Participants:
| Scene Title | Unveiling |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Delving into the mystery left behind by Caspar Abraham offers more questions than answers. |
| Date | May 5 - 14, 2019 |
Ryans' Brownstone
The basement was cold.
That was good because Lucille had been feeling very warm since she woke up this morning. The tall woman stands now in the center of the basement that her father so graciously allowed her to use for this. All of the "sensitive" information had been catalogued and taken down or covered with bed sheets, she didn't want to let loose her father's secrets. They were his to divulge and it was already enough to be bringing people here.
"Try not to touch too much if you can," a wry smile on her unpainted lips. "Dad gets cranky when I move his stuff." That's why she had taken a photo so she could place everything exactly where she had found it. "And try to keep this place a secret, he's being very nice to us allowing this to be used." Okay now that daughter duties are over, she walks and picks up her little red notebook where she placed notes.
Dressed in loose fitting clothes of a dark grey shade, her hair is put up in a messy bun, strands of hair falling into gray blue eyes that look over to Rue and Cassandra. The table and chairs has been moved to the side giving them ample space to move around in.
On the table sits a jar filled with copper pennies signed out from the Bunker, Lucille was putting herself on the pennies investigation and had enlisted Rue and Berlin to help but the younger Wolfhound operative had other obligations that day. Still she was keeping the Hound in the loop.
Starting now with Cassandra. I'll call you after we're done.
Sliding her phone back into her pocket she tries to look at ease, mostly to keep Cassandra from freaking. "Okay then… we should start slow." Like they all discussed. There's excitement for Lucille though, who knows what are on these things?
As much as Lucille’s nonchalance is meant to soothe Cassandra, it's really not working very well. She's nervous - how could she not be? Being called into something so potentially destabilizing is stressful, and not knowing what she's about to see is a whole different kind of stressful. It took a long late night conversation with Liz, a good night's sleep, and a day off from work to help calm her nerves but, right on the dot, she arrived at the address Lucille indicated.
Dressed for the late spring weather in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up just below her elbows, a bag over her shoulder, the walk through the surprisingly mundane brownstone was remarkable in how unremarkable it all was. Cassandra had to keep a tight rein on her emotions, though, when the door to the creepy basement was opened. Lucille got a sidelong look before she headed downstairs, pausing one step from the bottom to survey the informationally sanitized basemen, sheets covering mysterious shapes. Imagination goes wild right now - after all, Cassie has seen too many horror movies that start out in a place like this. It took all of her professionalism to not just bolt for the exit right there.
The sight of a cleared space that's not populated with a operating table draped in plastic, but instead a table and chair like she requested, is calming. Okay, she's not going to be murdered down here. Her bag is placed down next to the chair and a bottle of water is pulled out, placed next to the chair leg at the front before she takes a good look at the jar, letting out a low whistle. “That's a lot of pennies.” She says, looking to Lucille after a second or two.
“So how do you want to do this? Just grab a penny and go, or do you want me to take a few and see if we get any flashes before delving in?” A notebook and pen are placed on the table next to the jar, a blank page ready for notes along with a coin collector’s plastic page. Apparently she's planning on marking the pennies as she goes so they don't accidentally get the same one twice.
“I reckon you’re the expert,” Rue muses from where she sits in a chair at one end of the table. She’s dressed in a burnt orange sweater over a pair of simple black leggings with comfortable leather boots zipped up to her knees. “Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable.”
It isn’t that she’s dubious that this is going to work, but it almost seems too easy. Just sit down with someone and boom! all the secrets in the pennies are unlocked? Rue supposes they’ll see. She crosses one leg over the other and folds her hands into her lap. A pad of paper and a pencil sit on the table in front of her to take notes as necessary. Her phone sits next to that, the screen on with a red button waiting to be tapped to begin recording.
"I think you should proceed how you think is best," this is Cassandra's wheelhouse afterall and Lucille and Rue were just there to witness, record. Slowly the tall woman walks to stand by where Rue sits, taking her own seat next to her and stretching her legs out.
"Any tips for this particular ride?" Lu's tone easy going, conversational. Rue would recognize that tone from all the "networking" events they had attended together. Meant to keep the mood light, keep the person she's conversing with calm.
“Expert by default.” Cassandra corrects, bobbing her head and stepping back before sinking into the chair. “When there are one or two people total that can do this, the knowledge I have on this topic is pretty much head, shoulders, and torso above people who can’t just because there are so few who have any idea it can even be done.” It’s not bragging or, at least, she’s hoping it doesn’t come out like that.
There’s a squealing sound as the chair’s legs scrape against the concrete floor of the basement, Cassandra turning it to sit behind the table, the jar of pennies placed dead center. A pair of items are withdrawn from her bag - A foam mat with a blue motif of islands and a blindfold. The mat is laid out carefully and smoothed flat before a small handful of the copper disks are taken out and spread over the mat in a single layer - about ten to start, each one at a time, getting about three inches of space separating them. “First off…if you’re outside of a ten foot range from me, you’re not going to experience anything. My power seems to work by overwriting your senses, more or less, so the ‘outside world’ that we’re sitting in is overlaid with the memories from the items. I’m afraid your recorder won’t pick up anything besides what we say, so if you see something and need a record of it, speak it out loud. Sorry, Rue.”
“No skin off my ass,” Rue puts oh, so eloquently. “I expected I’d only be able to get audio anyway. We’re good.” She pulls her chair a little bit closer to the table and to Cassandra. She doesn’t want to miss any possibly important details.
Cassandra turns her attention back to the pennies laid out over the table, brushing her fingertips over them lightly, testing them for something that only she can feel from the surface. “Please keep your hands and feet inside the vision at all times. Remember that the events you will see did happen but aren’t happening right now.” This is an important distinction. “As far as tips? Just pay attention and if you see something important, tell me and I’ll see if I can stop.”
Cassandra nibbles at her lower lip in thought, tapping one of the coins, a tarnished 1994 D penny, turning it over to examine something on the underside. “Since this is the first time I’m trying this with something from this man, I’m hoping that he works differently from the way my ability works. I can just tell what a memory is from feel. I mean…here, look.” She fishes a Kennedy half dollar out of her pocket and pulls on her blindfold, knotting it behind her ears with a practiced motion. “This is just an example, but this coin picked up memories from when it was minted until just before now, from everyone who handled it. Some only for a few seconds.” Those she can’t pick up very well - while others carried it around for months as a lucky coin. Those are easier. “Hang on, so what I do…” Cassandra trails off as her ability starts taking hold, the world rippling around the three of them before fading into darkness, surrounding the trio in an infinite void, This is the kind of blackness you see when your eyes are closed in the dead of night, without even the hint of light but thankfully, Cassandra hasn’t overwritten the table or chairs they’re sitting in, as well as the items surrounding them. A little bubble of normal is right there as an anchor for those who might not be ready to experience such things.
Lifting her hand to show them her coin, Cassandra concentrates briefly and a bloom of threads erupt from all sides, spreading out in a rainbow of colors like an anemone’s crown. “These are the memories I read from. That means those?” She tucks the coin in her breast pocket, looking to the pennies. “Should have the same stuff.”
Lifting one of the pennies up, the same one she was looking at prior, she turns it over in her fingertips. “First thing is to find one that looks interesting. We don’t know if these all have stolen memories on them, after all. I mean…if I was wanting to hide something, like incriminating memories, I’d stick them somewhere safe that I could easily pick them from. Even better if they’re easily overlooked, like a jar of pennies might be. We already have a baseline of what memories look like from an object so let’s just see what we can see. Boring part for a bit, you two. Sorry.”
It’s why she wanted to take some pennies home, after all. To cut down on the boredom of watching her research. Cassandra begins slowly going through the pennies spread out on the table, setting aside any that look normal, leaving the ones that have particularly powerful, short memories - thicker, brighter threads - for closer examination. She’ll search until she finds an interesting one or two.
Who knows if this even is going to work?
A look is exchanged between the two Hounds. Not quite anxious and not quite skeptical, even if Rue is certainly both of those things. She reaches forward and taps the red button on her phone to start the recording. “If we see something important, we should note it out loud for the recording.” And if there’s stretches of quiet, so be it.
At first, Cassandra’s job feels insurmountable. The pennies all feel the same from one-another, and she’s unable to discern what memories were “stolen” and what ones were accrued over casual exposure. It’s a long process, taking a penny out of the jar and examining it, turning it over and setting it back down. One after another, in a jar of hundreds. Many of them feature the same memory at the end, of Lucille collecting them off of the floor of a trailer. Of blood, of a dead man. Many have the same memories behind that one, of a heavy-set man in flannel fishing them out of his pocket and dropping them into a jar.
Like… ordinary change.
Because that’s what these are. This is literally a penny jar. His loose change, his pocket change.
The thought dawns on Cassandra that there may not be anything monumental here to find. The memories of a copper-plated coin tossed aside to collect for a rainy day. But out of seventy-six pennies she’s quickly scanned, the seventy-eighth causes her to stop.
From the moment she touched this penny, it felt different. A 1973 Lincoln penny, tarnished so badly that it’s nearly black. It feels to Cassandra’s touch the way a jalapeno feels to the tongue, a sudden tingling that only increases the more she inspects it. There’s something different about it, about its texture. Like it’s been coated in some metaphysical grease, or perhaps pitted in the way a CD might be, imperceptible to the human eye, but not to a laser.
This penny isn’t pocket change.
There’s a movie Cassandra remembers watching when she was growing up - one her father absolutely loved for some reason. Sneakers. Any time it came on television they’d stop and watch. It was a part of her childhood and there was always one scene that got her. The main characters, after a successful heist, discovered the power built into a chip that would allow them to break any code almost instantaneously. This is similar to that.
The blackened penny in her hands draws out a gasp, a muffled “Woah.” as she fumbles with it, setting it down on the table with a click, separate from the pile of others she had already scanned and discarded.
“I think I got one.”
Watching as Cassandra picks through the pennies, Lucille sits by Rue waiting. Her eyebrows raise at the post cog's reaction and she leans forward momentarily, "Oh? Excellent." Flipping open her notebook to an empty page, a pen is taken from the table and she clicks the point out, blue ink as she writes the date in the margin. Is this what it felt like for her dad? She felt a knot in her stomach, whatever was on these pennies… was so important they were sent to be hidden with a man forever in the middle of nowhere.
A quick thank you and prayer mentally sent up to her mother Mary: guide us in this moment mom, please.
At first, Rue thinks this whole thing might be a bust. Penny after penny with not so much as a comment. When Cassandra speaks up finally, Rue sits up in her chair, turning to look at her partner briefly.
“Let’s see what we have,” the redhead murmurs.
“Hang on.” Cassandra leans back in her seat. “This could get interesting.”
And in she goes.
????
Clink.
Wine glasses come together amid soft laughter.
It is dark outside, and snow is falling in New York. Out the tall windows of a palatial Manhattan apartment, a normally clear view of the Empire State Building is obfuscated by the blizzard outside. But in the apartment, it is warm and comfortable. The supple leather of a sofa creaks, only just audible under the sounds of a record player and soft jazz notes. “We should go away for Christmas,” a blonde woman says, her brows raised in amusement. She breaks up her sentence by taking a sip of her wine, shifting to sit forward and letting the silk of her bathrobe fall off of one shoulder.
The man across from her smiles, he can’t help it. “There’s not a lot of places I’d like to go,” he admits, rolling his wrist and swirling his wine glass before taking a sip. She doesn’t say anything to the contrary, just leans in and presses a kiss to the side of his jaw, and then his mouth. His hand comes up and brushes her jawline, then threads a lock of hair behind one of her ears. “But, with you? I suppose everywhere will feel new, won’t it?”
She laughs, a bubbly sound, and shakes her head as a flash of color comes across her cheeks. “Charles owes us this. Owes us some time, some space. Now that the government isn’t looking for us, I think it’s time we all take a vacation. Just…” She smirks, “…maybe not all together.”
“God no,” he says with a laugh, taking another sip of his wine. “I don’t think any of them will be as fun around a tropical beach as they think they are.” And at his comment she smiles, leaning in again and curling her fingers around his skinny black tie.
“A tropical beach?” She asks teasingly, and he flashes her a warm smile in return. As they lean in, about to kiss again, the sound of a child’s cry fills the air and they stop, lips just a touch apart from one-another. He sighs, and looks off toward a partly open door. “I think it’s my tur— ”
“Sit.” She says, pushing two fingers against his chest. “It’s probably just Niki, she’s been having nightmares since she watched that horrible movie with Tracy.” He smiles, guiltily. He’d taken them to see that horrible movie. But he nods, and takes another sip of his wine as he watches her set her glass down, pull her robe up her bare shoulder, and pad across the hardwood floor to the bedroom and the sound of the child’s cries.
For a while, things are quiet. Things are simple. But the noise of a phone ringing joins the sounds of her soothing the young girl’s concerns. With a groan of effort, he pushes up off of the sofa and walks toward where the phone hangs on the wall by the kitchen. As he takes it off the receiver, there’s still a resonant hum of the bell lingering in the air.
“Monroe,” he greets into the phone, looking back into the bedroom.
But then, he sucks in a sharp breath. “Arthur, what— when?” Blue eyes track to the bedroom, and Adam swiftly steps around the corner with the phone, the cord tethering him to that point on the wall. “Did she give you a name?” His hands are shaking. Whatever’s said on the other side of the phone drains all the color out of Adam’s face, and he sweeps one hand across his mouth and nods, then looks back to the bedroom where she’s come out with a little blonde girl no older than six or seven years old, eyes red from crying. She’d had a nightmare.
Adam swallows nervously, then shakily says into the phone, “I’ll be on the first flight out of JFK.” He closes his eyes. “Of course.” Then, quieter, “of course,” before he hangs up the phone. She can already tell that Adam is shaken, the look in his eyes is one she’s never seen before, and as she approaches him with their daughter’s hand in her own, the question on her face is an obvious one. Are you alright?
“It’s okay,” Adam lies quietly. “I… Arthur called. Kaito found something in Japan, they need me there immediately.” He steps over, seeing her worry, and cups her cheek in one hand. “I won’t be gone long,” is probably another lie, and it kills him to say it. “Tell the girls I’ll be back in time for Christmas.” The vacation will have to wait.
“I love you, Claudia.”
Present Day
Cassandra lays on the floor of the basement, her chair toppled over. Warm lines of blood trickle out of her nostrils and flood her lips with a coppery tang. For Rue and Lucille, it was like blacking out and waking up inside someone else’s mind. They can still taste the wine on their lips, they can still feel the touch of SESA Director Claudia Zimmerman’s lips on their own. It was as if the memory was theirs and all the emotions within it blisteringly real.
For Cassandra, it was like drinking from a waterfall. Her mind tingles, her extremities prickle with numbness. She had no control over the vision, no barrier between herself and the memory. It was like something she lived. Her mind is on fire, she’s dizzy, her heart is pounding in her chest with the anxiety that Adam Monroe felt in that moment.
She’s never experienced anything like that before.
When Cassandra comes to, the room is at a different angle from the way she was before, her blindfold shifted off one eye from her collapse to the floor. Her hands and feet are numb. She can’t feel the tip of her nose. Everything hurts just a little bit, and what’s this stuff all over her face? Cassandra coughs weakly, pushing herself up with one arm before an explosive hack and spasming follows. It’s not a seizure at all. It’s more like her body is busily attempting to rid itself of everything that was inside as quickly as humanly possible. It’s a good thing she was doing this on an empty stomach. Still, it’s not pleasant for her or anyone that’s around her to watch as her mind tries to purge the sensations she just experienced. It was so unlike anything she had ever dealt with that putting it into words will be difficult.
Let’s get past the hacking first.
“God…” Cassandra finally manages to croak. “What the fuck WAS that?”
Whoa.
The tall woman leans back as the scene starts, as she feels the memory happening as if she's there even. It's overwhelming and by the end of it all, her eyes are wide and looking down at the post cognitive on the floor, Lucille goes to crouch besides her. "Claudia Zimmerman? …together with Adam?" As Cassandra finishes hacking up a lung Lucille turns to stare in Rue's direction/ the fuck.
"That man is Adam Monroe, he's an immortal.. he was good friends with my father once. Something he didn't know until my dad found a penny. Just like these… and your counterpart helped him see the memory." Lucille says this softly as she stares at the space between the wall and the table.
"Claudia Zimmerman is the head of fucking SESA.. together with children with Adam." ?!?! What the fuck. "Kaito was a founder of the Company," another friend of her fathers, they were all friends right? Friends that ripped memories out from the others and killed loved ones.
"Are you alright?" Lucille lends a hand to Cassandra to help her sit up and stand, "That I guess, is what we're dealing with." Already her mind racing as to how to most effectively do this. Maybe it was like building a tolerance, start very slow and then they can view more… memories as they go.
When it’s over, Rue exhales a shaky breath. This isn’t the first time she’s experienced something like this. Her tongue darts out between her lips, the taste of wine lingering where it shouldn’t. For a moment, she simply sits still and lets the situation settle around her.
“I’ll go get some water,” the redhead says, rising from her seat. “And a towel.” She turns and hurries up the basement stairs to gather what she needs to help Cassandra clean up.
May 9, 2019
"Okay just ease into it," not that Cassandra hadn't been trying to take it easy the first time the three women had come down to this basement. Yesterday, it was later in the afternoon today. They had wanted to give the traveler enough time to rest, after they had went through the pennies, singling out the ones that tingled for Cassandra the most.
Today Lucille is in shorts, hair loose and falling just above her shoulders. There's water and towels placed on the table now that they've had a taste of what this process would be like, Lucille is also monitoring Cassandra's vital signs from afar, golden glowing eyes tracking over the younger woman's body. Taking a note of what her lifesigns look like prior to unlocking a penny.
It all sounded so fantasy like for Lucille, like one of the books she had read growing up. "You just let us know, if you feel anything strange. I'll try to monitor you as closely as I can." She doesn't offer a alleviating for the pain, that's only for when Cassandra feels it a bunch.
27 pennies.
Out of the jar of hundreds, there were 27 pennies that gave that same tingle, that same burn of sparks that threatened to surge through her form. Enough for nearly a month of this, assuming they were all as intense as the last one. Memories like these don’t like to be hidden, and emotional memories like the ones they discovered, when given an out, take it in a rush, unbidden. Just going through the pennies took a long time, with Lucille and Rue coming and going from the nimbus of her vision, never leaving Cassandra alone, in case one of the memories happened to be too strong and managed to break the tight grip she had on her power, keeping the past from revealing itself again.
“It was like watching from behind someone’s eyes.” Cassandra finally managed to explain during the clean up after that first penny. “Like I stepped into their body from beyond and rode around. My eyes were her eyes, my taste was her taste…” she trailed off, wiping the blood from her nose and mouth, the dark tears from her eyes, shaking her head. “We’ll try again.” she said on the doorstep of the house, dressed in a borrowed shirt, hers near ruined from bloodstains and her inky tears. “I’ll see you soon.”
Instead of a chair this time, it’s a recliner. How Lucille managed to convince her father to drag a recliner down here is something she wasn’t going to delve into, but reclining instead of sitting did ensure that she wouldn’t crash off the chair as easily as she did last time, and the belt that went around her waist was there to make sure she didn’t hit the floor. Pulse, respiration, and blood chemistry levels all seemed to be within normal limits according to Lucille’s ability.
“It all feels strange.” She glances to the pennies on the table, the first one labeled and stuck inside a plastic disk for protection, several pages of notes in the book beside. “I look at those pennies, and it looks like nothing, but let me touch one of them? It’s like hearing a rattlesnake, a thunderstorm, and a gunshot at the same time. My whole body tenses up from what’s been crammed inside those things.” Still, Cassandra has a job to do and she did promise Lucille a week. She fixes her blindfold tightly in place, wraps a towel around her neck to ensure that anything that comes from her nose doesn’t get on her clothes again, and, once she’s cracked the case of the first penny, takes it up again like one would pick up a poisonous spider. This is just the first penny of 27 pennies, and already her body is physically tensing when it’s held between thumb and forefinger. Of course the man who used these was haphazard with the memories…the researcher in Cassandra cringes at the thought of all that data just left on whatever penny the man happened to have with him at the time. It’s what it seems to be, at least.
“Just say when.” Cassandra is tense, ready to jump at a moment’s notice.
Cassandra doesn’t remember hearing the ok. She shock of returning to that encoded penny is so great that—
????
“What I’m saying is that we’re about to make history.”
Arthur Petrelli cuts a distinctive silhouette, stepping out of the bright sunlight into the climate-controlled confines of a white-walled facility. Agents in sleek black suits and crisp white shirts, nod at him as he enters. A few scientists in white lab coats approach from a pair of double doors up ahead, and Arthur slows down his pace.
“Arthur,” the man he’s walking with says, and Adam’s voice is distinctive. “You’re telling me this thing still works?” He looks over to the approaching scientists, one among them a dark-haired woman with swept bangs and a nervous smile. The badge clipped to her jacket reads C. ROUX.
“Mr. Petrelli, Mr. Monroe,” Roux greets with a dip of her head. “We’ve tuned the device to your specifications, and I should be able to engage it as soon as you’re ready.” Arthur nods to Ms. Roux’s explanation, then looks over to Adam and motions for him to walk ahead rather gallantly.
Adam snorts, eyes Roux, and then walks around her toward the double doors. He pushes through them, into a metal-walled cylindrical space with an enormous central support column. Banks of computer equipment line the walls, and up against that central column there is a mechanical apparatus some ten feet tall. It looks like five tesla coils daisy-chained together with a three foot ring of metal above them. Gold-plated coils wind around the ring and a low ground-fog fills the room from the coolant pipes and tanks.
“Arthur… you made it bigger?’ Adam turns around and looks to Arthur, who approaches the room with Ms. Roux. A few agents file in as well, some with microphones and recording equipment, others with heavy and boxy video cameras. “You’re going to turn it on?”
Smiling, Arthur nods. “We have to understand what it is Michelle caused back in Kansas. Charles is already working to try and make ends meet with the visitors who appeared, but we still don’t know where they came from or how. But I have a theory,” he says, nodding to Ms. Roux, who makes her way over to a computer, clicking a pair of keys.
“Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Petrelli,” she calls back over her shoulder. But Adam fixes a look at Arthur and shakes his head.
“Arthur. Does Charles even know about this?” Adam asks sharply.
“Charles isn’t my boss,” Arthur insists, and Adam steps in front of him with his back to the machine.
“He absolutely is, Arthur. Charles runs the Company, I put him in charge because he’s the most responsible— ”
“Do it.” Arthur says to Roux. He doesn’t care.
The sound of the machine powering up causes Adam to wheel around. He watches as Roux steps away from the computer and extends a hand out toward the device, waves of scintillating auroral energy burning away from her arm, collected in the ring to form a spiral disc of light. “I should be able to simulate the solar radiation component we need,” Roux says cheerfully, “that’s why the previous tests didn’t ignite properly, there needs to be a combination of Gamma radiation and neutrinos.”
Adam spins around, grabbing Arthur by the shoulders. “Arthur please, you have to stop. You don’t understand, we can’t do this!” Reaching up, Arthur takes a hold of one of Adam’s hands tightly, staring him down.
“What don’t I understand, Adam?” Arthur’s grip becomes painfully tight, and Adam winces. “That you’re not telling me something about that woman, Joy, that we found in the cave? That you’re not telling me something about the aurora over Kansas?”
Adam exhales a gasp as a bone in his hand breaks. “Arthur— I can’t tell you. It’s not safe to tell you— ”
“Simulated coronal discharge at 100%,” Roux says behind Adam, and Arthur sharply releases his hand. Adam turns around, frozen in dread, heart racing and the pain in his hand nothing compared to the existential terror he experiences when he sees the swirling vortex of light start to smooth out into a hazy image of the laboratory, as if they were gazing into a television screen… except in this vision the room is empty.
Roux continues to bombard the ring with solar energy, and Arthur steps past Adam to look into the window of energy and light. “Amazing,” he says softly, “simply amazing.” Adam, clutching his hand, is filled with confusion now more so than anything. His lips part, disbelief palpable in the sudden breaths he takes. The pain in his hand passes swiftly, bones resetting and wounded flesh knitting back together. His regeneration affords him the time to see the display before him.
“What am I looking at?” Adam asks, but Arthur doesn’t say anything at first. The other agents in the room begin activating their recording equipment, and Arthur slowly shakes his head, taking one more step closer to the ring.
“It’s a window,” Arthur says in breathless wonder.
“A window to what, though? Because all I'm seeing is…” Adam’s voice trails off as a different group of scientists walk into frame in the ring. Their conversation can’t be heard, but their lab coats read Sunspot Solar Observatory. They’re astronomers. “Arthur, my god, what am I looking at?”
Arthur looks back at Adam, motioning to the Looking Glass. “A parallel reality,” Arthur is now confident of. “A world in which we don’t exist as we do now. A world where the Company was never formed.”
Adam shakes his head, taking a hesitant step closer to Arthur. “Never?”
“Never.” Arthur echoes, looking back to the Looking Glass. “In the interviews we did with the visitors, we discovered a common thread. They spoke of a world in which the disasters we’ve averted, the political transformations we wrought, the shell corporations we founded… all didn’t exist. A world without us.”
“How is that even possible? Unless…” Adam stops, bringing a hand up to his mouth. “If they never escaped Coyote Sands, then… we wouldn't…” He looks to Arthur, who remains rapt at the display, then lowers his hand from his mouth. “Arthur. What is this?” For a moment, Adam has forgotten the fear
“It’s the future,” Arthur says softly, “with this technology we can— ”
Ms. Roux turns to look at Arthur from the ring. Her eyes burn a violent gold, as though hot iron fresh from the fire. “Kensei,” Roux says, before she turns her radioactive wave of solar energy from the ring onto Adam.
The heat and radiation burns like the energy of the sun. Arthur lets out a scream of shock, stepping out of the cone of energy and holding up his hands to shield himself with a shimmering field of force. Adam is caught in the coronal blast, stripping flesh and clothing from his body, boiling muscle, withering hair.
He can’t scream.
Ms. Roux stares at Adam, advancing toward him. “Did you think your victory was so certain?” Adam drops to his knees, hands raised in front of himself to try and stop the radioactive fire. Agents around Adam are flash-incinerated, burned with a sudden eruption of near atomic fire that leaves nothing but their shadows scorched into the walls. Arthur, shielded by his forcefield, still leaves one such shadow where the radioactive heat and light doesn’t scour the steel.
Roux — or whatever has possessed her — forgot about Arthur. It would be the one time that it would. Roux’s neck snaps like a bundle of pencils, the radioactive energy ceases immediately as her head is jerked by Arthur’s bare hands and his superhuman strength. As she drops to the ground, smoking ashes are all that’s left of the other agents.
Adam, little more than molten muscle and bone collapses onto his side, exhaling a shuddering breath in lungs that struggle to rebuild themselves. Arthur, horrified, looks at Adam with both guilt and apology in his throat.
He had no idea what just happened.
How could he?
Present Day
As Cassandra comes back from that psychic shock, she is braced only just so for it. It’s less of a punch to her system than before, but it’s still mentally and physically exhausting. Much as before, she felt the emotional and physical stimulus of the memory as if it were one of her own. Thankfully for her, Adam Monroe’s sense of pain is not that of a normal human, but still one of her hands dully aches where bone was broken, her entire body tingles with a faint phantom sensation of burning, her lungs ache. She sucks in an involuntary, gasping breath, dropping the penny onto the floor.
The penny rolls, wobbles, and falls on its side.
Rue has a hand over her mouth when the vision ends, visibly shaken by what she’s seen. “That— That woman with the solar power. She’s Quinnie’s mom.” She’d met her before. Charlotte was always nice to her, and Rue tends to remember well the people who were nice to her. It helps that she thought she might be her mother-in-law someday.
“But— But when did this happen? She died there.” She had to have, given that awful sound. “I had to have met her later than that. What the fuck?” Rue scrubs her hand over her face, clutching it together with her other in her lap to keep the shaking under control.
Arthur's face makes Lucille's stomach turn, "Arthur.. the man that stole my father's… everything." Lucille whispers, her head hanging as the whirlwind ride that was dissecting this penny ends. If she could kill the man again for her father, for her family…
The insanity of it all. Her hand scribbling out notes on Looking Glass, Adam… friend? It seemed like it when paired against Arthur's willful ignorance of Adam's worry. He wanted to know why Adam lied, wasn't that what the immortal did?
There's the matter of Robyn Quinn's mother and Rue's admission that she met her after these events. "Maybe… somehow they brought her back." She wouldn't put it past the Founders. They thought they were gods. Lucille frowns as she rests a hand on the copper haired woman's shoulder. There's a tension in Lucille's muscles, her head turning back to stare into the empty space of air in the basement in front of her.
"What the fuck was that?" Luce knows she should probably clarify because there were a lot of WTF moments. "Those eyes…" The young woman can't help but think of her own eyes that glow a golden hue when her ability is in use. Luce knows of Lauren Gilmore's condition from reports from the other Hounds but it was still strange for the operative to witness herself.
Clawing out of the memory hidden in the penny is like pushing through a closet of fur coats covered in tar. The memory clings, slippery and sticky, to the skin and traces remain even when there's nothing there to be felt. At least this time her nose didn't abruptly start bleeding and she didn't end up on the floor.
It still takes a few minutes for her to gather her bearings, rubbing her hand where it prickles around the phantom break, trying to ignore the sensation of crisping skin and the smell that burned itself into all of their memories. Finally, when she does speak, it's with a halting, croak of a voice. “I don't know any of those people, but I've seen those eyes before. I know what that device they were working on was, and I've been to that place. Briefly.” It's where they landed, after all, after their exodus from the Ark. She remembers the burns on the wall even now, thinking there had been some prior experiment with plasma or something that burned the shadows of the poor unfortunates in between containment of whatever…or whoever caused the blast and the wall. “I can't tell you anything about that. I'm sure you have files and sources you can follow, but please. Just…don't dig into it. Trust me. That device is a monster that will devour anything dumb enough underestimate it or even look at it funny. And the golden eyes…Jesus, those eyes….”’ she rocks back in her seat, tears seeping from beneath her blindfold. “I hope that experience kept them from trying to poke between again.” Abject incineration and dire events do usually count as a final word.
Her head turns towards Rue. “I see two possibilities - either that woman didn't die from having her neck snapped like that in the memory you just saw, or the woman you met was like me. From somewhen else. They mentioned visitors, after all. Why put one asset at risk when you can have a second waiting in the wings?”
God, she'll have so much to talk to Richard about after this…
“Christ,” Rue hisses under her breath. Staring down at the table in front of her, she turns her head toward Lucille, but doesn’t quite manage to lift her gaze to the other woman. “This rabbit hole is a lot deeper than I expected. But… but we’re learning.” That’s the only word she can come up with for this experience. They’re learning. About Adam and what motivates him, maybe.
Maybe.
Suppressing a shudder, Rue finally looks up at Lucille. “Do you think we dare try for another?” she asks, glancing then to Cassandra. It’s ultimately her call, of course. None of them have the power to do what she does.
"Founders of the Company, Arthur. Adam. Nobody remembers Adam's involvement though…" Lucille trails off as she makes eye contact with Rue. "My father's ability was stolen by him. Arthur." The man was a brutal as she perceived, worse. Nodding her head at the y'all redhead, Rue was correct on that. Learning that was important and someone how to do it.
That device, Robyn's mom, those eyes, everything is noted down. It's their way.
A woman like Cassandra, "My brother-" Lucille swallows and looks down. "He's like you. Crossed over in the 80s… the Company did a massive cover up. Maybe.. Robyn's mom was one of those people.. you?" Who could even fucking guess? Speaking of her brother and his otherworldly circumstance makes her feel uncomfortable so she relishes in the opportunity to turn it back on the penny and memories.
"Do you feel up to it?" Directed to Cassandra, they would follow her lead on this.
“Give…give me some time to decompress.” Cassandra says, her voice weak. This is like running a marathon with a 50lb backpack on, in sand, with wind in your face. It takes a lot out of the woman. “We’ll see what else is in there in a day or so.”
May 12, 2019
????
Clink.
The sound of ice cubes settling as they melt in a lowball glass. The whiskey is gone. The room is dark, save for the stripes of dim light spilling through partly shut slatted blinds. Exhaling a shuddering sigh, Adam Monroe looks up in the darkness, squaring his attention on a woman’s silhouette half lit by the streetlights spilling through the windows. She is turned away from him, looking down at the street with a partly lidded stare and a curtain of dark hair shielding him from most of her peripheral vision.
“How many?” She asks, and Adam hangs his head.
“Ten that I married,” Adam admits in a hushed tone of voice, “scattered over the centuries. The others…” Shaking his head, Adam turns the glass around in his hand, eliciting further clattering sounds of falling ice. “I thought you were dead.”
The woman at the window is silent, bringing a hand up to her face to swiftly sweep a thumb beneath each of her eyes. She is not affording him those tears. “I was,” is something he didn’t know. Not for certain. Adam sets down his glass on the table in front of the sofa, slowly standing.
“Yaeko,” he whispers her name. “I— ”
“I’m not mad,” Yaeko insists, her arms wrapped around herself. “I’m furious,” she says, turning to look at Adam. Streetlight illumination glitters in the tracks of tears on her cheeks. “I’m furious that we lost all that time. That it was stolen from us. I’m furious that I couldn’t be there for you, that you wandered this horrible world by yourself.”
Yaeko’s answer has Adam frozen in his tracks, heart racing, jaw trembling.
“I’m relieved you were able to try and find love again,” Yaeko’s voice is small now, and she turns away from him to look out the window to an alien skyline. “I’m jealous,” comes in a whisper, “that I did not get to see the man you’d become.”
And that hurts him more than anything.
Adam closes the distance between he and Yaeko, but slowly. Gently reaching out, he places a hand on her arm and turns her away from the New York skyline beyond. “You shouldn’t be,” is his quiet response. “After you died, I… lost everything. Hope. Myself. You couldn’t love the man I became…”
Shaking her head, Yaeko places her hand against Adam’s cheek and brushes her thumb beneath one of his eyes. There is no tear, but not because he doesn’t feel. “You live forever,” she says softly, “you have forever to make amends for the wrong you did. A person is not bound in chains by the choices they make in life, but guided by them. Adam, you told me that.”
Reaching up to take Yaeko’s hand in his, Adam pulls it from his cheek gently. “I…” He can’t express himself, the tumult of emotions roiling in his chest simply too much. Yaeko steps in, leaving a breath of a distance between them, and slips one arm around his waist. His entire body tenses.
“Shh,” Yaeko says, rising up onto her toes to press a kiss to his lips. But Adam only tenses further, his jaw tightens, and he pulls away from the kiss and the embrace no matter how much everything in him says to give in. Adam gasps out a desperate breath, scrubbing a hand from his face and shaking his head. Yaeko stands there, transfixed by the gesture, confused.
“I can’t,” Adam says in a rasp. “There’s— I’m— ” Yaeko’s eyes dart from side to side, searching Adam’s expression for meaning. But she could never find the one that he gives to her. “I have children,” comes as a strangled admission. He thought she was dead, he’d tried to tell her. Yaeko sucks in a sharp breath, bringing a hand up to her mouth as she steps backward and bumps against the frame between the windows.
Silent, eyes filled with tears, Yaeko turns away and curls her shoulders forward. She exhales a ragged breath, a shuddering sob, and Adam does not dare to close the distance between them again. He stands there, in guilty silence, and then stares down at the floor as the sounds of her sobs continue to fill the air. She isn’t mad at him.
She’s furious at history.
Present Day
The lingering feelings of guilt and sorrow filter through Cassandra as though they were her own distant memories. She is separated by a layer of time, separated by the fact that they aren’t truly hers, but she feels the lingering hints of sadness that once belonged to Adam Monroe as if they were her own. He stood there, confronted with a woman he loved in centuries past, a woman he thought died and yet somehow — inexplicably — she was there. And he could not have her.
This, a personal memory of such intimate purpose, was robbed from him. Why?
Personal. Like the first memory. Yaeko??
These notes jotted down in Lucille's notebook, grounding her back in reality as the memory fades. "Arthur and the Founders wanted everything maybe, maybe they didn't pick and choose which memories they took… they just took them."
Bulk year memory theft. Underlined three times. This was brutal but in a different way than the previous days memory, no death just broken hearts. "All you hear about are the horrible things he's done. Never things like this." How a man that's a monster can still have a heart. The ties to Adam and the history of the things they were dealing with was becoming more and more complicated. Murky.
Out of all the memories she's seen, this is the one that makes her feel the worst. The subjects are tragic, even if she doesn’t know any of them. Unrequited love, thought long dead and gone, re-found after time and the world conspired to change one to be near unrecognizable to the other. It's like something out of a romance novel, really. “This penny guy…”’ Cassandra growls. “How could he just… take… this memory and cram it into a penny?” Said penny is left alone in the middle of the table, Lincoln staring balefully off to his right, the brightness dulled to a mottled patina of browns and blacks. Using a Bic pen, Cassandra scoots the penny a little closer to keep from touching it. Even being so close, she can feel the memories screaming to be let free.
“This is just one penny. Out of twenty seven you have. There might be hundreds more out there, packed full. He…”. Cassandra takes a shuddering breath, composing herself and, after a few moments, speaks. “This man. He was a disposal guy. A trash man. He just took and didn't care what happened to the memories as long as they were out of whoever his target was.” The bic pen is tapped against the penny, a soft click fading into the surrounding darkness. “Memories act like….layers of paint, basically. You do something and it subsumes into the fiber of the object, getting deeper the more age something has. Caspar just…ripped out the memories entirely and put it here. On top of the memories already there. And he did it again and again and again with the same penny.” Cassandra frowns. “This all might have been done at the same time, which would explain why it’s so packed in, but it's just not right to treat a person’s memory like this. It's just… bad curation.” And as a fairly accomplished researcher, that's a big insult.
“Look…” Cassandra says, looking to Lucille and Rue. “I could spend a month or two on this one penny and probably couldn't find everything he crammed into it. It's like looking at old strips of movie film stacked on top of each other and trying to pick out the individual scenes. Some of the memories are just buried too deeply to get to them without doing something.” She slumps back, quiet. As far as what to do, that's drawing a blank. If it were a painting, careful cultivation could strip the old layers away' to reveal what's beneath, but there's no such thing as psychic paint thinner, as far as Cassie knows. Maybe that lemon death stuff? Or someone with the evolved ability of Psychic stripping? Is that even a thing? Getting Caspar to take the memories back out of the objects might be another option, but she doesn't even know if he's alive or willing to assist. Whatever he did, it's beyond Cassandra’s ability to get down through everything.
Speculation, though? That she can do. “They probably took this memory to make that guy, this adam guy, more…aloof. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Without Yaeko there for him to worry about, him not knowing she was around again from whenever he knew her, he'd be the same old known they were used to and could be…directed easier?”
“There has to be something about her… Something about… That was Claudia Zimmerman in the other memory. I think we would have heard by now if she’d been having a— If she’d been—” Rue flounders to make sense of what they’ve seen and what any of it could mean.
She shudders, some of the emotion lingering from the last vision making her feel uncertain.
"The Company wasn't known for its proper handling of things, memory or otherwise." Often Lucille wonders what she would have done, would she had grown so… callous as the Founders? They thought they were doing the right thing. "Rumour…" Lucille turns her head with a slightly shocked expression, it really is all sinking in. "She doesn't have any idea… .. fuck. Probably her daughters as well…" Luce shivers.
"I think, you should continue looking at this one. I know we have more but… this is the guy everyone is looking for. His memories are paramount." To just about everything she hopes.
Looking towards Cassandra, "We are really in your field of expertise though, what you feel I trust." Because she doesn't feel what Cassandra does at all, she also can only guess how taxing this all is. "Let's proceed how you will."
The single penny sits on the table innocently, easy to overlook were it not for the craziness that was pulled out and pushed in unwillingly. Cassandra sits back in her chair and pushes herself up, drawing her legs beneath her before settling back down, reaching out to take the penny again. She physically twitches when she takes it, rubbing the relief of the Lincoln Memorial with her thumb for a second, deep in thought. “This…all of these memories…if I end up going through them…” Not a small task in the least. “You should try to get them back to people who might need them. You said that the Me from here got some memories for your father, and I found one for Elisabeth in one of the worlds we passed through. These memories….” She taps the penny on the table. “Need to go back to the people who had them. Somehow.”
“Still.” She looks at the penny again, turning it over in her palm, setting it down on the table with a click. “I’ve got at least one more in me for today. It doesn’t hurt as much, now that I’ve got an idea of what to expect.”
When everyone is ready, Cassandra rests her palm over the penny on the table, bringing her power to bear again, slowly, seeking another stolen memory.
????
“Don't stop! Don't you dare stop!”
A voice rings out over the howling sound of raging winds.The sky dark with clouds and a torrential rain hammering down from above. The winds are howling like a hurricane, twisting tendrils of tornadoes touch down in the gray silhouette of the Hudson River, turning into water spouts. Tucked down low against a gently sloping roof, Adam Monroe's black dress shoes slip against the slate underfoot.
The dark rectangles of the World Trade Center rise up high in the nearby distance, visible from Adam's point of view as he slowly unsheathes the sword held in one hand. Raindrops patter across the reflective surface of the blade, and for the briefest of moments a glimpse of his eyes can be seen in the polished steel — burning gold eyes.
“Hold!”
The voice, a man’s voice. Adam creeps to the edge of the roof, overlooking a lower ledge that gives way to a rooftop patio. The rooftop of the Deveaux Building is an iconic structure, and from Adam's perspective he must be atop the penthouse roof. The man shouting is a tall and dark figure in a rain-soaked business suit, one hand at his head and blood streaming down his face. He is unmistakably Charles Deveaux.
“God damnit hold!”
Nearby to Charles, a younger Simon Broome stands in an equally dark and equally rain-soaked suit, eyes shut and a line of blood trickling out of his nose and ears. He's fighting something, something unseen. Beside him, a dark-skinned woman who is recognizable as Kam Nisatta rests on her knees in a tattered red dress. Broome's hands are on her head, gripping tightly, and she's spasming and fighting his grip.
“Charles!” Another voice calls out, “Charles how much longer!?” The voice of Arthur Petrelli wavers with uncertainty, but he wears a mask of strong confidence. Arthur squints against the rain, a tiny blonde child no older than a year cradled in his arms and swaddled in a blanket.
“Kusogaki!” Filled with rage, Adam Monroe leaps from the rooftop, Kensei sword in hand. His arc takes him directly down to Arthur, and the curving Kensei sword is driven through Arthur’s shoulder. The blade extends out the front of his shoulder joint and narrowly missed the blonde baby in his arms.
Screaming in pain, Arthur drops to one knee, cradling the baby in his remaining good arm. He turns, looking back at Adam. “Koshinuke!” Adam twists the sword, and Arthur let's out a howl of pain a moment before Adam is lifted off of his feet and flung back bodily against the greenhouse wall, glass shattering in his back.
Another figure on the roof, dressed in a breezy jacket and floral patterned scarf holds out one hand as a harmonic telekinetic thrum keeps Adam pinned against the wall. She is graceful, confident, and young. She furrows her brows and squints against the rain, and Adam struggles to move, pinned amid the broken glass and splintered wood of the greenhouse.
“Yaeko— ” Adam hisses at her, and she clenches her fist shut and forces his mouth closed. Swiftly, she moves to Arthur’s side at the same time another woman does, dressed entirely in black with long hair down to her waist; Ishi Nakamura.
“Easy, Arthur.” Ishi insists as she lays a hand on his wound and a flood of white light spills out beneath his skin, knitting the injury shut. “Keep helping Simon.” Attention turned back to Adam, Ishi’s eyes narrow and her lips downturn to a visible frown.
Broome, struggling with whatever task he is charged with, lets out a frustrated howl of agony and collapses to his knees at the same time Kam’s body writhes around in his grasp. Charles clutches his head, screaming loudly through the pain and the hurricane-force winds. “I almost have it! I almost have it!”
“I've got you, Mr. Deveaux!” A red-haired teenager shouts as he places a hand on Charles’ shoulder. He's no older than thirteen or fourteen, but when he touches Charles’ shoulder there's a surge of rainbow-hued light that refracts around Charles brow, and the telepath seems to have renewed vigor and strength. Niel Trafford looks from Charles to Adam and back again, trembling in fear.
“Dawson!” Charles shouts to a woman his age standing nearby, her graying black hair soaked by the fierce rain. “Now!”
Nia Dawson raises her hands, the ground rumbling beneath her feet. Kam struggles, screaming, and then goes limp in Broome’s grasp. As Nia tries to utilize whatever power it is she has, Simon’s eyes flash open to reveal golden irises. He twitches, struggling, like someone who is paralyzed where they stand.
“Oh— oh my god I can feel its power!” Nia shouts, already beginning to buckle to one knee. “What— what is— Charles! Charles I don't know if I can h-hold— ”
“I can see,” Simon utters in a deep voice, “Eye to E — eeeeyeeaaaaaaagh!” Clutching his head, Broome’s eyes gutter out from their golden glow. Charles makes a concerted noise of effort and Simon collapses down onto his knees, then down onto his side and begins convulsing on the ground.
“Just a little more!” Charles shouts, and Arthur turns to look up at Adam, then down and over to where Simon convulses on the ground. “Almost! Almost!”
“We— ” Whatever Charles was about to say ends when Adam unleashes a primal scream and tears himself free of the telekinetic grasp. His right arm dislocates, pops, twists, and then tears free from his body. As he slips free of the telekinetic bond, he runs one armed at Charles and swings his katana up in a violent arc, cutting across the side of Charles' face and sending him crumpling to the ground.
"¡Hijo de puta!" Someone screams from inside the penthouse as a young man with curly, dark hair and olive-tan skin comes barreling out of the sliding door with both hands glowing with a white-hot atomic fire. He skids to a stop in the rain, blindsiding Adam with a crackling punch that incinerates Adam's jacket and sends him spinning around until he crashes onto the patio floor. His missing arm is already starting to regenerate as he gets up onto one knee, gold eyes leveled on Miguel Cambria with white-hot intensity.
As Yaeko and Ishi tend to Adam, Arthur turns his attention to Adam and calls out in a clear voice, "Now!" From the demolished greenhouse, Benjamin Ryans comes striding out in a black suit, one hand raised and a telekinetic hum rumbling around his body. He grabs Adam with an unseen hand by his sword arm, brows furrowed and anger plastered across his face.
At the same time, there's a vibrant green-blue glow that surrounds Adam's sword as it is wrenched from his hand and a young woman in a leather jacket steps out beside Ryans, that same aurora-hued light swirling around one of her hands. Valerie Mas spins the Kensei sword around, and with a thrust of magnetokinetic force drives the sword hilt-deep into Adam's chest. He screams, blood spilling from his mouth, eyes flicking to focus on Charles Deveaux, healed again.
"It's over." Charles commands, his eyes focused on Simon Broome's form, his eyes burning with the light of the sun. "Karin!" Charles shouts into the darkness, "Karin we need Mateo!"
Impaled by his own sword, Adam struggles against Ryans' telekinetic grasp, then looks to see Yaeko staring at him with horror and guilt in her dark eyes. He is torn in two, consumed by the unending rage that floods his mind, but there is something behind that. Something that brings tears to his eyes. It is not pain. It is not fear.
It is horror.
Horror at his actions.
Present Day
This time the memory hits like a baseball bat to Cassandra’s brow. This time it’s a psychic shockwave that floods her senses, as if her head were suddenly filled with too many voices, too many people. She can feel the palpable emotions surging through her, she can feel the anger that is neither her’s nor Adam’s pounding at the back of her eyes, she can feel the guilt, horror, and dread that belonged to Adam sink deep into her bones.
Her stomach churns, the world spins. She turns and retches reflexively onto the floor.
Rue is visibly affected in the aftermath of this vision. Her breath comes in short, shallow gasps, confusion in her eyes as she looks around the room as if something there, just out of sight, might provide an answer.
“What the fuck was that?!” She’s rubbing at her arm as though phantom pain still lingers. Thankfully, she’s in one piece. Rue looks around again, eyes falling on Cassandra and her own reaction to what just happened. With how vivid the vision was, she can’t imagine it was any fun to fuel it with her ability.
“‘Cille?”
Lucille sits there numbly, there were a bunch of faces she knew in this memory. What were you guys doing Dad? She asks herself for the hundredth time. "My dad's coworkers… the Founders. I recognize them from when I was younger, Company dinner parties." And the like.
The tall woman slouches in her chair, eyebrows raised and rubbing her temples. "Did that not just seem like a fucking exorcism?" Lucille rubs the bridge of her nose now, wtf…. "I… I'm really not sure. They seemed to be… removing something? From Kam Niasatta." Lucille knows her corporate information, one must when they are running sovereign states in your home country.
The shock though, of seeing her father with his ability weighs heavily on her. All that… stolen from him… from their family. Grabbing a water bottle off the table she scoots closer to Cassandra to offer it, "How are you feeling?" Said slowly, in shock. She's asked that question a whole lot since they started this process.
Pushing herself up from her position leaning over the arm of the chair, Cassandra wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, the taste of bile still lingering on her tongue. The water bottle is taken with a small nod of thanks, the bottle opened, the cap tossed somewhere in the darkness to be found later in the afternoon before she drinks almost half of it in one gulp, trying to get some sort of feeling that’s hers - difficult when you had all of those emotions rushing through her unbidden.
“It wasn’t an exorcism.” Cassandra finally says with a cough. “It didn’t feel like it, at least. They were trying to capture whatever that was. Gold Eyes. Put it somewhere they could control it. Seal it away.” There wasn’t anything before that memory on the penny - no meeting, no walk with a cool soundtrack in the background, just the scene as shown. “One of the limits of my power is that I only can see what is shown. So…jumping into a situation like that.” The penny gets a pointed stare through the blindfold. “That means we have no context leading up to what happened. We can guess all we want about what led up to this. I just know that he.” She points to Adam. “Is a central figure in this penny’s memory.”
“You need to tell someone about this, Lucille.” Cassandra says. “You can’t keep this to yourself. This…these pennies are just too…big.”
“Believe me, we aren’t keeping this to ourselves,” Rue breathes out, slowly coming back to herself. “But we need to know as much as we can - arm ourselves with as much info as we can - so we can figure out what to do with all this and know who needs to know.”
A hopeless sort of look is cast to Lucille. They can tell their own people, of course, but who else can they trust?
"Yea, this is a Wolfhound operation. There are people being notified." Echoing Rue's sentiments while a mild look of confusion towards Cassandra, maybe looking into the pennies had gotten the retro a little forgetful.
Though the two Wolfhound operatives share a look and Lucille understands because she's thinking the same thing, what the fuck have they stumbled upon and just what… who… besides Command… it was all so confusing. Everything Lucille knew about The Founders was proving to not be true. "We've got one more day, lets rest up and get a crack at it when Cassandra is feeling up to it." Lucille stands, "Almost…"
Almost what?
May 14, 2019
It's only noon and there are three beers cracked open and laid on the table in the basement. Lucille wears loose fitting clothes again. She and Rue had taken to staying over, talking late into the night. Trying to make sense of what they had seen, compiling a report for the Hounds. Lucille had been texting Nathalie often, keeping her update as well. Today was the last day of their agreement, whether Cassandra would like to continue another time is something to be discussed.
"Again," Reaching for her beer and taking a sip before leveling Cassandra with a glance and small smile, "This is really appreciated. You've been great. I understand you are close to people who are involved in… the matter of saving the world." Or almost ruining it. Lucille would like to think Wolfhound is also one of those groups or connected to that larger picture seeing as who is in the ranks. Herself and her red headed comrade as well. The former that is. Luce looks over at Rue and tilts her head. "Feel free to share with them what you've found. It's going to take many different minds to figure this out." And she knows Cassandra will speak of this week anyway. No use trying to bully the woman.
Taking another swallow of the crisp beer, "Shall we?"
It took an hour-long shower and lots of scrubbing, plus Miss Congeniality on VHS, to calm Cassandra down from the previous days events. She finally managed to fall asleep a little bit before midnight thanks to the help of a pipe picked up from Cat’s Cradle and a strong drink. It's not something she likes to do - self medicate - but sometimes it's what it takes. She could just as easily forget the memories, but that wouldn't do anyone any good, and besides, there's always the thrill of discovery, delving into the past like this is a thrill, even though the methodology is reprehensible. She feels like a driver gawking at a car crash as they roll slowly by every time she hits a memory in one of these pennies.
Still, it's at the assigned time that she makes her appearance at the Ryans brownstone. The basement stairs seem more ominous every time she goes down them, but this is the last time for the foreseeable future. “It's like being blindsided by a defensive back, some of these memories.” Cassandra lowers herself into the chair, pulling her blindfold out. “At least I can recover longer than a day before jumping into the fray again.”
Cassandra nods at the comment about sharing what she's found. It seems she’s earned Lucille and Rue’s trust and won't be the sort to run out and blah what she's found to anyone that doesn't need to know it. Lucille may not realize it, but that willingness to let Cassandra talk about her discoveries probably earned at least another penny or two.
“Let's finish up with what we have today.” Cassandra ties the blindfold tightly and leans back. “Assuming the feedback doesn't kill me or blind me, we can arrange another date sometime in…I don't know? June?” She's well aware that Wolfhound would love to wring every scrap from these that they could, and discovering secrets is what she does.
“Here’s hoping this one is less of a shock than the last one.” A simple prayer.
For her part, Rue looks like she maybe didn’t sleep a wink the night before. There isn’t even an attempt made to cover the dark circles under her eyes with concealer or foundation, like there would normally be. Perhaps it’s a sign of solidarity of a kind, proof that she too is affected by what they’ve seen and what they’ve learned. Even if they don’t know how to put it all together yet.
“For your sake, I hope we find him playing with puppies at the pound,” Rue murmurs, lifting her beer to her lips and taking a long drink. She scrubs a hand over her face and exchanges a look with Lucille. Once more down the copper rabbit hole.
“For all our sakes, I hope you're right.”
????
Crashing waves lap across a rocky beach in the shadow of a Ferris wheel visible as little more than a silhouette in the dense fog. The tide has pulled out, but everything is glistening and wet from the drizzling rain. Staring out at the gray horizon, Adam listens to the cry of gulls and the quiet sound of the surf in the distance. His shoes have sunk down an inch into the pebbly sand, suit jacket unbuttoned, tie loosened, and top button undone.
The cool sea breeze blows through his hair, and for as still as he stands Adam feels tossed by the wind. It is a metaphorical lightness of being, a sense of being untethered and directionless, like a rudderless ship caught in the storm. Seabirds wheel by in the rain, swooping down low to the water, then skimming back up.
“Are you scared?” A woman’s voice calls from behind Adam, and he doesn't turn, though he does scoff out a half-laugh.
“I should be terrified,” Adam says quietly as the woman walks up to his side. She's a teenager, maybe eighteen. Lightly tanned skin and long, light brown hair and haunting blue eyes. She has delicate, long features and cheekbones that could cut glass. Yet for all that her features are severe, her demeanor is cotton and linen.
Adam looks over at her, watching her stare at the water thoughtfully. “They told you, didn't they?” She closes her eyes and nods once in response, then blinks her blue-eyed stare up and over to Adam.
“Three hundred and thirty years,” she says with breathy disbelief, watching the waves come in.
“Three thirty-seven,” Adam gently corrects, “but who’s counting?”
She turns her attention back to Adam from the ocean, looking troubled. “You mustn't have been much older than me when you first met it,” she says thoughtfully. Carefully.
“No…” Adam says, “No, I wasn't. Charles wasn't much older than you when he and I first met either. The young are the future, or something like that.” He smiles, but it's more a mask against his weariness than anything else. Three hundred and thirty-seven years is a long time to be haunted by something.
“If Victoria and Colin’s project is successful, you should be able to find it without it turning you inside out or into a newt or whatever.” Though Adam’s tone is light, the topic is anything but. The young woman wraps her arms around herself and nods, brows creased together.
“I'm still not strong enough,” she says with a small shake of her head. “Charles is helping but… I'm afraid I won't be able to reach far enough if they're on the other side of the planet.” Seeing her uncertainty, Adam turns to her and places a hand on her shoulder, nodding once in reassurance to her.
“A less likely group of idiots, myself included, stooped this thing once before. We can do it again if we work together.” As much as Adam wants to believe what he says is true, doubt twists at him. Doubt and dread that he's leading a group of people to their deaths.
But she nods, reaching up to rest one hand atop Adam’s at her shoulder. “Thank you… I— Honestly I don't know what we’re going to do if Arthur’s plan fails.” Adam says nothing in response, just puts on his mask of a smile again and nods reassuringly. He's quick to move his hand from her shoulder when he feels her palm touch his knuckles.
“Don't thank me yet,” Adam says. “But, you should run along. Angela and Charles will be looking for you.” The reminder that two of the founders are keeping watch over her has the young woman nodding and taking a step back, looking at Adam with new eyes before she nods once in acknowledgement and starts to turn back toward the boardwalk.
“Oh,” Adam says, turning to look back at her. “Cindy,” and she stops, looking back at him. “Fear is normal…” Adam opines, “being without fear is what should worry you.”
In that, Cindy is relieved. They exist squarely in their mutual fear.
Cindy has no kind parting words for Adam, just a smile as she treads back to the boardwalk behind him. She passes someone along the way, headed down to the beach to Adam, their voices brief in greeting to one-another. Brief, but fond. She is just a little older than Cindy, long limbs and steely eyes, short dark hair striped with neon green. A cigarette hangs from her lips.
“I suppose this is the universe’s way of saying I can't get any peace, isn't it?” Adam turns to look at the surly young agent. “But I suppose…” Adam looks past her to Cindy and then back, “…this is fortuitous timing, Valerie.”
“You need something, boss?”
Adam nods, looking back to the ocean. The fear is growing. “I need you to get into Victoria’s lab…” he doesn't want to say, but he has to. Valerie narrows her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and scrutinizing Adam intently. “Arthur believes his plan is foolproof, but… but I need a failsafe.”
Valerie remains silent, obedient. Ever his disciple, he thinks.
“I need you to get me a sample of the Shanti Vir—
Present Day
It feels like a migraine now, as Cassandra comes back from the memory encoded in the penny. Gone are the short-lived shock of pain, instead replaced by an ever-present throbbing ache behind her eyes and in her skull. Nausea is common now, with this fatigue. Nausea and hemorrhaging, made evident by the blood on her upper lip and the burst blood vessel turning her right eye’s sclera bright red.
But for as it tears her apart, Cassandra is getting used to it. The pain is less shocking, the sensation of overlapping memories less disorienting. But all of it takes so much longer to fade now.
One last look, for now at least.
And what they see… "Well fuck me, each memory gets more confusing than the next." Rubbing the back of her head but getting up to crouch by Cassandra's side, peering into her eyes. "Hey hey, how you feeling?" Her eyes track over the woman, resisting the urge to read the woman as she reads the memories on the pennies. She probably wouldn't like what she sensed. A hand goes to pull the blindfold from the post cog's eyes, rearing back at the blood. Nope no need to read Cassandra with her ability. "Okay, it's good this was the last day. Honestly, you've pushed yourself. Lots of rest."
A chill up her spine as she thinks back to those visions of other worlds. A version of her as a doctor, she pulls Cassandra to a sitting position. "So he's about four hundred years ago, now." Speaking aloud is good to keep her grounded as well as for the audio recording that's happening for the purposes of catching what the Hounds and Cassandra say. Cindy. Valerie. "I know of Victoria. Scientist. I swear he was sending that green haired woman to get a sample of the Shanti Virus." But for what it doesn't help that these things are so far back in the past. Whatever damage or effect these projects or plans were supposed to cause has already been wrought.
Eyes flick to Rue, "We have a lot to go over." That was an understatement.
There was a book Cassandra read when she was younger, that compared space travel to being drunk, and when the main character asked what was so bad about that, he was told to ask that question to a glass of water. This experience with these pennies has been a harrowing one, and has left marks that, with time, will certainly fade, but for now, there is not much more that Cassandra can stand.
Assuming she could even stand after this.
Helped to a sitting position, Cassandra breathes in and uses the very real world around her as an anchor. Sitting carefully in the provided chair, Cassandra squeezes her eyes tightly closed, watching the kaleidoscope of colors flashing behind them. “I’m okay.” A beat. “A little beaten, but okay.” Lucille gets a gentle pat on the shoulder that misses, hitting about mid-bicep before resting there. Cassandra’s grip is trembling, like she's going into the early stages of shock. She's got to concentrate.
“F..f..four hundred is too long. Three hundred thirty seven years wh…h…hen this memory was originally made.” Cassandra is shuddering. “Th..Th..they hit Victoria’s lab to get a sample of the Shanti virus…as a backup plan for…something.” She draws a shuddering breath and slumps back in the chair. “Valerie looked like Shego from Kim Possible. She stands out for a secret agent.” Cassandra’s voice is a whisper, her eyes still tightly closed. “I think…I'm gonna pass out for a while. Don't let me get eaten by creatures.”
Her shoulders slump and her head rocks back. She’s out cold.
On the notepad in front of her Rue has written down names: Victoria. Colin. Cindy. Valerie. Shanti is underlined three times. That's the only name she knows the implications of with any certainty. While Lucille sees to Cassandra, Rue puts down her pen and stares at her shaking hand for a long moment. A hard swallow follows.
Lucille's words get a nod of agreement. "I think we've seen… enough to go on, for now. I have a lot of research to do." A lot of favors to cash in. Rue doesn't look forward to that part. "I'll reach out to Sly. Or Liza." Depending upon who manages to be made available to her, and who's willing to talk to her. And what they might want in return. Rue's dealt in information long enough to know one thing, and as she looks at Cassandra's unconscious form that this is no exception:
Knowledge comes with a price.