Participants:
| Scene Title | 324 Minutes |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When the remnants of the US Government sets an interrogator on Richard everything changes. |
| Date | July 21, 2021 |
There is a storage closet attached to the HAARP facility’s vehicle garage that Richard now calls home. The narrow vents no wider than two cans of soup that he once easily glided through now taunt him in the high ceiling. Metal shelves stocked with canned goods and jarred food show a depleted stock of food and little else.
His arrival to Natazhat was not precisely what he’d expected, but the variables at work here turned out to be far greater than the napkin math that put him on this path. Now, sore and singed, he has taken up roost on a ratty old armchair of faded ochre floral print, stashed at the back of the storage closet.
A solid slam of his shoulder into the wall when he’d been pushed in here not only helped put Richard’s shoulder properly back into place from the electrical spasm that had pulled it out of joint, but also let him blow off a bit of steam in a safe way.
He couldn’t afford to be angry. He had to keep calm, at least on the outside, even if on the inside he wants to send this place to the same hell that the Antarctic facility had once upon a time. Since he doesn’t have a nuclear bomb handy, he needs to play this carefully.
He leaned back on the armchair with a sigh, closing his eyes. Carefully. Like he hadn’t been doing since he’d heard Sarisa’s voice, which left him exposed. To Doctor Tavara of all people, one of his sister’s nightmares that he’d been just as happy to have never run afoul of.
“You’re getting old,” he told himself, grimacing at the ceiling.
High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program
Satellite Link Station
Storage Closet
Mount Natazhat
Saint Elias Mountains
Alaska
July 21st
6:10 pm
It’s been five and a half hours since Richard was captured by the remnants of the United States armed forces. He knows as much because they didn’t even bother taking his watch. A cursory search of his pockets, but otherwise handled with tight-lipped precision before being locked in a closet and left to his own devices.
After two hours, Richard had drifted off for a nap. That lasted almost two hours itself; he’d learned to get sleep when he could, where he could. Then he’d gotten up, and walked the space of the closet four times, learning how many steps each wall was by heart. Learning the boundaries of his cell - an old habit, one that all prisoners learn eventually. It wasn’t very many, but knowing those numbers helped steady his mind.
Now, he was gripping the edge of one of the shelves and pulling himself up - not to escape, just mindless exercise. The fact that his shoulder is still burning only makes it easier for him to keep his thoughts blank, to focus on nothing but the repetition.
Waiting in a cell is a talent he knows all the tricks for. It’s where he started, after all.
The muffled din of brief conversation outside the door sends a prickling surge of adrenaline up Richard’s spine. When it isn’t Heller with an assault rifle coming through the door, some of it dips, but only just. Sarisa being the one sent in sets off all other manner of alarms.
“Sorry for the rude introduction,” Sarisa says as one of the guards posted outside closes the door behind her. She’s forsaken the knife in her sheathe, coming in empty handed and—notably to Richard—without gloves on. “This is a secure, remote military facility and we’re not accustomed to getting unexpected visitors. Let alone gifted ones.”
Sarisa closes half the distance and offers her hand in greeting. “Sarisa Leroux. Formerly from the Department of Evolved Affairs, if the old world still means anything.”
At the sight of that familiar, if time-worn face, at the sound of that voice, Richard’s heart soars from the depths it’d dipped into. One of the others would be a problem, but Sarisa? She was his only hope to turn this around.
His mind immediately begins spinning lies, fabrications. He could be a watcher posted to watch Drucker and Roux. He could be a survivor following the rumors of a surviving government, looking for the flag to swear to. He could be so many things - he even thought of a dozen ways to get around shaking her hand, at least yet.
But Thunder Protocol’s in effect, so he does the one thing that his past experiences are screaming him not to do - trust Sarisa LeRoux.
He lets go of the shelf and turns to face her, meeting her gaze as he steps forward to meet her, a smile tugging up at the corner of his lips. “Richard Cardinal,” he replies, “Commonwealth Institute.”
His hand collides with hers in a firm, tight shake, holding her gaze with his own.
“And it does to me.”
“Pleasure t—”
Sarisa Leroux’s ability is psychometry, the ability to read past historic events stored in the genetic memory of a living individual she touches. She could also retrieve data from dead cells left behind in dust and other detritus, but the images and information were never as clear. Most notably, as Sarisa Kershner discovered in another timeline, her ability is pronounced to crystal clarity and heightened beyond its normal limitations when in contact with blood relatives.
The moment Sarisa touches Richard’s hand, she does so in the interests of deeply scanning the man and trying to ascertain his threat level to the operation. What happens instead is that her pupils dilate wide and her grip becomes a vice clamped down on Richard’s for just a few seconds.
When Sarisa withdraws her hand it is with shock and horror like recoiling from a live wire. She stammers, staggers, and nearly collapses to her knees were it not for the metal shelving she catches with one hand on the way down. Her eyes well up with tears and confusion paints itself across her face as one dawning horror after another crashes into her mind. She had not been braced for a familial link, she had not been braced to experience interdimensional travel from Richard’s point of view, she had not been braced to see the face of not only her daughter Nathalie, but her son-in-law Taylor as well.
Sarisa claps a hand over her mouth to keep herself from sobbing, eyes reddened and puffy from tears she cannot stop. She trembles, staring at Richard the way the bible describes people reacting to angels. Awe and horror.
“Easy,” Richard says in low, calming tones, lifting a hand a bit although not reaching out for her, “Easy, Aunt Sarisa. You can’t let them see you weak right now. Just take a breath. Process. I know there’s a lot.”
There was a lot of trauma in his past. He probably should have remembered that before offering it up on a plate, but, really, Sarisa probably deserves this. In all timelines he was aware of, she’d committed atrocities as part of the game she played.
He just needed her to calm down now, and that might be hard. His heart racing in his chest, but he knew any loud noises would probably bring a response from the guards no-doubt right outside.
Sarisa does and says nothing for a few minutes. She keeps that hand clasped over her mouth in still silence, eyes closed, focused entirely inward. After a few minutes she shakily fishes her gloves out of her pockets and tugs them on, then wipes her eyes dry with the heel of her palms. It takes one slow, shaky exhalation for her to fully stand and try to put on her facade again.
“Michelle’s son,” is all the confirmation Richard needs to hear to understand how deep her scan went. “Every—single thing we—” She is at a loss for words. The cypher to all the mysteries of her career is standing in front of her. The Looking Glass, the Flood, what happened to the Arcology. All of it and so much more that she can barely grasp at, all jumbled inside of her head.
Sarisa steadies her fluttering breathing and looks behind herself to the door, then back to Richard with abject confusion in her eyes. Her next words are carefully chosen:
“HELE?” Sarisa narrows her eyes.
Explain.
“Yeah,” Richard replies, a faint and tired smile tugging up at the corner of his lips. He spreads his hands to either side, inclining his head, “Guilty as charged. Michelle’s son.”
Then she’s grasping onto that single, terrible term, and no wonder– and the smile disappears instantly, even that brief flicker of family reunion tucked away for the moment. He nods tightly, glancing to the door, and then back to her with a grim set in his eyes, answering in as short and simple terms as he can manage, “November. Solar flare. I was told that the key to stopping it was here – suspect I was lied to. What’s the actual purpose of this facility?”
They had to have invaded this place. He’s gambling that they haven’t had time to set up listening devices in all the closets yet, but he’s giving away as little as he can anyway.
Sarisa stagger-steps away from Richard, one hand at her head. Her vision swims, anxiety bubbles up to nausea and she braces herself against the door, facing away from the source of her panic-induced vertigo. It takes another few moments of steady breathing for Sarisa to turn around and face Richard again. This time she’s staring, concentrating, like she’s trying to will away a particularly vivid hallucination.
Except he’s real. She knows the texture of psychic tricks, and knows what it feels like when her ability finds true purchase. It’s why she’s the interrogator. It’s why she’s alive.
“Atmospheric research.” Sarisa says breathlessly. “Currently.” Is a pointed addendum, as to imply that’s not what it always was.
“The HAARP-2 was an atmospheric weapon designed by the Department of Special Affairs, my former office’s predecessor. It was spearheaded by the DoSA’s chief Arthur Petrelli.” Sarisa saying that name is nausea-inducing for Richard, bringing back the worst kinds of deja-vu. “It weaponizes the ionosphere on a specific electromagnetic frequency to…” She spreads her hands. “Negate the abilities of people like you and I. Globally.”
With a sigh, Sarisa takes a step toward Richard. “It was never fully-realized. HAARP-1 had a too-small effective radius, and Petrelli was ousted before HAARP-2 could be completed. But that’s why we’re here.” Sarisa glances at the door over her shoulder. “The President wants to level the playing field before attempting to reclaim the United States.”
As she reveals the purpose of the facility, the reason why his other self had obliterated the site back in the timeline he’d grown up in, Richard’s eyes widen slightly in horror. Another puzzle piece clicks into place.
“The problem we’re running up against. The big problem. Is in my time there’s almost no one with abilities. Even people who had them slowly lost them over time, and the ones that are still present are weaker than people say they used to be.” Glory looks at her hands, then around at the group. “Like, I was born positive, but I never manifested. Not until I took my first Incision back in time, then I manifested this…” She says, swiping her hand through the table as if it weren’t there. “But when I got back to my time, I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s been steadily getting worse the whole time I’ve been alive and it’s been making our trips harder and harder and making us more reliant on technology that… honestly is getting unreliable too, with how old it is.”
Glory looks at her hands. “Nobody knows why it’s happening. But they call it the Decimation.”
“The Decimation… Raith, you motherfucker,” he breathes out, one hand lifting to rub against his face, fingers pressing against his eyes briefly as he inhales, exhales. Anger later. Focus now.
“Okay. Mission priority now is getting us all off this rock before it’s just a rockl,” he says, looking back over to her, “You, Nat, Tay, me, and my team.” He watches her - carefully - to see her reaction to it suddenly being us.
Sarisa squints. She doesn’t appear to have the full context of whatever it is Richard is talking about. “Good fucking luck with that. Even if I wanted to suddenly turn around and get you out of here, there’s fifteen highly-trained special forces officers on top of the men you saw before you came in here. And her.” She doesn’t even say the doctor’s name. There’s venom. Old.
“But what do you know about the President’s plan?” Sarisa edges closer to Richard. “The… Decimation. You mentioned President Raith.”
“I’ve got a thought there, we–” Then Richard’s brain blue-screens for a moment as he stares at her, “Marcus fucking Raith became President here?”
Sarisa narrows her eyes. “I don’t—no.” It’s not a usual surname, or even really a normal-sounding one. It can’t be a coincidence, but she doesn’t hold on to her confusion for long. “Roy Raith. Former CIA, Royals.” She knows he knows that term. “King of Pentacles.”
“Roy? Jensen’s– nevermind, if we try and hash out all the timeline differentials we’ll be here all day,” Richard sighs, a hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose, his other hand lifting, “No, the one I’m dealing with is Roy’s father, Marcus. Apparently unaging motherfucker that sent us here to find this technology, I’m pretty sure, while telling us we were after something different. Problem is, I know how this goes - it ends up with a planet that’s a dying husk in space without anyone able to use the abilities they need to save it.”
He grimaces, looking back at her, “Right. Special forces out there. What if we just tell them– most of the truth? I’m Michelle’s son. Commonwealth Institute was a Department front company, I know. Technically I’m as government as you are. Would they buy it if we said I escaped the destruction of the Ark and made my way up following the rumors of a government remnant?”
“Maybe.” Sarisa pushes past the questions she wants to ask. That can come after, if there is an after. “But Mitchell might also see it as a threat. This is a very tightly controlled operation and you were caught infiltrating it. Under other circumstances they might be able to make concessions, but everyone is on edge right now and paranoid. They don’t trust variables, they remove them.”
But Sarisa doesn’t seem to fully discount the idea. “What we do have are gaps in knowledge here. How the locals that were running the place were doing it. What they were up to. How many people were here. The—girl, the one I saw in your past. Nova? You could say you were with her. They know that a boat was purchased in what remains of Anchorage. That would get you out of the current problem, which is that I’m supposed to leave here with a corpse.”
Oh.
“But if you were part of the research team, they’ll want me to do repeated scans. Get an idea of what you know. They’ll also put you with the scientists.” Sarisa explains, glancing at the door. “I don’t know if they’ll be fuck-all of any help, but it’ll buy you time that you otherwise do not have right now.”
“That works,” Richard’s chin dips in a quick, tight nod, and he glances to the door with a grimace, “I know enough about the research team here - and the science behind what’s going on - to fake it on a quick ask, too, so that’ll work. We could say I was stationed here, was making a lengthy run to try and get some supplies, missed when you all rolled in and was trying to come back.”
“That’ll give you an excuse to get to me regularly, too, so we can figure out how the fuck we’re going to do this,” he admits, “Because we only have so long before the others show up. Especially if they’ve already bought a boat– means they’re on their way.”
“If you make me regret this,” Sarisa says, standing dangerously close to Richard. She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t need to. He’s heard it all before. And she knows.
A ticking clock. A cunning ruse. A person on the inside. Odds against them.
Game on.