Participants:
| Scene Title | In The Details |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Another vaguely clandestine meetup on Staten Island yields further information in symbiotic exchange for…further information. In addition to various other small favors and obligations, blah blah blah. It's all very straightforward, really. |
| Date | March 29, 2010 |
Girls are with Liette who is in the garden and enjoying s'mores over a gas powered stove. Brennan wishes he could be there with them, but he can't. Because he's at the appointed meeting time to catch up with Vicnent, keep him briefed and informed on what's happening. So that very much explains what he's doing on the front steps of an abandoned church and keeping an eye out for feral dogs, or smoke men that aren't of the skull opening quality.
How is it that a man can set foot out of a helicopter into snow settled into drifts higher than he is tall, collapse into inky vapor and reappear miles away with a cigarette still lit bright between paired fingers? One would have to ask Vincent. And he probably isn't telling.
Black coat, black suit, striped tie and attitude to spare, he coalesces not at ground level, but perched on the peak of the snowy roof some twenty or thirty feet over and behind those front steps, dark eyes already sizing up his competition in the form of a steeple crusted thick with ice. Cigarette set at the corner of his mouth, sunglasses glinting only dimly against sunlight intermixed with cloud cover, he surveys all the land of Staten Island laid out before him and deems it: crap.
So much. Crap.
"Looks better out here with snow covering everything."
But could he do it with Brennan watching while doing his own little trick. Brennan cranes his head up and over with a hand lifted to shade his eyes. "Agent. Come down to descend to us mere mortals or are you going to perch there like the devil on the roof?"
"I'm not sure I appreciate the implications of that simile," muffled around a furl of smoke more genuine than the stuff he's (presumably) made of, Vincent dusts ash down onto unsullied snow and vanishes. A flare of shadow, an ophidian twist and a downward plunge of vaporous sinew later, he re-establishes himself as solid matter a few steps down, allowing Brennan the higher vantage point between them.
"As much as I enjoy helicopter rides chartered especially for me, I hope you eventually intend to relocate somewhere you're less likely to be killed and crawled into for warmth."
"If I only had a tauntaun while standing here and waiting for you" Brennan quips back when he re-appears. Lo, he has more fun stuff for Vincent, papers and a file folder. "Presents and yes. It's hit past ten days, we'll be moving again. There's a sick house for some people who have come down with H5N10. I was contemplating bringing her there since thanks to you and Praeger, we won't be getting ill. Makes people with evolved abilities less inclined to come after us and I can at least be useful. It's over near summer meadows" THe file is waggled at him. "What do you know of a guy name Edward Ray?"
"A what?" inquired with earnest bafflement, Vincent sweeps past it with a knit of his brows and a reach for the offered paperwork. This time, he doesn't really even do Brennan the courtesy of thumbing through it to see what's up so they can ~discuss~ it, rather. He stacks it all neatly with an automatic squaring of gloved fingers and frowns.
With the particularly black state of his sunglasses, it's even harder than usual to read exactly what manner of frown he is frowning, but there are undertones of disapproval in the clamp of his jaw under a five o'clock shadow that's too well-kept not to be intentional. "Don't know him. …Do you think that's safe?"
"Should know him. He's the man hooked up to the machine Liette was telling me about. He might be someone to look into and really. Lazzaro, is anything right now that I'm doing safe? I don't really have a handful of hiding places in my back pocket that I can just choose from that aren't littered with technological detrius that the technopath can access. Of which, there's something on him in that file."
He ignores the query about what the hell a tauntaun in. Obviously, someone never watched star wars. "They kill people in that lab she's from. I managed to have her differentiate between hurting someone and killing. Are you and Secretary Praeger planning on sending her back to him and her sister or is there some other plan for her that I don't know about? I know there's people looking for her. A lot of people and this city is only so big and she's starting to question why I haven't brought her back to Doctor Luis. So far, it's because I don't know how to get her to Massachusetts without a technopath trying to have people lodge themselves up my ass"
Brennan shoves his hands in his pockets. "But t some point, she's going to seriously pin me down and make me answer and being a telepath.."
"A concrete plan is in the process of being finalized as we speak," says Vincent, because one damn well better be or he's going to move past polite suggestion and into strongly worded suggestion, and then what? Suddenly interested in the file after all accordingly, the shorter man flips it open with a wary sideways look after Brennan and his Concerns, cigarette lost to the wind and snow with a dismissive flick of his fingers. Apparently his strict adherence to the law has exception clauses for dropping crap into a place that is already 99% crap anyway.
"I can look into Mr. Ray," he flips a page over, crisp white paper and black ink, "but in exchange I would like your assistance in an unrelated matter. No telepaths or orphans, this time. As for safe, I meant more for the infirm individuals residing in this 'sick house,' of yours. There are urgent care facilities and hospitals on Roosevelt Island."
"I'm sure Agent Lazzaro, that you're not stupid and don't know who we're staying with or the name of the organization. Which means that the individuals in the residence in question, aren't exactly registered. I've tried to encourage them to bring sick individuals to a hospital or at least the suresh center but.. conspiracy theories abound that they will all be dark holed to places where they will never see the sun. Apparently, some have. Other have met unjust.. time spent under the care of psychologists experimenting on them after they were kidnapped from the center."
Brennan breathes deep regardless. "Better that there be someone there who can give proper medical attention than they cobble along and people die. I can have Michelle write prescriptions for anti-virals and hopefully that can help lessen the effects on them. This is just a thought. That's all. I'll have a message sent regardless to notify you of our next location. We'll be moving in a day or two."
But they want his help again and there's a raise of his brows, forehead taking a momentary sharpei wrinkle quality. "What would that be?" The help that is. 'In for a penny, in for a pound"
"Well, Doctor Brennan, you know as well as I do that the young and legally inadequate are at times prone to…exaggeration," the likes of which Vincent is so utterly nonplussed by that they might as well be talking about changing out bins of kitty litter. Or diapers. He turns over another page, only as distracted as he has to be while a slow breath filters in an insubstantial stream through his sinuses.
"If any of them manage to substantiate tales of the latest Area 51 or anal probes without consent or mad scientists — other than the ones we're looking into now, obviously — with a formal recounting of their experiences or direct, preferably physical evidence of such abuses, I would be very interested in speaking with them." Flip, flutter. Lazzaro glances over one last profile and lets the file fall neatly closed.
"A press conference. I'm not entirely sure when — within the next few days, no doubt. I'll let you know as soon as I've heard something. But as we seem to be on the same page regarding the most ideal means of treating the sick in Summer Meadows, I don't foresee short notice being an issue."
Trying to avoid a technopath and … He wants Brennan to attend a press conference. There's a frown, forefinger and middle rubbing at the center of his forehead and bridge of his nose. He's got near month old scruff on his face - the better to keep ones face warm from the cold - and hasn't even had a manicure in.. well just as long. Yes, he gets manicures. Everyone looks at a doctors hands.
"I have someone who can take Liette for a day. I highly suggest that my name be batted around as little as possible in case our friend is watching from on high and opts to .. take advantage. What exactly will I be speaking about at the press conference?"
"If you are willing, then we are willing to keep you safe. You don't have to trust our integrity to trust that we do not lightly see significant resources put in harm's way." Vincent sounds very rehearsed for all that there is no way for him to have anticipated how any of this conversation would go. More likely he's just worn out and it shows more in his voice than it does elsewhere, with dark glasses to hide the worst of it and twenty years in the business of sucking it up to cover the rest.
"As for what you'll be speaking about, common sense is simplist way I can think to put it. At this point, limiting the spread of the disease and its mortality rate are priorities for us. Not — throwing unregistered teenagers into pits forever and ever because they've dragged their heels, you know?" It's a rhetorical you know. Vincent knows Brennan knows, and he's slowly stepping down to the next stair besides. "I'm not going to put words in your mouth. What you want to profess is up to you, but you said yourself you've been trying to convince people to get to a hospital."
"People shouldn't be afraid to seek a hospital if they're sick" He nods. "Get me a fact sheet, let me read it over. Anything you can get your hands on so that I'm not sitting or standing in front of reporters and flapping my mouth like a fish out of water" Which amounts to sure, I'll be there. It doesn't pass by him the whole, if you're willing, we're willing to keep you safe bit. "Anything else Lazzaro?"
"Will do. And…no. Not today. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I know you're busy." Babysitting, trying not to be run over by runaway SUVs or exploding televisions. Treating unregistered specials squirreled away in unsanctioned facilities in Summer Meadows. Vincent glances back over his shoulder once he's started to trudge away from the base of the steps, hardly having made it three paces when he dusts out of existence in a stir of wind and loose snow that obscures which direction he set to slither off in, if any.
Busy.
Busy doing all that and a bag of chips. Brennan watches him turn to shadow before, with the corner of his mouth turned up, he starts back from when he came. "Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow,Ride, boldly ride, The shade replied. If you seek for El Dorado."