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| Scene Title | Sketches of Yesterday and Tomorrow |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When Catherine Chesterfield brings the Spektor Collection to the one man who may be able to safely hide them, other Ferrymen present unearth a secret from the past that has dangerous connections to the future… |
| Date | August 24, 2010 |
"This… is something else, isn't it?"
The basement of the safe house known as the Hangar is a well-tended and cooly-dry location. Under the glow of fluorescent lamps suspended from wooden rafters, Scott Harkness looks more weathered and pitted than this storage area itself does. Shadows cast deep across scarred cheeks, brows furrow into creases and weathered old hands press flat against the large workbench that rests at the center of the basement floor.
Spread out over the table, cut lengths of canvas spread with paint are more than just art, they are the tapestry of the future upon which the fates of many individuals are under lease. Catherine Chesterfield's arrival early in the morning interrupted a meeting on the status of current safe-houses and a discussion about where one Barbara Simms would be permanently relocated within the network.
Now, down in the basement along with the recently returned Lynette Rowan, they have joined Harkness and Chesterfield for the unveiling of what has been called the "Spektor Collection," fourteen pieces of prophetic artwork designed by a wide selection of artists, some depicting very familiar individuals.
Rubbing one hand over his jaw, Scott upturns his stare to Catherine, brows furrowed and jaw set, then back down to the paintings. "Now," he grumbles, "I can see why you want me personally to hold on to these…" Lifting up one hand, Scott traces his fingers over the horrible likeness of Noah Bennet, shot thorugh one lens of his glasses, laying dead on the ground with blood covering his face.
"We should go over these," Scott offers in a hushed tone of voice, looking up to Barbara and Lynette, "then the whole council is going to need to…"
This could be a canvas on which the future of the Ferrymen is written.
Precognation, as a concept, had always been an intriguing thing to Barbara, ever since she had found out about her ability and exactly what it was. It was the other side of the coid for her, and something that thus presented an interesting counterpoint for her. It was also something she had never actualy seen in action, or seen first had results of.
For her, this opportunity, both for this first time moment and for what it meant for the Ferry, was not something she could pass up so easily. Since her arrival back into town, she had been looking for… more to do, ways to help the Ferry, ways to be doing something. Perhaps this would presend her with such an opportunity.
But now that she was here, all of that had flooded out o the back of her mind. Al she could focus on were the paintings splayed across the table. All she could focus on was one painting in particular. A blond, pounding on a door in suspenders. A woman who looked strikingly like herself, save for blonde hair instead of her dyed red. A woman she could easily assumed was Niki. Or maybe the ever elusive Tracy she had yet to meet, she couldn't be sure.
All she could know for sure was that one of her sisters had had her future painted for her.
In unrolling the canvases immediately upon getting here, Cat hadn't yet taken time to acknowledge the presence of persons other than herself and Scott. But now that she's done and Harkness has spoken his initial assessment, this detail is tended to. "Lynette, Barbara," she greets, before getting back to business. Fingers flip over the item to the far left on the top row, showing it to be a menu from the Nite Owl Cafe, then place it so the woman's back and the coffee ring are shown. "Tyler Case," she informs, tapping a finger against the tattooed image. "Believed to have fallen into the Institute's hands."
Lynette frowns over those paintings, her foot tapping out a hurried rhythm. She doesn't recognize them all, but Bennet is a significant enough figure to set her to worrying. "Need to what? Start locking important people in a tower?" she finishes Scott's words with a hint of a smirk that doesn't reach beyond her lips. "Do you mind if I smoke?" The question is directed to Scott, although there's a sense that anyone's welcome to protest. She, for one, has never liked glimpsing the future. It always galvanizes people into action, but the looming prospect of self-fulfilling prophecy is always a heavy one. Her gaze falls over to Cat when the Institute is mentioned. But she doesn't comment.
"We'll need to discuss these with Bennet when he gets back ot the States," Scott offers in quiet tone of voice, one hand covering his mouth partly as he looks at the painting Cat pointed out. "Why would anyone have a picture of Case on their back?" One dark brow lifts and Scott looks around the women gathered at the table with him. "If we assume these paintings are literal, then there's someone out there with one of our kidnap victims tattooed across her back…"
ead canting to the side, Scott considers the other face shown in partial profile. "Looks like another woman, maybe bald? Dark skin…" his head shakes slowly, "a hand… I don't even know how to make heads or tails of this." Huffing out a tired sigh, Scott lifts one hand and spreads his fingers, allowing a lattice-work of blue-white light to shine in the form of a coffee cup that materializes in his hand, still hot.
"Tyler…" Barbara's voice is quiet, eyes closing briefly as she intones the name with a grimace on her face. "I don't know," she says when she opens her eyes again, letting them be drawn away form the painting of her sister, back to the painting with his face. "I regret having never really gotten to know him know. Maybe he would have known who this could have been, who would know him enough to have him tattooed on her back."
Wrinkling her nose, she reaches out and runs a hand down the painting, eyeing it thoughtfully. She has an idea, but she'll save it for later in the conversation. "Is anyone planning on checking with the tattoo artists in the city? I'm sure there's thousands of them, but… that may be asking for too much attention." Case, like many others, is a bit of a sore spot to her. She's searching for a way to help, particularly with him.
"I can't identify the woman, there's not enough face to connect concretely with anyone I've seen before," Cat muses. "I'd think it could be Delphine Kuhr, also snatched by the Institute, or Libby Case… Tyler's sister, she was taken too. But… given the dark skin and possible baldness, I can't help but think about Huruma." A glance goes to Scott as his coffee is extracted, and a chuckle is let loose.
"So I might ask around at the Nite Owl to see if a woman like this one turns up and/or if a precog artist comes there a lot. I'll also try to run across Huruma and see if she knows anything."
"You don't have to make heads or tales of it, darling," Lynette says, looking over at Scott. "Someone has this tattooed on their back. Presumably, this woman knows what it is she's put on her body, one would hope. Unless it was some horrible drunken mistake… we should focus less on the tattoo and more on the woman. She would be the quickest way to answers, at least for this one." She looks over at Barbara, nodding at her suggestion as she pulls out a long, thin cigarette and a lighter. It's blue, just like her clothes. It's too good a match to be chance, really. "It's a good start. As understand it, artists have decent memory when it comes to their work. I don't know which worries me more. This series or this… what is this creature, anyway?" Shaky fingers bring that cigarette to her lips to light it. She is thoughtful enough not to blow smoke toward anyone, at least.
"If you know someone to talk to about this that you trust, Chesterfield," Harkness averts his gaze from the pictures to Cat, then back down again, "tap that resource. This isn't something I think we have the ability to wait on." Barbara's notion about the paintings has Scott silent in consideration and Lynette brings a great deal to the table on that point as well, points Scott full-well agrees with.
"Too many tattoo artists in the city, too many to ask at one time anyway. Unfortunately we dont have any ID on the woman. I'd recommend we take up that thread to check in at the Nite Owl, ask around about an artist who might come in, because what I'm noticing right away…" Scott says as he picks up the scribble and flips it over, showing the menu itself to Cat, "Is that a three egg omelette hasn't cost a dollar since I was a kid."
Monster's though, Scott doesn't address. It's worrisome, whatever the horrible silhouette is, but that he has no earthly idea when juxtaposed with the razorwire and registration poster is perhaps more troublesome.
Barbara reaches out, running a hand over the painting of the woman with the tattoo, simply giving a silent nod to Lynette, and then to Scott. "I' not sure about Dephine. I suppose it's possible. Do we know anything about the artist? Any sort of… inventory or listing when they were found." She lingers for another moment, hand on the painting for several seconds before her face lights up, picking up a bag from off the floor by her feet. "Perhaps I can help," she states with a bit of determination. "Do you mind if I take this, for moment?" she asks, running her hand over the painting again.
She hasn't even begun to address the second piece of art, Cat's focus is on the menu. "Three egg omelette for a dollar," she murmurs, "so the menu is old. The sketch could be just as old, or could've been done more recently on an old menu. Can't hurt to ask around at the Nite Owl anyway. This isn't the work of any artist I recognize." No commentary is made about trusting Huruma, or not. She's not really sure she has a choice but to pursue the angle, will need to cook up a way to ask without revealing anything.
Focus is drawn to Barbara as she runs fingers over the sketch. "Not at all," she assents. No one present has a better chance of making sense from an object of questionable age.
"Just be careful," Lynette says toward Cat. "That hand could very well mean it was this woman who grabbed him in the first place." She lifts her shoulders there, but her attention turns to Barbara when she touches the painting. She's silent on the matter herself, of course, but she is watching. Curious.
Scott remains largely quiet when asked about the painting, at the moment the possessions are still Cat's until he finally moves them away to more extra-dimensional storage mediums. "Bennet didn't even tell me he knew about the paintings, this all came as kind've a surprise to me, but I understand the need for compartmentalization. When he gets back to the States I'll be asking, but I won't expect any miracles there."
Glancing up to Cat, Scott's quiet in their shared glance until he looks back down to the paintings. "I'm worried about this one," Scott explains as he points to the picture of the Earth as viewed from orbit and a streak of fire from the sky. "That's something in space, that's just… so far outside of my knowledge, I can't even…" Exhaling a heavy sigh, Scott looks askance to Cat.
"The council, at the very least, needs to see these. All of them." Brows furrow and Scott's lips press firmly together. "Do any of you know anyone else that we might benefit from showing these to? More interpretations can only be good for us… especially with things this vague," which brings Scott's eyes down to the painting of five different depictions of Midtown.
Taking the painting up into her hands, Barbara eyes it for several moments, a hand run down the front. "I'm a postcognative," she states simply, for the benefit of those in the room who don't know her, or don't know much about it her. "I can try and… focus on the painting. See if I can divine something about the subject. Or the painter. Or maybe Tylar. It's unpredictabe, but…" A hand reaches down into her bag, withdrawn a thick drawing pencil and a large sketch pad. "It could help." Now she's finding a seat, sitting, and concentrating. It looks like even if there's an objection, she has detemrination enough not to care.
Barbara is watched for a brief stretch as she commences this undertaking, before attention goes back to Scott and the artwork. "We were told of the objective only after landing in Russia," Cat provides, as she bypasses the second item and moves to the third. "Five cityscapes," is stated, "the first might match up with the flash forward visions. Fires and damage from rioting. The second looks like what I've heard the city looked like in 2019. Number three is New York pre-nuking, the fourth is after that tragedy, and the fifth, well…" She shows a muted grin.
"We already blocked that one."
Then it's on to the space image. "Someone has a view from a spacecraft, watching something fall. Another craft, a satellite in decaying orbit, could be a lot of things. A weapon used, or simply the effects of entering atmosphere making the object burn. This one," she recommends, "definitely needs to be shared with Hana so she can keep watch."
"Handy that," Lynette says to Barbara, a bit of a smile on her lips. "See what you can see, darling," she says to the other woman. She's going to watch this, because it's fascinating. However, she is still paying attention to the others! "What was it?" She asks of Cat. "The one you blocked, what was it?" As far as space, she takes in a breath there and glances briefly at the painting in question. "Do you know anyone who can reroute a meteor? That would be handy about now."
As Barbara stares down at the picture in her hands, her brows furrow and eyes sweep from side to side over the ball-point sketch on the menu. The conversations around her seem to dull a little, become muted and thin, and then stretch out into a polished flat din of muffled voices that have no real content or quality. Around the room, new noises take effect, the clink of dishes, the susurrus of different voices, the honk of cars outside and the smell of fresh cooked eggs lingering in the air. The first thing that Barbara sees change in the room, is a Coca Cola calendar hanging on the far wall, it shows the month March… but the year…
The Nite Owl Diner
March, 1977
Back tense and jaw set, the man seated with the diner door behind him looks disappointed. It's not in the stack of silver dollar pancakes and syrup in front of him, but rather the brunette seated across from him in the booth. Outside, cars roll by amidst a drizzling rain, and Barbara Simms is witness to a snapshot in history.
"He needs to know what to ask for to get his wishes answered," the brunette whispers, keeping one hand under the diner table, brows furrowed and the one visible eye that Barbara can see focused on the man across from her. While at first it looked like the shadow of her bangs, Barbara is soon able to see that the long-haired brunette has an eye patch covering her left eye. The fur collar of her black techcoat along with her hair is spotted with rain.
"You do not need that gun, miss…" Situated across from the one-eyed girl, a stockily built man with shoulder-length gray hair sits in stoic defiance of the woman holding a pistol under the table at him. Native American features are easy to read in his face, from the prominent nose to high cheekbones and general air the man has about himself. "Tell me who it is you seek… and I will show you how to find it. But this… you do not need a gun. My gift is for any who know of it, such is the way the world should be."
Scowling, the young woman clicks the hammer back on a gun that Barbara can't see. "Less talk Redhouse, more answers." Practically snarling at the invection of his name, the brunette looks down to the menu laid out on the table, then nods her head suggestively towards it. Redhouse reaches slowly up to the front pocket of his flannel shirt, plucking out a pen from inside and turning it around.
Redhouse is slow to begin, just starting to scribble on the center of the menu before his eyes slowly fog over with milky white and his hand begins to move of its own volition. "The painted lady stands at the gates…" Redhouse murmurs as he begins to draw the outline of a woman, "she takes his hand and he asks her for the power to change all power. He invokes the name of the man of red lightning, red like blood, and…" Scribbling again, Redhouse begins drawing Tyler's face on the woman's back.
"And so she shows him, the painted lady shows him where the Power of Powers is… and…" Suddenly Redhouse stops, lays his pen down after sketching a hand and a face on the woman's back, then looks up to the woman with the eyepatch. "All is black."
Swallowing tensely, the brunette looks down to the picture, about to take it, but Redhouse suddenly and sharply grasps her hand. She isn't prepared for it, staring up at his milk white eyes as he takes his coffee, brings it over and purposefully puts a coffee ring on the menu's back.
"It is coming," Redhouse intones as his eyes begin to uncloud and his hand unwinds from the brunette girl's wrist. "Powerlessness is coming, Kira." When he calls her by name, Kira snatches the picture and bolts up from her seat, looking startled as she takes a few booted steps backwards.
They exchange a look while the rest of the diner grows quiet, and—
The Hangar
Present Day
"Barbara!" She's laying on the floor, that's new. Crouched by the redhead's side, Scott Harkness was only just barely able to catch Barbara in time when she fell down during the usage of her ability, but even then not quite enough to stop her from hitting the floor back first, just enough to slow her fall a little. It was only a heartbeat of time that seemed to pass, but so much longer for the postcognitive. "Chesterfield, there's some water in the cooler by the ammo crates," Scott explains with a motion of his nose across the room suggestively. "Simms, you alright?"
There's a gasp for air as Barbara returns to the present - not that she hadn't been breathing, but the shock o the sudden return feels akin to coming out of some sort of coma anyway, tembling weakly as she bolts back upright. "I-I-" She blinks. She doesn't finish her answer, instead she clumsily pulls herself to her feet, up and into her seat with Scott's assistance. Wordlessly, the sketchpad is grabbed, and Barbara begins drawing - not the posessed, delieberate sort of drawing or painting that many precognatives go through, but concious, frantic sketching, erasing, darwing across a flipped up blank page.
"1977," she mutters, eyes scanning back and forth over the page. "I'm fine," she interjects randomly, a glance up. "Just- give me a moment. Before I lose it." Eyes narrow, brow furrowing in concentration as she continues to work, the outline of a space in he Nite Owl beginning to form on the page. "Kira," she intones quitely. "And a- Redhouse. They met here. March 1977." It's fragmented, the words, as Barbara process the scene she saw, related broken peices thorugh a filter to the others. "Just… give me a minute." Pencil moves across paper in hurried movements; despite this the picture doesn't reflect such a rush, it looks rather clean adn quality.
Her attention is drawn away from the artwork by the sudden motion seen peripherally, she spins around to see Barbara being caught in the act of falling forward and turning to land on her back all the way from a seated position, and starts to get the water Scott spoke of, but halts in tracks when the triplet begins to sketch. Watching happens instead, her face showing a flash of recognition from the name Redhouse. There are questions, but she'll hold those until the drawing is complete.
Note to self: acquire the presence of a telepath before Barbara does such things, so I can see them too and remember.
Lynette doesn't move to catch Barbara, but only because Scott is there much faster. "My goodness. Seems a bit of a hazard, doesn't it?" she says to no one in particular. She certainly doesn't want to interrupt the sketching process, but it does get a lifted eyebrow. "1977? Well, that's going to make investigating difficult."
Watching Barbara frantically working, Scott doesn't seem to have the slightest clue of what to do. Tense and uncertain, he looks down to the sketchpad as the redhead works, one brow lifting as he turns to Lynette, then back to the paintings themselves. Scott looks over to Lynette on her comment about the nature of investigating something that old, then furrows his brows as he comes up to stand beside Barbara.
"You're sure you're alright?" Having only seen Barbara use her power for the first time in this concrete basement, there's a world of worries crossing through Harkness mind, but also a world of things to consider. The potential for there to be some sort of practical application for her postcognition is startling, and Scott's mind is awash with possibilities.
As the others have talked and reacted, Barbara has simply kept on drawing, tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth like an artist in a cartoon as she concentrates on the scene still fresh in her mind, clear as day like it was something that just happpened to her, for the time being. It takes several minutes, but the picture is coming closer and closer to completion with each one, forming into a startlingly accurate representation of a booth in the Nite Owl, one clse by the doors even. Details like a wall caandar with the date, and silver dollar pancakes are accurately represented, as are side profiles of each individual, another, smaller sketch to the side of what she could see of each of their faces.
"I'm fine," she mutters again, eyes still scanninga cross paper as she draws, and in a short time, she's put the entire thing to rest. Words are scribbled at the bottom of a page, like excepts from a conversation, the names "Redhouse" and "Kira" scrawled at the top, arrows down to their respective owners. THe rehead lets out a long sigh of relief, shoulders slumping as she stares long and hard at the picture. "I'm fine. T-Tired. I always get like that after one of… those. BUt I saw…" she point down, blinking. "This woman, with an eyepatch. Kira. Talking to this man, Redhouse. Look…" The conversation, maybe minus a word or two, or a bit of a phrase at the beginning, seems largely intact as it's scrawled at the bottom of the page, the sketchbook offered up and to the others.
"I'm sorry," she remarks, looking up to Scott. "It's… a lot to process, those visions, and it takes a lot of concentration to make sure I get it down as accurately as possible. KIra, she was searching for answers form him, for some reason. He… he drew that picture. Said 'the painted lady," a pause as she looks down at her written dialogue, pointing, "stands at the gates. No mention of her name."
Once Barbara's done, Cat surveys the finished product as best she can, recording all she can see of it. "Redhouse has native features. Could be…" In silence she considers the chances for a moment before voicing the thought. "Redhouse isn't an uncommon name, there could be hundreds of natives with it. But these things tend not to be coincidences, having mojo runs in families. This could be a relative of Sparrow Redhouse."
Her eyes close, she speaks quietly. "I can see the future too sometimes. I foresee myself taking a trip to New Mexico."
"The painted lady stands at the gates? Now that's deliciously vague." Lynette sits up, though, legs crossing in a very lady-like fashion as she regards the others. "And a woman with an eyepatch is rare enough to be memorable. Maybe she's still around somewhere to be tracked down."
"Thirty years later? Possibly. We have a name and a description of her, that's a start." Scott looks down to the other paintings, then back to Barbara. "Alright, I'm going to get these stored somewhere safe," and where is left nice and vague for compartmentalization reasons, though Cat has a pretty good idea of where. "Simms, do you think you could do a postcognitive look at some of the other paintings too? Not right away, I mean… get your rest, but I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to see what you can pull up."
Taking a step over to the paintings, Scott furrows his brows and dips his head down. "Chesterfield, Rowan… ask around about our girl with one eye and this Redhouse fella'. Maybe we can pin down something. Nite Owl's gotta' have changed hands by now, I don't know how asking around would work. But… maybe Mr.Redhouse still hangs out there."
Scott's dark eyes drift over to look at Cat, one brow raised. "What's brewin' in that head of yours, feline?"
"It is vauge," Barbara agree with a grimace, a half frown on her face. "When I- when I try t' force a vision like that, sometimes some details get lost. Or it's fuzzy. I'm hoping that's all there was to that one, it seemed clear enough." Fingers raise up and massage her temples, a look over to Cat, and then to Scott. "I could try. It doesn't always work, I'm afraid. And it isn't always so clear, either. And it leaves me rather exhaused afterwards…" she could continue listing off "ands", but she trails off at that one. "I'm wiling to give it a shot, though. Just- not right now."
Hands fold in her lap, pencil still in hands. "I didn't mean to derail the whole meeting, though." ANd finally, she brings her gaze up to Cat, giving her a very curious expression. "Is there anything else I can do to help?"
"Sparrow Redhouse is a Native," Cat explains, "and if this man is related to her, he may well live in New Mexico. That's where she told me she came from. I've got sources to check for an address, he might not live on a reservation. It's a theory to run down, might be nothing, but if it is the worst result is not having what we already lack. I'd travel wherever he might be, go right to the source." Her eyes shift from Scott to Barbara, as an iPhone comes out of her pocket. The camera feature is used to take a photo of her work in case it's needed to try matching the man with records.
"You might balk at this, Barbara," Cat suggests, "but when you're ready to try reading from more of these paintings, we can maybe have Kaylee Thatcher around with you and me. You get the visions, Kaylee bridges across our minds and lets me see all you do. You wouldn't need to write it all down afterward, things would be kept in perfect clarity. But that choice is yours."
From there she's looking at the art again. "Your question, Lynette, about which was stopped. This one." Fingers tap the panel of a flooded city, the last of those five. Then she looks at the one with the fallen female. "Claire Bennet died. It's happened before, and will again thousands of times over the centuries. Her head's intact, whenever this death happens she'll be alive again in two minutes."
"I'll see about tapping some resources," Lynette says with a nod to Scott. And frankly, she seems to relax, having a task in hand. She doesn't put out that cigarette, though. "Barbara, it's more than we had to go on five minutes ago, so I think you're golden, darling." Looking over at Cat as she goes on, Lynette lifts an eyebrow, then she looks down at the painting of Claire. "This may sound dense, but if she always gets back up, what was there to avoid in that one?"
Lynette's question has Scott's brows furrowing and eyes flicking down to the bloodied picture of Claire laying broken on a flight of stairsa, blonde hair spilled out around her. "Exposure?" There's a narrow of dark eyes, "A Negator?" Slowly shaking his head, Harkness looks over his shoulder to Barbara, then Cat before he comes to lean against the table the paintings are laid out on.
"From today onward, I'll be keeping these safe. If anyone needs to see them, you can go through me. Whatever digital copies you have are yours to deal with. Otherwise…" Scott's brows furrow, "they're staying out of sight. Catherine, I'll leave it up to you to furnish whoever asks for electronic copies of these pictures to you. If you need to take better pictures we can do that here before you leave…"
Barbara's mostly remained still in her seat, watching the otehrs talk. She's a bit drained from the mental strain of her vision, still rbbinf the side of her head. "I think that sounds fine to me, Cat. It sounds smart. But the drawing… the drawing helps me process the visions. Understand them. I think I'd go crazy without something like that to make sense of it all." She looks up at the woman and offers a weak smile. "But otherwise, that's fine."
She's not looking at the artwork anymore, not needing to. Cat can visualize the pieces and tell others where to look, knowing where they are on the table. "Negation is possible, yes, that'd keep her down until the field is removed. There are ways, even without negation, but none of those is shown here. Now, the swordfighters, that may have already happened between Adam Monroe and Hiro Nakamura, around the time Kaito Nakamura was killed. Or it may even have happened in the seventeenth century, from how they're dressed." She pauses, turning mental attention to the man shot in the eye and the Indian with the gun in separate paintings.
"These are numbered next to each other in sequence. Mohinder Suresh, one of the Institute's founders, will shoot Noah? And these," she opines in moving along, "are maybe related to the Institute also. The brain, the men with the biohazard sign, the vial of clear liquid. We know they've already been bioengineering pathogens. This man," she taps the image of Peter, "should be shown this one. The carnival image, the monster, Niki beating on a door, the space image, these are mysteries to figure out. I've got nothing, except thinking it's Niki. Or whichever of the others is driving at the time. She'd try to hammer the door down. If it were Tracy, she'd freeze the thing and shatter it, I think."
Round about then, she perhaps catches herself and ceases with the brainstorming. "Got it," she tells Scott, "photos are already taken care of."
Lynette rubs her face a little when Cat points out the one of Bennet, and she mutters, "I hate this. We get a little hint of what may happen in the future and get to grope around pretty much blindly for an answer." Pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment, the woman shakes her head. "Although, I still point out this monster one has got me entirely baffled." And, apparently, it bothers her. Enough that her cigarette is brought up to her lips again.
There's a frown when Cat motions to the picture of Peter, then a narrowing of his eyes on the man behind him. Lynette's assement about the monster has Scott's eyes drifting back down to that picture again, brows furrowed. Something about it sends a chill down Harkness' spine, throat tightening as he breathes in deeply, then exhales a slow sigh through his nose. "Show them around, the only way we're going to turn these hints into leads is by tapping our sources of information…"
Shaking his head at the pictures, Scott looks back to that one of the biohazard symbol, harkening back to the battle against the Vanguard, then closes his eyes and shakes his head. "This really worries me," Scott murmurs, "did we really prevent any of these catasrophes from happening?" When his eyes open, he's looking at the picture of the five alternate versions of Midtown. "Did we really stop anything?"
"…or did we just delay the inevitable?"