Participants:
| Scene Title | Promise You Won't Be Mad |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | …please? |
| Date | December 17, 2011 |
Super 8 Motel
Austin, Texas
It's been more than a month since everything changed.
More than a thousand miles from New York City, Libby Case sits in the driver's seat of a late model Nisan Versa, hands on the steering wheel and head on her hands. She's been like this for a half an hour now, breathing, eyes closed, trying to keep herself calm. No matter how hard she tries, when she closes her eyes she can still see the horrors committed inside the Arcology. She can hear the screams, see the bodies, the gore. Her stomach turns, and she pushes herself back in her seat and grips the steering wheel with white-knuckled tension. The street light over her car fills the otherwise dark cab with yellow light, reminds her that she's been parked here outside of the hotel for too long. She'd seen Tyler peek out the blinds twice, but he hadn't come out after her.
Behind her car, behind the parking lot, behind the buildings across the street the silhouette of Austin's skyline is on fire. Riots haven't spread this far from the city center yet, but they will. It's that orange glow in Libby's read-view mirror that pushes her out of the car, pushes her across the asphalt of the parking lot and to the motel room door. When she takes out her keys, she's certain she hears another voice. Tyler, talking to someone. Her hand unsteadies, and a thousand different horrors await her on the other side of the door. The Institute, DHS, Eve. It could be anything. Reaching inside of her jacket, she takes the handgun she couldn't trust Tyler with out from the pocket it was jammed into and clicks the safety off.
Then, turning the hotel key in the lock, she gingerly nudges the door open.
"Ty?" Libby calls out into the darkened apartment, followed too quickly with a response.
"Yup!" It's over-eager, nervous, and it makes the hair on the back of Libby's neck stand up. There's no lights on in the room, only the faint yellow light spilling in from outside, through a small gap in the parted blinds.
"Ty, why're the lights off?" Libby asks as she eases into the room, barrel of her handgun pointed at the floor. She doesn't trust herself not to shoot him on accident. Tyler steps into the light coming in from between the blinds, smiling awkwardly.
"Okay," Tyler starts with an exasperated tone. "Promise you won't be mad," isn't the best way to begin a conversation. "But you were gone for a few hours, and… I might have panicked."
Straightening herself, Libby slowly shuts the motel room door, entirely unaware that someone was hiding behind it. Tyler swallows anxiously, breathes in deep, and wrings his hands together. "Ty," Libby's voice has an anxious quaver to it. "Ty what'd you do. Please, please tell me you didn't try and call Richard!"
"Hey! Richard's our friend!" Comes the voice of the man who was hiding behind the door, and Libby lets out a shriek and whips around, firing blindly into the dark. Tyler lets out a scream, the person she shot screams and falls to the floor, and as Libby flips the lights on she sees—
— Tyler, looking up at her. "Y-you shot me!" He screams, clutching his arm. Libby lets out a horrified wail and drops the gun, wheeling around to come face to face with— Tyler? But then the bathroom door bursts open, and out steps—
— her brother. Again. She starts stammering, backs away from all three Tylers. The one that came running out of the bathroom looks at the scene and runs his hands through his hair. "Oh my God she shot Ty-Three!" This Tyler looks at Libby wide-eyed as she's just screaming. "We gotta call a doctor! Or— or— "
"Calm down!" Comes a voice from under the bed, as yet another Tyler Case slides out from under it. "Jesus Christ, One, you said you had this under control!"
"I did!" The original(?) Tyler shouts over all the other shouting and screaming. Libby is backed up by the window, one hand over her mouth and tears streaming down her face. When the Motel room doors open and two more copies of her brother come walking in, slamming the door into the one with a gunshot wound on the floor, she cracks and starts hysterically laughing.
"Oh my God, she shot Five!" One of the two new Tylers from the Motel entrance shouts over the cacophony of Libby's laugh-screaming.
"I— I'm Two you asshole!" Replies the one injured on the floor.
"L-Libby? Libby are you ok?" The presumed original Tyler asks, slowly approaching his sister who still has a hand clapped over her mouth and is simply wailing with laughter so hard she can barely breathe.
Out of the Motel room, into the parking lot, down the street people can hear Libby's whooping laughter. Her brother — brothers — all look on in mixed measures of confused and concerned. He'd asked her to promise that she wouldn't be mad.
She never agreed.