the everloving fuck is he doing here'," he says, and here a hint — just a hint — of his usual snark shows through before he manages to suppress it again, "then let me save you some trouble on that. I woke up about three minutes ago, and Miss — " he pauses, glancing to Emily for a moment before his eyes flicker back to Geneva, " — Agent Epstein gave me basically the same explanation she just gave you. That's all I know, other than the fact that there's a gaping abyss in my memory stretching from sometime last night up until I woke up here."
With that said, he slouches back further into his bed at that, closing his eyes. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep Karen Prime over there from doing any more foaming at the mouth.
Then, a moment later, he opens them again. "Actually, I do know one other thing," he says, sitting up, looking over to the other three. "I am ravenous. What the hell, I feel like I could eat a horse right now," Isaac says, looking distraught. "Is anyone going on a takeout run soon?"
Agent Epstein is a phrase Emily never wanted to hear uttered about her in her life, and she flinches visibly to hear it. Regardless that it's untrue, even if it's half-true, it's a solid pluck against her already cracked mental fortitude. She has no words for Geneva, reassuring or otherwise, and for a long moment Isaac's request is met only with silence.
Her hand curls by her side, but she can't even ball a proper fist before her grip goes slack again.
She realizes on looking back up that now is not the time or place to have a breakdown, though, and with a veritable snap of her fingers she steels herself and her spine. "Once you're both stable, as far as I know, you're free to go. SESA will want to take your statements, but that doesn't have to happen today. And any questions you have in the meantime, we'll answer them." There's only the briefest pause before she adds, "As best we're able." There was only so much information she had, since she'd not stuck around to see what else came of the cleanup of the masquerade-arena-goers.
"What are you in the mood for?" is a direct, but flat question Emily levels at Isaac, turning his direction. Stepping out to grab food might need the mental break she needs.
“Sorry, no prank. Am I going to have to, like, microchip you all so I know when you’ve been kidnapped? Because, Jesus…” Lance’s tone is only half teasing, since the Lighthouse seems to have a higher-than-average kidnapping rate. Since she seems to be relaxed, if ornery, and ornery is her default state, he reaches over to start undoing the velcro holding Geneva’s arms down.
“And that would be your opponent. A bunch of rich assholes were watching you fight each other for fun, which, uh, is honestly the other reason you’re in here,” he admits. It’s not like they were fighting easy on each other, after all. “Basically you both got meth-roofied.” Which is a terrible combination nobody ever should’ve thought about.
As he works on Gene’s restraints, he slants over an amused look to Isaac, “What, you don’t like hospital food?”
Oh, don't fucking worry. Geneva is listening alright.
Literally the moment Lance successfully frees the closer of her wrists from its restraint, she has to resist an overpowering urge to flip that hand up in a bird towards Faulkner. Instead she only rotates it nearer to herself with a slightly rueful grimace, accustoming herself to its full range of mobility again. God.
"Fuck, man, you can't blame me for asking okay. I mean fucking look at us." Look at them indeed. Two drugged-up, banged-up, part-time amnesiacs, lying there in their hospital sheets. The incredulous quality does not drop from Gene's gaze, nor the similar lines of tension stiffening her posture. Even still, on top of all of that smoldering baggage, her mouth forms a razor-thin line of a smirk— an initially nearly-invisible thing that nonetheless broadens quickly, as though lit off by some secret internal fire.
This, even as a sudden aching grumble escapes from her abdomen, needlessly reminding her of her own priorities. Thinking way too hard about the fucked-up shit could come later.
Like the meth-roofies.
"What about it though, Miss Agent Epstein? Mister Agent Gerken? Think you guys could get your hands on…" More relaxed now as they scan Faulkner over, Gene's bright-blue eyes squint in deliberation. Just for another hot minute, anyway. "How's a couple of large pizzas sound, for me and…. Isaac? Extra jalapeños for me. Hold the microchips, please."
Hm. Looks like Agent Epstein is not a fan of being called Agent Epstein. Oops. Isaac actually feels a little bad about that.
But hey, chances of a takeout run are looking pretty good! The question of food gets some deliberation… right up until meth-roofies are mentioned. That lovely description completely derails Isaac's train of thought (which had been going towards Italian), eliciting a brief look of horrified incredulity and a slow shake of the head; he's pretty sure that you got meth-roofied is a sentence that no one ever wants to hear.
Lance's question draws a snort, though. "I'm pretty sure no one actually likes hospital food," Isaac deadpans. "Especially not the people who actually make hospital food."
Geneva's Miss and Mister Agent bit gets a self-deprecating roll of the eyes and a shrug; fair enough, he'd blundered into that one. Pizza, though… yes. Yes, that could work. Probably faster than Italian, too, so A+ on that one… and the hold the microchips line draws a smirk to Isaac's lips, too. "Pizza sounds good. Meat lover's for me." Mm. Italian sausage and pepperoni.
Emily slants Geneva a hard look that's definitely unbefitting of a sympathetic agent looking out for a kidnap and drugging victim, but Gene's her best friend, and she'd be up for worse under normal circumstances. So it kind of evens out, at least on her scales.
"Heard:" she announces flatly. "One meat-lover, one microchip pizza."
She paces deeper in to the room, like the other row of beds is going to provide ample distance, or the closeness to the window to provide better cell coverage. Slipping her cell phone from her pocket, she thumbs through it to a number she must still have on speed dial for how quickly it's put to her ear. "… Yeah, hello? I'd like to place an order for delivery?"
You're flying solo for entertainment and education this round it seems, Lance.
“So, yeah, like Epstein said,” Lance says with a cant of his head over to where Emily’s pulling out her phone, “They’ll want to ask you some questions, see what you remember— if you do remember any faces, they’re going to want to know so they can prosecute better. There were some pretty…”
He smirks a bit, letting a bit of satisfaction bleed through, “…high-profile faces and names on the list after we were done arresting everyone. Uh—”
A glance to Geneva, and the smirk fades, “You might, uh, want to definitely not remember anything from the fight though. You kinda attacked one of my bosses.”
With a wince pulled from multiple sources now, Geneva works herself up onto her elbows, one cramped forearm at a time. A heavy snort follows Emily's back as her friend paces off to place the order, and it's an odd noise that sounds rather suspiciously like an attempt to conceal her appreciation. Honestly that pizza could arrive 10 minutes from now topped with a microchip sculpture and flaming metal spikes, and Gene wouldn't have cared, particularly.
What Lance says next makes her go a little more crestfallen again though, and she squinches her eyes as she tries— and fails— to force her miasma of memory fragments back up to her mind's eye, and also into something halfway useful.
Ah shit.
"What did I do to the who, now?"
God. This sounds more and more like a gigantic clusterfuck; it's enough to make Faulkner want to sink back into his bed and go back to sleep. He's pretty sure testifying in court about his experiences as the latest DLC character for Mortal Kombat is probably going to open up a can of worms he wants nothing to do with.
On the other hand, if he does that, then there's still the possibility of that whole 'waking up with amnesia again' bit to deal with, which sounds unbearably dull. Besides, finding out exactly what happened in that big hole in his memory might be useful, if only so he'll know what to tell people when they ask why he vanished. People like, say, his girlfriend. Shit.
"Storytime, then?" Isaac asks dryly, raising an eyebrow. "I know I would like to hear who did what to whom."
The call is a quick thing to wrap up, and then Emily looks back to the conversation, catching the end of Isaac's question. She shoots a glance to Lance, hesitating in providing an explanation that could be wrong, at first. Then her gaze flicks back to the direction of the sickbedded stranger.
"Listen, the specifics of it… I mean I don't know who, exactly…" Emily's expression flattens before her brow angles down into a sharp furrow. If she fed information to a guy who was having trouble with his own memory, was that witness tampering? "The certain thing is that you were kidnapped by people who pit Evolved against each other in an arena. They'd been doing this for months before SESA cornered them— before they kidnapped you for this tiebreaker fight of theirs." Idly, her gaze falls to her phone, looking at the screen without really seeing the little icons staring up at her. She realizes this isn't the cleanest look for her, this distraction, but it's all she can come up with in the moment.
Forcefully, she sighs from her nose. "There were…" Her head lifts, gaze still not on any of them as she delicately says, "Powerful people within the crowd. Faces you could recognize, maybe, if you've been following the primaries cycle for this election."
Is that too much to give away? she wonders to herself.
Fuck them even if it is.
"When we entered the arena, you were fighting each other. Gene… got you some with her ability, you were trying to restrain her with yours. There were armed guards on the arena floor, both live fire and with tranquilizing guns. There were rows and rows of seat on either side of this dust-covered arena, filled with black ties, champagne, and masks. Some of them were masquerade masks, some of them were less… I don't know, elegant. But animals, each and every." Emily purses her lips together, finally looking back toward Isaac. "We were able to get most of them to stand down. Even some of the guards laid down arms. But some of them went down swinging."
With a mirthless smile abruptly touching her lips, she gestures to Geneva with a tip of her head. "Like you." she says, trying to keep from chuckling as she looks back at her friend. The sharp angle of her brow shifts, the furrow of it changing shape. "You tried to melt someone's face off, so an agent tried to intervene, and you got him pretty good in the process." Emily lets the phone begin to rotate in her hand like an awkward sort of fidget spinner. "No lasting injuries on the good guys," she reassures. "At least, I don't think. But maybe some scarring."
“Yeah, whatever they had you shot up with had you almost as pissed off as Hailey gets,” Lance says in rueful tones, rubbing a hand over the back of his head, “I was talking you down, but— well. They didn’t know I knew you, and there wasn’t enough time to explain. Fortunately neither of you, and none of the agents were too badly hurt.”
He’s still a little annoyed at the intervention, but he understands it.
A glance between the two, and he suggests, “If you want to pursue it— I’m sure you can find a commercial telepath to dredge those memories back up, but I imagine they’re not exactly fun ones. Might be better off without them, honestly.”
The story that Emily tells is mostly only that for Geneva, especially at this early point. A story, albeit one that unearths sullen-feeling jabs of discomfort in her that are as vivid as they are vague, and the barest of recollections dotted about here and there.
Overall, these are still only anemic little candle-flickers in the ocean of her deep, darkened, fogged mindscape.
One description in particular does seem to entice Geneva into latching onto it with one slightly raised eyebrow, though. Up it goes, with a small but solemn little quirk. "That agent you're talking about. No. I think I remember him. He got right on top of me. That was kind of hot."
Uhhhhhhhhh.
"Can you dredge those memories back up?"
Isaac's expression is attentive as he listens to Emily lay out what had happened… though, like Geneva, he finds that it sounds more like something that happened to someone else. He does raise an eyebrow at Emily's not-very-subtle hint, but opts to overtly ignore it for the moment; he's not SESA's biggest fan, but Miss Agent Epstein did buy pizza.
Then Geneva makes her request, and Isaac can't help but snort. "Well. I'm glad you got something positive out of the experience, at least." he deadpans. "Me, I apparently just got lightly roasted and shot with horse tranquilizers," he says with a smirk.
"Though there's going to be pizza, at least. That counts for something. Right?"