(no subject)

[evowhisperer]

  

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"Stand aside, please, I'm a doctor!"

 

Chaos. Pure, grainy, cheaply recorded chaos. The cellphone trembles violently with its owner's hands, and frightened shouting in Spanish from all around threatens to drown out the wails of a child. The dirty sidewalk is no place to treat the wounded.

 

The seven people bleeding out on the ground may not be alive to care, soon. The child screaming at a young couple's side is unhurt, but rightfully frightened.

 

Several someones pass in front of the camera. The owner moves to the side, and a loud male voice blares out, 'Are they alright? Are they alright?' when no one answers. The owner continues to move, and a frilly sleeve is pushed out of the way.

 

There's a man in a white labcoat kneeling over one of the bodies, pressing a cloth flat against a puddle of red.

 

'Hey, are they going to survive?'  the phone owner repeats. The doctor snags the cuff of someone standing too close, and orders them to keep pressing down. They step forward with shaking hands and kneel also, and soon the doctor stands and moves on.

 

Someone's voice is rising and falling hysterically. There's shouting about police, and an ambulance. The camera turns to look, but it doesn't seem that either have arrived, and when it looks back several people have begun to grab shirts from the store's open sidewalk display, following the doctor's example. 

 

The doctor is wearing a large woman's hat with a tag sticking out of it, now, conspicuously snatched from a knocked-over shelf. He's facing a direction that would normally let the camera see his profile, but the hat is big enough to hide all but his neck. He slows as he reaches a body that stares vacantly away--it's not the first he would've reached, but it is the first the camera has seen--and moves on.

 

Finally, there's the body that no one seems ready to approach, curled up and with its back to the crowd. Broken glass litters the ground around it, and when the doctor pushes it onto its back, he kicks a gun further out of reach.

 

Someone passes in front of the camera. "Hey..." The owner complains. No response, and the owner moves around. "Hey, why's he helping that fucker when there's people here who need help?"

 

The doctor's back is to the camera. It's impossible to see what he's doing until he glances towards the crowd, loops the hat's strap tightly around his jaw, and starts CPR.

 

No one stops or helps him. The camera continues to watch, eventually panning over the wounded, and the unhurt victims still milling around. Someone shouts about the police again, and more people are kneeling over the wounded victim's bodies, pressing down more cloth. The child has climbed into a sitting woman's lap, face buried in her hair.

One of makeshift medics calls out to the doctor tearfully, but they are ignored.

 

There's an outcry. The camera snaps back to the doctor, who's lifting his head from the shooter's chest, pushing down arms that have begun to move sluggishly. More shouting, with more than a couple of screams. The crowd is starting to shuffle back, and the doctor throws up a blood-soaked hand, shouting urgent assurances. The camera glimpses part of his face, and he's young, and very clearly aware of the new dangers--both from revived shooter, and the crowd.

 

"He's not armed!" Triple checking. The doctor kneels on his wrist, shifting the man to check underneath. Quadruple checking. "He has no more weapons! He's unconscious!"

 

The shooter's eyes are glazed but open, and the confusion in the crowd eddies and swirls. Before anyone can do anything, there's armed men in uniforms of the law shoving through the crowd, taking control of the situation. The crowd's din reaches a new high, and the man with the camera is forced back. It becomes impossible to see anything else, as people move back and shake the camera every which way.

 

There's only a glimpse left of the doctor left in the clip, and it's from one last ditch effort. The phone gets held high in the air, and it shows a white coat turned to one of the uniforms, hands forward, bloody, and earnestly reassuring.

 

The clip cuts out.

 

Comments

[evowhisperer]

Caesar waits for the detectives to leave with the tension of a mouse who's no less safe from a house cat even after the lights have gone out. This is a discussion he would just as soon not have the rest of the team watching, if he can avoid it.

As the last man passes through the door, Caesar asks in English, "I would like to verify certain frequency ranges with data on my phone sometime soon, for maximum safety's sake."

Polite. Respectful. He's testing the waters while making a show of the fact that Ryuzaki has every power to turn him down.

[dead_black_eyes]

The switch to English is easy and fluent for the detective, and very likely preferred over the textbook formal Japanese he has to speak around the other task force members.

"Maximum safety should be a priority 100% of the time," he says, only mildly chastizing. "Watari, I'd like to grant him use of his phone back, but only under very close supervision. How long should it take?" He asks Caesar, producing the phone and offering it with his spindly fingers.

[evowhisperer]

... Success? Caesar considers looking contrite at the light rebuke, but the insincerity would be too obvious, so he simply raises his eyebrows.

"Not long at all," Caesar replies, taking the phone and tapping its password in. "Less than a minute."

He's never timed himself, but he's confident that he knows his phone through and through. Sure enough, there's about forty seconds of tapping tiles open, scrolling, reading, then tapping scrolling and reading some more.

Hell, twenty seconds left is enough that he could check his mail and send off a quick reply, if he dared. He doesn't, and instead locks the screen again and holds it back out. No changes necessary, and he's confirmed what he already knew.

By now the other detectives are well and truly gone.

Caesar says nothing to prompt the questions he knows will follow soon, letting Ryuzaki take the lead. If he could avoid the upcoming conversation at all, he would, and he's not going to make the conversation any more complicated by offering things that might not have even come up otherwise.

[dead_black_eyes]

The timeframe, at least, is acceptable to the man, and he watches carefully as Caesar does what he said he would, and fights the temptation to sneak in what he didn't. It's probably for the best, as any such attempt would likely be noticed and intercepted by Caesar's paranoid and eagle-eyed employer.

"Take a seat," he says, once he's satisfied. "We'll likely be here for awhile. I suppose the first thing must come first... it goes without saying that I need to know everything you can tell me about Rylander, as well as some of the things you probably feel like you can't."

[evowhisperer]

Caesar sits in the offered chair, resting his hands on his thighs. It takes a conscious effort not to try to dry his sweating hands in the same motion.

"Doctor Gabriel Rylander is an evolutionary biologist, and a leading expert in nanite technology. He was on the original team of scientists that developed the nanite prototypes that were used to temporarily revive the shooter in Argentina."

It's not everything that Ryuzaki wants, but it's a starting point. Caesar hasn't said anything that couldn't be found through judicious googling, but he's already sorting out what he plans to say and what he plans to avoid.

Lo siento, Rylander, he thinks to himself. It's necessary.

[dead_black_eyes]

If L is surprised at the ease with which Caesar's words seem to flow, he doesn't indicate as much; that poker face is sternly in place. No notes are being taken by Watari or L; the man's memory is perfect and is actually more reliable, at least for a starting point.

The trick from this point will be to keep Caesar from being able to map out the conversation too far in advance, and that means throwing a few curve balls his way. Just enough to keep the answers spontaneous and honest. What you just said sounds like it was memorized from rote and while I don't doubt the truth of it, I need more than hard facts. I need keys and weak points.

"I thought something didn't fit before, when you said that you were working alone," he admits. "This man is the one who put you up to going to Argentina to revive the shooter, or... you're estranged from him and have been for some time, even before we encountered one another."

What Caesar says in answer is important, but so is the way he says it.

[evowhisperer]

Cesar's expression changes more as L describes his second scenario, but not enough to indicate a direct bullseye.

"You're wrong in both theories." He folds his arms casually. "No one's put me up to anything, and though it is true we've gone a few years without speaking--" And isn't that a story. "--we're not estranged."

How did Ryuzaki know that much? Is he taking guesses, and is Caesar just confirming them for him? ... Has he been in communication with anyone from his homeworld? That's unlikely. Even most people there wouldn't know or care about the details of is personal life.

[dead_black_eyes]

"A few years without speaking? A few years is the time someone spends in high school or college," L points out, stretching out one of his legs before tucking it back under himself in his signature sitting style. "It's no insignificant amount of time, in other words. What kind of circumstances would prompt you to avoid contact?"

The word is carefully chosen. Avoid implies intentionally not contacting someone, even when it is an option.

[evowhisperer]

He looks uncomfortable.

"Nothing as dramatic as a fallout. I spent five years travelling, and he worked in a remote lab with poor communications." Half truths are dropping from his mouth like leaves in autumn. "We knew it was coming. We parted on good terms."

Too much, too much. He should have left this with much simpler details, rather than draping around all this rope around to hang himself with. Why did it matter to say this much? It hadn't, and now he can't unsay anything.

[dead_black_eyes]

L's nonexistent eyebrows raise; he seems to have caught something that Caesar didn't intend to say or show, and he's mulling it over behind his black-ice eyes. It's true, Caesar can't unsay anything, but he also doesn't have the option to just clam up here, either.

"I see. The communications problem appears to have been solved, judging by his ability to track us down to the precise location and contact you. If convenience was keeping your collaboration separate, circumstances seem very different now."

[evowhisperer]

Caesar blinks back as L turns over things only he can see, and he tries not to worry. He can't possibly have gotten more than what was said at face value from that. There was nothing to deduce. Was there?

... Ah. His gaze moves past Ryuzaki and to the side.

"Not exactly." How can he put this in a way that wouldn't invite more questions? "I mean--they were different. For a little while. We talked shortly before I left work, but it wasn't for him to put me up to anything."

[dead_black_eyes]

Ryuzaki has been sitting for a long time. Even though it seems like it might not be the case for as often as he spends hours curled into an uncomfortable-looking ball, he does get cramped, and at this point he stands and paces across the room, Watari watching him the entire time.

One thing you should know, Caesar Salazar, is that there will always be more questions.

"But it was enough for you to leave," he points out languidly. "What was it for?"

[evowhisperer]

His face follows the man as he paces.

"Coordination." A small pause. That sounds suspicious, so he explains. "I was asking him to look after my old projects after I left."

Which implies that Caesar approached him. It implies he was in a position close enough that he could look after things. It implies that whatever happened, Caesar was behind the plans driving it all.

[dead_black_eyes]

It sounds extremely suspicious, to the point where Ryuzaki pauses in his pacing and turns to keep the other man in his eyeline. Clearly, Watari having his face in full view is not enough as of now.

"What were these projects, and what did it take for Rylander to agree to watch them? Did they have anything to do with the nanites?"

[evowhisperer]

Caesar doesn't quite hold back an uncomfortable sigh.

"Yes, they did. It didn't take anything to convince him to agree. Like I've said, there's history between us." History, and shared causes that either of them would (and have) died for.

"I'm afraid that the exact nature of the projects were confidential."

[dead_black_eyes]

Ryuzaki expression doesn't change with the sigh, but he fidgets slightly, as if he's predicting that he's going to be on the receiving end of an Oscar-worthy performance in just a moment. Then again, maybe not... Cesar is a good actor, better than most, and it can be difficult to tell for certain at times.

"Everything said in this room is confidential," he presses softly. "And you're not leaving until I'm satisfied. I'm sure you can see the position we're both in and how you can make it easier on yourself."

[evowhisperer]

Caesar realizes that his face has twisted in a distasteful frown, and he consciously clears it to something more professional. "I was the head of a company's nanite research lab. I organized most of the ongoing projects, and was leading progress on program debugging."

There. That's a relatively inoffensive way of putting it, isn't it? It's vague, but it says exactly what he was doing.

Rylander wouldn't have been physically capable of handling everything. He had no body. His main purpose was to continue the debugging, and to keep a watch on things. Or it had been, before Rylander left to follow him...

[dead_black_eyes]

It's vague. Perhaps too much for Ryuzaki's tastes. Even though he's willing to spend limitless time interrogating a subject, he doesn't like to waste a second of it. He blinks, clearly dissatisfied.

"You haven't told me the name of this company yet. I'd very much like to know it, so that Watari can cross-reference what you've told me so far."

[evowhisperer]

"Ah... Providence."

There's more to say, but he doesn't voice it. He knows they won't find anything, so although it's a truth, it's a meaningless truth. No harm will come of these people knowing such an innocuous part of his past.

[dead_black_eyes]

"Providence... you caught that, didn't you, Watari?" L asks, turning his gaze to the older man.

"I'm on it," he says briskly, taking a seat at the computer desk and taking his eyes off L for the first time. Clearly, Caesar is being cooperative enough to allow it.

"I can guess easily enough about the reason for Providence's existence, at least those things you haven't explicitly said, but how public were they, exactly? I tend not to forget these things, and I have not heard of this organization."

[evowhisperer]

"Not public. They were very private, and very big on company security. You might not even find them if you search," he explains, turning to watch Watari as he types. He knows the man won't find them, but nothing he says will stop him from trying.

"All their work is confidential. Some of it could be very dangerous in the wrong hands."

[dead_black_eyes]

L snorts at the implication that he might not be able to find something he's looking for. He doesn't even dignify it by considering the possibility, allowing Watari to continue his searching and cross-referencing.

"Whose hands are wrong?" he presses. "It sounds like you have someone specific in mind."

[evowhisperer]

The question homes straight in on a target that's both sore and willing to give. Cesar's head dips in a brief nod, and his hands close loosely into fists.

"My former projects were funded by a consortium of businessmen. Some of the demands they had were starting to become... alarming." To say the least. "None of this was new. They only reached a breaking point when it started to seem as though it might actually be possible that they achieve their goals."

Honesty. This is a subject that's not only important to Caesar, it suits his purposes.

[dead_black_eyes]

Whatever else it might be to Cesar, L finds the subject fascinating and makes no effort to conceal the extent to which this is true.

"Tell me what the affiliations of these businessmen were. I assume you know them," he presses. "It would be nothing short of idiotic to take orders from any kind of unproven consortium, even before the alarming demands started coming in. What goals were they trying to reach?"

1/?

[evowhisperer]

"Affiliations?" he repeats, twisting his eyebrows and letting his gaze travel past Ryuzaki without actually meeting him. "They had many different connections, but also none that seemed important. They were international, and so were we. Their goals were that they were interested in what our project had as a proposal."