Participants:
Scene Title | Not Infallible |
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Synopsis | Corbin's research into Akado Ichihara turns up some surprising connections to past Company events. |
Date | April 27, 2010 |
Fort Hero: Company Archives, High Level Access
Almost no one has the access to be in this section of the archives. There's a higher level of access, even beyond that of this, but the paper work and files fill rows and rows of shelving and file cabinets. All carefully arranged, all tagged. There's a key to get into this area of the archives, and other security measures to make sure no one who shouldn't be there even steps foot. Even he, an old archivest, rarely steps foot down here. Usually everything he needs is in the other archives, that most the agents have access to. But not today. Today he has a reason. With the lower level file already looked through, it didn't tell him much. Nothing he hadn't already known about the stern and almost frightening man that had vetted him to make sure he was worthy of being partnered with his daughter.
A Company Agent, just like his daughter. There's a sticker on it that shows the Agent is no longer active, and in fact, deceased. The same sticker that just got placed on his daughter's file. Such identifiers have not been infalliable, though the one he might wish to be a mistake, isn't. He saw Hokuto died, held her hand as she slipped away. And no matter what fleeting images he sees in the corner of his vision…
A slow breath exits in the pale light of flickering overhead flourescents, as he opens the cabinet, looking past the various Is, to the file that he wants. A comes before H, though he looks past A briefly… before reaching for Akado's file instead.
It's thick, and a man with Akado Ichihara's long tenure with the Company is expected to have a file this dense. Opening it up, it shows his recruitment date as May 3rd, 1967. He'd been with the Company almost since its inception. Stacks of pages containing cases he was on give the file weight, photographs of Akado through the years, from a young man standing shoulder to shoulder with Kaito Nakamura to his wedding to his wife Li, pictures of his daughter Hokuto and…
…Project Icarus?
Flipping through the file, there's documentation about human experimentation, trials of a drug designed to deliver a synthetically created Evolved ability to a normal human being. There's signed waivers, forms written by Akado and details about injection regimen for his daughter Hokuto. As Corbin pages thorugh the files, more and more layers of the mystery start to come unraveled. A 1970's genetic experiment, Hokuto testing positive for results, deaths of other tests subjects, all signed off on by the Petrellis; Arthur and Angela.
There's a photograph of Akado shaking hands with a balding doctor with round glasses, his jacket having the surname Zimmerman written across it. Photographs of Hokuto as a young girl in a hospital environment, dossiers on her ability training done by Angela Petrelli. Then, beneath it all, more grim truths.
1989, the Hartsdale NY facility and the closure of Project Icarus. There's lists of names, research staff members that were subjected to mind wipes, others that were slated for incidental casualty and what amounts to a cover up of a lab explosion, lists of scientists that were rounded up to be in the building when it exploded. Everything, neatly arranged by Arthur Petrelli at the end of the Formula's research.
Akado Ichihara helped murder the researchers.
Injections. Testing. While Corbin started out kneeling by the file cabinet, the more he reads, the closer he gets to the floor itself. The file is eventually laid down, spreading out, as he squints through the flickering light to read things he'd never known. Such files he could have had access too, with his special clearance levels, but that doesn't mean he'd read them. He didn't file these. He had no idea there was anything at all known as Project Icarus.
Hartsdale. Incidental Casualties.
"Son of a…" This isn't the Company he thought he'd joined. While he'd known about some questionable things, this…
Blue eyes slide shut for a few moments. Maybe he can be glad that Hokuto never knew this— god he hopes Hokuto never knew this.
She'd been in archives same as him, would have had access to his file…
When he can open his eyes again, he looks for the important things. How did he round them up? What might he have been doing with those files?
Flicking thorugh the file, Corbin finally pulls out his assignment tracker printout. There's a profile photograph of Akado from 2006, well-groomed and with his long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a list of details explaining his vital information pertinent to the Company:
Akado Ichihara, Japanese National, DOB: November 8, 1956.
Height: 5'8", Weight: 167lbs, Eyes: Brown, Hair: Black
Ethnicity: Japanese, Residence: 776 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, NY, NY.
Scars and Marks: None
Unique Ability: Telepathy
Evolutionary Anomaly Class: Cerebral, Detail: Create lasting link to conscious mind allowing for remote telepathic control and sense links. Local-area domination of multiple subjects possible.
Data Analysis
Biological: 75%
Cerebral: 90%, Elemental: 65%, Temporal/Spacial: 40%
This description is followed by a dossier of his recruitment history and a psychological evaluation last updated in 1995. The psych profile shows a high loyalty to the Company but also a growing sense of dissatisfaction with their work, distrust of authority and tendencies to question Company policy and operations. Akado was being watched for potentially insubordinate behavior following what happened in Hartsdale…
"Christ," Corbin curses outloud as he reads some specific words in the file. Lasting link. Conscious mind. Remote telepathic control and sensery link. Local-area domination of multiple subjects possible. Within moments he's reaching for his cellphone, thumbing to a name in his send window. This is something he'll need to talk to Crowley about, and quickly. To tell him what he found out, explain the situation with Luke…
And they'll need someone to check him. Make sure that he's not still a sense link…
But a photograph of a child Hokuto catches his eye, and he reaches down to gently touch it. Even in her thirties, she looked like a teenager, but as a child, she looked like a child. Long before he ever knew her, before she gave him that tiny flower.
The phone sits on the name and number, as he sets it down, gathering up the paper work and pushing it all back together, to place it back into the file…
The number continues to wait, the phone screen shuts off, saving battery power.
They've been investigating it for weeks now— it can wait a few more minutes, while he runs his fingers over a name, glance at the file of a woman whose deceased sticker is still valid.
Unlike her father's.