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Scene Title | They Just… |
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Synopsis | Rebecca Nakano, Felix Ivanov and Elisabeth Harrison converge on Textile Factory 17 in the wake of Richard Myron's death. |
Date | May 29, 2009 |
Strings.
We are all connected.
Upstairs from the scene of Richard Myron's death and the chalk outline that is his lasting impression on the world, the Phoenix base in Textile Factory 17 looks like a game of cat's cradle gone horribly awry. In the round, high tower overlooking the old factory grounds, there was once a web of some design strung out between the room, of interconnected photographs, newspaper clippings and tokens all bound together by interwoven strings. All of them, however, have been cut and lay limp and tangled on the floor. All but one singular thread…
Joined together by an invisible thread, infinite in its potential and fragile in its design. Yet while connected, we are also merely individuals.
The piece of black thread runs the length of the circular room over the center of a round wooden table, from which hangs an obituary article dated back in 2006 entitled, "Linderman Group Attorney Arthur Petrelli, dead at the age of 62." All of the other strings, containing discarded newspaper clipping about a German biotech company called Pinehearst, newspaper clipping about the terrorist attack on the Verazanno-Narrows bridge, and Nathan Petrelli's presidential campaign all lay on the floor surrounded by evidence markers where photographs were taken by the NYPD.
Empty vessels to be filled with infinite possibilities. An assortment of thoughts, beliefs. A collection of disjointed memories and experiences. Can I be me without this? Can you be you?
This all stands apart from the graffiti of the Phoenix logo and "Rise Up" painted below, and the anti-government pamplets halfway printed and designed in a room with a single laptop computer. So much here has yet to be moved out into evidence, left untouched so that one singular federal agent can get a solid look at the crime scene. The man that is jokingly referred to as the human hurricane — Felix Ivanov.
And if this invisible thread that holds us together were to sever, to cease, what then? What would become of billions of lone, disconnected souls?
Only one person awaits Ivanov and his guest in the tower, an off-duty NYPD officer in plain clothes, arms folded and brow furrowed, staring out one of the tower's twelve narrow windows down to the courtyard below. Officer Oliver Wilson looks nearly a decade older from the lack of sleep he's gotten, and the weary, tired sag below his eyes is indicative of the weight Myron's death has put on him.
Therein lies the great quest of our lives. To find. To connect. To hold on. For when our hearts are pure, and our thoughts in line, we are all truly one.
Turning to look at the sound of footsteps as Felix comes up the stairs into the round room, Wilson looks past him, focusing on the bespectacled forensics investigator behind him. It's everyone that had been gathered before— minus Richard. A tense, heavy frown creases Oliver's face, and his solemn nod is the most greeting they can get.
Capable of repairing our fragile world, and creating a universe of infinite possibilities…
More like Felix the Stampede. For someone supposedly unkillable, he doesn't look intimidating……gaunt, nervous, and worried, Fel's more like an abused racing grayhound than a bloodhound, these days, tailored suits hanging more than a little loose despite Lee's determined feeding. "Wilson," he says, calmly, inclining his head. "You were first on the scene, right?"
Granted, there are times when Rebecca Nakano dreads the thought of coming to a crime scene. She's recently found herself a new lease on life, as well as a new attitude. From behind her glasses, she peers as she follows Felix up the stairs and gets a look at the place of death for Richard Myron. A chill creeps up her spine as she lets loose a small shiver — something she does when she arrives on the scene of a shooting — and yet this time it's someone she knew.
She first walks over and places a gentle hand on Officer Oliver's shoulder and gives him a soft look, condolences scribbled across her face before she turns her attention away from him and she begins to walk around the room — careful of where she steps, to avoid any contamination of the scene. She kneels on the floor and sets down her forensics kit, flipping open the latches and pulling out a pair of latex gloves. Where to start? There are so many things that need to be looked at, but instead she scans the room — for something perhaps missed from any previous inspections as she leaves the questioning to Felix.
A tired, worn-thin sigh escapes Oliver, eased only by Rebecca's quiet condolances and the gentle touch of one hand on his shoulder. Felix's question is afforded by a solemn nod, eyes glancing around the room, then back up to the agent. "Yeah… Yeah I— I was— just a couple minutes behind him on foot. He— Christ." Oliver's mouth creases into a horrible grimace, and one hand comes up to brush over his forehead.
"Sorry I— you… yeah. I was here, fucking… fucking waited forever for the ambulances to arrive, he was…" Running a hand through his hair, Oliver turns and looks around the room, breathing in a slow and calming breath. "I don't know what the fuck to make of this, Agent Ivanov, I— fucking terrorists why would— I just— " he leans against the wall between two windows, unable to put two and two together and get anything other than the sign of the beast.
"How exactly did it go down?" Felix wondered, with that little pair of tension lines firmly graven between his brows. He's oddly still, for him, without the usual interminable fidgets, as he paces around the areas marked out as safe by the previous crime scene crew. "And how do you think this ties into what we were investigating?"
While Felix asks questions of Oliver, Rebecca is walking around touching things with latex covered fingers. She doesn't move anything, but perhaps there's something here that other's haven't caught onto yet. Her eyes take the clippings. Something — just doesn't seem right.
How many times has he gone over this story now? Wilson breathes out a heavy sigh and folds his arms across his chest. "We were downtown— Brooklyn. Myron was circling blocks on the lookout for Case, seeing as that was his hometown and he's gone back there a few times during the last investigation. We were… discussing the investigation— and how neither of us were really assigned to it, and then— Myron just spots Case out of the blue walking down the street, clear as day, free as a fucking bird."
Shaking his head, Wilsom closes his eyes. "We chase him down in the car and he runs into a narrow alley, so I hop out of the car and give chase. He's a whole lot more fit than I thought, because he was able to outrun me on foot clearing rooftops. So Myron peels out and follows— follows him in his car," there's a rub of one hand at the side of Oliver's face, "we lose contact. I— guess he chased him all the way here. I was out of sight, just on the radio… last thing I heard was— he told me to catch up."
Looking to his side, out the window, Wilson stares down into the courtyard below, vacantly. "When I got here, his car was parked out front, and the door to the fabrication building below us was open. I— he was just lying there on the floor, bleeding. He— he was already dead when I found him and radioed in. I— I didn't— fuckers were probably still here and I didn't think to search the place, I just— I froze."
"Did you see anyone here? Did you see Case himself?" Felix wonders, unhappily. "No other people, right?" He jerks a thumb at Rebecca. "This is Nakano. Her amazing people trick is that she can look into the past. I'm hoping it'll be able to help us here. I don't know what to think. This isn't like…." He
"Yeah, I saw Case. I fucking chased after him for a block on rooftops." Wilson shakes his head slowly, pacing around the discarded newspaper clipping and photographs. "I just— no, I didn't see anyone here. Myron didn't even— he didn't even radio for anyone. They fucking shot him with his own gun." Oliver's voice cracks and he runs his fingers through his hair again. "Nobody found the revolver, I— his own fucking gun…"
Not having found anything too out of place — which would be odd enough as it is, and having heard Felix mention her ability — Rebecca turns her head to the two only for a moment before she walks over and kneels in front of her kit and pulls out her mirror. She doesn't want to interrupt the questioning, so she doesn't do anything more than walk over to where the chalk outline of Richard Myron is. This — she knows — is the best place to be, if she's going to figure out who shot him — or at least get an image. She actually pauses before the outline, deciding not to step inside it. That would be just too creepy for her — and disrespectful.
"Were there anyone else's fingerprints on his gun?" Felix asks. It's an odd, perhaps stupid question. But then, there are Evolved who can force you to suicide without doing much more than thinking hard about it. "Anything else weird?"
Elisabeth has been listening from the ground floor. She opted to look around below just in case before she comes up the stairs. But hey…. audiokinesis is good for something. She comes up the stairs quietly and pauses in the doorway to study the officer in question. Her eyes skim over Wilson and Felix, and she leaves the Feeb to do his questioning since he's already got the officer talking, instead moving more toward Rebecca. She does have a question in a few minutes, but it'll hold.
"We didn't find the gun." Officer Wilson reiterates, "But it's missing from Myron's holster and ballistics matched the round they— they pulled out of him to the same caliber as Myron's old service revolver." Oliver's brows crease together as he looks down at the floor, to Rebecca as she pulls up the mirror, one brow rising from that expression. "Weird? I— I don't… I don't know. It all happened so quick, I know I just— I didn't see anything. I fucked up, I should've looked around, I just— I'm sorry."
For Rebecca, all it takes is one glance through the looking glass for her mind to snap to another moment, a snapshot in a grisly history of this old and stories structure. But the emotional content and the sheer layering of recent events has her mind reeling from the experience. At first it comes in hints and shadows, plays of silhouettes and deadened voices without form of shape, then definitions of contrast — lights and darks — and finally full-on words and conversations, faces, and death going backwards from present to past.
"I'm… sorry," Rebecca can clearly see Tyler Case, a bit older, a but scruffier. He murmurs those words, and those words cause the unexpected face of Myron to look at him with a crooked brow, only before catching a shadow drawing closer out of the periphery of his vision. Myron turns around, squeezing off a shot at the looming figure drawing closer, only to have it deflect harmlessly off of his solid iron body in a shower of sparks. Myron's eyes grow wide as he recognizes the face — through the scarring and the warped, molten look to one side of his countenance — there's no mistaking the face of the man who was once set to be president.
"Jesus Christ," Myron murmurs before an iron fist sends him sprawling to the ground in a single swipe. The old man collapses like a sack of bricks, gun skittering across the floor where it comes to a polished black shoe that lightly steps down on the revolver to halt it.
Reaching down, pale fingers pick up the gun, open the cylinder and check the ammunition, then close the cylinder back. "John," the calm voice of Edward Ray states as he begins walking towards Richard Myron, "could you please take Allen and head to our fallback position I told you about?" There's a quirk of one brow as Edward watches the younger man stare at the gun in his hands.
"Edward I— " John looks down at Myron's form on the ground, at the way his hands rub at the side of his head where Rickham struck him. "Edward I— I'm sorry, they— he spotted me when I was following your directions to— "
"It's okay, John." Edward enunciates slowly and calmly, looking up to Rickham. "Allen, could you escort John to the Library?" Metallic brows furrow, and then the deformed head of Allen Rickham nods slowly, as he circles around Myron's prone form, moving to John's side before winding fingers in his jacket.
"Come on," his horrible, metallic voice groans out with the scraping quality of a broken engine. John stares up at Allen for the first time in weeks, looking at the acid scarring on one side of his iron visage, he wordlessly gapes at the taller, wiry man, before nodding awkwardly and taking a few stumbling steps away, eyes averting away towards Edward and the gun.
All Edward can do is stare back at John with a what expression on his face. The withering stare makes John look away, turning to face Rickham's scarred back as the iron giant leads him towards a side door to the factory floor, feeling Edward's eye son his back the whole way out until the door closes soundly.
"Alone at last," Edward states as he circles around Myron's prone form, loking down as the detective glares up at him. "I'm sorry about this…" his eyes find the badge pinned on his jacket, "detective, I truly am." Myron spits down on Edward's shoes, a pale pinkish spittle blob mixed with blood.
"Go to hell you psycho." The words may as well be rain that rolls down off of Edward as his brows crease together, a stern look coming over his face as he raises the pistol up slowly in one hand. There's a long, piercing stare from the slightly bruised mathematician, still showing signs of the savage beating his younger self had delivered to him.
"I'm sure that's where I'll go, when I'm done."
The sound of a gunshot is what shakes Rebecca from her vision, causing her to nearly drop the mirror as fingers go cold and numb from the experience. There's so many memories here all layered one on top of another, the more she digs, the more she'll find, but already… so much.
Watching Rebecca with a furrowed brow, Officer Wilson seems concerned, moving over to the young woman's side hesitantly. "Hey… I— you alright, Nakano?" He finally catches the sound of footsteps nearby, looking up to spot Elisabeth, his brows rising and head dipping into a nod. "Oh, ah— H— Hey, Harrison."
Rebecca visibly jumps when that shot — the one know one else in the room hears — goes off. The mirror jostles in her hand and it almost slips free, she does manage to catch it. She slowly sinks to the ground as her headache begins. That strikingly painful one that she always gets after each vision. The reflect side of the mirror faces down as she removes her glasses and sets them on the floor next to her and reaches into her kit for her meds.
She pops two into her mouth and swallows them down. "Alan. Edward. John." Though a confused look crosses her face as she brings her finger and thumb up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "John is Tylar Case." She remembers now. From before.
"Edward shot Myron." Her phrasing is short and choppy because it requires less work and less thought and her brain is already pounding.
"Edward Ray," Felix breathes. He sounds….unsurprised, but displeased, nonetheless. IT's all begun to spiral out of control, considering. He looks to Rebecca, lips thinned out "Myron came barging in….didn't he?"
"What else does Myron do?" Oliver murmurs in response to Felix, turning to watch Elisabeth wander over to the tangled web of strings and photographs on the floor. He raises a hand, rubbing it against his cheek, then looks back over to Rebecca, both his brows furrowed. "How… I mean— you can just… do that?" There's a bit of disbelief in Oliver's voice as he watches Rebecca, but the disbelief and amazement slowly turns to concern as he sees the expression of discomfort on her face, a few awkward footsteps taking him paces closer to her.
"Are… ah, you alright?" Hesitantly, Officer Wilson reaches out a hand, then stops, fingers curling against his palm as he withdraws his hand and frowns visibly. "I — that's— a hell of— " an awkward and loud swallow comes, along with a steeling of his expression. "Who's the sick bastard who did this to Richard?"
"I didn't see that. He was shooting at Case, who defected each shot. That was the first thing I saw." Rebecca starts to stand slowly. The mirror turns towards her and she is suddenly pulled into another vision. This is something that has never happened before. Two visions so close together.
A breathy voice comes from a laptop. Perhaps some sort of cartoon character, unfamiliar to Rebecca. "I think April has news." The faces are new. Not the same as in the previous vision. Three new faces. An older bald man. A female, presumably 'April'. And a younger man, smoking underneath a 'No Smoking' sign. "I'm not entirely sure this is about." the voice from the laptop continues. Just then another man appears — literally out of nowhere.
And just like that, the vision is over. Rebecca staggers forward and a crunch is heard as her foot steps down onto her glasses, crushing the spectacles underneath her foot. She doesn't bother moving them because it's then she notices the trickle of blood that comes from her nose. Any questions asked before the second vision are forgotten as she runs the back of her hand under her nose, a red streak left over her skin.
"Four more were here." Five if you count the voice in the computer, though she just attributes that to a VOIP session or something. "One female called 'April'" Her eyes are glassy, watery as she glances around to each individual in the room as if in disbelief. Her eyes rest on Felix's finally when she announces. "The President was in this room." She looks like she's about to faint.
"Supposedly someone from the future," Felix says, with the stony flatness of a man trying to iron real grief out of his voice. He hands Rebecca a clean handkerchief from his pocket, only to freeze and stare at her. "What do you mean?"
If there was ever a way for Oliver Wilson's face to fall straight off, this would be it. Hearing the words the President was here makes his skin crawl and a chill rise up his spine, as if just knowing that kernel of truth shortened his life by decades. "You— what?" He practically exhales the words in one exasperated breath, taking a step back and away from Rebecca to run fingers thorugh his hair and try to come to terms with what it is was just said. This, of course, is before Felix decides to go all Back to the Future on the conversation.
"You're— you're joking right? Ivanov, don't tell me— come on, I— I know Case looked a little older in those photos we got shown, but— time travel?" It's like something out of a Ray Bradbury novel, complete with people stepping on butterflies. He turns, though, to Rebecca with a bit of incredulity. "You— sure you tuned in that thing correctly?"
The handkerchief is taken with a nod of thanks as she holds it to her nose. This would be a first for her. Her foot moves off the broken glass and plastic underneath as she peers down and sighs. Her only pair. She looks to all three in the room as she shakes her head, as if clearing cobwebs. "I am certain the President of the United States was in this room recently. He.. he had a beard." She considers reaching for more pills, but doesn't want to have too many. The merciless pounding. "I saw Nathan Petrelli." she insists.
"How can we be sure it was him?" Fel wonders, polishing his glasses on his tie, that absentminded gesture. He looks despairing. "So many face shifters and illusionists. What exactly was he doing?" HE nods grimly at Wilson. "I wish to god I was kidding. We've got two different versions of some of these criminals running around."
Running a hand down his face, Wilson turns away from the pair and blows out a sigh between his fingers. "This is crazy," his head hangs, one hand massaging at the back of his neck. "Ivanov's got a point, I— don't know how you do what you do, but is it literal? Like— could you be faked out? Were they calling him by his name or another one?" He wants to make light of this — somehow — like Myron would, but the gravity of the detective's death is just too much.
"Fuck, what the hell are we doing? Chasing down the goddamned President— or— " a frustrated groan escapes Oliver as he flails one hand in the air violently, swinging at shadows and anger before his face contorts into a scowl and he slams the side of his hand against one of the exposed wooden supports in the room, leaning forward against it with a soft clunk of his head.
Finding something to lean up against, lest she fall on her face and break more than her glasses, Rebecca responds with merely. "I see what occured. Nothing more — nothing less. I can move the mirror around to get different angles, but other than it being a reflected image.." meaning reverse ".. everything else is how someone would have seen it from where I stood." In other words, it could not have been the President, but it was definitely someone who /looked/ just like the President. The mirror is set down, reflective side down. She doesn't need to do this again tonight.
"We're seeking justice," Felix's tone is soft, even as the blue eyes are uncharacteristically vague. "And Myron's killer. IF that happens to be the President, by some freakish occurrence, then we bring him in. The whole point of this damned country is that no one is above the law." There's so many level of irony in him saying that, it doesn't bear looking at. But he's in earnest.
Oliver's eyes flit over to Rebecca. "This Edward guy," he looks up to Felix, "You knew his last name, without Rebecca even saying anything." A suspicious narrowing of Oliver's eyes brings the officer across the room, on a path towards the federal agent. "Do you know who she's talking about? Who the hell is he, where do we find him, how fast can we get there?" Not only is this entirely investigation out of Oliver's duties but he's on forced leave of absence from work due to what happened to Myron, pending an investigation of their "off duty" work.
"If you know something and you're holding out I— " So much for all of the reverence Oliver was spewing a half hour ago, "Edward Ray, who— who is he?" No concern shown for Rebecca's state, Oliver has become target-focused on the man who gunned down detective Myron, and like a dog with a scent, he doesn't seem to be letting up.
"He's some sort of scientist mastermind, supposedly from the future. I know the name from the whole fight against the Vanguard back at the turn of the year," Fel's voice is colorless. "What in hell he's up to now, I have no idea."
Oliver exhales a sigh and shakes his head, "tell me you can find him— arrest him— shoot him I don't really care at this point." There's a strained, tired look in Oliver's eyes as he turns to look back to Felix, then finally over to Rebecca, noting her leaning against the wall. He hesitates from continuing his tirade with Felix, then bites down on his lower lip and hangs his head.
"Nakano…" The young officer rubs at hand at the back of his neck, "Sorry I— thanks for sticking your neck out and using your ability. I— you and Ivanov are pretty lucky, having what you do. I— I really appreciate the two of you coming down here to take a look at this. Myron— this shouldn't have happened, I— where the fuck is that guy who was feeding us information now when we need him?"
"We have more than we had before. Even if it's not something we can legally use, it's not going to stop us from following as leads, right? So, we start looking around for Tylar Case, Edward Ray, 'April' and 'Alan'. There was someone using a VOiP connection through a computer as well, I heard in the second vision and a couple other guys who I can probably describe to a sketch artist. As nonsensical as it may be at the moment, it's still a fountain of information that we can use, if we are able to figure out how." A weak smile is hurled towards Oliver. Of sympathy, perhaps.
Guilt… now that's not an expression often seen on Felix's health . His usual mingling of rectitude and arrogance prevents it. But he looks away from the both of them now, ostensibly to give the physical evidence another looking over. "Hm?" he says, tone absented. "Yes. Case is a power switcher." His tone is oddly offhand.
"Voiceover IP?" Oliver narrows his eyes, "Huh, alright… I— " his shoulders square, one hand rubbing across his mouth again. "Okay, Nakano— see what trees you can shake down at NYPD Headquarters with the descriptions you have. I'm just a beat cop, so there's about jack and shit I can do to help with that. They've got me on forced vacation because of what happened, but that won't stop me from putting my ear to the ground. I'll try and follow up on anything you give me, descriptions, names, faces, whatever you've got. I'll go door to goddamned door in the city if I have to."
Furrowing his brows, Oliver looks over to Felix with an unsettled expression. "There any resources you can pull on to try and maybe get a heads up on this Ray character? Or any of his accomplices? I know you've got your nose in a lot of dirty pies from here to Staten, if the rumors are true, and Christ I hope they are now."
A soft sigh comes from the Forensic Investigator as she moves back over to her kit. She kneels down and places the mirror inside before she moves back over to consider her broken glasses. She bends down to pick up what she can, leaving the smaller shards of glass behind — dropping the rest into a waste basket — or something. She will have to look into getting new glasses. Or contacts maybe. "I'll do what I can. I'll let you know if anything comes back on the sketches." she nods to Oliver. She does understand and is more than happy to include him in the results — just as she did with Detective O'Shea. She stands as it looks like they are just about done here. "Is there anything else?"
The look Fel gives Oliver is utterly opaque. "I'll do what I can," he says. It's vague, but there's the weight of sincerity behind it. "Nobody gets to kill cops in New York and get away with it. No matter what."
There's just a long, silent acknowledgement given to Rebecca, followed by a shake of his head from Oliver to her question. Then, turning to Felix, he nods in solemn agreement. "Then we find the bastard who did this," his words come off as a murmur, turning to look at Elisabeth Harrison's silhouette in the framing of one of the round tower room's many windows, "and we make him pay for what he did." There's a narrowing at the corners of Oliver's eyes, a layer of rookie innocence peeled away by the caustic horror of the act he was forced to bear witness to, one that Rebecca Nakano has now seen up close.
"One way or another."