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| Scene Title | Of Homicidal Maniacs |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Geneva and Richard have a lot of respective catching up to do. |
| Date | February 4, 2019 |
A wash of natural light spills down from the windows overhead to illuminate the expanse of the Raytech building’s lobby and its white flooring, assisted by softly luminous light strips that line the top and bottom edges of dark grey walls during the evening hours when the sun isn’t up to provide it. The first thing visitors to the building see once they’ve come through doors of bulletproof glass is the front desk, with open space to either side of it and the vertical Raytech logo on the wall behind, backlit for a striking effect in red and white.
Along the walls of the lobby are framed newspaper stories about the company - announcements of the opening of their main factory in Detroit and of this very building in the New York Safe Zone, stories covering the technological breakthroughs and advances by the company’s innovators, and mentions of the company’s infrastructure restoration work in contract with the government. Tall potted plants are placed between the framed pictures, keeping the lobby from feeling overly sterile and unnatural.
For many here, it's just another unremarkable workday at Raytech Industries— as "unremarkable" as Raytech could ever be said to get, at any rate. For a certain teenaged intern however, it's another story altogether. It's one of Geneva's first days as an actual human being in many weeks, and though physically she is feeling much more herself, there is still some amount of cognitive dissonance at not looking down at herself and seeing feathers in a spectrum of colors. At not perceiving a heartbeat thrumming like a low, continuous drumroll inside her chest. It does not help that she is not a morning person on the best of days; it is a good thing she has a rather ridiculously sized thermos of steaming coffee along with her, or she might just murder everybody here.
Though she is certainly dressed presentably enough for her usual work, gray slacks with a baby-blue turtleneck sweater, the face she greets the reception with is one of sourness barely-plastered over with a token amount of patience, and she drums her fingers atop the reception desk when she gets there. "Yeah, uh, hi. Morning and stuff. I think Rich might want to see me." Not an unreasonable assumption, given her recent… leave.
Sera, the receptionist in question, is looking rather stressed herself. There are post-it notes all over the place and she’s looking somewhat frazzled as she looks up at Geneva. “What? Who? Oh. Mister Ray, of course, um…” She looks around the desk, “Um, where is… the phone…”
It’s over there. Complete covered in post-it notes.
"Over there?" Geneva points out helpfully, sticking her finger in the direction of an apparent monstrosity of post-it notes. Under her breath, she does a silent prayer that this interaction with Sera will be less drawn-out and eccentric than it normally tends to be. Please, no accusations about doughnut theft or whatever the hell goes through this woman’s mind on a regular basis. She is most certainly not in the right mood to handle that today, giant cup of coffee in hand or no.
“Oh! Yes. Sorry. Things are crazy, things have been— “ Sera fumbles under post-it notes and finally finds the handset, bringing it up to her head and blindly stabbing the buttons. “Mister Ray? Oh wow I actually got you, um, there’s someone here to see you? I think it’s an intern. I’m not sure.” She peers at Geneva, “She is carrying a lot of coffee. So she’s probably an intern. Okay. Okay I’ll send her up.”
She hangs up the phone — dimly she can hear Richard on the phone going, ‘Who is it?’ on the other end — and beams, “Go on right up!”
For a split second Geneva nearly feels sorry for Sera, seeing the stress written on the woman's composure, but any sympathy she may have had is erased when she is referred to only as 'an intern.' "I've been here for months, you know, you could at least remember that my name is Gene," she comments somewhat more icily than necessary, a stark contrast to the temperature of her thermos— which becomes just a few degrees more scalding beneath her touch for no particular reason at all. Harumph. Without another word, she heads right past the front desk and down the long hallway where she knows the elevator awaits. Her journey up to the office of the CEO is otherwise uneventful, and in the course of a few minutes, she raps loudly on the side of the imposing doorframe leading into Richard's office.
Raytech Branch Office: CEO's Office
A large double-window along one wall of Richard Ray's office allows natural light to spill in throughout the office and provides an excellent view of the green roof on the lower floor of the building, the flowered garden spreading out between rows of solar panels.
The walls of the office are in slate grey, the carpeting on the floor matching, and the furniture is all in black glass, metal, and leather - but the modern starkness is offset by the tall potted plants that grow along the side of the room opposite the window. The CEO's desk is a broad affair in black glass with a video feed and touch-screen built into the surface of the desk itself, the non-interactive portions of the desk decorated sparsely with a plastic 'in' and 'out' box, a framed picture of Elisabeth Harrison, and an old onyx chess king set beside it like reminders of times long past.
"Hey, Mr. CEO. Lowly intern here to see you."
As there’s the knock, the door unlatches itself for her to enter. Electronic locks are like magic sometimes.
“Geneva!” Richard’s straightening up from behind the desk, eyebrows leaping towards his hairline, “Good to see you in… uh… a more appropriate shape.” Apparently, he’d been filled in on her situation at some point. His brow knits a bit in worry as he looks her up and down, “Are you alright?”
He’s in a suit, as usual in the office, black with a red tie, although he’s wearing sunglasses in the office oddly enough. As the door opens, Richelieu goes bounding over towards Geneva in a ball of fuzzy curiosity.
When the electronic door finishes sliding open, Richard sees— perfectly framed by both sides of the doorway— Geneva standing right in the middle and taking a gigantic sip out of her thermos. She finishes her drink and arches an eyebrow at her boss before moving again, stepping through into the enormous space comprising his office proper. The aroma of fresh coffee floats into the room with her. "Well, I'm not three inches tall anymore, soooo I guess I'm doing better now." This is said in that tone of voice where it seems like Gene should be rubbing her face with both hands.
"I guess Kaylee filled you in on what happened? How much have you heard? Aww, it’s Richie." This is clearly directed at the smaller of the duo, and she stoops as the little cat capers towards her, resting her free hand on her thigh. "It is so good to see you, you adorable little angel."
“Just that you’d gotten somehow moved into the body of a hummingbird,” Richard says in somewhat dry tones, an eyebrow arching over the edge of his shades, “And that it had something to do with Eileen. Things have been a little— “ He hesitates to find the right word for it, “— hectic lately, so why don’t you fill me in on the rest?”
The kitten - a cat, now, really - happily rubs himself against her knee and thigh, slinking around her leg and rubbing his face over her shoe to claim it as his own, in the inscrutable way that cats do.
"Yeah, I picked up on that," comes Geneva's equally dry but also curious reply. She had not been back long whatsoever, but even so, there are still signs she had seen. Sera's strange state of stress, to name one. "…And Christ, where do I even start." This is becoming a common thread lately. To distract herself, she strokes the kitten affectionately as he nuzzles up against her, still stooped down nearly to his height. The fellow had certainly grown since she had last seen him.
"Well. You know about the situation with Sybil." Kaylee had, at any rate, so Gene continues on bearing the assumption that Richard does as well. "Apparently an Eileen from another dimension wasn't happy with all that, so she wanted to murder her. Because why wouldn't she. Emily and I got in her way, so she shoved my brain into the body of a hummingbird because she was a complete asshole. I almost died." She adds on the last words almost as an afterthought, just for good measure.
"But… she's dead now. That Eileen, I mean. I've heard that you guys might've had something to do with that?" Curiosity has entered her voice in full force now, and she gazes right into Richard's rather ridiculous sunglasses.
“I…” Richard trails off, his expression hard to read from behind those shades, and then he drops down into his chair heavily with a creak of the piece of furniture. One hand comes up, thumb and forefinger sliding under the glasses to rub between his eyes. “…okay. So you knew where Sibyl is? Because I’ve been looking for her for awhile.” He may need to have some words with his sister.
He sweeps his hand back out again in her direction, “I wasn’t aware that Eileen Gray was dead, no— last I knew she was trying to murder us all out in New Mexico with her fucking terrorist militia. Did she get hit by a stray round or something?”
Geneva's hand eases off mid-scratch, and she glances critically at the top of Richelieu's fuzzy head. "Nah, sorry, I have no idea. I know that Emily arranged to have her passed on to Gabriel— for safety— but I have no idea where she actually ended up or where she is now. As far as Eileen Gray… her being dead is the entire reason I'm back to normal now, so I know it happened, but I don't know exactly how she died." Both of these things are truths as far as Gene is concerned.
"What the heck happened out in New Mexico? I assume that's why things are, um, hectic now?"
Richard’s brows raise a little. “Well,” he murmurs, scratching at his chin, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I might need to find out how Ms. Epstein contacted my old friend Gabriel…”
Then his nose wrinkles up, “We were ‘assisting on a classified government contract’ and were ‘attacked by terrorists’, is the party line.” It’s clear that he finds the party line a bit distasteful, since he just actually raised both hands to do air quotes.
"Um, was he actually your old friend, or was that rhetorical?" Geneva questions, finally straightening up to her full height once more to steal another sip from her coffee. Fuck, is everyone she knows friends with the famous serial killer? What actually gives?
The air quotes are noted with some amusement, as well as appropriately lifted brows. "And what's the non-party line?"
“Gabriel’s a… complex subject,” Richard admits with a shake of his head, “I’d like to think that he remembers me well, at least. We have some history, and I know that Emily’s not likely to tell her father where to find Sibyl…”
Arms fold behind his head as he leans back with another creak of the chair as that trails off subjects switching, “We tore a hole through to another world to rescue two of our friends, my daughter, my mother, my— well, my lover’s mother, and about a hundred refugees who were stranded in a world where the Vanguard won.”
Dry, “The government seems to think we’d cause issues if we went public with interdimensional technology.”
Now Geneva actually does rub at the side of her forehead as she takes this in. "Someday, I'm going to get the full story about Sylar from one of you. Either Emily or you, it doesn't matter who, but I swear I'm going to find out why everybody is apparently best friends the world's most famous Evo killer." Because clearly she is missing something vital here.
To offset her bemused state, she chooses to try and shrug this off by focusing on the other topic at hand. In this regard, she seems rather less surprised to hear the news about what the Raytech team had been up to than might have been expected from her. "I mean, yeah, that sounds reasonable. If people are able to traipse on through from other dimensions, a murderer who can turn someone into a miniature pigeon might be the least of people's worries." She does not mean to sound deliberately flippant, but her tone is just as deadpan as Richard's. But her next question is slightly less so. "Did you guys succeed?"
“Sylar was the killer. Gabriel… well, like I said, it’s— “ Richard’s nose wrinkles, “Complicated. Also, it was Peter-fucking-Petrelli that blew up Manhattan, not Sylar, if anyone asks. Fuck that guy.” He may be bitter.
He leans further back, head tilting to look up to the ceiling, “We did. It was a high cost, but we did. We rescued all of them.” He smiles faintly, “If you’ll forgive me a cliche— and they called me mad.”
"Sylar was… wait, are you going to tell me that this Gabriel is from a different dimension too, like Eileen was?" It's the only rationale explanation Geneva can think of that fits for how exactly Sylar could also be regarded as a friend and someone to be relied upon, as she now knew was the case for several people she was close to. Unless the man was dissociative. "Fuck all this shit," is the very quietly muttered comment she has to make to that, but she simply sounds bleary as she says it.
But Richard's smile is contagious, however faint, and Gene finds herself sharing in the moment of proud relief. "That's amazing that you did, though. Next time could I come with? Assuming I haven’t been turned into a bird by a homicidal maniac?" Normally she would not ask this— she knows well how adults tend to be about the thought of putting youngsters in danger— but she raises one eyebrow with an air of daring hopefulness for a reason that soon becomes apparent. "I’ve heard work rumors that you had another, um, young intern out there…"
“No, he’s… there’s clones and psyche fragmentation and— shit, I don’t even know how to explain the whole situation,” Richard admits, “You’d do better asking Eileen, but since she’s dead I guess you can’t do that…”
Then his head drops forward again, and he actually grins, shaking his head as he watches her through dark lenses. “Work rumors, right— I’m already in trouble with Gillian, you know. Hopefully there won’t be a next time, but— I’ll keep the offer in mind.”
“After,” he adds, “You’ve got a good grip on your ability at least.”
This was a surprisingly acquiescent answer, and not what Geneva had expected. She grins back at those sunglasses, tossing her hair out of her face in a single, breezy motion. "See, Rich, this is why you're the cool uncle… And my boss too I guess. Speaking of which, I should probably actually get to work sometime today." After all, it's been a hot minute since that's last happened. She takes advantage of the moment to bend, giving Richelieu one last loving scratch or three beneath his chin, and then she has turned around back towards the electronic doors leading to the rest of the building.
She is already strongly in need of a coffee refill, but the day promises to be just slightly less vexing than before.
At that, Richard laughs. “Just one thing before you go,” he says, even as he pushes himself up to his feet and steps around the desk— making a clicking sound with his tongue and reaching down, attracting the feline stalk of Richelieu so he doesn’t wander out the door with her. “You said that Eileen Gray is dead— “ He glances up, brows lifting, “Do you know what state Ei— Sibyl was in when Gabriel carried her off?”
It's too bad, really. Geneva would be the best and kindest of all would-be catnappers. The girl pauses just as she reaches the doorframe, glancing backwards in Richard's direction and shaking her head introspectively. "I have no idea what state Sibyl was in when she got handed off, it was Emily who took care of that stuff— she just told me about it. If I had to guess, she was still a confused, possessed zombie at that point."
“Damn,” Richard murmurs, glancing to the window, “I was hoping— well, anyway.” The kitten’s collected up in his arms, and he straightens, flashing over a smile, “Glad you’re back in human shape. Let me know if you need anything, kiddo.”