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| Scene Title | Waiting For The Bullet |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Day two of interrogation, Matt brings in Audrey for her portion regarding Sylar and they learn a few interesting things, none of it really good. |
| Date | August 28, 2010 |
Homeland Security, Battery Park City Facility.
Saturday, another day for magnes as the guest of the united states government. Yesterday his visitor was Matthew Parkman after he'd been brought in by Audrey. Accomodations to be expected for where they were far below the surface, it was a return trip back to that cement chair with it's restraints, and this time, coming in with Matthew was Audrey. Likely not someone that Magnes would like to see, but he can't see the other person present and nearby, lurking. The haitian back from Russia.
Slacks, heels, blouse and jacket, Audrey's severe look is only compounded by the line line of her lips and the severe haircut that ends at her jawline. Even her freckles that scatter across the bridge of her nose and cheeks look severe. Varlane is not her favourite person. One has to wonder if there even is a favourite person that she has. "I dunno Parkman, you think he knows anything?" Asked as they enter. Not for Matt's benefit does she speak but to start in on Magnes and get him off kilter and uncomfortable.
But can you be comfortable on that chair.
"You're not going to get gold if you don't get your hands dirty, Hanson."
Parkman's harsh dark eyes settle on Magnes as soon as the door opens, and they almost immediately squint as he tunes into the younger man's thoughts. "Did you sleep well last night, Magnes?" he asks, but there is little to no kindness in his voice. He takes up a position similar to the one he had yesterday, leaning against the wall directly opposite Magnes in the concrete chair. "It isn't the Ritz, but we do try."
ORDER: It is now your pose.
"My girlfriend wasn't there, so I didn't sleep particularly well. I've gotten used to waking up with red hair in my face." Magnes says a bit bitterly as he drums his fingers against the arm rests. "Not that it'll last, considering what you want me to do. Why am I even strapped? You're a telepath. Not as confident as Emma Frost?"
"Well, I mean, that's perfectly fixable" Audrey settles in on the opposite wall, thereby forcing Magnes to look at either her or Matt when he talks. Back and forth, back and forth. SHe gesture to matt, fingers curled, forefinger pointing at him. "We can get him a wig! He can lay it down on the pillow beside him. You can lay it on the pillow beside you Varlane. If you tell us what perfume she wears, we can even sprtiz it a bit. I think Jason picked up a t-shirt of hers, we can drape it across the pillow" Who the hell is Emma Frost?
"Standard procedure really, the strapping. I mean, we've all seen the extent of your ability, the careless and dangerous use of it. It's just precaution. You know how it is. dangerous evolved, we strap em down, interrogate em, toss em out on the street. That's if they tell us what we want. If they don't, well, who knows." Ankles crossed, Audrey settles her gaze squarely on magnes. "Your boss sure talks a lot magnes. Care to tell us first, what you think she told us?"
"Sweet gig," Parkman comments, taking on his old role of 'good cop' to Audrey's 'bad.' "You know Tracy Strauss and I used to work together, right Magnes? Be a shame if it got back to her you got pulled in for this investigation. So tell us the truth." Again, the command is two-fold - both a verbal and mental pressing. He tilts his head slightly, focusing in on Magnes's thoughts.
"Tracy Strauss could tear your reputation a new asshole." Magnes answers, but his defiance is short lived, as he can't ignore the command, shaking his head before speaking up again. "She probably told you about the robot, that you need both keys to open the case. It's the only surviving robot that I know of. I smuggled it out of Argentina before everything blew up, and I trusted her with it. She knows about the Company too, from when I was an agent. But she's vulnerable, she's just trying to keep herself safe and keep her life together, she's not a bad person, I try to protect her."
"Tracy Strauss could tear your reputation a new asshole." Magnes answers, raising an eyebrow when Matt asks about Tracy Strauss. There's briefly a long monolog about Cable and coming from the future he's just dying to say, but there's something in his head just not allowing him to lie. "I'm not stupid, for all I know you have absolutely nothing. Why would I sell my boss down the river when I have no idea if she's actually spoken to you? She's not stupid." He sure as hell hopes not, at least, then squints at Matt. "What kind of telepath are you, anyway? Why are you even bothering to ask questions? You are definitely not Emma Frost."
"Procedure," Parkman stresses, the word coming out through his teeth. "You want me to dig around in your head?" After all, it's not like they need to use anything they get from Magnes as direct evidence. He's just their discovery point. Even though he has no idea who Emma Frost is, the comic book king is getting on his nerves. "It's easier if you just tell us, but you can show us if you'd rather this be more like your precious little storybooks."
And without another word, Parkman tenses his jaw and they're no longer in a concrete room with a concrete chair. Magnes is sitting behind Tracy's desk, in an office the Department Secretary himself has been in more than once. The leather office chair is a great deal more comfortable than the concrete one is still actually chained to. Digging deeper, his eyebrows knitting together, Parkman pulls out an image of Tracy Strauss herself, all severe lines and and professionalism. The woman walks through the door wearing a dove gray suit that fits her like a glove and busies around the office as if the DHS officials were invisible.
Go ahead, Magnes, comes that pressure again Does she talk to you about your Messiah buddies? Does she talk to you about Sylar?
Magnes raises a hand in his mindscape to massage his forehead inbetween two fingers. This is weird, a new experience he was entirely not prepared for. "Tracy doesn't know anything about Messiah, I'd never put her life in danger like that. She told me she wants my help to capture Gabriel because she suspected I have connections. I told her I have a way to capture him, but if we do it her way, she's just going to get lots of people killed and waste a whole lot of time. I know him, I've fought him, I have his number. I won't tell her anything unless she agrees to let me help with planning the capture."
SHe's never really been often on this end of Matt's talent. She doesn't interact too much, the man far too busy elsewhere and doing jobs with higher security and higher importance. Audrey just chunks away at Sylar. So when she finds herself as well within the little mentally concocted office, audrey takes a moment to adjust, re-adjust and lean against a wall. "What did you tell her about operation apollo and about Gabriel Varlane?" He has his phone number? SO Tracy was going to try and use Audrey, to bring Sylar in. To what purpose? For self promotion? To prove something to someone?
Tracy grabs a file from her desk and leaves just as quickly as she came. She's not needed. That much is obvious. "If you want to bring Sylar in, why not do it through the proper channels?" Parkman paces the posh office, his hands behind his back. He keeps his gaze firmly locked on Magnes, however, even if the illusion is now supplemented by the younger man's own memory. Tracy, as a Press Secretary, is hardly the right person to bring divulge such information to. She's the completely wrong person.
"Let's start even simpler than that. Start with what you know about Gabriel Gray. Like what that number is. Or where he's hiding out. You said you wanted to help people - wanted to do things peacefully. Now's your chance."
"I've never been sure how Tracy intended to bring him in legally at all. Gabriel should have a pardon with the rest of us, everyone in Apollo got a pardon for all of their crimes." Magnes reaches for a pen and paper on the desk, then writes Gabriel's number down, sliding it forward. "I haven't told Tracy anything about Gabriel yet, other than my ability to contact him, she'd do something irresponsible and people would die, that's why I was trying to get her to let me help her plan. And I told her everything about Apollo. The robots, the nuke, that I brought that robot back with me, that Claire lost her memories of me and a lot of people sacrificed themselves to save the world from that bomb."
He leans on his elbows, forehead in his hands. "I don't know where Gabriel is, I just know how to set up a meeting with him. I'm not afraid of him because I know I can kill him whenever I want. We have a mutual understanding. I'm trying to help him fight the urges his ability causes, like if he sees someone using their ability improperly, he has the compulsion to take it away, but sometimes it goes even deeper, like jealousy or necessity, primal things. He trusts me, I think, but I just want to control him, keep him from being someone's weapon."
He sinks into the desk even more, arms folded and head laying down completely now. "Gabriel's in Messiah, but I know he's not one of them. He doesn't have world saving ambitions, he doesn't care unless it's going to benefit him somehow. He's not evil, he just has issues. I spoke to him recently, I offered him a lot of plans I had, one of them being that we could pretend to capture him, or really capture him. Tracy's plan was to give the country hope, to show that the government is still in control, and I thought it was a good plan. I thought I could talk Gabriel into agreeing to either trick them into thinking he was killed, or maybe we could really capture him and then he could escape, then the country would have hope, the government would cover any escape up, and I could make the White Knight a symbol that the city is protected."
There's a snort from Audrey. Make him into a white knight. Pretend to capture him and give the city hope. Audrey scratches at her temple disrupting dark hair while doing it and looking over towards Parkman, or the illusion of Parkman in everyone's mind. "Such a noble idea. Most hair brained and stupid idea. She really needs to stick to publicity and not arranging how to capture wanted men. That's someone elses's Job"
"You hear that Parkman? He's not evil, he's just got issues. He's just mis-understood. He didn't mean to blow up midtown, didn't mean to kidnap me, and murder how many others. We've completely read him wrong." Sarcasm drips from her.
"Do you hear yourself Varlane? You're wanting to tame a lion, tame king kong, bring him from his island and put him on display in an amphitheatre." She pulls out of her lean then, the click of her heels across Tracy's office as she starts to circle varlane, pausing to lean down, lean near him. "Do you really think you can do that Varlane? What if he turns on you. You said it yourself, he'll only do it so long as it benefits him but when it doesn't benefit him…" Both palms slap down against each other near his ear.
CLAP
"He'll crack your skull open and then he's got another trick to his bags"
The number is on the desk, even if it is illusionary. Parkman pulls an actual pad of paper from his suit jacket and jots it down. "That monster," Parkman says slowly, "isn't a superhero anymore than you are, Varlane." It's Audrey's message all over again, but without her passion. Parkman simply doesn't have the time for it. "This isn't one of your comic books."
"You don't get it. I'm the White Knight, He'd be my Maxwell Lord." Magnes winces, rubbing that ear she smacked her hands next to, then sits up again to watch the two. "I'd solidify the White Knight. The streets would be blocked off, and I beat Gabriel Grey for the entire world to see without anyone getting hurt. World's first superhero beats the most hated man on the planet. I can kill him, I can stop his heart, I can rip his brain out of his skull with a touch. And if I can kill him, I can capture him without killing him. Even if he couldn't escape, if somehow you could keep him locked up, do you think I'd lose sleep over it? Over not having the responsibility of being one of the few people who can kill a super powered serial killer, and not having to constantly judge if he's worthy of being alive anymore? Wondering if every person he kills because he couldn't change him is my fault, because I decided to give someone the benefit of a doubt and try to make them better?"
At this point, getting overtly emotional, he's holding his head again. "Meet him by calling him. There's no way to ambush him into a trap, or anything stupid like that. Anyone who thinks they can honestly just go and capture him is as much of a moron as Peter Petrelli!"
"You don't get it" Audrey gets up in his face, nose to nose.
"You don't listen to the words that spill out of your mouth. You don't get to decide if he lives or dies. You don't get to determine whether he stays free or not. You can't reform him. He is a killer and if a feeb and a teenager nearly died capturing him, what makes you think that you're ability would do a single thing, if he turns you blind? Did you think of that? Turns you blind, what if he picks up negation along the way? He turns into smoke Varlane. Can you control the gravity of smoke? I've been hunting him for years, tracking him across the country!"
Audrey pulls away abruptly, circling around behind Magnes. "Did you know he can copy himself? Splits himself up into a couple different ones, and they can shapeshift. So which one are you plotting this little maneuver with Varlane. THe one who parked in the lighthouse, pretending to be Jillian childs and playing patty cakes with the children? The one who aids his dad in cracking open heads and stealing abilities and shooting at homesec agents. Let me tell you Varlane, if he really was interested in reforming, if you were really interested in reforming him, you'd have come to me and told me. Not told your boss" Her words all short in nature, clipped and hissed.
Parkman stands there, his face a hardened mask of disappointment and displeasure. Magnes isn't the dog that's piddled on the carpet anymore. He's the rabid animal chained up in the toolshed, waiting for a bullet to end his own misery. "That much ego never did anyone any good," Parkman finally says a few moments after Audrey's tirade has quieted. "If I were another man? I'd trim it back for you." Thankfully, not even Matt Parkman hasn't stooped so low as to be soulless. He still can't put Old Yeller out of his misery.
"Hanson, clean up his mess. Get rid of the robot, and do what you need to do to get rid of what Strauss knows." At least now, if they ever need to pull Magnes in for good, they can charge him with the various mischief that surrounds vigilantism. "Make it go away - like he followed our rules in the first place." He takes a deep breath and focuses on Magnes again. The illusion fades, and they're all back in the concrete room. "As for you, Varlane. Sending you to your cover is like giving a dog a cookie after it's destroyed the couch, but I've got no other choice. So be happy about it. But this White Knight business? Your little ego-parade? I don't know what didn't happen to you when you were a kid, but damn, boy…you need help." Shaking his head, Parkman turns toward the door.
"I don't have a problem, we're in a world where hope is very hard to find, where people with abilities are too busy committing terrorism to go out and make a real difference where the police can't. Do you know what I learned from being a cop? It's all PR, you can't make a real change, you can't just go out and save someone and let that be it. Why can't anyone understand that? I just wanna help people and make a symbol, I don't want anyone to know who I am, I just want the symbol to be alive. If I die, someone else can take that symbol, and my life wouldn't have mattered, because a symbol can't die, and people would still have hope no matter who's wearing it." Magnes frowns, just generally looking hopeless now. But then what Audrey says finally clicks.
He jerks at his restraints suddenly, fists balled as if he wants to really get up. "He's doing what? Back up! Gabriel is in there, at the Lighthouse, with Evolved children? With Hailey? He can duplicate? Damnit… damnit… How do I help? Just, tell me, no tricks, I want to help capture him, however I can. You can't do it on your own, at the very least, I can bring him to you. And I know he can blind, that's how he stopped me from killing him the first time. I hesitated and he blinded me."
"Everything in this world is about PR. Everything in this world is changed. Just becuase people have the abilities found in comic books Varlane, doesn't mean that we need people like Batman. There's some idiot on the street bouncing around in a white suit and playing at vigilante. Ripping up the street. Just like Shibuya Japan. You remember Shibuya I'm sure and what came of you there"
Audrey shakes her head, everyone back into the real world with it's concrete and harsh lights, no soft chairs.
"I don't need your help varlane. I don't want your help. You're to unstable mentally, just listening to you makes me wonder if I've been taking peyote or whether I'm going crazy myself. I just wanted information. I got the number, we got what we need and then some. But I'm not the only one that wants to get their hands on you. But my part is done here. You won't even remember this conversation when the weekend is over."
Hands settling on her hips as she walks away to share a glance with Parkman and a shake of her head. Where were his parents when he was growing up? Did a television babysitt him?.
"Where's the robot?"
"I'm not unstable. I fought robots, I fought a monster with four fucking brains, if I weren't negated, I would turn this chair to dust. You think about the world we're living in and then tell me if it's so crazy that I think being a superhero just might be a viable option. Find religion and hear voices and you're enlightened, put on a mask to go out and help people and you're insane." Magnes turns his hand over as best he can manage, then suddenly flips Audrey the bird.
"Erase my memory, figures. I can only guess how I'm going to do what you want when I leave. But you know what? That's fine, I'll be your pawn. But when this all backfires, when one day I get all my memories back and they royally screw my head up… well, what's the point in even finishing that sentence? You're all sociopathic fucks anyway." He turns his other hand, offering Matt that finger, then just looks to Audrey and says, "Tracy has the robot, I don't know where she hid it. I'd bite my tongue and die if I did know. Like I'm going to let the government use the technology to release Sentinel robots all over the city."
Audrey just stares, a mixture of disbelief, horror and shock. She turns then, knocking on the door with her knuckles, a glance to Matt. "I'm done here. I'll get working on Tracy, find the robot and have it slagged" Ignoring Magnes threats. Just another thing to add to the list. Threatening federal officers. Anything else?
Someday, Parkman will be able to put Magnes in a deep, dark hole where he can live his tiny little dream without nobody ever having to be the wiser. Where he won't cause collateral damage. Where he won't have to be worried about his symbol ever dying out. It's a pity that day isn't today. He simply purses his lips and shakes his head at Magnes before he opens the door for Audrey and follows her out of the room. It is a pity.
Much like the previous day, Magnes is soon joined by the two men and the Haitian. But rather than simply stick him back in the holding cell and tossing him another back issue of 9th Wonders to use as toilet paper, the last thing Magnes sees is the man's outstretched hand.
But the last thing he remembers is the wild party at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta and having way too much to drink. So much that the details of the party are fuzzy. The hotel room he's in is scattered with costumes, and not all of the various bits and pieces belong to him. Is…is the shower on?