(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 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."

2/?

[evowhisperer]

His eyes flick back to Ryuzaki's. "We knew that nanites were capable of affecting cellular chemistry on a molecular level. We'd already drawn up plans for ways to control this for the sake of a greater net result, such as accelerated cellular reproduction.

3/?

[evowhisperer]

"Reproduction was just the start, obviously--once you get down to that level it's possible to rewrite the genes themselves."

4/?

[evowhisperer]

"They could be a cure to cancer, or correct any genetic disease, or even modify simple cosmetic conveniences."

5/?

[evowhisperer]

"Nanties at their core could have revolutionized science, medicine, food industry, global environmental issues, sanitation..."

... They were trying to change the world.

He only notices the wistful smile on his face as it fades. Even after all this, some things never change, do they?

6/6

[evowhisperer]

"...It was an ambitious project, to say the least."

Focus. His eyes re-center themselves on Ryuzaki's face, sobering himself up with the here and now.

"I feel it important to mention that none of our goals were completed in their entirety. The nanites' programming was left unfinished before we lost at least half of our team to a work explosion. I've been working on it ever since, but... none of it was enough, compared to the workforce we once had."

[dead_black_eyes]

It's an interesting array of emotions and expressions on display throughout the telling. L keeps a hawkish eye on them, committing them to memory, perhaps converting them to numbers and statistics for easier analysis from his hyper-logical standpoint.

"It's clear that you're passionate about your work and its potential," he says finally. "Watari, see what you can find about the incident responsible for those deaths. Surely something so major would at least make a dent in the typical news channels... following that, Cesar, wasn't working with the other scientists involved an option, even independently of Providence?"

[evowhisperer]

Caesar's eyebrows lift fractionally, but he seems both unhopeful and uninterested. Whatever the accident was, there are no mysteries left to cloak it, and he has no expectations that the man will find any trace.

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean," he says carefully. "It was an option, certainly, but none of the others were readily available until I searched them out. I reassembled what was left of us to finish our work in Providence's labs. But now..."

Now he's left them all to the tender mercies of the jaws they'd tried to escape, hasn't he? Caesar's face is neutral as he cuts his hand to the side, leaving any end to the sentence unsaid.

[dead_black_eyes]

Watari's silence is actually what gets L to glance back his direction, looking perturbed and annoyed. Clearly, he expected the old man to speak up by now with at least something he'd found, and every indication seems to point to L needed to search for these pieces of information himself.

"Watari...?"

He merely shakes his head, continuing to search.

"Assuming that any of this is true, as it doesn't appear to be verifiable at this point," he says dryly, "what stopped you from finishing your work if you did manage to reassemble them?" he imitates the gesture, eyebrows raised as if to ask and...?

[evowhisperer]

Hazard one: Ryuzaki might not believe him if they can't find anything. (They're never going to find anything, so this is concerning.) Hazard two: Caesar wracks his brain, trying to remember if he's already said anything about this. There's a reason why he'd rather say nothing instead of saying things that aren't true, and it's that it's a lot easier for him to calculate things than it is to remember his own lies.

"The work was complicated," he explains blandly. Stay close to the truth. "As I've just said, we're effectively talking about the cure to cancer, and these have evolved into being one of the most sophisticated computer networks known to man. There's bugs everywhere, and nearly every interaction has to be reexamined."

[dead_black_eyes]

If Cesar isn't memorizing his lies, then he can rest assured that L absolutely is with those cold, calculating eyes unwavering as they fixate on every little detail of his telling.

"Complicated... see, I would assume that that would light a fire under you, rather than deter you," he muses. "I feel I know that, because I am much the same way. Is it that your colleagues gave up and you were the only one willing to press onward, even alone?"