Closed RP Stairway to Hell

[Brightheart Corp]

City streets were easy for Emily to blend into. They were full of people, people of all kinds. Tall, short, thin, fat, dark, light– city streets were perfect for someone like Emily to blend into. She wasn't particularly tall, and she wasn't particularly thin. The only thing about her that was distinct was her face– all bones and sharpness and tilted eyes– and her skin, patchy as it was from the growing vitiligo. Other than that? Dark brown hair, brown eyes, and mid-toned skin meant that Emily was barely noticeable.

That was good for her. She liked to go unnoticed. It was better for her, working for the government on such a secret basis, that she go unseen by the general populace. No friends, no partners, no anything outside of the lab. But then, of course, that was fine by her. She liked it better by herself. There was no one out there who could keep up with her, not mentally or physically. There was no one who she could form a genuine attachment to when she knew that they would die long before her.

That was why city streets were one of Emily's favorite places to be. She could watch all of the people she would never know, all of the people she couldn't know, and she could categorize them. She could make deductions about their lives. It kept her sharp to do that kind of thing as she walked, and it was fun. Or at least, she found it fun. Some of her coworkers, the ones who favored creativity to logic, they couldn't understand. Nor would they ever.

For instance, the woman walking alongside her. She was taller, blonde hair pulled up in a tight, perfect ponytail, a three-piece skirt suit on. Her brown eyes weren't focused at all on where she was going. She seemed to be moving by memory as she twisted the bracelet on her wrist. There was a tan line on her left hand where a wedding band would sit, and between that and her clothing being slightly ruffled, it was easy enough to assume she was having an affair, one she felt guilty about.

Her coworkers thought that kind of observation was rude. To Emily, it was all the same– she would never speak to this blonde woman. She would never know her. So what was the harm in this kind of deduction? She sighed softly under her breath, pushing her hair back behind her ear as she moved. She would never understand the minds of the people she worked with. No, not the minds of people who had no spark, the minds of people who didn't think outside of the box or push the limits. After all, she had been working with sciences the world had only dreamed of for years.

Since the beginning, since the original Brightheart Project, she'd been doing the impossible, working with sciences that she'd had to discover all on her own. Her research had laid the groundwork and contributed heavily to the Human Genome Project. That had all been because of the first Brightheart Project. How long had it been since she had thought about Ava Hunt? About Lady Liberty? The project that had started it all. It had been her genes that Emily had eventually altered and used as the basis of the second Brightheart Project, which had led to the most recent iteration of it. Of course, no one knew that. No one was around from back then anymore.

Not that Emily was allowed to interact with anyone from back then, even if they were around. After all, that would make it way too obvious that she was–

Was that–

A smile broke out across her face as she made direct eye contact with a pair of bluish eyes as she passed the woman on the street. A woman who was supposed to be very dead.

Her day off had just gotten a lot more interesting.

Emily turned her head back around, facing forward. She kept walking, letting the crowd carry her onward. She had no doubt that the woman she had passed would come after her. With that in mind, she made her way down most of a city block before ducking into a little café. Once inside, she sat at a table for two, and she ordered a black coffee with sugar and cream, and something off the menu that looked more like a milkshake than coffee.

As she waited for the drinks to be delivered, she looked out the window with a faint smile on her face, facing away from the door entirely. After all, there was no way that Lady Liberty was going to make a scene in a little café in Pittsburgh.​

 

[Ava Hunt]

"...and you remember Givens, right? Staff Sergeant Givens? Well, his grandson, Bobby, just finished his second doctorate," a voice more reminiscent of autumn leaves droned on in its rapidly aging victim's ear, "Something regarding biology...or was it botany? It started with a B."

"Biomedical Engineering," Ava said with more breath than tone, her exhaustion building exponentially with every millisecond of this rather one-sided conversation as she walked down one of the busier streets in downtown Pittsburgh, "He was studying Biomedical Engineering, Mom."

"Now see that's a man who knows what he's about. You could use someone like that with you, kid," the older woman continued through Ava's little hands-free headset, "You know I'm not getting any younger, right?"

"Yes, I know, Mom, but I'm not exactly keen on trying to make a move on some boy less than a quarter my age," Ava fired back with a bit more venom than she'd intended. Waiting for the light to change at an intersection, the prosecutor wondered if the woman she called "Mom" was finally losing it. A regular retirement home was probably out of the question, but the federal government would probably set her up in some kind of secure facility to live out her few remaining years.

"Hey, it's not robbing the cradle when he's old enough to rent a car!"

The prosecutor's right hand threatened to rip her own face off as she tried desperately to keep her voice from letting out a stream of vitriol and profanities. Allowing a bit of silence to be her direct answer, Ava finally decided that she'd had just about enough "family time" for the next...week? No. Month. Definitely month.

"Listen, Cohen's, yeah, Cohen's calling so I gotta go, Ma," she lied with gusto, "Love-you-BYE"

Not even waiting for the response, Ava quickly tapped the big End Call button on her phone before opening her music streaming app. Not really looking around her, she decided to listen to some older music she'd not consumed in quite some time. Soft guitar filled her ears as the crosswalk switched from "DO NOT WALK" to the little white "WALK" symbol.

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold

Zeppelin. Ava remembered seeing them live in '73 in Germany, but that was several lifetimes ago.

And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

Memories of old times suddenly came flooding back. Robert F. Givens, a Corporal at the time, asking her for her autograph. Telling her about this girl named Maggie he'd gone on a date with the night before and how she was a big Liber-Teenager. A fan. Young Robbie making the argument that Ava's signature was essential to the continuity of his bloodline. Admittedly she'd caved just before...

Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow? And did you know

A pair of brown eyes locked with her own suddenly. Eyes that saw you not as a person but a subject. An experiment. A...Project. As "dead project" gazed into the face of one of its "dead" leaders, time stood still for the briefest of moments; broken only by a cold wind swept through the streets as the weather began to turn. The dead woman's smile which followed was more chilling to Ava than any arctic blast could ever hope to be.

Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?

The moment gone in a flash, the smaller woman disappeared into the crowd as swiftly as she'd appeared. Pain shot through Ava's hand as she looked down. Her phone, or at least the remnants of it, had caught fire in her hand for a moment before falling to pieces. A bit of redness had developed in her palm, but at least nothing seemed to have pierced the skin. Wait. Unimportant. The Doctor. She was real...right?

Scanning the streets, Ava caught a glimpse of the specter's hair just as it entered a cafe. Real? Imagined? Need to confirm drove the woman forward. The crowd jostled around her and a large bearded man wearing a heavy leather jacket found himself bouncing off of what he thought was just some hot but uppity piece of ass. His surprise at finding his three-hundred-pound-plus ass collapsed in a ignoble heap like so much trash distracted his mind just long enough for the root cause to break free from his sight and attention.

Ava steadied her mind and her breathing before entering the little coffee shop. The smells of ground coffee and various types of tea flooded her nose, but the reassurance of the scents was not enough to dispel the quaking in her heart and soul. Sitting at a little table before her was the Doc.

The Doc. The one who'd essentially made her.

Slipping into the open seat without a sound, Ava inhaled with a series of halting jolts before speaking.

"H-h-hhhey, Doc. Ya...ye-you look g-good for a...y-you look good."

And so the universe had set the stage...

for the modern Frankenstein to so rise from the dead...

and share a coffee with their truly great and monstrous creation...

in fucking downtown Pittsburgh, of all places.

Downtown Pittsburgh, PA 2024

 

[Brightheart Corp]

"H-h-hhhey, Doc. Ya...ye-you look g-good for a...y-you look good."

Emily's eyes slowly left the window, traveling over to Ava's face. Just like Ava, she hadn't aged a day. Her brown hair was shorter than the last time the two had seen each other, now cut into a bob that almost brushed her shoulders. Her brown eyes remained only lined with the weight of her refusal to sleep, the rest of her face seemingly untouched by the time that had passed, her jaw and cheeks sharp as ever.

She looked Ava over slowly, her face blank, before she blinked and smiled. The smile was creeping and slow, like a spider's movements when it saw an insect flying too close to its web. There was even a sharpness in her eyes to match, the same unending hunger that had been present since the first time that Ava had met Dr. Emily Russo. Undefined, unknowable, and definitely not something you would ever feel comfortable asking her about.

"And you look alive. Which, if I'm not mistaken, you legally aren't. Isn't that right, Ava?" The voice that came out of the all together deceptively average woman was almost girlish. It was high, almost forced, but with an ease that indicated there was no strain to do so. Her tone was lilting, upbeat, and soft. She tilted her head to the side, her curtain of hair falling with the motion. She leaned her chin onto one hand, elbow on the table, and hummed softly.

"I shouldn't be surprised that they would lie to me about it. I am surprised that you survived." She paused, waited a beat, and as she did, the waitress returned to their table, two drinks in her hands. She set them down in front of each of them at Emily's indication. After a brief check that there was nothing else they needed, she left. Another beat, and Emily resumed speaking. "But then, I gave you everything you need to survive, didn't I?"

Her smile, which had turned polite and disinterested when the waitress had shown up, now turned into something knowing, something secretive, something that said "you and I both know." She gave her coffee a twirl, dissolving the sugar into it before adding cream from the little container they had brought alongside the mug. Emily raised her eyes to Ava's, almost as if to say "your turn".​

 

[Ava Hunt]

"But then, I gave you everything you need to survive, didn't I?"

Her eyes burned as her body froze from the sheer frigidity of space. Deep crimson ichor burst forth and then froze instantly as her skin shattered like glass. An argument could be made for humanity being the peak of evolution, but mankind was never meant to endure the void beyond its little ball of dirt.

Ava's vision grew blurry as her eyes tried to defend themselves from something that had occurred almost four decades ago. She swept it away with the back of her hand as her breathing steadied. The scarring across her body was nothing compared to the scars on her mind, but Ava wasn't about to let them win today. Wrapping a hand around the vaguely-coffee-flavored-milkshake she'd been given, the prosecutor smiled back before taking a single sip. Where her sheer will had failed to soothe her battered mind, caffeine and processed sugar would do.

"To be fair to the bean counters and nerds," Ava began with a smirk, "They really did think I was dead for at least six months. I mean, it's not like the radar techs back then could properly track an object moving at relativistic speeds."

Not that she'd remembered any of that, of course. Her last memory before waking up in that hospital outside of Hanoi was the blazing heat as the bomb det-

"But yes," Ava continued, forcing her mind to stay here and now, "I doubt I would have survived without all of the...alterations you'd made over the years."

Try as she'd might, there was no way Ava'd be able to call the various abilities the Doc had grafted into her improvements.

"Though I think they've all either run out or are running out," she finished with another sip, "The eggheads told me after they finally found me that all of my abilities, even my original adaptability, were actively degrading. So, while it's been a bit prolonged, it looks like I'm a bit beyond my shelf life. But you...you look...great, Doc."

Ava'd ended her little explanation with a bit of a raised brow and a smile. She'd always suspected that the Doc was a miracle worker, but now she was beginning to think that the woman had actually found the treasure of Ponce de León.

Downtown Pittsburgh, PA 2024

 

[Brightheart Corp]

There was a moment after Ava's comment, or rather insinuation, where Dr. Russo simply took a long, slow sip of her coffee, her eyes closed as she savored the flavor. One thing she had to hand to modern times, they certainly knew how to brew a good cup of coffee. Coffee where she had grown up as a little girl had been bitter and disgusting, something you drank quickly to get it over with and in your system, rather than the delicious beverage that it was today. You had to hand grind the beans, often after harvesting them yourself or at least trading for them from someone else, and always after roasting them yourself. Now? Now you could just go to a café on the street corner.

"Well, they never were the brightest bunch of light bulbs, were they? They never just plugged you back in to charge you back up, I presume? Of course they didn't. You would still be active if they had." She sighed as she set the mug back onto it's saucer, looking down at the contents of it like they might have the answers to some problem she was trying to solve. She looked back up at Ava, then, her brown eyes cool and calculating.

"Ava, you'd be dead if you without any power. We both know how old you are. If you didn't still have power, then you wouldn't be able to sit at this table with me, much less as you are now. All you need is a quick charge. Your powers were depleted, because you used up all of your energy storages when you did what you did. You didn't just lose them." One of her hands lifted and gestured as she spoke, twisting and gesturing to all of Ava. She laughed then, a little trilling sound, too girlish for the face it came from. Something about it seemed almost too practiced, almost like a recording of a laugh, and not a genuine one.

The answer seemed obvious to her. Ava just needed to be hooked up to a battery, something strong, and it would jumpstart her. That was, if her body hadn't spent the last couple of decades soaking up power from everything around her and stockpiling it. After all, that should have been something that was possible for someone like her. With all of the modifications that had been made to Miss Ava, she should have been able to stand under the sun for a few hours and charged her batteries enough to do minor things again. Not, of course, that the woman might know that. And Emily certainly wasn't going to tell her. No, that would ruin the potential fun of it all.

And Emily would do anything for some fun, at this point. She'd been bored for so long, with nothing interesting her or surprising her. Maybe Ava would be the thing that brought her out of this slump of boredom. She hummed when she picked her coffee back up, letting it warm her hands. She turned the mug around in her hands idly as she waited for Ava to speak.​