Kill the Messenger

Participants:

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Also Featuring

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Scene Title Kill the Messenger
Synopsis You're not supposed to.
Date November 1, 2011

Isaac's Loft


Once, the loft belonging to precognitive artist Isaac Mendez was raided by the Department of Homeland Security. For a time, it sat abandoned, traded hands, and eventually — when larger problems drew authorities attention away from a derelict building — became the roost of a man on the other end of the spectrum from a prophet. The loft has become a labyrinth, of sorts, a tangled maze of easels that once held paintings, colored strings dangling with newspaper clippings, personal affects, and Post-It notes of varying colors. In the center of this menagerie is a painting on the floor of a vibrant orange atomic blast tearing apart a city. It is a highlight that expresses the futility of prophecy, the failings of visions, the inertia of time.

With a roar of wind, Hiro Nakamura appears atop the painting, one hand clutching his head and brows furrowed. He slouches, an elbow falling to rest down on the seat of a tall stool. There's a noise in the back of his throat, raw emotion mixed with physical pain. With one hand he wipes under his nose, smearing blood across his upper lip. Shakily, he levers himself up to stand, jaw trembling and eyes closed. "I'm so sorry," he mutters to himself, to the woman he just left behind after tearing her heart out. He's alone, if only for just a moment.

"I'm not sure you are," comes from somewhere else in the apartment. Hiro reaches up for his sword, fingers curling around the cloth-wrapped grip. But when he sees the slight, dapper-dressed frame of Rhys Bluthner emerge from the shadows at the loft's edges, his posture relaxes and his hand slowly lowers. Instead, Hiro's expression becomes accusatory, frustratedly so.

"What do you want, Rhys?" Hiro tries to act casual, pushes down emotions that were welling up to the surface. "I don't— have time for another one of your errands." Rhys' expression hardens some at that, and he ducks under a carnation red string, hands tucked into the pockets of his navy blue peacoat. Then, looking at the painting of the bomb, his brows furrow, and pale blue eyes alight to Hiro.

"Are you sure?" Rhys asks, tellingly. Hiro's dark eyes avert to the bomb, then flick back up to Rhys. "About feeling sorry," Rhys clarifies, his head inclining ever so subtly to one side of the string web. Hiro's dark eyes move to that, finding a photograph of Nikki Sanders hanging from a yellow thread. He looks away, immediately, the wound is still fresh from taking her away from Micah. It was just moments ago for him. Hiro walks away from Rhys, dismissively, ducking under the twinned black and white strings of Peter and Sylar to move toward one of the loft's tall windows. He looks out the cold-frosted glass, scrubbing some of it away with the edge of his sleeve. Midtown lays in ruins beyond, and Hiro's eyes avert to the floor.

Rhys is slow to catch up, taking a languid and serpentine path through the loft. He plucks at one string, holding a dangling photo of Molly Walker on it. The corner of his mouth raises, ever so subtly, and Rhys ducks under the string to join Hiro by the window. "Have you reconsidered my offer?" Rhys asks, finally done kicking Hiro while he's down. Rhys doesn't look to the time-manipulator, just watches the distant lights within Midtown, of construction crews and National Guard.

Hiro can't look out the window, not anymore. Instead he focuses on Rhys, noticing the boy's distant stare. He's not looking at Midtown, he's looking through Midtown. "Yes," is Hiro's sharply given response, "and, again, I'll pass." Rhys finally turns his attention back to the time manipulator. Concern edging the corners of his expression, where crows feet will be in several years.

"How many more trips do you think you have in you? Playing this game?" Rhys pulls out hand out of his pocket, enough to gesture to the strings. "You're playing Russian Roulette with history, and one of these days, Hiro… you're going to catch a bullet. Probably sooner than you'd think." Hiro snorts, derisively, and steps away from Rhys, ducking back under the strings and this time tracing the path of a forest green string that goes to a photograph of Micah Sanders with a Post-It note that says Rebel attached to it. Several strings connect here, and Hiro considers them all carefully.

"You can't ignore the facts," Rhys intones. "I know you're dying, you know you're dying. You've seen how many healers about that tumor?" One of Rhys' brows raise, slowly. "Has your vision started blurring yet? Memory failing?" He closes back in on Hiro, a constant reminder of the time-traveler's mortality. Hiro fires the young man an accusatory look.

"Leave," is the only response Rhys receives for his jabbing. But Rhys, to his credit, does not. Instead, he circles Hiro like a vulture, shoulders hunching forward in a shrug.

"What happens the next time you bring someone back, and you die in the process, stranding them in another time?" Rhys poses the question innocently enough, but Hiro can feel the barbs in it. He can feel the predestination in the boy's confidence. Hiro looks back, this time without contempt. This time, with worry.

"You can't know that," Hiro deflects. "Not for certain. If I haven't done it yet — "

"Can't I?" Rhys takes a step closer to Hiro, that one brow still raised. "Hiro, you don't know me. Not really. Everyone thinks they know me, thinks they understand me, but…" his expression scrunches into a half-frown, half-grimace. "You know what they say about assumptions." Hiro is given pause by all of this, he pulls his attention away from the strings, looks to the bomb painted on the floor, then back to Rhys with such deep uncertainty. Though, in time, there's also bitterness.

Hiro takes a step forward toward Rhys, brows furrowed. "I control my own destiny," is Hiro's rather final answer to Rhys. "I'm not following someone else's plan." That much is thrust at Rhys in as much of a barb as he can manage. "Though I wonder, what would happen to you if I did stop the bomb. Would you still be here? If there was a change that monu — "

A gunshot cuts Hiro off.

Pain lances through Hiro's chest, his breathing suddenly becomes drowning, and blood bubbles up from both his jacket and foams at his mouth. Rhys keeps eye contact with Hiro the entire time, the snub-nosed barrel of his revolver pressed firmly to the entry wound. He frowns, feels Hiro's hand claw at his chest as legs fail. Gurgling something, Hiro drops to the floor and paws at the wound on his chest. He can't concentrate, not enough to stop time, not enough to teleport, not enough to flee. Rhys stays standing, lips downturned into a frown as he levels the gun down at Hiro.

"For what it's worth, you would've died tomorrow." Rhys punctuates that sentence by firing two more rounds into Hiro's head. Blood pools out from below the time-traveler's corpse, filling the space where Isaac Mendez died five years earlier, where a vision of the bomb sprawls out below them all. Rhys tucks the small handgun back into his pocket, then retrieves a phone from his side at the exact moment that it begins to vibrate. Looking down at the screen on the front of the phone, he sees a string of familiar numbers.

01101101011100100111001100100000011101110110100001101111

Stepping away from the pool of blood before it can reach his wing-tip shoes, Rhys answers the phone. "Here," he softly states to the caller on the other end of the line. There's a pause, and Rhys nods to something. "No, it's done. Are you…" he glances back at Hiro's body. "Sending anyone to clean up?" Another pause, and Rhys dips his head into a second nod. Swallowing dryly, the young postcognitive exhales a short burst of a sigh. "I understand. I… think we made the right choice too." Rhys listens to one last thing on the other end, and then smiles faintly and closes the phone without saying goodbye.

Eyes fixed on Hiro Nakamura's corpse, Rhys lingers there for a long while. Finally, he circles around the corpse and heads for the door. His work here is done.


Nine Hours Later


Once, the loft belonging to precognitive artist Isaac Mendez was raided by the Department of Homeland Security. For a time, it sat abandoned, traded hands, and eventually — when larger problems drew authorities attention away from a derelict building — became the roost of a man on the other end of the spectrum from a prophet. The loft has become a labyrinth, of sorts, a tangled maze of easels that once held paintings, colored strings dangling with newspaper clippings, personal affects, and Post-It notes of varying colors. In the center of this menagerie is a painting on the floor of a vibrant orange atomic blast tearing apart a city. It is a highlight that expresses the futility of prophecy, the failings of visions, the inertia of time. Twice, there was blood on that mural. Now, it's simply been washed away.

With a roar of wind, Hiro Nakamura appears atop the painting, one hand clutching his head and brows furrowed. He slouches, ducking under a few strings. His eyes flit from one photograph and newspaper clipping to the next. Then, he begins to trace a white thread down the line to a Post-It note. October 4th, 2006. Nodding, Hiro reaches up to adjust the sword on his back, and slips over to the window. Outside, the Midtown skyline is in ruins, but there's still so much work left to do.

"I'm coming, Peter…" Hiro looks back to the string web, "I think I know what we have to do."


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