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| Scene Title | It's a Parasite, Eve |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Elliot searches for answers from the only person willing to talk about a woman who wasn't at the oil rig was at the oil rig this whole time. |
| Date | June 18, 2021 |
Composite memories are difficult to explain to somebody who’s never experienced one or been involved in its creation. Multiple simultaneous points of view, sound reaching one listener before another. Hearing your own voice they way you hear yourself speak, but also the way another hears it. Things can get weird when co-hosts have wildly differing emotional reactions to events. Recalling the memory later can carry that schism with the recollection.
A minor inconvenience compared to suddenly having conflicting sets of composite memories. Elliot’s composites of time spent on the oil rig leading up to deployment. Wright’s composites of the same events, suddenly changed by the appearance of Richard Cardinal’s sister. A woman who Elliot didn’t know existed suddenly having worked there all along.
Eve certainly didn’t make that memory conflict make any more sense when she insisted that it was in fact not the woman Wright remembers clearly as Richard’s sister, rather Eve’s own aunt.
Honestly, walking through the corpses of skyscrapers looking for the boat Eve seems to have inherited in some way from her local self, he’s not sure coming to talk to her about it will lead to anything making more sense than it already does. But if there is in fact an imposter capable of altering past events suddenly inside the office working to ensure the continuity of humanity, he needs to check the boxes.
June 18th
The Flooded Timeline
The ocean spray is as brisk as it’s been, though the jacket he procured through work and barter holds off the worst of it. It’s amazing what you can do for income when you’re the only person on the planet with internet access.
Cats.
Orange ones, brown ones, white and black. All meowing, purring or yowling at each other on the deck which is mostly covered by a blue tarp tied to the mast to allow for people to hangout without being rained on consistently. It appears Monica, her co-captain Poppy and the other Daughters are away but there's no way you leave a craft like The Forthright totally unattended. The reason that Elliot has ventured this way is lounging on the roof of the boat, one leg swinging freely while peeking from a sheer black dress.
Eve is smoking slowly while being softly pelted with rain, savoring every taste of the cannabis mixed with tobacco. Mad Eve had friends here, Eve had inherited more than the old woman's body. The hand of which her red glowing eyes study, watching as pale flesh poofs into red mist and back again. A tiny grimace each time, she holds it for a few seconds. Just her hand in phase, the swirling red mist curls around her bony elbow before snapping back into its original state as a strong gust of wind blows by that causes her to hiss with teeth barred and smoke billowing from her nostrils. So much time wasted behind bars when she could have been preparing for the journey, Eve kicks herself still.
As the cats begin to react to the incoming presence the former seer turns her head as she takes another puff of the rolled up joint. An eyebrow raises at the man as he makes his way towards the boat. "Hello Walkie,"
For a moment she looks at the space above Elliot's shoulder and winks, "Talkie."
Elliot hides most of a wince with a look along the deck. “I actually go by Elliot these days,” he says. Wright raises an eyebrow in general dissatisfaction with the concept of nicknames (call signs excluded), though Elliot doesn’t pass that on. He’s still far too uncomfortable with people here knowing what he’s capable of.
“Permission to come aboard, or should I shout questions at you from here?” he asks, gesturing at her characteristic smoky haze, “I don’t want to throw off your… vibes.” The cats get a precursory slow-blink to establish friendship should he make his way up to their level.
"I too sometimes feel like a Harriet."
Eve grins at the man and takes another puff of her joint, smoke battered by raindrops as it exits her mouth, she looks like some sort of dragon turned human with those red eyes and smoke. "Of course you can come aboard, let's get inside hmm?" Clapping her hands together as she slides onto the deck, landing in a crouch with long fingers grazing the wooden floorboards.
"Have you gotten any rest, learned to take the edge off a little? Your shoulders look bunched up." The older woman turns and begins to walk below deck, petting a cat here or there. Puffing on the joint all the while leaving a cloud of smoke in her wake, thankfully it's not her red energy sapping mist but perhaps she is trying to loosen the poor soul up. "Dimension lag," Eve cracks up at herself and kicks a door open at the bottom of the stairs that leads into Mad Eve's old personal quarters. Her? room?
The wires were getting crossed often now that she had been given the body of her otherworldly counterpart. Sometimes she would look at Castle and feel what she believed was actual maternal love. An amplified version of her love for the unique being. When Eve sees Elliot she feels the familiarity but then a question from Mad Eve's perspective, who are you?
She almost wants to ask. Even to Chess at times, brain fog. Eve rubs her temple and shoves the pieces of the older version of her to the side and plops down in a large wooden chair with a worn out, faded orange cushion.
"Have a seat."
There are numerous chairs, not as many pillows as the Oracle Room on their home world but numerous prophetic paintings line the walls and are stacked against each other. A few cats nuzzle Elliot's legs and beckon him forward with their purrs and meows. He is a friend of their unusual mistress.
"Sleeping a little better," Elliot confirms as he follows Eve belowdeck. "Nightmares thinning out. Mostly the old fashioned anxiety type." And keeping a low profile in dreams for the most part, the minotaur rarely getting within problem range. Less of a problem in dreams, only partially in the Palace and only some of the time.
He admires the care people have taken to make this boat a home. He can't help but scan the displayed paintings for signs and portents of himself. "Recovered the paintings you showed Wright at Bannerman's recently," he says, stooping to allow a cat to mash its face into the side of his hand. "Since Kaylee Ray was planning an excursion. Survived fairly well in a garbage bag where she was sleeping those days."
He looks around for a place to sit and hangs his rain coat before settling into one. "Not that that's what I'm here to talk about. Unless Local Eve had any for some bizarre reason," he clarifies. "Mostly still trying to make sense of why you think Richard's sister is somehow actually your aunt, despite Wright remembering and knowing her as the former. Nice house, by the way."
"Hmph, the enemy that I could never beat was always the nightmares brewing in my brain pan." She does look at the man with sympathy, "Maybe some light cannabis to ease the mind." Raising her eyebrows and tilting her head
"Art never dies," she assures Elliot with a twinkle in her eye. "I use to feel so beholden to those prophecies, like they belonged to me. I almost gave my life to retrieve them from the Ark." That twilight dims a bit but she doesn't allow the past to ruin her mood when they have much more important things to focus on that involve their future.
As to the reason that Elliot is here, Eve leans back and interlocks her fingers across her belly. "Ah Aunt Rianna." Nodding her head and tapping her fingertips on her belly with a light grin. "Technically she's not my blood aunt. More… cosmically related. My family is filled with strange, bewildering, chaotic women. Rianna Mas Price is no different."
How to proceed… how to proceed.
"The subject of Rianna is a confusing one, please do well to understand what I am explaining to you is beyond my total comprehension, none of us truly understand the extent of her gift. I will start with the obvious, I am not by blood a Mas." Waving her hand at that revelation, "But my cousin Odessa Price and her mother are. She's the sister to my adoptive father and I never met her because she was murdered when I was a child. Rianna is more or less a spirit that is roaming.. well the multiverse now. This Rianna hails from the shiny bright future that some of our friends in the DOE are also from! Last we heard she was stuck in the In Between place after helping Miss Mind Kaylee put Otter Eyes and Lady Zeus back together again. Very cosmic, very benevolent. Or at the moment."
"Aunt Rianna has one objective in life and one objective only and that's to be near my cousin. That leads her to turn up in the most unlikely of places but we do not judge. So, I'd suggest leaving it alone for the most part. They always find their way to each other." The need to unite her family is strong but she knows her meddling can cause even more chaos when this might need a more delicate hand.
"And that about covers Aunt Rianna on the surface."
Elliot gives a gesture of no thank you to the offer of weed. Too unpredictable in effect even before accounting for how it feels to stream the perspective of a host who's high on it.
He's unsure of where to begin with Eve's explanation. "So — and sorry in advance, I have very little context here — your aunt Rianna Mas Price, mother of internationally famous bioterrorist PISEC escapee Odessa Price, is a detached consciousness of some kind that's compulsorily driven to reunite with that daughter. And you believe that the woman Wright and I know as Rianna Cranston is actually the floating consciousness of that aunt? Do you mean she's possessed?" That's a horrifying thought.
"Sorta, not really, yea. The folks who she slides over don't seem to remember much of anything, maybe a unsettling feeling like they left the stove on." Eve wrinkles her nose and then takes another puff of her spliff. "And it's her alright," said as she exhaled the smoke up into the ceiling. Eve feels it. "I'm not sure that's as weird as my random cousin Tom!" The older woman's brow furrows at the thought of the memory?
There's another reason Eve has asked Elliot here, it's something she's been inquiring about slowly with her friends. Something that chills her to the bone and beyond, "Do you know anything of a man with an eyepatch? Cruel, deadly and sneaky?"
He could do this all day.
The pang of a memory makes the woman wince internally.
Eve's head tilts to the side as she studies Elliot's face with squinted crimson eyes, "I've seen him in visions."
Elliot looks momentarily baffled by Eve's question, though he would understand if she was kept compartmentalized. "We were sent here by a man with an eye patch," he says. "Marcus Raith runs the OEI. He's a top-tier asshole who's apparently time traveled and also a former Nazi."
"Ah ha."
Eve leans forward and her crimson eyes flicker in the candlelight. "I've got you now you slippery fucking goose. Raith. Of course." She hoots with laughter and slaps her leg, coughing up smoke as tears leak out of the corner of her eyes. "A Raith." Rubbing the inside of her elbow and studies the joint in her ghostly pale hand.
"He's very cruel." Even though the man he was torturing was even crueler. "I think—" Eve squints and tokes a few times holding her thought, eyes closing as she tips her head back and midnight locks swing free. "He probably needs to die. Darkness sits in him. Darkness at the throne." It's said quite simply with a shrug but Eve knows men like that, they've lived in her dreams for a lifetime. You can't trust men like that.
"My children's own boss, pfft." Blood red eyes roll into the back of Eve's head. "That won't do."
"I'm certainly not going to take a bullet for him," Elliot says. "Wright hasn't committed to not punching him in the breadbasket if she sees him again, so maybe that's a problem that'll settle out on its own. Houdini style." He laughs bleakly, mostly because he only cares that she'd get in trouble for it.
"You have an inside scoop on his moral dark gray area?" he asks. "At this point all I have is vague personal dislike for the man."
"Good."
Eve bites the bottom of her lip allowing smoke to continue seeping from her nose, contemplating her vision. That man's face. "My visions use to seem innumerable, multiple in the morning, a dozen at night while sleeping. From random places to run into key people that could shape the future, to what was for breakfast down the street at the little apartment above the bodega." Speaking of her gift in a slightly more clinical fashion was better sometimes for her thoughts and always better for the person she was talking at.
"But ever since my first transformation, the echoes have changed. The potency and the number increased. I do not see just one lesser event, I see a myriad or one huge tapestry, all in one go. Massive headtrip."
Tapping her joint into the ashtray and leaning forward with a curious glint to her glowing eyes. "My last visions mostly held this Marcus as the subject and my does he get up to some nasty delights in the shadows of that smile." A pause and another puff.
"People who smile like that can't be trusted."
Eve smiles like that.
"Overseeing shady deals, the autopsy of Cherry Rumor Rue Lancaster. All manner of things." At the last bit Eve sounds sadden. "That is one caged bird I helped free once."
There’s a sudden lurch. Elliot’s skin goes pale, his mouth opens and then closes. He stands from his seat and steps back in the direction of the door. Of not being able to do anything. He feels a wave of nausea, and the hand he puts against the wall to steady himself is shaking. “Is she…” he asks, but can’t get the rest of the sentence out because if he doesn’t close his mouth he might vomit.
Wright steps into his awareness reflexively and without permission, her own heartbeat erratic in sympathy as she reaches for his memories of just now to understand this sudden burst of panic.
Elsewhere but with no less alarm, Asi lifts her head and opens her perspective for Elliot's view. She's standing on the roof of the Bastion, cigarette in hand. She exhales the nicotine away hard and takes a deep, cleaner breath on his behalf, looking out over the skyline. "Hey, hey— stay with us here," she cautions, placing a hand on the concrete railing. "Breathe. Feel." She, unlike Wright, doesn't seek out understanding immediately.
"Dead? I wouldn't worry on that, I see the future. Not the past." Saying that makes Eve pause as she remembers the end of her vision, head tilting and brow furrowing.
But she did seem to see things that occurred chronologically in the past. That wasn't something Eve was willing to admit now. "Are you close with Cherry then?" Registering Elliot's reaction. "You should really try to smoke this will chill you out, hm? Or there's some liquor." She doesn't offer the joint actually, she knows he will refuse. Don't need to be an all knowing oracle to deduce that.
"That's a lot of emotions on display, boy." An eyebrow raises, she knows they are fellow Hounds. "Goddess have mercy on whoever decides to harm a hair on another Hound's head." Sucking her teeth in and shaking her head. "Poor Nat… I wonder if they've brought her killers to justice." Another puff of the joint and the smoke wafts around her hands as one of the many cats curls up on her toes which she wiggles to massage the feline's stomach.
Elliot steps into Asi's senses as soon as she draws him to her. He begins recalling what's just been said for her benefit even as Wright is putting the pieces together. Attention now divided three ways he can do little in the Here and Now other than take a few gasping breaths. He focuses on the chill of the stone on the roof of the Bastion.
After a moment he begins to process what Eve said in the moments he's been gone. "Coalesce," Wright says, her own heart breaking as she tries to make sense of it. Elliot takes the Big Breath In.
There are more calming breaths that follow the wash of relief the trigger word produces from his memories, and it's a moment longer before his hand lowers from the wall. "Rue is my girlfriend," he finally croaks out. "And she's missing in action in Iraq. She's been gone since March."
Asi shakes her head once as it's all laid out, quietly pinging relief when Wright demonstrates the right Indexed Word to help with the situation. "Eve's a precognitive, so this implies future," she agrees while Elliot gets himself together, her own mind otherwise swimming. "It's always hard to tell if knowing the future leads you to accidentally cause the foreseen act to happen, in trying to prevent it from happening. Time travel quandaries in reverse, essentially." It's a problem complicated by Rue's being missing in Iraq, which makes her wince.
"fuck," she breathes out. Trying to get in touch with her to warn her if she's deep in Mazdak territory could be the trigger for her being caught and killed, or could stop her from going too deep. And there's no telling which is the right play.
"That Cherry, always surrounded by love." Eve hums but her swaying stops mid motion at the news of the redhead being missing for months now. "You poor thing, take a breath and focus my dear. That's it, more breaths. Here, have some water. Non spiked." Sliding a dark, smooth wooden cup over on the table while looking Elliot up and down.
"Mazdak I assume, if she is over there." Eve fears that even someone that was great at spying could pull that off, not without an ace in the hole. The older woman frowns and she shakes her head at Elliot, this won't do. But there wasn't much that could be done from their end. At this point in time she wishes she had Miss Mind's ability to make Elliot forget.
"Call to your fellow Hounds, have them find Brother Seer Tae. His echoes manifest from the past. Offer to pay him if need be but, he's a man that likes to do good it should not be hard to convince him to help. They'll have to find a spot to bring him to work his gift. Oh." Giving the man a small smile.
"Under no circumstances are they to mention me to him. It will– just complicate things." Grinning with a tilt of her head
Elliot sighs, becoming momentarily emotionless as he lets the dread roll off of him to be grappled with some other time. "I'll make sure somebody at Wolfhound gets those instructions," he says, easier than introducing Asi already having heard. "Thanks for the idea, that helps with the stress."
From afar, Asi's mouth opens and closes without saying anything, thoughts occupied by the barriers to finding Rue's last-known location. It's a conundrum she ponders in silence.
He looks down to the glass of water, lifting it but not drinking. "Because you mentioned alcohol earlier," he says evenly, "I should remind you that I don't drink because Wright is a recovering alcoholic and feeling alcohol in my system would be like feeling it in her own if she streamed my perspective, which she is doing currently. I don't smoke weed either, since a clouded mind makes it harder to maintain the network."
"That is unfortunate dearie. Sometimes freeing the mind is all it takes. Maybe one day when you find yourself out of options and no creative spark smacks you in the third eye." Eve ashes the joint and gives the younger man a sad look. She knows what it is to worry about someone she loves and feel powerless to do anything about it.
"The worst thing for you to do is be there, while we have important work here." Eyebrows raising, "Your situation and mine being a bit different so I think we can both be forgiven for having… our heads in the clouds at times." Albeit for vastly different reasons. Another warm smile is thrown his way and the woman rubs her stomach in a circular motion while holding the smoke from her joint within her lungs. "There's a party tonight, stay and meet more people of this world. Socialize, be free. Or go it alone but be free regardless young Elliot."
"There won't be many more chances for that on this trip."
Considering that sobriety is a Lock, Elliot thinks bitterly, let's fucking hope not. His breathing has evened out, though the needle remains just below the red. He takes a slow drink of water before setting down the glass and signing thank you to Asi.
He turns back toward Eve finally, and returns to his seat. "I think my party suit was in the crate you dropped through in," he says with feigned regret, trying to pivot further out of his panic. Irritated, he then reaches into his pocket for a bright orange waterproof container. Opening it produces pills, one of which he tosses under his tongue. He gives Eve a look of oops, forgot I have meds for this. Surely she knows the struggle.
"We were talking about a time-traveling psychic parasite?" he attempts to segue back to the topic he came here to discuss. He makes no effort to keep Asi out of the room for it, keeping his attention split with her generally levelheaded demeanor for stability.
"Take what opportunity you can to prepare for what's ahead," is all Asi cuts in quickly to say, agreeing with Eve's sentiment even if not her methods. "Relax. Be at your best later."
Crimson eyes narrow at the pills in his hand and watch with feign disinterest. She was on pills once, she remembers the lucidity, she remembers how dull the world was. Eve wonders just what this chemical cocktail of Elliot's is but she doesn't pry, just silently judging and thinking back to the Institute.
"There is not much else to know of Aunt Rianna, she was gone, now she is not. Her only goal has ever been to protect her daughter. If nobody on the other side threatens my cousin, they will be fine." Leaning forward Eve makes sure to look the man squarely in the eye. "The women of my line can prove to be dangerous if cornered. My advice is to observe. From afar."
Maybe not what the others want to hear but.
"If you do speak with her, you can try and show her my face but I'm not sure she remembers being a Mas or our one conversation. She was posing as some muscle for a very attractive man on Staten Island." That bit of knowledge being slipped is intended but it hurts to say aloud. Deep down Eve realizes Rianna Mas was a face like the others but there was a piece of all of them still in there… right?
Elliot considers what's said as the last of the pill dissolves in his mouth. There probably isn't much more he can get from Eve about the parasite that won't be cloaked in the woman's perceptions of it. He doesn't blame Eve for that, he knows more than most how relevant one's perception can make something.
"I have no plans to engage with her," he says. It's the literal last thing he needs right now, and he's clearly not the one to address the problem either way. "Wright remembers her as the operations manager of the rig, and that's who she'll stay as far as I'm concerned. If she's the reason Wright survived, we owe her one. I just wanted to make sure we weren't absolutely fucked by this wildcard." Maybe Gates has the capability to deal with it, he'll have to ask Wright to track him down.
He sighs and rubs his hands together. "You see anything else in the tapestry that I should know about from an operational standpoint?" Would she even tell him if she saw the destruction that follows in his footsteps, waiting for the levee to break?
"Good she has earned her peace." Of that Eve is certain. When she is asked of what else she has seen the seer tilts her head and considers what would be important to him or them as a whole here, all the while oblivious to his thoughts of leaving destruction behind him.
Eve was the most destructive person she had ever met, Elliot should find good company with chaos incarnate.
"Nothing pertaining to the here and now. Marcus is someone I must watch for, he is closely connected to my mother. Very. If he is as dark as the echoes show…" then she fears for her mother's wellbeing and anyone near that man. She would have to meet him…
"Everything else makes no sense for now and in order to see more I'd have to find some insanely creative way to die." Her search for Ninbanda would have to start as a solo endeavor.
"Go on, do what you do to relax. Try and understand that what can be done will be." Settling back in her chair and lifting her chin so that she can stare up at the ceiling. It wasn't a dismissal, Eve welcomed anyone to linger and hang in silence or laughter.
Elliot considers in silence for a moment, then downs the glass of water he was offered because it’s clean and right in front of him. He didn’t get the answers he was hoping for, but at least he has something to go on. Whether or not to tell Gates is the next decision. “Thank you,” he says, standing. “For the time and the water. And the warnings.”
He turns to leave, but stops. “Is there anyone you want to communicate with, back home?” he asks. “Wright can track them down relay anything you want to say through me, if you’d like to talk to someone, or if you left the stove on.”
The two are of one mind on many things today, the desire to speak with Gates is overwhelming as well as Gilly. Two Gs heh. Eve snickers to herself softly.
"I feel there was more to say to Agent Gates, something I can't place my finger on. Maybe pass the message along. I would like to speak with him."
Another moment passes and Eve offers in farewell: "Thank you for visiting Elliot."
“I’ll let him know,” Elliot says. "Take care."