Participants:
| Scene Title | Every Single One of Us |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Here come the man with the look in his eye / Fed on nothing but full of pride / Look at them go, look at them kick / Makes you wonder how the other half live |
| Date | August 27, 2019 |
Squinting against the midday sun, Adam Monroe stares up into the sky to watch the shadow of a massive aircraft eclipse the sun.
A powerful downdraft kicks up small debris from the concrete of the airfield, and as the behemoth of a quad-rotor helicopter touches down for a landing, Adam can feel a momentary chill run through him. Paramilitary soldiers dressed in grays and blacks run about the tarmac, clearing the way as cargo vehicles move into position along with a pair of spider-like tanks on wheeled legs, rumbling into a line awaiting the opening of the bay doors.
“Sir,” a man in body armor says as he approaches Adam, a digital tablet tucked under one arm, “we should have all of the hardware moved by 0:200 hours, what do you want us to do with the cargo already on board, there were no instructions given to the air crew.” Adam glances at the officer, then watches as the cargo bay doors slowly open, a single metallic container on wheels is brought down the ramp by aircraft crew.
“Bring it inside.”
One Year Earlier
Praxis Ziggurat
Praxia, California Dead Zone
March 19th
2018
“He took off my fucking arm!”
Erica Kravid’s voice rings off the glass walls of Adam’s office. The shutters around the pinnacle suite in the ziggurat are halfway down, leaving long horizontal lines of evening sunlight burning gold across the floor. Adam, standing behind his desk, cradles the bridge of his nose between forefingers and thumb. “You’ve said as much,” he sighs, exhausted with the day and the conversation. Nevertheless, he turns to look over his shoulder at Erica.
“Look, Pete is an indispensable figure at the moment. An indispensable asshole. Doctor Allen is comparable, but she can’t affect the rapidity of… of…” Adam searches for the word, failing to find it. “Whatever Cong said, about cell expansion. I need the remainder of these bodies finished in a month.” Something about the way Adam’s right eye twitches when he says that elicits a pause from Erica and an end to her warpath. With a mercurial grace she takes a step toward the desk, eyes narrowed and posture pitched forward; wanting to inquire closer but not being brave enough to.
“You’re already experiencing nerve— ” Kravid starts to say, but Adam cuts her off.
“A month, Erica. Then a fully functional Gemini before the end of the year. We need to be prepared.” Adam looks down to his chair, nearly sitting but then second-guessing himself and continuing to stand after a brief dip. Erica notices the hesitation, notices that she’s rattled him with her observation. Smoothing down the sides of her skirt she disengages from that argument.
“He threatened my daughter, Adam. As soon as we’re done with him…” Kravid trails off, and this time Adam finishes her sentence for her.
“…he’s as good as dead.”
One Year Later
Praxis Ziggurat
Praxia, California Dead Zone
August 27th
2019
Under fluorescent lights a matte metal case looks dull and lifeless. The concrete walls of a subterranean research lab are bare save for where studs of steel bracket to a mesh of hexagonal metal framework. Save for a set of standing medical lamps the only occupants of the room are Adam Monroe and Erica Kravid, each standing on opposite sides of the long, wheeled metal case.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Kravid asks, one of her brows raised. Adam’s expression is a sorrowful and sullen one. In his right hand he holds a loaded pistol, tapping the barrel against his thigh unconsciously. Kravid glances down at the gun, then back up to Adam in the awkward silence. It feels as though he’s delaying his answer, even though he already knows it.
Rather than say anything, Adam reaches down to the case with his other hand and keys in a seven-digit access code on the touch-screen keypad. With a click of a confirmation button, the case emits a pressurized hiss and expels a heavy, cold fog from a now split seam onto the floor. Kravid takes a half step back, the fog swirling around her ankles as she does, eyes tracking the eddies and currents before she looks back up to Adam.
“Would you have killed her yourself?” Adam asks of Kravid. The question drains some of the color from her face. She draws in a breath, finding her balance after the sucker-punch of that inquiry.
“Probably,” is Kravid’s candid answer. “Our split duties at Sunstone were always out of necessity rather than preference, and we both know that her allegiance wasn’t ever truly with you or your cause.” It isn’t clear whether Adam is listening to her, his eyes are focused down on the dark gap of the seam in the container, to the waves of cold air wafting out and tumbling in foggy ribbons to the concrete below.
Kravid swallows, audible in the silence between them, then looks down to the case. “She had her chance, mine was stolen from me by happenstance. She failed as a mother, as a scientist, and it cost her everything. I can’t say I’m… disappointed by how things went down. But I’m not exactly happy for it either. You can’t help but…” she looks up to Adam, “want to root for yourself. You know?”
Adam nods, slowly.
He knows.
One Year Earlier
Praxis Ziggurat
Praxia, California Dead Zone
March 19th
2018
“Isn’t this a little obvious?”
A westerly-facing office in the middle levels of the Praxis Ziggurat provides a panoramic view of what was once the San Francisco hills and the Golden Gate Bridge from across the bay. Seated in a white leather office chair and smoking a thin cigarette, Erica Kravid turns her attention to the gray-haired man standing with his back to her by the window.
“Obvious?” Claudius Kellar’s voice ticks up at the end, joined by a low bubble of laughter as he turns and looks back at Kravid. “Of course, but I helped design this place, Erica. It’s a fortress of paranoid delusions. Shielded against teleportation and phasing, surrounded in a faraday cage preventing unauthorized wireless telecommunications access, and I have a keen eye for knowing when and where I’m being eavesdropped on.”
Kravid grows quiet, taking a drag off of her cigarette as she halfway lids her eyes and stares across the empty surface of Kellar’s desk. “Just like Cesar,” she muses, to which Kellar laughs and shakes his head.
“We’re hardly the Senate,” he rebukes, walking back to his desk, “because this isn’t a democracy.” As Kellar settles down to sit at his desk, he turns yellow eyes over to Kravid. “No coup is.”
She winces, visibly, at that word. “Don’t call it that,” she insists with a husky exhalation of smoke out her nose.
“Hostile takeover?” Kellar amends, brows raised and tone sarcastic. “Paint it whatever color you like, it’ll be red underneath. Adam is already on his way out, he just doesn’t realize it yet. His little stunt with Yamagato that he’s planning is going to turn everyone against him. Nothing riles up the veterans like a little collateral damage to civilians, regardless of the intention.”
Kravid exhales a sigh through her nose. “What if he finds out?” She asks, to which Kellar looks up at her with a pointed stare.
“I have plans for that.”
One Year Later
Praxis Ziggurat
Praxia, California Dead Zone
August 27th
2019
Adam eventually reaches down to the case, curling his fingers around a recessed handle on the side. Hydraulics aid in his opening of the coffin-like lid, and the old ACTS unit hisses and groans in protest as the lid comes all the way up. A bundle of clear tubes spluttering with fluids hangs from a rig in the lid, coiled all throughout the padded interior of the containment device.
Kravid’s eyes slowly widen as she takes in the pallid frame of the figure laying in the case. Gray skin and white hair, sunken eyes look cadaverous, but stare up nonetheless with unseeing blue. Adam sniffs the air, sour-sweet, and aims the barrel of his handgun down at the figure’s head. He hesitates and in that moment Kravid slowly edges closer.
“It’s mercy,” Kravid suggests, nodding slowly. “It’s just meat. Old meat, but it isn’t distinctly more you than any of the other vessels are now. Your consciousness lives on in Hydra, you can trust in that now. Let this one rest. He’s done his job.” Adam looks up to Kravid, drawing in a slow breath and then exhaling it through his nose as his finger dances across the curve of the trigger.
“When we first talked,” Adam says in a hushed voice, “and you told me you came from another world, I thought you were lying. We barely knew each other, indirectly, through the medium of time. But I came to understand that living in Arthur’s world changed your perspective, changed the way you raised your daughter, motivated you after she passed away.”
Kravid falls silent, listening to Adam with a tension in her jaw. For a moment she looks down at the other, ancient and slowly dying Adam gradually waking up inside the ACTS container, then flicks her attention back up to his more vivacious clone.
“I understood why you wanted to split shifts at Sunstone with this world’s Erica. To see her — Taylor. It felt noble. Honest. A mother’s life.” Sliding his tongue across his teeth, Adam squares the barrel between his dying self’s eyes. “Then I saw you for who you truly were.”
A single gunshot echoes in the concrete room. Erica gasps, mouth agape as Adam pulls the trigger.
Blood blossoms on her abdomen and her legs give out. Quickly, Kravid collapses onto her backside as Adam quickly rounds the foot of the ACTS container.
“You’re an opportunist.” Adam hisses, training the pistol down on Erica. “You’re the mole. I traced the communications to Nakamura, you’ve been feeding her intelligence for how long?” Erica’s expression becomes one of stone, her jaw tight in spite of the searing pain and the growing fear from the lack of feeling in her legs. Kravid’s gaze stays locked on Adam’s.
“You won’t get anything out of me,” Erica says smugly, “you’d just as soon ki— ”
The back of her head erupts from a second gunshot, spraying brain and bone across the floor as she slumps down onto her side. Adam lowers his pistol, exhaling a ragged sigh through his nose. “I don’t need you to talk.” He has other ways of interrogating the past.
Turning his attention to the ACTS container, Adam sucks in a sharp breath through his nose. “You were right,” he says down to himself.
“Cheers.”