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| Scene Title | Where Goes the White Rabbit |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After a harrowing vision, Eve Mas tracks down a leader of the Deveaux Society. |
| Date | August 21, 2018 |
The drizzling rain continues to fall in Red Hook as the afternoon sun is covered by clouds, gray and overcast. The sound of bare feet pounding on the pavement, a pale foot splashes into a growing puddle of rainwater and the disturbed reflection of Eve Mas ripples on the surface of the water. Dark hair wild in the wind, her brown eyes wide as she looks from left to right. Searching for that white rabbit. Light blood seeps from a cut in her foot that she doesn’t seem to notice, mixing with the puddle of water as she sees that building, the clocktower. The one with the Three Mothers, or Witches depending on how you viewed them. Eve’s breath ragged as her chest rises and falls and she tries to steady herself.
One step taken forward and the veins in her neck twitch and before she can stop herself she marches over to the doors of the Clocktower Building, “Must follow the white rabbit. Follow the white rabbit, all the way down. Down, down.” She mutters to herself a pale hand going to clutch at her mess of hair. Waking up in an abandoned parking garage is one helluva thing but Eve knows she wasn’t partying until the sun comes up like in her younger years, tripping balls on LSD and shrooms. The last thing she remembered was going to sleep in Lene’s room again, a hand goes to pick at the wool shirt she is borrowing drenched in water, something else she’s ruined for her niece.
The oracle peers at the doors before she hurriedly opens and runs in, “I um.. Hello!” she calls standing in the lobby barefoot, bleeding foot and in a pair of jammies with pandas on them.
“No.” Comes from the front desk, first startled then alarmed. “No, No.” A red-haired woman with a name tag that reads Mira rises up from the desk and hustles toward the front door of the lobby. “No, I'm sorry. Yes, this is a charity, no it's not a homeless shelter. There's a shelter two blocks down, same color building.” She must get this a lot.
But as Mira gets up on Eve she slows to a pause, squinting and then raising one thin brow. There's a double-take, certainly, and then, “Eve Mas?” Alarm changes to concern, and then melts into an expression of uneasiness and worry when she sees one bleeding foot tracking across a pale tiled floor. “Come— come in.”
Sometimes, infamy has its perks.
Eve is use to these sort of greetings when she shows up somewhere but usually it's because someone knows who she is. Her name has the opposite effect this time and Eve blinks before trying to smooth her hair back and failing horribly at it. “Y-yes Mira.” Taking in her nametag and trying to compose herself. Walking forward Eve nears Mira’s desk, “A-Alice. Alice.” She croaks out and grand the edges of the desk to steady herself.
“Can you tell her I'm here?” The Oracle's body shakes and she momentarily closes her eyes before eyelids flutter open and she stares at Mira with renewed focus, Head in the game silly. if her latest experience told her anything it was that Eve had been in this “game” for longer than she even had thought herself. “Tell her.. I've seen. I know she helped me once.”
This isn't quite what Mira expected, isn't her usual responsibility, but it also isn't the first time she's sent up an injured guest to the penthouse. Helping Eve inside, Mira shoots an anxious look down to her bleeding, bare foot, showing her to a leather armchair. “Just— wait right here.” Mira is quick to hustle back to the front desk, leaning right over it and pulling her phone off of the receiver after pressing a button.
“Hello, Ms. Shaw?” Mira look back over her shoulder to Eve. “I… Eve Mas is here. Yes, in the lobby. I think she's— no, she's alone. But her foot— ” Mira's brows furrow, lips press together flatly, and she nods once. “I… alright. Okay, ma'am. I will.” Hanging up the phone, Mira slowly slides off of her desk and comes hesitantly back to Eve’s side.
“She's sending someone down to come get you,” Mira explains, crouching down in front of the seer. “Do you,” blue eyes track to the foot and back again, “need anything? It'll only be a minute, but…”
Being led to the armchair has Eve looking around the place, “Thank you, thank you.” Steadying herself as she slides into the chair she sits and waits as Mira makes the call to Alice. The dream from earlier flashing before her eyes. Tubes and golden eyes. // Alice and another man// speaking about protecting her.. that pizza boy.. it's all overwhelming and Eve literally hasn't had a moment to just sit yet. The weight of what she's seen and the fact that.. some of it seemed to be the past. It unnerved the artist.
“You are very kind to a crazy woman.” Eve snorts as she bends to examine the cut on her foot, “I.. just a towel if you have one handy. I'll..” grimacing, “I’ll throw it away.” Because who wants a towel drenched in blood from a oracle? “Oh.. um.. can you send an owl to my best friend? Her name’s Gillian Childs. She is probably.. very worried.” The second incident in a week, she's worried Gillian will finally grow tired of the craziness that surrounds her, maybe a irrational fear because the augmentor was for all intents and purposes her sister.
“I don't.. I have been waiting to meet one of them for so long. Look at me.” Dripping wet, a vein in Eve’s neck twitches with how rigid her body becomes, holding onto the arm of the chair frightfully. Picking at the hem of her panda pajamas, “She’ll think I'm silly.”
Mira offers a confused look at Eve for a moment, then raises one brow. “I don't know if I can reach Miss Childs,” she admits, “what with the phone service as it is. But I can… call her and leave a message. We have her number on file.” As she's talking, Mira returns to her desk and starts rifling through drawers, shaking her head. Ultimately, she doesn't find a towel but does come up with a first aid kit.
Hurrying back over to Eve, Mira sets the plastic case down on the table beside the chair and drags a leather ottoman over. “Foot up here,” she says, not quite believing she's about to hastily dress a wound in her work’s lobby. But it seems Mira at least has some first aid training, as she opens the box and pulls out antiseptic, some gauze pads, and tape. “You still need to see a doctor,” she affirms.
The phone situation, always biting her in the ass when she needed them most. “The things I took for granted,” Brown eyes watching the woman go and come back with more than a towel, small blessings. Looking up towards the ceiling with a faint smile, “You're too kind.” Before placing her foot on the ottoman, wiggling her toes a bit. “Have you worked with them long? The Mothers?”
That nickname so plainly stated, it's much nicer than calling them ‘The Witches’, especially when Eve was under their roof.
“Elmhurst is not a fan of me but I’ll manage over there later.” Before she can stop herself, “You know it was just a tuba. I was only trying to bring the patients great joy with my Faalarps.” A thoughtful expression on her face, “It didn't go over so well but I would never tuba this fine building.” Not unless it was an emergency Eve promises herself. Or only if she got extremely bored and there was nobody else to prank. Meeting Mira has given Eve some grounding from her experiences from the night before and earlier in the day.
If she didn't know any better she’d say this place was charming her, casting a spell on her.
Mira levels a slow, dead-eyed look up at Eve and mouths the word tuba with much confusion, then slowly looks down to the injured foot. “I'm not kind, I'm practical. Besides, I sewed up my wife on more than one occasion when she got into an extrajudicial scrap or two back in the day…” That admission comes with a distant look in Mira’s eyes, and a growing silence as she cleans up the cut and applies a few layers of gauze bandage and tightly tapes it to the cut.
Then, after having mulled something over for a bit, Mira looks back up to Eve. “Mothers.” It didn't make sense at first. “Are you… referring to the executives of the Deveaux Society? I think only one of them has children, to the best of my knowledge.” On the opposite side of the lobby from Mira and Eve, the elevator makes a loud chime, doors sliding open.
From within, a tanned man with short, dark hair and a neatly-trimmed beard emerges in an immaculately cut blue suit. Mira nods over to him, quietly offering, “That’s Ms. Shaw’s assistant.” The man in the suit quietly approached, eyeing the lobby triage with some measure of suspicion and awkwardness. After a moment he clears his throat and offers a hand out to Eve.
“Hello Ms. Mas, I'm Zachary.” He's soft-spoken, not too tall, and his blue-eyed stare feels unusually penetrating. “I'll take you upstairs.”
“Your wife is lucky to have you.” Eve could use some more practicalness in her life, Ghost was well.. a ghost often. She winces the tiniest bit as the gauze are tapped to the cut. Elmhurst would be thrilled to see her again, that's for sure. Not.
“Are they not Mothers of Society? Women with their fingers on the pulse?” Her brown eyes search Mira’s before the elevator pings and out walks the tan stranger that is too escort Eve, “I don't think I've ever dreamt you,” she says softly as she stares into his blue eyes too deeply. The oracle hasn't forgotten why she's here though, her freshly bandaged foot and the twing of pain that snakes up her foot is a good reminder. “Than.. thank you Mira. Sorry to drop in like this,” as she takes Zachary’s hand to stand, allowing him to lead her.
As Zachary leads Eve into the elevator and the doors slowly shut, Mira is left holding the first aid kit. She looks down to it and smiles, faintly. Only once the doors are closed and Eve is gone does she correct her.
“Was,” Mira says to herself. “My wife was lucky to have me.”
The Clocktower Building
Penthouse Level
After a ride to the top of the clock tower, the elevator doors open for Eve into a sprawling and breezy penthouse. Hardwood floors, eggshell white walls, and scattered paintings of purely artistic and not prophetic means decorate the living space. The mechanism for the clocktower itself churns at the ceiling, and at least one face of the foyer shows the back of the clock and a view of the Safe Zone skyline.
As Zachary leads Eve into the foyer, the pair are greeted by a woman familiar to Eve only in dreams. She is blonde, severe-looking, and possessed of a sure rigidity that would make Hana Gitelman seem flexible and casual. Alice Shaw isn't a woman of refined tastes, her clothes are casual at best. Loose jeans, a brown leather jacket, hair tied back in a clip. She approaches with the soft scuff of sensible boots on the hardwood floor.
“Eve Mas.” Alice says with a shake of her head, “will wonders never cease?” She looks to Zachary, motioning to a doorway that looks to lead into a kitchen. “Help yourself, Mr. Stone, your services won't be needed with Ms. Mas.” Alice's cold eyes level back on Eve.
Expectantly.
Well at least she isn't dripping wet as much as when she first arrived, padding barefoot on the hardwood floors her eyes wide as she looks from end to end of the room. The view of the clock and the Safe Zone give her pause and she squints with her head tilted before catching herself lagging and trailing after Zachary. Eve’s eyes take in the woman from one of her paintings, a face she knows quite well. Finding herself staring often at that painting of The Three Mothers hanging in the Oracle Room.
As the older woman speaks Eve’s back stiffens and her eyes are wide as if she's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Tapping her toe she nods hurriedly at the tan man, “Thank you!” Wiggling fingers at his retreating form before she steps forward a little towards Alice. “Moth— Ms.. Al— You know me.” Clasping her hands behind her back she tetters nervously, “But not from my meme.. from before. I was.. younger.” Eve’s still shocked at the idea herself… Alice and that man.
A look goes down to her attire and she looks sheepish, “I'm sorry for the wet floor.. I slept walked and woke up in a dirty parking garage.” Eve knows that part of the story isn't hard to believe and that's saying something.
Alice’s expression is a measured one, a difficult to read and anxiety-building stare with a nearly flat smile that makes it hard to tell if she's surprised or expectant of all that. Walking toward the sitting room from the foyer, which amounts to just heading right to the leather couches, Alice motions for Eve to take a seat. Briefly, she looks down at her bandaged foot, then back up with a pump of her brows that wordlessly implies oh look at that.
“I didn't figure you'd remember that. You were only, what, sixteen or so?” Glancing to the enormous clock face, Alice doesn't take a seat but instead chooses to stand, hands on her hips and one brow perpetually raised. “You were sleepwalking then, too. I made sure to call you a cab and send you home. You were asleep the entire time, walked halfway across Manhattan in the middle of winter.”
Slowly threading an errant lock of blonde hair behind one ear, Alice asks, “Why do you care about this?”
Following after the blonde, Eve stares at her back and slides onto a leather couch, sitting forward a bit so she doesn't slouch the woman takes in the story that Alice tells her and looks thoughtful at her words before she slowly shakes her head from side to side, No no no. “Well why wouldn't I care? Pieces of the puzzle that's my life I suppose. Interesting pieces. There was a man there.. you said I was special. You knew I was like Angela..” a frown at the thought of the old friend/mentor like person to Eve. Peter's mother, “You wanted to save me from the Company.”
“I didn't remember it. I dreamt it and that isn't right. Fishy.. I don't go backwards. I go forward, only forward.,” Yes that's it, only forward. The oracle slowly slides backwards into the couch, fidgeting as she gets comfortable. Her eyes flick back to the clock and she studies it intently, always forward never back. “Why did you care?”
“Oh, come on now.” Alice says with a roll of her eyes. “Sometimes a banana is just a banana, honey. Sometimes your dreams can be just that, dreams, and dreams overlap with memory in interesting ways.”
At the mention of the Company, though, Alice's hard expression softens some. “I did. Want to keep you off their radar, I mean. I've been working for the Deveaux Society for a long time.” Hands folded behind her back, Alice paces a little. “I knew what the Company was, too well. I knew what they cared about, where their true allegiances laid. I knew Charles was different, to an extent.”
“I care because it's human nature to.” Alice says with a flippant wave of one hand. “But what I meant was why does any of this matter to you? It doesn't change what happened, doesn't change who you became. It's just a dream of a memory of a day in your life.” Alice slowly raises one brow. “Why now?”
“I can't always be sure if the banana isn't a noose or not,” throwing her hands up in answer to Alice’s roll of her eyes the precog sits and listens. “I suppose… I also saw a time when I was painting for Simon…” the gradual return of her memories of her time at the Institute not only fascinated her but scared her as well, the things she had told them. How they had twisted her gift to their purposes. Eve frowns at the thought and wrinkles her nose. So much lost that she had seen.
“Ironic then, that I wind up working for Angela and Peter…” Eve gulps and looks away at the thought of her lost friend, “I'm sorry I didn't see anything to save him.” She was blind that day, not her fault but she couldn't help but feel like it anyway. “You and the other Mothers have kept the world spinning,” a shy look up at the severe woman, “I wanted to approach you before to offer my… talents.” The oracle known for her rather.. unorthodox methods when investigating her own dreams or.. say fighting.
“I've been searching for a man, you probably know him, Adam Monroe.” The paler woman looks directly into Alice’s eyes, “I thought you might know something, I'm unsure.. there was another memory. But it wasn't my own.. it wasn't now. It was a long time ago.. a little girl. She was trying to get away, she crawled.. clawed… she was desperate. She.. she didn't get away. He found her,” tears welling up in her doe brown eyes. “Say goodnight Alice, say goodnight Alice.” Eve rocks side to side gently her head shaking along, “Say goodnight.”
Alice’s eyes narrow slowly, her posture straightens and she becomes an impassive statue as opposed to Eve’s emotional torrent. Alice's expression flattens, emotion draining from her face, and then her eyes close and she shakes her head and scoffs. “That was the past,” Alice offers in quiet consideration. “If you go seeking Adam Monroe you will die. He isnt just a man. He isn't just one of us,” Alice notes with a raise of one brow. “He's an apocalypse.”
Taking a step toward Eve, Alice keeps her arms crossed over her chest until she gets within arm’s reach. Then, one hand comes to rest in Eve’s shoulder. Not reassuringly, but more in a falcon-like taloned grasp.
“That's not a metaphor, either.” Alice explains. “Adam is predisposed to the end of all things. In the 1940s he worked alongside the Nazis and stood by as millions were killed, because he thought they could offer him an answer to what it is he was. They couldn't. But it offered him an insight into what humanity was. In the 1970s he wanted to turn a virus the Company discovered into a plague that would wipe out nearly all life on Earth to start over.” At that, Alice walks to the far end of the sitting room and retrieves a leather-covered tube with a strap on it from a rack of similar containers. Eve recognizes it as a canvas case.
Alice's eyes narrow. “Kazimir Volken gained that deadly inspiration from Adam.” There's a slow turn and Alice walks back to Eve, taking the cover off of the case and flipping through it to remove one canvas from inside, slinging the case over her shoulder by the strap afterward. “Whatever ties you have with him — cut them off. Let them go. Because if you pursue Adam Monroe…”
Alice looks back at Eve and rolls out the small canvas in front of her, which depicts a woman that is unmistakably Eve Mas laying in a pool of her own blood, face down on the ground with the Kensei sword in her back and a black silhouette of a person with gold eyes standing over her body. In the blood, Eve’s hand has swiped clean a shape of the symbol. The painting is signed Mas 09 at the bottom.
“You will die.”
The end.
The words whisper in Eve’s ear and she flinches at the thought, “My visions have pointed towards a end coming, he wants to destroy the people not gifted like us. Genocide.” And that doesn't seem to be a new trick for Adam listening to the weather witch as she goes to retrieve a canvas case.. and her eyebrows raise. Shaking her head she looks up at Alice as the blonde continues to speak and then is pulling out artwork of her own and Eve sucks in a large breath studying the painting and rearing back in her seat. “Where did you get this?”
Her hand shakes and the oracle closes her eyes and dips her head, pondering that painting and almost wishing she hadn't seen it but it's just another piece to the puzzle. What can she do with it? Alice’s advice, Jolene’s.. Eve shakes her head. “He's killed me once, I went back in time on accident and he beheaded me.” A wave of her hand and she's leaning forward to examine the details more closely, “It put me back together. The golden eyes,” frowning as she takes about that traumatic experience. Drawing her shoulders back she tilts her head at Alice and studies her like she had the painting a moment ago, “I cannot. Will not. If.. If I cared about dying I would have never joined PARIAH, fought in the war. Somethings are worth the risk.”
“I won't sit aside while genocide happens, I just.. can't.” Hasn't Eve had enough? Enough prophetic experiences for a lifetime? Died twice? Will she ever have enough? “You can't either. This can't be what you and the others want for the world you've been trying to keep spinning.. He and I are circling each other like a psycho one two step and we’re going to step on each other’s little piggies whether people try to stop us or not..” She doesn’t dare say it’s destiny but it’s ironic given their names. Eve was predisposed to witness the end of all things and to stop it. “Help me.”
“Where was that place, that Adam grabbed you..?”
“The past,” is all Alice answers of that. “Let the past die, Eve. Or it will kill you. I can tell you from experience, the dead can't accomplish much.” Rolling up the canvas, Alice lays it at Eve’s side. “As a reminder,” she says thoughtfully.
“You aren't the only person looking for Adam, and if Benjamin Ryans knew what was good for him he would be too.” Folding her hands behind her back, Alice looks from Eve to the clock and back again. “Swim in smaller ponds, Eve. Don't play with the immortals, and keep a clean nose.” Motioning to the door, as if dismissing the seer, Alice has one final piece of parting advice: “Don't play with the dragon, because the fire will burn more than just you.”
“The past wants me,” Whether Eve wants it or not it seems.
There she sits, listening to Alice’s words and Eve rests a hand gently on the canvas case laid down next to her, eyebrows raise, “The Old Cowboy yes,” but Alice’s dismissive manner gets a hard stare from the younger dark haired woman. “That's not all.” The weight of those words at the end, the oracle looks Alice square in the eye. No fear there but a curiosity shines through. “There is something coming, something we all need to stand together for. An idea, it's spreading, hard to explain. An Entity if you will, please be on the lookout.”
She doesn't stand though because there is something else there always is with Eve. “You spoke with Agent Fancypants, you had to kill him. But the young— ” Eve’s face screws up at the thought of Rhys, he was a strange one even for Eve sometimes, “The Brother Seer he didn't know anything about his shadow. Declawed or not, you didn't want him around.” Whoever this curious man was, “Rhys didn't want to,” shaking her head from side to side, “Maybe it did matter, where he was from.”
That Eve saw Hiro Nakamura’s death at Rhys’ hands elicits another raise of Alice’s brow. She looks to where Zachary had gone off to, and then back slowly. “Like I said,” is how Alice chooses to frame her response to all of that. “Let the past die.” To wit, she motions to the elevator and lets her chin up just a touch.
“It’s been nice catching up,” Alice says with a painted smile.
Standing with the canvas case Eve eyes Alice wearily and shrugs her shoulders in a light admission of giving up, perhaps. Walking to the elevator with slow steps she takes in the penthouse as the doors to the elevator open. “You know better than I the past doesn't stay dead.” They had Rhys for crying out loud! “I respect you Mothers, m’lady but if you don't take this seriously..”
Eve’s eyes flutter as she lays her head back against the cold wall inside the elevator, “Well.. you already know.” And the doors slide shut on the pale woman’s face sending her back down to the ground floor. Eve had a lot to think on.
With the elevator doors closed and Eve departing, Alice closes her eyes and exhales a slow, tense sigh. She walks toward the kitchen, calling in for Zachary. “Mr. Stone, I need you to go into town and fetch Mr. Bluthner.”
“Yes, Ms. Shaw,” he can be heard saying back from the kitchen. Alice then turns, walking across the tower to a slim desk seated by one of the clock faces. She retrieves a landline phone from within and calls down to the front desk.
“Mira?” Alice says with a faint smile for no one but herself. “Put in a call to Ms. Ruiz. I think we need to have a talk…”
“…about Mateo.”