Participants:
| Scene Title | Return to Fucking Antarctica |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | This isn't going to end how you expect it to. |
| Date | December 11, 2019 — December 17, 2019 |
“Hold on! Hold on!”
Over the whine of jet engines, a single voice echoes across the tarmac of Floyd Bennet Airfield. Just ascending the steps to the Raytech branded jet, Richard Ray pauses with one gloved hand on the cold metal railing, looking back to see an auburn-haired latecomer to what was indicated as an invite only trip.
“Mr Ray!”
Dana Carrington, suitcase wheeling about behind her, barrels toward the Raytech jet from the open door of a nearby Yamagato Lapis emblazoned with the seal of the SLC-Expressive Services Agency. By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs, Dana is huffing and puffing, out of breath and doubled over with a look of both surprise and frustration painted across her face. The surprise is directed to herself at having reached the jet before takeoff, the frustration is directed at
“Director Zimmerman,” Dana huffs out the name, “wanted me to— work with Agent Quinn— on this trip.” Dana is gulping down breaths between words, shakily trying to lift her suitcase up with one hand while climbing the stairs.
“Room for one more?” She asks, smiling toothily.
Raytech Jet
Floyd Bennet Airfield
NYC Safe Zone
December 11th
5:12 am
There isn’t enough coffee in this entire timeline for Michelle Cardinal. Sitting up near the front of the plane, a laptop left open in the seat beside her and a tall thermos of steaming coffee cradled in both hands, she looks beyond resentful at the timing of this trip. Nevertheless, she is here among people who know some of the truth surrounding her identity. To the young woman sitting one row back and one aisle to the right of Michelle, she is Doctor Michelle Cranston, one of Raytech’s researchers working in their hydroponics lab.
For Geneva Stevenson, much of this trip is shrouded in need to know and clearly you don’t levels of secrecy. One cause of which is the brunette woman sitting across from her on the plane, one with a laptop in her lap filing away last minute emails before the flight disembarks. Robyn Quinn is an agent of SESA, a storied war hero, and both a political and societal figurehead of the Ferrymen. Not that she’d ever claim to be any of those things. It’s hard for someone of Robyn’s renown to exist in polite society, not without being asked a thousand questions about the old days, which no one ever prefixes as good.
Not far from Geneva, Devon Clendaniel likewise sits squarely in the doesn’t need to know pile. A young man versed in the military operations of Wolfhound, but one who was never cleared to know all of the darker secrets the government has in its shadow. Michelle Ray’s true identity among them. Out the window by his seat, Devon can see the silhouette of a SESA-branded SUV departing the tarmac. Mutedly in the reflection of the window, he sees another room not inside of the plane. Momentarily feels somewhere — someone — else. But then it passes.
Conversation from the front of the plane isn’t from the pilot but rather from the last arrivals of the trip. Richard Ray is followed by a shorter, copper-topped woman with thick-framed glasses and a somewhat starstruck smile as she spots Robyn Quinn. She settles her attention on the seat across the aisle from Michelle, instead, and stows her bags before settling down in the seat and leaning across the aisle. “Doctor Carrrranston,” Dana says with a stammer, “I didn’t uh— realize you were going to be on this— ”
“Flight.” Michelle returns, deadpan. “I need four more hours of uninterrupted silence before anyone talks to me,” Michelle admits flatly over the brim of her coffee. Dana’s brows shoot up behind her bangs and she slowly eases back into her seat, looking back at Richard and the others.
This was going to be a long flight.
"Well, that'll be tough without Kaylee," Robyn jokes, looking over at Richard and Devon, and then at Dana. Her own cup of coffee sipped and subsequently finished, she leans back in her seat. "I wish I'd known you were coming, Agent Carrington. I would've dressed a bit better." Not to say she's dressed unprofessionally, but certainly not dressed to impress. "And packed a bit better. And-"
She cuts herself off, waving a hand back and forth. "Well, no matter. It's good to have you along. I'd love to chat later, if you're up for it." She lowers down her tinted glasses - something she's been wearing more often than her asinine eyepatch as of late - and offers a distinctive smile at Dana.
Maybe she should be worried. Maybe not.
Either way, Robyn seems in for the long haul here.
Brows knit slightly, and Devon sits up a little straighter. The timing of it comes on the heels of Richard’s arrival with… Someone else. However he looks over his shoulder first, as if confused by some reflection he’d seen rather than their arrival. But there’s nothing to the side, save for Geneva, and nothing behind that he can pin any oddity on. Maybe he’s just a nervous flyer, for all his soldiering and military bearing. Or, like most travelers, he’s got that lingering feeling of having forgotten something. Since he doesn’t cook, it definitely wasn’t the stove being left on.
With a shake of his head, the young man turns forward again. Perhaps he’s just tired. He looks up to the conversation ahead, while he pulls his backpack close enough to dig around inside. Earbuds are found, along with an old iPod.
Dev fits the buds into his ears and leans back in his seat. He thumbs on the device, rests his head against the back of his seat, and lets his eyes wander back to the tarmac. The first notes of Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again fills his ears, blocking out the discussion about flights and science.
Perhaps appropriately enough given the nature of this trip, Geneva Stevenson had already made herself known as a creature of extremes in the very short increment of time she had been surrounded by this group of unfamiliar people, Richard and Devon excluded. Thanks to the volume of information being withheld from her— she doesn't even know how much she doesn't know, goddamnit— the extreme she had chosen right from the onset is an especially barefaced presentation of what Richard knows to be her everyday irascibility.
On the plus side, this also means that she isn't currently bombarding anybody with pointedly impatient questions, but rather sitting in silent surliness off by herself as much as is possible in the confines of the fuselage available to them.
Like Devon, her buds are already well-fitted in her ears by the time the plane begins its ascent off the tarmac, connected to an impressively faded bronze brick of an 80's Sony Walkman resting squarely on her lap.
Unlike Devon, her own starting track of choice, cranked-up folk-rock twangs and all, is Just a Song Before I Go.
Just a song or two before Geneva begins going completely insane on this plane, more likely.
Fourteen Hours Later
Brisa do Mar Beach Hotel
São Gonçalo do Amarante
Brazil
8:22 pm Local Time
“Did you know that in 1964 the first space launch was constructed here in the Rio Grande?”
It’s been like this for fourteen hours.
“People call it NASA Brazil, but it doesn’t have any actual affiliations with NASA at all.”
Dana Carrington is a travel-sized brochure of useless facts about most everything. Emerging from a limo at the rear of the travel crew, Dana has her nose buried in her phone, scrolling through the wikipedia entry for São Gonçalo. She flashes a quick smile to the young man holding the limo door open for her, then looks back to her phone. “Oh! The airport we landed at is the first in the country operated by private indus— ”
Michelle snatches Dana’s phone out of her hand and with one fluid motion spikes it on the sidewalk like a football. The case and phone come apart in a shower of delicate pieces that all rattle and clatter to the ground. Dana freezes, wide-eyed, staring up at Michelle who leers over the frames of her dark sunglasses at the SESA technician.
“Next time I’ll hollow out your skull and drink a gallon of coffee out of it,” Michelle says flatly before slowly pivoting like the walking dead back toward the hotel entrance. Dana, grimacing, adjusts the collar of her jacket and raises her brows.
“Coffee is the number 3 export of— ”
Michelle pauses mid-stride. Dana grows silent.
No one dies.
"Brazil? São Gonçalo?" Robyn's eyes move from Dana to Michelle, her tone a teasingly questioning one as she attempts to finish Dana's sentence. Looking between them, she takes a long sip of whatever she has in her thermos. "Rude." It's not certain if Robyn is commenting on Michelle or Dana, but she offers the both of them a smile afterwards.
"Which, I might add, is a rather nice place to see from the air. Perhaps we can find out how it fares on foot in what little time we have here, Dana. Go shopping." There's a bit of a devilish smirk on her face as she takes another long sip of her drink.
"That said? I almost wish we were going to Praxia," she notes in an earnest tone, "and talking directly to someone who lived and remembers the things we need answers for." Another sip. "But-" She falls silent for a moment, eyes cast over towards Devon.
"Yeah."
Obviously that isn't an option.
Oh thank god.
Staring straight ahead with an expression as dead as the deliberate arc of Michelle's pivot, Geneva can't help but let out a barely bridled snort at the fate of Dana's phone, a burning wave of sentiment that successfully cruises right over any further comments she otherwise might have made about Devon and Praxia.
"Obrigado. I swear to all of you that if I have to hear any more of the São Gonçalo garbage sanitation strike of 2008 I am going to make sure Michelle keeps that promise about your skull—"
Someone might just die yet on this trip.
The Next Day
Greater Natal International Airport
São Gonçalo do Amarante
Brazil
December 12th
5:03 am Local Time
”Why?”
Sunglasses on before sunrise and slouched forward like a shambling zombie, Michelle cradles a thermos of coffee to her chest like it was a child. Barely having made it up the mobile stairs from the tarmac back to the plane, Michelle’s tiny and protesting whine is followed by the unbridled energy of the sun behind her.
“I can’t believe they offered lattes in the hotel,” Dana quips behind Michelle, holding the brown and red striped cup from the hotel in one hand, “I usually don’t have coffee when I’m working at Fort Jay, the coffee maker on the lab floor always seems to be out of order, which is funny because the same thing started to happen with the lab coffee maker at Raytech too once I started working there on the partner project.” It all came out in one seamless breath.
“Robyn,” Michelle whines as she kneels in her chair, hands on the back, chin on the headrest, staring at Robyn through smoky black lenses, “I’ll figure out a way to upload human consciousness into a machine body if you take one for the team and grab Carrington and leap out of this plane once it reaches cruising altitude.” She exhales a huff of breath, blowing a gray-streaked lock of blonde hair from her face.
“I personally can’t believe we’ve got another fourteen hour flight ahead of us!” Dana cheerfully comments, rummaging around through her bag. “I was thinking we could pass the time by singing songs, my new phone,” she says, pulling it out of her bag, “has a karaoke app on it!”
“Robynplease.”
Tinted, prescription glasses sit over Robyn Quinn's face (yes, even at 5 am), hiding the redness in them from both a few too many drinks yesterday and the lack of sleep. One of those is a mistake she won't make again on the next leg of their journey.
It's anyone's guess which that will be.
"I don't know, Michelle." Robyn has, perhaps surprisingly, attempted to retain some sort of formality and professionalism at first, but when she slips into just calling Dr. "Whatever her actual last name is" simply Michelle, it's clear that idea has died on the vine. "I think karaoke sounds fun, as long as it isn't any of my songs."
Having been standing next to Dana, she takes a few steps back to where Michelle sits, and leans over to her. "I'll raise you my mother and a body that looks nothing like me," she stage whispers, knowing that probably neither of those things is really possible.
“I get it if geography isn’t your forte,” Devon quips easily to Richard, “but isn’t this the wrong way to California?” He’s already brought it up a few times and in various different forms of the same question since they first arrived, then again at the hotel, over breakfast, on the way to the airport. “You do know you’re supposed to turn left at Albuquerque, right?” His tone, this time, borders on asking to be told where they’re headed.
"Allez, Devon, you're joking at this point." Robyn looks back up from Michelle, shaking her head. "I think Richard would combust the moment he set foot there. You shouldn't be so surprised." The tone in her voice is teasing - like his repeated questioning, this almost seems like a practiced response on her part by now.
She looks down at a watch on her wrist, and then back up. "Besides. Like I said, as much as I wish we could, it's not an option." She stares at Devon for a long moment, quirking an eyebrow. Eyes drift over to Richard, then back to Devon. She opens her mouth like she's ready to tell him, but stops short.
And then she grins. "How warm did you pack? Because being able to tolerate the cold is about to be as Important as tolerating Dana and I singing."
"…You know that y'all brought me along as a walking space heater. Right?" This would be Geneva's overly droll voice, piping in when she hears the question about packing warmly, which also doubles as unintentional commentary on needing to tolerate any amount of said singing. By this milestone of the journey, she already sounds bored beyond all possible measure by that particular implication, even if the unusual dearth of any resentment residing in her tone indicates that she might also be excited about some— or actually, all of this.
Maybe. It's hard to tell for certain. But her bright-blue eyes are definitely vibrant with a much more pronounced reservoir of energy than they have been at any point so far.
In a rather unnecessary visual illustration of her point, Geneva half-raises a hand next to one of her ears and gives it a slight waggle of suddenly red, radiant warmth.
Walking space heater, at everyone's service. Just please don’t fucking touch any of the buttons.
14 Hours Later
Raytech Jet
Puerto Deseado
Argentina
7:03 pm Local Time
Military vehicles on the tarmac are an unwelcome sight. They haven’t surrounded the Raytech jet on the tarmac, but they’ve come to make their presence known. A handful of soldiers stand beside the vehicles, armed and waiting.
“We’re going to take about an hour to refuel,” the Captain says, standing in the doorway to the cockpit as he addresses the passengers. “Given the political state of affairs with Argentina and that this aircraft is registered with an SLC-Expressive cooperating corporation, we’re not permitted to disembark.” Michelle is only partly listening, watching out the window, her stare vacant against the reflection of sunset light silhouetting the armed soldiers.
“Are we safe?” Dana asks without thinking, then looks back to Richard before returning her attention to the captain again.
“As long as you stay inside the aircraft,” the Captain says. “The military’s been very clear on that part. We just stay inside, get refueled, and take off again. Which… means you might want to get up and walk around in here for a bit now.” The captain takes a step back, drumming one hand on the ceiling over his head. “I’ll be back once I confirm with the runway crew about refueling specifics.”
Willie Nelson’s voice can be heard briefly from an earbud that Devon’s pulled away from his head. Pinched between two fingers, the tinny sounds of On the Road Again are unmistakable and a complete contradiction to their current situation. Unlike a band of gypsies, they’re stuck waiting on refueling and under the watchful eye of a government who thinks they need to have a pissing contest. He sighs and pushes the bud back into his ear. “I can’t wait to get back on the road again,” he murmurs, along with the renowned artist, his eyes turning to stare out the window while he waits.
Thirteen Hours Later
Base Marambio
Marambio Island
Antarctica
December 13th
6:00 pm Local Time
The American flag flying over the red-painted walls of Base Marambio on a desolate, rocky island off the coast of Antarctica is a welcome sight. Not all that long ago this remote research facility was run by the Argentinian government, but following the events of Operation Apollo it transitioned to United States control and never shifted back, even after the tumultuous Second American Civil War.
Even on the outskirts of the Antarctic continent the temperature is a brisk 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing compared to the skin-splitting cold of the Antarctic inland Raytech’s crew is bound for. Indoors, though, the American-run base is a dry and warm environment surrounded on all sides by fields of rock and snow. Gathered in the Cafeteria, Raytech’s expedition team sits huddled at a round cafeteria table, enjoying their first real meal in more than twelve hours.
“I think Michelle’s asleep,” Dana remarks quietly, offering a worried look over the thick frames of her glasses to the older blonde, slumped forward on the table with her head resting in the crook of her folded arms. A drained cup of coffee sits beside her and an empty plate that once held a pastrami sandwich. Shrugging her own jacket off, Dana drapes it over Michelle’s shoulders and looks back to the others, offering a mildly hopeful smile.
“Not far off now,” Dana admits with an optimistic tone, “just… you know… three days on a boat.”
Her stomach is already turning at the prospect.
The Next Day
HNLMS Tydeman
Somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean
December 14th
9:49 am Local Time
Travel from the Marambio Base is courtesy of an old, somewhat rusting research vessel belonging to the Netherlands Navy. Through international partnerships with the United States, the Netherlands has remained one of the few European allies America can count on in the post-war world. A frigid wind whips across the deck of the ship, creating a ring of ice around the porthole windows that look out to the dark, choppy seas.
“Are… you alright, Michelle?”
Inside the crew galley of the Tydeman, Michelle hasn’t been able to look away from the dark and restless surf under clouded skies. Making a soft noise in the back of her throat and scraping below one eye with the fingernail of a thumb, she nods. Blinking away any remnant emotion, Michelle picks up her coffee and takes a sip, then exhales a weary sigh. “Just… thinking about people I left behind when I— ” She glances over to the table Geneva is sitting at, then back to Dana, “when I moved to New York.”
Nodding, Dana bites down on her bottom lip and wrings her hands around the plastic mug of hot cocoa she’s been nursing for the last hour. “Yeah,” she says without really knowing why. But it’s a good enough response to say again. “Yeah.” What else can you say to that?
Curled up in a ball, knees pulled close, Robyn sits not far from them. Whereas Michelle can't take her eyes off the water, Robyn refuses to angle her gaze in any direction that might give her a view of the churning waters outside. She's been quiet ever since they stepped on the boat, suddenly on edge and jumpy.
All anyone's been able to get out of her is "no one told me there would be a boat", despite the fact that she was almost certainly told in advance.
Whatever the case may be, the talkative and mischievous woman joined them for this trip seems to have taken a bit of a hiatus, replaced with someone more unsure and introspective - and someone who definitely wants nothing to do with the ocean around them.
At Michelle and Dana's conversation, though, she finally perks up, looking off in Michelle's direction. In the know by virtue of her connections to Magnes, Richard, and SESA, she too has an idea what Michelle's getting at. Her eyes lower back to the floor in front of her, and then back up to Michelle.
"If you want to talk about it sometime," she offers in a small voice, "find me."
So there's that, at least.
The Next Day
HNLMS Tydeman
Somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean
December 15th
2:12 pm Local Time
“That’s not the most efficient heat-sink though.”
Sitting beside Agent Carrington, Michelle opens up her laptop and motions to a diagram in a drafting software, comparing it to something Dana is sketching in a spiral-bound notebook. “If space is a premium, you’d be better off utilizing a nano-polycrystalline material.” Dana flicks a look over to Michelle, writing down in her notebook at the same time she’s attentively listening without missing a beat. “I developed a thermoelectric polycrystalline semiconductor for the reactor at the…” she nods to Dana, as if it were their shared secret.
“I get you,” Dana says, writing down arcology reactor in the margins of her notes. “But those technological developments didn’t come around until last year. How— ”
“Here,” Michelle notes with a shrug. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t put your Evolved population in cages.” She closes her laptop, eliciting a smirk from Dana that has something of a dark-humor tinged edge to it. “But anyway,” she pushes the laptop out across the table, “why do you need to displace that much heat?”
Closing her notebook, Dana shrugs slightly and looks away. “Oh just— idle musing. I was thinking about how the hardware on the Deveaux Building melted down on the first try and I…” she shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter, it’ll never work again.”
Steely, Michelle nods. “It’s best that way.”
The Next Day
HNLMS Tydeman
Somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean
December 16th
10:56 pm Local Time
The whirring sound of a helicopter’s engines spinning up in the frigid cold will always be a triggering experience for Richard Ray. The first to be settled down into a seat and buckled in to the H175 Super Airbus, Richard listens to the whine of the engines and can’t help but remember the helicopter launch from the USS George Washington to the Antarctic continent exactly a decade ago. A trip that would lead him to the threshold of life and death. Even more recently, the helicopter that took them from the Mount Natazhat research facility moments before its displacement in time and space.
“I need everyone listening to me!” A Dutch scientist says, standing in the doorway to the chopper’s passenger hold. “It is going to be minus ten degrees Fahrenheit when you arrive at your destination. Frostbite on exposed skin will set in within one minute! Hypothermia and death minutes after that. You need to find shelter from the wind and the cold!” He wasn’t briefed on Geneva’s ability, but in those extreme temperatures it’s not clear how long Geneva could keep up her heat generation.
“Once our helicopter bring you to the landing site, it will return to this ship!” The researcher says clearly over the whine of the engines. “That’s a two hour window for retrieval. When you radio back to us it will take two hours to return! Remember that, two hours!”
Dana looks nervously to Robyn as she settles into the helicopter, bundled up for the cold. She looks unrecognizable in her textured balaclava, save for the dark-framed glasses worn over the mask. Michelle is likewise bundled against the cold, coming in to sit beside Richard and lay a hand on his shoulder. She doesn’t understand precisely what’s troubling him, but she knows that look.
It’s the same one she gets every time she stares at the sea.
Richard mutely raises a hand and lays it over Michelle’s on his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze through the glove he’s wearing. He’s all but indistinguishable himself, his arctic gear patterned in the primary red and secondary black color schema of Raytech, his goggles tinted dark to keep the extreme glare of the sun off the snow from literally blinding him once they land.
“It’s always in the snow,” he says quietly, although it’s hard to hear, and might just be himself he’s talking to rather than his mother. “Always somewhere with fucking snow.”
Two Hours Later
Utsteinen Nunatak
Queen Maud Land
Antarctica
December 17th
1:07 am Local Time
The twilight has long since passed.
There is no night, no darkness. Not here. Not in Antarctica.
A seething, brilliant sun burns high overhead and reflects blindingly bright off of the Antarctic snow. Queen Maud Land is a rocky stretch of mountainous Antarctic land interspersed with miles of trackless ice shelf. The distant thump of a helicopter’s rotors fades further into the distance as the Raytech expedition marches across the windswept snow and ice under a relentless sun toward a frozen, rocky escarpment nearby, upon which rests what at a distance looks like a UFO.
Colobanth is a steel-walled building of brushed metal and black, square windows. The facility rests above the ground on tilted metal stilts, rows of unmoving wind turbines jutting up from the escarpment edge on either side of the facility. The structure lays largely in ruin, looking to have been uninhabited for more than a decade.
“Colobanthus affinis,” Dana says, tucking her chin into the collar of her jacket. “An alpine flower.” Arms wrapped around herself and shoulders hunched forward, she glances over to Richard as the team approaches the arctic station’s entrance. “It’s a pretty name for… something so lonely looking.”
Even bundled up as she is, Robyn teeth seem to constantly chatter, much to her and everyone around her's annoyance."One time, during the war," she remarks in a low voice, "I got stuck in Minnesota for three days because of a snowstorm. I think it got down to negative twenty three." There's a beat. "It still didn't feel this cold, and I wasn't dressed for it then." She angles her gaze up towards the entrance to Colobanth, staring long and hard at it through tinted goggles - the way the light can reflect off snow would otherwise not be fun to deal with.
This is it. They're finally here.
Her feet plant firmly in place, scrutinising the sight before her as though it may not actually be there. She swallows hard, lifting feet that feel suddenly weighted down up and forward. "Let's… let's get inside. Assuming we don't have to blow an opening in the wall."
This is, as far as Richard Ray is concerned, a land specifically made to kill him.
The frigid cold of the environment would kill him rapidly if he weren’t bundled up - and even then, the arctic gear is just buying him time - but if he were to take his other form the unrelenting sun and its glare off every ivory surface would boil him away to nothingness if he didn’t move very carefully through what few shadows exist.
He should know. He’s had to make that trip before.
“Yes,” he says curtly, “Let’s get inside. Geneva, you’re on point, we’re probably going to need to cut the door open— chances are it’s frozen solid.”
He scans the horizon, then starts trudging towards the building, “Keep on your guard. No idea what the previous inhabitants might’ve left behind.”
“I’ll bring up the rear.” Devon, already scanning the area around them, speaks in a way that offers no room for debate. In this moment he’s the soldier. And while he knows at least two in their party likely have more combat experience than he does, they also have more knowledge of their purpose in this forsaken land of ice and snow. The role to keep the command and scientists alive comes somewhat easily and almost naturally.
His head turns so he can look over his shoulder to the rest of the company. The cumbersome layers slow his movements slightly, thick gloves and goggles hinder marksmanship. He knows he’ll adapt, find away to survive and keep his team alive.
Devon follows the party after a count of three. The space allows for some reaction, should anything come up from behind. A second or two is an eternity when it’s needed. Heavy boots plod, breaking through the crust of wind-fused snow and pressing into a dense powder beneath. He keeps his eyes roaming, checking behind and to the sides as much as marking the progress of the others in the group.
“Yeah. I gotchu, fam."
Just from the apathy of her syntax, Geneva seems almost comically unsuited to the somewhat militant nature of this mission, especially next to the show of seasoned competence already being displayed by some of her party members. Like Devon. But at the same time there is an unmistakable sense of hard, deadly quietness that stiffens the way she delivers the response, and also what sounds rather more suspiciously like joy. She is already moving forward several clean steps ahead of the rest of the group, determination creasing her brows.
Unsurprisingly enough, she seems the least affected by the silent assault of iciness that presses around all of them, though she is bundled up in a collection of clothing no less heavy than the rest, goggles included. The main difference is that one of her hands is bare against the starkness of the terrain, a tiny, nearly perfectly circular radius of red-orange insistence inside a vast spread of white.
As a source of actually useful warmth, it is not much in terms of distance covered, as cheerfully luminous as it definitely looks right at the epicenter; she is conserving most of herself for what is to come. But she had an inkling that those closest to her would appreciate any residual heat they could get, however modest it happened it to be.
It is, after all, fucking Antarctica.
Rows of solar panels flank the path to the front door of the research facility, looking to be in less disarray than the wind turbines that have shifted over time and stalled in disrepair. While some of the solar panels look damaged, most of them appear intact and still functional. The approach to the door is silent, save for the crunch of boots through snow and the brush of wind across the rough terrain. Dana pauses to inspect one of the panels, giving it a ginger jiggle with gloved hands. She traces cabling on the back down into the snow, then looks back up to the facility without remarking on anything. Michelle catches that look and pauses by Dana’s side, one eyebrow raised behind her snow goggles at the agent.
With Geneva on point, the rest of the group is fanned out at the base of the short steps going up to the facility’s front door. Devon, taking up the rear, sees no sign or sight of anyone save for the retreating silhouette of the helicopter that brought them here. Visibility goes for miles, especially with this station perched on a rocky escarpment as it is. As Geneva reaches the door, she can feel the radiating waves of cold emanating from the metal surface. Her supernaturally heated hands brush over the metal and find it, not as Richard had suggested, but intact.
“What is it?” Michelle asks down to Dana, who looks back from the station to the solar panels. Dana starts to say something, brows furrowed together and lips parted, continuing to tug at wires behind some of the solar panels. “Dana?”
The latch is a little tight, but Geneva is able to give it a firm tug.
“These are still operating,” Dana says with an exasperated breath, looking up to Michelle. “The wiring’s been repaired, I think someone’s been— ” Then noticing Geneva opening the door, Dana prepares to interject
clank
Geneva pushes the door open into a narrow and unlit hallway that goes only a couple feet before hitting stairs that go up and another set that go down. There’s boots by the door—
A rifle report reverberates through the station, the sound sending a jolt of adrenaline through Geneva as much as the p-tang of a slug striking the wall beside the door has her jumping practically out of her skin on reflex. There’s a ratcheting sound, a bolt being slid back and another round being chambered from somewhere inside Colobanth.
Someone is here.
And someone else isn't having any of it. Robyn Quinn's teeth clench together as the gunfire rings out - thankfully the report is dulled a bit by her cold weather gear. "I knew it," she seethes between teeth. "I fucking knew it. It's never as abandoned as it's supposed to be." It's a good thing she's come prepared for this - she had never expected this excursion to be crisp and clean.
"Hey, asshole!" she shouts out as the ratcheting sound rings out. "We're not here to start a fight!" She moves, back pressed against the large metal door frame. Eyes angle over to Dana, and though it can't be seen, she smirks. "Dana, do you think we have jurisdiction here? Because if yes, we can flex that. If not-"
She pulls up a handgun from her waist, an extremely cold CZ75 - thank god for gloves and all that. She's never used it in temperatures this cold. She maybe should've studied up on that, but here they are. Taking a deep breath, her attention turns to Richard. "So, this didn't take long," she notes with a tone somewhere between amusement and annoyance. "I can blind if you can shoot."
“Wait, did you say— “ Richard’s head turns towards Dana as she speaks, his unseen brow furrowing in sudden worry. His attention snaps back towards the door, a gloved hand lifting, “Geneva, wait— !”
Too late.
As that gun rings out, he growls under his breath, moving to duck behind a solar panel for cover— probably their best bet of somewhere the gunman wouldn’t want to damage. “Geneva, take cover,” he calls out, and then brings one hand up - tugging the mask down a bit to let his voice carry more as he shouts in a cloud of frosting breath, “I swear to God, Julien, if that’s you shooting at us I am going to kick your fucking ass!”
Of course it would be to the front of the group and not the back that an attack happens. Devon can only make a sound of frustration at the report, a chesty grunt as if hit himself that punctuates the instinctive, flinching duck. Another, more guttural than the first, is forced past his teeth as he pushes himself forward. So much for letting the civilians take point.
“You keep firing at us,” he calls in while surging forward, “and so help me I’ll blow this whole fucking building up.” No apologies, no shits given about what else might be hidden inside. Just the straightforward going to stop the threat business in his tone. The pistol strapped to his waist is drawn as he comes alongside the doorway, and one of the layers of gloves removed to give him some mobility with his trigger finger.
Pressing his shoulder to the doorframe, Devon looks at Robyn then tilts his head toward the interior of the building. “You cover when I breach,” is less a suggestion and more of a strategic plan. He knows the agent’s abilities in a fight and, honestly, he’s glad to have her on his side. “Then flank. Remember Fort Irwin.” Specifically, the two-pronged attack that finally put an end to one nightmare.
"AaaAAA—"
That would be a yawp of utter surprise from Geneva, who has no time to formulate a more cohesive-sounding word in her brain as the bullet ricochets away right beside her. Richard doesn't need to tell her twice either: ears ringing, she immediately flattens herself against the wall next to the door frame, one half-fist lifted by her shoulder in what is suddenly a brilliant spheroid of crimson. The hot light of it pulsates with her unease and adrenaline, throwing the greyness of the hallway behind her into dancing shadows of ominous contrast.
"Who the fuck is Julien?" she almost yells, even as she dares to just barely peek beyond the edge of the frame again after a few seconds have ticked by. And what was that about Fort Irwin? Frustration at being the notably least-informed of the group sifts into her posture. Causes her booted heel to dig against the floor with more clenched force than strictly necessary.
The most that Geneva can see is the stairwell just beyond the door there's boots, three pairs. Two are smaller than the others. There's jackets too, one smaller than the other pairs. She can feel her heart racing in her chest, hear the sound of booted feet clomping down stairs, but she doesn't hear the rifle fire again. For a moment there's just silence.
Devon can feel all of his Wolfhound training coming rushing into the forefront of his mind. He's estimating what caliber of firearm the solar panels can stop and at what range. He's looking for alternative exist, alternative routes of entry into the research station. Contemplating what it would take to knock it off it's stilt foundation if it comes to that. He's considering how many attackers there might be, the odds of both he and Robyn getting shot on breaching the entrance.
Dana isn't responding to Robyn. In fact, Dana isn't here right now. She's about fifteen feet past where Robyn last saw her hunkered down behind one of the angular solar panels, gloves hands clasped over her ears and eyes wrenched shut. This isn't her wheelhouse. This isn't what she trained for.
Neither did Michelle, but apparently she has a gun. Richard bears the click of the beretta safety come off in the silence between shots. Wordlessly she nods to Richard and moves behind Robyn, crouching in her silhouette with her gun trained on the snow. Her world, her timeline, was much more violent than this one. This, of all things, feels natural to her.
But none of them could prepare for what comes next.
“R-Richard?”
There's no gunfire. That voice. It isn’t Julien Dumont, it's
“Quinn?”
Tyler Case emerges from the entrance of the research station in a vibrant orange parka with fur trim. “Wait, what’re you guy— bWAH!” He screams on seeing Geneva by the side of the door, fumbles his rifle and trips over his own two feet, pitching over the railing on the stairs and landing in the snow so hard he disappears down into it leaving a human-shaped hole from which a groan emits.
“Richard?” Wait.
An identical Tyler Case emerges from the doorway, this one unarmed. “Quinn?!” Then, as if on fucking cue. “What’re you guys doing h—” He spots Devon on the other side of the door and “bWAH!” This Tyler slips on the ice and falls down the stairs, landing on his back upside down in front of Richard.
Michelle angles a look to Richard mouthing what the fuck?
The lack of response from Dana draws Robyn's attention for just the slightest moment. There's something on the tip of her tongue, but it doesn't make it far. Not before a voice cuts through the air like a knife, calling out to Richard and to her. She freezes. Metaphorically and literally. Her eyes widen and she snaps back to look in Devon's direction. "Devon, stop-!" she shouts, lowering her own pistol.
It would be hard for her to forget that voice, even after all these years.
"There's no fucking way," she mutters, staring in to the compound as Laurel and Hardy commit to their act. "There's no fucking way." She pauses, before turning back to Dana and offering her a hand - it's okay may seem like something that's an un-Robyn like gesture these days, but she knows not everyone here is as trained as the rest of them. Or maybe it's just Dana.
"Tyler," she says in an even voice as she turns back to face where he lies on the ground, slowly making her way forward. "It's nice to see you. How many of you are there? Are we going to go through this routine every time?" He can't see it but she's actually smiling.
"Oh," she adds after a moment, holding up a gloved finger. "And why the fuck are you at a Company installation in Antarctica, Tyler."
There's the Robyn everyone's gotten used to.
“Wh-what, I, why, how— “ Richard just stares back at his mother before looking back to the building, and then he’s moving to step into the open, voice lifting with Robyn’s own, “Stand down! Stand down, these are friendlies— !“ Unlikely as that may seem.
His hands spread to either side as he walks towards the door, laughter in his voice as his breath turns to frost, “What the fuck are you doing here, Ty— oh my god, wait, did— did all the Julien clones convert into you when— oh Jesus Christ. Of course they did. Fucking hell.”
Stepping over to offer a heavily gloved hand up to the Tyler that left a him-shaped hole in the snow, “C’mon, let’s get inside it’s fucking freezing out here— Devon, Geneva, Dana, Michelle, this is a friend of mine, Tyler Case. And that’s— uh— also Tyler Case.”
“…there’s probably more of him inside.”
Devon has sights trained on the first Tyler to appear. His finger rests just above the trigger of his pistol, alongside the slide. The appearance of a second Tyler has that finger sliding into position to squeeze, aim transferring from the one that toppled into the snow to the one falling down the stairs.
Tension eases a fraction when Robyn calls to him, but he remains ready. The call to stand down doesn't produce immediately friendly results either. The handgun is lowered, but kept in hand, and his posture appears to relax. He doesn't switch off, though. There's a readiness to him, a subtle restlessness to his posture; he's still on alert, still watching for traps, no longer just guarding the back but keeping eyes and ears on all directions.
"WHAT," Geneva practically explodes in no less of a yell than before, nearly shoving the entirety of her heatwave-glazed fist into an empty space perilously close to Tyler's face before he goes tripping down the railing and off into the snow of his own accord. She doesn't exactly stand down either, unless speechlessly staring downwards at the vague Tyler snow-angel with nothing less than complete confusion counts as doing so. Her hand is still slightly upraised, still illuminated in a glowing swirl, highlighting her own adrenaline-fueled consternation more than anything else.
Spotting the second clone doesn't help this at all.
"Somebody tell me what the fuck is happening here. Please, I swear to god."
Still laying on his back, Tyler makes a soft groaning sound and scrubs one bare hand against his forehead. Richard notices the number 3, scribbled on Tyler’s hand, in sharpie. “Uh, yeah, we should uh— go inside? It's kind of cold out— ”
“Dad?”
Standing in the doorway to Colobanth is a child, no older than eleven of twelve, her long dark hair tousled by the cold wind and eyes narrowed against the glare of sun on snow. Michelle’s back straightens when she sees the girl, immediately lowering her gun.
“Oh boy,” Tyler mumbles, “yeah uh— who wants coffee?”
Eight Years Earlier
San Francisco, California
The sound of a door slam might as well be a gunshot for all that Sabine Hazel reacts to it. Jolting up from her desk cluttered with paperwork, dossiers, and partially disassembled radio equipment. In the same moment she stands she's snatching a handgun from the desk and swinging it out to point directly at an Institute Retriever at the door.
The white-clad figure in the biohazard suit unclips his respirator mask revealing the long and tired face of a familiar man, dark circles around reddened eyes, greasy blonde hair poking out from a hermetically sealed nylon hood. Sabine grabs him by the collar and pulls him in for a kiss, then growls, “Scare me like that again and— ” she realizes he looks panicked. “Julien, what's going on?”
“Pack a bag, everything. We've gotta go,” Julien says sharply, pushing past Sabine to a metal locker. “Endgame hit the Arcology with the Ferrymen, it's all going down. Liquidation orders were passed out to every Retriever team.” He continues, hauling a sloshing metal canister of gasoline from the locker, pouring it over the documents and the desk. “We’re done here. Burn it all down and vanish.”
Sabine doesn't need any more answers than that as she grabs her jacket, slinging it over her shoulders and bolstering her gun at the back of her pants. “Where are we going? Where’s our— ” Once more Sabine is cut off as Julien drops the gas canister and collapses onto the floor. He clutches his chest with one hand, and she can see his brow slicked with sweat. “Julien!”
Dropping down beside Julien, Sabine sees one of his eyes has gone blood red, every single capillary ruptured. Julien fumbles for the gas can but can't control himself. He lets out a keening wail, looking up to Sabine and breathlessly tried to explain something to her. The skin on his face sags, sloughs, and blood begins to deep through the cracks in his flesh like a melting two-tone candle. Julien’s last words are a wet gurgle as he touches Sabine’s face, leaving a bloody palm print behind in its wake.
Sabine’s scream is a strangled one of confusion, horror, and grief.
Present Day
Colobanth Research Station
Antarctica
There wasn't any coffee.
The mess hall inside of Colobanth feels like a high school cafeteria. It makes for an awkward setting to have a stranger tell a horrifying tale of survival. Especially one as disjointed as Tyler Case’s. The expedition team is seated around a long table with bench seating, and though the heat had initially felt insufficient Geneva’s presence has helped make it downright cozy.
“So, after Gillian helped me take control of the Root of Julien’s cloning ability, I… sort of took control over a bunch of them. But some I just— it was too much. I had all these memories up here, jumbled up,” Tyler #3 explains with a wave of one hand at the side of his head, a plastic mug of hot cocoa (which is in supply still) cradled in his other hand.
“The two of us,” Tyler #4 jumps in, identified as much by the 4 scribbled on his hand, “woke up here. With her.” He indicates to the girl that has joined the storytelling, sitting at the end of the table.
Noel Hazel-Dumont
“It's kind of hard to explain,” Tyler #3 says with a slouch of his shoulders, “because I know what the root Tyler did right up until the moment he gained control of Julien’s ability. But now we’re disconnected. Most of what I know about the outside world’s come through tv and radio broadcasts we can pick up here.”
“You missed the war?” Dana asks, brows raised. Tyler #4 nods in the affirmative.
“Nobody’s been out here in years, not since before the war. Julien took Noel when she was just a baby and hid her to protect her from the Company, then later the Institute. Kept her on the move. Sabine never even knew where she was, for her child’s protection. She’s…” Tyler #3 looks down the table to Noel, who quietly eats cereal from a bowl. “She's special.”
Michelle slouches forward, lacing her hands together and resting her mouth on the back of her hands. She looks at Richard once, uncertainly, then over to Tyler #3. “How’ve you two survived here for so long?”
“Julien was a doomsday prepper?” Tyler #4 jokes, cracking an awkward smile. “This place was a mess, he did repairs and moved supplies here ahead of bringing Noel. We've probably got another two or three years of food left before we’d have to… figure anything out.”
“So, you've been cut off?” Dana asks, looking back at the others for a moment.
“There used to be a Tyler 1, 2, and 5 here,” #3 says regretfully. “We lost them all trying to reach another station or port.” Tyler #3 takes another sip of his hot cocoa and cradles the mug in his hands. “I've gotta say… you all being here is kind of a relief.”
Besides some occasional recoiling - notably at the initial appearance of a child and then at Tyler's story of survival and change. Much of Robyn’s time has been spent either staring into the middle distance, or glancing over at Noel. She hasn't said much since the child appeared, but it's when Dana speaks up that she finally turns her attention back to the Tylers.
"Then it's an amazing stroke of luck that we're here," she offers. Her eyes narrow and she scowls. "Or someone's very careful planning." She's learned not to discount that particular possibility. Offering a wave to Noel - the third one so far, because Robyn has a bad habit of treating all kids like little kids, she sighs.
She looks down at her hot cocoa, briefly wishing for something stronger as she considers her next statement. "I'm glad you're okay, Tyler. Any of you," she admits in a low voice. She'd always been proud of the fact that they had been able to get him and Libby out of the Institute.
But knowing now how it complicated the life of a child, even while acknowledging that Julien likely would've died in the Ark no matter what, puts a new light on some of those choices. "I'm Robyn," she offers to the young girl, leaning towards her end of the table and extending a hand, as through it were a much more professional environment than it actually is. "It's nice to meet you, Noel."
She has plenty of questions for and about Noel, but for the moment there's still something much more pressing on her mind. "So you've been here since the Ark. How long was Julien here before that? How much…. Access do you have to the information here?"
“Obviously we didn’t know you were here,” Richard admits, leaned forward to rest his arm on the table and his other hand wrapped around a similar mug of cocoa, “Glad that we’ll be able to help you, though— we should be able to get you back to civilization, get you somewhere comfortable. I…”
He looks over to the girl, offering her a faint smile before turning his attention back to the Tylers, “I can probably get in touch with Sabine. It’ll take a bit of time, given the state of things, but I’m confident I can manage it.”
When the question about the base comes up, he slants a look over to Robyn— who is not good at working through the casual chat before getting to business, he’s discovered— and then back, admitting, “We were here hoping there was still some data left here; about the personnel, about what they were doing here…”
As a new voice enters the scene, Devon half raises his gun. It’s a split second, from hearing to processing the voice belongs to a child. The gun lowers again as that assessment is made. He follows the party into the building, but doesn’t join them at the table or for cocoa. He takes up a position, a vantage point, to keep a lookout while Richard and Robyn get down to business.
You all being here is kind of a relief is not a sentiment that Geneva is sure that she shares, though there are other, more dubious emotions that rise to fill that same space as her time in this company wears on. The young woman is lounging at the other end of the long table like a brooding but covertly curious cat, one hotly luminous hand curled by her ear in thought. Her eyes have been glazing over with passive peevishness every time some new nugget of information taken for granted by the others is lost on her— which is still too often, even though she has been doing her honest best to follow along with the clusterfuck of the tale told.
Perhaps it's because of this that Gene's focus drifts, despite herself, and finally she finds herself gazing with a kind of bleak, biting sympathy at the youngest figure among them. Noel. "I can't imagine fucking growing up like that. Jesus," she mutters, half to herself. The next question is more clearly meant for the table, however, and her voice lifts a little accordingly. "What does she think about all this?"
Noel is quiet, hands folded around the steaming mug in her hands. She looks down the length of the table to Tyler #3, her brows raised in query. Tyler #4 smiles, nodding to her. “It's okay, they're friends. That’s Richard and Quinn, from the stories.” It sounds like Tyler’s told her about the old days. Except—
“Are you really secretly in love with Teodoro Laudani?” Noel asks Richard with great investment. “Can I see your underground lair?”
Tyler hasn't told her shit.
She's seen River Styx.
“Oh my god,” Michelle breathlessly states, gently waving a hand at Noel while both Tylers look like they want to phase through the floor. “Obviously we’re going to help them,” Michelle interjects. “This isn't a place to raise a child, and if her mother is out there — regardless of the complicated biological mess,” she motions to Tyler, “the paternal side is, she deserves to know.”
Tyler #3 grimaces and nods, looking down to the table. “We've had a lot of time to think about that here. I… I don't know what Sabine wants, but the angry lady is right,” he says with a gesture to Michelle who slouches into her seat, “she deserves to know.”
“Tyler, uh, Mr. Case?” Dana, still rattled from earlier, speaks up again. “Robyn and the others have already mentioned it but— we’re here for information the Company may have left behind. Anything at all might be valuable.”
The two Tylers look to one another and seem to deliberate something. Tyler #3 looks over to Dana, then around the table. “Okay so… maybe this— this is a little messier than I let on. So,” Tyler #3 eyes Noel who makes a soft sound in the back of her throat and nods, much as Tyler had before. Permission.
“My thoughts and Julien’s memories are a jumble most of the time. I remember the things he's done, but I also remember his paranoia. His… his feelings.” Tyler #3 looks at Noel again. “I basically am her dad. Us two are all she has left of family. None of the others of us,” by which he means whatever clones Root Tyler has spun off, “have these memories and feelings. So… sometimes I feel like I've gotta lie. Or… or maybe downplay things.”
“What he's trying to say is you all aren't the first people to come out here,” Tyler #4 chimes in as he paces around beside the table. “Before we moved Noel here, back in January of 2010, a couple folks found this place on accident. The day that huge explosion shook the whole damn frozen continent. Sabine and I were here, using the leftover hardware the Company didn't need anymore to do some spy work of our own. This place is — was — multi-purpose. A medical facility and also one of the satellite tracking stations for the Company’s isotope tracking system. There's a ridge,” he points south, “about a mile that way with a huge satellite dish sitting on it. Connected to here by underground cables.”
Tyler #3 picks up the long story. “Anyway, we were researching the Institute’s compass technology and other tracking technology and medical equipment. We— being— a few Juliens and Sabine. Some survivors from the explosion came uh, knocking on our door. A blonde lady named Clara, a military guy with one eye named Epstein, and uh. You know. Sylar.”
Both Tylers grimace. “He was uh, nice. Mostly. Julien…” Tyler #3 pauses and makes an earmuffs gesture to Noel and she covers her ears. “Uh, Julien gave Sylar one of his clones. To. Eat? I don't know. He got Julien’s power out of it. Copied it somehow. Uh— they were here for a few days, then one Julien and Sabine left for the States, left me and my uh, siblings behind to scrap the whole facility not long after. We took all the computers and hard drives and— everything. We brought it outside, doused it with gasoline, and burned it.”
Tyler #4 looks both apologetic and a little frustrated. “A Julien came back here with Noel when things with the Institute seemed to be getting… out of control. I learned other Julien's were still with Sabine, and they were both working for a lady named Kershner. That Julien who came back died in an accident trying to fix the electrical system. Right before… before I took over. Nobody else had ever come back here. It just fell through the cracks. This was all supposed to be temporary.”
“Honestly, we’re… I mean,” Tyler #3 grimaces. “I'm glad you're here. Things have been getting weird lately and… yeah. This isn't a place for a kid to grow up.”
Dana, frustrated that they'd come all this way for nothing slouches down in her chair. Meanwhile, Tyler #4 excuses himself in the direction of the kitchen.
“So all of this,” Michelle motions around, “is new renovations. Jesus Christ…” She rests her head in her hands.
Chin propped against the back of her hand, Robyn sips her cocoa silently as she listens to the two Tylers explain a very complicated situation they have managed to find themselves in. The cocoa is tasty, but she almost chokes on it when the names Epstein and Sylar come up in the same breath.
Robyn's posture straightens and she almost chokes on her cocoa, trying her best not to sputter any of it onto the table. "I'm sorry, Avi was here with Sylar?" Her brain searches for a match for Kershner before landing on Sarisa Kershner, a name she is only vaguely familiar with as someone who once helped kick her ass in Egypt, and as the mother of Nathalie LeRoux. Along with Avi.
She can't help but let out a belabored sigh at that.
When the word scrapped escapes Tyler's lips she freezes, attention finally drawn from Noel to the two Tyler. Her gaze is steady, brow slightly knit and jaw clenched. Nostrils flare and she takes in a deep breath, and as soon as they finish and one Tyler steps away to the kitchen, she rises up to her feet.
Another sip of the cocoa as she wordlessly turns around and takes several steps away from the group. A long slurp sound out as she takes a final sip of her cocoa, and then—
She winds back and heaves the cup forward, sending it flying and shattering into the wall.
"Merde!" she yells, both hands clenched into fists at her side as she watches the little remains of the cocoa drip down the wall.
“Oh, God. No. No I am not in love with Teo, how— how do you even get that show out here, if you haven’t— “
As the mug shatters against the wall, Richard flinches— looking to her for a moment before he looks back to the others apologetically. “Sorry. Her mother was stationed here, a long time ago,” he explains quietly, regretfully, “Amongst other things, she was hoping for answers.”
He breathes out a long, frustrated sigh, fingers rubbing over his face, “Every time we get close. Damn it. Remind the Julien part of your brain that we were both working for Kershner, and are on the same damn side. Did they create any backups, any caches of information that might have what we’re looking for…?”
A glance to the girl, then to the Tylers, “And what do you mean that things are getting weird around here?”
The questions the child poses drive cracks through Devon’s bearing. Her first question draws a glance, brows raised and mouth starting to open with amusement. The second prompts him to look at Richard, whose response elicits a choked laugh. He tries to mask it with a cough. And by turning away. Maybe that strange strangled noise wasn't from him but came from the entryway.
Ceramic shattering just seconds later prompts another look toward the table. Dev studies Robyn, then Michelle and Dana before slanting a look at the two Tyler's. The history is lost on him almost as much as it is on Geneva. With a shake of his head, he looks to the remaining members of his party. Gene is given only the barest of shrugs. Richard, on the other hand, can expect some questions later. Likely starting with asking if Francois and Liz are aware of his tryst with Teo.
Robyn isn't alone in the way she receives this news, or at least some of it. The names Epstein and then Sylar draw progressively larger reactions from Gene in the shape of highly suspicious squinting, her eyes narrowing a little further with each mention. The strangely choked laughing sound from Devon scares her somewhat, both with how unexpected it is and how severe her focus had been.
Not as much as the mug of cocoa being flung into the wall, though. "Fuck," escapes from Gene in a muttered flinch of reflex amidst the tinkling of debris, and it takes a long minute before she can get her hackles to settle down again.
"You didn't keep anything?" she manages afterwards in a more truncated echo of Richard, an even more insistent intrusion into a conversation that had, thus far, excluded anything even remotely to do with her. For some reason, the reference to a futile search for familial answers seems to have triggered something inside her.
“I— I'm sorry, no,” Tyler #3 says with a frown. “I'm really sorry, Quinn,” he adds, looking down the table to Noel who is finishing her cocoa. “We— uh— Julien and Sabine were too worried about any of it being used by anyone. We destroyed everything.”
In the kitchen, still within eyeshot of the others thanks to the facility’s somewhat open floor plan for the galley, Tyler #4 fills a kettle with water and sets it on the electric stove. He then moves over to a small turntable on the counter space that divides that tables from the kitchen, pawing through a small collection of old records kept in a milk crate.
“As for what went weird,” Tyler #3 says, looking more concerned to Noel, then back to Richard, “Uh… back like, at the end of last year the auroras out here went nuts. The sky lit up like, just, crazy and I started having really weird-ass dreams and hallucinations.”
“Me too, dad,” Noel reminds him, to which Tyler motions to Noel with fingerguns. “I had dreams about being on a boat.”
Tyler #3 smiles, nodding to Noel before looking back to the others. “Well, around the January of this year or— February? The aurora got all weird and… honestly I don't know. I could take you out there, it's not much further then the satellite dish. I don't know what it is.”
At the same time, Tyler #4 puts on one of the records. After a few moments of softly popping static arrhythmic piano notes and saxophone comes over it's small built-in speakers. It's a lilting piece, giving a sense of both exploration and uncertainty. “Hope you don't mind, it's the best we've got out here when the satellites aren't available. The records are the only thing we didn't burn.” It’s Jazz, which apparently the Tylers and Noel both don't seem to mind.
Even as the others talk Robyn keeps her back to them, watching cocoa drip down the wall. After a moment, her shoulders slump and she turns back. Shaking her head at Tyler, she walks back up to the table and sighs. "It's not your fault," she assures him quietly.
Her hands fold into her lap, and she clears her throat. "I'm sorry about the outburst, I just-" As the music begins to filter in she pauses, blinking. "This… mum liked jazz too. This one… I think she had it." She looks like she's ready to to take a turn for the sullen when she catches the talk of the aurora.
"We call them overlays," she says to Tyler. "The dreams. It was a phenomenon that happened all over." Her gaze moves down to her hands. "I had several," she admits. "They're disorienting, aren't they? Sometimes I feel like they still live in my head. " After a moment of thought, she looks over at Richard. "I think we should check it out. Let's not leave empty handed."
After a moment, she looks to Noel and Tyler. "No offense," she adds with a chuckle
“Yeah, they were fairly… widespread,” Richard rubs at his forehead, “Damn it. Another dead end.”
He slants a look over to Robyn, noting, “They’re probably her records, then. At least you can bring some mementos back home with you.”
Straightening, both hands running back through his hair, he agrees, “We might as well take a look at whatever anomaly fell through the overlays, if you’ve got something for us to look at. Does any of this equipment still work at all, or did you trash everything?”
Dev looks over at the Tyler who's decided to turn on some music. A brow ticks up at the choice, something vaguely familiar about it, the way early childhood memories are. His head shakes slightly and returns his focus to the present.
The satellite.
While the others continue to talk, Devon wanders. It isn't aimless, but scouting, surveying. His eyes trace doors, windows. Those open to the outside are paused at and the land outside studies. Maybe he can see something from here, track a route to limit their time outside.
"Fucking boat dream overlay shit. Fucking coming out here to neverland to find out that you destroyed everything like a bunch of assholes—" is Geneva's newest valuable contribution to what had been brought up, muttered out in a fashion that suggests she is allegedly trying to keep her voice down from being overheard by the rest of the group, but also not really.
While Robyn is staring at the rivulets of cocoa that are trickling blandly and desolately down the wall, Gene stares away more tightly, in turn, in the direction of Devon's meandering back. Some of the tension drains out of her shoulders, or at least she tries to force it to, fractionally. Jazz isn't a style of music that interests her as much as it does the others, but it serves as a loose backdrop to focus on while the discussion continues on for The Important People.
“Yeah uh,” Tyler #3 glances back at the equipment, “nnnnnot all of it? So we have a couple smaller satellites in the array that pick up basic broadcasts, television and stuff? The big dish that tracked the satellite hasn't worked in years because, well, the satellite it was tracking blew up I think?”
Ah, yes, the time Ryans went to space.
“But yeah we can lead you out to the satellite station to see the uh… the weird stuff.” Tyler # 3 says with a look back to Noel. “You stay here with Dad #4, okay? We’ll be back soon.” Noel nods, smiling gently and standing up from the end of the table. She starts to walk around it, seemingly just meandering.
“Yeah hey,” Tyler #4 says to Robyn from the kitchen, “you wanna take these records when we go, they're all yours. Hopefully we’ll get some better, uh, you know options?”
Tyler #3 claps a hand on Devon’s shoulder, drawing his attention away from the ice and snow out the window. “Whole lotta nothin’ out there,” he says, jerking his head back to the door. “C’mon, we can lead the way…”
As it appears to be time to venture back out in the cold again, Geneva finds herself stirred from her thoughts not by the movement of the people she came here with, but by the presence of Noel standing suddenly by her side. “I like your hair,” Noel says softly, affording Geneva a gentle smile before slipping away into the kitchen with the other Tyler.
The trip out here may not have uncovered what they had hoped to find, but for three people stranded at the end of the world…
…it was the best day of their lives.