Starring:
and Rebel
Date: September 28, 2009
Summary:
Matt gets some specific instructions from a rebel.
"Open Rebellion"
Matt Parkman's Apartment
The apartment is dark; there's a faint glow of sunlight outside, but it hasn't properly breached the horizon quite yet. Matt is sleeping off his jet lag on the couch, on the off chance that someone tries to break in - hey, you'd be paranoid too if your family got caught up in a string of serial kidnappings - while Molly is sacked out in her old room. Wallet, keys, cell phone and pocket change have been dumped onto a nearby end table.
The cellphone lights up and vibrates against the end table. It emits a loud, and rather annoying, beeping tone, the kind that almost anyone would be embarrassed to have heard in public. It seems Matt's got a text message from an unknown number.
Pragmatism over fashion. For the first couple of cycles, Matt just turns over on his side and mumbles incoherently; on the third, he pulls himself up to a sitting position, squinting at the display and calling up the message, rubbing the remaining sleep out of his eyes as he waits for it to come up.
The message is typed in all caps. It's about as imposing as a message can get. It's simple: "I KNOW WHERE YOUR SON IS." It's to the point, simple. On the next line is another line of simple text, still in all caps: "YOUR HELP IS NEEDED."
A number of questions run through Matt's head in quick succession. Who is this? How do they know where he is? How do they know he exists, when I only found out from Number One Beyonce Fan this week? But all of these are secondary. It takes him much longer to figure out how to send the reply (he doesn't do text messages very often) than to decide what it will say. "KEEP TALKING."
The reply is beyond speedy, faster than most people could possibly type, let alone think: THE GOVERNMENT HAS MATT PARKMAN JR. The first line is once again to the point. The second is equally succinct: THEY ARE TAKING PEOPLE WITH ABILITIES. This time there is a third line: THEY ARE ON A TRAIN BEING INVOLUNTARILY HELD BY GOVERNMENT. A fourth line of text is equally to the point: THEY NEED YOUR HELP. THEN WE CAN FIND MATT PARKMAN JR.
Ah, so the mystery son has a name now. He's still going to lay into Janice for hiding it all for him— but, again, first things first. It's that second line that really holds his attention. That means they could come after me, too. THEY LET MOLLY GO. HOW DO I KEEP HER SAFE?
There's a pause in the text as if the person sending it is considering something, taking a moment to consider everything. After five minutes or more the text comes through: TAKE MOLLY TO SOMEONE YOU TRUST. Several more seconds pass before the next message comes through: MOLLY IS STILL ON THE RADAR. IF WE WORK TOGETHER WE CAN STOP THIS. The next line merely contains some coordinates, a date, and a time.
This time, Matt doesn't reply, just sets the phone down. "Who?" he says out loud to no one in particular. "Mohinder's all the way back in India." Too risky to send Molly by herself, too physically debilitating if he went with her - besides, he only has so much leeway for time off from his job, and this train thing is liable to burn through a lot of that on its own. Have to find someone in town, he thinks to himself, laying back down and trying to get back to sleep.
The phone buzzes one more time despite the lack of reply from Matt: THEY WON'T EXPECT YOU. The second line: YOU AREN'T ALONE. The third: —REBEL