Participants:
| Scene Title | Murder at the Dorchester |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Niles pays Liz a gruesome visit. |
| Date | May 15, 2009 |
Elisabeth's Apartment
It's late at night. The clock reads 1:47 AM and only the occasional car hisses by on damp pavement outside the window.
It's Elisabeth's apartment, but she's not alone.
There's a figure seated in a chair at the end of the bed. He is silent. In fact, it's likely the scent of cigarette smoke that will wake the cop from her slumber, rather than any sound that Niles Wight makes. He is cast in darkness. Only a little light from a nearby window illuminates the room.
The smell assuredly does it, niggling her immediately into wakefulness. As she opens her eyes, though, Elisabeth's alarm ratchets from 'wtf??' to "OMFGWTF??" at the sight of the man sitting on her bed. Scrambling backward against the headboard, struggling to get untangled from the blankets, she doesn't scream but only because fear has her choking on her own voice.
"Don't do anything stupid, Elisabeth. I'm not here to hurt you." Niles' voice is calm - almost deadly so. "You've seen what I can do. I could have killed you from half the city away."
The ember on the end of his cigarette lights up as he inhales. "You could try and use your ability or you could go for the gun that's likely in your nightstand. Either action would force me to hurt you. And I. Don't. Want. To."
"Th… then what exactly do you want?" Elisabeth responds in a voice still tight with fear. Either of those options exist, but … let's put off being hurt as long as possible.
"To talk." Niles' tone is friendly, upbeat, casual. It's totally at odds with the fact that he broke into the apartment and is sitting at the foot of her bed at 2 AM. "To…ask for your help." It's hard to tell how serious he is, given the fact that he's cloaked in darkness.
That makes Elisabeth hesitate, and she considers. "What kind of help are you asking me for?"
"To prevent me from becoming what I am," he says. There's a certain melancholy tinge to Niles' words. He stands and exhales a low hanging cloud of cigarette smoke. "My young self is free. If he gets locked away, I can promise you that he will become me again. And I don't think you want that."
He rocks forward into a sliver of light. Only then does it become clear that there is blood splattered all over his face, on his hands. It sticks in his hair and cakes the side of his face. It's spattered on and he's not moving like he's been injured.
Nibbling her lip, Elisabeth moves to sit more comfortably in her bed. "I really don't want that," she tells him quietly, candidly. "In point of fact, once I figured out what the cause of all this was, the only thing I wanted to do was get the younger you some help." She hesitates. "If you know where he is…. I know people who can help him get the hell away. Help him learn to control his abilities better so that he can have something close to a normal life."
Elisabeth blinks at the sight of him and murmurs, "Oh God…. what have you done?"
"My…ability has been suppressed for so long that I forgot what it feels like." Niles' lips twitch. His eyes shine brightly, but in a disturbed, skewed way. "It is…a perfect sensation. I…" A hesitation. "…Aria. Don't blame her for helping me. She feels responsible for what I am. She pushed me too soon." He cants his head. "My mind went from one to six parts in the space of a few weeks. Seeing the world six ways and then one again. It's…well." A burble of detached laughter. He doesn't answer the question about what he's done. He only looks briefly over his shoulder, then back to Elisabeth. "I came here simply to escape prison. Ray offered us a way out. How could I say no?"
There's a long, slow nod. "And what did he want you to do in return?" Elisabeth asks quietly, wrapping her arms around her knees. Sure… he could still turn on a dime and kill her. But if he'd wanted to do that, it would have been frighteningly easy.
"I didn't know that we would end up here or what we're doing. I still don't know what he wants. Something about the Company, about Pinehearst. But to be honest, I'm more interested in my own fate. As long as I don't end up in prison, I don't give a fuck about Edward Ray's plans." Niles seems to have forgotten he was smoking until just now. He raises the cigarette up again and takes a slow, meaningful drag. "But know this, Elisabeth. The future that I come from is not worth saving. Isn't the foundation of the justice system that it is better to set a hundred guilty men free, than to lock up one innocent man? Well. Where I come from, that has been forgotten."
"I don't know what future you come from, Niles," Elisabeth says gently. "I don't know anything about you, about the future you come from." She hesitates. "I know nothing about Pinehearst except that it appears to be a group who wants to take down the Company. No organization is perfect, I do know that. Bt is Pinehearst really so bad?" She sounds absolutely sincere in this question — granted that she's asking it of a complete psycho. "Is it so horrible in your future that it outweighs the greater good? Truly?"
Niles lets out a short whuff of laughter. "The…greater good? Elisabeth…" He takes a half step towards her and leans in, but not within her personal bubble. "…you know the concept of a power vaccuum, yes? Take down the Company and Pinehearst grows more powerful. They are not out to destroy the Company for the good of the nation. Ask yourself what their motivations would be. And…if Pinehearst really was so benign, why would Edward have brought us all back here?"
Elisabeth nods slightly. "He's already contacted us about destroying both entities, Niles," she replies quietly. "And I'm willing to do so, but he won't even tell us why. We're not entirely sure whether to trust what he's saying to us. The fact that you're coming here like this…. It lends weight to your argument for ths, so I'm asking you: What's so bad about this Pinehearst place that I should take your word for it, risk my life and the lives of my friends to take it down too?" She leans forward now too, willing to listen, to really hear what he has to say. "And for what it's worth to you …. I have every intention of trying to help the younger versions of at least you, and Reed, and Case. I haven't figured out yet whether the rest of you need to be broken out," she grins a bit.
"You're assuming that Edward has told me anything," says Niles with a strange flatness to his tone. "You know more than I do. I have been in prison for ten years. To be entirely honest, I have only helped Edward because I owed him for setting me free. I was…the distraction. Nothing I have done has been of any significance to anyone but myself. I'm sorry to tell you that I am the red herring."
He shifts backwards and starts to turn away. "Please stop me from existing, Elisabeth. Stop him from becoming me. Do whatever you need to do."
Looking at this man sitting on her bed, Elisabeth can only feel sorry for him. "Where is he?" she asks quietly. "I'll do what I can for him, but…. Niles, Aria said that he was already violent and uncontrolled at this stage. I cannot promise to be able to fix his problems." She wishes it were that easy.
"I don't know, Elisabeth. And I don't trust myself to know." Well. That's sinister. Niles swallows and reaches up a hand to push lengths of hair out of his face. "But he'll make himself known soon enough. He's…violent. But he doesn't want to hurt anyone. Not yet. He feels powerful, not angry." And it's the anger that makes this version of Niles so dangerous. "Goodbye, Officer Harrison." He moves briskly out of her apartment now, through a pair of doors he left open, down into the hallway and out of the building, all without pausing or looking back.
Well…. at least that's something. Now…. how to get a barely legal kid on a power high into SOME kind of protective custody without turning him INTO the guy who just (thank GOD) left her apartment. Elisabeth sinks back against her headboard and makes a mental note to talk to the stupid-ass genius upstairs about a better fuckin' security system. Cuz her adrenaline is sky high. She may as well go to work and figure out what the hell he was doing before he came to her apartment all covered in blood.
Work comes to her. There's a call that comes not twenty minutes later informing Elisabeth of a disturbance in her building, just three doors down. A homicide.
It's one of her neighbors, a man named Josh Trembley. He's a French teacher at a local high school. Or, he was. Now he's a bloody corpse laid out on his bed with his throat slit deep and the contents of his veins sunk into mattress and sheets.
The man, disturbingly, has dark hair, a thin frame, strong cheekbones - European features. A man not unlike the one who killed him. A fact that can't possibly be coincidence.