Participants:
| Scene Title | Punnett Square |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After returning from her trip to Texas, Lucille Ryans seeks expert advice. |
| Date | June 29, 2019 |
It was close to evening hours as Lucille Ryans walks down the sterile, bustiling hallway of the hospital. The heels of her boots click on the linoleum, dressed in her usual black and grays with her hair pulled back into that tight and high ponytail the woman looks just as ready for busy as a Wolfhound member.
Having just come off of Staten Island and pursuing a lead, it makes sense to be in her casual uniform, asymmetrical blazer trailing behind her.
The short haired brunette had one goal this evening, speak to Julie. Someone she didn't know but had an awful lot of coincidences with. Their connection always felt awkward.
Knock Knock
Lucille raps on the brown wooden door with a fingerless gloved fist.
“Hold on,” is snapped through the small office door in a mostly familiar voice. In the interim following Lucille’s knock a pair of doctors briskly pass by down the hall, both looking exhausted. While Lucille is following their movement the door to a small and cluttered shared nurse’s office opens. Julie Fournier-Raith looks as tired as the doctors are, her blonde hair tied back with an elastic, eyes dark and cheeks sunken.
For a moment there's no recognition when she stares up at Lucille from her slouch in the doorway. But then it hits her, followed by, “Whatever this is it'll cost you a cigarette and last as long as it takes me to smoke it.” She turns around, calling over her shoulder to another nurse in matching pink scrubs sitting at one of the tiny, paperwork-cluttered desks, “Cathy I'm going on break. Be back in 15.”
Julie steps out of the office, blue eyes angles up to Lucille and one hand held out expectantly. Payment please.
Lucille doesn't outright reply as Julie opens the door and greets her in her own special way. Just shifting her weight to follow where Julie heads while fishing out two cigarettes from a pack in her pocket. One to Julie, one for herself. "Thanks," Is the short reply, together the two walk down the hall and soon out to fresh air leaving the scents of sick and meditation behind. The beeping of an oxygen machine is muffled as the door closes and Lucille wheels around with a lighter in hand, lighting Julie's then hers cigarette before leaning against the wall opposite of the side ally door into the building.
"I need your thoughts on some things."
That's as good as any intro Julie is going to get, "Some of it has to do with Wolfhound business." Technically all of it did but… The Hound is fairly certain she won't have to remind the blonde to keep it to herself, "Years ago I never noticed too many people with an eye color like mine." In that moment her normally gray blue eyes flash a bright, hot gold before fading back. "Not that I believe the gold is all that special," Not when people had eyes that glowed red, blue, purple and whatever other color was out there. "But there is a procedure being done to people by the Institute Remnant, it gives them abilities after stealing them from someone else. The project is called Gemini. There have been leaks online about it. We encountered someone that had been through it and it was reported that her eyes glowed gold." That's the first part and Lucille takes a long drag from her cigarette before she continues.
"I've also been investigating the Company and it's past and there…" Luce stops to think for a second, "There was a power, entity. Maybe Evolved with the ability of possession. They took over someone's body and that woman's eyes glowed a hot gold as well." How they are connected, Lucille can't be all that sure.
"The people I've noticed with the same eye color all have different abilities.
None like mine."
…"Thoughts? Do abilities and eye color once that ability is in use, have any correlation?"
Julie is quiet for so long it feels like she has no intention of answering any questions. Even once they're outside and she's lighting up that cigarette. Squinting against the sunlight, Julie takes a few slow and meandering steps away from the ER entrance they'd exited through and slowly follows the brick wall toward a parking area.
“I've actually heard of that,” Julie finally says, exhaling a lungful of smoke. “Gemini.” She turns to look over at Lucille. “In the last year before the Institute fell there was this… operation. Roger Goodman led it, out to somewhere in the Mid East. They found some old Pinehearst facility being run by terrorists. Some shit went down,” Julie so helpfully explains, “and some info was salvaged. Apparently the terrorists had been researching chemical ability transference using old Pinehearst research.”
Taking another drag from her cigarette, Julie pivots on her heel and comes back to face Lucille. “I know pap— Luis’ department did some early precursor work on it before the lion’s share was shipped out to the new office in San Francisco. I never heard much of it after that.”
But then Julie’s brows crease together as she considers the second half of that question. “Ok, you're like, romanticizing eye color here. Your eye color is determined by your gene pairs inherited from your parents, specifically from the alleles in those genes. Then you have the iris itself,” she points with a finger to her eye, “which has two layers. Depending on the melanin count in each layer it'll affect overall color.”
Stepping close to Lucille, Julie rises up on her toes and stares the older woman in the eyes. “Yours? Those are amber. Less than 2% of the world had that eye color, which might be why you haven't seen it much. Just slightly rarer than green. It's that color because of a high amount of lipochrome in your iris layers. You can thank your parents — or maybe grandparents — for that.”
Julie settles back down on her heels. “As for people with abilities? I don't know. My pupils dilate when I use my power, I've seen other people whose eyes glow through induces bioluminescence. It isn't well understood and nobody’s put a lot of money behind researching it.”
Lucille's hands are moving as soon as Julie starts speaking, habits die hard when gathering info and her little red notebook was filled with little tidbits. It was almost time for a new one.
Mid East
Roger Goodman
Chemical Transference
It's a wonder more people don't attempt to talk to Julie about the Institute's most recent projects. The young nurse obviously had ample knowledge. Just like her sister had… Lucille shakes the idea of Liette away for now and peers upwards from her notebook closing it with the pen in the middle.
She was only here to speak on the science of the eyes and abilities. To hear that nobody had done much research on it was disheartening. Luce felt as if there were some real discoveries there. Maybe even a further classification system. That was an academic venture for another time though. "I'm looking specifically in regards to abilities." The taller woman stops and looks more closely at Julie's face. She was a well of secrets already, another wouldn't hurt.
"I'm trying to look at every angle possible in two different investigations to see if they have a connection beyond the two I know of already. Two that make me think they might be linked in the first place. The first variable is Adam Monroe, a few hundred year old immortal who has connections to the Institute." Sliding her tongue over her teeth, "The second is the amber eye color. I witnessed a memory brought forward by a retrocog. It showed Adam Monroe and another Company Founder as well as…" Lucille doesn't know how to explain it best but she rubs the back of her head and tries anyway, "In the memory, a woman was taken over by something. It's hard to explain, they were running some sort of experiment. Had opened some sort of gateway or wormhole. The… force took over the head scientist and her eyes changed to this color." Her eyes flare again for a moment. "Seeing as Adam Monroe is in the center of both investigations. I just don't think seeing amber colored eyes on two occasions is a coincidence."
"Perhaps whatever that thing was… perhaps they concentrated on what it is, it's," Lucille stops herself and just jots her thoughts down quickly.
Perhaps the Force was concentrated and used to make Gemini a thing.
Sounds insane.
How would that even relate to her? She wasn't a product of an experiment..
If she had been then why not her sister? Whose eyes don't glow the same when her ability is in use. Though her eyes are usually closed.
Lucille already had a lot to think about in that short exchange.
Underlining insane three times before looking up at Julie again and flicking a wayward auburn tendril of hair out of her eyes, "It all sounds really crazy I know but I approached you moreso about the eyes and if any science had been done I didn't know of. Leaving no stone unturned. Seeing as it hasn't.." What a bummer.
Somewhere along the way, Julie paled. She’s let her cigarette hang at her side, brows scrunched together and lips pursed in an uncertain expression. Whatever it was Lucille is investigating is cast into the alley like a cigarette butt, instead Julie has her own questions. Lucille’s curiosity be damned. “Wormhole,” she says a little quieter than she intends, reiterating, “You said something about a wormhole?”
Julie takes a step closer to Lucille. “From the Company?” Her blue eyes track from side to side, searching Lucille’s eyes. “Explain. What did it look like, what shape was it?” There’s an urgency to Julie’s tone, also a knowing, like she suspects one thing but isn’t sure she even wants to broach the topic otherwise. But the possibility is too distressing not to.
As Julie begins to ask her own questions it doesn't take her ability to know that Julie is feeling some kind of way about the discussion of this wormhole.
Their blue eyes, not too many shades different lock and Lucille's own eyebrows raise as she herself looks deeply into the blonde's eyes opposite of her. "Yes, a wormhole." The taller woman starts slowly before she throws her own cigarette to the side as well. "It was triangular." Lucille thinks of a prism of energy, "There was something on the other side but nothing physical came through. The triangle shined."
Long fingers go to flip the notebook open again, " You know of it?" If she did, then Lucille might have just struck gold. "Arthur Pertrelli and Adam Monroe was there, as well as.. Robyn Quinn's mother. She was the scientist that was killed."
Julie’s eyes go distant for a moment, unfocused and unsure. Then, looking over to Lucille she exhales a sigh through her nose. “I’ve seen something similar before when I worked for the Institute,” she offers in a hushed tone of voice, “it’s called the Looking Glass. Some sort of… attempt at creating point-to-point teleportation, technologically, but wound up… I’m not sure. It drained all the power out of a single floor of the arcology and materialized a whole man in the room.”
Julie raises a hand, palm out, at Lucille. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know who he was or what happened to him. That was handled by Erica Kravid, and according to the news she’s dead and buried thanks to your employers.” It’s a casual observation, one that implies Julie has little love lost for Erica.
“You’re conflating correlation,” Julie adds, taking another drag off of her cigarette. “Iris illumination and color transition during activation of the Suresh Linkage-Complex is common, one in ten Expressives have that trait. Why does it matter?” She asks quickly at the end, more than halfway done with her cigarette already.
Looking Glass is underlined three times as well and Lucille shrugs her shoulders gently, "Yes, we had a hand in taking her and the others down." It's modest and both Julie and Lucille know it. The Hound feels in that moment how long it has been since a "Hunt."
That drives her today, what feels like a new scent. As well as her own fears that the people with eyes like her, might have some nefarious connection. Luce doesn't divulge this when Julie asks after why it matters to the auburn haired woman. "There are no, or not many leads. You see something twice while investigating and it's better to check into everything then leave anything left to chance," She's learned this from her father, watching him and Huruma over the years. It is mostly the truth.
"If there's some kind of interdimensional… threat in this world… I had hoped for a way to track it. Find a connection," Rubbing the back of her head, "Or just figure out what the fuck this all means." The older woman is far from tired of following the crumbs and trying to piece together how Adam, her father, The Company and this "Thing" were connected. If there was any connection at all. "Would you be able to detect a presence like that?" The question comes out of left field but Lucille's gaze is serious. "Something that was of-" she stops and searches for the word.
“I’m not a clairvoyant,” Julie interjects, finishing her cigarette and throwing it down to the asphalt, grinding it out with the toe of her sneaker. “If someone has an ability, I can tell that. With time, I can tell you the broad brush strokes of what that ability does. But I can’t do magic,” she adds with a shake of her head.
“What you’re talking about?” Julie looks Lucille up and down, slowly. “It sounds like… I don’t know. But it’s not how this works,” she gestures to her own face, “it’s not how any of this works.” Blue eyes dip down to the black smudge on the ground that was her cigarette. “And our time’s up.”
Nodding her head along with a shrug, she had to ask at least if it was something Julie was capable of. "No magic, got it." Lucille stops, "You didn't really believe in the theories about Kazimir Volken and his conduit right?" It had been a while since that day that Colette, Lucille and Nathalie had shown up to investigate Lucille's miraculous healing.
The cigarette is over and Lucille has gained some more knowledge surrounding the events she and Rue had been made privy too.
"I know. Nothing is working how it should. It's why I came to you," Pushing herself off the wall, the brunette begins to make her exit. "Thanks though Julie, I owe you a drink and a pack of smokes." Luce would bring it by later this week she decided.
“Don’t write checks you can’t cash,” Julie says as Lucille starts to retreat. “Oh and— Ryans.” Julie tilts her chin up. “Volken was just a man with a power.”
“All men die.”