Participants:
| Scene Title | The Wind Cries |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Doyle is presented with a new responsibility for his good behaviour and given a new pet. |
| Date | March 23, 2009 |
Security Room
Good and Evil
Static flickers over a grainy closed-circuit television monitor, displaying an unmoving view of a long corridor lined with heavy iron doors marked with nine digit serial numbers. This screen is one of many, a part of a bank of television screens filling floor to ceiling, curving around a full half of a spacious concrete bunker deep underground. Each screen seems to show the same thing, the same place, the same identical hallway — save that the serial numbers on all of the doors are different.
It is possible that Friedrich Nietzsche described the dichotomy best…
These televisions make no sound, only show hundreds of points of reference within a labyrinthine facility made of sturdy materials, built upon the backbone of Company ingenuity. Beyond the wall of flickering screens, a circle of five lamps are recessed into the ceiling, shining a colorless light down on a pale, shivering form on the floor curled up on her side. Dark hair is plastered to sweat-slicked skin smudged with grime, her eyes half lidded, pupils wide and dark, rimmed with cobalt blue.
"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself."
Manacles around her wrists connect to slacked lengths of thick iron chains that snake around her body loosely, some cold links draped over her bare shoulders, others slithered across the white tanktop that clings to her small frame. She mouths words no one can hear, lyrics to a song she can hardly remember, words that once brought her happiness, once brought her comfort.
"What is evil? All that is born of weakness."
Behind her, a low hiss of hydraulics moving accompanies the screech of steel scraping against steel. Slowly, a thin shaft of light begins to appear over her form, from a pair of doors to her own personalized hell grinding open against worn runners. Her muscles tense, instinctively, fingers curling against the concrete of the floor, chains moving with clinks and tinks all the way to where they connect to a great iron ring set between the circle of lights in the ceiling.
"What is happiness?"
As the door opens, fluorescent bulbs in the red-painted in the hallway backlight a broad and hulking form, made of smooth and round angles dappled in light and dark, thick fingers twitching as the doors come to a grinding halt, giving way to this special room, and it's very special guest.
"The feeling that power is growing…"
The brunette woman's eyes wrench shut, shoulders trembling. Her eyes flutter open, pupils dilating from wide to pinpoints, and her lips cease moving, her jaw coming still. Fingers twitch, slipper covered feet step out of the doorway, and iron doors begin to slide shut after birthing his presence into the stark contrast of light and dark in the room.
"…that resistance, is overcome."
The hand drops from its slight raise, fingers rustling against colour-painted foil in a sound that disturbs the sterile, industrial silence of the room. They draw out a ridged, powder-dusted potato chip that soon disappears between his lips, the soft crunching replacing the bag's metallic rasp. As the light of the hallway is slowly cut off by the closing of those heavy, metal doors, he approaches the chain-draped guest of these exquisite quarters from behind, only the shuffling whisper of his slippers against the concrete flooring speaking of how close he is. Standing behind where she lays, he looks over the silent screens in silence for a moment, another chip fed into his mouth before he speaks.
"Takes you back, doesn't it?" Crunch. Crunch. A tip of his chin back down looks to her, a smile dusted with cheddar just a ghost on his lips, "The concrete walls… the security checkpoints… the complete lack of humor. I think it could use a little color, personally, but I guess they appreciate that whole 'hopelessness' aesthetic they've got going." The smile flashes to a grin - that's gone a moment later, as if wiped from the blackboard, a look of faux-concern on his face, eyes widening a touch in his rounded face, "Oh. But you don't look like you're enjoying it very much. And they went to all that trouble to get you such a good room."
The sound of the door was horror enough. The voice of her visitor is enough to further amp up the terror to a point where only her heart pounding overpowers the still of the room. In hear ears, her blood is roaring.
Brooke Lynwood, an uncommon bank robber, made her bed on the concrete floor she lays upon when she got too cocky and tried to take her small-time operation to greater heights as visions of grand schemes danced in her head.
And she was caught.
Trembling uncontrollably, the dark-haired woman tries desperately to control the fear. Never before has she felt so helpless. The chains encircling her wrists and the periodic injections of drugs designed to inhibit her ability have ensured this powerlessness.
"Aahhn." A miserable whine escapes her lips. Instantly, her eyes squeeze shut. Brooke tries to shut out the nightmare. To will it away. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. But it doesn't happen. Think, Brooke.
"We never talk anymore," comes the quiet lament in response, "Why, I remember when we'd have… conversations that went for hours. Whatever happened to the good ol' days, hm?" Another potato chip is turned over between his fingers, considered, then devoured in short order. The visitor's head tips just enough to look down at her, regarding her in silence for a moment before observing mildly, "Aren't you supposed to be watching these monitors?" His hand lifts, two orange-stained fingers extended—and then flicked upwards, a sharp movement.
The levator muscle controls the opening of the eyelid, while the orbicularis closes it. One tenses. The other relaxes. And the muscles seek to pull her eyes open against her own will. "You should sit up, too," he notes, drawing his hand upwards with fingers dangling, his power threading through the muscle of arms, of legs, pulling them like the strings of a puppet to bring her to a less fetal posture.
Eric Doyle smiles, gaze turning back to the flickering, grainy light of the monitors. "After all," he murmurs, smiling faintly, "We all have a job to do."
"No, please!" Brooke begs as her eyes are opened forcibly. "I see them even when I close my eyes! It's all the same! The same thing over and over and over again! It never changes! It's constant! It doesn't move!" She's made to sit up and face the monitors, but her eyes snap up to look at the puppeteer controlling the strings. "Eric, please! Don't make me look anymore. It doesn't move." Her voice is little more than a desperate mewling sound. "It's standing still. It hurts so bad. Please, please make it stop. I can't feel anything anymore." Tears well up in her eyes as she pleads for an end to her misery. The words are coherent enough, but without context, it makes little sense.
"Please, please, make it stop. Don't make me look anymore." A high-pitched mockery of her own voice, Eric's head bobbing back and forth a bit and both brows raised to widen his eyes. His fingers flap in the air, miming her talking as he does so. A brief, satisfied smirk carves its way across his expression, then, as that hand delves back into the bag once more. Foil rustles, rasps in the quiet of the room. He leans down, just a bit, meeting her gaze steadily as he asks in faux-concerned tones, "Are you in pain, Miss Lynwood? Do you have a… medical complaint? Maybe I should call for a doctor."
At the end of that taunt his voice darkens, a rough edge entering into it as he leans back once more. She's watched, something dark behind those eyes, before he feigns a yawn and looks back up to the ever-steady images upon the monitors. "Besides," he adds casually, his tone as conversational as if he was discussing the weather, "You really brought this upon yourself, you know."
Brooke's eyes grow wide as saucers as he actually threatens to call a doctor. Not that. Anything but that. "Eric…" She lowers her voice to a soft whisper, "We can help each other. We can escape this place if we help each other." The fear is slowly being quelled as the instinct to manipulate kicks in. Quite the pair they are, sharing the room.
"Oh?" A look down to her, a bland smile offered down to her as he shakes his head sadly, "I'm afraid we won't be doing that, Brooke. No, I don't think we'll be doing that at all."
The fuzzy slippers that he wears shuffle against the floor as he steps up behind where she's seated — the muscles along her back pulling her straight, neck rigid to keep her facing forward — and his knees bend as he eases himself down to a crouch. Unseen, there, but the presence of him can be felt oh so keenly. A stirring of his cheddar-and-whiskey scented breath stirs over her ear and cheek, his nose just-brushing against a lock of dirty hair as he whispers there, "If I wanted your help, though, my dear, old friend… I wouldn't ask for it." His smile's audible in his voice. No doubt it doesn't touch his eyes.
Frozen in rigidly perfect posture, with her eyes still opened wide, Brooke can't even shudder as the puppet master's breath washes over her skin. "You're just acting under orders. I know what that's like. But we both know that it's a lot more fun to break the rules and act for ourselves. We could make a beautiful team, Eric." Miss Lynwood's mind works at a rate of a thousand miles a minute, trying to come up with something that will give her a release from her return to hell. The ceaseless sameness of the multitude of monitors is already beginning to make her bones ache in their lack of activity. In the back of her mind, she suposes that this is why they brought in the man to make a marionette of her - to force her to start watching the monitors again.
A low, unsympathetic chuckle tumbles past his lips, stirring to the skin of her neck. He doesn't touch her, though, not yet. Not more than the accidental brush against a drab, lifeless lock of unwashed hair now and again. "Then tell me, because, I'm really—I'm really quite curious," he murmurs ever so softly behind her, tone guileless, "If you were the one following orders… and someone else was sitting where you were… and they asked you for help… what would you do?"
"If I were just as much a prisoner as they were, I'd take all the help I could get," Brooke responds without hesitation. She finds herself oddly grateful for the control over her for the moment, if only because it avoids the tell-tale twitches of muscles that give away revulsion. "We're smarter than they are, Eric. You're the puppeteer, not the puppet. We both know you deserve better than to be used by them as a one. We could teach them a lesson, Eric. We could teach them not to underestimate us." She pauses for a moment, taking in a slow breath to help calm the racing pulse of her heart. "We could start over. Think about it. Just the two of us and our abilities? Who could ever stop us? You could be right back where you should be… Pulling all the strings. And I'd be right by your side." Reflected in the dim monitors, Brooke's lips, unhindered by the man's control, twist upward into a smile, as though pleasantly entertained at the though of a partnership of Doyle and Lynwood.
The words bring a long silence for several beats, but just when she might think he's considering them, he speaks once more. "You really must think I'm stupid," Doyle observes mildly, "I mean, seriously, c'mon— " A low, jolly little chuckle, "— I wasn't born yesterday. Although…"
The puppeteer's head turns, and hers turns with it in eerie synchronicity to look to the corner of the room, where a faint red LED glints in the darkness to show where one of the cameras watch from. A potato chip is drawn from the bag, and he crunches down on it, chewing, swallowing. Casually, he completes the sentence, "…I really think we might have more fun without that around, don't you? Just the two of us — on the run — you, and me, and no walls, or chains, or cameras to keep us apart."
This time, the turn of his head is mirrored, until he's looking down into her eyes, a cruel smirk curling to his lips as he proposes, "What d'ya say?"
Brooke's head turns stiffly to stare at the light watching them. Of course she knows it's there, and that they're being monitored, but deep down… Deep down, there's still a considerable amount of arrogance within the Clyde-less Bonnie. To her credit, she doesn't flinch when she's forced to stare up at her effective master. What does she say?
"Sounds like a good time to me," she grins in return. Sacrifices must always be made in the pursuit of freedom.
At those words, at that grin, Doyle leans in closer, closer, the scent of his breath on her face, his lips pursing…
…and then they part in a soft little syllable that sounds like the clanging of an iron door in her ears. "No."
The puppeteer draws back without a smile on his face, rocking up to his full height with a soft 'wuhf' as he accomodates for his weight. Those soft, fluffy slippers shuffle once more over the concrete flooring, carrying him out of the range of her sight en route to one of the room's doors. Once more, a crack of light slices across the room with the soft hiss of hydraulic power and the screech of steel on steel. A hand raising, the backs of his fingers flicking towards her dismissively - the muscles of her neck jerking her head back around to force her eyes to those steady, flickering monitors. Never moving. Never changing.
The refusal is enough to bring the fear back into Brooke's features in full force. "No!" she cries as he begins to walk away. "Eric! Don't leave me! Eric!" Those same images again are forced into her vision.
Obstinacy.
Sweet as the music Brooke Lynwood tried to console her broken mind with is the scream that echoes off the colourless, lifeless walls. Music sang only for Eric Doyle.
The light is slowly cut off once more as the doors begin to rumble closed behind her visitor, her minder, her master — and he looks back over his shoulder just before it's gone, the helpless scream from within reaching his ears. A cruel little smile curves his lips, and then he turns away, the entrance sealed once more.
Perhaps Nietzsche said it best, indeed.
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