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| Scene Title | 324 Hours |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Armed with a plan, Richard departs Chicago on his own to get a lay of the land. |
| Date | July 8—July 21, 2021 |
“You be safe, Richard Cardinal.”
Richard starts to reach out for the hand, then he’s surprised by the hug– and he breathes out a chuckle, wrapping an arm around her in return. “You too, Destiny Price,” he murmurs, “You too. You’re more important than you think. Don’t forget that.”
Then he’s pulling away and striding for the edge of the time stop, “You should be able to catch Robyn and Silas if you hurry, since this didn’t take any time.”
Destiny doesn’t cling, doesn’t try to hold him there. She withdraws and slides her hands into the pockets of her coat and nods. “Good luck.”
Right back out of her pockets come her hands, lifting into the air and moving about as if conducting some arcane spellcraft. Eyes closed, she traces circles in opposing rotations through the air in front of her, her thumb and middle fingers coming together as they close, drawing out to either side from there.
A conductor calling fine to a performance. Time resumes, Destiny wobbles for a moment, one foot staggered ahead, a hand slapping onto the side of the Wildcat to catch herself. She feels dizzy, head fuzzy. “,,I’ll get used to it eventually…” she promises herself. Looking over her shoulder, she watches Richard’s retreating form.
Only he’s not there anymore.
Just a shadow.
The temporal manipulator smirks faintly. “So, that’s what that feels like.”
Three Days Later
July 11th
Old Wives
Saskatchewan, CA
7:15 pm
He’d traveled further west than he intended. The grease-smudged 2002 road Atlas in his hands is proof enough of that. Seated beside a campfire tended to by residents of the tiny village of Old Wives, Richard warms himself with a bowl of fish soup and a humbled sense of orientation.
There’s less than fifty people living in the shell of what was already a small community. None of them are original residents of the town but itinerant survivors from elsewhere in the US and Canada. They eke out a meager but simple life on the shores of a lake that shares the name of their settlement. They’re used to the occasional traveler, used to taking in strays like themselves. As they sit around the fire, telling stories that were once television shows to children who don’t know any better, Richard sees the resilience of humanity. Just like Elisabeth had described in her own journeys across dimensions.
Here he has a moment to catch his breath, to reorient, and plan.
The world has ended, but life moves on. Richard listens to the stories being told from the very edge of the firelight, its flickering illumination reflected bright from his glasses. He stirs the spoon through his bowl a few times and then brings it up to take a mouthful of it, knowing he needs to keep his strength up. It would be inspiring, seeing them carry on despite everything, and it was… until he remembers, and that sense of wonder faded for one of helplessness.
Perhaps humanity here had survived water, but they wouldn’t survive fire.
The bowl’s set aside after a bit of eating and listening, and he picked up that old Atlas, opening its stained pages to the map of Canada and turning it a bit. If he went that way until he saw that landmark, then there should be a highway that he could follow until…
Five Days Later
July 16th
Athabasca Sand Dunes
Laronge, Saskatchewan, CA
2:22 pm
A temperate desert spreads from one end of the horizon to the next, abutting the shores of a placid lake. The weathered Atlas in Richard’s hands says this is Athabasca Park somewhere in northern Saskatchewan, far off course again. The sight of a desert is bewildering, dusted with snow, and without a single human being in a hundred miles as far as Richard is aware.
The cold wind whipping across the dunes plays at the dog-eared corners of the Atlas, and Richard assesses the angle of the sun to the position of mountains and shore to try and reorient himself. Worry sets in now, that perhaps he’d acted too hastily, perhaps he’d moved too quickly. What if he lost the convoy? What if he arrived after them? What if he never found his way?
What if?
Maybe his absence alone would be enough for the Thunder Protocol to be successful; maybe with other leaders, without his guidance and interference, they’d break out of the design they’d been locked into and somehow save everyone. So at least he tries to tell himself in these moments when despair stalks him like a shadow of his own shadow.
But he never really believes it.
“West, west… west…” Richard mutters the direction like a mantra as he squints up at the skies and the mountains, the sun a pinprick of pain even through the mirrored finish of his glasses that reminded him of the doom that hung overhead, “…there.”
He has to get there before them. He would make it there before them, he tells himself.
He has no other choice.
Four Days Later
July 20th
Somewhere outside of Jade City
British Columbia, CA
11:23 pm
Hollis Fitzroy might be dead. Or maybe she never lived here.
The door to the cabin was open when Richard arrived, the space thoroughly looted at least a decade ago. There’s a chill in the air that sinks bone deep, matching the blizzard outside. The walls keep out the worst of the breeze and there’s enough wood near the fireplace to last a night. It tells him how long ago the looters must have come, when they were thinking about material wealth and not survival.
It feels like an eternity since he was in this cabin. Even back then, Aria was right:
Richard walks in circles.
He stands in the doorway, his fingers brushing down the frame of the door as he gazes into the ill-maintained cabin, memories coming rushing back from the time spent in this cabin– or its reflection.
So many nights of mourning their dead, of trying not to break down. Of advice, some good, some bad. It was here that Aria pushed him down the path that she’d been told to, that she’d been ordered to.
You’re done, she’d told him. But that was the thing about circles. There isn’t an end. You’re never done.
But this time, he wasn’t blindly walking in a circle as he had been for so long - he was walking backwards along it on purpose, in the desperate hope of finding a branch he’d missed before. A new beginning. A way to break the pattern he’d been trapped in.
He drew in a breath, pushing past the tide of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, and moved for the hearth to start up a fire. He could spare a night here, an evening of actual sleep in his corporeal form. It’d been days since he’d done that.
The wood left by the fireplace is a mix of foraged branches and broken down furniture. It’s dry enough to burn. Richard starts the fire and soon the warm glow of the fireplace bleeds color into his senses. Everything outside the cabin is a matte black painting, just like it was the last time he was here. It feels like a tiny stage set, and that if he traveled just a few feet beyond the set dressing he’d be behind the curtain somewhere else.
There is no one here to redirect Richard. No convenient run-ins with a familiar face. Nothing at all to indicate he is moving along some preordained path. Time bleeds away, and soon even the artifice of the cabin feels different as the sky illuminates. The pink-jade curtains of light drifting behind the trees, visible from the ratty sofa Richard is stretched out on, cast an otherworldly glow on the snow-dappled landscape. The color creeps into the edges of the cabin, and… ripples.
The sky ripples like the surface of a once-still pond disturbed by a tossed stone. Its visible in the auroral lights, the way the curtains of excited gasses and ionic particles drift as if touched by something. Stranger, the experience causes a stuttering in Richard’s chest—a physiological reaction—and momentarily affects his vision of the darkest corners of the room.
He’s lost his ability before. He knows what that feels like. That moment felt identical.
“What…?” Richard jerks up and out of that half-doze that had crept in around the edges of his mind, absent thoughts of the beauty of the aurora swept away in an instant as adrenaline washes through his veins and his heart’s triphammer beat roars in his ears. Fight or flight instincts bring him to his feet and off the couch in an instant, though he stumbles a bit on his way to the window.
Hands slam into either side of the frame as he stares out at the rippling colours in the sky, the pinks and greens suddenly seeming aposematic, a warning rather than a lure. His thoughts rushed through everything it could be - ripples preceding the HELE flare striking the magnetosphere, a Looking Glass activation, something as yet unrecorded…
It’s not a harbinger of solar apocalypse, but the shape that has haunted Richard since his birth that’s up in the heavens. A spiral.
A spiral-shaped aurora, rippling across the western horizon.
For a brief moment, Richard’s ability is gone. He feels it in his bones, feels the heaviness in his body, feels the sluggishness of every step that doesn’t have the option to be ephemeral. But as quickly as this panic-inducing effect began, it ends. The aurora slowly fades, as auroras a not wont to do. The sky is dark again.
The night is darker still, for wholly new reasons.
Richard never looks away, his gaze tracing the tightening whorls of light in the sky as one would stare into the remains of a car wreck and look for bodies despite their better judgment. As he feels that brief, flickering absence of his ability, his fingers tighten against the frame of the window and his pulse quickens in panic, but he doesn’t look away.
There’s only one recorded aurora pattern that matches what he just saw, just experienced, so he has to assume it’s that.
An overlay.
He tears himself away from the window, moving quickly to grab his belongings, to throw on his jacket and prepare to get moving. No time for the wicked to rest, he had to see if he could find out what had arrived – or what had left. If it affected him, it couldn’t have been that far, at least as the shadow flies.
As he slings on the jacket, there’s another brief, deja vu moment of synchronicity. Just before the cabin, there had been an overlay - one that had dropped Moab atop the remnants of Natazhat.
He was still walking that reverse spiral of time, it seems.
A Day and a Half Later
July 21st
High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program
Satellite Link Station
Mount Natazhat
Saint Elias Mountains
Alaska
01:08 pm
Ten years ago, Richard stood on the slope of Mount Natazhat twice over. A version of himself that tumbled down the slippery slope of ends justifying the means has led him there. Now, he has to wonder if history is somehow still repeating itself.
Embraced by shadows, the mountain feels alive. There is something in the air, the closer Richard gets to the summit, that feels like an electric current moving through his transubstantiated form. Even at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion he’d never felt anything quite like this. Nor had he seen anything like this.
Natazhat’s peak is awash in a kaleidoscope of light, color that transcends his monochromatic view of the world in his shadow form. It undulates and ripples like the surface of an ocean, hanging in the sky over the mountain. It pulses like a heartbeat, sending palpable waves of electric chill through his incorporeal form.
There is no road or trail to the peak of Natazhat, that much is the same in this timeline as the last. And just like last time, there’s a facility, too. It is not the sprawling concrete fortress of the Institute, but something altogether different. It is a modest-sized elevated building with a central geodesic dome, surrounded by miles of antenna connected like a spider web across the mountain’s bowl-shaped valley next to the mountain peak.
There are two helipads, one occupied by a small civilian-issue Airbus helicopter, the other a familiar CH-47 Chinook that has seen battle and been patched over multiple times. It still bears a faded United States flag on the tail.
The exterior of the facility is quiet, unlike the sky overhead.
The urge to substantiate into human corporeality is strong, to escape the feel of the rippling aurora overhead, but he knows he can’t risk that. Not now. Not with what’s sitting there on the helipad.
Wright was telling the truth, Richard observed to himself as he caught sight of that faded flag on the tail of the Chinook, rolling over in his mind the comments that she’d made about some sort of remnant government still hanging on after everything.
Given the circles that time seems to be taking him in, he wonders who’s lurking within. He really hopes it’s not himself this time.
The shadows deepened by the display of light overhead and the lights shining outside the facility are his paths that he takes up towards the domed building, to find the answers to that question.
Doors refuse to provide enough space for a shadow to slip through, and it makes sense with how many arctic facilities Richard has been in. This is the third? Fourth? Too many. But they all have something in common, ventilation systems.
Not even a mouse could slip through the ventilation ducts on the roof of the Natazhat HAARP facility, but Richard’s sublimated form moves through like a vapor, pushing against the heat exhaust from the HVAC systems. A labyrinth of small pipes weave a network through the ceiling and walls of the facility, eventually emptying out into the first observable space, a recreation room. There’s a flatscreen television mounted on one wall, bookshelves full of DVDs and VHS cassettes, CDs in another, book in yet one more. The armchairs and sofas in here are weathered and old, but well-loved. It’s quiet, though. There’s power in the facility, lights and heat running. It isn’t abandoned. But there’s no immediate signs of life.
Continuing to follow the heating system, Richard finds himself in an empty office. There’s two glass desks facing an enormous window looking out to the helipads. Post-It notes flake the walls and monitors here, and a whiteboard is scrawled with messy handwriting and a reminder writ large: 1/15 N’S B-DAY
Still quiet.
The lights are on, the heat is running, but there aren’t any people in evidence. Shouldn’t there at least be security active, even just one person out keeping an eye on the helipad? Richard could just swoop in and steal the Chinook and nobody would notice.
He doesn’t have anywhere to fly it to, but he could.
The shadow slips out of the vent grate in the office, spilling down the wall to the ground – stirring there in a pool before moving to slip under the door. The vents were safer, but he’s nervous about the aurora’s effects on his ability. Turning into a human in a vent isn’t as safe as it seems in action movies. Those aren’t made for people.
There have to be people in here somewhere. Were they running a test? Is that why the aurora was active? It’d make sense if everyone was in some sort of control or observation room - maybe the dome?
As Richard moves out into the hall from under the door, the muffled voices are louder now. Echoing up from a lower floor in the direction of a mezzanine. “—rotation at sixteen hundred hours. We’re to have full eyes on the situation at all times.”
The voice echoes impossibility in the back of Richard’s mind, because he knows the voice.
It’s a voice that freezes Richard in his tracks, a shadow on the floor unmoving, as he listens. As he digests, processes, and the processing isn’t easy. Briefly, madly, he thinks that it must be the Sarisa Kershner of the Bright Future. The one he’d heard not too long ago in a memory shared by Elliot. The one with the OEI.
But that’s not possible. So it must be the local Sarisa Kershner. This realization just leaves him frozen for a longer moment, because this is the timeline his parents were from, the timeline he was born in…
That’s his first cousin, once removed.
After that shock fades, puzzle pieces fall into place, his mind rushing to understand the how and why of her presence. The Chinook. The lack of personnel. The ‘remnant government’ mentioned by the local Wright.
Are the Royals here?
It’s a possibility that sends a chill even deeper than that caused by the ripplings of the aurora overhead. A chill, but also a wild, strange hope, because at least they’re known factors. And he has an embarrassment of cards to play against Sarisa’s hand at the moment.
The shadow moves; sweeping towards the sound of that voice, as silent and subtle as the shifting of a light.
There she is, older than Richard ever knew her. Her hair is its natural dark color, dressed in well-worn tactical clothing, with a knife ever sheathed at her belt. The right breast of her uniform reads Leroux rather than Kershner, however.
“I want Gunny and Henrik rotating on the helo to keep the fuel lines from freezing.” Sarisa continues, addressing a half dozen soldiers in gray-black uniforms that do not designate a specific branch. Then Richard hears a whirring sound, hydraulics, heavy footfalls. Someone eclipsed by the overhang of the mezzanine to the ground floor entrance steps into view, and all the worst-case scenarios in the world couldn’t have prepared him for this.
“The lab rats are getting uppity.” Comes from a grizzled man in a suit of matte white powered armor that looks like a generational evolution of the Horizon suits. His tangled hair is dark brown with threads of gray, but age does not disguise one of the most notorious war criminals in history.
Leon Heller, a man who in Richard’s timeline butchered thousands of Evolved and was executed in the aftermath of the Albany Trials strides to stand beside Sarisa. She gives him an askance look and shakes her head.
“We’re still in a holding pattern until we get Hephaestus up and running full-time.” Sarisa says with an edge of frustration in her voice. “I expect your grunts to keep this place in tight operation before the President gets here.”
Heller snorts, motioning to dismiss the other soldiers that were mustered. They return to their duties and he postures on Sarisa, advancing a step towards her. “Don’t undermine me in front of my unit again.”
If this is the man in charge, Richard shudders to imagine who the “President” at the moment might be. That, he feels, is a revelation that he doesn’t want to have if it can at all be prevented. This isn’t just the Royals raiding an outpost. This is something worse.
The shadows remain silent, withdrawing slowly and carefully to a better hiding place; to watch, to listen. It’s a role he’s got a lot of practice in, and he needs to understand what’s happening here before he knows what mountain he needs to move.
Until, suddenly, he is moved.
Corporeality hits Richard like a shock of electricity. No. It is electricity. As he is forced into his corporeal form a crackling bolt of electricity strikes him from behind, sending him down onto his side in an uncontrolled convulsion. That sensation of ability denial isn’t like it was with the aurora. It’s a different, but also familiar sensation. With his vision blurred, the dark shape rapidly moving at him from the hall at his back should be Rene—this is his ability.
But it isn’t Rene.
“Move and I will shock you again,” is the clipped, precise voice of a woman with a severe, dark ponytail. One dressed in a lab coat with dark clothes worn beneath. Her hand crackles with electricity, eyes dark and focused on Richard’s prone form.
“Fffff–” A sharp hiss of both pain and profanity is pulled between Richard’s teeth as he convulses on the floor for a heartbeat, two, before the electricity grounds itself and stops making muscle groups twitch and pull against each other. Old wounds and aches aggravated even more by the shock - he’ll be in dull pain for awhile, that’s for sure. He may need to push his shoulder back into its socket. Age hasn’t rendered him better at getting electrocuted, unfortunately.
He lays still for a moment, before drawing in a slow breath and asking in tight but measured tones, “…can I at least get up on my knees and put my hands behind my head? It’d be more comfortable than.. nhn, than the floor, lady.”
The woman with electricity dancing around her hand takes a step toward Richard and he sees something in her eyes he hasn’t seen since Sylar. A ferocious, thirsting hunger that gives her eyes a shark-black quality.
“I think we can give our new guest that courtesy, Doctor Tavara.” Comes a deep voice from behind her, and Richard’s sum of all fears unfolds like an ever-escalating nightmare. Andrew Mitchell comes into focus, dressed not in the sleek attire of President but the military fatigues of an officer. He crosses his arms over his chest, looking Richard up and down with no recognition in his eyes. Just a practiced and indiscernible calm.
“You’ve come a long way for a bed and breakfast,” Mitchell says with a flash of a smile.
“But I think we have a room for you.”
