Participants:
Scene Title | Tinfoil |
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Synopsis | Perhaps they should have been wearing some prior to reaching this point. |
Date | August 15, 2019 |
Jared Harrison's apartment
Jared's apartment was the one Devon lives in off and on, so it's the one they all landed in… what with Kaylee's being a bit … uninhabitable. Elisabeth's expression as she looked at the ruins of her sister(-in-law)'s place was one of wary apology. Richard got a (somewhat) gentle elbow to the ribs when he sighed.
Now that they're all settled in Jared's living room, Elisabeth is busying herself with tea and coffee. Richard knows where the whiskey is kept if he wants to pull out the bottle. Ibuprofen materialises in front of Kaylee along with a bottle of water while the coffee and tea kettle are heating. The audiokinetic drops a brief kiss on top of Kaylee's head as she murmurs, "I'm really sorry." For like the ninth time.
“Thank you,” Kaylee murmurs, taking hold of the painkillers and working to take several. Mirrored sunglasses covering over red rimmed eyes and helps a little with the migraine. She looks miserable, but at least she was able to wash off the blood. “And it’s fine. You got lucky those pieces of Granny’s china survived.” It had been the second thing she checked on in a panic.
The first, was currently on the floor next to her. Willy was unhappily confined to a cat carrier and hissing at anyone that comes near the cage; except Kaylee sitting next to him. It had been a chore to get the poor scared feline out from under her bed; the red of dark red lines on her hands and anyone else that helped prove it. He had taken residence there since moving in and he was just starting to venture out when Liz lost her ‘shit’. .
“I’m not the one to apologize too, tho.” Kaylee comments, with a glance at the carrier. The old cat let out a gravelly meow, claws hooking on the cage bars like he could shred them apart. He really wanted out!
It was probably a surprise for everyone who knew her well… Kaylee has a cat.
It wasn't the revelation that Kaylee had a cat at all that surprised Devon. It was how absolutely pissed off the cat was. How was it that something so small and cute could turn into a yowling murder machine? The seeking claw is given a look of mistrust. No way is it being let out any time soon. Not here. His arms tuck more tightly against his chest as a ward against further scratches from the demon-possessed creature.
“Yeah.” The word is drawn out, and a worried look is lifted from the carrier to the others. “Well, I'll help clean up when…” He nods in Kaylee’s direction. When she's more recovered, he means. “It's the least I can do for… everything, really.”
Shifting his shoulders, Devon looks at Liz and Avi and Richard. His brows tick up, making the worried lines deepen. “On the subject of everything? What's… the plan moving forward?”
“Honestly,” says Richard, setting down a trio of whiskey shot-glasses on the coffee table in the palm of his hand and releasing them, straightening back up and starting to work the top off the whiskey bottle, “If this bullshit keeps up I’m just going to go to Praxia and bang on his fucking door until he opens it up and gives us some answers.”
“Shit,” he admits, pouring the whiskey, “It might actually work.”
The worst part of all of it? Richard's right — it's just fucking crazy enough, it might work. Elisabeth drags a hand through her hair. She has no words right now that adequately express the roiling thoughts in her head, and so for the moment she is just doing her level best to keep her shit together. Coffee. Tea. These things keep the world civilized. They keep blonde sonic weapons from obliterating more windows. See? It's easy!
There is a hesitation in Kaylee’s actions at the mention of going to Adam’s door. “Yeah… well, whatever it is, he’s not doing what he did or the Company did before. According to him, they made the same mistakes he did. So it isn’t that.” Maybe it’s the pounding headache, but the telepath doesn’t even realize what she says until it is said.
“Probably need a pow-wow, big brother,” Kaylee points out after a moment, after downing several aspirin. There is a glance to Liz, before glancing at the cat again.
“Richard’s got the right idea, and it’s shit like that making me want to drink straight from the fucking pot,” is how Avi Epstein interjects himself into the conversation, emerging from the kitchen with a mug of coffee in one hand to complement the full set of luggage under each eye. “I’m sick of fucking meetings, we need to get up off our asses and do something. Problem is I don’t have dick-all of an idea as to what.”
Coming up to stand beside where Elisabeth is sitting in the living room, Avi takes a slow sip of his coffee and looks around at the others. “I’ve got a jet and some fucking munitions, so… uh,” he shrugs, helplessly. “Look, we don’t know fuck all of anything. We don’t know what Monroe and his ass-clown buddies are up to, except for the world’s biggest corporate espionage roleplay. We don’t know why they did fuck-all whatever experiments on Devon. We don’t know shit.”
Avi takes another sip of his coffee. “Last time I was in this position? We were trying to pin down which airbase the government was keeping a flight of experimental aircraft at. Gitelman did the usual intel gathering, but the net was quiet. So, Harkness and I did some door knocking. We grabbed somebody who knew somebody and put a guns in mouths until we either ran out of bullets or people started talking.” It probably didn’t go down exactly like that at all. “You get my fucking point though, right?” He looks at Richard on that point.
“We need to start shaking people down, starting at whatever fucking leech lead we can get until we find whatever the fuck is at the top of this goddamn pyramid.” Avi says, brandishing his coffee to accent his point. “But I still don’t know how that helps the kid out at all…”
As Richard suggests knocking on doors and shaking some heads, Devon's brows raise toward his hairline. Avi echoing those sentiments earns the major an incredulous stare. Wasn't that pretty much what he'd suggested early on after he returned?
They can't be seriously thinking that's a good idea now.
As much isn't out to words. He shoots a look at Liz, imploring her to tell the older men off like he would've been had the thoughts come from his. “I don't know what good it would do any of us,” he states. The words are slightly pointed, and are accompanied with a carefully neutral look.
“As far as leaches and leads.” Devon pauses, lifts his hands to rub his face. “Don't… don't we already have something like that in our possession?” Hands drop, arms fold across his chest like an armor against his own interjection, and he looks at each in turn. “I mean… they can use me to know what's happening here. Shouldn’t we use it against them?”
The bottle of whiskey in Richard’s hand is offered out towards Avi with a vague motion of its neck towards the one-eyed man’s coffee in case he wants it irished up. “Well, for the time being, we can’t exactly go lay siege to the walls of Praxia,” he notes with a shake of his head, “But we don’t really need to go all that way to get to Monroe, not really…”
Whatever the outcome of the bottle-offering, he then drops down to sit, leaning back with the shot glass in hand and considering it with a frown, “Avi’s right. We need to be proactive. So, we go after the nearest group of Adam’s people for answers…”
He looks over the edge of the glass, “We go knock on the Triad’s door. Zhao will know something.”
To Devon, he hesitates, “We could, but to what end? I mean we could shake you and demand the asshole pick up the phone and call us, I guess, maybe that’d work.”
Elisabeth has been doing a fantastic impression of a piece of furniture. She's listening as Richard and Avi blow off their steam and talk about shaking people down, putting guns to people's heads (which earns Avi a vaguely dirty look — she's a cop again, dammit!), and otherwise rattling cages. When she does speak up, it's quietly.
"We have several leads to follow up on that do not necessitate guns in people's mouth." Behave, Avi! Her blue eyes flicker to Kaylee and she observes, "it's definitely time you had a talk." Whether Kaylee wants to include Avi and Devon in that conversation is her call. "I don't think you'll need to pick up a phone for that." Talking to Adam, she means, though her meaning is probably only clear to Kaylee. "And based on what we know so far, Adam… likely doesn't know much more than we do about how to actually get rid of the entity. We know he's missing a lot of his own memories, so… he may be reaching in the dark just as hard as we are. And this bullshit with your head, Dev, could be his way of keeping tabs on us and whether we develop any useful information."
She sighs heavily. "That said…. I honestly have no idea what to do either."
Pressing the cold water bottle against the back of her neck, Kaylee quietly listens to what everyone has to say, eyes on the floor in front of her. “Honestly, I’m not sure he’d talk to you all. Even if Devon might be a communicator… or simply there to keep tabs on us. I dunno if he’d answer anyone.” Blue eyes lift from the floor to look squarely on Richard. “I can’t imagine he didn’t know we’d find the link.” Adam knows her after all and her involvement with so many. “Which begs the question what his long game is?”
Kaylee takes a deep breath and says after the exhale, “What I do know is Adam called me tainted.” With Avi there she can’t really say a lot more. “So… if he thinks that of me…” She motions at her brother, to indicate he may very well be in the same category.
“For answers, I agree the Ghost Shadows will be the best bet or even Joy, but… I don’t know if I trust her either,” Kaylee adds that last with a shrug. In this day and age, trust was hard earned.
“I’m all for putting a boot in the Triad’s ass, and God knows your bosses probably wouldn’t mind either,” Avi adds with a nod toward Elisabeth, tilting his coffee toward the bottle offered by Richard, letting him pour. “If Zhao’s still around, we knock the bushes hard enough he might come rustling out. That fucker was a person of interest back when I was behind a desk in Langley, but if he’s got ties to Monroe?” Avi shrugs. “SESA probably has questions for him.”
“Fuck, speaking of the alphabet, there was this guy we popped out of holding at Sunstone too,” Avi suddenly remembers, “he’s doing time down on Liberty Island. A uh, former Company agent named James Woods. Institute had him since before the war, I know SESA pumped him for info but they might not’ve asked the right questions. We got a Renautas too, two if we go up Long Island to that PISEC facility they built. Fuck, they’ve got Pete Varlane under glass there. All it’d take is a phone call for me to get us interview time. They might—”
“Wait.”
Avi backtracks, one hand up at the side of his head, “who the fuck is Joy?” He asks, firing an askance look over at Kaylee.
“Isn’t that where they’re keeping Price,” Devon interjects just as Avi tangents into a new line of questions. It’s followed by a look to Liz and Richard. His shoulders hitch in a shrug. He’ll explain later. Maybe. Right now…
“Joy is the one who helped me escape,” he fills in. His arms fold across his chest in an effort to still the fidgeting. A quick glance goes to Kaylee, then away again. Oh look, a ceiling. “At least, that’s how I remember it. She… I don’t know. She helped me get out of the sub. Then, when Liz’s friend Cassandra did her ability on the clothes I was found in, Joy was there and actually started talking to us.”
“Joy, also known as Princess Yaeko— she’s a mosaic, at least as old as Adam. We date her back to Dynastic China, and she’s the earliest known host of the Entity,” Richard explains, head canting to Devon, “She seems to be… well, she thinks Adam is doing the right thing but in the wrong way. If we could make reliable contact with her we might actually be able to find out something useful.”
“It isn’t that bad an idea to interview some of the people over at PISEC… if you can get us an interview with Varlane that could be productive,” he admits then, brow furrowing in thought, “We can see if Des’s made any progress with Renautus while we’re there— I asked her to try and crack that particularly quiet egg if she could. Woods— “ A blink, “Wasn’t Woods at Des’s trial?”
Elisabeth looks a little nonplussed. "Oh God…. I don't know that's a good thing." She facepalms and drags her hand down. "Fuuuuuck. They've got Woods? Poor Dessa." Blowing out a quick breath, she murmurs in an aside, "Long story much less long… this Dessa traded places with Odessa Woods. And he died defending a Pinehearst facility from some terrorist attack." Which means this Dessa lived at least some of that. "Woods was also the Captain that got us to the Ark, and he raised Destiny." So Dessa might have lived that too. It's a tangled mess when one dimension-hops.
Pretty much everyone covers who Joy is, so Kaylee doesn't feel the need to elaborate further, However, something Richard says catches her attention. “Actually, Richard. I might have found mention of someone predating Joy as host.” It was a theory, but one she was standing by. “An Imperial Onmyouji named Takeya Masatane.”
The telepath’s mouth opens to say more, but then she realizes it might not be the time for a discussion like that. “There is more… theories mostly, but that is best left for another time.”
The name Woods seems to tickle at the back of Kaylee’s mind, familiar, but she can’t quite understand why. Even with the mention of the trial, there is something else… a sense of deja-vu. Until Elisabeth speaks up about her travels, then it clicks a bit… another her maybe?
“We’re working on that drug case,” Kaylee arches a brow at Liz. “We could use that as an excuse to shake the Ghost Shadow tree.” There is a small wicked smile that tugs at the corner of her mouth. She couldn’t help but wonder if any of the Shadow’s remembered Adam’s pet telepath.
Exasperated, Avi holds up both of his hands. “Hold the fuck on,” he blurts out, slowly turning to Richard and squaring his old friend in his vision with two vertical chopping gestures with his hands. “Did you just say a fucking Princess? Is there some motherfucking robot with a hologram that shared this info with— ” Avi takes a step back, frantically waving one hand in the air as if swatting at a fly. “No. No, you know what, fuck it. There probably was and I don’t want to live in a world where I know that’s for sure what happened.”
As he sucks in a sharp breath, Avi claps a hand on either side of his head, “Jeeeeesus,” he exhales the word, “Christ I would give my right fucking eye to live in a world that even makes fifty percent sense.” He looks up and over to Elisabeth, then Richard. “Princess Leia or whoever the fuck aside, I’ll grease wheels for you at PISEC, though I imagine it won’t take too much given your credentials. Intel gathering makes sense to start there.”
Then, looking over at Kaylee Avi grimaces. “An old Ferry contact, Ricky Dasells, owes me both of his fucking legs and he’s got underworld connections. I can squeeze him and get some info on the Ghost Shadows to drop out his puckered asshole, hopefully that’ll help set your investigation in a direction that helps fuck all of anything.”
But then, there’s Devon. Avi looks over at him and seems lost. No direction to give, no directive to enforce. Then, thinking on his own mistakes he offers, “and maybe you… should just— you know— spend some more time with Emily.”
You never know when that time will be up.
Argument brews at first, lending a familiar stubborn cast to Devon’s expression. Nothing, no real direction or inclusion to plans being made. Not even a remark to what prompted the whole exploratory invasion into his mind. His lips thin, jaw tightening, while his thoughts percolate on his commander’s words. No orders, except…
Emily.
How is he going to explain this? How much of this second chance was just a farce of science? He looks to the floor, jaw working over the turn of events. For a moment, he looks as though he might begin laying his thoughts out — never mind how awkward that would be — but then he shakes his head.
“I've got to go. I'll be home later.” It's all the explanation that Devon offers as he leaves the apartment.
Elisabeth watches him get up and go, dragging a hand roughly through her hair. She holds the blonde mass there with one hand and puts the other on her hip, starting to pace. "I don't remember you being this excitable, Avi," she says wearily. There's a low throbbing in her own head right now, although she's pretty sure it's just stress, given the fact that she can still feel the bees humming on her skin — the hum isn't audible, but she's definitely leaking vibrations still. And now she's aggravated on top of it. "To borrow one of my favorite of Woods' exclamations, Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle."
It occurs to her that her mother'd laugh to hear that. Pulling in a long breath, Liz let's it out slowly and then finally asks in a strained voice, "Kaylee … seriously. How sure are you that Devon is our Devon? What if they're both really Devon, the same way Brian tosses clones out in the world? Is he, or are they both, going to literally go cherry cobbler??"
Yeeaaaaah. She held it together (mostly) (broken windows don't count as losing it, do they?) while Devon was here, but now her mind is finding all the worst-case scenarios and there's a slow (no, it's really not slow at all) descent into a kind of siege mentality that she still hasn't quite broken the pattern of anyway. Is he going to melt like the other Magnes did???
Kaylee watches the young man storm out with obvious worry. It was a lot to learn about yourself all in one day. An annoyed glance goes to Avi, but Kaylee doesn’t say what’s on her mind. Thankfully, Liz’ question gives her something else to focus on. “I am not,” she offers over. “But if not, he’s a hell of a good copy.”
Leaning back in the chair, Kaylee’s eyes unfocus as she flips through her own thoughts on the matter, using the only other clone she knows. “When you were.. Gone. We had a man named Varlane show up and we took him in. We knew it wasn’t Magnes. I knew.”
Background out of the way, the telepath continues, focusing on the other blonde. “He mentally felt cobbled together, like if I touched one part too hard, he’d fall apart in front of me.” Luckily she missed that. “Not just that… unless he had a connection to another Magnes, he was practically catatonic.”
Kaylee pushes to her feet and motions to the door. “Devon doesn’t feel that way. Everything about him seems solid. I don’t think he’ll cherry cobbler either. Not like Varlane.” It was the best way she could describe it. “Only thing that makes me doubt everything, is that telepathic link to another and even that is far more stable.”
WIth a weary sigh, Kaylee looks down at the cat carrier, “Now if you don’t mind. I really need to lie down in a dark room.” She’d also need to cancel her plans for the evening too. “Keep me in the loop, yeah?” she asks of the room, even Avi.
There’s a lot of intense conversations happening. Avi manages a nod to Kaylee, not that she has to press him too hard for him to keep her in the loop, they’re practically colleagues these days. Once again proving that no matter how much things change, they stay mostly the same. But he avoids the topic of molten meat deaths, of clones, of things that soar high over his head. Instead, he focuses on the small victories. He focuses on the easy answers. Avi slides a look over to Elisabeth, smiling.
“I’m peppy when I’m sober.”