Participants:
| Scene Title | Where God Can't See |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | It is time to tell a truth. |
| Date | August 12, 2019 |
“Fuck.”
The expletive is punctuated by a swift kick, sending an empty metal waste basket flying through the air to strike against the wall. It clatters and clangs, coming to a stop at Gillian Childs’ feet. “Sorry,” comes next from the kicker, and Jolene Chevalier crosses her arms over her chest and paces the floor of the two bedroom suite with face flushed red with anger. “What a fucking failure of a rescue mission…”
The princess wasn’t in another castle, she just didn’t need rescuing.
Praxis Ziggurat, Executive Residential Level
Praxia, California Safe Zone
August 12th
6:19 pm
It had been hours since Gillian and Lene arrived at the Ziggurat, hours since they’d discovered Squeaks was in the care of none other than Adam Monroe and Joy. In the time between their meeting and now, Gillian and Lene had been shown to a private suite with promises of answers to come. A half eaten dinner sits on the glass-topped dining room table by the wide windows that overlook the San Francisco bay, Lene couldn’t finish her meal.
This had not gone as planned.
But when did anything? Gillian isn’t as finicky with her food, glad to finally have something to eat that’s not dry packed and cold, so she has another forkful as she listens to Lene, understanding the frustration, and even sharing it to an extent… But… “At least we found her,” she said after she finished chewing, putting the fork down and leaning back to glance out the window. “And, at least, she now knows we won’t just abandon her.”
Cause she knows that a girl who had felt abandoned by others might have felt unsure that she would come so far, even given the situation. “But this complicated. I don’t know exactly what they’re telling her, but places like this…”
Pinehearst had preached something similar, there were always those who would say they were doing the right thing. The Institute had thought they were doing the right thing. The Company. All of them. But this…
“I won’t leave her here to go through whatever they want from her alone.”
Lene’s been quiet since the revelation of Adam’s presence here was made clear. She only has the most tangential understanding of who he is as a person, but even that doesn’t paint him in a good light. Anyone that closely tied to the formation of something like the Company put her on a defensive footing.
“Did you notice,” Lene starts to say, gesturing around the apartment, “there’s no phones here. No computers. There’s not even electrical outlets.” She motions to where a floor lamp stands, then looks back. “Everything has wireless charging plates. It’s weird.” Her brows knit together, looking out the slanted windows to the California skyline beyond. “It’s like— ”
The door to the apartment clicks and opens swiftly into the apartment, followed by a trailing conversation. “…prefer if we address that later,” Adam Monroe says as he walks in, followed shortly thereafter by Joy and Squeaks. Lene straightens as she sees them enter, offering a brief but reassuring look to Squeaks.
“Evening,” Adam says, trying to be casual. But he doesn’t behave like this is someone else’s residence, rather motioning toward the small living room and its comfortable furnishings interspersed with houseplants. “If you two wouldn’t mind joining us,” he says with a start toward a chair, “I promised answers.”
Blue eyes, ever observant, fall from absorbing the visual side of the conversation she had been privy to, to look with unfiltered curiosity at the apartment’s occupants. Lene’s look is returned with a small smile, a flicker of light that Squeaks hopes would reassure her older sister. Whatever happened beyond the door, before she shadowed Adam and Joy, is left there. She raises a hand in echo of the greeting, a small wave accompanies the light smile she gives to her mom too.
See, she's still being treated very well. She's healthy and clean and not hungry. Nothing to worry about.
Her path shifts with the invitation. If there's anything odd about it, about Adam’s mannerisms, she doesn't notice. Or she chooses not to. But when he helps himself to one of the chairs, Squeaks chooses a spot on the rug nearby to sit criss-cross.
While Gillian is doing her best not to be on edge around Adam, the moment the man enters her shoulders tense. She glances toward Joy with a quiet suspicion she hadn’t possessed the first time she had seen her in that office, but she keeps her concerns to herself for now. Her daughter seems to be healthy, which is better than many of the scenarios she had played out in her head.
Standing from where she was poking at her food, she abandons the mostly finished plate and moves to sit down near where Adam claimed a seat, and close to where Squeaks sat in the floor. Close enough that she could lean forward and touch her shoulder if needed.
“It looks as if you are treating her well, better than the ‘held for your own safety’ places I’ve seen in the past, at least. If this room is any indication.” She glances at both her daughters for a moment, then back to Adam, as if waiting for him to answer the questions she can’t even think of yet. Sometimes those answers are the ones one never even thought of, too.
“We’re not the villains of this story,” Joy says quietly, though there’s a subtle look she gives Adam that shows concern. As if she was saying that for his benefit too. Adam continues on uninterrupted to the armchair, settling down in and then sitting forward with his hands folded between his knees. Joy comes to sit on the arm of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other.
Lene isn’t entirely convinced, firing Gillian a flat look before she joins them. Lene’s spot on the opposite end of the sofa from Joy puts important — to her — distance between them. Joy is still a memory of a dark and confusing time. The tumultuous emotions her presence brings up darkens Lene’s expression some.
“I suppose I’ll start with the easy things,” Adam says with a look to Joy, then back to Gillian. “Jac is, biologically, related to me. She was born via an in-vitro fertilization process as a part of experiments performed by everyone’s favorite asshole, Arthur Petrelli. First during the Company and later with Pinehearst. Jac was a part of Project Icarus, just like you.” He motions to Gillian with his chin.
“But— ” Lene’s voice hitches in her throat when she realizes she’s about to talk to Adam Monroe. “That doesn’t make any sense. Mmmnh— Gillian’s told me all about that. It ended in the 80s. Squeaks isn’t that old.” She gestures to Squeaks, confusedly.
Adam, nodding, rubs his hands over his face. “Jac is composed of DNA samples taken from me after I was put in Company custody and ova from Claudia Zimmerman. They were trying to replicate what they thought was an artificial process that created Niki, Barbara, and Tracy Zimmerman. But they were operating on a lie built to cover the truth of their birth. That… that they were my legitimate children with Claudia.”
Joy looks away, down to the floor. Gillian can see the muscles in her hand tighten, fingers flex closed. Knuckles pale. Adam fails to notice the change.
“A fertilized egg was put in cold storage by Arthur,” Adam continues, “before the Hartsdale facility was destroyed. In 2003, after Arthur began research on the Formula again, he had the egg unfrozen and placed into a surrogate womb. Jac’s birth-mother, Cindy Morrison.” Slowly leaning back in his chair, Adam exhales a tired sigh. “Jac’s synthetic, like you,” he nods to Gillian again, “but it’s… more than that.”
Joy looks back to Adam, brows furrowed. Then, interrupting him, she turns to Gillian. “I know this is a lot.”
Squeaks, elbows on knees and chin cradled in a hand, looks on and listens like a student in a lesson. There's no surprise to the answers that are given. When she was first told Adam was her father, it had been a shock. Oh was the only thing she could come up with. Since then, it's become a fact, a thing easily accepted and, sometimes, even defended. In this moment, though, she doesn't look to her mom or sister. Her attention stays on Adam. If there's new information it's filed away along with what she already knows, to be picked at and questioned later.
Her gaze flickers away, casts to Joy when she speaks up. She mirrors a look of concern, possibly confusion over the interruption. It isn't unusual for the enigmatic woman to interject, but posture and expression raises some curiosity.
Scooting ever so slightly, like finding a more comfortable way to sit, Squeaks tries to catch Joy’s gaze. Her look is one that usually comes with the light touch, even though she doesn't reach for Joy, the intent is still the same.
Of all the things that Gillian could have imagined that was not one of them. Oh, would have been an understatement. Besides a sharp inhale, though, she stays quiet as if waiting for more information, looking away from Adam to the young girl she sought to adopt not even a year ago and focuses on her for a long moment. “It explains why you ended up here, of all places,” she finally says after a long silence, resting her hands on her knees and keeping her eyes on the young girl.
“I’d known you were looking into your origins…” but she had hoped it would lead somewhere… different. Not to the other side of the country, not to the Adam.
Her father. Biologically.
Her eyes move as that sets in, looking at the man who had been the source of one of her closest friend’s curiosity to the point she went world trotting in an attempt to find him. She never understood exactly why Eve had been so obsessed, even after hearing about her ramblings. He had brought her back to life for some reason! She had been so sure of it. But why? Wanting to know why was something she could understand. She’d had the same problem, once.
“I know Niki and Barbara,” she adds after a moment, then to Squeaks she continues, “You met Barbara, too. She’s the one who helped us with the camera at the library. And you probably saw Niki at the Council Meeting.” She has family back in New York.
Mention of Niki and Barbara has Joy looking down at her lap and her folded hands. There's a subtle pinch of her brows that Lene notices, before she searches Adam’s expression and sees him likewise awkward at their naming. “Siblings,” Adam says with a nod to Squeaks. “I… suppose close siblings, depending on some genetic factors. But that's— not really why I wanted to talk to you today.”
Adam looks to Joy, who pushes past her discomfort, and then to the trio of Gillian, Lene, and Squeaks. “What is said in this room today doesn't leave here. For your sakes, for mine, for the whole of the bloody world. That saying — knowledge is power? — It's so much more literal than you realize.”
Joy slides off the arm of the sofa and walks around Squeaks to stand beside Adam, offering him reassurance. It feels like she may have talked him into this. “Jac, you're special. Special in ways I don't think anyone has ever realized. You're a synthetic expressive, but you're also a culmination of decades of research. But, in order to really…” he looks up to Joy, then back down to the others, “to explain this to you in a way that matters, I have to tell you… why.”
Taking a deep breath, Adam laces his hands together. “A very long time ago, more than three-hundred years, I was an ordinary man. No ability, nothing. I fled England in the late 1650s, traveled Europe and Asia, wound up in Japan…” Joy reaches down and squeezes Adam’s shoulder.
“The important parts,” Joy says with a hesitant smile, “not all of us live forever.” Adam can't help but laugh at that, turning his attention back to the others.
“Right. Anyway, there was someone like us,” Adam says with a look to the floor, “a prisoner of the Emperor, held captive and forced to do his bidding. As a reward for my services, the Emperor had his onmyou— juh— witch. He had his witch force this being to make me special. To be an unkillable soldier to help him conquer Japan.”
Adam’s brows rise, then fall. “It's a long story, there was a princess,” he briefly eyes Joy, then turns back. “I turned on the Emperor, freed this being he held captive, and promised myself to it to protect the indigenous people of Japan from the Emperor. But it was a Devil’s bargain.” Adam scrubs a hand at his brow. “It— this being— the Dragon— would have taken someone I loved from me in exchange for what it gave me. So I betrayed it, and imprisoned it in a place of great darkness.”
Joy looks down again, blinking, and then looks up with a determination in her eyes. “This being’s name is Uluru, it's an ancient name, older than the wind. Uluru is… the first. Of all of us. Ancient beyond measure. Violent, destructive, and has come to hate humanity and the world.”
“In the 1980s,” Adam continues, “the Company accidentally freed Uluru using a piece of technology called the Looking Glass. It…” he glances at Joy and then shakes his head. “The Company was barely able to defeat it, and I don't really know how they did. But they banished Uluru back to a space between spaces. But Uluru is powerful, clever. It's time in that place had changed it. Made it… more, somehow. The Company believed it grew in power the more people knew about it. Especially if they were linked to it, connected by a telepathic thread.”
“It's back,” Joy says with a sharp exhalation of breath. “It's here, in the world now, and regaining its strength. If we don't… find a way to stop it, millions or more will die.”
Adam nods, hunching forward and lacing his hands together. “But I believe the Company was attempting to develop a weapon to fight Uluru. One they didn't have time to finish back then.”
Adam looks at Jac. “You.”
“I remember,” Squeaks confirms with a look to Gillian. She remembers Barbara and the warnings to destroy the camera. Niki she saw at the council meetings, but also the laboratory. She makes a huh, sort of a wondering sound, but the conversation — explanation — is fast moving on.
Her head tips so she can look at Adam when he specifies her place in the matter. She tries to keep the mask in place, the facade that this is all new information. Blue eyes dart to Joy then Adam then back again, following each as they take turns speaking.
The girl’s shoulders tense, her weight shifts. She used to move, used to stammer through her understanding. The Company again, Uluru — is that the one Eve and Richard are worried about, the one from the tape? She was created, she knew that, but… to be a weapon? The urge to stand and pace ripples throughout her posture, but she remains rooted. Except for her arms which wrap around her middle tightly.
Squeaks draws in a deep breath, licks her lips, and then slowly exhales. “That's… that's why it's safer for… to stay here.” It's a question, although stated as fact. “Because… we need to find a way. Complete the… what they were doing and stop Uluru from destroying everything.”
While a lot of this isn’t really news to Gillian, that last bit has her sitting straight up and looking at Adam as he explains what it had been that they were… doing to Squeaks when she wasn’t even born yet, and the experiments after. There’s a sharp inhale through her teeth, and then she looks over at the girl as she responds to that. There’s a microscopic shake of her head that gives a prompt as to what she thinks about this situation, and then she just outright says it, voice raspy and thick, “No.”
It’s not denial that this is what they had done to her, it’s denial of… “You are not a weapon. You’re a child and my daughter.” She knows the stakes, of course. She’d heard Eve talk about them for months and months, about the one with the golden eyes, about Uluru even. All those strange words she would sometimes mutter like she knew what they meant, but Gillian had not. Oh, she knows the stakes.
She looks toward Adam anyway and says firmly, “I won’t let you experiment on her and use her. I won’t. I don’t care if you’re her biological father, she’s my daughter. She’s not an experiment. She’s not an object. She’s not a weapon. You could hurt her or kill her or worse.”
“We wouldn't let that happen,” is Joy’s quick response. One that shoves the retort Lene was about to make back down into her throat. They had already seen proof that Joy, if not able to bring back the dead herself, was willing to find the resources to do it.
“We’re beyond the point of this being a choice,” is Adam’s more hardline response. “Jac is the only person who successfully underwent the Umbra process and can resist its abilities. Even I’m defenseless in its face. We all are. This isn't a matter of if, but a matter of when. This thing is going to destroy the whole bloody world if we don't do something.”
Joy rests a hand on Adam’s shoulder, chiming in after his passionate plea. “This isn't about experimenting. Someone already did that to her. All we want to do is give her the remaining power necessary to save us all.”
Adam eyes Joy, then looks to Jac and her family. “We have a proven medical procedure to create synthetic mosaics. I've undergone the treatment, others have. People with my genetic structure are predisposed to the process. We could make Jac more powerful than someone like Peter Petrelli.” That name being invoked causes Jolene’s back to stiffen and eyes to widen. Her breath hitches in the back of her throat.
“You— you can do that?” Lene asks in a hoarse tone, looking at once guilty and small. Adam seems surprised by her reaction, but nods.
“We can,” is how Adam answers that question. “Jac isn't our last line of defense, but she's our best. I don't intend on just… throwing her at a peril, but if it comes time to rescue civilians or protect her family, protect us all, she needs to be ready or we’re all dead. Uluru doesn't care who you're the mother of.”
Adam sighs, eliciting a squeeze of a hand at his shoulder from Joy. “I know this is a lot,” she says, “but we’re running out of options.” Lene slouches back into the sofa as she listens to Adam and Joy, looking overwhelmed by everything. She's accustomed to Gillian always wanting to protect her family, keep them safe, out of harm's way. But then, as she looks at her mother, her own perspective comes into play.
“What do you want, Jac?” Lene looks over at her, worry painted across her face.
Cocking her head to one side, Squeaks directs a look at both her mom and sister. Brows furrow with uncertainty, a lack of confidence, fear of the unknown. She'd been experimented on, and her dislike of doctors and needles is legendary. Still, something musters deep down, a bolstering of hope and bravery tarnished by her apprehension.
She makes a noise, words intending to explain, to bring her family — both sides of it — to an understanding. Her head turns to include Adam and Joy in her thoughts.
But Joy beats her to it.
The teen presses her lips together, breathes out slowly to calm the jittery feeling that's risen from the bottom of her stomach. She settles, slightly hunched to make herself smaller, arms drawing her knees into that hugging of herself. While civil arguments are laid out, she stares off at the rug trying to decide the pros and cons on her own.
When Lene directs the most important question to her, The girl looks up. She studies her sister and her mom, then looks at Joy and Adam. It's easy to know which each pair might want for her, expect of her, but what she wants…
Squeaks stands. Hands clasp behind her back as she steps away from the seating area. Her feet carry her toward the window, but she stops short of going to it to look out. “Stopping Uluru is the most important thing right now.” Her voice is quiet, weighted with worry. “I came here to understand me, why me, and… and Adam hasn't ever lied to me. Neither has Joy.” Turning, she looks at the adults, afraid of her own shortcomings. “I don't want my family or friends to die because of some world-destroying monster who possesses things and scares everyone. Uluru needs to be stopped.”
At the mention of him, Gillian’s eyes darken, narrowing with anger and probably a flurry of other emotions she’d rather not feel and a moment later she closes her eyes. Because she already knows exactly what Squeaks is going to say before she answers the question. The only answer, in this case, really. When she opens her eyes again, she looks at Adam, expression heated. “And there you did it. The worse part I mentioned. You put the weight of the fucking world on her shoulders.”
While Gillian used to pepper every few words with curses back in the day, now she used it rarely. When she did, it was for emphasis. Or when she was especially angry or frustrated.
“You may not know or care what that does to a person, but I do.” And somehow, to her, that might be worse than dying? Perhaps. Because she has seen what it does to people. People who take the weight on their own, people who had others tell them that they needed to do things or else.
With a tightening of her fingers against her palm, she stands up and follows after the girl, no longer looking angry, at least. That part is reserved for Adam. And even a little for Joy. Jolene and Jac, though, she’s proud of somewhat. Even if she fears for the younger girl.
“Jac. I know I can’t stop this.” Even if she wants to. God she wants to. Even if she wants to put her foot down and say she’s not old enough to make this kind of decision. She knows that, in this circumstance, she has no way to stop it. “I’d do it for you if I could.” She would take on whatever this was, if she could. She can’t. “Since I can’t, I’m going to promise you something. No matter what happens, no matter what this does to you, I’ll be here. I’m your mother. You will not have to do this alone. Okay?”
“Gillian’s right on that. There's some old friends here you'll be reacquainting with soon. More to come, eventually.” Adam takes Gilliam's anger in stride, recognizing it and understanding it. “Right now, I don't want anything. Except you all to have some time to yourselves.” Looking down to his lap and folding his hands, Adam hunches his shoulders forward.
“I know what having the weight of the world on your shoulders feels like,” Adam says to Squeaks, echoing her mother’s concern. “I also know what failing while carrying that weight does. But if I can help it, we won't fail here. Not this time.”
Lene has sunken into herself, threading hair behind one ear as she stares out one of the windows. The promise of what they want to give to Squeaks, what she once possessed, is intoxicating. “I'll do it with her,” Lene finds herself saying in sudden resolute determination, sitting forward and squaring her jaw. Adam makes a noise in the back of his throat and raises his hands in a whoa gesture.
“It's not that simple. It wouldn't be safe for you, you're already like us. Adding more to you likely would kill you.” Adam is certain of that much. He's done the math. Or, Pete Varlane and Erica Kravid had. “Look, right now I just wanted to lay this all out. I didn't want there to be any misconceptions about my agenda, especially given… the history I've been saddled with.”
Joy steps away from the chair and walks between Adam and Gilliam's family. “For now, you're our guests. You'll be given freedom to roam the ziggurat and the island of Praxia, but we ask that you don't stray beyond it for your own safety. The ziggurat is a sanctum. Safer than anywhere else.”
Adam nods in agreement to Joy, then looks back to the others. “I know this is a lot to take in all at once. So… if there's anything you want to know, I'm here to answer. Here,” he motions to the ziggurat, “we can speak openly.”
Lifting a hand, Squeaks presses a finger to Gillian’s arm. It's intended to be a comfort, along with the understanding look she directs up to her mom. It's a lot, it's scary and, honestly, maybe more than she can handle. But she latches on to why she's agreeing. She isn't seeking power or fame, but truly wants to keep everyone she's gathered in her heart safe. Which, in itself, is kind of a lofty goal.
“It's going to be okay.” That was their promise before, and she reaffirms it now.
Her head swivels to the exchange between Lene and Adam. For a second she grins at her sister, but worry still weighs in her eyes. She trusts Adam’s judgement on the matter. “You can help me practice and search,” she offers, with a glance to Joy and Adam. She's allowed to make that offer, right?
The wondering look is just the tip of the iceberg built of her quest for knowledge. Squeaks could easily rattle off a half dozen questions on the spot, but she doesn't. She takes a minute for herself, to think over what she's agreed to and process it. “It's a lot,” she observes out loud but mainly to herself. What follows is directed at Adam. “Your old friends or my old friends?”
From the way Gillian’s eyes tighten again when Jolene says she wants to go through it with Jac, she very much wants to yell no. Even louder than she did before, even. She almost lost Lene multiple times already. Once in the Ark, once in the War. She didn’t want to go through that again. No more than she’d wanted Squeaks to be turned into some kind of a weapon to be used against Uluru. Her jaw tightens and she holds her tongue but is perhaps relieved when it sounds like Adam refused that offer.
At Squeaks’ words, she nods, though there’s doubt in her eyes. “Of course we can help you practice. I’m even a certified instructor. And I was mosaic for a while,” she adds after a moment.
But, since Adam told her they could talk openly, she turns away from Jac and looks at him, setting her shoulders again, “I have a promise for you too, Adam. If anything happens to either of these young women, anything that isn’t needed to fight this thing.” She’ll understand that some small harms might happen, even if they said they would not let it. ”If you or yours hurt them… you will wish I could kill you.”
Cause while she knows she probably can’t, if everything she heard was true, she would find a way to make him pay.
“Your track record speaks for itself,” is perhaps a glib answer, but Adam is such more often than not. “But I assure you, I'll do everything in my power to protect her. As for her training, I was hoping you'd volunteer for that. Undergoing the Gemini procedure is physically taxing and Jac will not only need physical therapy to recover, but time to learn how to hone her abilities.”
“As for friends,” Joy chimes in, “it's more… friends of your mothers. Adam is carefully selecting a group of people he trusts to help, people you may remember. Benjamin Ryans, Niki Zimmerman, and others. Bao-Wei Cong is already here, has been for years. We can't do this alone, but some people are… higher risks than others.”
“Eve.” Adam interjects sharply, which elicits a bit of a look from Joy, but he pushes ahead. “Eve Mas is a terror, and I don't know how else to explain it. Everything I've seen and everything she's said to me implies that she may have been compromised by Uluru. She may have been telepathically corrupted, or at the very least become a proxy for it.”
“Eve may not realize,” Joy says, trying to level out the explanation. “Uluru’s ability is insidious, as it makes contact with you it forms… limitless bonds with your mind. You in turn become sensory organs for it, like a telepathic web for a gigantic spider. We believe that while it was imprisoned it had a greater sense of time and space, but we suspect now that it has presumably crossed over that it's reach is more… limited. It needs those connections to continue to see. Without them, it's blind.”
Adam leans forward and makes a gesture that not even he seems to be sure what it was trying to convey. “Look this— is a lot. All at once. The short story is that you're here for… a while. At least through December. Worse, we can't broadcast your purpose for being here without risking it getting back to Uluru through one of its proxies.”
“They'll come for us,” Lene says in a firm tone of voice, speaking from experience.
“Right,” Adam is quick to reply, “which is why you need to deliver a cover story. Something believable, but so nobody comes looking for you with all of their heavily-armed friends. There's pieces of this,” he gestures broadly, “things in bloody motion that no one but me knows the full scope of. I'd like to keep it that way.”
“She was calling it mother and father.” Squeaks chews on her lower lip, trying to remember everything, all of the details from anything Eve might have said about Uluru. “She couldn't see before, like she went blind and… her powers weren't working?” A glance goes to her mom for confirmation. “But we took the video camera, and she… like she was drowning but then my mom’s power helped her.”
There's more. So much more. The books, the meeting at Raytech. The sound machine and red lightning. Too much to offer in a sitting and in a way that makes sense.
Grasping tight to her thread of determination, Squeaks moves away from the window. Some essence of apprehension still lingers. What if she fails? Is there a Plan B? She swallows against those questions, wrestles the doubts away, while she crosses the room and sits, criss-cross, on the floor in front of Adam.
“I'm stronger now,” the teen reminds him. “I can do this.”
“I know you can,” Gillian responds quietly, giving the girl the support that she probably needs, even if she’s worried about what this will do to her in the end. She has seen what happens to people who get the hopes of a whole world put upon them. And she knows things, while working out in the end, don’t always work out the way one suspects. That might be why it sounds sad, rather than hopeful.
“We’ll call Robyn, spin a story about staying in the California Safe Zone for a while before coming home.” It won’t be a lie, but it will leave out key things like Adam and even the Ziggurat. No need to give exact details on where they were staying or how. “I can’t promise no one will come after us anyway. If Eve learns you are here, I don’t think any story spun would keep her from flying across the country to come after you.”
After all, the Seer had traveled the world trying to find him. And that was before she could actually fly.
“But I won’t be the one who tells her. She’ll be safer where she is.” Cause the last time Eve went hunting the Entity, they had thought it had killed her.
Lene draws in a slow and nervous breath, her hands balled into tight fists as she considers the prospect of being here on a prolonged scale. But at the same time, deep down she believes this is the kind of thing her father would have wanted her to do. The kind of dangerous heroics she believed he was capable of. Closing her eyes and swallowing down her fear, Lene reaches out for one of her mother’s hands and squeezes firmly. Adam sees the gesture, sees Squeaks’ determination, and nods once.
“Then, it's settled.” Adam says with a clarity and resolution he hasn't had in some months. “You'll be safe here, especially in the Ziggurat. I've worked hard to make this place a fortress, for myself and everyone here. As long as you stay by my side, you'll be safe.”
“Not even God can see this place.”