Participants:
| Scene Title | Blood of My Blood |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lazarus abides. |
| Date | January 11, 2019 |
The patter of a drum breaks the silence.
“That one’s the snare.” Seated behind a large drum set, a bearded man with swept back blonde hair balances a young boy of no more than three on his knee. The child holds a drumstick awkwardly in one hand, his father the other. Matthias leans forward gently, tapping his drumstick across the surface of the snare drum again, and the child’s face lights up with a brilliant smile and jubilant laughter.
“I know your mom isn’t all that into this,” he says as he taps the top of the drum again, “but maybe you’ll grow up to be a famous musician. You’ll have the best instruments, the best teachers,” he taps the drum again, and the child giggles again and taps arrhythmically across the top. His father smiles, leaning in to press a kiss to the top of his head.
“Whatever you become, Devon,” he says with a smile into his son's hair…
“I'll be proud of you.”
Twenty One Years Later
There is no fire.
That's the first thing Devon recognizes as his eyes slowly open. There is no burning building, no fire, no broken chassis of a machine. It is the soft and rhythmic beep of an EKG machine that focuses his mind, evokes memories of hospitals and injuries past. The bed is slightly elevated, a chair pulled next to it with no one in it, but a mostly finished mug of coffee sits on the table beside it indicating that someone was here.
That Devon is alive is a miracle, dressed in a hospital gown and not even so much as bandaged. He doesn't even feel in pain. The only discomfort is from the IV plugged into his arm from a transfusion bag of blood hanging from an elevated hook beside the bed.
Not far away, windows set in the white walls show off a too-bright sunlight panorama of urban landscape. A city hospital, safe, secure.
Alive.
For what seems like a long time, Devon stares straight ahead as the room works its way into focus. The room isn’t immediately familiar and far different from what he expected to see. The shock of it makes his heart skip a beat. The rest of the team must have hauled him out of the wreckage.
His head rolls to one side, eyes first finding the chair and abandoned coffee. His attention is soon drawn to tubing that runs from his arm to the bag hanging just above his head. A hospital, which his thoughts decide should mean he’s in Rochester.
As his head tilts down again, Devon lets his eyes catch on the scene outside the window. He squints, as though it would bring it further into focus. Then, with cautious movements, he shifts so he can sit up. The expectation of pain is obvious, but the absence of it is confounding and it stalls further movements so he can investigate the lack of injury.
The door to the hospital room opens, followed by a dark-haired nurse stepping in and looking through the doorway. She doesn't seem surprised to see Devon up, managing a warm smile as she steps in and closes the door shut with a soft click behind her. “Mr. Clendaniel,” she says with an easy smile, the faintest hint of a southern accent behind her words, “good t’see you up and about again.”
The nurse comes to the bedside, checking the IV tubing and straightening Devon’s blankets. “We’ll have someone bring you something to eat soon,” she says with practiced serenity, picking up a plastic pitcher and pouring Devon a cup of water, set down on the east to reach table by his bedside. “There anything you need, dear?”
Still with his attention on what’s beyond the window, the nurse goes unnoticed until the door clicks shut. Devon turns to look at her. An unfamiliar face to go with the unfamiliar room. Not the Bunker, but maybe the Safe Zone? His brows furrow, puzzled, as he watches the nurse. “Yeah,” comes as an agreement of sorts. It is good to be up again, but how long was he down? Biting on the corner of his lip, he looks to the half-finished coffee, trying to work out what happened.
The blinking red light. The fail safe…
Devon’s head comes up and he looks at the nurse. He can only imagine the explosion that followed and know full well that he probably shouldn’t be alive. He certainly shouldn’t be uninjured as he is. It gives him an uneasy feeling, a sinking worry, one that pushes his upper body against the pillows. “Commander Epstein,” he answers the last question. “I need to call him.”
The nurse eyes Devon for but a moment before replying. “Your company is aware of your condition,” she says without missing a beat. “You just need to rest, you've been through a lot. Just lie back,” she says, adjusting one of Devon’s pillows, “and take it easy. The more you resist the worse it'll be overall.”
But the nurse warmly smiles at Devon, looking up to the nearly empty transfusion bag. “A doctor will be in to see you soon, you just get your rest and you'll be out of here before you know it.”
“Condition.”
In spite of all of his confusion, inability to find the missing pieces, Devon manages to deadpan that single response. A stubborn wariness sets in as the nurse fusses with the pillows and offers placating words instead of real information. But what he gets, he uses to fill in what she isn’t saying. His company is aware. The blinking red light.
His eyes track up to the transfusion bag again. There’s no injury that he can find, no pain when moving, then he shouldn’t be in need of blood.
“No.” It’s not forceful but it’s intended to end the conversation and dismiss whatever doctor she thinks is going to see him. “I have to get back there. I can’t let them think…” Dev shakes his head, unwilling to complete the sentence, further denying any implications that he’s staying put as directed. He wraps his fingers around the IV stuck into his arm, then tape and all it’s removed with a quick jerk. His feet swing over the opposite side of the bed, the side that opens up to the door, and he starts for it.
The nurse doesn't stop him, just sighs at his back and makes a distressed sound in the back of her throat. When Devon pushes through the doorway he steps immediately back into the hospital room. It is a disorienting moment, facing the bed he'd just had his back to. The nurse’s expression is one of patient frustration.
“Please, this will all be easier if you don't resist,” she explains as she pulls back the blankets on the bed. “Come back, lie down, and rest. You've already been a great deal of trouble, and I'd prefer if we can continue like this, rather than the alternative.” Reflexively looking back over his shoulder, Devon sees the same scene behind himself. The same hospital room, the same nurse, the same bed.
What the fuck?
Grabbing the doorway, only partly for support, Devon lingers on the threshold of a room in two places. Looking over his shoulder brings a wave of nauseating unease, and looking forward does no better. He squeezes his eyes shut to encourage the wave of vertigo to pass more quickly. This can't be real. This shouldn't be happening. “What’s going on?” The question is a murmur without the expectation of an answer.
His feet take a shuffling step backward, and he turns himself so he’s facing into the original room. Toes curl against the cold floor as he wills his eyes open to find the nurse. He can only hope the sinking fear in his gut isn’t showing on his face. “What is this place, what…” He tosses a look at the transfusion bag. “Is all of this?”
A steadying breath is drawn in slowly. Dev looks over his shoulder to the door that should allow him to leave. “When can I go?” He needs to get home to his friends, his family. He made a promise, and being held here is keeping him from that. “You asked what I needed.” A fresh spark of anger blossoms in his chest, chasing back the cold fear. It makes his next words forceful, demanding.
“I need to return home.”
The nurse furrows her brows, then slowly shakes her head. “There is no home,” she says in a disappointed voice. “There was just this…” Slowly, the nurse looks off to the side, as if someone is standing there, then back to Devon. “But the cracks are already forming. Soon, you’ll be— ”
Undisclosed Location
January 11th
“Awake?”
The soft hiss and beep of a respirator and EKG echoes off of bare concrete walls. Under the flickering illumination of fluorescent lights, Devon Clendaniel looks particularly ashen and sunken. The IV bag hanging over his hospital bed slowly feeds drops of blood into his veins; not quite a transfusion, something slower, something more cautious.
Standing by his beside, Adam Monroe looks down at the young man with that question still lingering in the air. He upturns pale blue eyes to the woman standing at Devon’s bedside with a hand on the young man’s brow. “How soon will he be awake?” He asks again.
Furrowing her brows, Joy slowly shakes her head and moves her hand from Devon’s forehead. “Soon. It’s a miracle that he’s alive right now at all.” Adam scoffs at the notion of miracles, instead pivoting to look down at Devon.
“There’s no miracles in this world,” Adam says with the cynical certainty of a man his age, “just charlatans who’d have you believe until its convenient that you not.” His attention shifts from Devon to Joy, his decision made. “Call ahead to Doctor Cong…”
“…Tell him we retrieved a new specimen.”