Participants:
| Scene Title | Imagine Something So Terrible |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve Mas meets with Kam Nisatta. |
| Date | May 24, 2018 |
Since the bombing of the Fellowship Building, the Yamagato Corporation isn’t accepting guests to either of its primary holdings in the Safe Zone. Most external client business has been moved to teleconferencing — when possible — or otherwise is conducted via proxy. There are some situations, however, where the power of discretion outweighs the need for security. There are some guests sensitive enough to not parade around in public.
The primary Yamagato Building is where one such sensitive guest is expected. The Yamagato Industries corporate headquarters in New York is the single most advanced building in the United States. But above the white-walled and pristine halls of the lower floors, the executive levels are coded with black and gold aesthetics. The floors are lined with black marble with gold veins, the walls are papered with a matte floral print with a hush of gold leaf antiqued over its textured surface.
Frosted glass globes that shed warm light are suspended from the ceiling by black cords, and the mountain symbol of the Yamagato corporation is stamped above each tall doorway. The sound of heels on stone echoes down the halls, past security desks, to the inner offices of Yamagato’s highest level executives.
Eve Mas is escorted by Yamagato security chief Eizen Erizawa. He has been suspiciously quiet during the entire scorting process, save for a brief introduction on Eve’s arrival. It's an ominous portent to meeting a woman who now sits in interim second in command of one of the largest corporations in the world.
More ominous is the metal bracelet around Eve’s wrist, glittering with a single blinking blue light. A security precaution according to Eizen, so that the building's automated security doesn't detect Eve as a threat. It seems innocuous enough, as all dangerous things are.
When they reach the black glass doors of what was once President Egami’s office, Eizen opens one side of the doors and motions for Eve to head inside. Beyond the doors, the executive office rests in the building’s southwest corner, with one corner nothing but gradually sloping walls of glass clearly viewing the ocean and the dimly lit ruin of Liberty Island.
The office is cathedralesque in height, with tapered black columns trimmed in gold rising to the ceiling. Ferns and other potted plants are spaced around the room along with six foot high decorative trees. A single black slab desk rests beside the windows and sitting on the corner of the desk, a dark-haired woman in a pin-striped burgundy suit with a red crimson vest beneath. The woman Eve had the audacity to ask for a meeting with.
The woman who answered Eve’s call in the affirmative.
Kam Nisatta.
She hadn't been back here since the gala, with the well and her accident. Eve had been preoccupied and it would seem like Yamagato had been as well. Well enough to travel now, the wanderer known as Eve Mas has come seeking an audience with a powerful woman. Leaning heavily on her staff, Eve is dressed in a simple dark crimson dress, the material light and comfortable on her skin. Her checked messenger bag hangs on one shoulder and though Eizen fails to speak much Eve hums softly to herself as she follows along. Content to be with her thoughts and there are many of them.
Upon finally coming into Kam’s impressive space Eve breaks into a light grin. Dipping her good knee in something of a courtesy, “Thank you for seeing me, there have been booms?” Eyebrows raise up as she looks at Eizen before walking a few feet closer to Kam.
Pale gray eyes study the woman and a pale hand moves to swipe away midnight dark curls from her heart shaped face, the bulk of her thick head of hair was weaved into a single thick braid that was thrown over her shoulder. She looks nervous and wrings her hands, “Were all of his things destroyed? The.. the sword?” Maybe if it's gone then Eve’s dream wouldn't come true. A flinch as she encounters Adam’s bloody face in her mind's eye.
“No.” It’s all the answer Eve gets as Kam slides off the corner of the desk and comes to stand up straight. She looks past the seer to Eizen, who politely shuts the doors and leaves himself outside. Once the doors shut, Kam’s dark eyes swiftly move to Eve, and her posture has a viper-like tension to it.
“What,” Kam enunciates clearly, “is the nature of your relationship with Adam Monroe?” Judging from the tightness in the way she curls her fingers closed against her palm, the steady set of her jaw, and the furrow between her brows the answer of this question matters.
Sliding into a chair in front of the desk Eve does her best to sit up straight as she folds her hands into her lap and stares over at the other woman,
head tilts and Eve considers that question. “Years ago I met a man who refused die and after me and my PARIAH buddies like Monica busted up Level 5 real good.. he flew away. No more a caged bird. I gave him a painting once,” that memory clear in her mind.
“Six years ago,” and Eve’s trickster’s grin fades and a frown creased the lines in her forehead. “I died, in Cambridge. Fleeing from Noah’s failed plan, the Arcology. He wouldn't be stopping any floods.” Her gaze narrows as it goes to the windows behind Kam. “Noah” actually meaning Ezekiel.. the man with the master plan.
A pale hand taps along the surface of her staff, leaning her pale face against it. “And Adam brought me back. I've been looking for him ever since. He… is slippery, like a fish. And I'm not green around the gills I am a finder.” Eve looks exasperated, all the dreams. All the chasing. All of the near misses of running into Adam face to face. It's wore on the darker haired woman.
“But recently.. I was teleported down the river.. back before all of this, long long ago.. I was transported to a battle field in Japan.. feudal Japan.. so many bodies, all the blood and piles of gore. I could feel it, it was real.” She's earnest about this, she needs Kam to know she is serious this is no metaphor. “He cut my head clean off with that sword, a Barbie with an angry owner.” There’s no grin “But she saved me. Glued my head back on straight. Mother,” Pale Gray eyes wide as she tightens her grip on the staff. “She with the gold eyes, she who wants out. She's ancient.. she is everywhere.. The Gemini burned into the place between.” Rubbing a thumb slowly down her forehead and the bridge of her nose right between her eyes. Friend or foe? Who's to say when it comes to Adam and Eve.. she doesn't even fully understand herself.
“What.. is yours.”
There's a visible tension in Kam, one that informs the silence that comes over her after Eve’s answer. She closes her eyes after a moment, one hand pressed to her forehead and then slowly taking fingers back through dark hair. “You need to step away from this. You need to step away from Adam — get as far away from him as possible — and forget anything you know about what you're calling Mother.”
Kam opens her eyes and furrows her brows, expression serious and firm. “That you're not dead right now is perhaps the biggest surprise out of all of this. If Adam saved your life it's because he intends to use you. Everything else is just measured of how fast you're killed.” Moving around the corner of her desk, Kam traces a hand over the black surface. “I have nothing to gain from lying to you here. I don't know you, Eve. If you keep pursuing this, if you get yourself killed for nothing it doesn't affect me.”
But then, as she settles down in a chair that once belonged to Kin Egami she asks a more pointed question. “But how would your death affect others?”
A warning, much like the warnings she gives to other people usually. Eve’s brow quirks as Kam spills that information, that she is surprised she is even alive. “My search had paused. I opened a venue, I tried to live my life. No more crazy, no more meddling just life.” She failed at it but these were puzzle pieces were like catnip for the seer. The pursuit of them, the thrill, the hunt so to speak was something Eve lived in and loved. “I'm not sure if it will leave me alone now. I think we are connected. Obvious funny name connection aside.” A joke, Adam and Eve? Seriously?
The faces of Gillian, Chicken, Red, Lady Zeus, Dorothy, Claire, Monica.. Otter Eyes. “The others are who I must protect, I.. Otter Eyes is not safe. None of my friends are. None of us are.” The pale woman leans in hands both on the black table. “He is bringing war to this world. And it's a matter of genocide.” Her tone is serious as she thinks of that dream. “I had a dream that ruined me for over a month. Adam is gathering forces against the people without gifts. This world was not meant for them.” Gaze wild as she relays that message from the immortal. Plucking from her bag numerous drawings from that dream and the others before. Sliding them across the table, Looking Glass, Eve herself with gold colored eyes, Adam with an army at his back, his symbol on a flag. The Gemini symbol. Two golden rings. Four Horsemen in wicked armor.
“She.. it.. was there. She can see me.. eye to eye..” Eve touches her eyelid softly, dragging her finger down her cheek. “She ripped me from my body and flung me back inside. I had a stroke, I lost my eyesight. I lost.. my gift.” But Eve has not loss enough to stop.
“Kam, please. I can't let Mateo get hurt, I can't let my friends die. Not anymore.. not after Peter.. not after Liz..” a sad expression on her face all those deaths being relived in her mind, the moments she found out about them. The sorrow that sticks with her today.
“What is she? If not a she? Where is it trying to escape from?”
Seeing the drawings, Kam slowly moves a hand over her mouth and leans back into her chair, chest rising and falling with unsteady breaths. She swallows, tightly, and looks away as though she were shown something viscerally horrifying. It takes her a moment to regain composure, and even then only just.
“You need to destroy those.” Kam says in an uneven tone of voice, “you need to forget her.” Brown eyes level back on Eve, considering something. Something difficult. “What you drew here is a trick,” Kam tries to explain without explaining, “a trick played on you to…” she doesn't finish that sentence.
“Imagine something so terrible,” Kam reoriented the conversation. “That the mere knowledge of it made it more powerful. A violent idea so virulent that it takes root in the mind and feeds on others perceptions of it. A psychic parasite that is wholly Ego. Starved, it is powerless. Fed…”
Kam looks toward the window, brows tense and one hand gently brushing fingertips across her neck. “Fed, it is the end of the world.” Her dark eyes settle on Eve again, and there is no humor in Kam’s expression. “Depending on how many people you told, it may already be too late.”
That reaction draws a light gasp from the woman barely audible. Destroy them? A trick? Played on a trickster, that's a concept. Not one she's wholly unfamiliar with either. Her eyes flash at the description of “Mother” and she tilts her head. “All ego.. she wants us thinking of her.. all on the brain. Constantly, all consuming.” So she can consume the world.
“It was too late much before I ever found her. She inhabited my friend as a young girl. Was a vessel. She knew who I spoke of, she saw her too. In Japan..” as to everyone else she's told.. “A few know of her.. she has spread already. I don't believe we have the chance to stop the knowledge of her from spreading.” She says this gently because Eve can see how distressed Kam is at all of this.
“How..” Eve stops as she rubs her wrists while eyeing her drawings. “How do you know her? About this?” Settling back into her seat she takes her own gaze over to the window, searching. “If it's too late. What you know could be of help. Wrinkles, butterflies and black holes.”
“Odessa,” Kam exhales the name like a curse. “Of course, it always starts with her.” Slowly, Kam reclines back into her chair and closes her eyes, exhaling a slow breath and letting her mind steady. “I know who they are, because I helped defeat them a long time ago…” Kam’s dark eyes settle down on the surface of her desk, though she's not staring at the desk, she's staring through it.
“What I know is a curse, Eve. We tried to cauterize the wound a long time ago, because that was all we could do. You don't — can't — understand what they are, because there's never been anything like them before or since.” Scrubbing a hand at her cheek, Kam slouches forward and rests her head in her hands, elbows down on her desktop.
“You can't fight this, Eve. You can't run from it, you can't hide. All you can do is forget, and even that might just…” Kam exhales a sigh. “I don't know what to do. But the less people who know what you and I know, the better.”
Then, as if by concession Kam adds, “If you have to focus on something, focus on Adam. He's a relentless killer, and if you're eager to sprint into a grave… find him and stop him before it's too late. If what you've seen comes to pass — and you're not the one who initiates it by merit of trying to prevent it — then perhaps there's hope yet.”
But Kam doesn't seem to have it. “I don't know where Adam is, what he's doing. I just know that he's planning something, and it may involve our corporate enemy Praxis Heavy Industries. Beyond that… I have no idea.”
“You know her,” Eve’s eyes widen and then Kam drops that bomb. Defeat them..? There is a glimmer of hope that blossoms in the oracle but that is quickly stamped out as Kam tells more of what happened. “Burning the wound close.. they tore it back open.” Smacking her wine colored lips she places a finger to her temple as she studies Kam. “You have no reason to believe me. But I can keep secrets. And whether or not this is something that can be ended or not. I need to know.. who are we.. and who is them..” Eve’s mind running a mile a minute. Cops and robbers, the Olympians Vs the Titans.
To forget isn't an easy thing. “We’d have to have someone steal all the memories of them,” it's said in a doubtful tone, she doesn't really believe that could work. That person would need to be so powerful. Augmented? Shaking her head, she feels that isn't the answer. Maybe there weren't enough brains on the subject trying to tackle it. Eve is not use to not fighting, even so many years after the war.
“Third time won't be the charm,” heading off any worry of her imminent demise. Something’s keeping her here. In the land of the living. “Praxis..” Vaguely familiar with the name. “Praxis Heavy.. on the west coast..” Nodding her head, the name cemented in her mind, something she needed to investigate. She had spent a bunch of time there during the war. “I'm not made.. I'm not made for sitting. Locked away in towers, my place is with the people. Meddling with them. Adam won't be good for them.”
“Your ideas aren't new,” Kam assures Eve. “Novel methods of attack, it's… complicated. Whatever is happening now is so much less worse than what's coming. If they're returning, if we’re truly in that danger, I may be the last person left who remembers how to defeat them.” Brown eyes shift to the side, consider the future and the past.
“But I promise you. If you follow down the path against either of these people,” Kam's eyes level back on Eve. “You will die.” There's a certainty in Kam’s voice, along with a real fear. “There are some monsters you can't fight. There's some battles you can't win.”
Though she doesn't take it as a challenge that idea that Eve wouldn't attack in a completely surprising and unorthodox method is not one Eve wants to sit on. Taking pride in her unpredictability, she does nod though for good measure. The weight of Kam’s words weighing heavily on her now. To die the true death.. that's not what she wants.
“What am I to do? Allow this? I have family.” She looks grief stricken at the thought of losing Gillian, Jolene, Lynette.. Eve cannot allow it. There's a look of confusion on the woman’s face and she grips the arms of the chair tightly.
“I believed Kazimir Volken could be defeated. He is not here any longer.” She didn't deal the death blow but this was an immortal force that she and her friends had come up against before. There's a surge of hope in her and it lights her eyes up. They have no choice but to handle this, together. “What will you do? Will you tell me nothing of your history with them?” Eve’s eyelids flutter close, tipping her head back up towards the ceiling.
“You're the only person who understands like I do.. more than me even. You’ve witnessed. I've been lost in those gold eyes.”
“Kazimir Volken was an insect. You don't understand what you're talking about, Eve. You need to do what you've done, live your life and focus on problems you can solve.” There's resolve in Kam’s tone. “Right now the best thing you can do is let people forget, and maybe there's still time to keep this idea from infecting anyone else. But…” she rests a hand at her head, “Eve. You came to me for answers, and I'm not just going to give you ones you like.”
Wetting her lips, Kam looks out the window again, half-expecting to see something that isn't there when she does finally focus. But then, looking back at Eve there's a frustration. “Let it go, Eve. For your family’s sake, for all our sakes. Don't— ” she cuts herself off, as if she were about to say something she shouldn't have.
“Don't be the cause of their deaths.” Is a resolute warning from Kam, delivered without hesitation.
“And these are what, Gods?” Eve throws a hand into the air no anger directed at Kam but at the whole situation. That she's in this mess in the first place, the triangle… the triangle. Blinking she leans forward again and looks directly at Kam, “It doesn't matter if you or I forget about this Kam or my friends, my family.”
“The Institute is working on a machine called Looking Glass.. something wild.. out of this world, in this world.. I only stumbled across the golden eyes because of trying to see about Looking Glass. They are connected. The Looking Glass.. lets you see into different worlds, planes!”
Shaking her head with a manic energy, “They are going to open the door. Whether they know or not.” That almost and then warning from Kam gets a look. “I've caused deaths.” It's an admission of guilt something she hasn't done in front of many people. “I’m usually the one giving answers people don't like.”
Eve’s insistence only further agitates an already upset Kam. When she rises from her chair she isn't making suggestions any longer. “Get out of my office,” is delivered with a flick of her eyes to the door and then back to Eve. “If you keep pursuing this you're going to get yourself and everyone you care about killed.”
Raising one hand, Kam motions to the door. “I won't ask you a second time.”
It's time then. As Kam’s gets more agitated Eve’s eyes widen and she leans back with an expression that is hard to read. She sits for a moment and just stares at the woman. This isn't what she wanted to hear. It's not what she wanted to learn. But it's something.
Sliding out of the chair, she uses the staff to raise herself to a standing position. She rummages in her bag and half turns to leave. “I'm sorry to upset you Kam, I can't imagine.. I'm sorry.” Her tone sincere and she pulls out a single page that she must have forgotten. She slides it over the table and begins to walk towards the door. As her back turns a look of horror crosses her face. The current head of Yamagato doesn't even want to touch this. Pushing the door open, her head turns towards the window, “Destroy them yourself. Or let them remind you.”
The picture is of a woman in a kimono. The woman from her time traveling excursion, her golden eyes staring back up at Kam’s face. “Hopefully we don't need to meet again.. I'm sorry.. again.”
“That’s the problem, Eve.” Kam’s brows are furrowed in intense concentration, “we will meet again. Because there’s no avoiding what’s coming. A storm doesn’t even begin to explain what’s been unleashed, and there isn’t a nation on Earth that can do anything to stop it. The more anyone tries… the worse it’s going to get.”
Lifting a hand to her forehead, fingers pinched at the bridge of her nose, Kam looks drained. She slouches back into her chair, then looks down to the art that Eve has left on her desk. Once the seer has shown herself out, and Eizen is escorting her from the building, Kam picks up the painting of the woman in red with the golden eyes. Her jaw unsteadies, and she reaches into her desk to produce a cell phone.
A number is dialed from memory, and the phone is brought up to her ear. Shifting her eyes to the side, Kam looks out the window to the skyline of the Safe Zone beyond.
“It’s Nisatta,” Kam says into the phone when the party on the other end picks up.
“We need to talk.”