Participants:
| Scene Title | Seek |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The OSI is backed into a corner. |
| Date | November 26, 1970 |
"FUCK!"
A desk explodes into wooden flinders in a violent eruption of emerald-green light. Marcus Raith throws his hands into the air, and what should have just flipped the desk has reduced it to pieces no bigger than a pencil. The walls on any side of him are caved outward from the rapid expansion of his forcefield, the floor as well. The phone that once sat on Marcus' desk is likewise obliterated; black plastic pieces everywhere. Shoulders heaving and hands clenched into fists, Marcus stares at his demolished office with monocular vision and screams at the top of his lungs.
Outside, a few pigeons are startled into flight.
A Short Time Later…
33 Thomas Street
The Long Lines Building
Manhattan
New York&
November 26th
1970
The door to Agent Duvall's office is thrown open so hard it slams against the opposite wall, knocking a framed degree from Harvard to the floor. Duvall, on the phone, looks at Marcus Raith with a steady but ghostly-pale expression.
"I'm gonna need to call you back…" Duvall says into the receiver as he hangs up the phone. "They got away again." No question, not with the look Marcus has in his eyes.
"They fucking got away again." Marcus slams the door shut as hard as he opened it. "Why the fuck are you here behind a desk instead of in the fucking field!?" He bellows. Duvall, with much the grace as one might address a bear that wandered into your path on a hike, slowly rises from his desk with both hands out toward Marcus. Placating. Calming.
"I don't need to have my nose up their ass to know where they are, Sir. You want me to get shot and bleed out on a Brooklyn street that's your order to give, but my use is here." Duvall motions to the desk. "The nerve center."
"Fuck the nerve center they got away!" Marcus storms over to Duvall's desk and slams a hand down on it. "They killed two agents and they had help from those fucking spooks!" He waves the other wildly toward the door.
Outside in the filing pool, the rapid din of a hundred typewriters going at once does little to mask the argument happening behind Agent Duvall's doors. Kara Prince, reviewing reports being delivered from field agents, rises from her desk at the back of the pool and elegantly walks down the rows of desks where specialists transcribe field reports into typed documents. She stops outside of Duvall's door, coming just shy of knocking.
"The entire fucking scene has been sanitized, Teddy!" Marcus bellows, his voice carrying through the door. "Frady's body is gone, the cops don't remember a fucking thing. What the fuck happened? I trust you to pull off operations like this and I find you in here with your dick in your hand!"
Kara draws in a sharp breath through her nose, steels herself, and pushes the door open to step into the room. "Agent Duvall I—" She feigns ignorance of interrupton, cradling documents to her chest like a cross. "Oh. Director. I'm sorry, I can—"
"Prince." Marcus says before turning to look at her. "No," he says, calming, "stay." She shuts the door behind herself, setting the entirely unrelated paperwork down on a table near the door. It isn't her job to manage the emotions of the men in the OSI, but doing so comes with its advantages.
"Do we have an ops report yet?" Kara asks, glancing between Duvall and Marcus. "I assume you're here about the interlopers?"
Marcus looks pointedly at Duvall.
"I was just getting off the phone with the field team." Duvall says with a wary look at Marcus, then Kara. "They encountered a known variable. The regenerator from that murder case in LA in '58."
"Monroe." Marcus says with a squint. "What was he doing there?"
Prince snaps a look at Duvall, then Marcus. "Adam Monroe?" They both look at her with surprise and expectance. "Don't get excited, I didn't know him personally. But he was still alive in the 21st century. Like I told you, I didn't follow all the details of things that went down in Albany, but I know his name. If the spooks you're dealing with are the people I think they might be, you've got a serious fucking fight coming."
"What haven't you told me?" Marcus asks with evident suspicion in his voice.
"I told you about the Company, you just didn't like my answers." Kara insists. He didn't like how little she knew. They existed, but not who, not where, not when. "This could be the start of everything."
Marcus looks back to Duvall. "What happened in the apartment?"
"They vanished again." Duvall says with a slow spread of his hands. "Probably through time, and it's going to take a while to get on their trail again. I'll know when they re-emerge, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that they aren't here right now. Anywhere in the world."
Marcus pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. "Monroe, then. We have a name and an ID, we have his presence at the building. We find Monroe, we find the Company?" Marcus looks at Kara for confirmation, but the best she can give him is a shrug.
"There's no telling if he's with them right now. It could be a year or two out. Or you could walk yourselves right into a fucking trap. Remember, you don't come out of this one on the winning side." Kara warns. "They do, and the whole of fucking history is their bloodbath."
Marcus offers a wary look to Duvall, then Kara. "Prudence, then. Track Monroe, have him surveilled. Lightly. Start building names and associations, a who's-who of his friends. Then we pick them off one at a time."
Duvall offers Kara a brief look of thanks, then settles back down at his desk. "I can have that started immediately."
"And the interlopers?" Marcus insists.
"Hide and seek," Duvall says with a shrug. "We're just at the count to 10 part."
Marcus sighs and turns for the door. "Make it happen. No matter how long it takes." He excuses himself without so much as another word, opening and shutting the door with less tempestuous force. After a few moments of silence, Kara walks to Duvall's desk, giving a knowing glance to the door.
"I'll keep him from unraveling. You focus on keeping a carrot dangled in front of his face." Kara says conspiratorially. Duvall eyes the door, then nods, cursing under his breath as he does.