Participants:
Scene Title | To Clarify and Classify |
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Synopsis | In the search for Adam Monroe, Eve and Monica stumble onto something bigger than they realize. |
Date | June 27, 2018 |
99 Düsenflieger
Jeder war ein großer Krieger
Hielten sich für Captain Kirk
Es gab ein großes Feuerwerk
Michael Green has been having a bad day.
He was just walking along, minding his business, when someone pulled a black bag over his head and threw him in the back of a van. Zip ties kept him from being able to do much but lie there. He's been pushed and prodded and eventually found himself tied to a chair, sitting in a room that has gone from being far too cold to what it is now. Which is sweltering.
Die Nachbarn haben nichts gerafft
Und fühlten sich gleich angemacht
Dabei schoss man am Horizont
Auf 99 Luftballons
He hasn't been given any water. No food. No trips to the bathroom. The bag over his head smells. And worse: this song has been on repeat for eight hours. Every so often, he can hear a voice singing along. More worrying is when he hears a pair of them whispering to each other. He can't make out what they're saying, but it sounds intense and heated.
Mostly because Eve and Monica have been getting into it over who gets to be Bad Cop and who gets saddled with Good Cop.
In the end, they decided that everyone gets to be Bad Cop.
Except Michael.
Poor Michael.
“Just let him have it, whammy!” Eve whispers excitedly to Monica with raise eyebrows. The seer is dressed in a suit borrowed from Monica and she rolls a sleeve up as she finishes her joint behind the door they are both standing at. Dark sunglasses cover her face and she fiddles with a wallet..?
Before turning over to look at Monica. “Okay fine both Bad Cops you're right! You're right!” Clearing her throat and pounding on her chest the pale woman walks forward, no staff in her hand she's managing walking okay.
99 Kriegsminister
Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Hielten sich für schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Placing a hand on the knob, she turns it in and steps inside the room. “Hey there Mr. Green, are you comfortable? Don't you love that song? I could listen to it a thousand times!” There's a snort and a slap to her forehead, “Oh duh! You just did!” Flipping her “badge” out to show an ID card and a.. star? No too fast, Eve flips it back shut with a grin. “Agent Norwell. This is Sloane.”
Riefen "Krieg!" und wollten Macht
Mann, wer hätte das gedacht?
Dass es einmal so weit kommt
Wegen 99 Luftballons
The expression on Michael Green’s face is an absolutely bewildered look of confusion and disorientation. His mouth is agape in an open-jawed grimace that pulls down into the corners as a frown, eyes squinted and brows pinched. He doesn't so much look at the badge as he does look past it in vague perplexion.
There's a few moments where he tests at his restraints, arms and legs wrenching, then squints back up at his captors with an inability to parse anything that is happening to him right now.
“WHAT?” Michael tries to shout over the music.
Monica reaches over and turns off the music. The silence that follows is momentarily disorienting for their guest. She leans against a wall, flipping through papers in a manilla folder.
"Michael Green," she says, name drawing out for a moment before she snaps the folder shut and looks over at him. "Impressive resume. It looks like you've worked for some interesting people."
Of course… Monica has no idea what's actually in his resume. Nor are the papers in the folder at all relevant. But she can Tim Gunn it. She's gonna make it work.
"He's worked for some interesting people, hasn't he, Norwell?"
“Very interesting.” Circling behind Green with a dramatic wink at “Sloane” once she's behind him, “What,” she lays a hand on his shoulder and adds just the smallest bit of pressure, Eve leans in with a whisper at his ear. “Can you tell us about…”
A slow smile on her face and her eyes dance along his jaw and then his arms. “Huruma!”
For all his disorientation, Michael seems remarkably composed for a man tied to a chair and sleep-deprived. Pale eyes scan the two women, one eye narrowing, and then as he watches Norwell slink around, there's an unusual look in his eyes. He blinks a couple of times, mouthing the name Huruma with a squint and a distant look of bewilderment.
Finally, he reiterates her name aloud. “Huruma?” Michael squints again. “Seven foot tall? Right?” He looks to Sloan with another squint and actually flicks his eyes from her to Norwell as if trying to subtly indicate something. Then he mouths something that looks a lot like what the fuck? at her.
Finally, he gives a long hard look to Norwell again and asks. “Aren't you— ” he swallows dryly, then barks out an awkward laugh. “Aren't you the horse metaphor lady?”
Oh god.
“From the television?” He adds, in case there's another.
Monica lets out a heavy sigh. It's possible she forgot about the meme. Or has only heard about it in passing, what with all her traveling around in the last few years. Her hands move to her hips for a moment as she regards the two of them.
She lets him have his laugh. Awkward though it is. But then she moves in front of him, gripping his face in her fingers— the flesh and blood ones— hard enough to bruise later. "You. Adam Monroe. Everything you know about him. Or the horse lady is going to be the last thing you ever laugh at. You don't want that, do you?"
CURSES!!!
“Listen you don’t say th-”
Then Monica gets in his face and Eve peers over her shoulder with a firm nod, serious face on. “The last.” Coming to the side of them Eve leans against the wall and pulls out a cigarette, nose wrinkling because she would rather it be weed but, serious dealings call for dramatic smoking of a cancer stick. Which she does, even goes to light the thing with a match.
Inclining her head towards the flame, smoke wisps around her face and she's waving the march out and giving Michael a rueful smile, “I'll show you my horse once we're done toots.” Followed by a wink and wiggle of her fingers at the man.
Eve has gone full on 1950’s Detective.
Wincing, Michael gives Eve a sideeye before turning to look at Monica with an absolutely baffled expression. “Adam?” There’s a wild look in his eyes, lips downturned into a frown. “I— I haven’t seen Adam in like, eight years. We did a job in Jersey, ripped off some biochem company that was getting blown the fuck up by terrorists or something, got the recipe for some drug and bugged the fuck out.”
Flicking a look back to Eve, Michael looks further confused, but he directs his question to Monica. “Is she… okay? Like, does she need a— did she hit her head?” Another quick, furtive look is fired back to Eve, then settles on Monica again. “I swear, I haven’t talked to Adam in almost ten years. I figured he was like, dead, or something.”
"You figured Adam Monroe was dead?" Monica looks over at Eve for a silent conference over the fact that anyone who would think that didn't know much about Adam Monroe. But she looks back to Michael, her grip easing so she can pat him on the cheek. "You're sweet to worry about her," she says, to his comment on Eve's mental health. It sounds decidedly sarcastic.
"Which biochem company? And which drug?" She may be pulling back on the intimidation factor, for the moment, but Monica remains in his personal space, just as a reminder that this could go the other way.
“I fell down a well but that's besides the point.” Eve waves that off quickly and as she puffs on the cigarette while Monica does the heavy lifting at the moment. Her back stiffens, “Phoenix, when they were destroying the virus..” Brown eyes squint and Eve pulls out a knife from behind her back, nestled in her waistband until now. While Monica doesn't implore the intimidation factor, Eve let's loose with a relatively light show.
The blade catches the light and Eve blows a bit of smoke towards it, billowing and curling around it giving it an otherworldly sort of look. “Better talk fast. I think I forgot to take my meds.”
“What?” Michael asks once, to Monica, then wheels around to look at Eve. “What?” There’s a back-and-forth volley of bewilderment in his eyes, a few twists of his wrists and tugging of his shoulders to test his restraints. “It— it was in Fort Lee, in Jersey! Like, a half hour from Manhattan! Something uh, Pine-something.” Michael’s brows scrunch up. “Adam and the whole gaggle of lunatics that worked for him hit it up and came away with a drug he sold to the triads.” Then, a beat. “That’s how Refrain got on the street.”
Adam Monroe was responsible for the release of Refrain and — indirectly — all the deaths caused by it through a rogue dream manipulator. “This is like almost ten year old fucking news, though. I was running one of the getaway cars, but it was like— fuck uh… me, Huruma,” he remembers her, “the big fucking like… muscle guy? Fuck, I forget his name. The blonde telepath chick, and Sabrina.” Another pause. “I’m pretty sure I saw her explode during the war, so— yeah she’s dead.”
Michael fidgets, twisting against his restraints a little more. “I haven’t seen Adam in years, man. He just fucking disappeared one day.”
"So. Adam Monroe grabs you for a job, lets you meet some of his heaviest hitters, has you help let Refrain loose on the world," Monica says, straightening up to look down at him, arms folding, "and then just… poof. And never contacts you again. And doesn't make sure to tie up that loose end. And doesn't pay you to keep quiet. And doesn't keep you in the fold to make sure you won't talk." She looks over at Eve, her head tilting.
"That kinda sounds like bullshit to me. Does that sound like bullshit to you?"
“Man,” Eve pushes herself off the wall and walks slowly back to Monica and the bound man with a slight limp, “It smells in here doesn't it Sloane? Yea I think it smells like BULLSHIT.” BOOYAH BABY! But Eve doesn't outwardly cheer instead she takes very slow and deliberate steps to stand at Michael’s back.
“You know, Sloane is so very sweet like that honey I've got in my cupboard. I think you're getting too used.. to niceness.” Taking a drag from her cigarette with a knowing look over at Monica the seer sighs, “I suppose being nice is boring through right Mikey?”
She puts her lit cigarette on the back of Michael’s hand. Grounding the embers into his flesh. “Is there another answer behind door number 2?!”
“Aaaaawwwhat the fuck is wrong with you!” Michael screams at the burn to his hand. “I worked for him for like a year leading up to that shit, he paid me in literal fucking gold, ok!” Michael struggles against his restraints, eyes flicking back and forth from Monica to Eve. “He bailed on everyone, just fucking disappeared out of thin fucking air. “Last time I saw him was right before Christmas in two-thousand and fucking nine!”
Looking down to the stinging red mark on the back of his hand, gray with ashes, Michael looks up to Eve and then Monica. “We’d just wrapped the shit with Refrain, the shit business in Japan, and… and the last thing he had me do was book him some fucking flights for July the next year.” Michael swallows, tensely, and looks up to the two. “That’s all I fucking know! I swear!”
"Gold? Like, bars? There any stamps in the gold?" Monica tilts her head some, curious like she missed the burn and his screaming in reply. "Symbols, pictures, names… Anything?" She looks over at Eve, lifting a shoulder. "Actual gold might be something we can trace. It isn't exactly normal."
But she turns back to Michael, letting out a sigh. She had ended up being the good cop after all. Or, well, goodish. "What name did he use to travel under?" Apparently, she doesn't expect him to travel under Adam Monroe.
“The gold? Yeah it had fucking swastikas on it. Nazi gold.” Michael makes a face, as one night when mentioning literal Nazis. “I melted that shit down and laundered it years ago. Everybody said he was old, so…” Michael makes another face, as one night when mentioning ancient literal nazis.
“He had like a hundred false identities, never used them more than once for travel. We'd pull dead folks’ names out of cemeteries and build identities for them.” Michael grimaces, “That was half of my job. The cemetery part. The tech side— he had somebody else.”
“You know we want the name of the techno wiz buddy boy.” Eve grins as she leans back on the wall behind him, just so he can't see her. So he's nervous if she's gonna do something else, relighting the cigarette she sighs, “Gold stamps would have been ideal but go on.” Bored. Nazi gold. OH. MY. GOD. “He's a racist!” She blurts out at the realization, eyes flicking to Monica and there's new anger there for the immortal. Maybe this was something she already knew but the dots connect again for her. Oh hell no. Adam was very aryan looking. Did he-?
Puffing on her cigarette she taps the heel of her good leg, she was pushing it without any support like her staff but the wall would do for now.
“End of two thousand and nine, right before I kicked the bucket.” Right before he brought her back. She still needed to talk to her sister seer Barbara. About many things. A shudder at the memory of her shoving her off the roof.
“Woah, woah, hey, I didn’t know he was a literal Nazi when I started working for him, ok!?” Michael hunches his shoulders, offering a wide-eyed stare up to Eve. “Look, the tech was a contractor Adam hired personally. He hired her in August the same year he disappeared, technopath I think. A kid, she uh— ” Michael tenses, trying to remember who it was, brows furrowed and eyes flicking back and forth. “Chavez,” he finally recalls, then looks over to Monica. “Alia Chavez.”
"Of course he's a racist. Why not. I think it's likely he lacks empathy for anyone who isn't him. Side effect." Of being immortal. Monica looks from Eve to Michael, taking in the news with a blink. She knows that name. Worked with her before.
"Cut him loose," she says suddenly. "He won't be able to tell us anything else. Nothing useful." Maybe what kind of tea Adam likes, but she isn't sure that's important. Tactically speaking. "Right, Mikey? You've told us everything you know."
The implication is clear. He better have.
Bending forward to “cut” him loose, Eve sniffs at the back of his head but she doesn't move to hurt him further. Taking a look over at Monica with a raised eyebrow she nods her head and leans back against the wall. “We’ve got eyes everywhere, seriously bro don't cross us.”
As if he was a threat. As if he was someone who would attack her.. well he wasn't that stupid. The oracle grins. “If you see Adam this conversation never happened.”
Chavez They both know that name. Monica more than Eve but the new information makes her furrow her brow. The technopath has the tracks they need to follow.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Absolutely.” Michael stammers, struggling against his restraints even as Eve cuts him free from the chair. Michael doesn’t move to get up out of his seat immediately, instead he waits until Eve is out of stabbing distance, creeping up into a standing position and warily watching both woman as he slowly backs away with his hands raised.
“Like, I didn’t see anything. Okay? I won’t tell a soul.” Michael looks between Eve and Monica. “Please don’t shoot me in the fucking back when I turn around, please? I— I’m just a fucking errand boy. I don’t know nothin’.”
—
"We won't," Monica says, although by her tone she realizes that there's no way he'd be able to trust them. But really, he's safe. Especially given the look she gives Eve, one that promises that there's a reason not to shoot him. "Just pick your associates better, yeah?"
That's just good life advice, Michael.
Monica moves over to Eve, settling her arm on Eve's shoulder. "We should keep an eye on him," she says once there's some fair distance between him and them, "see if he runs to Adam in a panic. Just in case he was keeping something back."
“Don't be such a baby the bullet would only go into one butt cheek,” a dismissive wave of her hands, “Go go go. Hurry you must be hungry!” Calling out to him as he retreats, leaning on Monica as she slings her arm over should shoulder the seer stares at Michael’s retreating back.
“Weasel or not… yes we have to watch him.” Eve didn't really think Michael was lying but.. people are crazy nowadays. Speaking of crazy.. she thinks about how long she's been out of the Benchmark. A few more hours longer than usual today but she’ll say she was at the Santoru Garden, planting those tomatoes for the duck stew.
Brown eyes finally leaving Green’s retreating form and she smiles over at Monica, “It's like you read.. my mind!”
Michael is gone is a scramble before Monica and Eve even begin their whispered plotting against his further longevity. He beats a hasty retreat from the confines of the building he’d been held prisoner in, disappearing out the door the two women had come in.
Unable to get 99 Red Balloons out of his head.
Four Hours Later
Sweaty and out of breath. Michael Green stumbles down a flight of concrete steps, holding a rusted railing as he goes. Slamming his fist into the metal door at the bottom of the stairs, he yelps out a demand to the other side. “Open the fuck up! Right fucking now!” With a wary look over his shoulder, Michael huddles close to the door when there’s a groan of it unlocking. At the top of the stairs, Michael spots a lone stray cat watching him intently while grooming one paw.
As the metal door opens, Michael pushes his way inside past a squat man with a handgun. “Where is he?” Michael hisses, and the broad-faced and sour-looking door guard motions intp the back of the warehouse basement. Michael scrambles, wiping sweat from his brow, hurrying past folding tables full of guns and ammunition, grenades, knives, rockets. He practically runs headlong into a stack of tarp-covered fiberglass crates with Chinese writing stenciled in white on the side, then ambles through an open doorway into another room.
“Shíliù àngsī.”
A din of voices fills the room, where two dozen Chinese children stand around tables, filling IV fluid packets with a luminous blue liquid from pressurized metal containers. They turn and look at Michael as he hurries through the room. Some of the children, filling tiny glass vials with the blue liquid, are also smoking cigarettes.
“Gěi wǒ yīgè biāoqiān.
Four children at one table are applying labels to the IV bags that have a cartoon fairy with blue wings on it. Michael pays them no heed as he continues through the room, legs wobbly and eyes constantly flicking to the shadows cast by the dim industrial lights overhead. A few stray cats underfoot scatter away as he barges into a room at the back of the long hall.
There, Michael finds himself face to face with a dour-looking bald man sitting in a high-backed leather chair, dark eyes immediately squared on the invasion to his office. “M-Mister Zhao,” Michael stumbles over his own words, only then noticing a dark-haired young woman sitting on the corner of Zhao’s desk, flipping a switchblade around in her hand. “Uh… I….”
“Mister Green,” Zhao grumbles, “this had better be good.” Michael swallows, looking over his shoulder again at the shipments of Refrain, then back to Zhao.
“We’ve got a problem.”