Children Are The Future

Participants:

cardinal_icon.gif gillian_icon.gif

Scene Title Children Are The Future
Synopsis Gillian discusses Linderman's warning with Cardinal. A man who is interested in destroying futures he doesn't like also wants to protect those who can build better ones.
Date June 7, 2010

The Lighthouse: Gillian's Room


With it being summer, even if it's hard to tell with the snow still on the ground and it still feeling like the middle of winter outside, the sun sets later in the day. Gillian's sent the kids off to bed, with stories and help from Brian, and finally makes her way back to her room, after spending a while sitting up with Mala and reassuring her. Kids don't handle being left sometimes, and these kids have lost a lot.

Once upon a time their parents said they would be back and never did.

The door to the bedroom opens, and she flicks on the desklight, illuminating a journal that lays open, consisting of words and scribbled drawings in the margins. The cat, Chandra, sleeps at the edge of her bed, as she pushes the door closed.

Sometimes, people never come back. A promise only does so much good against a bullet or an explosion. One day they're there, and the next… they're gone.

They thought that of Richard Cardinal, once.

"Hey, babe." Cardinal looks up from where he's leaning against the wall, half in shadows, arms folded across his chest and a smile crooking to his lips, "The kids having a rough time lately, I take it?"

"Fuck, don't— just appear out of nowhere," Gillian says with a startled jump, before she looks at the door to make sure she kept her voice down enough while cursing. "Yeah, as soon as it warmed up enough half the people who were here for weeks and weeks suddenly up and disappeared, and then today we another one's moving out. They'll be okay, though."

The journal is pushed to a close, even if he's probably had plenty of time to read it if he wanted to. "It's good to see you— I was out of it after the healing, so I barely remember what happened after. Other than that you were okay."

At that objection, Richard can't help but grin. "People've been telling me that for years, you think I'm gonna start listening now…?" A push off from the wall, and he steps along over towards her, reaching over to slide a hand over her shoulder. "Wanted to say thanks… and I don't know either. Peter's new 'friends' carried you off, I was a little worried about where…"

"Somewhere in Manhattan," Gillian says with a frown, trying to figure out what Peter's new friends might possibly have in common with anything. "Even after I woke up there I was wiped for a while. Barely remember the ride back, when I had a Brian pick me up. I think I slept through most of it. But— here you are." As he touches her shoulder, she actually leans up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek, less intimate than other kisses in the past. "For a while I didn't think you'd have a cheek to kiss."

At the peck to his cheek, Cardinal's lips tug up a bit in a faint smile. "Neither did I," he says quietly, "I appreciate it, Gillian, I know it… wasn't easy for any've us. Fuck, it may not've worked at all."

"Yeah, it's not the hardest thing I had to do, but it was one of them— anytime I have to do an augmenttaion loop it usually does some pretty amazing stuff," Gillian settles back on her heels, but doesn't move away other than that. "So what's going on down at the Library? With so few people here right now, I don't know how much I can get away, but— we might be moving the kids soon, if I can talk Brian into it. Lighthouse may not be safe here forever."

"The library's just about uninhabitable," admits Cardinal as he drops down to sit on the edge of the bed, leaning back against his hands with a frown, "The weather really fucked the place up. We're thinking of opening up a security business as a front for the time being…" A pause, one brow lifting, "Not safe? What's going on?"

"I could see that. You guys all in charge of 'security'," Gillian says with a laugh, dimples appearing on her cheeks, before she looks toward the door. It's not the door she's looking at it, but the sleeping bodies she knows are in the rest of the house, in the two dorms where the kids sleep in their bunk beds. "Pretty much all the kids here are registered, except the new ones. So far none of them have anything really dangerous, but… You know we're funded a lot by Linderman Group," she says, looking back at him, that serious expression in her eyes. "I actually spoke to him, Linderman. I know a lot of what you want to do is take him down, but… I don't think he agrees with what the government has become."

"We've got more important things to deal with than Daniel right now…" A shake of his head, then, Cardinal's lips twitching in a faint smile, "…and of course he doesn't. He's lost control, and he doesn't know why." The smile fades, and he notes seriously, "Did he… warn you about something?"

"He did, yeah," Gillian says, rather serious, but vaguely relieved at the same time. There's always so much to worry about. "He said that the kids may not be safe here soon. That if I don't have a safe place to move them now, I need to find one soon. That the island, and association with him, may not be able to protect them long. He's going to be sending me some kids, orphaned by the storms, and— he said not all of them are registered, or manifested, and that the ones that are— he said I probably wouldn't want them registered. He mentioned Moab— and also the Institute. So I'm guessing at least one of the kids might be potentially dangerous."

"A teenager rated at tier three…?" Cardinal's brows leap upwards in surprise, and he whistles under his breath, "…well, shit. Yeah, you might consider moving them somewhere with heavier security, at the very least." He rubs a hand to the nape of his nack, frowning over, "I've seen some — hints of unpleasant shit on Staten in the precog files, too."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. And somewhere not publicly known as an Evolved Orphanage," Gillian says, pulling back a bit to run a hand through her hair. "I'll probably have to talk to Cat, or someone with a good source of money, cause the one thing kids need a lot of is money. Starting to wish I hadn't put all my Apollo money into a trust fund for them. Cause I don't even know if that'll still be there by the time they're old enough to need it for college, or something."

"Money." A vague brush of Cardinal's hand through the air, before it falls back down to the mattress, "Money's just numbers. Money can be arranged if it's needed. You going to be doing that full time, or do you want to do your whole research thing with the security company?"

"It'll depend. Back when we had almost as many adults living here as kids, I could have easily done both," Gillian says, shaking her head a bit. "Right now it's pretty much me and Brian. But if I can get some others to work here sometimes— or once we get moved if there's more people around, I can probably do research for you."

"Just keep me updated. If it's going to jeopardise your work with the kids, I'm not gonna push for it," Cardinal says with a glance towards the door, then back with a faint smile, "They're the future, after all."


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