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| Scene Title | The Girl With the Power |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | On an ordinary morning at PISEC, anything but the ordinary happens. |
| Date | January 5, 2020 |
A buzzer indicate when the freight elevator has reached the bottom floor. A strobing red light flashes beside the elevator and the automatically locking doors do not open until an all-clear from security upstairs authorizes it. A second buzz heralds the lock release and the doors slowly sliding open into the concrete-walled lobby marked only by a single two foot tall strip of black paint in a line across the upper third of all the walls.
Stepping out from the elevator Mohinder Suresh’s eyes look like that of a demon’s with the red security light reflects off the lenses of his wire-framed glasses. A subtle shift of his head is all it takes to change that look. Tucking a clipboard under his arm, Mohinder briskly walks down the hall through two security checkpoints, then past steel mesh reinforced glass windows past an isolation cell. He pauses at one, looking into the cell as the bald-headed man in a gray jumpsuit sitting inside. Mohinder approaches the window and the man on the other side slowly rises to stand from his cot.
“He's not even throwing fire at you,” comes the crooning greeting from a woman approaching Mohinder from a hall at his back. He turns to look over his shoulder, regarding the small brunette in a lab coat closing the distance. “The new negation drug is actually working. No more rounds of multiple pills. Just one, simple, injection.” Her brows rise, and Mohinder’s eyes flick down to the badge pinned to her jacket.
Doctor Alison Meier
Primatech Paper Research
Class: Level-5
“Doctor Meier,” Mohinder says with a furrow of his brows and a hand offered to her as he puts the cell at his back. Alison takes the hand aggressively and gives it a firm squeeze. “Mr. Gordon was a perfect case study. I'm glad to see this round of treatments are working. Unfortunately,” he disengages from the handshake, “I'm not here to check up on the neurotoxin’s status.”
Doctor Meier purses her lips and looks past Mohinder to the bald man in the cell behind him, then back to Mohinder in a blink. “Flint’ll be heartbroken,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “How can I be of assistance then, Doctor Suresh?”
Mohinder looks back over his shoulder at Flint Gordon in the cell, then squares his attention back at Doctor Meier. “Actually, I'm not here to see you…”
Eleven Years Later
PISEC
Plum Island, New York
January 5th
6:08 pm
It’s dinnertime on Sunday when Odessa Price is ushered back in with the general population after her little incident at breakfast the day before. It’s easy to tell by her slow movements that she’s still recovering from heavy sedation. She sits at a table with a tray of food in front of her, picking it to pieces before she eats it by the small mouthful. It won’t help not to eat.
She needs her strength for what’s to come.
There are eyes upon her in the cafeteria. Guards and inmates alike. Hers are on the windows outside, where she can see her garden covered in snow. There’s the faded memory of a snow angel in the lawn, slowly filling in further and further with each new dusting and gust of wind.
There’s also the muted reflection of the world inside this room. There’s been uneasiness since she entered. It practically seasons the mashed potatoes she forks into her mouth.
A tray slaps down on the table across from Odessa, the typically brash greeting that someone like Pete Varlane would give. But when Odessa’s attention is drawn to the man standing across from her it, much to her surprise, isn't Pete at all.
“Is this seat taken?” Mohinder asks as he pulls out the chair opposite of Odessa and raises dark brows as punctuation to his inquiry.
Go right ahead, is Odessa’s answer. Except that it comes out as, “What the fuck do you want?” With a subtle emphasis on the fact that it’s the notion that he wants anything to do with her that’s so baffling.
Tilting her head to indicate the chair he’s already pulled out, she acquiesces to his request. Her gaze drops to the table, seemingly absently, like she’s too awkward to look up at his face and start a question. But she’s actually checking to see what he has on his tray for cutlery. How sharp are those tines? Is that butter knife actually serrated?
Odessa looks up again at the man settled in across from her, lifting her own brows in a sort of mirror of his own earlier expression. “What can I do for you?” She knows better than to expect this is any kind of social exchange. Mohinder Suresh doesn’t even like her. He wanted to see her at the end of a noose, didn’t he? Blue eyes narrow faintly, a betrayal of her concentration, as she narrows her world down to just she and him. She may not be able to discern what he’s thinking, but feelings say a lot about what someone’s planning.
Mohinder doesn't seem put off by the aggression, in fact Odessa can feel that he's relieved by it. As he sits down, Mohinder pulls his chair in and scoots forward, hunching over his meal as he briefly eyes the security on the periphery of the room before returning his attention on Odessa.
“Do you remember Doctor Meier?” Mohinder asks, which is absurd because of course she does, Alison Meier’s work came up during Odessa’s trial. He doesn't belabor the point before continuing. “When her research on Advent started, back before Kazimir Volken and the Shanti Virus,” he glances to the frost-covered windows to the garden and back to Odessa. “Do you remember all of the platitudes we were given? All the reassurances that our work wasn't going to be weaponized? That it was research? Purely scientific?”
From Odessa’s perspective, Mohinder sounds a little agitated.
“You mean the lies they told us?” Odessa meets Mohinder’s agitation with a healthy dose of cynicism. “They were absolutely weaponizing it. I saw what it did to people. There’s no way they weren’t looking at those results and saying ‘how could we best use this to murder scores of people.’”
Lifting her spoon, she wedges it into a cube of red Jell-O. “One thing off on that formula,” she slips the spoon into her mouth and continues speaking around the gelatin pressed between cheek and teeth, “and you destabilize a person’s entire molecular structure.” This is where the confusion sets in. “Why are you talking to me about this? Why now?”
Mohinder’s brows rise slowly, he spreads his hands, and motions around the cafeteria. “What they want us to make, the weapon we’re working on, isn’t just something that could be applied to Adam Monroe. This is a cellular degenerative non-viral biological agent, which means it lacks the risk of spreading like Advent. But the specifications we were given, the way it would attack new cell creation…” Mohinder presses a hand to his temple, fingers spread across his brow.
“Odessa,” Mohinder says with a sharp exhalation of breath, “even by itself, it could kill anyone that depends on cellular regeneration. Claire Bennet comes to mind, wherever she is these days. But beyond that we have done no testing on its effects on a non-expressive. The design is so laser-focused on Monroe it just— it feels like…”
Mohinder leans forward, scooting his chair in and folding his hands in front of himself as he whispers across the table to her. “I’ve been intentionally sabotaging this project,” he says with a shaky voice. “I was afraid you would leap at this, that you’d… that you’d do whatever your jailors wanted to maybe cut a better deal for yourself. But I can’t— I can’t keep sabotaging this on my own. I’m thinking of… of refusing to work. Of a strike of conscience.”
Then, Mohinder does the unthinkable.
He extends one hand across the table. “But I can’t do that alone.”
“That explains a lot,” Odessa breathes out at the mention that he’s been sabotaging their work. It makes some of the results make much more sense. All the dead ends when there should have been breakthroughs. Her spoon settles back into the Jell-O dish with a clink and she stares down at that proffered hand.
Her lips purse, and Odessa doesn’t try to hide her skepticism. “This feels like a trap,” she informs him. “You don’t even like me. How do I know you aren’t just setting me up to look uncooperative to the brass? I can’t prove you’re the one sabotaging the results. You could pin the whole thing on me and get my ass kicked to solitary.”
But, she does the unimaginable and reaches out across the table to clasp his hand with her own. “I don’t want to hurt people anymore. Not even Monroe. If you’re sincere…” And she’s extending her senses, feeling what he feels more than ever now, “I’ll do it. I’ll risk it all. And if you’re just setting me up to take a fall… I won’t even complain about it.” It might be the least she deserves anyway.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still want to know if he’s lying to her.
And for the first time in Odessa’s Price’s entire life, she can tell.
“I’ve been made to be the devil before,” Mohinder says with a momentary squeeze of Odessa’s hand, “and for as much as I dislike you… I’m starting to think we’ve both been fed a raw deal.”
She can tell if someone is deceiving her.
“I want to change that.”
For the first time, Odessa is the one in charge of her own destiny.