Participants:
Also Featuring:
| Scene Title | Shadow on Water, Part III |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After a run-in with Jensen Raith, Feng Daiyu gets in touch with a contact, and presses him for information… |
| Date | June 29, 2009 |
Droplets of water cling to the silver exterior of a car parked at the far end of an alley, its headlights turned off. A thin mist of rain falls from the sky, visible only in the dirty yellow light cast down by the street lamp suspended above the alley's damp brick and pitted concrete.
Black windows bead with moisture, rivulets of water running irregular tracks through the surface, deep shadows swallowing up portions of the vehicle to the edges of night. Soon, though, they are peeled back by a bright pair of lights turning in to the other side of the alley.
Headlights cut gleaming paths through the drizzling dark, and a black sedan rolls slowly down the narrow alley, tires splashing through puddles and treading over old, waterlogged newspapers. It comes to a halt just a few feet away from the nose of the silver car, and only once its headlights turn off does the opposing car's door open.
Pushing dark sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, Feng Daiyu steps out from the silver car, closing the door with a soft clunk as raindrops begin to collect on the lenses of his glasses. The driver's side door of the black sedan opens, and a tired looking man with wavy brown hair steps out, aviator sunglasses shielding his eyes. Both men, it seems, like to wear their sunglasses at night.
Neither of them thinks of that song.
"You're asking a lot, having me come out here in person, Daiyu." Aviators isn't in much of a good mood, hands tucking into the pockets of his gradually dampening leather jacket. "You'd best have a damned fine reason to call me out here at the ass-crack of night when you know god-damned well this isn't protocol."
Feng's expression may as well be wrought from stone, with how little it changes. Only when his lips faintly downturn to a frown does he begin to show any hint of emotion, and unfortunately it is negative. "Your intelligence is faulty, and it nearly cost me my life." Feng's shoes splash through a puddle as he clears the distance between himself and the man in aviator sunglasses.
"Jensen Raith is in New York City, and he knew exactly where to find me." As Feng reaches inside of his jacket, the man across from him begin to take on that same stony demeanor, maintaining his composure even as a pistol is drawn and pressed to his sternum. "How how many of us do you have trawling the underside of this city?"
Tilting his head down to better regard the gun, Aviators rolls his tongue over the inside of his cheek. "Go ahead," he states with flat disapproval, "go ahead and pull that trigger. You'll have every spook this side of the equator up your ass so fast you won't even be able to pull your own head out of it."
"Jensen Raith was one of your men." Feng snarls out the words, pushing the gun hard against the other man's chest, forcing him back against the black car. "Why did you send him after me?" While neither man can see the others' eyes, both Feng and his counterpart know that neither one is blinking.
Aviators' lips pull back into a snarling expression. "Jensen hasn't been one of ours since the Clinton administration. He isn't on our payroll, he isn’t like you either. The last man he worked for wore a red armband and did his best to emulate a man with a tiny moustache."
"So if you're going to shoot me because you got one upped then you had better do it now instead of wasting my time." Aviators pushes himself against the gun, leaning forward to bring his face closer to Feng's. Like a game of chicken, eventually one man has to swerve away, and whether by intimidation or facts, Feng is the one who relents, pulling away the pistol and taking a few paces back.
There's silence for a few moments, on both sides of the scenario, until Aviators is the one to continue talking. "We had no idea Jensen was in New York; Hell we didn't even know he was in America." There's a sigh, a long and tired one, and Aviators' runs a hand across his mouth in a weary motion.
"Have you found Holden, yet?" That question makes Feng bristle, and he turns his focus jerkily back to the other man, "I take it that's a no?"
"No." Feng states flatly – hotly. "No, I have not found Holden yet. I went to ground after Jensen ambushed me, I lost track of Ruskin's day-to-days and lost my lead on Salucci. I still haven't found proof that Lucrezia Bennati is here in the city either, but if that many Vanguard are here, they're going to slip up sooner or later."
There's a slow, bobbing series of nods from Aviators as he paces back and forth in the alley. "Stay down for a while longer, go to ground and don't poke your head back up. Eventually one of them is going to slip up, but they know you're here now. Thankfully, they don't know who you're working for." It's more of a question than a statement, given the way Aviators looks at Feng at the question, but when neither man says anything for a moment, it goes unasked.
"There's something else." Feng withdraws a photograph from the interior pocket of his jacket, offering it out in a gloved hand. Aviators' brows rise, and he moves over, fetches the photograph and looks through it with scrutiny. There's a moment of prolonged, awkward silence.
"Where did you take this?" He finally asks, looking up from the photograph to Feng.
"Staten Island. It's from my scope camera, he was with Ruskin the day I made contact with her. When I shot him, he bled out a black smoke…" Feng's focus shifts from the photograph of Gabriel gray up to Aviators, waiting for recognition. There is, and it isn't pleasant.
"Jesus Christ," Aviators' practically breathes out the words in one quick huff, "what does that mean?" Feng's head shakes slowly at the question. "We know Volken was old, real old. Intelligence fed to us by our contacts indicated that he may have had some sort of possession ability. The last reports we got from her before the bridge incident indicated that Volken may have been inhabiting a stolen body…"
Nodding his head slowly, Feng slides his pistol back into his underarm holster. "What is the protocol if it is him?" It's a worst-case scenario question, that Kazimir Volken didn't die on that bridge, and that he's still out there. Aviators seems almost at a loss, head shaking back and forth slowly.
"I don't know, if—" he waves the picture around in his hand, "if this is right, he's hopped into the body of one of the most dangerous men in the world." One of Feng's dark brows rise slowly, not recognizing the face in the photograph. "This man?" Aviators turns the photo around, showing it to the man who took it, "this man is Sylar. He's the man who turned Midtown into a crater."
Suddenly, the notion of going to ground for a while doesn't seem so bad.
"Does this change the mission?" Feng's eventual question comes with a bitterness and resentment. "Does this make him the priority, not Holden?"
"No." Aviators' response is a quick one, "No, this—doesn't change anything for you. This just means we have a bead on another one of our most wanted. This makes Holden blowing up a school full of kids seem like small time, but the President still wants blood for that, and I'll be damned if we're going to let one wolf go because a bigger, badder one just reared his head."
For a moment, Aviators seems to be considering something, before finally turning his focus back to Feng. "No," he eventually adds, "you keep on Holden's ass once you're in the clear again. This," he looks down to the photo again, "this is going to someone else, and I can tell you for damn certain that she's not going to let Sylar go."
"Then I become shadow." Feng states smoothly, taking a few steps back away from his employer. There's a moment's hesitation on his part, looking up to Aviators, waiting to see if he has parting words.
None are spared. For tonight, there's been more than enough talk.
The only thing that matters now is action.