Who: Seymour and Walter (NPCs) What: It's time we checked in on those guys! Where: Walter’s lab When: 3/15, not long after the blackout starts Warnings: Mild language, shoe-throwing, and NPC villains being far funnier than they should.
It was customary for someone new in a city to spend some time exploring it and seeing the sights. Normally, someone new in a city would do everything in their power to investigate and see what their new home had to offer. It was exciting, after all. Exciting and new and interesting. For Walter Frost, Seattle was just a new time zone. The only thing that changed, for him, was the settings on his watch, laptop, and Blackberry. Everything else was the same. He wore the same clothes, worked on the same projects, and stuck to the same schedule. In the twelve days since he had arrived in the city, Walter hadn’t been anywhere but his apartment, his lab, or the commute between the two for more than twenty or so minutes. He was a man possessed by his work, lacking interest in anything else. Plus, he had left his precious company behind on the east coast - he wasn’t leaving her in the hands of a babysitter to just waste time.
For Walter, time adhered to the old adage of “waste not, want not.” Everyone complained that there weren’t enough hours in the day, but he knew better. All the whining and moaning just exposed the common man for the pathetic weakling he was. If you want more time, you make it. You forge it out of fire and sweat, and you reap it for all its benefits. Wasting time leads to not enough, but saving it makes you wealthy. That’s how Walter explained his success, and he wasn’t going to apologize for any of it.
So, like one would expect, he spent his Tuesday in the lab, alone amongst his creations. He consumed his time with research, focusing on what could be done. The problem of the Night Terror was most pressing, leading to his lab being filled with acquired sleep monitoring equipment - some new, and some painfully outdated.
He was currently welding together a prototype “dream machine,” a rigid shell that looked almost like a hi-tech tanning booth. Sleep monitors were outfitted with amped-up batteries to be hypersensitive. Some would think it cruel, but Walter thought it progressive. With his welding mask shielding his face, he crouched over the two long panels, very carefully drawing the fiery blast of the torch between them. Sweat dripped down his face behind the mask, his arms swimming from behind his protective suit. Every ounce of that sweat went into his work, forging it beautiful from its commonplace parts.
And then, out of nowhere, the lab went dark. The only light left came from his blowtorch, which he quickly snuffed out cold. Setting it down, he straightened up, lifting the panel of his mask to peer into the darkness. “Hello?” he called out, all apprehension and caution. It could have been just a fuse - maybe. But he could see that the hallway was dark, and he knew damn well that if it were a fuse, the hall wouldn’t be out. His power was dead, for whatever reason. And he knew that there were people that would benefit from blacking him out.
He quickly crawled out of his welding suit, the air warm on his bare arms. Though it was dark, he knew which direction he wanted to move in, making a beeline for a cabinet in the back. Opening the second drawer from the top, he reached in blindly, pulling out the loaded pistol inside. He slipped the safety off, holding it in both hands as he made his way very carefully towards the hallway out of the lab. “Is anyone there?” he called, opening the door slowly.
It seemed that the entire building was deserted, completely vacant and dark. He moved from the underground lab up to the in-construction school on the surface. Half-finished classrooms taunted him with partially assembled desks and broken down walls. It looked like something out of a horror movie, which only tightened his grip on the pistol in his hands. He kept expecting to see something jump out of the rubble, something vicious and in a cape. All the while, he mentally swore - he was getting too damn old for this shit.
When a check of the school revealed nothing, he prepared to head out onto the grounds, moonlight from the sky giving him a ghostly blue glow. Sweat kept his hair and tank top slicked to his skin, like a perfect second coating that he’d have thought to remove if he weren’t gripped by growing concern. He pushed open the front door, ready to examine the grounds, when a loud sound caught his attention. It was as if something had sprang to life below him, something hungry and vibrant.
Still clutching his pistol, he ran downstairs into the underground lab, throwing open the door with a shoulder and holding the gun out aggressively. Instead of seeing a masked vigilante jamboree, he saw the last thing he had expected: his lab, lit up, like nothing had happened. Gaping, he stumbled forward, turning three hundred sixty degrees as he walked as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His power was back. But why had it gone in the first place? Maybe it was just a normal blackout, some kid putting too many X-Box consoles in their house. Maybe he was getting paranoid in his old age.
Just as he was calming down, the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside the lab caught his attention. Grip on his gun, he turned, ready to aim and fire at whoever dared to trespass on his almost-under-seige property. Seymour had been waiting patiently for the lights to go out.
He’d driven out to The Academy while the sun was low in the sky, knowing the generator there would kick in as soon as the lights fell. He was distracted with the nearness of his prize, and he’d forgotten to inform Walter of the coming dark, but no mind. He would tell him personally. There were other things to discuss as well, including the catch Eric had made that was currently housed beneath the ground level of the bank.
He parked the car outside the almost-repaired school. It would be opening soon, and it gave him a sense of pleasure, the fact that he’d hidden the heart of their organization in a place no one would ever dare threatened. He wasn’t a vain man, but he did enjoy a job well done. That, you see, had been well done.
It took him a moment to shut off the car engine and approach the building. He was, he recognized, slightly enamored of his Mockingbird. He awaited collecting her like a butterfly catcher anticipates a pretty specimen, and he intended to put her under glass and study her in much the same way. He had created a special collar for her, one that administered the drug that would make him fully his, and he had spent the last moments of sunlight twisting it between his fingers before venturing inside.
He had a lantern, which he held high until he heard the buzz of the generator kicking on. By then, he was in the hallways outside the lab, and he paused outside the door, having heard the steps within. He knew Walter Frost well enough not to want to surprise the other man.
“Walter, are you inclined to receive company?” he asked across the heavy door, loudly and with a friendly smile in the words. The footsteps stopped just outside the door, causing Walter to pause. He cocked the pistol, holding it at the ready, though he wasn’t sure why. Who would wait for the emergency generator to kick in before invading his lab? Maybe someone slow. Or maybe someone blind arrogant enough to think that they could take him on because he was an old man. Over fifty or not, Walter, moved towards the door, ready to call out again when a very familiar voice caught his attention.
Seymour Shawn. That son of a bitch.
Sliding the safety on his pistol, Walter quickly set it down on a nearby table, pushing it away out of concern for an itchy trigger finger. “Seymour!” he called out, keeping his voice fairly jovial as he leaned down and loosened the laces on his boot. “Of course, come in!” He didn’t doubt that that mind-hopping bastard would know what was coming, but that didn’t stop him from removing his boot and holding it in his right hand, poised to throw it at the other man the second he walked through that door. Seymour threw open the door without hesitation, and it was only dumb luck that the boot missed his face. As it was, the tip caught the side of his head, resulting in an undignified Oomph! of pain and surprise, before he recovered enough to shoot Walter a look.
“Do you feel better?” he asked the other man, a quirk of a brow and a lean to pick up the dangerous, previously-flying boot, which he held out to Walter as he entered the lab. “Now that you have thrown your footwear at me?” When the boot didn’t hit Seymour directly in his face, Walter frowned, though the undignified noises he made almost made up for it. With a nasty smirk packed with schadenfreude and childishness, Walter watched the other man stoop to pick up the thrown boot. “Yes,” he replied, voice very self-assured. “Yes I do.”
He took the boot from the other man, scowling at him, and not stooping to put it on just yet. He held it in his arms the way a student might hold a book, both arms crossed over it to hold it against his chest. “And you damn well deserved it, too. I’ll bet you think that was real cute, your little light show. Any reason for it?” He didn’t doubt that Seymour had his reasons for doing what he did - the other man wasn’t an idiot by any means. But Walter was angry, which meant that everyone around him - even Stephen Hawking, if he were present - was dumber than a sack of bricks on fire. “I’m picking something up shortly, and I could use the distraction,” Seymour explained, smoothing down his hair to perfection again, foiling the attempts of the boot to make him look disheveled. “As a result, you’ll have two deliveries in the morning. Little mice. One has an impressive little dream ability, I’m told. Perhaps experiments could help you find a way to deal with our little Night Terror problem. The other is a healer, a girl, quite a stupid one. But I need her, and I can’t return her. As it is, it wouldn’t hurt to figure out how far she can go with that ability. Can she revive, for example? At what point is something too damaged for her to repair. That sort of thing.”
He grinned. “And if you get very bored, you can throw your boots at them. I’ll take care of their memories, should we want to return them once you’re done.” Let it never be said that Seymour Shawn was a meek man. Walter didn’t doubt for one second that “picking something up” was more than met the ear, though he had to admit that shutting down an entire city when he possessed the power of near-complete mind control was little more than showing off. Stooping to lace up his boot, he glanced up at the other man, squinting slightly as he spoke. He tied off the knot, straightening up slowly to tease crackles and creaks out of his spine.
“Are you delivering cages for them?” he asked aloofly, twisting from side to side as joints cracked. “I’m not on dropping duty.” Shaking his head, he dismissed his own idle asides, turning to the issue at hand. “And I’m also insulted by that “perhaps.”” With a dark, wry smile, he beckoned the other man as he backed up towards the in-progress machine, gesturing to it with a proud hand. “I think I’ll find a use for your dreamer. This case, when finished, should perform complete brain scans that feed data directly into that computer.” He gestured to the equipment in question. “I’ve done some study on neuroanatomy. If we can get our dreamer dreaming, we can establish a baseline and see what we need to prevent. Once we see the leak, we just plug it. I’m thinking electrical stimulation to block the activity of certain brain patterns. It might be risky, but other mice have died for lesser causes.”
With a self-satisfied smile, he leaned back, one thumb hanging in his belt loop. “As for the stupid healer, I’ll find some coloring books with dead animals. Maybe spice up the pages a bit, make them more authentic.” That smile turned nasty as he ran a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath. “I only ask for top-of-the line video surveillance equipment in-use for all my trials. One pair of eyes and ears isn’t enough.” “The cages will be delivered in the morning. I’m housing them in the cells beneath the bank until then. Where is the thanks, Walter?” Seymour teased. “After all, I am having mice hand picked and delivered to your cages in the morning.” He chuckled. “And order whatever surveillance equipment you like. I am only a messenger, after all. I don’t fund your little experiments when all is said and done.”
He looked around one last time, and then he turned to leave. “I must get going. Something to pick up,” he reminded him, and the grin said whatever he was picking up was, indeed, special. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow, after the delivery. Try not to throw any more shoes until then. The power will be back at sunrise.” Seymour’s teasing fell on deaf ears, earning a perfectly unimpressed look from the scientist. “Cages you’ve asked me to build,” he reminded the other man, tensing the slightest bit as he mentioned funding. Funding was what made the world go round, or - in some cases - stopped it dead in its tracks. Walter resisted the urge to mutter darkly about payment compensation, instead giving the other man a practiced smile and polite wave.
The reminder of a pick-up wasn’t lost on him, and he knew that grin. Resiting the urge to roll his eyes like a teenage girl, Walter scratched at the nape of his neck, crawling under the sensation of dried sweat clinging to his skin. “Hop to it, messenger boy,” he said with a low chuckle, though there was little humor in his voice. “I should have the dream machine prototype operating by morning. If I’ve got time, I’ll cook up a maze for the other rodent.” Metaphor would never cease to amuse. Seymour, accustomed to Walter’s demeanor, merely smiled a politician’s smile. “I know you’ll do exemplary work, Walter, because you’re doing it for yourself and not for me at all,” he said plainly. “I’d be a fool to think otherwise.” Seymour liked to think that he was not, in fact, a fool.
With a turn, he left the lab, marveling at the school that had been rebuilt over it. He’d make some calls in the morning. It was time classes begun at the new Academy.