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| Scene Title | Blackout |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | In the midst of a blackout in 1977, many roads converge. |
| Date | July 13, 1977 |
Carry on, my wayward son
A bolt of lightning lances through the night’s sky, striking down in the middle of Manhattan. A blue glow like something from another world builds behind the blocky silhouette of skyscrapers, erupts up into the sky as transformers explode across the island. Block by block city power is drowned out amid the worst heatwave in decades.
There’ll be peace when you are done
From across the river the sight is one to behold. Stepping out of his garage, a young man watches the flash of heat lightning flickering in the sky as Manhattan goes dark. The music on the radio behind him blares into the night along with the distant barking of dogs and the howl of sudden wind.
Lay your weary head to rest
“Dad?” The younger man calls into the garage and his father slides out from under the ‘77 Charger they’re working on together. His father crawls to his feet, brushes his knees off, and steps out onto the driveway outside the garage. He surveys the lights going out across Manhattan and laughs to himself, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder.
Don’t you cry no more.
“Huh, the blackout of 77.” Richard Cardinal says as if it’s old news. “Neat.”
Meanwhile
Hell’s Kitchen
New York
July 13th
9:40 pm
1977
Windblown trash whips across the intersection of 10th Ave and West 48th Street where crowds of pedestrians march down the middle of a carless street. Some people are singing, others, cheering, a few just hooting and shouting at the top of their lungs. Sweaty, often shirtless, likely drunk masses parade through what should be standstill traffic. But there’s nothing. No street lights, no lights in the buildings, nothing.
The transition from a Brooklyn apartment under attack on Thanksgiving Day ends with an abrupt emergence into a hot summer night in an instant. Tom Porter falls backwards onto his hands and heels on a basketball court at the corner of this pedestrian-choked intersection, turning his strangled sound of confusion into a scream.
Moonlight spills down on Walter and Matthew, the latter of whom collapses into the former’s arms, blood pulsing out of both of his nostrils and weeping from his tear ducts. Walter lets out a cry for help, cradling Matthew helplessly to him. Nowak, emerging into this same chaos, looks around frantically for Howard Frady, but can’t find him anywhere.
“Howard? Howard!?” Nowak shouts over the din of people in the streets, distant police sirens, and jubilant chaos. There is no response.
For Delilah, Elaine, and Odette, this is yet another moment to be thrust into. A pale, waning crescent lights up the skies overhead, shrouded by a patchy quilt of clouds that—with the city lights dead—shows stars that New York City has rarely known.
Elaine's heart drums in her ears, almost drowning out the sound of people around them. All she can hear, all she can focus on is that they're somewhere else, probably somewhen else, and that they're safe. Her breath hitches for a moment as she realizes that she's not certain of that last part. She reaches out for Odette quickly, desperate to pull the small redhead to the security of her arms, the certainty that she hadn't lost her daughter again. It isn't until she's got an actual hand on the girl that she looks around, searching for the rest of her family.
"Is everyone here?!" She swallows the fear in her voice, letting her gaze sweep quickly to focus on the familiar forms of her fellow travelers. "Dee?"
Memories are as fresh as can be in Delilah's head, but making sense of them is another story. So much happened in no time at all, and now they have all the time in the world.
Or so that's what they tell her.
One muffled, raucous event melds into the next as Delilah's head spins back into place, pressure forming behind her eyes as it does. Dizzying, at best, disorienting at worst. She could swear the kick of a gun is still throbbing in her palms as Nowak's shouts are the ones to call her back in, the panic punctuated by the shrillness of Walter's cry for help, Elaine's voice with her name. There is no answer to Nowak and she cannot hang her head for Howard long, hair falling and obscuring a stifled pain.
Pushing onto her elbows with a winded grunt, Delilah scrapes herself off of the courtside and beelines to Walter and Matthew. There are already smears of red on her clothes when she gets to them, echoes of what was moments before; one hand cradles the back of Walter's head while the other cups Matthew's cheek, a gentle attempt to elicit a response.
There’s a small noise from Odette as her mom pulls her into her arms, but she doesn’t really look up from the bleeding from one eye. She keeps her eyes closed and leans into her mom. She isn’t exactly crying, but for a change, the almost unshakeable girl is shaking, clinging to her mother for support. She probably won’t be offering much assistance anytime soon.
Tom rolls onto his hands and knees and vomits onto the basketball court. In a gasping breath he has enough wherewithal to ask. “Are we dead?”
“No.” Nowak says in a shaky exhalation. He looks over to Matthew and Walter, then Delilah, Elaine and Odette. His eyes adjust to the dark, and Frady is nowhere to be seen. Hanging his head, Nowak slams one hand against the court floor. “Fuck!” He screams, causing the kids to jolt.
Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Tom crawls onto his knees and then moves over to Nowak, putting a hand on his shoulder. He swats Tom’s hand away and pulls himself to his feet, cursing again. Tom stands up after him, looking around anxiously. “Hey, man. C’mon.”
Nowak wheels around and shoves Tom, who stumbles back and loses his balance, falling backwards onto the court. “He’s fucking dead!” Nowak screams, pointing away from the group, hands trembling. It’s only when he sees the confusion in Tom’s eyes that he turns to little Odette, crumpled against her mother’s side. The fire and fury die down immediately, and Nowak covers his face with his hands, slowly dragging them down.
“Mom, where are we?” Walter murmurs to Delilah, clinging to Matthew as he does. “Is this the war?”
The city is dark enough, but the shouting isn’t right. The city isn’t right.
Elaine gently strokes Odette's head, keeping one hand there as if almost to make sure the girl still exists. Her eyes settle on Nowak, her heart aching at the reaction, and she waits a moment before she says anything. "He's a hero," she says, tone soft even if it's loud enough to be audible. "That could have been any one of us. They could have been all of us. He saved our lives." That's not a sacrifice she's going to soon forget. She shuts her eyes, letting herself have a moment to let the fear, anxiety, and adrenaline settle into a place where she can control them before she looks back at the others.
"We should take a minute, make sure we're all okay enough, and then figure out what time it is," Elaine says, glancing over towards Dee. "Given our luck, it won't exactly be safe."
There is a moment where Delilah nearly gives Nowak a harsh word for his own, her desire for quiet almost winning over letting him cry out. But she understands, squeezing her eyes briefly shut to stir the last looks from Frady from her racing thoughts. Elaine is right, even if it hurts where it does most.
Breathing in, Delilah looks from her son and Matthew to the others, assessing them and the space around them with a long moment of respectful silence.
“…I don’t think so, hon.” Dee murmurs back to her son, the hand at his head smoothing a thumb across the back of his hair. “It doesn’t…smell right.” As in it doesn’t pass her sniff test, but also- - there is nothing new in the air. Only the now familiar, unlucky sort of smell in a big city after dark, during a time period where saving the ozone layer wasn’t anyone’s priority. While she doesn’t get back up just yet, she cranes her head to find any sort of street signs. “I just hope I’m right.”
“Can you get us out of here?” Tom asks as he stares into the darkness beyond the court, only turning to Walter a beat later. The young redhead stares up at Tom, trembling, and shakes his head. His right eye is bloodshot enough to barely be able to see the whites of it. The moment Tom sees that he shrinks back, looking away, and then runs his hands through his hair.
“When are we?” Nowak asks Walter, and he shakes his head. It doesn’t work like that. Nowak’s expression softens and he looks at Delilah, hopeful that she has an idea. She knew Woodstock, after all.
In the midst of this, Matthew squeezes Walter’s hand. No words, just reinforcement. They’ll get through this together. They have to.
“What do we do?” Matthew asks the adults, trying to be braver than his rabbit heart wants, hoping one of them has a plan.
Everyone has questions and Elaine has no answers to them. There's a feeling of familiarity that keeps her calm enough, the feelings of another Elaine who once traveled between worlds. She inhales deeply, then exhales slowly before she opens her eyes to look at her daughter. Her mind makes an ordered list: make sure everyone is physically okay and tend to them if they aren't, then carefully look in the world around them to find out the context of their new situation.
"We're going to be okay," she assures them, and she actually sounds almost certain of it. "Can everyone stand alright? No injuries?"
Elaine flashes a quick smile to Delilah. Some part of her is used to these strange situations and she lets it become her confidence. There's an Elaine who's lived through more than her. The look to Dee softens. "I'm almost certain this is New York. You seem to have a hunch what's going on here, don't you?" It's less of her posing a question to the woman and more of her wanting the other redheaded mother to speak the thoughts in her head.
Delilah's hands go to wrap around the boys' still joined together, as if to make sure that they haven't lost one another as she stands again, bringing the boys to their feet provided they have kept their sea legs.
A similar look is given between Tom and Nowak, not quite a warning- - she doesn't have the heart for a real one, and she knows that they probably already regret pressing her son for any answers. It's alright now, though. The air is quiet and there is no percussion of gunfire.
"Pretty damn familiar- -" An answer to Elaine preludes the rest. "All I know for sure is that this isn't where we should stay- -." Delilah breathes out a weary sigh, trying to clear her head despite the noise surrounding the intersection they've been deposited along. Fortunately anyone out at this time hasn't paid them mind just yet. The darkness gives them something good, at least. Glancing back to the other adults, Dee offers an explanation. "And there's a blackout happening, I think? Nothing's on."
“I didn’t do it.” Walter mumbles. Though he doesn’t seem entirely certain that’s the truth.
“Let’s—” Tom shakes his head, looking around the night streets under pale moonlight. “Let’s at least get out of this court. Might be safer to not be alone right now. I hear music up that way,” he says with a nod up one of the unlit streets, the distant din of singing and acoustic guitar lilting through the air. “Then maybe we can—we can get our bearings.”
Nowak doesn’t say anything, he just moves to Elaine’s side and takes her hand, then reaches down with his free hand to rest on Odette’s head. “I’m fine,” he murmurs to them. “Are you both okay?” He lifts Odette’s chin up to look at him. Her eye is still bleeding, though slowly. He wipes some of the blood from her cheek with his thumb, then looks with silent worry to Elaine.
Walter and Matthew check themselves, giving a verbal, “All clear” of injuries. Though Matthew does pick some broken glass from Walter’s hair. Neither boy is full of the energy they normally would be. Howard Frady’s death has reverberated through them like a gunshot.
In Elaine's mind, actually being where they were was a combination of known and unknown abilities from a good chunk of their little traveling group. It only reinforced in her head that they were a team at this point, and that they'd somehow make their way through. While she seems confident, the only real tell that she's feeling the grief of the death of a friend is the way she grips Nowak's hand tightly. They couldn't lose anyone else.
Her eyes go to her daughter, and while she's not entirely sure Odette is alright, she'll be no better by staying where they are. "Safety in numbers, right?" She flashes a smile to Tom. While she doesn't really feel like enjoying music the way she might have if they hadn't just lost Fraidy, the presence of people with the acoustic guitar seemed to be a good indicator of safety. She nods to the boys, then to Dee and Tom, and grips the hands of both her husband and daughter as she begins to head in the direction of where the music fills the dark streets.
Swallowing deeply and silently, Delilah takes a long look at her boys before following Tom’s gaze.
“Whatever they’re playing up there will help give us an idea. If anyone sees a piece of trash that could have a date on it, grab it…” She takes Walter’s hand as head of the train, breathing out with the slight shakiness of coming down from an adrenaline high. Dee starts off with a hesitant step. If she has to play it straight, she will- - somehow she always manages- -
But even that veneer has been wearing so very thin.
Tom’s stomach is twisted into knots and he swallows down bile as he steps out of the basketball court and onto the sidewalk. His focus alights to the sky and the apartment buildings all around them. There’s trash littering the sidewalk, crushed in the crook between curb and street, littering the alleyways. He waits for the others to join up before leading the way down the sidewalk toward the sound of distant music.
“This looks like the past.” Tom admits as they walk by a few parked cars. He stops at one and kneels down behind it, brushing his hand over the license plate. His thumb catches one of the registration stickers.
“Seventy-seven.” Tom murmurs. Then, jolting a little, he stands up and calls out to the others. “It’s 1977. It’s on the plates.” He shoots a look at Nowak who is now looking around the city.
“We did not go far ahead.” Nowak observes, giving Elaine’s hand a squeeze. “Maybe we can—”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Someone stammer-shouts nearby. There’s a woman rushing across the street, barefoot in jeans and a striped shirt. “Hey, please hey! Help!” There’s blood on her clothes. “Hey please I need help!”
Were circumstances different, Elaine would be more than willing to jump in and see what's wrong. Even though they'd taken enough time to calm themselves after the jump, not long ago they were being physically shot at. Their friend died. As she spots the woman, her grip on Nowak's hand tightens and she looks quickly towards Dee. Should they interfere? Should they do something when they're barely settled and oriented themselves?
It's simultaneously both hard to help and not help, and the lump in Elaine's throat won't go away.
The plates are a good catch, and as Tom confirms at least one piece of information Delilah gives him a thankful look. A palpable kind of relief that they haven't gone far doesn't last for long; the shouting, of course, is what breaks it. Already on edge, the unfamiliar person smeared with blood pushes Delilah to put herself between the others and the stranger without much of a second thought.
It's not a good time.
"Whoa, whoa- - easy, what's going on?" Nor would it be Delilah if she didn't give pause when someone calls out for help. She has to take a middle ground, in this case very literally, her family at her back, Walter just behind her.
“He’s hurt! I need—I can’t move him!” As the woman struggles to explain the situation, Nowak gently grips Elaine’s shoulder and keeps his attention on the street around them. Where normally he would be the first person to be empathetic, he instead reacts with caution. Tom, however, steps up.
“Ma’am, who’s hurt?” He asks, gently lifting a hand toward her. “Look we’re—” don’t say lost. “Uh—”
“My boyfriend!” She points across the street. “He got stabbed. Some guys tried to break into our place and he fought ‘em off but they stabbed him! I can’t get him to the car. Please nobody’s helping!”
Tom turns a worried look back at Delilah and Elaine.
“I just—I need to get him to the hospital!” There’s tears in her eyes, fresh blood on her hands, staining her clothes. Desperation.
Worry stays on Elaine's features as she returns Tom's look, but then shoots a gaze to Delilah again before she nods. "We can help you get him to the car." It's hard not to help when a situation like that is right in front of them, especially when they just basically watched a friend die. If they could help someone else live, that would mean something, wouldn't it?
"Where did he get stabbed? He needs to be putting pressure on the wound."
“We’re not from around here and we’ve got jack shit so if this is a ploy to rob us you’ll only get a black eye for your trouble.” Delilah is prompt with picking up with where Tom inadvertently leaves off, reaching out to take the woman by the shoulder while she says it.
Dee can’t just say Fuck Off, but it’s as close as she can get. If she had snubbed this her family would think her an evil clone for sure.
“Show us, make it quick love.”
Odette blinks. The blood on her face is smeared as she lifts it, her left eye no longer the color that they had known her whole life but a transparent gold that almost seems to catch the light and flash for a moment as she moves determined, as if she’s suddenly not weak or tired or exhausted at all.
She hadn’t even been holding up her own weight until just then, but it looks like she’s managing, and with the stern determination of a kid who doesn’t have weird mismatched eyes.
“I can help.”
Tom looks down at Odette like she just popped out of nowhere and is very proud that he doesn’t scream. Instead, he fires a worried look at Nowak who is already moving toward the distressed woman.
Nowak exchanges furtive glances with Elaine who reads it clearly as if this goes sideways get behind me. He puts a hand on the woman’s shoulder and gently gives it a squeeze. “We’ll help. C’mon kids,” he motions to Walter, Matthew, and Odette. Playing the part of a concerned parent. “We’re gonna help this lady, ‘cause that’s what people do in a crisis. They help.” The adults can see the concern behind Nowak’s eyes, the practiced calm.
“Right.” Tom blurts out. “Right okay. Yeah it’s—what she said, where’s he hurt?” Tom begins following Nowak and the stranger across the street.
In the periphery. Walter and Matthew lock hands and stay anchored to one-another as they follow the adults and the much more lucid Odette across the street. “Can you get us out of here?” Matthew whispers to Walter, who shakes his head but seems more uncertain than anything.
Across the street there is indeed a man in his mid thirties, stabbed in the stomach. Blood weeps through his white tanktop where he clutches red, wet hands at the wound. He’s slouched against the steps of a brownstone, no shoes on. Nearby, the front and rear passenger doors of a Plymouth are left wide open. There’s blood on the door handles and outsides of the windows.
“Mike!” The distressed woman shouts as she hurries over. “C’mon, help’s here. You gotta get up! C’mon!” She presses her hands at the wound, but has clearly never treated a wound before. She’s just repeating hand placement she’s seen in movies. Mike’s lost too much blood to press himself.
Tom is turning around, looking up and down the lightless streets. He catches the street signs and pivots, looking in the dark, squinting, trying to make out shapes. “Hey—” He says softly, then calls out louder. “Hey! We’re in Manhattan! That’s West 48th! There’s a hospital just a few blocks uptown!”
The sound of her daughter offering to help draws Elaine's gaze downward towards the small redhead. Her smile is small, filled with concern as she doesn't know exactly what Odette actually means at this point. She gives Nowak the slightest nod of acknowledgement from his look, trusting him as he leads the way. Since he has eyes on the situation, it gives her the opportunity to look back down at Odette, and her tone both softens and lowers.
"How do you think you can help?" It's clear that Elaine wants to make sure whatever special 'help' that Odette thinks she can render isn't something that's going to immediately bring down someone on their heads. The tension still hasn't left her shoulders about what happened with Howard.
Is it a relief that there is actually someone in trouble? Not precisely, but Delilah senses it all the same when they come up on the scene. There is actually a person at the end of it and not a scheme- - they've had enough of those already.
Dee looks up at Tom as he figures out their approximate location, nodding once and moving to help the strangers. "Here, like this." She shows no unease as she moves in to better stifle the bleeding. "Do you have a shirt or a towel in the car?" A glance to the car lingers on it, silently measuring the distance they'll need to cover.
“N-no,” the shaken woman stammers, “I—I’ve got something in the house but we live on 6. He—” She kneels down next to “Mike.” He doesn’t have six floors of time.
With a glance at her mother, Odette just reaches down to her ribbon and pulls it loose. The length of cloth has seen better days but it looks solid and like it will work for a tourniquet, if the stabbing happened to be in a place where a tourniquet could be used. “We can stabilize him. Do you not trust the police?” For a kid, she sounds pretty grown up suddenly.
That and she’s been around a lot of people who would definitely have never called the police or an ambulance even if they did have access to a phone.
She also saw a lot of what people had to do after people got hurt.
That’s surely all it is. The shiny gold eye has nothing to do with it.
There’s a clarity and certainty in tiny little Odette’s eyes that speaks of certainty and confidence imbalanced by youth and physical ability. Elaine sees something in Odette’s expression she hasn’t before, and that metallic gold hue her left eye has taken on is alarming. In spite of Odette’s confidence, her youthful appearance has made her easily dismissable. It’s so sweet she wants to help.
“C’mon, Odette, stay out of the way,” is how Nowak handles it, gently placing his hands on the girl’s shoulders and issuing her out of the adults’ way. The panicked woman who still hasn’t introduced herself takes “Mike’s” right arm and loops it over her shoulder, getting Delilah to help hoist him up the rest of the way as they stagger-walk him to the back seat of the car together.
“Hey, keys?” Tom shouts back to the others.
“They’re in the car!” The woman cries back.
Tom hustles over to the driver’s seat, throwing the door open. He turns the ignition over with a satisfying rumble. “Matt, Walter! Front seat!” He barks back to them, and the two teens quickly pile into the front away from the traumatic stabbing victim. Nowak hefts up Odetta like an errant housecat and puts her in the front of the car, carefully making sure to tie her ribbon around her wrist.
“Keep the boys safe for me, okay?” Nowak says with a gentle smile, seeing Odette as little more than someone in need of protection from the cruelty of the world. She’d seen enough already in the last few minutes. He had no idea if she was in shock, if the boys were, if he was.
“We’re gonna have to cram in.” Nowak says, leaning on the passenger side door now that Mike and his girlfriend are safely in the car. “Dee, keep him steady. Elaine, think you can squeeze in on the floor?” Thankfully the 77 Plymouth Gran Fury has a spacious back.
Cheeks puff up as Odette gets manhandled, a universal face that shows she’s less adult all of a sudden and much more her age. “I wasn’t in the way.” She complains, little fists on her hips as she looks at the older boys as if they would defend her. But then she blows air out of her mouth in a sigh and just makes herself small.
She won’t throw a tantrum right now but it looks like it was a close thing.
Elaine shoots Odette an apologetic look, but seems more grateful that her daughter is tucked safely away. There’s a gut feeling that makes her worry about that strange gold hue, but she can’t do anything about it. Her eyes go to Nowak at the instruction and she nods. “I’ll make it work,” she replies before scrambling into the back regardless of the awkward positioning.
Odette's 'help' is seen as little more than parroting what she has already witnessed in her short life; Delilah simply knows no better, and her attention needs to refocus on the two strangers rather than what appears to be something manifesting itself in the little one. Something uncanny seemed to be there before they even jumped. Unfortunately things haven't stopped moving.
Maybe soon.
Delilah slides into the car with Mike over one arm, looking ahead to the driver's seat and then the kids parallel. It will be tight but they have to do it; at least it will be a Story if the poor guy comes out of it.
Momentum is unforgiving. Both spatial and temporal. Physical and perceptual. As Tom takes the wheel and peels out from the curb, Walter and Matty lurch in the front seat, still grappling with what happened to Frady, their home, the past. Nowak can see the distress in their twisted expressions, and loops an arm around the boys.
Tom is quick to weave in and out of pedestrians on the street, around parked cars gawking at the blackened New York skyline. “Best traffic I’ve ever seen in Manhattan,” he jokes to himself because of sheer nerves, pushing down the bile in the back of his throat.
In the back seat, Mike writhes and clutches at Delilah’s hand on his stomach. It’s not bleeding awful, but it is still life-threatening, especially in these conditions. “He fuckin’ stabbed me. Motherfucker took my fuckin’ wallet. Motherfucker!”
“It’s okay baby, we’re on the way to the hospital, we got this. We got this.” His girlfriend says, holding his free hand in both of hers. “Thank you,” she sputters out, looking between Delilah and Elaine, crammed in the back of the car as they are. “Thank—thank you so much. I owe you—we owe you.”
"You've got to try and be still. " Or more still than now. Delilah responds first to Mike and his squirming, her attention split between the road ahead and keeping Mike from rolling out from her grasp.
"You took a chance, " Dee answers the woman, sighing and catching her breath. "We'll see how well it goes from here… did I catch your name? "
Elaine flashes a smile in Tom’s direction even though it’s unlikely he’ll see it. “Doing great with the driving, we’ll get there in no time.” Really, she’s grateful it shouldn’t be much of a drive, but she focuses her attention on keeping an eye on Mike and his girlfriend from her cramped ‘seat’ at their feet. “No need to thank us, it’s a rough situation but you’ll get through it.”
“Patty,” the exasperated woman says with a nervous smile.
“It is nice to meet you, Patty. Wish it were under better circumstances.” Nowak says with an anxious smile from the front seat.
“This is Mike, my boyfriend—ah, fiance.” Patty says with a squeeze of his bloody hand. “Thank you all so much. Thank you. I can’t fucking believe people in this fucking city.”
“Look we’re—just good Samaritans.” Tom says as he glances at Patty in the rear-view mirror. “We’re not far now. Just hold on.”
Crammed in the front seat, Walter turns around—not buckled in—and kneels on the bench seat, tugging on his mom’s shirt. “Hey,” he whispers, “I—I think we can uh—try again.” There’s a hint of nervous confidence in his voice. It takes a moment for it to click what he means. Try again.
"Yeah, better circumstances." Delilah echoes, keeping her hands fitted to Mike's side as the car moves onward. "After we get there you can say whatever you like." Thank yous should come after things are good, though there is always room for the bad too. Preferably good. Delilah looks up to the tug of her shirt.
"You- -" Ah. A nod. "Okay, okay… Once we're done here we can try. If you really think so." Nobody has a better grasp on the real capacity than Walter does- - even if Delilah wants to think she'll know best. There's a not insignificant trust.
Elaine manages a gaze in the direction of the front, but she can't quite see Walter properly from the way she's seated. At the very least, glances vaguely in that direction, doing her best to bottle any nervous energy that the idea of trying again brings up. "Right, we're almost to the hospital," she agrees. "Home stretch, and then everything will be taken care of."
She hopes, at least, there's no lingering consequences for interfering.
“I wonder if there’s some outward conditions that affect it, like location,” Odette muses quietly to herself, looking toward Walter with that oddly glowing yellow eye. The other eye remains the same as usual, brown, like her mom’s, but oddly enough Elaine and Delilah might think that her other eye now looks kind of like Sable’s in a way. Yellow within yellow, but not unhealthy, catching the light a little when she moves as her hair falls in front of it.
If her eye hadn’t been bleeding earlier it might not be nearly as scary.
Tom glances down at Odette, his expression saying where the fuck does she get this stuff that he has the better sense not to blurt out around her. But the look he shoots Nowak is one of mixed curiosity and concern, not just for the look, but for the change in Odette’s eye. Odette’s always been precocious, but something is up lately. To Nowak’s credit, he’s recognized it, but assures Tom with a subtle nod while closing his eyes. We’ll handle it.
Outside the window as Tom drives, the lightless cityscape of Manhattan sits in a muddled state of familiar and unfamiliar. Shadows hide the difference forty-four years has cost. But in the glow of the car’s headlights, the past is visible in all its trash-strewn shame. It was only two years ago that there was a sanitation strike, and the city is still struggling to recover. Alleyways and side streets are choked with plastic trash bags, litter and refuse clings to the curbs and chokes gutters. Yet that, too, is familiar. Those first few harrowing years that the Safe Zone was operational, before it started to turn around, when the detritus of Civil War clung to every building and every resident the way the shadow of the Vietnam War hangs on some of 1970’s Manhattan’s residents.
The road becomes congested closer to the hospital, mostly with pedestrian traffic. There’s a crowd gathered on the street outside Mount Sinai West, ambulances are blocked on the street by non-hospital vehicles caught in traffic trying to get to the Lincoln Tunnel and out of New York. Tom drums on the wheel as he spies the sea of tail lights ahead. Between the vehicles, a few beat cops are trying to direct traffic with flashlights. It doesn’t look promising.
“We might need to get out and walk,” Tom says over his shoulder, “I don’t think this traffic’s going anywhere.”
“They’re walking stretchers up.” Nowak says, pointing out the windshield to one of the ambulances that is wheeling a stretcher across the street through stalled traffic. Other bystanders are trying to help clear the way. “Yeah this, uh, isn’t ideal.” He turns his attention to Mike and Patty in the back. “Home stretch, we’ll help you.”
"Shit." Delilah is hushed when she gets a good look at the sheer disorder of traffic and the police making a sad attempt at making sense of it. They seem to be doing their best, as are the workers outside of the hospital doors.
"Patty, I need you to keep pressure here, I'm going out. Maybe they can meet us midway…? " The redhead's volunteering comes with the knowledge that she is also covered in fresh blood, hopefully imparting a sense of urgency. She doesn't wait for much of a confirmation or offer of an assist before she is shimmying her way for the door and beyond, arms raising as she waves to flag down someone in scrubs past the barrier of cars and bystanders.
"Hey! HEY! We have a stab wound! Losing blood fast! "
The insightful musing from Odette gets a look from Elaine from the backseat. There's a moment of alarm simply because she's aware that her daughter is busy jumping to the logical conclusions and musing she might have. There's a lot of thoughts coming out of someone so little. She can't dwell on it, though, as she glances out the window. "Yeah, I don't think we're moving anytime soon." She glances towards where the kids are. "Don't get separated, okay?"
She manages to get her door open, poking her head just outside of it to try and figure out where exactly the stretchers are coming from. If nothing else, with Dee's feet on the ground she can direct her towards someone useful. She's not straying too far from the car and the kids, even if they need to find a solution for the man bleeding in the car.
Nowak climbs out of the car, mid-traffic, and looks to Matthew and Walter. “Buddy system, okay? We stick together.” The two boys quickly link hands and follow Nowak out as Tom climbs out of the driver’s seat.
“I’m stayin’,” Odette says defensively, as she pushes her hand on one of the buttons on the dash, depressing the cigarette lighter down and having it begin heating up. Did she do that on purpose? Does she even know what those are? Well of course, they watch movies! But she looks in the direction of the hospital and then gets on her knees and looks over the seat, watching Patty and the man quietly.
“Nope,” Nowak says as he turns back into the car and hoists Odette out like a sack of potatoes. “Not letting you out of my sight. I’d never forgive myself if we got separated.” He gently shuts the passenger’s side door while Tom and Patty help Mike out of the back seat. He groans in agony, clutching at his stab wound. Hastily, Tom takes off his flannel shirt and balls it up, pressing it to Mike’s midsection as they lead him, limping, through traffic to catch up to Delilah.
Nowak takes a moment to brush Odette’s hair from her face as he carries her, looking at the discoloration in her left eye. Concern briefly flashes across his face and he shuffles Odette around with a shift of his grip, following at the rear of the group with Matthew and Walter just ahead of him.
As the group wades through pedestrians and stalled traffic toward the entrance of the Emergency Room sirens blare through the night. Delilah, at the forefront of the group calls out over a raucous sea of voices, trying to get the attention of the EMTs offloading ambulances and carrying stretchers. Meanwhile, back in the car, the 12v cigarette lighter pops out with a spring-loaded action. Due to a manufacturing error in the Plymouth Gran Fury’s cigarette lighter, the spring-action is sometimes greater than the grip-strength of the socket, resulting in—
Plink.
The cigarette lighter, heated coil glowing orange, rockets out of the socket and lands on the floor of the car, atop a crumpled fast-food paper bag.
Up ahead, Delilah finally catches the attention of a paramedic speaking to a nurse from the hospital who is receiving patients that are being wheeled in through the traffic. The paramedic turns, looking at Delilah and taking a moment to parse her words, only to see Tom and Patty hauling Mike in his blood-soaked clothes down the street.
“Help over here!” The paramedic shouts, waving down people from the hospital. He briefly claps a hand on Delilah’s shoulder, then hustles past Delilah, pushing through the crowd. “Move, move!”
“See? People want to help.” Nowak says to Odette, whose attention is focused back on the car she was halted out of. A dim, orange glow builds in the front seat of the Gran Fury, unseen by anyone else.
In the middle of this chaos Elaine, Walter, and Matthew are walking through traffic just behind where Tom and Patty are handling Mike. Walter looks up to Elaine. “How soon do we go?” He asks, visibly nervous about the crowded surroundings as he and Matthew bump into shouting pedestrians.
Amid the noise and the chaos, Elaine only feels the nose of a pistol pressed into her ribs at the last moment. “Don’t scream, don’t fight. You and the kids are coming with me.” A warm, weathered old voice whispers far too close to Elaine’s ear, accompanied by a firm hand gripping her bicep. “Nice disappearing act you pulled there, and for what it’s worth I’m sorry about what happened to Mr. Frady.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Elaine sees an unfamiliar middle-aged man with curly, light brown hair and a push-broom mustache. Black suit, white shirt, black fedora. Almost stereotypical in his federal fedora. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
There's a deep inhale of breath from Elaine at the words. "I don't plan on starting any fights," she says, voice loud enough for the boys at least to hear that she's talking to someone else. She glances to the hand on her arm before she sets her eyes squarely on Walter, mouthing the word 'go'. She isn't sure how he'll interpret that, but she's not risking saying anything else that might get her shot.
"Howard was a good man," she says, glancing over her shoulder towards the fedora.
There is relief when she is able to flag someone down- - not just for the people they came with but for them too; it means they can get moving again. Without being too worse for wear, all things considered- -
"Thank you!" Delilah breathes out as the medic works past her to the injured man; she turns to follow, helping to keep people from crossing into their path again.
From where she’s held, Odette tries to keep one eye on her family, extended and otherwise, and one eye on the car, watching what happened with the lighter and then looking back toward her mom. She bites her lower lip. “Walter has to get out of here,” is what she says, though probably only Novak can hear her, as close as they are, since he’s literally carrying her like the medium sack of potatoes that she is.
“Mom’s in trouble. But don’t worry. There will be a distraction soon.” She doesn’t sound worried. She sounds calm, as she locates each and every member of her family— “You should help Mamma. I’ll stay here where it’s safe,” she says simply, as if Novak would be of better help somewhere else, and she can get put down and it would be fine. Safe.
Blood is pounding in Nowak’s ears as he sets Odette down on the ground but keeps one of her hands firmly held. He advances up to Matthew and Walter, using one free hand to yank Walter back a step which in turn pulls Matthew since they’d been lock-step in the buddy system. Behind them, the fire that started in the car begins to grow. A handful of pedestrians notice the fire and watch with curiosity.
Up ahead, the paramedic reaches Mike and sees the severity of blood loss. “What happened to him?” The paramedic asks Patty, who begins explaining the stabbing, and when Mike briefly pulls his hand away from the shirt balled up over the wound, the paramedic clamps his hand back down. They turn, focused on the hospital and not Delilah, beginning to lead them away to receive medical aid.
Tom turns a nervous but relieved look to Delilah, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, good work us.” There’s a bright flash from nearby, a quick shuttersnap of a camera. Someone at the hospital taking a photograph of the crowd and the gurneys. Tom blinks against the blind spot in his eyes, but then, in his periphery, sees Elaine’s expression, sees the unfamiliar old man standing beside her, sees Nowak’s icy expression, and—
“The car!” Tom shouts, “the car’s on fire!”
The mustached man holding Elaine’s arm doesn’t hear Tom’s shouts clearly over the din of the crowd. “Why don’t you let your friends know everything is fine, and that we all need to meet up with some of my friends, and have a nice, long talk in Washington? Hm?”
Nowak spots three other men in black suits trying to weave their way through the crowd, right as shouts of “Fire! Fire!” begin to reverberate through the street. People scramble away from the Gran Fury as its seats are now engulfed in growing flames, licking at the fabric lining of the roof. “Fire!”
Between Tom’s shouts and the shouts of others on the street, Elaine’s aware of the car fire in spite of her predicament. She turns her head visibly towards the orange glow of the Gran Fury, taking a step away almost reflexively, regardless of the grip on her arm. She’ll drag Duvall away with her if she has to.
“I think all of us have bigger worries at the moment,” she says loudly, inwardly wondering exactly how long a from the late 70s takes to explode once it’s on fire. “We need to move!”
Delilah can’t help but let out a small laugh to Tom as he congratulates the gang. Of course it doesn’t last long. She quickly follows his gaze to the car before trying to pinpoint the kids and their guardians in the crowd.
One good thing, everyone appears to be outside of the car.
The unfortunate part of this is that they are spread a little too thin for her liking, and the presence of a stranger with Elaine makes a lovely whine of nerves ringing in her head. On the surface she bristles visibly beside Tom and pushes her way around the moving rush of people towards the others and the flaming car. You all step away for one second- -
Odette doesn’t fight being dragged along by the hand, as she continues to keep her eyes on the situation. She doesn’t bother looking again at the car, she already knows what’s going on over there. She’s more concerned about the movements of the crowd and the locations of her family. But for now she’ll hold Novak’s hand and wait for events to unfold.
And they do. Unfold.
Not the car. No, the car continues to burn, flames now leaping out of the windows as the roof fabric catches alight. Not the crowd, they’re scattering in the panic. Not Duvall, whose grip on Elaine slacks when she yanks away from him. But he does raise his gun, good to his word, he didn’t want to make a scene. The other agents don’t unfold either, they just close in. Inches from Delilah and Tom, reaching through the crowd, shouting.
No, what unfolds is space. The fabric of reality.
Walter flinches the moment before it happens, like he feels something in his bones. So does Matthew, but they experience it as a different sensation. The two boys step back and away from Elaine as the air behind Duvall ripples and unfolds into a yawning abyss that sweeps over him like a butterfly net. Duvall reappears across the street, falling from a modest height down onto the concrete steps of an apartment building.
Nowak curls his fingers closed, spacetime rippling over his palm as he uses his ability for the first time in what feels like forever.
“We gotta go! Now!” Tom shouts, only to realize he’s being pulled back by strangers’ hands. An agent is on top of him, trying to wrestle him to the ground. “Hey! Hey—fuck you! Fuck you let me go!”
“Tom!” Walter shouts, watching the chaotic scene unfold as the car burns behind him. “Mom, we gotta go!” Walter shouts at Delilah. All the while Matthew is looking more and more panicked, eyes flitting from side to side, heart racing.
Elaine’s eyes go to where Duvall was. She doesn’t see where he ends up, just that he’s no longer standing between her and her family. She bridges the gap between her, Nowak, and the kids in only a few frantic steps before she turns to try and get a bead on where Delilah and Tom are. They just all need to regroup.
“If they can’t get to us, we need to get to them… just stay together.” She can’t imagine losing any of them at this point, either physically or emotionally. Elaine grabs for Odette’s other hand to connect herself better to the cluster as she looks gratefully towards Nowak.
As the fingers of one of the encroaching agents wraps around her wrist, Delilah's first instinct is to lash out with a solid right hook and pull away from his grip. A grip already slick from skin contact- - more than sweat, clinging like vaseline. It hurts like hell when her fist connects with the agent's face, but hopefully it stings just as much for him when his bell gets wholly rung.
Her eyes reflect the growing fire and a glimmer of something deeper. She can hear Walter shouting for her- - just a minute, darling, Mum's busy.
"Piss off!" As much as she's learned from her time in the Ferry and from Teo, that flourish from growing up a little rough hasn't gone away.
The agent staggers away from Delilah, with a chromatic sheen on his skin where her fist connected to his jaw. He starts to double back, reaching for his gun, but in those few heartbeats his world becomes a kaleidoscope of drug-induced colors. The agent stumbles, loses control of his legs, and lets out a loud moan before collapsing onto the street, pissing himself. At the same time, Tom throws an elbow to the other agent, breaking his nose in a single hit.
“You must’ve been amazing at the freedom-fighter parties!” Tom nervously yelps to Delilah, awkwardly hurrying with her to where Matthew and Walter are. Nowak puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder, the other arm hooked around Elaine’s waist while still holding Odette’s hand as he draws the group in close. Sirens are blaring in the distance, and the fire within the Gran Fury has reached a raging inferno. Matthew, nervously, reaches out to hold Walter’s hand.
“How the fuck did they find us?” Tom hisses as he watches Agent Duvall slowly pulling himself off the stairs.
Matthew and Walter share a nervous look, each squeezing the other’s hand. There is shouting all around them, confusion.
Nowak barks out a nervous laugh. “We need to go. We can figure that out after we”—
The agent with a broken nose pushes his way through the crowd and has his gun out, but
the world lurches
down.
The sudden sensation of falling, like missing a step in a half-remembered dream.
Elsewhen
Tom yanks Nowak out of the way as a horn blares loudly. A wall of thick, summer heat shifts the humid night to a scorching day. Manhattan vanishes, instantaneously replaced with somewhere across the river, Brooklyn or Queens, maybe. The car that rumbles by stinks of exhaust fumes, and now pulled up onto the curb, Nowak grips Tom’s arm and nods in repeated, wordless thanks.
Night has turned to day. A summer haze clings in the air, and people walk by on the street barely noticing the small group of people who weren’t there a second ago. There’s a few people who notice, of course. But their distant looks of disbelief across the street shift to a shake of a head, uncertainty, and then disbelief as they keep on moving.
“Are we home?” Walter asks, hands trembling and a little blood running out of his right nostril. Matthew notices, making a little dabbing motion under his own nose, and Walter is quick to swipe away the evidence of his strain.
Tom’s eyes are focused down the street, toward a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the skyscrapers of Manhattan seen through a narrow gap between buildings. “No,” he says with a sigh, then scans around for any immediate threats. Other than the smog and the heat, there aren’t any. “But we can try again.”
Walter clenches his hands into fists, tears welling up in his eyes. He was so sure this would be the one. “I—I was thinking about grandpa. I figured—if—if I could get to gramps, then—then we’d be home.”
Nowak looks down at Odette as Matthew speaks, brushing a thumb across her cheek and looking at her discolored eye. Worry and pride beam down at her in equal measure. His smile is approving. You did good back there.
Nearby, music approaches. Tinny and loud, blasting out of a hand-held boombox carried by one of a group of teenagers. The song hits Delilah in the chest like a knife.
«Then you say, go slow.»
The trio of teenagers that are approaching as talking with each-other, laughing. Tom, ignorant of the song’s importance to Delilah, shifts to look back at the group. “Okay, let’s make another jump, then.” He’s impatient, wants to be home.
«And I fall behind.»
In the crowd, Delilah can see the trio. A tall, lanky young woman with sandy brown hair smiling and laughing while she skip-dances to the music. A redhead woman walking backwards, chatting with the young man carrying the boombox that she can’t see.
«The second hand unwinds.»
The redheaded young woman turns, smiling as she leads the group, and Elaine’s stomach turns into knots. The redhead steps aside, and Delilah can see the young man behind her carrying the boombox, crooning to himself to the lyrics of the chorus she knows by heart:
“If you're lost you can look and you will find me!”
And the whole trio joins in:
“Time after time!”
None of their faces are a mystery. Delilah and Elaine know exactly when they are.
“If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting!”
“Time After Time.”
Meanwhile
Seven Years Earlier
A Plymouth Gran Fury burns in the middle of the road. Sirens from the fire department are so distant as to not be responding to this event. The crowd outside of the hospital has dispersed, some, and the agents of OSI have slinked back into the shadows. The Blackout of 1977 is in full-swing, and looting has begun across the city, drawing law enforcement away from areas where the disruption has not spilled over into all-out lawlessness.
Among the crowd of pedestrians watching the burning car, one stands in frustrated silence. The fire reflects in his eyes, scowl etched in his features. Steadying the tremor in his right hand, this stranger checks a simple kinetic wristwatch, currently set to five minutes to midnight. With a shaky breath, Martin Crowley steps back into the crowd and blends into the surroundings, sinking into an alleyway, dimly lit by the ambient glow of the burning car.
Slowly, Martin dons his helmet again and affixes the latches. His breath reverberates through the enclosed environment. He flexes one hand open and closed, looking at a button on the wrist of his suit. He closes his eyes, sucks in a sharp breath, and depresses the
Seventy-One Years Later
There is an electrical snap the moment Martin jolts up from the floor. He is shaking from head to toe, struggles to stand and collapses back onto his knees, gloved fingers fumbling with the release latch for his visored helmet. The moment he gets it off with a hiss of pressurized air he exhales, retches, and vomits on the concrete floor.
Wiping at his eyes, Martin looks around the room. Electricity leaps off of spines rising out of the black walls. Narrow columns around him bristle with copper plates arranged like leaves on a tree, all of which hum like tuning forks. Martin lurches forward and rests his brow against the floor, hands curled into fists.
«Success?» a voice disembodied booms from the ceiling. Martin shakes his head, exhaling sharply through his nose. Some blood spatters on the concrete. He wipes it clear of his upper lip, then stands shakily.
«Success?» The voice demands again.
“No.” Martin says through clenched teeth. “I was off by… don’t know. Spatially. Too much.” Tucking his helmet under his arm, Martin strides down the steps from the circular concrete platform to a gangway crossing over a hemispherical pit filled with more sparking spines.
«Are you experiencing Refactoring?»
“No.” Martin mutters as he approaches the airlock door on the other side of the gangway. “Let’s—fucking have this chat face to face, yeah?” His patience is at its end as he waits at the door. A long silence hangs in the air until a buzzer sounds, and the door opens. Through decontamination it’s silent. The routine of changing out from his Horizon suit into civilian clothes, then out once the computer is satisfied with the air particulate results.
On the other side of the door, Martin is met by a cadre of masked doctors who guide him over to an angled chair set in the floor. Martin’s done this a thousand times, settling in to the seat, rolling up his sleeves, letting the blood draws begin. One doctor pulls open a mole on Martin’s inner wrist, revealing a concealed port that a flexible cable is plugged into, tethering Martin to a console of computers.
“So,” a man’s voice carries over the noise of medical protocol. “How close were you, Gene?”
“Martin.” Crowley corrects with a ferocious bitterness. “Or did I refactor your fucking memory?”
Matthew Parkman raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’m sorry. You were Gene when we built you, and it’s only been a couple of days for me to get adjusted to the name change. I apologize, sincerely.”
Martin calms at the apology, still rankling at the medics probing and prodding him. “I was a few minutes late. Ran straight to the hospital from the Incision point, got there right after they left. Car hadn’t even exploded yet. Was burning, though.”
Matthew nods, eyes distant. He dismisses the doctors with a subtle wave of his hand, then pulls up a stool to sit by Martin while the blood analysis is underway. “Well, we’ve got another shot. Last one, too. 1984.”
Martin sits up in the chair then swings his legs over the side so as to face Matthew. “We can’t do 84.”
“We’re not supposed to.” Matthew corrects, quietly.
“Van Dalen authorize that? Or are you going behind the director’s back?” Martin asks with a pump of his brows. Matthew doesn’t vocalize an answer, but the down-cast of his eyes is answer enough.
“You’ll need to go alone again.” Is how Matthew chooses to answer. Because it’s a necessity.
“Another calibration run?”
Matthew closes his eyes and nods. “We’ll fudge the Incision log.”
Martin looks down at the cable sticking out of his arm, focusing on it rather than Matthew’s visible discomfort. “You’re gonna get caught.”
“One more glitch won’t raise too many alarms.”
“Many.” Martin says as a laugh. “Fine. When I’m done getting scanned, fire her back up.” And Martin can see the hesitation in Matthew’s eyes. “Look, you want one more shot at this or not? Because if I don’t go now, when this thing finishes running its diagnostic, it’s going to ping a hardware fault downstairs, and they’ll quarantine me until I’m fit for service again. And how long d’you think it’ll take before your boss gets wise to these calibrations?”
Matthew is silent, inhaling a cool, tempering breath. “Well, if you’re successful, maybe I won’t be here at all when you return.”
A beep emits from the computer, and Martin unplugs the cable from his arm.
“I'm ready.”