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| Scene Title | Where Eves Dare |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve Mas is released from Rikers Island Prison. |
| Date | March 10, 2021 |
It’s been just over a week since her sentencing.
Eve Mas remains a ward of the United States, held behind bars in Rikers Island Penitentiary. Though the accommodations are nothing like the nightmare Rikers used to be back when she was a kid, she can’t help but feel the walls closing in around her. But just when it feels like the sentencing hearing in Kansas City was a happy dream, when it feels like everything was a lie, Eve’s patience is rewarded.
«Mas Mas?» A prison guard calls through the intercom into her cell, followed by the buzz of it unlocking.
The door opens and the guard motions into the hall.
“It’s time.”
Inmate Processing
Rikers Island Penitentiary
March 10th
8:27 am
A loud buzz emits from a white-painted iron-barred gate. Through the bars, a blonde woman in a blue and black uniform slides the gate open, morning light reflecting off of the badge pinned to her chest that reads DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. The lobby beyond the gate is wallpapered with a pine forest panorama, fresh black and white tiles reflect the gray light of a cloudy day. Nearby, the reinforced glass of a window serves as a partition from the foyer to the security station beyond.
«Please step forward,» the bald man behind the glass says into a microphone that repeats out a speaker near the glass wall.
A simple pair of white, canvas sneakers carries Eve Mas to the partition where the bald man sets a plastic-bagged bundle into a metal tray. «One pair of shoes, one pair of jeans, one flannel shirt, five rings, one necklace, a pack of cigarettes — empty, wallet, identification cards, eight dollars and two cents in assorted American currency.»
The entire contents of Eve Mas’ life when she was picked up by SESA months ago. The bald man behind the glass pushes a lever sliding the parcel through into a bin that opens below the window. Then, he places one last item in the drawer and pushes it through.
«One box turtle.»
Eve is able to take her bundled belongings in hand, to which the man behind the glass says.
«Please have a good morning,» and then motions to a guard.
It all feels unreal, like a dream within a dream. Eve knows the feeling well. There is a part of her that half expects to wake up in that cell after blinking. Perhaps that’s why she stares ahead, at what feels like blinding morning light coming through the tall glass windows and door at the front of the holding facility.
A corrections officer escorts Eve through the remainder of the lobby, past a metal detector and security checkpoint, and out to the front lobby that is nothing but diffuse gray light, rain falling on parked cars, and a silhouette waiting for her by the door. A dark figure, bathed in the contrast of light and dark.
Eve steps forward, her worldly possessions and a turtle cradled to her chest, but her head is held high as she approaches that figure.
“You are hereby transferred to the custody of the Department of the Exterior,” the corrections officer at Eve’s side says. It’s only then that she gets a good look at the man waiting for her: Agent Gates.
She almost asks about her old joints but they'd be kind of lame by now anyway.
Rikers was indeed a place from Eve's nightmares from the days of her childhood. You were always told horror stories about the place, you never wanted to end up there. She wonders if that's how the people on the west coast felt about Alcatraz. Regardless the facility now was nothing like the horrific place of her dreams, imposing still. The energy or lack thereof was something she was all too ready to flee from.
But the turtle.
"Oh you precious Bean, did they feed you?" Eve waits a second and draws close, placing the turtles shell at her ear, "Oh me? The food was…" Eve spins around towards the door but looks over her shoulder adding in a whisper, "Kind of shitty but that's all behind us now." It does feel surreal but Eve shuffles forward while squinting at the light.
To think she bombed federal buildings and had escaped any sort of retribution but karma had a way of balancing the scales. Not that a fairly brief stint in prison absolved her of the deaths caused in her wake but she would make up for those that she swore. "Hope to never see ya Kerry!" Eve does wonder where Castle is but surely nearby or at whatever safehouse she's staying in. Maybe a hotel? The woman was curious. What a fascinating ordeal.
For a moment she stands there and considers Gates, tilting her head while the breeze blows loose strands of dark hair into her eyes, "Hello," Marching forward and tilting her arms into Bean is heading for Gates arms. "Don't drop her please! She's very precious. An old soul." Eve offers Gates a impish grin.
"Thanks for all the help with the being behind bars thing heh. Where we going?"
Gates grunts softly, now holding a turtle in his hands with somewhat of a helpless expression.
“The airport,” Gates explains, looking down at Bean. “We have a bag packed for you, and Agent Castle will be waiting for us there.” Gates looks Eve up and down one more time, then takes a step back and turns, walking for the doors.
“I understand you’ll want to talk to a number of people, but unfortunately part of your release conditions require an orientation period.” Gates explains, looking side-long at Eve. “This isn’t so much a get out of jail free card as it is…” he wobbles his head from side to side, “sort of an Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire kind of situation.”
Gates comes up to the door and pushes it open with his shoulder, holding it for Eve. “I assume you’re familiar with the type.”
"Airport! Mmm." Eve loved to fly, she wanted to fly in her own way also. There's a brief look down to the ground but the wild woman cheers up almost immediately and her gaze lifts, winking at Bean before staring into Gates' eyes. "I am quite fond of Castle." A mischievous look gleams in those dark eyes of hers. Her current situation is a very, very familiar one for Eve.
"I'm not sure I've been without a blaze surrounding me in over a decade." Is that a hint of bitterness?
Must be something in her throat.
Other things to worry about…
"Orientation! Hope there's some munchies involved." Eve laughs lightly and bumps Gates' shoulder as she walks out the door but not before a bow of her head to the courteous gentleman for opening the door for her, and for carrying Bean. "If the skillets are too hot and I'm dancing over open flames. I'm gonna need my gift."
Being cut off from herself, new self had been rough. In this moment Eve takes a look at herself through the glass in the door. Unsure on if she'll see herself or the face of whoever's body she's stolen this time.
“The effects of zodytrin should wear off soon,” Gates says with a look back to Eve as he crosses the sidewalk and opens the back driver’s side door of the awaiting car. “Provided you don’t give us any reason to, I don’t think you’ll be having any more injections either.”
Gates motions into the spacious back seat of the car, watching Eve carefully as he does.
"That's awfully nice of you!" Eve piles in and buckles up. Shoving her stuff down at her feet before she turns her body and looks at Gates. Squinting and then eyeing Bean in his hands before looking back up into his eyes. "You're not like the others… those men in suits." Her voice deepens in a faux male tone, brow furrowing while she gives her most serious face. "Little restrained but not as gruff as some of the others I know."
She //really wants to press on about it but since they seem to have a long drive ahead of them. She had other pressing questions:
"You know my momma well?"
The tone is sly, a child seeking information that she knows she might not receive. Still Eve has never most that thick skull and stubbornness.
“We’ve never actually met,” Gates says with a tilt of his head to the side. He slips into the car behind Eve, then swings the door softly shut. In that time, he’s given pause to think about his answer. Then, with a crease of his brows, he reconsiders. “Actually, no… that’s not true. We met, once, when I was younger.” His eyes go distant, unfocused. “But the woman you spoke to in our Exchange wasn’t her. The Valerie Mas who works for the Department of the Exterior is from our remote office… in another timeline.”
Gates squares his shoulders and reclines ever so slightly against the leather seat as the car starts to take off. “Your mother, in this timeline, is deceased as you presumed. Trust me when I say that, if she were alive, she’d have let you know. The situation in our remote office is a complicated one. But you’ll get a chance to ask her yourself, eventually.”
Fidgeting a little, Gates looks over at Eve. He says nothing.
"Hm. Younger. Did you two do cocaine together?" Eve grins lightly and places her hands in her lap though she wants to look out the window, the urge to wave farewell to her temporary prison was high but instead the somber subject of this timeline's Valerie Mas is also brought up and needed her energy.
"I figured that. The world overrun with the virus couldn't be the one, no no, maybe the one with the barren world but I doubt it, the flooded world seems unlikely, there are so many of them.." worlds that is, different incarnations of themselves and the people in their lives. "Maybe the one where everything seems so shiny and clean, did you know I'm a pop star there?" It's the artist in her that beams back at Gates.
"Platinum baby, they say the hit single is something like When The Stars Fall."
Wait.
"Did you say I would get the chance…"
Eve squints and leans a little closer into Gates space, looking at his eyebrows to be precise. Utterly studying them, "Are you saying I'm gonna see my other momma?" A pause.
"Does she know about Castle?"
“I’m not saying that,” Gates says with a side-long look to Eve, “but I’m also not saying you won’t be able to talk to her. E.T. Phone home is significantly easier than E.T. Cross Dimensions.” He smiles, just a little bit, at that. “As for your personal life, you’re welcome to discuss that with Castle. It isn’t any of my business.”
Gates leans against the armrest and looks out the window. “What is my business is getting you up to speed on things. The… bigger picture, I’m leaving to Castle. The smaller picture is, the reason my agency worked so hard to get you a chance at freedom is because we need your help.” Gates looks out of the corner of his eyes to Eve. “We’re building a team of individuals to traverse dimensions, go back the direction Castle came from.”
“We want you to accompany our team.” Gates says, plainly.
A smile.
For Eve that is a very simple sign of, she's working her way inside someone's defenses. With her being so… her it had become necessary to try to gleam when she was gaining favor with someone. Or at the very least getting them to be a little more relaxed. As for her personal life, "That feels like something a man in your position wouldn't be saying given the connection between your agent and your… new ward." Eve grins and taps her fingers on the windowsill.
"Doesn't mean I want you in my business, but the way you act makes me want to… share." A pause. "Is this a tactic you employ in your secret agent servi-" Eve claps her mouth shut and continues listening to the man.
A mix of expressions cross her face, from annoyance, to excitement and then finally resignation. "That's where it is isn't it." Now Eve is looking out of the window, watching the countryside speed by. "The weapon we can't find here in our own home." A soft chuckle shakes the woman's shoulders.
"You do know that I'll know that I'm coming, right?"
That makes butterflies flutter in Eve's stomach. She's spoken to the mirror versions of herself but never been face to face.
Gates’ brow furrows, ever so slightly. Whatever thought he has he keeps to himself, and when his expression smooths out he exhales a patient sigh. “That, Eve…”
“…we’re counting on.”
Not Long Later
LaGuardia Airport
Jackson Heights
There is a large military helicopter waiting on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, a slate gray Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion. Two unmarked, black SUVs are parked near the helicopter, with but one person waiting beside them. Agent Castle rests with his back up against one of the SUVs, hands folded in front of himself. Eve sees him the moment they round the terminal and the helicopter comes into view.
Gates’ vehicle rolls to a stop near to the helicopter and he is the first out onto the tarmac, turning back to offer a hand to help Eve out of the vehicle.
“I imagine you have a great number of questions right now, and I assure you there are answers, but the biggest of them will have to wait a little.” Gates says as he waits for her, “Agent Castle is going to fill you in on… the why of things.”
"I'll have those answers soon enough!" Eve agrees, though she wasn't going to be just waiting for any of the people to enlighten her, not when she had her gift at her disposal.
"Thank you so much!" As he helps her out and she holds Bean up to her chest and hurries over towards Castle, "Yoohoo! Dearie! What a fine suit you're wearing. Come and meet Bean," Eve's smile is large and she nudges into the tall man's shoulder, holding up the turtle as a revered lion's cub. Then the woman is looking over at Gates and it might be striking to see them standing side by side when Eve isn't almost withering away to ash.
Unruly midnight black hair, an almost ever apparent twinkle in the eye.
"You have taken great care of my Castle, I have to thank you!" Grinning from Castle and Gates, "I will have to make my Grandma Amelia's spaghetti and meatballs. Veal meatballs, fabulous I tell you. It'll knock you right through the veil before you can whisper Hiro Nakamura!"
“A turtle? I hope you got it an outdoor enclosure. Don’t want to stunt the poor thing’s growth,” Castle says as they look over the small creature with a glimmer in their eye. It’s not an uncommon pet to them, it would seem, after all, Eve brought home all manner of strange creatures back in the day. Their Eve. And this one as well. “At least it’s not a seagull. That was the worst attempt at a pet we ever had. You kept promising me a monkey, but we never had one, though I finally got to see one up close not too long ago. That was really nice— “ Agent Castle was rambling a bit, perhaps.
They were of the same blood, in a manner of speaking.
“No veal, that’s cruel. It’s baby cows. I never found that out until I tried to make it myself…” Something that it sounds like part of them blames her for. Even if another her. In another world. A long way away. And a long time ago. Even if cattle, in general, were very difficult, if not impossible, to come across for quite some time, it had still been a moment that had made the lad a little— distraught.
“It tastes just fine with regular meat from non-cruel sources.” And that was that. “So what all has the mid-boss-man told you exactly?”
“Mid-boss,” Gates sputters as he walks past the two with his hands up in the air. “Walk and talk, we have a several-hour long flight to Virginia,” Gates says as he slides open the door to the helicopter, pulling a headset from a hook by the entrance and sliding it on. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the way.”
Gates climbs up into the helicopter, then taps the pilot on the shoulder to indicate they’re ready to get going, and settles down into his seat, buckling up. As he does, the helicopter’s engine begins to start up, along with the slow, whining hum of the rotors just beginning to turn.
"Oh! Well… I suppose you're right…" Eve frowns and looks at Castle closely. They were changed by their being raised by a version of her, traumatized even. It was once thing to see the horrors shes put through others reflected in their eyes when they look at her but see it from plainly from Castle's eyes.
She straightens her shoulders, "Chicken it is," Eve would be better, for Castle, for herself. "Who is the Final Boss then, hm?"
She walks in step with the others and makes a kissy face at Bean. "Not much! Just that we're traveling to where you're from. Gonna see ya momma. Are you prepared?" There's concern in Eve's voice.
“Not really, no,” Castle admits with a small laugh, because, well, “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.” And even longer since she’s seen them in this body? But knowing the Mad Eve, well— she may have known that would happen someday or hoped it would. Or this will be the biggest surprise in her entire prophetic life. That might be interesting to see at least.
But as they board the chopper, they settle into the seat beside her, and glance over, “You told us this exact same thing I’m about to tell you when we were just kids, you know. The world’s ending. Everyone you know is probably going to die.” It had been very difficult for children to hear, even if it had been the truth. The hard, simple truth. “But this part’s different.”
This is the part she hadn’t been able to tell them. The part that they at least get to offer.
“Are you ready to do something about it?”
Janus Offshore Drilling Platform
Off the Coast of Virginia Beach
March 10th
11:28 am
From the air, from almost any angle, the Janus Offshore Drilling Platform looks like any other oil rig in the pre-war world. Even as the helicopter touches down after a two-hour flight, it still looks like what it appears on the surface. But Eve knows that appearances are often only skin deep, and even more often deceptive.
Eve knows where this is. She had a feeling the entire flight. But seeing it—the Virginia coast—reminds her of those last few moments before her entire self was taken away. There’s a chill down her spine, the hairs on her arms rise. It feels like walking over her own grave. When Gates opens the helicopter’s sliding door and steps out onto the helipad, there’s certainty in his eyes. He offers a hand to help Eve out, not bothering to explain where they are. He knows that she knows.
With her nose pressed against the window, digging up the glass, Eve has been silent. Flashbacks to that day overwhelm her mind and at times the dark haired woman can be seen closing her eyes at times. Losing Silas, losing herself, the murder of Adam… so many events all at once.
"There's a feeling I have, when I wake from death. Cold. Not just on the outside but as if…" Eve falls short as they descend and then are exiting, taking Gates' hand and placing her feet on the surface of the helipad, flexing her feet and wrinkling her nose. "What happened here, that day?" Eve yells over the sound of the blades windmilling behind them atop of the helicopter, "That huge convergence of energy? Like a mini Big Bang…" Eyes widen a touch, a brighter brown then before, slowly crimson has begun to swirl in the irises over time as the effects of negation wear off.
"I'm surprised this land wasn't swallowed up by the Void itself." Eve's laughter is sharp, barking and full of nerves. Hands curling around Bean's shell and storing him in her jacket pocket. "Do you feel that Bean? This is where it happened. This is where it starts."
A pale hand goes to pat and rub the outside of her pocket gently and then she's looking at the two agents of the DOE. "We came here guided by my visions, what purpose do we have here? This place of power." Castle receives a look, did they know this was the destination?
“More like this is where it started— again,” Castle says quietly, looking at the platform, because yes, they know exactly what this place was and what it meant to Eve. What had happened here. It had been in the file, after all. “They tried to use me to contain it, but I can’t keep the Castle up long enough for it to matter. I hadn’t been able to do much to stop it from growing. I could basically just turn it back an hour at a time and that didn’t do much. If I’d been there when it happened, maybe.”
Those were, sadly, the limits of the Castle. It couldn’t take back what had already happened. Just like they could not save those who had died in the first blasts of Xpress. They could only save what had happened after.
“It’s weird being in the place you died, though. Even if this wasn’t the place you really died.”
That’s something that he knows about, honestly. Just like he always considered the place he died the place he woke up, that first sight from that beach, many miles away.
“Yeah, this place kind of has the run on weird,” Gates says with a kick of his brows up. “C’mon. We should show you what Castle’s talking about. I think seeing it in person might be more impactful than hearing the story second-hand.”
Gates leads Castle and Eve away from the helipad, but he doesn’t end the conversation there. Instead, the journey across the busy walkways suspended over the churning ocean fills in another gap in Eve’s understanding.
“We’re walking on a razor’s edge, Eve, one that I think you understand better than most of us.” Gates says as he walks. “This whole facility was built to stave off the largest disaster in human history. The literal end of the world—of all worlds—brought about by the Entity that possessed you.”
Gates glances back at Eve and Castle. “A day when all humanity is wiped out by a solar flare that will scrub all life from the Earth, except—presumably—those chosen by the Entity.” He pulls the bad news off like a bandaid, knowing better than to try and ease Eve Mas into anything.
Gates then turns back and keeps walking. “Against all odds, my agency’s leadership believes you are critical to being able to stop it, thanks to your newfound precognitive ability. We’re hoping that with your visions and…” he exhales a huff of a breath, “the combined power of two Eves, we might be able to win a game of chess with a very expert adversary.”
"I've died all over by now dearie but this, this is a special spot. The first death place? Not even on the map anymore just a crater," a slow shrug and impish grin for Castle and then Gates, "This feels like a cool funky memorial." Eve snorts as she follows after the two, fingers caressing the turtle's shell.
Hearing of the mass extinction event headed their way only somewhat sobers Eve. This wasn't her first trip around the doomsday bend and it was also something she had been trying to warn people about without knowing all the specifics for a long while now. "So not a flood this time but with fire. Very biblical." Musing as they begin to enter the structure but she frowns deeply, "Very sad. Lots of deep fried people, not supposed to be on the menu unless you're Dr. Lecter." Wrinkling her nose, crimson gaze flicking towards her child.
Eve squints then at the mention of leadership, "I'd like to say hello to your boss if they are around! A little yooohooo!" But the prospect of meeting another version of herself… of putting two of her brains together for one purpose. She visibly vibrates, "She's a kinda rude old bat but I love her and can't wait to meet her in the flesh. Did you know we all used to say hello? During the times we could see our other lives, other selves beyond the Veil."
One last look at the sky before she enters, it feels like a step past the point of no return.
"She's probably been planning for our arrival for years!" There's a nervous glance over to Castle riddled with guilt. "I think she needed her children to find me, the only ones who could and would bring me to her." Eve speaks as if she's quite sure of it but it's just a hunch… a feeling in her belly. She leaves the I'm sorry out because she's already apologized enough as it is for crimes she hadn't committed against Castle.
“You would be the type to skip right to the end-boss. Don’t you know you have to go through like ten mini-bosses first before you get that far, usually?” Castle teases, but it’s light-hearted, as one might gather from the fact that they are still using ‘game speech’. They had called Gates a Mid-Boss earlier, after all, and perhaps they considered him one. Even if they knew he wasn’t the end-boss. He was the boss that they dealt with the most and the one they seemed to respect.
With that, they tap Eve’s forehead fondly, “If you got to say hello to the others, then you know that at least one of you is more together than the others— taking her meds and everything. We’re going to have to work on that in the next few months to get you in tip-top shape to save the world.” It doesn’t seem like Castle needed the sorries anymore now than they had before, because— no, it wasn’t her that did wrong.
“I don’t know if she knows as much as you think, cause there were always blank areas in her visions, and in her ability to read them, but I think she knew more than she ever let us know. Maybe she’ll reveal more to you than she ever did to anyone else.”
Gates is quiet as they walk, letting Castle manage Eve’s particulars, especially the questions. “I’m going to ask that everyone pay close attention for the next few minutes…” Gates finally says over his shoulder as they reach a door to the interior of the rig.
“Because what comes next is… a lot.”
I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
to listen for a while
And there he was
this young boy
a stranger to…
… my eyes.
“EVE!”
The young woman jumps as she hears her father's voice behind her. Her eyes are milky-white as they snap open. She leans forward with a gasp, choking and trying to catch her breath. The milkiness fades as she looks over her shoulder at her father with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry dad! I uh… I was listening to Lauryn… and I fell asleep.” She blushes as her father's gaze goes to the disposed of joint.
“Eve, did you go into my stash again?”
“No I just took a peek—”
“I told you if you want to get baked, do it with your friends with your own pot!”
Eric Mas shakes his head and turns his back to head downstairs. “Come on, you owe me some labor for stealing my shit kiddo.”
With a loud sigh Eve lays her head back on the bed before climbing to her feet, switching off the song midplay. She hefts the boombox and goes to follow her father.
Stopping a moment she turns to look at the view of the city out her bedroom windows behind her. She quirks an eyebrow as she rubs her temple. She's tired, but she just took a cat nap. That doesn't make much sense to her.
With a light shrug she steps down the stairs slowly her dress flaring in the wind as she descends.
“Not a word of this to your mother,” Eric says over his shoulder on the way down the stairs. “The last thing I need is her giving me grief because you got into my stash.”
"You get in trouble more than I do, heh." Eve snickers at her father as she tosses the headphones onto the bed and follows after him, slipping her feet into a pair of greasy Chuck's as she goes, unruly dark hair whipping into her face until she stops at the last stair. The laces flail around as the steps are taken, ends clacking on the floor. That nap was so weird, there was a feeling of foreboding that she couldn't shake. Whenever the girl closes her eyes she sees an eclipse as if it was burned into her vision. What did she dream?
It was fading in and out of her memory, hands. Outstretched hands…
Why was she so tired? This weed must be really good shit (per usual of her father's taste). The teen makes a mental note to nab some more when her father isn't paying attention for now though there were duties to uphold. "What ya working on? Challenger? Mustang?" Eve stops and her eyes open wide, "Is it that purple Buggy!?" That glitter bomb machine had been sitting in Mas Mechanics for months, she was absolutely sure this would be a Christmas present or something if she maybe stopped going into Eric's stash.
“Nnnno to all the above,” Eric says as he walks through the door at the bottom of the stairs and emerges into the kitchen. “1990 Ford Fiesta,” he says with all of the deadpan delivery that kind of car inspires. Eric doesn’t linger in the kitchen, instead he crosses straight through to the door out to the garage.
But when he opens the door, Eric hears his wife’s voice echoing through the garage. He hesitates, still holding the doorknob, and doesn’t step outside.
“Take your fucking car, and go.” Valerie says, her voice a shrill whisper. “What the fuck were you even thinking pulling a fucking stunt like this?”
“I just—wanted to see her,” an unfamiliar man says. He too is whispering, and it makes it hard to make everything he’s saying out. Eric pushes the door shut, exhaling a sharp sigh through his nose.
“On second thought,” he says with a look over his shoulder to Eve, “you want lunch first? Bet that shit gave you the munchies something fierce.”
Her pale hand trails along the counter top, there was a small stack of dishes she also should have done by now but before she can open her mouth to assure her father that she'll get to them very very soon the sound of her mother's very distinct tone and favorite word make her stop. "I'm always hungry dad duh! So are you," poking him in the gut, Eve strains her hearing and squints her eyes but doesn't get much more as her father closes the door.
"Mom's home?" She loved her mother very much but she hated how stressed out Valerie could get but there wasn't much Eve could do about that usually except, well, maybe behave more. Which reeking of weed may not always be considered behaving but it definitely mellowed the Mas' daughter out.
There's obviously someone with her out there, the tone sounded deeper like a man. Why was dad closing the door? "Sounds like one of your customers is pissing her off…" which wasn't that hard to do admittedly.
Doe Brown eyes look into Eric's, "You sure we shouldn't go check on her?" Sometimes her mom could get too angry.
Eric looks at the door, then to Eve, and shakes his head. “Nah,” he says with an obvious tension and discomfort. “She can take care of herself,” is a dismissive thing to say, but it’s clear something is twisting him up. “C’mon,” he says with a hand on Eve’s shoulder as he starts to walk past her back into the kitchen, “let’s make lunch and we’ll go out when you’re mom’s done chewin’ that jerk out, huh?”
"Sounds grrrrrrrrrrreat!" Eve says, impersonating Tony the Tiger while looking completely and utterly innocently, which is to say not that innocent at all. But it's lucky for her, and perhaps unlucky for her father, that his back is turned so he isn't able to see the mischievous grin that plays across her face.
It would be more fun hearing what Mom was saying to whatever lameo was out there.
Backing up slowly, Eve twists the knob and eases the door open. Stepping out onto the landing, tip toeing to disguise her footfalls. One slightly nervous look over her shoulder at her father and Eve almost snickers but the teen catches herself and tries to peer down into the garage itself.
Eve catches a glimpse of her mother, pacing around beside a car, raking her hands through her hair. “—just stumble back into my life after sixteen years and expect to just… fucking act like everything is fine.”
Valerie yanks her hands from her hair, staring across the garage at someone just outside of Eve’s line of sight without opening the door more. Valerie takes a step forward and throws her hands in the air frustratedly. “So just fuck offf and—”
Janus Offshore Drilling Platform
Medical Bay
7:14 pm
“…she’s coming to.”
Eve’s vision of the world swims. She sees the world through a blurry tunnel of kaleidoscope memories, slowly crystalizing into a single moment in time.
Agent Gates stands on the side of a hospital bed—Eve’s bed—and Castle just on the other side. The hospital room looks spartan and utilitarian, with privacy afforded by little more than a white curtain that separates Eve from the rest of the medical bay.
“That was reckless.” Eve hears a voice from the foot of her bed, and as her vision swims to meet the source, she sees someone she hasn’t seen in over a decade. “She could have died.”
Gates offers Mohinder a mild look, then turns his attention back to Eve. “You back with us yet, Ms. Mas?”
"….momma?" Her voice rasps out and then she's understanding where she is. When, she is.
"Oh." Eve slowly looks from left to right before right back to Mohinder, dazed and confused, "Hello Doctor Momo Mohinder! Is it the real you?" She seems out of it but nobody in this room is new to the sight of the woman in this state or something similar.
Eyelids flutter and those crimson eyes refocus on the face of her child, "Baz… darling… what did I do? I saw… I saw…" It's as if the pieces of what she had just seen suddenly snap into place and she gasps. "Momma." Eve was sixteen then, in that distant memory. Her mother was screaming at a man.. her mother… was just like Eve.
A liar.
Could that have been George?
"What happened?" Rubbing her temple.
“It wouldn’t have been the first time,” Agent Castle says quietly in response to Mohinder’s admonishment, but despite the offhand remark, there’s relief on his face as he sits forward and takes her hand— perhaps because she said his name. Or the shortened version of it, at least. “I think you got a little too close to the anomaly— you collapsed and started to seize— Thankfully you stayed solid and we were able to get you to medbay and the good doctor helped stabilize you.”
With a worried glance, green eyes land on Agent Gates, “Is it safe for her to be here after all? Should we relocate her somewhere else instead?”
Gates looks from Castle to Mohinder, deferring to his expertise. Mohinder steps around the side of Eve’s bed, resting a hand on the siderail and the other at her arm, feeling her pulse with warm hands.
“She should be fine here,” Mohinder says as he looks down at his wristwatch, “provided she doesn’t pass the quarantine threshold of the anomaly. I should have thought of this in advance, having read her file, but the electromagnetic energy from the anomaly must have disrupted your…” he looks from his watch to Eve, “unique physiology.”
Satisfied with what he finds in the pulse, Mohinder lets Eve’s arm go. “Without knowing more about what you’ve become and anything more about the anomaly, it’s hard to say what precisely happened to you. But I’m just glad you’re alright, even if it feels like everything that’s happened to me over the last decade started with you.”
Gates clears his throat and looks from Mohinder to Eve. “What did you see?” He asks.
"HM!" Eve stares at the people staring at her for a moment, going over her experience. Did she remember going poof? "Ah… yes. My cloud." Wrapping her long, pale arms around her middle and beginning to rock back and forth. "I saw my past, teeny bopper days. Sneaking into dad's stash— momma." Crimson eyes swirl and she almost falls over. "Momma was talking, no, screaming at someone. Someone that came to see me."
"Sixteen years? No visits. Shameful." Now the older woman is glaring and racking her hands through her mess of midnight dark hair. Eve can't seem to shake the feeling that this had to do with one man and one man alone.
"Some family squabble." Her demeanor shifts and Eve now lays back down, looking up at the ceiling. "The Rift did that? Your Anomaly?" There's an obvious gleam of excitement beginning to dawn in her eyes. What else could it show her?
"That," Eve holds up her finger, "is entirely fair, but to be fair we were both, on opposite sides." The mad oracle winces, "Some of us more voluntary than others. But I assure you Doctor Science Fairy MomoHinder that I am a truly reformed case." Smile too wide, too many teeth but she's trying.
“So you can see the past now too? Greaaaat. Though I suppose it could have been a repressed memory you saw in a flash when you almost died again.” That last bit came out with a slight Australian cadence to it, showing it wasn’t the usual Castle speaking at the moment. “Try not to do that again, please. We don’t know how many times you can reach the brink before we won’t be able to pull you back from it. We’re not quite ready to bury you yet.”
And they don’t mean the Department, either. They’re speaking as children who aren’t quite ready to bury a not-quite version of their mother just yet.
And yes, they know what their mother was thinking the moment she thought it. They could see it in her eyes. That moment when she was ready to jump head first into it again.
“The Anomaly isn’t well understood,” Gates says with a glance down to the floor, then back to Eve and Castle. “What Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz saw in their exposure was also past events, so we have to imagine that it has some spatio-temporal qualities. But precisely how it works is…” He sighs and shrugs, then looks to Mohinder who shakes his head.
“Geneticist.” Mohinder says with a motion to himself. “Don’t look at me.”
Gates cracks a smile and sighs, looking to Eve. “The others will be arriving in a few weeks. You should get some rest and familiarize yourself with the facility, I trust Castle to show you around. We’ll have a conference when everyone is here to go over the specifics. Until then…” he drums one hand on the metal rail at the side of her bed.
“Try not to go anywhere.”