Participants:
| Scene Title | Calculated Risk |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Warren tags Audrey's vehicle with GPS, so he can approach her about the vault where a thousand cops won't arrest him. |
| Date | November 5, 2010 |
Lit by a swarming sea of headlights, street lamps, neon signs and interior lighting, the bustling Canal Street Market is packed shoulder to shoulder and moves to an urban pulse. Amidst the tight crowds of residents and visitors, it would be hard to see that New York had collapsed in on itself in this cross-section. Spared as much as it could be after the explosion, Chinatown had endured as a pillar of New York City, and its refusal to succumb to the collapse of the other burroughs around it only contributed to the surge of population and interest here after the rebuilding began.
It is within all of this play of lights on the dark streets where that strong facade begins to show its structural cracks. A district so small can hardly sustain the some two-hundred and fifty-thousand residents, piled upon with transients seeking shelter, the unaccounted for displaced housed in local homeless shelters, and the thousands of visitors that pass through each and every day. There simply isn't enough Chinatown to go around, and in the face of more pressing reconstruction, the condition of this portion of the city has begun to continue a slow decline in the years following the bomb. Potholes line the market's street, pieces of broken sidewalk litter the curbsides, and the facades of so many buildings have begun to take on the look of post-bomb New York that so many other regions had assumed. No place in new York was truly spared, some just didn't know they were wounded yet.
Having calculated the risks, from worst to best case scenarios, this is still not one of Warren's best ideas. Walking through Chinatown after his car got close enough to the signal, he's staring down at a black box full of buttons without any markings, rapidly beeping the closer he gets to Audrey's car. It's around here somewhere…
He's wearing a black suit, jacket unbuttoned despite the cool breeze, briefly straightening the tie that keeps blowing back over his shoulder. "Damned thing. About time for a coat…"
A spot two blocks from the Golden Luck Dragon, when you have to go get chinese and you are a creature of habit, you will go out of the way for it. In her case, it wasn't really out of the way since she'd been out to see if there was any progress made on getting into the vault. Evidence was down there and each day they were unable to access it was a day the evidence was disappearing, being made redundant.
Brown bag with food in it, set of keys in hand and phone in the other, she's talking on the cell as she hurries for her vehicle. Black coat, blue scarf, black slacks and low heels, she doens't quite look like a federal agent right now, but she is. "No. No. Just keep at it. If they break through it somehow, call me. I don't what hour. I'm about to go put in a requisition for a technopath or something if it takes any longer"
"A technopath won't help, it's clockwork." Warren says from behind as even Audrey can hear the rapid beeping from his remote now. A button gets pressed, the beeping stops, then the remote is slid back into his jacket. "But I can open it." His hand comes back out of his jacket, remote replaced with his registration card. Warren Ray, Mechanical Intuition, Tier-0. "I built it."
There's some asshole trailing her great. Listening in on her conversation. "I gotta get back to you Gary" Thumb to a button ends the call and she turns around to face whomever it is that's decided to butt into her business. The little black box and it's beeping almost make her drop her food and reach for her gun, especially when his hand dips into his jacket. Government agents aren't exactly top of the like list these days and you never know when it's a gun in their hand.
But out comes a registration card and Audrey is eyeballing him in the wake of his confession that he built it. The face of the man familiar, she drops the food onto the hood of her car, taking out her own badge and his registration. Hers is flicked open to show her ID and other credentials, taking in his. "If you built it, describe it"
"It's yellow and black, full of gears, and there's a kind of number pad to dial a combination and get inside. The vault is completely clockwork, nearly all of my work is, that's why a technopath couldn't help." Warren slips his card back into his jacket, then straightens the white leather gloves on his hands. "I used to be known as Mortimer Alex Jack, but my memories of being a crazy cult leader were erased by a government organization, and now I'm sane again, and build things for them. But I only recently learned that I used to be the leader of the Locos, and it's a mess I'm trying to fix. I want those men to get help, everything they're doing is my fault, they're victims."
"It's yellow and black, full of gears, and there's a kind of number pad to dial a combination and get inside. The vault is completely clockwork, nearly all of my work is, that's why a technopath couldn't help." Warren releases his card so she can inspect it, then straightens the white leather gloves on his hands. "I used to be known as Mortimer Alex Jack, but my memories of being a crazy cult leader were erased by a government organization, and now I'm sane again, and build things for them. But I only recently learned that I used to be the leader of the Locos, and it's a mess I'm trying to fix. I want those men to get help, everything they're doing is my fault, they're victims."
I was crazy but now I'm sane. I led the crazy cult of Loco's but a government organization wiped my brain. Except that… he knows what that door is down there. The registration card is held, looked at and then back to him again, getting out her phone. "Sir, can you produce another piece of identification for me please?" Work has followed her home in the form of some more than likely conspiracist nutjob.
"Hold on." Warren reaches back into his jacket. How many pockets are in that thing? We may never know. Out comes his wallet, and he offers both photo ID and voting registration. "My passport and SSI are at home. And you're having a surprisingly calm reaction, surprising in that I don't have handcuffs on by now."
"You're not waving a weapon at me and you're acting calm and you're not trying to touch me or get close." The photo ID is taken, voting registration all but ignored. "Hey Gary, yeah, I need you to run an ID for me and a registration, might have a break on the vault door" She turns to the side, able to keep an eye on Warren and rattles off the ID number on the registration card. It's not like she has a reader with her or a reader in her own car. "No, don't think I'll need a car. If I do I'll call again, start a file, grab what you can about him if there's anything" It takes all of two minutes to verify at least the warren identity.
That done, she turns around, passing back the ID's to him. "Loco's are being tracked down and they will be arrested. They will be tried with whatever can be associated with them and they will go to jail Mister Ray. They have broken the law and have been running around committing murder. If you have any information on how to access the vault, names or addresses of those who are members of the Loco's, I would ask that you let me know before another person is hurt or killed"
"I would tell you, if I actually knew. I probably know as much about the Locos as you do right now. My memories of them are simply gone and I've been trying to learn all I could. I've probably spilled more blood than any of them, I just can't remember doing it. I'm just as, if not more guilty." Warren slides the IDs back into his wallet, then into his jacket, staying serious, but trying hard to keep a casual demeanor about him. "Unless you just find a way to blow the thing up, the only way to access it is if I go down there. I saw the front of the vault before, there is no security card, the gears switch and change on the outside every time you open and close. It only makes sense to an Intuitive. So basically me, or Sylar."
Him or Sylar. She'd ask him who number fourteen was, but his mind has been conveniently wiped. A potential break in the case and it's muddy and could potentially boot her in the ass. What to do with him? He's confessed to being a loco, leader of the Loco's and everything points to him being such.
"What was the thing that was beeping, when you first came up to me?"
"Oh, hold on." Warren walks to the back of her car, then bends down and grabs a little mechanical spider that crawls around his hand for a bit, before going up his sleeve. "I slipped the tracking device on your car, because I didn't know how you'd react if I approached you around an army of cops. I wanted to discuss things calmly, without being held to the ground or something. I slipped it on while you were underground, when I was trying to decide who to approach. I remember meeting you before, you seem level-headed, so I chose you."
He put a tracker on her car. She's stunned. There's her phone again, out, dialing up Gary. "Hey, yeah, no. I'll need that car" The address for where her car is packed rattled off. 'Soon as possible please, I'm bringing my car in, to be looked over too. There was a tracking device on it" WHich means, god knows what else was on it. God, was that a … robot?
The phone thumbed off again, she's watching Warren closely. "I'm bringing you in. There are others that will want to talk with you and then we'll see if you get to go down to the vault and see the door" See if Parkman can confirm the whole government wiped my mind or whether he's just a nutjob.
"That's fine, I'll cooperate however you need me to, I just want to put a stop to this." Warren stares at the car after her phone call, then just smiles with casual amusement and shakes his head. "Sorry about the tracking device. They won't find anything else on the car, but I understand the need for caution. I feel the same way about computers, with technopaths running around."
"Forgive me if I choose to have a team check regardless considering you have just admitted more than a few things to me, including entering into the midtown disaster area illegally, on at least a couple occasions" People forget that they're not supposed to do that. Trespassing. Yeah. "A car will be here soon, we'll just wait" And it seems that she'll be eating her dinner in her office after consulting with a few others. "Mind passing over that …. tracker… thing"
"I don't recommend random button pressing. It's really just a frequency control and detecting device. Controls everything from various aspects of my car, to robots." Warren pulls the remote from his coat and offers it over. The black buttons have no markings, and there appears to be at least forty of them, all lined up and plastic. He offers the little golden spider robot as well, around two inches in diameter, crawling to the palm of his hand. "Evidence?"
"Pretty much. It may or may not be returned to you in the case that it is not applicable, thank you for voluntarily handing this over" Joy of joys. God, it's a spider. She's opening her door, depositing food into it and sigging out a plastic grocery bag so that they can be dumped into the bag, tied off and sealed. Put on top of her car. "Now we wait Mister Ray. We'll talk more once we're downtown"
