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| Scene Title | Divide |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The Office of Special Investigations digs into the details of their new guests stranded in the past. |
| Date | July 9, 1947 |
Walker Air Force Base
Roswell, New Mexico
6:03 am
July 9th
1947
Dawn is only a pale blue glow on the horizon when the sound of rumbling engines breaks through the veil of sleep. Delilah’s instinct at the sound of heavy truck engines is to sit straight up, a reflex that the Civil War honed into her. But it isn’t the bombed-out ruins of a safehouse she wakes to, but the cavernous ceilings of an aircraft hangar converted into a makeshift shelter for…
She still isn’t sure of the answer to that.
As the others wake, the doors to the hangar are pulled open revealing the headlights of trucks waiting outside. Three soldiers in drab uniforms step inside carrying their rifles, though not holding them at the ready. Agent Ryans is with them, sweeping off his fedora as he steps inside, casting a suspicious look around the hangar. Among the soldiers, Delilah recognizes Martin Pines, though he remains deferential to Agent Ryans’ orders.
“Good morning!” Ryans calls to the wayward time travelers in a cheerful voice. “We’ve got some breakfast brewing in the mess hall. Thought you all might like to rise and shine and tackle the rest of the day with a full stomach. We just have some medical exams we need to handle before we get to food, want to make sure you’re all in fine shape, what with Tom there having quite the knock on his head.”
Tom, still half-awake, holds his head in one hand as he slouches forward on his cot. His long legs look exaggeratedly bent for his low the cot is for his height. “Coffee would be great,” Tom grumbles, not wanting to acknowledge the idea of medical exams.
Matthew slowly rises out of bed, groaning and squinting against the glow of headlights. He looks at Delilah with his brows furrowed, worry in his dark eyes.
“Come on everyone,” Ryans says with a clap of his hands. “Rise and shine.”
It's been a hard sleep for Elaine. She's not entirely sure how much she's managed to get, mostly because her attention would be turned occasionally to the sleeping Odette. While not her memories, there's the sting of worry. Maybe she had experienced a lot, but this was not something her mother wanted her to experience. This would have been something she'd have done most anything to prevent.
Rising is easy, mostly because she's not fully asleep in the first place, so when she sits up, she stretches, but there's no groggy half-awake impression from her. She's instantly snapping into focus, what with the headlights and the view of soldiers. Armed ones, even if this isn't some kind of firing squad. It does, however, feel like an overt power play, and draws a frown from her before she looks over to Odette to make sure she's getting up okay.
"Medical checks are good, I'm not entirely sure how much we escaped unscathed from… whatever all that was," she replies, though her gaze shifts over to Tom, concern thrown in his direction. He was the one with the missing ID and the "head injury", after all. Out of all of them, he was the one the most out of his element… as much as the rest of them could be considered in their element.
Delilah was wide awake before they even opened the hangar doors, sitting up with one leg tucked and hands taming down the muss of her hair. It may be a grumpy mood she is in, but she does her best to not show it- - or at least not the worst of it. There is already a nebulous plan forming in her mind when the doors birth soldiers and an overly cheery sort of ghost in Mark Ryans.
"It's alright." is what Matthew earns for his caution, Dee turning to check on the next cot and Walter still blearily unwinding on it. He woke up briefly over the night, and slept hard since then; blue eyes are rimmed red and racoonish, mirroring exactly how his head is feeling.
"Nnnmn." Morning. Walter squeezes his eyes shut and looks tiredly to the adults. He's starving, but the same caution in Matt is the same kind he carries too.
"No labs." Delilah's only requirement, spoken out loud as she stands to compose herself. "No draws." Fully cognizant of what it could trigger in any of them, but especially her extra ward. Brown eyes are hard when they find Ryans', shifted seamlessly from doe to wolf. "Only exams."
She had all night to decide how she's going to move forward.
“I’m fine, but Magistra Mýval needs stitches…” Odette says as she gets down from where she had slept for a little bit. Not nearly as much as she probably should have. Though just the skin that’s visible on her shows some cuts and bruising that’s started to form, but she doesn’t really seem to care so much about herself. It doesn’t look like anything is broken or badly hurt by the way she moves effortlessly, and the cuts were so minor they did not even need bandaging. The bleeding had long stopped. “I don’t like needles, but you can use them on the Magistra!” Though she, like the stuffed pig also in her arms, is made of cloth and stuffing.
Ryans purses his lips and laughs, shaking his head. “I’m no Doc, don’t know what they have planned. But you can trust them all you need. Whatever it is they got planned, I’ll ask that you comply. We’ve got your best interests in mind.”
Pines slowly approaches, looking from Ryans to the others. He’s carrying a small leather bag with wood handles, gingerly approaching Odette with it. Taking a knee, Pines sets the bag down and opens it, revealing a small sewing kit inside. With a gentle smile, he makes a gesture for Magistra Mýval. “Agent Ryans told me your little friend needs some work. My mom taught me how to darn my own socks and I thought, well, patchin’ her up ain’t all that different, is it?”
Delilah can’t help but recognize how gentle Pines’ soul is, even now, so close to the end of the second world war. There’s so much of that soft-spoken old man she came to know in this fresh-faced young man. Perhaps it has something to do with Pines’ ability, that he never forgets, that he never was able to forget who he is at his core.
The other soldiers, however, lack Pines’ gentle nature. Even as the wayward travelers are waking up, the soldiers are breaking down their sleeping area; removing partitions, folding up tables, doing everything they can to force Agent Ryans’ issue into the present-tense.
“We’re also going to need to split you up for the exams, we have plenty of doctors.” Ryans says briskly. “That way we can get these checkups done nice and fast and get you straight on to breakfast. alright?”
There's a little smile that creeps up on Elaine's lips as she sees Pines offer to play medic to the small Magistra. She watches for a moment or two, but the sound of the soldiers breaking things up pulls her back to Ryans' assessment and she looks quickly back over towards him. "Well, it wouldn't make sense for everyone to be waiting on one doctor," she says with a charming smile. "I also imagine it won't take terribly long. I think mostly everyone is just shook up." She nods in Odette's direction. "My daughter and I can go once we've seen to the littlest patient there. She'll feel much better knowing the Magistra is taken care of."
Her gaze darts in Delilah's direction, watching her in careful thought.
Delilah knows she ought to hide whatever else it is she recognizes in this fresh-faced past Martin Pines, yet there is still a familiarity enough to soften her regard to him offering fixes to the broken doll.
Keeping yourself through everything- - it's almost impossible. And yet.
"Absolutely not." Agent Ryans doesn't scare her. Splitting up scares her. "I am going with my boys. And yes, I will put up a fuss." For her part, Dee looks like she means it, arms crossing and all, with Walter looking on as if he is scared for them now. All he knows is that he doesn't push it when she's like this.
"How would you feel if some strange doctor took your kid off to who knows where and did who knows what? No." Shoulders tighten and fall in a defensive twitch. Lilah's tongue runs over her teeth, stifling her language. "If you have plenty of doctors they can take their time. Unless there's some tea party we're going to be late for?" Delilah's brows raise in tandem, tart and expectant, it seems.
As Pines looks very nice and since Auntie Dee seemed to have known him, Odette hands over the Magistra without any issues and smiles up at him, adding nothing else to the conversation right up until Delilah mentions tea parties. “Oh I love tea parties. Can we have a tea party mommy?” The little girl looks up at Elaine, either not understanding the potential danger of this situation, or just— not caring about it that much. But one thing is sure, she probably shouldn’t be left alone with the doctors or these Agents.
Pines looks up past the doll he’s sewing to Delilah. He doesn’t say anything, but the subtle nod of support he gives her is quickly hidden away as he focuses back on his work and Odette.
“This one looks like she’s a real trooper,” Pines says to Odette with a warm smile, nearly done with his work.
Ryans has been quiet and the soldiers with him tense in anticipation. When Ryans ultimately barks out an abrupt laugh and rubs his hand across his forehead. “God, you women. I swear, it’s that time of the month every day.” He smiles, as if that joke was funny or not at all out of line.
“Okay,” Ryans says, waving a hand to the side. “Red 1 and Red 2 here,” he says to the soldiers of Elaine and Delilah, “can do a group test with their kids and the doctors. But him,” he points to Tom, “keep this one separate. For the ladies’ dignity.”
“Great,” Tom mumbles, rubbing a hand down his mouth. “I’m going to get probed by the Men in Black in Roswell.”
“Now,” Ryans calls attention back to himself, “unless you little ladies had any other demands?” His tone indicates it isn’t an invitation. Matthew rankles at it and fixes Ryans with an unwelcome stare.
The small redhead's suggestion that a tea party might be a great thing tugs a small smile from Elaine who casts her gaze in her daughter's direction. "We can't have a tea party right now, 'Dette. After we get this sorted, though, I'll make sure we get to have a wonderful tea party, alright?" With the sweetness of Odette and her interaction with Pines, it's enough to keep Elaine tempered at the bad joke.
"Well, you know us and our feminine sensibilities," she says, an entirely saccharine smile on her features. "But it's very much appreciated that you let us remain with the children. It's so kind." Her smile stays on as she flashes her attention briefly towards Delilah, but it's Tom who has drawn her attention most fully. She's not saying anything to him, but it's clear she's just as worried about him being interrogated alone as she was with Odette.
Delilah looks like she just bit into a lemon, arms crossed and mouth tight around the slip of tongue on her teeth. Elaine knows precisely how to act in the shade of such a comment. Delilah does too, but she is decidedly not in the mood.
A sixth sense has Walter inching a little nearer to Matthew.
"I'd rather have an eternal mood syndrome than my head jammed so far up my own ass that period jokes make me laugh." Rather than go on, Delilah stops when she catches Tom out of the corner of her eye, simmering as much for his sake as her own. Yeah, fine. Okay. Maybe Elaine should take point from here, lest she cause a timeline anomaly by kicking Mark Ryans too hard in the jewels.
“I feel like he just said something very rude, mommy,” Odette says quietly as she looks up at Ryans, perhaps having noticed the other women’s reactions to the comment more than understanding what it actually meant. And Tom’s apprehension makes her look back at him and frown some more before she steps closer to him and holds up the stuffed pig suddenly.
“Doctor Schwein says he will go with you and make sure they treat you well. He is a very smart pig. He’s well trained in all kinds of sciences! And he’s very soft.”
Since Tom has to go alone, he should have a friend with him, if nothing else. He won’t be a very good conversation partner unless Tom has a child’s imagination, though, but— the plush pig is very soft.
Tom stares down at Doctor Schwein, then looks up and around at the soldiers watching him. He purses his lips, slides his tongue across the inside of his cheek, and weighs whether or not turning down the stuffed animal would make a little girl cry. Erring on the side of oh god have I waited too long? Is everyone staring at me?, Tom takes Doctor Schwein by one soft arm and says through his teeth with a nervous smile:
“Thanks.”
A Short Time Later
Exam Room B
The medical facility on base is housed in an aluminum-roofed building that looks like half a tin can laid on its side. The prefab structure is metal-walled and cold, consisting of only a handful of rooms off of a single, claustrophobically narrow hallway. The overhead lighting is bright and stark, casting deep shadows on the tile floor.
Elaine and Odette are divided from Delilah, Walter, and Matthew by a pair of soldiers, brought into exam rooms opposite from one-another in the hall, while Tom is escorted two doors down. Soldiers follow Elaine and Odette into their exam room, which consists of a wheeled cart of medical supplies, two cots, and a wheeled examination table which has padded leather restraints. A curtain that could partition the room is left open, folded against the far wall.
“The doctor will be with you shortly,” the soldier says, leaving Elaine and Odette alone in the exam room.
The medical supplies and examination table are eyed carefully by the older of the redheads as they're left alone in the room, and Elaine looks back towards Odette. "I don't know if your…" She hesitates, unsure of how to phrase things. Children caught up in the midst of time travel is not exactly an easy thing to understand. "If they ask you questions and you aren't sure what to answer, don't be afraid to not say anything, okay? They should just be asking to make sure we aren't hurt, but…"
Better safe than sorry.
“Don’t worry, mommy,” the child says as she looks curiously around the room with big brown eyes that probably saw more than her few years should— after all, she’s seen far more than her few years should ever have seen. Odette understands what her mother isn’t saying, and what she is saying, as well, “There are some things I can only tell to mommies, daddies, and friends of the family— and these people are not them.” While she has been used to being able to talk candidly about what had happened to her, about who her family is and where she came from— she recalls another time when things were taught to her when secrets were kept.
When the memory of her mother had to be locked away, never mentioned. Where the scary things that had happened to her were just not thought or spoken of. “I am Odette. I’m most worried about my friends who will miss me dearly. I hope someone will take care of them. Usagi-hime can’t stand not getting her paws rubbed every few days. And Super M might do something unfortunate. He has a habit of throwing himself into trouble.”
She’s not talking about the stuffed monkey, is she?
Footsteps echo down the hall, hard-soled shoes on concrete, drawing nearer. Soon, a silhouette is visible through the frosted glass window pane in the exam room door. The doctor who emerges from the hallway is a tall, thin man with a long face, balding and wearing wire-framed glasses. It takes a moment for Elaine to click why seeing this man causes her blood pressure to rise, but then…
…not everyone knows Kazimir Volken’s original face.
“Good morning,” Kazimir says in a thick German accent, he is followed in by another doctor neither Elaine nor Odette recognize, a younger man in a matching white coat to Volken. “I am Doctor Volken, this is Doctor Warner.”
“Good morning, ladies,” Doctor Warner says with a gentle smile, setting his clip-board aside. As he does this, Kazimir folds his gloved hands behind his back and looks at Elaine and Odette with an assessing stare.
Doctor Volken. Elaine's heard that name. Kazimir Volken. It's not one she expected to hear, especially given that it was one she was only familiar with in books and a vague mention or two by Magnes. What little she does know is that this is certainly a more dangerous situation than she expected for a medical examination. Even with the tension in the air, she offers a polite smile. Playing along seemed the wisest of moves.
"Good morning, doctors," she replies, glancing over to her daughter for a moment before looking at the two of them. "The good news is I don't believe that the two of us were injured, just a little shaken up and some scratches. Hopefully that will make your job much easier. A clean bill of health is always a good sign."
It’s not the voice, or the face, or even the name that Odette recognizes.
It’s the feeling. There’s a moment when she looks up at the wire-framed eyes that she feels a horrible cold chill run down her neck and her spine. The usually unshakable little girl starts to tremor slightly, pulled back to a moment she doesn’t even really remember.
Blue eyes. Strange words. The girl who had been watching her yelling and trying to hold her, strength-giving out as the fear flooded the room. There were no birds, but Odette had learned not to fear the birds. Even the eyes had stopped being an object of fear. Only this feeling. She shrinks away, suddenly deeper in her chair than before, pulling her knees up against her body as a shield. Part of her regrets giving away Dr. Schwien.
This feeling was what took her from mommy. She closes her eyes and hides her face in the skirt gathered at her knees.
Kazimir sees Odette’s discomfort, his brows knitting at the reaction. “Do not worry fraulein, all is well. You are safe here.” His delivery is measured and practiced, a cold comfort he’d given to others in darker times. They weren’t safe then.
“So, we just need to run a couple of quick tests to make sure you’re both ok after your accident.” Doctor Warner explains, opening a kit on the table he’d laid his clipboard down on. “Doctor Volken will be observing while I take care of everything. Now, where’d—Aha!”
Doctor Warner turns around from his kit not with any sort of medical tool, but rather a paper-wrapped lollipop. He smiles and offers it to Odette. “If it’s okay with your mom, maybe you’d like a little sweet? Though, I’ve gotta admit, you seem sweet enough already.”
Kazimir discreetly rolls his eyes, wordlessly turning his attention to Elaine.
“She can be a little shy sometimes,” Elaine offers as an explanation, though it’s not in an apologetic tone, but a firm statement of fact. The lollipop is eyed, and she flashes a quick smile. “It’s a bit too early in the day for sugar, but I am sure she can save it for later.”
Odette can certainly save it to throw away later.
“If you don’t mind, would you explain the tests as you go? I’ve always found medicine fascinating and would love the opportunity to learn a little more,” she offers Doctor Warner a charming smile, her attention focusing on him and not on Kazimir.
It’s not really the candy that gets Odette to raise her eyes up— it’s that Doctor Volken will only be observing. There’s a skeptical look on her little face, lips pressed together and eyes darting from the piece of candy to the doctor in glasses— then to her mother. The candy is taken, slowly, but not unwrapped and shoved into her mouth immediately as one might expect, just held, almost similar to how someone might hold a pencil in their fingers.
“He’s just observing?” she makes sure that she heard that right, brown eyes flitting toward Volken, even if the way she shifts her body still seems to be trying to pull away from him. “Are you a doctor too?” she asks the other man, now that she turns her eyes on him.
“I am not a physician,” Volken says as an answer. “But I am a doctor.”
“The tests,” Warner says as if to take focus away from Kazimir, “are pretty straightforward. I’m going to look for signs of a concussion first, which will be testing your pupils to see how fast they dilate with a little light—won’t hurt at all, cross my heart.” As he’s saying that, Warner is taking a pocket flashlight out of his coat.
“Then,” Warner continues, “we’re going to draw just a little blood and make sure you aren’t sick, you know, nothing that might spread to the rest of us here at the base. Once we have the all-clear on that, you’ll be able to move around a lot more freely. We had a Rubella outbreak here in Roswell not all that long ago and it just swept through the base, lots of our boys got sick.”
"Oh dear, I bet it must have washed right through," Elaine's tone is steady, a winning smile offered in Warner's direction. "I hope your troops are faring much better now, Doctor." Her eyes go towards Odette in an assessing glance, but she makes no move to offer the girl reassurances at the moment. "Wouldn't want anyone to get sick on our account, but I'm certain you'll find that there's nothing wrong with us."
It takes a bit of strength not to add any intonation to the words, so she covers it with a continued charming smile. Honey over vinegar, after all.
Despite the original show of fear when she had seen Volken, Odette appears to have regained herself for the most part and sticks her arm out to the Warner in a sign that she’s ready for the blood draw part. The small arm has some scrapes on it, and but has a good base of a tan of someone who spends a good deal of time outside in the sun, but doesn’t get burned despite the fairness of her skin. She used the sunblock when she was told to, after all, cause her family had taken good care of her in Providence. Even when most of them suffered farmer tans. She still had quite a few freckles and scars from childhood, though.
Even as she holds out her arm, though, she keeps her dark eyes on Volken, and addresses him again, “What kind of doctor are you then?” It could be a curiosity question, but the girl, despite her young age, sounds very skeptical.
Kazimir settles a look down at Odette, his chin up and blue-eyed gaze directed just above the bottom arc of his wire-framed rims. “You are a very curious little girl, aren’t you?” He asks with a squint. There is some, faint, amusement in his eyes nevertheless.
In the interim, Doctor Warner checks Elaine’s pupils and gently touches her head, searching for signs of concussion. When he sets the light down, he switches for a cotton swab and a glass bottle of clear liquid that stinks of rubbing alcohol. Doctor Warner swabs the inside of Elaine’s arm, prepping her for a blood draw.
“I am a student of human evolution,” Kazimir says, watching Doctor Warner, “a doctor of eugenics. Evolutionary science.” He adds, turning his attention back to Odette. He looks for understanding, now more curious for the girl than before.
There’s no way she’s sure of to guarantee an excuse out of the blood draw, so Elaine shifts her attention fully to Kazimir and just how much his gaze is on her daughter. She grits her teeth, though it may be more from the blood draw equally as much as her displeasure from the attention on Odette.
“Evolution. Hm, interesting,” Elaine replies, her gaze snapping to Odette to assess just what she’s reacting to in all of this—while she has memories of Odette’s birth mother, she hasn’t entirely discovered just what the girl knows about some of these more sensitive situations.
“Like how I got my hair and eye color,” Odette says quietly, even if she’s still giving Volken a long look that shows she’s just being polite by saying she understands a child’s level of what genetics was, consistent with what they probably would have taught her in school at least. Her eyes were brown, just like her mother’s. Her hair was also very similar. She just looked like her mother— A small, young, version with the baby fat still attached.
Even if her eyes didn’t seem to be as young as they probably should be. Suddenly she looks down and away, blinking as if she got something in her eyes, or maybe it was that chill running down her back again. Then she adds more quietly, almost to herself, “Magistra Mýval always told me that hard work was more important than who your family is or where you come from.”
“Did she now?” Kazimir says with one brow raised, earnestly entertaining the curiosity of a child. “There was a saying where I am from, too.” He admits with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Work will set you free.”
Meanwhile
Exam Room C
Rubbing his arm, Tom wrinkles his nose and looks at the syringe of blood the nurse had taken from him. “You sure you don’t have a bigger needle you could’ve stuck me with?”
The nurse looks at Tom, then glances up and down at him and laughs. “Honey, that was the small one.” She says with a crooked smile. “You wait here, Doctor Warner and Doctor Volken will be around to give an inspection shortly.”
Tom nods, still rubbing at his arm, then does a double-take and looks up at the nurse. “Sorry, wait. Doctor who?”
Meanwhile
Exam Room D
Matthew looks unwell. Sitting on a metal folding chair in the corner of the exam room, he has his hands laced together in his lap but his right leg is jittering. Delilah’s seen the look before in her friends, post-traumatic stress. A hospital or lab environment is setting him off and he’s withdrawing into himself, a bundle of nerves that can’t hear the world around him as a defense mechanism.
The interim between arrival and the wait has allowed Delilah's own nerves to settle somewhat from the tornado they were. Still, there's an electricity to her presence. She has sat down beside Matthew, though refraining from contact at first; perhaps she just isn't sure where he stands with such a thing. Nonetheless, Dee hopes that her nearness can do something for him. It is difficult to discern some things, but she has tried her best to stay open with Robyn about his emotions.
Normally, Walter would also be camped out beside his mother. Normally. This time, he has somehow managed to quietly detach himself so that he can snoop openly around the exam room. He's not exactly looking for anything, but he could be. It is ultimately an unfamiliar setting, people, situation- - and as he is getting older, the more the mild-mannered boy grows out of being just that. Taking after his parents in even more fashion.
After they've been waiting for a time, Delilah does decide to lift a hand and rub her palm over Matt's back, gesture wordless as she watches her son rifle around peeking in drawers.
Matthew leans subtly against Delilah’s hand, the smallest recognition of her presence but also his trust in it. It isn’t long before footsteps come down the hall and the exam room door opens. Doctor Warner is the first to come in, smiling brightly and offering a little wave.
“Hey there,” Doctor Warner says to Walter, catching him snooping. There’s no frustration in his tone, just amusement. “Kids can be so curious, can’t they?” Warner asks with a wink to Delilah. But he might as well not exist when the lanky specter of death steps through the doorway behind him.
Kazimir Volken is pulled straight from the pages of Wolves of Valhalla. It is not the round-faced grandfatherly host of Richard Santiago, but the long-faced bespectacled German from the book’s earliest pages.
“I’m Doctor Warner and this is Doctor Volken, we’re here to do a little check up.” Doctor Warner says with an easy smile. “You must be Delilah, now which one of these is Matthew and which one is Walter?”
Walter closes the current drawer upon being spotted, and his mother knows when he is being oblivious on purpose. He scrubs his hair back and shrugs in response to Doctor Warner, still looking at him when Delilah's expression sinks and pales visibly. Her mouth flatlines.
"Worried about us when you've got a Nazi here, okay sure that tracks." But it's not her with the biting this time. It's Walter, arms crossed and blue eyes hard. To her credit, Delilah's reactivity has something to focus on that isn't Volken; both brows shoot up and she reluctantly edges onto her feet to grab her son by the arm and direct him physically into the seat she has just vacated. A finger raises when she leans in to him, a hiss of shush to that pugnacious little face of his.
Something about the turn in attitude is alarming, and yet, she can't be too bothered. This is stressful, after all.
Raising back up, Dee gives Warner and the good doctor Volken a semi-sweet smile, only bordering apologetic. "Sorry about that…you know how boys are." Perhaps taking some notes now from Elaine, wherever she may be. "Matt," A small gesture, "Walter." A second. The subtle agreement with her son comes out in her lingering looks over the doctors, unspoken.
Doctor Warner looks aghast and looks directly at Kazimir when that accusation is made. He knows.
Kazimir, however, narrows his eyes and tilts his head to the side. He is no longer interested in Delilah, but wholly focused on Walter. “What an interesting boy,” Kazimir notes as he steps past Doctor Warner. “Very well-educated.” He flicks a look over to Delilah, then back to Walter. “Tell me, Valter,” his accent shows through more, “where did you hear such a fantastic story?”
Doctor Warner looks lost, glancing at Delilah as if she has some idea how to handle this situation.
"From m- -" Walter hesitates, as kids do, and squares his crossed arms and shoulders against the back of his seat. Freckles rankle with his nose, and Delilah's stance changes subtly, a shift back so that she is as much in Volken's sights as her boys are.
"Hey." Delilah isn't being a force of presence yet, but she is certainly willing to pull attention back to herself with a quiet warning.
"We have friends that fought in the war." Arms still crossed, the little redheaded boy gives this as his answer, supplemented by, "My dad did too."
Kazimir angles a look up from Walter to Delilah, then back to the boy. He’s silent for a moment, then murmurs an, “Of course.” His pale eyes then track over to where Matthew sits, and finally back to Doctor Warner.
“You may handle these, Doctor Warner. I am going to speak to the other one.” Kazimir insists, leaving Doctor Warner nodding a little awkwardly before looking back to Delilah and the kids. Kazimir turns for the exam room door, while Doctor Warner tries to bring everything back to the medical procedures.
“So,” Warner says with a nervous smile, “we just need to do a little checkup to make sure you all don’t have a concussion, and then draw some blood.”
Delilah feels herself breathe in when Volken backs off from Walter, jaw squared as she watches him turn away. She reluctantly takes her eyes off of him to look to Warner, expression calm but politely apologetic. Walter, on the other hand, squares his jaw just like her and pointedly glowers at Volken's back until he is gone.
Chances are that he's running on adrenaline now. He can be mortified and-or exhausted by himself after this is over. In the seat he's taken from Dee, he leans over to bump his shoulder to Matthew's. It isn't the motherly petting, no, but it's the same intent, tinted protective.
"Right…" Dark eyes give the door one more look before Delilah smoothes her hair and moves on. "Right. Why the blood draw?" She looks from Warner to Matthew, and back again, hoping to draw the former's attention to the latter's current state of dissociation. He probably doesn't do well with needles, she estimates.
“Communicable diseases,” Warner says. “We had an outbreak of of Rubella on the base a while back, and the last thing we need is some other nasty bug slipping in.” He says with an awkward smile, watching the door when it shuts. He looks back to Walter, offering him a little grimace, then turns his attention back to Delilah.
“Good eye on recognizing Doctor Volken, he’s one of those fellas who surrendered to the Allies at the end of the war.” Warner says, retrieving a clean syringe from a small case on a nearby counter. “I didn’t think he was that well-known, but I served in a different part of Germany at the time.”
Served. Germany.
“Trying to play down the accent, though.” Warner says with a sad smile. “You know, for my own well-being. Not a lot of folks happy to hear a Kraut.”
Rubella. No vaccine for that yet, is there? Delilah does her best with the context she has for the state of the world- - as she is not at all a historian by nature. Neither is Walter, but… She looks to the boys once more before giving Warner a drier sort of smile.
"And what about seeing one working on a government base?" Dee is the one this time to interject, far more mild- - and curious, actually- - about how this one got here. Stakes were a lot of ways in Europe, and not every story was condemnation. Same in her own war. Some people just wanted to … not die.
"Volken is …distinctive, I guess." Deciding it best to let it all begin with her, the redhead pulls up a chair, sighing through her nose as she takes shotgun and palms a tourniquet. The faster this happens, the faster it's done- - so she's helping expedite things. "I've done this before. Let's get this over with, hn?"
“Civilians don’t usually see me,” Warner says with a hesitant smile, daubing at the bend of Delilah’s elbow with a alcohol-wet cotton swab before sticking her with the syringe. “This place is actually pretty top secret, you know, government secrets and all that. We’re only here temporarily, though.” He starts to just ramble, finding talking eases his nerves. “Eventually they’re moving us to a proper lab, where we can—”
Warner realizes just how far he’s rambling and stops, finishing the draw and withdrawing the syringe. He’s quick to press gauze into the crook of Delilah’s elbow and then bind it in place with medical tape. He’s done this before, too.
“Just the little troopers now,” Warner says with a nod to the boys.
Though the instruments are of course less sleek, the practice of a blood draw is still simple. Delilah is able to put Warner under her personal telescope for as long as it takes, and even then she lets her gaze linger. Nothing without her watchful eye.
"A proper lab?" Dark eyes momentarily leave the doctor to the boys, returning with a small huff of a laugh. Nervous, yet curious all the same. Maybe she can keep him talking. In the meantime, she rises to her feet and moves over to Matthew; taking a crouch in front of him, Delilah's expression is one of familiar maternal concern. Her hand rests on the boy's knee, a small weight in addition to her presence to pull him back.
"I know this must be hard for you," Delilah is hushed, and Walter looks on with a small concern of his own- - more for his bro than anything. "…but we have to cooperate. Just for now, 'til we figure something out. We'll get home." She looks askance, briefly meeting Walter's eyes, wondering if she can really promise this.
Warner smiles, thinly. His nervousness makes the face a bit tighter than it should be. “I’ve already said too much,” he admits in a hushed tone of voice, prepping his second syringe with a look to Walter.
“Okay, now, let’s roll up that sleeve.”
Some Time Later
Walker Air Force Base
Roswell, New Mexico
10:19 am
Sore arms all around, but no worse for wear.
“He’s a ghost Nazi!”
Except for maybe Tom.
“He’s literally a Nazi like— like a Capital-N Nazi!” Tom’s exasperated whisper-hissing reaches a crescendo as he paces around the communal living space in the hangar. He’s been ranting about Kazimir Volken for close to five straight minutes.
“We have to get out of here.” Tom says with a quaver in his voice. “We—we’ve gotta—we’ve gotta just get out of here, Great Escape style. We’ll steal a Jeep and—and we’ll just go.” He paces back and forth, running his hands through his hair.
“A Nazi ghost stole my blood.” Tom whispers in a high-pitched whine. “I sound like a River Styx episode,” he mumbles.
“If he were a ghost, he couldn’t really hurt us,” Odette says very quietly, perhaps not making the situation at all better by the simple statement. She has reclaimed her stuffed pig and he sits quietly in her lap, staring out with beady eyes as she continues, just as softly, “His ideas are morally wrong and scientifically dated. He may not live long enough to learn that, but others will.” That would have to be enough. She didn’t sound scared, but the way she hugged the pig and sat close to her mother gave her emotions away a little more. She was more scared than she had been before.
She was still a brave little girl, though. She looks up at her mom as if wondering what her opinion on getting out happened to be.
"Do not mention that bloody thing, please." Delilah focuses not on 'Ghost Nazi' but 'River Styx' when she looks up to where Tom keeps his pace. Her hands are busied with a borrowed newspaper, several days old, or so it was told to her; she folds it back up and gently tosses it onto a cot. "It's bad enough that people still watch it. I didn't even get my own character- - "
Tension aside, Dee has to laugh, harried and tired, voice softened by a long night and morning. She moves to Tom to physically still him, hands on his arms. This guy, it's like he's running on diner coffee.
"I don't think grand theft auto in a military installation is our best bet." Though she offers no immediate alternative. "At least… not…yet. We'll need help. Maybe there's someone we can bend…"
Curled up on a cot, Walter has his back to the adults and knees to his chest, hiding under a fringe of red hair while he listens.
"He might be a ghost when we left, but he's certainly not here. I know some history but I absolutely have no idea how early SLC tests were created… and certainly not publicly if they are," Elaine's eyes scan the room, but her hand rests itself on the top of Odette's head, smoothing the girl's hair. "Any great escape is something we are going to need to do quietly. Dee's right, we need to see if we can get help."
She lets out a slow breath. "Tom, I need you to be cool. The more you panic the more likely it is" She pauses. What was it he, Walter, and Matthew had been discussing on the bus? "It's a stealth game. Blend in, act natural, sneak when you can but play it safeyou've only got one life left. You can't waste it in an act where you could get shot."
“One life, right.” Tom says with a feigned composure that is just whispered exasperation. “It’s Dark Souls meets X-Files. Awesome. Awesome.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “Awesome.”
It’s quiet in the hangar, but it’s easy to see how it will change when these living spaces fill in. There’s a tremor of anxiety, all things considered, as the pieces of this particular puzzle continue falling into place. A military research base in Roswell New Mexico in the 1940s, Kazimir Volken, all these beds. It feels uncomfortably like a precursor to the events that birthed the Company in the 1960s. It feels too close to Coyote Sands.
The lights in the ceiling flicker. “What happens if we die in the past?” Matthew asks, looking down at the floor. He is remarkably sullen, eyes unfocused, worriedly knitting his brow together. “Do we—where do we go?”
Matthew’s bleak question elicits a look from Tom. Not of panic, but of sympathy. He frowns, shoulders relaxing a little. “Hey,” he says, taking a step over to Matthew. “Hey, it’s not gonna come to that, okay? We’re not—” Tom looks back at Delilah and Elaine. “We’re not gonna die here, okay?”
Though his words are reassuring, the look he gives Delilah and Elaine silently wonders: Are we?
“That sounds like hide and seek, where you’re not really allowed to hide,” Odette says with a frown down at the stuffed pig, as if he could fix the whole thing if he would just tell her what to do. But the pig doesn’t have all the answers, and the flickering lights cause her to draw her feet up onto the cot, getting closer to a ball than before. It’s a scary thought, to think about actually dying.
Her mommy had died. But who she had been had become her mommy as well. That had further complicated her view of death. There had been people in Providence who had died, though. And while they hadn’t had what her mommy had gotten, she wanted to think they went somewhere. “We’re all energy. Energy doesn’t disappear— it just changes,” the little girl says, very quietly.
Delilah rakes her fingers through her hair, mouth downturned as she watches Tom make an attempt at calming someone else rather than himself. Maybe that will help him anyway, she hopes. Before she has the opportunity to make her own reassurances, it's Walter that sits up out of his curled shape, as if prodded by a current hanging off of Matthew and Tom's exchange. He looks over to Odette for a long moment before his gaze moves back to Matthew.
"It doesn't… work like that…" Though his choice of words is suspect, it sounds better than 'we disappear'. The redheaded boy stops to scrub the back of his hand against his nose, eyes avoidant. Delilah knows guilt in him when she sees it, and in this context it prompts a coil of pain and anxiety in her stomach, phantom at worst. She crosses to Matt's side and crouches there again much like she had in the exam room.
"It won't come to that." Still, Delilah can't promise verbally- - so instead, she knits her brow and squares up to her own fear. A smile moves across her lips, just for the older boy. "I haven't done bad by you yet, have I? We got this." We.
A comforting arm is drawn around Odette as Elaine pulls the small redhead in closer to make sure she knows that her mother is there. "It's hide and seek of sorts, yes," she agrees softly. Death, though, is not a topic she's willing to jump into at this point. Not with how complicated a discussion it would be. Her eyes go to Delilah to make sure she's got enough reassurance to go around for the boys, and then she looks back to Tom.
"You're right. We're not just going to survive, we're going to find our way out of here, maybe tell someone who to bet on for a World Series or something, and get our way back to where we came from."
Delilah was right. It was a we.
Several Hours Later
Hangar 3
Walker Air Force Base
Roswell, New Mexico
Markus Ryans walks through the open doors of the hangar with a briskness in his stride. The sun is setting as his back as he stomps his way across the floor, past engineers and armed guards. He plucks the cigarette from his mouth and flicks it to his side, then shouts ahead. “Frady!”
Up ahead, Howard Frady stands with his back to some sort of machine covered in a white drop cloth. Ladders arranged around it are placed near tall standing lamps being set up to illuminate the covered object. Frady pulls off his headphones, motioning back to the machine with some sort of microphone in his other hand.
“It’s not radioactive,” Frady says with a rise of his brows. “I’m starting to think our little green men we have in the medical bay know something about this,” he says with a wag of the microphone at the object.
Ryans snorts and waves a dismissive hand at the sheet covered object. “Fuck that hunk of metal.” He says. “We’ve got bigger shit.”
Frady glances back at the object and then closes in on Ryans. “How big?”
Ryans pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it over to Frady, who scans the display with thoughtful confusion. “The fuck?” He says with a wide-eyed look at Ryans. “It’s a match?”
“Yep.” Ryans says, snatching the paper back. “Same thing Doctor Volken said to look for. Every single one of them. Specials.” He slides his tongue across the inside of his teeth. “This wasn’t an accident, Frady. Some unattended women, some kids, and that goon? This is infiltration.”
Frady opens his mouth to protest, but Ryans pinches his fingers in the air and gives Frady a look. “Zip it. C’mon, boss wants to talk to us about how to separate them.” Sighing, Frady nods and follows Ryans as he turns on his heels to leave.
“You know what they say,” Ryans says with a lopsided smile. “Divide and conquer, right?”
Frady smiles a half-hearted smile and looks back over his shoulder at the object covered in the drop-cloth. He can’t help but feel there’s a connection Ryans and the others are overlooking. Because though the material of the object is damaged nearly beyond recognition, it’s the word stenciled across it in barely legible paint that has been haunting him.
DAWN.