Extraction Day

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elliot_icon.gif wright_icon.gif

Scene Title Extraction Day
Synopsis Elliot looks inward on the ten year anniversary of the day his life was irrevocably altered.
Date May 16, 2021

With a few months of practice, Elliot has become comfortable swimming. There’s a sort of meditation to it, getting lost in the repetition. He can’t exactly match Wright’s stroke, so now they perform their laps in parallel lanes without sharing. Originally they stayed in each other’s senses, feeling out variations and making small corrections without needing to get out of the pool to talk about it.

Swimming itself isn’t a worry at this point, he doubts he’ll be spending too long in the ocean after dropping into it from a hole in reality. Endurance training is now the point. He’ll definitely need to travel three thousand miles on land, possibly without reliable transportation. Possibly swiftly, pursued. He doesn’t envision a leisurely pace at any point on the trip.

Despite his focus on the task, life is too unstable to keep thoughts from occasionally intruding. He’s leaving for a parallel timeline. Rue has been on assignment for a month and he doesn’t think he’ll get to see her again before he’s gone, possibly forever.

Today is no exception, and perhaps the worst day for little intrusive thoughts yet. Today is the ten-year anniversary of the day that Elliot was not extracted from his infiltration of the Commonwealth Institute Arcology.


Elmhurst Metropolitan Pool

May 16th, 2021

7:30 PM


He doesn’t really look around on the brief moments his head is above water. The place is all but empty, a family cleaning up, a man they see exercising here regularly but rarely talk to. Doug? Dennis? He focuses on the floor of the pool, trying to only take in enough information to alert him to the oncoming wall before kicking off again in the opposite direction.

Ten years. A decade irrevocably altered by his decision to follow up on that one thing out of place. To go where he knew his fabricated clearance wouldn’t allow him. He remembers that walk without sound, as if the momentous importance of it needed to feel even eerier. The place without labels. Imaginary numbers. No, additive identities. Intrusive thoughts. Zeroes.

Elliot is sitti—ne in FBI inter—oom 0000.—afraid. Head resting on the table, he knows Wright is stand—side of the room’s two-way mirror. Watching—help. Writing in fingerprint—blood on the floor word—

He shakes his head, eyes losing their target on the floor. That’s one of many memories now a victim of his ordeal within the Ark, as well as his attempts at clear recollection after escaping the Ark and then escaping Pollepel Island. A loose collection of imperfect thoughts, the remembrance of which is experienced like a sudden electric arc of regret directly into the nervous system.

Not a memory rabbit hole he really wants to go down today. Focus on the floor. Focus on the feeling of the cool water arou—sweeps all of the photo—to the floor like a hurricane, now lapping at the table's edges and so cold—

He misses a breath, should have brought his head above water on that crawl. God damn it, he thinks. He can breathe on the nex—Wri—lone in polic—rogation Room 0.1—knows Wright is standing on the oth—two-way mirro—aiting for the confession—fog on the glass words she can’t read. Remembering it feels like his ears are ringing.

He hits the wall and fumbles the reversal but claws his way through it, finally catching that breath, taking a couple extra over the course of the next few strokes. Here and now. Tries to—alone in the 0bservation Room. His terror—replaced with fatigue—esting on the table, he knows Tala is stan—e other side of the room’s two—Nearly through. Knocking to let—she’s still there, she understands what’s about—oesn’t blame him.

That was, he thinks, but he doesn’t know what it was, he can’t remember even getting close to that memory in the last ten years. Where the fuck did that come from? It doesn’t carry with it layer after layer of emotions imprinted through attempts at recollection.

His form is sloppy and he’s anxious, but no amount of focusing is keeping his eyes on the floor. Wright, feeling his frustration, joins his perspective, feels how off his movements are in the water. Pings at him to do the same with her, to pull him ba—


The Commonwealth Arcology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 16th, 2011
7:30 PM


Elliot is sitting alone in an interrogation room somewhere inside the Commonwealth Institute Arcology. He is terrified, unable to speak. Head resting on the table, he knows someone is standing on the other side of the room’s two-way mirror. Watching. Deciding his fate. Coming to the conclusion that they’re better off disposing of him.

The door unlocks with an electronic beep and the clack of an electromagnetic bolt. He thinks about the ways he could get around the lock if he had his kit with him. If his hands weren’t cuffed to this table. If he wasn’t in a blind panic. If he wasn’t just another powerless human. If he was special.

What can he say that will let him be uncuffed and released, without giving away the Ferrymen mole in the Ark? He knows he can say nothing even if he wants to. Now, after so much progress, he can’t get words to form. That rock is in his throat again. That bend in his mind where words slip past him again and again.

A man takes a seat at the table between him and the mirror, he has no face. “Who are you?” he asks without preamble.

He has no face.

He has no face

He has no face.

ask him why he has no face

then comes the—clatter of the cogs in the massive door—and then the—rattle of the tools on the tray of the rolling table—and then the—little pinch—throat raw from the tube—tears cloud his vision—and the—slam of the coffin—click of the lock—hiss of the seal—and then he’s drifting off to sleep, thinking, I was never ready for this, why did I tell them I could do this—then nothing but the black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black b1ack black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black bl2ck black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black blac3 scintillating black


Elliot comes back to the here and now at the bottom of the pool, sitting with his knees to his chest and his hands over his ears. Wright kneels in the water in front of him, her hands over his, her head to his. She gives the sides of his hands a light squeeze, directs him back up. How long has it been since he took a breath?

They emerge from the water, standing. Wright wipes the water from her eyes and hair, then does the same for Elliot. When her hands reach the back of his head she pulls him forward, returning to the anchor of their foreheads touching. He’s breathing raggedly to make it up, getting a grip on the convulsions not caused by the cool water.

“Coalesce,” Wright says quietly, peeling his hands away from his ears just enough for him to hear. Exactly as far as he’s comfortable having them moved and only by her. Elliot is trying desperately not to cry in front of the room’s other occupants. Wright has him in a bear hug, he thinks she’s whispering Big breath, to him. The Ferry operative who brought Wright to the Brick House silently gets Elliot’s charge—another young teen bound for Canada—to leave them alone in the room. It’s Wright, he thinks, confused and so relieved as to feel almost heartbroken. He finally brings his attention to her alone.

”I’m here,” she’s saying, “I’ve got you. Time to take that Big Breath In.” So he does, keying himself to the relief of that moment. The long breath in and out. He’s not alone. So much less alone even than he felt at that moment in the summer of 2009. Two kids who couldn’t comprehend the level of intimacy they share now.

“Get a room, you two,” calls the man who they see here now and then.

Wright seethes, lurches from her focused calm, the cultivation of quiet for Elliot, and lashes out the way she shouldn’t anymore. “Don’t ever fucking speak to me again,” she snaps, beaming a glare of contempt straight through to the man’s soul, “Nod if you understand me.” The Man With a D Name realizes how badly he misread the situation, grimaces. Holds out his palms in the universal sign for I’m not armed.

The anger roils in Elliot for a moment as well, though he’s quick to spot it and let it pass. He focuses on his breathing, on not going any further into that spiral. “Ten fucking years,” he croaks, finally taking his hands away from his ears. He’s staying away from the memory but still feels the reverberation of the ACTS door slamming closed in his bones.

“Cottage,” Wright says. The townhouse still smells of fresh paint, cardboard, grilled pizza. Marthe glances over and smiles warmly from the living room, trapped beneath the sleeping Tiny Baby Ames. Wright smiles back, head relaxed against Elliot’s shoulder, arm wrapped loosely around his waist. Lethargic and content where they slump against the wall beside the now crackling fireplace.

Elliot nods, and they make their way out of the pool. He focuses on getting home more than he registers the time they’re apart in the gendered locker rooms. Isn’t sure if D Name tried to apologize while he was in there. Says, “Nightingale,” to Wright. “Can you stay?” Elliot asks, not wanting to spend another night alone in the Bunker. Meaning Can you spend the night even though you’re married; too lonely not to be a little selfish.

Wright is already headed for the exit in the silence of the open space. She draws his attention to a memory of texting Marthe from the empty locker room to say she’s spending the night and heading straight to work in the morning. Of getting a response that seemed honest in its understanding. Of a video of Ames, asleep and hanging over the arm of the couch on a slow descent to the floor ending in a rude awakening. Wright has plenty of clothing still stored in the closet and dresser in her and Marthe’s old room.

“Jesus,” she says in the wafting smoke outside the building, talking where there’s no indexed language otherwise. “Not looking forward to finding out if all of those memories are getting a ten year anniversary screening.”

“Only the finest, curated selection of shattered nightmare-memories from the worst months on record in good ol’ Boston,” Elliot says cheerfully, feeling more of a helpless laugh than any real dread. He doesn’t want to talk about how he’ll probably already be trapped in another timeline if it does happen, without access to Wright’s care and attention, the physical closeness, to pull him out of them.

At least in the next few months there would be some memories of time spent with the others in Site Zero. Despite all of the torture, he knows that some of the time they spent awake was filled with moments of intense love and support in the face of sheer horror.

“Ten fucking years,” Wright says.


Ten Years Earlier

The Commonwealth Arcology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

April 8th
2011


“We’ve hit a dead end.”

Richard Cardinal sips from a glass of whiskey up in a hand that is not his own. Tyler Case’s eyes stare back at a weary man standing by a simulated window looking out over a backlit matte painting of a city at night.

Elijah Carpenter slowly turns from the window facade, looking at Richard with blank confusion. “What?”

“With the Zero project,” Richard says, swirling the ice in his glass around. “I’m not confident that Baumgartner will be of any use, and I don’t want to risk turning her into a vegetable if this goes awry. So…” Richard tips the glass toward Elijah. “That’s where you come in, Doc.”

Richard,” Elijah says in a pleading tone. “You can’t be serious. I know you’re ignoring my advice about cognitive declination, but the more complex cerebral activity I copy the weaker the pattern is and the shorter-lived it’ll be. You want to take someone with an ability like that…” he motions vaguely out of the concrete-walled office, “and copy him? The interference alone might just leave whoever I put it in like—like—scrambled fucking eggs.”

Elijah shakes his head and approaches Richard’s desk where a second glass of whiskey is untouched. “You need to take a step back. You need to have a full neuroimaging scan, so we can tell if—”

This isn’t about me.” Richard says through clenched teeth, sending snapping arcs of red lightning dancing up his hand and over the brim of his glass. “If you won’t do it I will get someone who will.

Elijah slowly raises his hands and takes a step back from Richard’s desk. “Look, look,” he says with faltering confidence. “Richard. There might be alternatives.” He glances at the floor, then back. “For Zero, I mean. We just need an appropriate uh…” he makes a box shape with his hands, “vessel.”

Richard tips back his glass of whiskey, studying Elijah over the rim.

Tell me more.


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