Participants:
| Scene Title | Inertia Creeps |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | All. Teo's. Fault. |
| Date | September 22, 2009 |
The sound of beeping hospital equipment shouldn't be so surprising to Felix Ivanov, not now, not after so many cheated deaths. They say a cat has nine lives, but it's clear Felix Ivanov may well be on lucky number thirteen. The way vision comes back blurry to meet with the beep and chirp of a heart-rate monitor matches so many other times he's come back from the brink. But the last time he checked, Humanis First doesn't have this good of a medical plan.
The whitewashed walls of a hospital room are illuminated only by the fluorescent lights in the hall, visible out the large windows that view Felix's room. It's night, night enough for one man but day to a survivor of captivity. His swelled brain can do little to parse the how's and why's of his freedom, but the tall and dark-haired woman standing at Felix's bedside certainly isn't offering much in the line of answers. She's unfamiliar, though somehow it feels like he may have known her in another life or some fever dream. Black hair is wound up into a bun behind her head, a strong jawline is set squared, brows furrowed and pale blue eyes leveled on Felix, arms folded across her chest. She's in real people clothes, not scrubs. It can mean only one thing.
Once she settles her gaze back onto his face, she offers quietly, «I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.»
Russian.
Well, damn, it's not as if they don't have a room with his name on it, over at Saint Luke's. That must be where he knows her from. Or….she's a fellow Agent. A cop he's met. He offers her the shards of what used to be a bright smile. "Khorosho. Tui khorosho," he whispers back. It's fine. You're good. His gaze flicks right, flicks left. He's never been so glad to be in a hospital. Not even the day he awoke in recovery from the original gunshot wounds. « H- how?» he asks, and lets it sit there. She'll explain.
«The Company.» The look on the woman's face is a confused one, her head tilting to the side further as thin black strips of her hair come untucked from behind one ear, coming down to frame her face. «Felix you do remember where you are, right?» There's a look on her face, one of confusion and at the same time worry. Swallowing, her pale eyes divert to the floor.
When she looks up, the guilt is mixed with regret, «I just wanted to…» Smother you in your sleep? «…say goodbye.» It's all very professional, the way she speaks, layered over something resembling emotion. This woman doesn't even seem interested in making the token gesture of holding Felix's hand— though, maybe that's because both of hers are full. One carrying a messenger tote, the other appears to be clutching a photograph of some sort.
Confusion ladders his brow as he stares at her. « I'm in a hospital. Which hospital? What day is this? And…..who are you? Do I know you?» He tries to sit up a little, but he's bound about with tubing. The monitoring equipment squeals in protest. «I know you,» he insists, but his tone is uncertain. «How do I know you? I've heard of the Company. Do you….do you work for them?»
The look on the woman's face sours, rather immediately at the litant of questions. «Christ Ivanov, have some fucking spine.» Her blue eyes look away, head cocked to the side and shoulders rolling forward. Moving away from the bed, she has all the posture of a wounded cat. «You're at the Company hospital, this— » she cuts herself off, shaking her head before looking back with a misty quality to her eyes.
«Is this really how you want to say goodbye to me? Pretending you don't even recognize your own fucking wife?» She swallows back the words, teeth clenched together, brows furrowed, fingers wound so tight around the articles she holds in her hand that the filmy plastic of the photograph crinkles in her palms. «You're unbelievable.»
Cue the record-scratch noise. He really does have that condition. Fel's face is aghast. «…I….I….» he stammers. «Oh, God. I don't remember.» It's almost a sob. «I….you have to tell me. Did someone destroy part of New York with a nuclear explosion in '06?» But he -does- remember. His beautiful ex-gymnast wife. His clever little daughter, capable of boosting other Evolveds' powers into the stratosphere, and thus the eternal human Mcguffin in the Petrelli family feud. They've pinballed - from Angela's care to Arthur's and now back again, courtesy of that rescue of Peter's harpy of a mother. Was all of it a coma dream - the explosion, Phoenix, the Vanguard. Teo, Leland, Elisabeth. He's pale as the pillow he rests on, bloodshot eyes huge.
There's a tightness at the corners of the woman's eyes. She takes a few steps forward, back to the bed, disdain bleeding away to worry now, pocketing the photograph so that one hand can reach out to take Felix's, her thumb brushing over the IV connection at the back of his hand. She tenses up, her expression fails to hide the concern in her eyes. «Felix…» it's pleading, «what'd they do to you?» She swallows dryly, a lump of guilt sinking to the bottom of her stomach from the motion.
«F— Felix it— it's the first of September, 2007.» The words hit him in the side of the head like a sledgehammer. «New York's fine.» As fine as New York can be, at least. «Felix they— they said they wouldn't— » her eyes dart back to the door she was headed towards, then back again. «They offered to let see my daughter again if I agreed to work for them.» Not 'have'. Not 'our'. Back to Felix's face, her own expression solemn, «I accepted.» How could she not?
He really was proud of how long it took him to break the first time. Bore pain, privation, torment - Bill and Danko've made him scream until it echoed down the halls, sob aloud, whimper like an animal. But they never made him weep. This nameless woman has succeeded - he doesn't seem to be aware of the tears as they roll down his cheeks.
«I don't -know-. I've never run into the Company. Why am I here? Last I knew, I was being held by an anti-Evolved terrorist group called Humanis First. You're my wife? When did we marry? You have a child?» He turns his hand, clutches at her grip like she'll save him from drowning. «Please. Tell me everything. I'm so lost, I don't….I don't know.»
Reaching up to rest a hand on Felix's cheek, she offers a hesitant smile. "Shhh…" Her expression is so earnest, so gentle, and the thunk of her messenger bag falling off her shoulder barely registers in Felix's ears. The truth she whispers is so much more deafening. «You're here, because you're supposed to be here, Felix.» Then, with a hesitant crook of her lips up into a smile she offers, «You… said Humanis First?» Her hand slowly pulls away from his cheek.
«Felix,» pale eyes settle on his face, in the moment before her open-handed slap across his face sends him skittering sideways, sending the chair he's abruptly been tied to tipping onto its side with a clatter. The metal floor of the shipping container clangs as Felix's shoulder impacts it, the duct-tape and rope binding him to the chair keeping him fast in place. She's still there, brows furrowed, hands folding behind her back, but that clothing is more leather than sweater and jeans now.
"Easy there Sierra darlin'…" The voice is tangentally familiar, spoken by a bald-headed man leaning in the back of the shipping crate, "We want wot's locked up inside'a 'is 'ead." Stepping into the light of a swaying lamp overhead, it's Ethan Holden who comes into view, a man who should not be holding a pair of pliers in one hand, and a bottle of Fanta in the other.
"Why don' you go an' tell us all you know 'bout Humanis First, Felix? You ain't got much other choice, right?" He crouches down beside where Felix lays, pliers flicking from side to side, bottle of Fanta brought up to his lips with a slurp.
It sounds like sobs at first, a continuation of that unbound grief. But resolves, after a moment, into a hyena's cackle, flickering along the edge of raw hysteria. Laughter and grief look so similar when the sound is off. Felix finds this intensely funny. "Yes," he says, gulping air and reaching for the semblance of calm. "Surely. I don't know where they lair. They're led by a man named Emile Danko. He's got a second in command or co-leader, whose name I don't know. They have moles in the cops, maybe even in the Bureau. They've vowed to destroy the Evolved, but they're afraid of you. And afraid of Sylar."
Russian fatalism can only take you so far."I don't think they're on Staten," he says, before he collapses into wheezes of laughter, face pressed against the corrugated steel of the container floor. "You know, I had a case once," he notes, conversationally, "Thirteen dead hookers in one of these. Mob was importing 'em from Eastern Europe. Hiding 'em in containers. Until someone murdered them by crushing the pipe they used for an air intake. We never did catch the bastard, though I think it's cause someone else got to him first. I hope it was his body we found in the Hudson. I've hated the scent of these ever since…."
Ethan leans close, pressing one grubby hand to Felix's cheek, pinching it the way one would a baby's. "Now 'ow 'ard was that?" His lips creep up into a smile as Felix evokes the memory of Emile Danko, and in the background, the severe countenance of Sierra Heart looms wordlessly, arms folded in a cold and stoic expression of blind frustration. But Ethan seems more entertained by Felix than her, the way he leans in and brings his lips to the side of Felix's ear shadows his world for a moment.
"Sorry to wake you, but…" Something isn't right with the husky whisper of Emile Danko's voice in Felix's ear, a hand familiarly brushed across his chest, then down the side of his leg, industrial orange playing harsh over the backs of his shoulders and off the fuzz-softened dome of his skull from behind. He doesn't look sincere. Doesn't sound sincere, voice rough and quiet because it can be. There's very little noise within or without — the thrum of the generator muffled into servitude somewhere far across the compound. The other prisoners, if there are other prisoners, are quiet. Asleep or pretending to be asleep. No heads lift when the next patrol makes its drowsy round.
"Simon says…" But the rest of Danko's words don't come, not right away. Not until Felix recognizes the familiar prison surroundings, recognizes Danko, feels the pain in his legs, the prick of the IV, and then hears the incongruent, "is this Emile Danko?"
Fel shudders in disgust and horror at the touch, jerking himself away. Still bound - it only makes the cuffs clink in protest. "Da," he says, all but spitting the monosyllable out like it's an obscenity. And then, "Yes," He keeps forgetting to whom he needs to speak English - Bill's fond of mocking him, when his command of his second language slips. His eyes are wide, wild, almost blank - animal desperation but very little human intelligence. Now they're back to reality. What passes for reality.
"You've been very helpful, mister Ivanov." Danko notes with a lopsided smile in that cadaverous skull of his. Offering up something of a bitter grin, he reaches down to withdraw a knife sheathed into the vest he wears, waving it towards Felix in a laxidaisy brandish. "You know, I was thinking about keeping you here… leaving you locked up in this nightmare, but you know…" Danko's shoulders rise and fall in that helpless shrug as he approaches the chair. "Your reality is a worse thing to leave you in. So you know— I think I'm going to give that to you."
The blade flickers up, slashing across the front of Felix's throat quick enough to leave the first arterial spray on the floor and not Danko. The pale face leans in, a spurt of crimson flashing across it, wetting his now reddened teeth, and Felix can barely feel the press of the knife under his jaw. "Simon says…"
"Wake up."