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| Scene Title | Shells |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Aric and Peyton attempt to figure out what has happened to Molly, but all they're left with are shards and scraps. |
| Date | November 10, 2010 |
It has been two days of hell…literally. Aric finally got some rest after the riots and returned back to his shop. After getting his shop back in order, he decided to bring some normal life to the Endgamers and bring them sweets. Aric has been cooking up a storm in his kitchen with cookies, tarts, and cakes. It was more of less use the materials or they could go bad until he can get another order in so…he used them all up today.
Silence.
Molly's room is absolutely silent, laying on the floor is the teenager, dressed in the same clothes that she wore on the 8th. Her eyes clothes and her breathing shallow, it's as if she's sleeping. Except this Molly's coloring is off and she looks.. dry.
The door creaks open to reveal the sight of Molly on the floor. Blonde hair is out around her, like a halo. Her lips parted slightly, though no other movement comes from Molly Walker. She hasn't even moved since the door has fallen open.
As he drops off a large basket into the basement for those who come and go, Aric has made the second basket special for Molly. He had never gotten the pleasure of meeting Molly and wanted to bring some sweet happiness to the girl's day. As he walks up the stairs, he approaches her door and taps it gently to say, "Hello? Molly? My name is Aric Gibbs. I am good friends with Cardinal…I thought I would bring…" He leans in and takes a moment to listen.
The water tickles down into Molly's parted lips but there is no movement from Molly, no acknowledgment of Aric's presence of anything. Molly is just lying there and if only she could talk right now..
Inside the mental maze she's been wandering for the last two days, without any concept of the time that has passed, Molly has tried every door in the strange building she can only assume is her adoptive father's mind. But her latest discovery dwarfs the various empty bedrooms she's peeked into and poked around in.
The door at the end of the U-shaped hallway Molly's been working her way down opens onto the balcony of what can only be described as a warehouse, but on Molly's level, the relatively narrow balcony that follows the permiter of the immense space seems to simply be a viewing platform for a series of paintings on the walls. But they aren't the sort of paintings that Molly has seen in her trips to various museums, or even in the history textbooks she's been assigned. They have a distinctly cartoonish quality, as if plucked from the pages of a comic book. In one of the far corners of the balcony is a metal ramp that spirals down to the floors below.
The floor immediately below is also open, and across the expanse, Molly can see that it's balcony follows the same path as the one on which she stands, but it would appear that the second floor extends further beyond her immediate sight. Instead of art on the wall, there is only aisle after aisle of shelving, each one presumably packed with what look like all sorts of containers - from file boxes to steamer trunks.
The ground floor, however, is the most stunning. The same shelves on the second storey are repeated here, but the center section is clear, with just a large work table set with a high-back, winged leather chair at one end of the elliptical space, and to two parallel lines of life-size granite statues leading from it to the other end.
As he blinks and brings a hand to his head, he looks down at Molly and says, "What the fuck." He can see the water didn't help, and he places Molly gently back on the floor as he stands up and takes out his phone. He decides to dial Peyton and begins to wait for it to ring. "Peyton…it's Aric. I am in Molly's apartment. Please call me back….something is very wrong…bring the med kit."
Living in your dad's head.. sucks.
Molly has been yelling this to her father for two days straight. Her throat should be sore. "Damnit! Dad! Will you come and talk to me, I.. I.. arghhhhhhhhh!!!" she screams and leans against the wall in frustration. He is being such a coward.Then she's sighing and looking down over the balcony. Blinking, she stares down at what the men are doing. "Um.. hello?" she asks with a bit of a shudder. She's getting a creepy feeling. "What are you guys doing?" she yells down, her voice echoing which makes her jump a bit.
"Just great.. my dad is the new Jigsaw." What with the puzzles and confusing mind he has. Molly really doesn't like her father right now.
The men look up, searching the balcony for a moment before they look at Molly. One slides the lid off the coffin, revealing another statue inside a bed of thin yellow packing straw. With the ease of a man who knows his job, he inches it out and into it's place in line, taking a moment to pluck the stray strands of straw off the stony form.
The other lifts the baseball cap from his head and scratches at his tawny head as he looks up at Molly. "Whatta you doin' pokin' around, little lady?" he asks, calling the question up to the teenager, one hand still tightly gripping the crowbar.
Aric kneels back down to Molly, as he dips his fingers in the glass of water and tries to places drops of water in her mouth. He only does a few drops at a time to make sure she is not gonna choke. He wants to see what is going on but needs someone here to help Molly before he goes in…something is very wrong.
The door to the apartment opens and Peyton rushes in, nearly stumbling over Aric. She drops to her knees beside him and reaches for Molly's wrist to check her pulse. "Shit," she breathes out. Her own health looks questionable; beneath the short sleeve of her t-shirt, gauze can be seen wrapping her upper arm where she was shot the week before; her wide and frightened eyes are bloodshot with dark circles beneath.
"We can't … we can't bring her to the hospital… I might be able to get someone medical here. Can you tell what happened? If you go in her mind, can you read her memory, see if someone did this to her, or is it just some sort of … I don't know…" Her eyes search Aric's face imploringly — she doesn't know the younger girl, having only seen her briefly in passing, but she feels responsible — after all, Molly was at Redbird for safe keeping.
Peyton swallows, trying not to cry as she stares down at the girl's pale face.
"Because.. I really need to talk to him!" she yells out. And as she does so, she spots the ramp and begins rushing down. When she reaches the bottom. "Look." She waves her hands. "I know you think you're real, but you're not. So if you could please just take me to my father, I'd love that." She waits a beat and then adds in a singsong voice. "I'll bake you cookies." Bright smile. Yep, that's right. Take the cookies bitch.
"Look, kid," the man says as he helps his mate lift the second coffin-shaped box off the cart to set it on it's side. They attack the edges with their crowbars, making sort work of the lid so that a second new statue can be placed beside the first. The first man watches Molly's progress, seemingly unpreturbed as she makes he way down the ramp.
"If we aren't real," he says with an amused sort of smirk, "then what the hell are we gonna do with cookies?"
Aric looks up at Peyton and then follows her down as she kneels next to him, "She needs hydration I think. Her lips were like age old leather when I came in." He waves a hand over her head and says, "Something is going on yet I didn't want to go in until someone got here. I caught a glimpse of a room yet it was so quick all I saw was a balcony. I am worried…I want to go in while you tend to her. Maybe some fluids in her? What does that med kit have? While you tend to her…I have a bad feeling…I need to try and help her inside. Do you think you could do that? " Aric runs a hand through his long hair and looks down at the girl as he cracks his knuckles preparing himself to get comfortable kneels behind her head.
"This is just a basic first aid kit… there's nothing that's going to get fluids in her," Peyton says with a shake of her head. "Let me get some ice chips and let them dissolve in her mouth, I guess?"
She gets up and moves toward the kitchen, rifling around and coming back with a cup of crushed ice from the freezer and kneeling again.
"But at least I'll be here so if she starts to get worse I can shake you out of it, or yell at you in your head to come out?" she suggests.
"Real or not, everyone loves cookies." She says flatly before moving forward to examine the statues that the men are taking out. "What are these for?" she asks as she moves in to get a closer look. Every scary movie lover would scream don't do it!! At this point, but it can't be anything too frightening or weird. Right?
The young clairvoyant pushes the blonde hair out of her eyes.
As he looks at Peyton, "If I do not come out of it in 30 minutes…slap me very hard and break my contact with Molly. Do you understand?" The telepath gives her his final instruction as he takes a deep breath and clears his mind. He places his pointer finger and index finger on Molly's forehead and his thumbs on her temples. As he closes his eyes, he opens the bond between Molly and himself.
For an instant, Aric can see what Molly can see - the statues, the workmen, even the storage shelves beyond them.
But it doesn't last long.
The ceiling of the warehouse chamber is a massive skylight, not unlike what one might see atop a greenhouse. Though the storm outside has calmed to a simple, steady, rythymic rain, no sooner does Aric catch this glimpse than a bolt of lightning cracks across the sky and thunder rolls in it's way. While Molly only hears the tempest, Aric feels it. It's as if the lightning were directed straight at him, warding him off like some Olympian dog at the end of a cosmic chain.
Above the skylight, above the cavernous warehouse, Matt Parkman glares out of a small round window before he retreats to the shadows once more.
The base of the first statue placed by the workmen has a name on it, clearly carved into the stone. Ryan Larson. As they thunder echoes, the second is put into it's place beside it. Jacob Stahl.
"What else?" the workmen who has stayed silent this whole time says with a slight chuckle. "Why would anyone want a statue of something?" His eyes move past Molly to the statues on the other side of the makeshift aisle - to one wearing a baseball cap low over his smirking face, his hands in the pockets of his zippered sweatshirt.
"Okay," Peyton says to Aric, brows contorting with worry as she looks at him, then back to Molly. "Be careful."
She moves to kneel at Molly's head, lifting the girl's head slightly to rest on Peyton's knee, then reaches for a couple of ice chips to slip into the girls mouth. The melting water shouldn't be enough to choke her, and the angle is meant to prevent that.
As the lightning strikes and Molly can hear it above her she happens to be turning and staring up at the statue that the workman points too. A shriek can be heard as the teen falls on her butt and pushes herself back from the statue, tears rolling down her eyes. She shakes her head and covers her face. Rolling into a little ball.
She rocks herself and shakes her head. "Not real.. not real.. not real." She chants to herself but she can't seem to untuck herself. Sylar's gaze baring down on her. The true boogeyman.
Peyton frowns — she got mentally kicked the other day, so she knows the pain he's in. Her fingers move to the med kit and she pulls out one of the individual packets of Advil and hands it to him. "Um. Kaylee… but I don't think she's available right now," she says softly — checking on various people over the past few days, she had caught a glimpse of the injured woman in the Ferry hiding place.
Her eyes glance to Molly, and she shakes her head. "He wouldn't hurt Molly, not on purpose, I know. But he's strong, yeah. From what I know."
With Aric gone, the storm abates once more, receding to that same, unrelenting rain that patters on the roof high above the floor where the statues stand and Molly sits curled up. But try as she might to block it out, the face underneath the bill of that cap can't be ignored forever. And when Molly does look at it again, she realizes that there is…something odd. Something not quite right about those features she knows all too well.
With the girl out of the way, even if it means in a state of duress, the workmen go back to their business. They load the empty coffins onto the cart, leaving the third untouched and the bits of thin packing straw strewn about the shining hardwood floor.
Aric takes the Advil and swallows them without water. He lays still for a few moments more as he slowly begins to sit up and says, "Could you look in on him? I hate to ask but…well I need to know if he is breathing because if he isn't? I might have to kick him in the head for that blast to my brain." Aric brings a hand to his temple looking down at Molly. "We are gonna have to call for help. We can't take her to a hospital…we need medical help. I need to know where Matt is and what he is doing before I go in again. I need to know if it is him."
As Molly shakily stands up, she tiptoes towards the statue. Shivering all the while, there is something off about the face. Molly stares up at the statue, shaking and shivering. Tears still rolling down her face. This young Walker will probably forever be afraid of this man, he took so much from her.
"I don't know who to call, but I'll figure something out," Peyton says with a shake of her head. Too many people who can help are out of commission, for one reason or another. "Maybe there's a private doctor who can come here, if I can't get someone we already know. Someone… I can pay or whatever to keep quiet." She heaves a sigh, and nods again. "Okay. Hold on."
Her pupils stretch as she seeks to see through Parkman's eyes, to hear what Parkman hears.
When Molly's trembling hand stretches out to touch the stony figure, the statue crumbles beneath her fingers as if it were made of nothing more than sand. It falls from the pedastal, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust in it's wake - dust that hangs in the air like ashes.
Peyton's distant eyes open to a bright light shining directly into what little sight she has. When it goes away and Matt Parkman's pupils are given time to adjust once again, she can see the intent faces of a man and a woman, one in a white coat and the other in a pair of green scrubs. The woman hums thoughtfully, then moves away from Parkman, letting his eyes close once again. Peyton is left with only the sounds of a heater kicking on and the whispered conversation of doctor and nurse.
Aric 's eyes turn to watch and Peyton as he looks down at Molly and says softly, "Stay with us kid. We are working on it." His eyes turn to look back at Peyton to hear what she has to say.
Dark lashes blink, and Peyton's bloodshot eyes glance up at Aric. "I … it seemed out of focus, but I saw … doctors or nurses, I think," she says with a frown. "I think he's in a hospital or something."
She reaches down to put some more ice chips on Molly's tongue, and she frowns. "I'll have to figure something out."
The young teen blinks as the statue dissolves and she looks up towards the ceiling. "Thanks.." she says softly with a bit of a smile before she walks off to another part of the room, she still has much to explore. Who knows what she's gonna find?
"But why, you even let that be in your head.. I have no freaking clue." Molly Walker can't show her father that she's too happy with him.
Like so many in New York City at this very moment, Peyton and Aric are at a loss of what to do. They hold fragments - pieces of Humpty Dumpty's shell that need to be put together again. But things once broken can never be fully mended.
The doors leading out of the warehouse on it's first level do not yield for the young girl trapped inside her father's mind. Locked, they keep her imprisoned in a treasure trove of memories. Song lyrics. High school foolishness. College days with Janice. But search as she might through the boxes and drawers, or in the faces of the statues or the figures in the paintings, she'll find few touches of the man's father, or his days prior to age thirteen.
If ever Molly Walker wanted to know the impetus behind so many of the actions of the man she calls father, she'll find no better opportunity.