Running Up That Hill

Participants:

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Also Featuring:

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Scene Title Running Up That Hill
Synopsis Eve is given a choice.
Date November 3, 2020

There is a heavy traffic noise in the midday rush.

It doesn't hurt me

Cars are gridlocked up and down both sides of the street. An accident four blocks up has backed up traffic as far as the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun is bright in the sky overhead, the late autumn air crisp and cool as it winds through the shadows of skyscrapers.

Do you want to feel how it feels?

The wind takes smoke with it; a single thread snaking away from a lit cigarette held between slender fingers. Today feels like any other day, until it suddenly isn’t. To the woman leaning against the brick facade of an alleyway between two tall buildings, the man on the sidewalk who stops at the mouth of the alley is a stranger.

Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me?

He walks with his hands tucked into his pockets, a hood up and an eyepatch covering one eye. Marcus Raith turns to look down the alley, making eye-contact with the woman smoking the cigarette.

Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making?

She takes one last drag off of it, then snubs the cigarette out on the wall beside her. Hazel eyes study the man in the leather jacket, hoodie, and worn jeans. Leaning away from the wall, she approaches him as she had every other day they’d met, with a casual grace and a crooked smile.

You, you and me

Snake,” she jokes, making the same Escape from New York jab she always does. Marcus doesn’t acknowledge the nickname, but instead withdraws a yellow packing envelope from his jacket and discreetly hands it to it. There’s a VHS cassette inside, she can tell by the firmness of it.

And if I only could

“Another one?” She asks, and Marcus nods with a look over his shoulder. “Rikers security camera feed this time, I got to it before Parkman could.” The woman smoking the cigarette nods, threading a lock of green-dyed hair behind one ear.

I'd make a deal with God

“I need you to take it downtown,” Marcus explains, “we’ll try and keep everything coordinated. You haven’t told Eric anything, have you?”

And I'd get him to swap our places

The woman shakes her head, smiling awkwardly and once more threading a lock of hair behind one ear. “No,” she replies with an aversion of her eyes to the ground.

Be running up that road

“I haven’t told him any—”

Be running up that hill

A bloom of white light flashes everywhere at once. A blinding, scalding light from which there is no escape. She is facing the direction of the flash when it happens, screams in shock and pain and paws at her eyes. Even standing in shadow as she was, the light is blinding.

Be running up that building

Marcus, his back to the flash, is equally as startled but can see enough to turn as the light dims. There is a roar building in the distant city, a shuddering rumble that threatens the ground like an earthquake, but grows in crescendo as a nightmare rises up between distant skyscrapers.

See if I only could, oh

The plume of a mushroom cloud is reflected in Marcus Raith’s eye. A burning shockwave of atomic fire tears through the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Buildings are flayed of concrete and glass like bark from trees in a tornado.

You don't want to hurt me

The city is consumed.


Fourteen Years Later

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Geographic Region Redacted

November 1st
6:34 am


But see how deep the bullet lies

Eve Mas wakes from a dream in a concrete cell, different than the one she has spent the last few days in awaiting a meaningful interaction with SESA, Homeland Security, or any of the other expected agencies of the US. She doesn’t remember coming here, sitting in the red-upholstered armchair in the middle of the room, in front of an old picture-tube television.

Unaware I'm tearing you asunder

The last few days have been hard for Eve; detained and questioned over the festival that ended in the deaths of dozens of Expressives in the single largest attack by Pure Earth in America since the end of the Civil War.

Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts, baby

The television turns on of its own accord, a test pattern of colored vertical bars and concentric circles framing block text that reads Please Stand By.

Is there so much hate for the ones we love?

The sudden sound of an old rotary phone ringing startles Eve. There is a red phone next to her on a wooden table beside the armchair. A glass with two fingers of whiskey has been left for her on a cork-backed coaster.

Tell me, we both matter, don't we?

The rotary phone has no true rotary to dial out from, just a receiver nestled on the cradle.

You, you and me

Ringing.

It's you and me, won't be unhappy

Eve Mas knows a dream when she feels one.

And if I only could

She isn’t a stranger to their incongruent logic, to their uncertain corners of undefined spaces.

I'd make a deal with God

To the strangeness masking purposeful intention.

And I'd get him to swap our places

Nightmare Man, Hokuto, Benji, Delia; this wasn’t any dissimilar.

Be running up that road

But the red phone is ringing.

Be running up that hill

Demanding an answer.

Be running up that…

Here her eyes are whatever color Eve wills it, and as she looks down at her pale hands the crimson eyes blaze brightly as she flexes and wiggles her digits. The phone ringing is loud and blaring but far off as if a blanket covers and muffles the sound.

Her black dress is simple and hangs on her skinny form, one hand lifts to reach towards the phone and the ends of her sleeves rise with an invisible current. Her raven hair also floats in the air. She stops and takes the glass of whiskey and nearly holds it to her lips but uses her other hand to take the ringing phone. Eve knows a dream when she's in one yes, and she also knows when someone is reaching out.

She picks it up and puts the receiver to her ear, glass on her lips, her breath making it fog, "Fancy fancy room, your head" a sip of the whiskey.

"Or mine?"

“Neither, really.” Eve’s heart skips a beat in her chest when she hears the voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi baby.”

The television pops softly, and there is a woman on the other side with crows feet, laugh lines, and wrinkles on her brow. A wavy lock of green hair down the side of her face. Hazel eyes staring back across time.

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Mom?

The glass falls and Eve leans forward, eyes wide. Tears are already beginning to form at the corners of her eyes. There's a piece of Eve that passes this off as a fragment of her imagination, this is a dream. Whatever this was, a way to trick her.

The other side, the larger side, wants to believe this… the woman there. It's her mother. The glass is shoved aside as Eve knocks it over, crawling to the television and blinking back tears. "Momma?" The cord stretches and she reaches to put a hand on the screen.

"How?"

“It’s a long story,” isn’t the answer Eve wants from her mother, but it’s the one that also rings the most true. “You’ve been a hard girl to track down, y’know.” She looks only a little older than Eve’s last memory of her, the day before the bomb that tore through Midtown and destroyed the Mas garage. A few more worry lines on her forehead, a hint of gray showing in her roots. She’s aged well.

“Yours is longer, though.” Valerie says in gentle concession. “We need to talk, but this… this is business. A family reunion might be a ways off, baby. But I convinced leadership that you needed to see a friendly face. Because you need to understand.”

This is business.

The statement sobers Eve almost immediately, a callback to her childhood and Valerie's having to go work nights at the club. This is business baby, business that helps us survive.

"Business that helps us survive." Eve nods and slowly backs away from the screen, placing her back to the armchair and staring across at her mother, alive. There's a wrinkle in her forehead and she tilts her forehead. Leadership? Her mother was still working for someone, maybe this whole time even while she was with The Company.

"I never took you for the type to follow anyone, Momma." It's not a shot but she's curious her mother had always seemed such… her own person that Eve had modeled her whole everything by surrounding the fact that her mother followed nobody. She frowns, "Well I have to thank you for convincing them to be nice! ….What must I understand."

“This ain’t nice, sweetie,” is Valerie’s apologetic response. “There isn’t time for nice.”

"I've been saying that for years." Eve retrots with a glare at the fallen whiskey. "No time."

Now there is someone beside Eve where there wasn’t a moment ago. He is a tall, lean man in an ink black suit, older than her mother but not by much. He has a hand on Eve’s shoulder, and his eyes look both focused and unfocused at once, one of them lazy enough to make it hard to tell precisely where he is looking. Agent Gates looks down at Eve, his expression stern and testing.

“We need to talk about the Entity,” Gates says in a firm voice, lifting his hands from Eve’s shoulder. “Because right now, what you know, and separating the fact from the fiction, may be the only thing between us and the end of the world.”

Valerie’s face on the television twists into an expression of worry and regret. “Please, baby. I know I owe you… a lot of explanations. But now isn’t the time.”

“Start from the beginning,” Gates says, stepping to stand beside the television, resting his hand flat on the top of it. “What do you know?”

Eve doesn't jump at the hand, her eyes just slowly shift over and then upwards to the man standing there. "Serious face." Sitting up more now that a more unfamiliar face has appeared. She keeps the phone close though, not wanting to lose connection with her mother.

Her eyes go to Valerie's face and it dawns on her, "I spoke with your Castle, very funny. Funny funny. So you," Pointing at her mother and then at Gates, "Believe me. They said as much." Eve tries her best and she snickers and her body pops out of existence and pops back in place sitting in the armchair. The whiskey returned and in her hand, she wanted a joint. "Do you mind if I smoke?" It's Eve, she doesn't wait and instead a freshly rolled joint is lit and hanging out of her mouth. Story time wouldn't do without the necessary tools.

And assurances.

"I love my momma," Red eyes on Gates hand that rest on the TV screen, he could sever the connection anytime she was sure. "But if I tell you what I know you can't throw me away. No no no. This isn't… isn't like other times. This thing, Mother and Father. It's different. We're connected. What It showed me. I have to end It. It's going to end us all… can I trust you?"

She could trust her mother, maybe after all this time.

But this man… this Castle.. even with the milky ways..

"I'm ready if I can."

Gates makes a sound in the back of his throat, watching Eve with a momentary thoughtfulness. He closes his eyes and raises his brows, then blinks a look over to the face of Valerie on the television.

“I would’ve loved that,” Valerie says with a knit of her brows together, looking away from whatever camera is projecting her image in this space, “but it isn’t about you trusting us, it’s about us being able to trust you.”

Gates nods, looking back to Eve. “Let’s start with the facts, and see where it goes from there, Ms. Mas. Why don’t you start by explaining what happened in Detroit, what you remember happening, and we’ll ask questions as we need clarification.” He explains in a smooth voice, one brow raised. “Lest we get rambly.”

The dark haired woman looks between the two as she puffs on the joint, smoke veiling her face and curling upwards. "I have been cleaning up the mess that you Momma and my friends' parents failed to clean up." There is a bitterness in her tone that lays over the sweetness of being reunited with her mother. A familiar acidity that was constant in her teenage years. Rebellion. "I was robbed of my gift, of my sight. I was taken. Steered my whole life. Nothing has been my own choice. I have been laughed at, thrown out, forced to work alone to gather the ones that could be trusted in order to find out what this is exactly and what it wants and what can be done to save our world. Trust. Did you time travel to Ancient Japan and encounter it on the battlefield, did you even-"

"Who in the goddess' name are you people?" In regards to them as a group, obviously.

Eve stops herself and looks down, the smoke trailing up from her mouth. Slowing she exhales through her nostrils. Control your emotions, Eve. "I'm sorry. It's been hard. So so hard." It was the overwhelming emotions with being reunited with her dead mother and people who weren't her friends believing her that Eve must now navigate through, so use to having to scheme and convince people of the truth.

"Lest we get rambly." Eve's descent into madness was one that Valerie was able to witness in the early days but after Eve had reached adulthood it was harder to convince the woman that her family had her best interests at heart, a fragile and sometimes tense peace due to Eve's inability to cope with the visions that plagued her. "We need to trust each other, if we hope to end this." Finally. She agrees with Gates and her mother. Eve controls her outbursts, or tries.

"I don't remember Detroit," Eve taps the joint's ash into the whiskey glass now with her preferred vice in hand. "Except for when I awoke in a body that wasn't mine on a cold slab in the morgue. Freezing really." A roll of her eyes.

"We tracked Adam Monroe, The Plague to a boat off the coast of Virginia, myself, Hot Hands Luther Bellamy, Miss Mind Kaylee Thatcher Ray, Kimbo… and…" Eve looks off to the side with a sad expression on her face. "Siguy, Silas Mackenzie. He's not from our world." She pauses, "Now he's not here anymore." She felt it was important to explain what happened right before Detroit. "We didn't just find Adam for us, we found him for It, followed us. Destroyed Adam in front of me and Siguy, he had a gun, it happened so fast. Bang."

Eve lifts her hand to aim a finger gun out to the left of her without looking in that direction, the smoke curls around her other arm, "The child Sibyl Black, the host for Mother and Father was killed. Bullet to the brain pan. It had no choice but to leap." There's a fear that enters Eve's eyes, "I always felt or wished I had been chosen for something, some purpose. I had always wanted to find what that was exactly." A slow pull of the doobie, "I've never wanted to take something back so bad in my life."

She grins and snorts, smoke billowing from her nostrils, "And so, after the boat. I awoke in the morgue in Detroit with two lovely docs and I did the most natural thing a woman resurrected from the dead into a body not her own would do, I ran!"

Her grin widens and Eve leans forward. "I can guess your next question I bet, no echoes of the future needed: Where did It go?" A beat, "The Hydra. The many clones of one Adam Monroe. A hive that is connected. Each with a different gift bestowed upon them but I don't think that really matters once The Dragon has collided with you."

A cruel smile, "You are theirs to shape. In body, genetics, but the mind… from what I was told. They acted like me.. it was me through their lense. Amplified but not myself… speaking in ways I only do. But not me." Eve laughs softly and waves the smoke out of her face, "A parody. A good one."

Rambly.

Gates pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling a soft sigh. He takes a few steps away from where Eve sits, looking over at Valerie on the television, then back to Eve. “That’s a lot all at once,” Gates says frustratedly, “so about half of what you said…” Reconsidering, Gates looks to the side and grows momentarily silent.

“Eve.” Her mother says from inside the television. “The boat, was that in Virginia?”

Gates looks at the TV when she asks that question, then looks over to Eve with one brow raised. “Were you there?” Where there is feels like something Eve should know, but doesn’t.

"Listen carefully, you asked to jump to the end." Eve cannot be blamed for misunderstandings on that. "Yes. Off the coast of Virginia. With my friends. On a boat." Jeez mom. The look that both the other adults in this space receive from Eve is one that looks as if it's lifted from Valerie's face and planted onto her daughters. Irritation, annoyance, fraying of patience.

The man is asking her if she was: "Speaking of a stenographer, you'll have to be a bit more specific than that dearie. I've been there. Often. Back in time, the space between worlds, the bridge that Kazimir and the Black Conduit were defeated, Florida, (don't ever go there)." A pause, "If you mean Virginia, yeswith my friends. On a boat. That's where I was taken over-"

Eve's brow furrows, they aren't asking the right questions, how much did they actually know… A tilt of her head, about any of this. Castle had said they weren't as late to the party as Eve had thought but now… the former oracle really wondered.

Swallowing her impatience to get around to more of the meat of what's going on, Eve restrains herself, "…was taken over by The Entity. Woke up in the Dirty D with no idea what had happened. Just that I had died for the fourth time. Shall we continue?"

Gates turns to the television, brows furrowed, and shares a silent look with the image of V flickering there. “Let’s circle back to something else,” Gates says with a slow, steady exhalation of breath. He compartmentalizes the information Eve has given him, whatever it is seems precisely a piece of the puzzle he needed.

“You say you’ve been cleaning up their mess,” Gates motions to the television, then looks back to Eve. “By that, you must mean the Company. Precisely what mess is that? Because where we’re standing, we don’t have that information. We don’t even know to ask what it is, because we don’t know what we don’t know. SESA has scraps of information, but not a whole picture.”

Gates chin rises challengingly. “Do you have the full picture?”

Eve's eyes close and she bows her head, "I have as clear a picture as we can get so far, nobody has the whole picture and that is the fault of The Company. The Founders erased all trace of The Entity from memory, from the physical world using the likes of Caspar Abrams and Alfonso Baumann, it's not a surprise that it's hard to find anything concrete." The pale woman feels she's being unfair so she adds, "Though they did do that after thinking they had banished it forever."

There's a nod and Eve's head pops up at the same time as a medium sized mirror pops into existence above her head. "A visual aid helps," When she's trying to explain something so great and undefinable. Eve waits a moment, centering herself. The effort to align herself along with most people's way of communicating doesn't necessarily come easy for the former oracle but it is something she's practiced.

The surface of the mirror is cloudy with smoke but when she exhales the joint smoke in her mouth it's like she's blown away the smoke from the glass. The rooftop of the Deveaux Building comes into view, hazy and staticky. "In the 80s, the Founders and a new generation of agents, analysts within the Company performed what I call the Ritual. A convergence of abilities that combined were able to oust the energy, the former person known as the Entity." A memory of a memory showed to her, Eve looks at the TV screen as the mirror shakes and the group of the Founders can be seen, Kam Niasatta screaming with gold eyes.

Adam appears and Valerie Mas soon after, vicious in her taking down of the savage immortal, "They thought they won that day. Saved the world, they were very very wrong." The image wafts away and another is replaced, one of a young child standing on a hill, an array of colors dance in the sky above them as an eclipse begins. "Because what they were fighting has been alive so long… has survived at any cost… how could they know? I had a dream when I was young, on the roof of my family's shop. There was a child, I didn't know what it meant at the time. I didn't know anything." As she speaks the child lifts their hands to the sky and their eyes begin to burn gold.

"But I believe it is a vision of how the Dragon came to be in power, at first. I thought it was the First of us but the more I learn, peel back I still think it was a first but just not the first Expressive. Maybe the first of us to display multiple talents, the First Mosaic."

The mirror shifts to another perspective, a mountain of bloodied and broken bodies. "It's unknown, most of its history but at some point it wound up in servitude to an emperor, a cruel one. It and three others. And it reigned destruction for its master and held dominion over the others. You see It, can control our very genes. Like that," Eve snaps, "My entangling with it twice has left me changed, twice. Both of those were even an accident." Before she can derail herself, the mirror shifts and a young woman steps down towards the bodies in a red kimono, eyes blazing as gold as the child's. "At some point It's original body was destroyed, ripped to shreds or beheaded," She waves her hand dismissively as if it matters little, "But It persisted. Possessing who they could, The Hosts are what I call them."

"It got free, eventually, thanks to a deal struck with Adam Monroe, his gift was immortality in exchange. There is word of a betrayal, something he didn't give. Something it wanted." Adam walks next to The Entity in Yaeko's body, bloody Kenzie sword dripping by his side, he descends upon someone… Eve seeing as it's her perspective, the sword is raised high and it slams down, the world turns upside down and the image goes black. "It was banished back then, that seems to be the only thing that works. Nobody has found a way to kill it. But it always finds a way back into the world, from the space in between the different universes." Eve lifts a finger and sways in the seat, "I met it back then, briefly. Time traveled with m- friend. It… put my head back on. After Adam took it off." As an afterthought with a snort.

"While it's banished, it can see across time. This allows it to plan, it can also push at the edges of the veil, if you have any psychics in your employ," Eve waves a hand at the "place" they are in now. "You should know that they are not only susceptible but probably have been influenced in some way by It. It uses seers, telepaths, the mental variety to push people, push events to a certain point. How fun to learn that every vision you've had has been in some way in service of The Entity. It pushed my mother to meet my actual father, to birth me, so I could have the gift I was born with," Eve looks towards Valerie with a sad expression on her face, "I've connected people, helped exchange power, helped topple enemies but it was all for one thing. The only thing it wants."

Her midnight hair touches the back of the chair and she stares up at the mirror as it displays a young girl, Sibyl Black with gold eyes, pacing and then standing, speaking towards Eve. "This world is sick, and it means to cleanse it. That's It's very round way of saying It wants to end the world. All the worlds. Reduce us to our base matter, just stardust." Her fingers spread wide as her lips make a poof motion. Eve tosses the joint in the black ashtray and drains her whiskey from the glass.

The next image is of Adam, on a small island with the aurora in the sky as well as many other twinkling lights that aren't stars. "I've seen our end," The eyes of the immortal burn as gold as Yaeko, Kam and Sibyl's. "And I mean to stop it."

Two faces appear on the surface, "A weapon, forged by two great minds in the Company. Richard Drucker and Charlotte Roux, named after a sun goddess Amaterasu, it channeled the solar energy. Mmmm?" The faces vanish, leaving the mirror before Eve claps her hands and it vanishes as well with a sharp pop!

"A weapon that we haven't been able to find, two great minds that are lost to us in my world. Though I think the true solution will be a bit more," Eve searches for the word and licks her lips, "Mmm. Nuanced. Then just pointing a very fancy, very pricey ray guy at a cosmic being." Eve smiles a sad smile, "So, we have time but not that much I'm guessing from the ways things are going! It's got huge amounts of followers thanks to the very tall, scary and studly Baruti Naidu and Mazdak."

"Bullets in the brainpan can kill the Host body. Unless you're It's inside a regenerator! But it does have one sure fire disadvantage, while on the mortal plane. It cannot push at the psychics, cannot weave events into a tapestry of their own design. But they have spent centuries planning this." Eve placed her hands in her lap and looks between the two.

"There are finer details, but that's what I've got so far!"

A pause.

"Do you maybe… perhaps… know anything that I don't?"

It's fair to exchange.

Some of what Eve says is revelation to Gates, that much is evident from his expression, but other parts… especially Amaterasu don’t seem to elicit the same measure of surprise as time travel and parallel dimensions do. Gates glances at the TV as V comes back on it, then looks back to Eve.

“What you’ve said aligns with what our department has uncovered through our own research,” Gates explains. “We became aware of the Entity during the lead-up to the Crossing. But our department has handled phenomena of similar nature for some time. Where this leaves us is unfortunately still a one-way street. Right now we can’t share any of our intelligence, nor would now be an appropriate time to, especially given that you may be compromised.” To say nothing of himself.

“Eve,” V stresses from the television, “hun. You’re in a position that I wish you hadn’t been thrown into. But it’s one that doesn’t… necessarily have a happy ending.”

“There is a not insignificant number of powerful people in KC that would like you to be locked away for the rest of your life.” Gates explains. “Not without due concern, admittedly. There is a very real and growing concern that you may be a vector for the Entity and its operation, given how central you’ve been to its most heavy-handed moments.”

Gates walks to stand in front of Eve, chin up. “Let’s say that your reckless choice to hold the XPress festival outside of the Safe Zone also didn’t win you many defenders there. What little good will you have within federal agencies has all but dried up. But…” Gates looks to the side, then back to Eve. “You have a choice.”

“Please, honey. I need you to listen to what Agent Gates has to say.” V says with visible tension in her voice.

It's looking more like it was a good idea for Eve to not go into heavy detail and divulge all she knows, or suspects.

Similar nature? She rolls to doubt but her curiosity is piqued, not that it's hard to get Eve Mas' attention somewhere.

The woman stretches an arm out and then goes to scratch the top of her head. "Silly, if I'm as compromised as you say then not even, this," Waving a finger around the space they occupy currently, "Can save you from It's eyes. Or the agents I've met already, Castle? Reeves?" This isn't the first time that Eve's been shut out and for maybe good reasons. Maybe it has to do with the fact that her mother is also on the side of the people doing the shutting out that makes the dark haired woman feel a bit more betrayed about it than usual. "I've died four times now, my ending was never going to be happy momma." Grim and bitter is her smile towards the TV screen. "The only way- I have to stop it."

Watching Gates as he walks and talks, the recklessness of her actions have weighed on her already but at the moment she simply nods but her eyes are on her mother on the screen and she leans forward. Ignoring Gates for the moment, "This feels very much like your chit chat with the FBI agent that wanted to help you get me back when I was a young babe, mom." How strange to find herself in seemingly almost the same situation as her mother all those years ago.

"There is intelligence you can tell me mother, and intelligence I'll have," She feels as if she's about to throw up, there's been one question on her mind since diving into the memories surrounding her mother's past. And her fathers'. Both of them. "Where is my biological father? Not Eric," Fingers curls in on themselves and she gives Valerie Mas a hard stare, voice as tense.

"Where is George Porter?"

Gates’ mouth presses into a thin, flat line as he looks at Eve. Before he speaks, he looks at V, waiting to see if she has an opinion on the matter.

“I don’t know, honey.” V answers in honest response. “I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. And even if I did know where he was, it wouldn’t help you right now. I barely knew him, I…”

“This isn’t the matter at hand.” Gates gently redirects the conversation back to the earlier topic. “This isn’t about informational compartmentalization, Eve. This is about the fact that twice now the Entity has chosen to inhabit your body. It’s about security and risk. About making calculated choices.”

Gates steps in between Eve and the television with V’s face on it. “There’s two ways this can go right now, Eve. For you. I’m not talking about the bigger picture right now, I’m talking about your personal stakes and how you want to show you can be trusted.”

“Because you can either stay behind bars, let the legal process play out, and know that if push comes to shove and the end of the world can only be solved by you it’s a pretty sure thing you’ll be released. Or…” Gates looks back at the television, then back to Eve. “You can escape. Be on the run for the rest of the new life you have.”

Gates furrows his brows and looks down at Eve, conflicted. “I can help with either path. But only you can make that choice.”

That's not the answer she wanted but probably what she expected. "It could help later. The Dragon doesn't mention things just for the hell of it," Neither did Eve, not truly. There was always a rhyme or reason, even if she didn't always know what that reason was.

Gates' gentle redirect has Eve turning to look at him fully again and she tilts her head before she breaks out into a wide smile, "Huh, not as much as a stiff as I thought you were. Maybe Castle isn't the only fun one around here, mmm?" Doe brown eyes narrow though and she considers her options. The two options. "I get bored very easily," A sly glance towards her mother as she says this. But Gilly… Odessa… BOOM… WarMortJack… everyone would be so worried and she didn't have much time left… and now her mother was alive and in front of her. Usually Eve would have fallen into some hairbrained scheme to escape that just might work and be off into the wind but things were different now.

Another long look at Valerie Mas and she grimaces and rolls her eyes, "I'll stay." She'll never hear the end of this. Eve Mas, The Eve Mas. Captured and imprisoned. "My reputation is taking a severe hit here, I'll have you know." Which gives her an idea.

"Two things," Holding up her fingers, "I'm going to need to get a post out to my social media's, not written. My followers aren't gonna fall for that, short, 30 second video. It'll keep them calm." And maybe save some of her hard earned street cred at that. "You can edit what I'll say." This might seem silly to them but it's of the utmost importance to Eve.

The next thing isn't quite as silly.

"Next thing is, I'm not going to be alive very long. Let's keep that between us shall we?" Eve doesn't look at the TV screen and instead closes her eyes. "The body I've been occupying is decaying, I don't think it likes having me squeezed in here." Eve taps at her chest a couple times and shrugs. "Negation or suppressing the gene might help and all but there's a ticking clock on these bones." She sounds older than she appears in that moment and her shoulders sag, what a long journey it's been and miles to go before she could really sleep. "Just something to think about. While we wait." A pause.

"Will you visit me?" Now she looks at her mom.

“I wish I could…” V says with a look away from her daughter. “But that’s not possible right now. Not face-to-face.”

Gates is quiet, which is good because he doesn’t say no to any of Eve’s shockingly reasonable requests. She isn’t in the place to be making demands, but Gates seems willing to entertain them nonetheless.

“I can facilitate a few meetings, on occasion.” Gates explains. “But they’re going to be rare. By necessity. I’m sorry.” Sighing as if his lungs were really full of air and any of this were real, Gates moves to stand beside Eve. “We’ll discuss the matter of your… physical state soon. I have to cut this meeting, though. We’re out of time.”

V’s expression twists, a tense and emotionally-overwrought thing. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

Valerie is squinted at and then Eve looks from Gates to Valerie and the TV, then the space around them. "You wouldn't have ever stayed away…" The way Valerie seems on the screen is indicative of that abs it reminds her of how fierce her mother's love and protection of her was. "My mother wouldn't have ever stayed away this long- how- you-" Why would her mother not have seen her until now? How could she have stayed away? Her mother would never, "My mother…"

The former seer grips the edges of the chair and leans forward, "You're her… but you're not. Just another shade of the glass." Astonished though this isn't the first time she's experienced this phenomenon but how? Eve looks at Gates and almost begs him to not to cut the meeting short, though there is equal parts a coldness that comes over her and a fiery warmth at the inkling that the Valerie Mas before her was not from her world.

"I look forward to our future rare meetings…" Eve closes her eyes and lays her head against the chair's back. She was ready to sleep, overwhelmed, emotional, drained.

"Thanks for using my momma to soften me up," her tone is playful as she opens her eyes to wink while looking Gates up and down. He doesn't know it but there's a nickname on the tip of her tongue for him and Eve rubs her chin, "…I'll pick it later." She says aloud.

V looks like she’s going to say something, but doesn’t. Instead she just closes her eyes and looks away and the screen goes black. Gates watches that wordless exchange and exhales a sigh. He doesn’t say anything, but instead steps over to Eve and puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Time to wake up.”


Meanwhile

Elsewhen


If I only could, oh…

Valerie Mas’ eyes open slowly, staring at a ceiling fan spinning overhead. A radio nearby is playing a familiar, old song. Her vision is blurry until she wipes at her eyes with her hands, then rolls onto her side and swings her legs off of the armless leather chair she was seated in.

C'mon, baby, c'mon darling

Bare feet touch down on a tiled floor, and Valerie steps away from the high lab chair. Bright morning light comes through the windows and the woman in the room with V offers her a concerned look with furrowed brows.

Let me steal this moment from you now.

“How did it go?” She asks. V offers her a look, then closes her eyes and shakes her head. The dark-haired woman watches V cross the room, then slowly slides off of the stool she was sitting on. Her heeled shoes click softly on the floor, walking in V’s shadow.

C'mon, angel, c'mon, c'mon, darling

“She’s doing good.” V says with a rasping quality to her voice, moving to stand by the window to watch the sun rise between the gleaming glass facades of massive skyscrapers. “Hurting, but… good.” She fishes a phone out of her pocket, dismissing some notifications.

Let's exchange the experience, oh

“Important call?” The other woman asks, resting a reassuring hand on V’s shoulder. V stops at a contact entry, thumb hovering over it.

And if I only could

Mas, Eve

I'd make a deal with God

“I should call.” V says in a hushed voice. The woman she’s with nods, squeezing her shoulder, dark eyes turning to look out at the same sunrise.

And I'd get him to swap our places

“It won’t be the same,” she warns.

Be running up that road

V nods in understanding, then looks out to the tallest building rising higher than all the others over Manhattan. “I could use a minute,” V says. The woman with her removes her hand and steps back, a concerned but understanding smile offered in return.

Be running up that hill

“I’ll be right outside.” Her friend offers.

With no problems.

V presses the call button on the contact and looks out at the massive, cylindrical skyscraper.

If I only could

“Thanks, Hokuto.”

Be running up that hill

bf_hokuto_icon.gif

If I only could


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