dr. enoch waldinger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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enodia_gpsl2024-07-08 10:34 am
imaginist) wrote in enodia_gpsl2024-07-08 10:34 am
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WHO: Crysta Waldinger & Enoch Waldinger
WHEN: 1/30, late afternoon
WHERE: Enoch’s apartment
WHAT: Waldingers make a game plan after being interviewed by the FBI.
WARNINGS: None????
WHEN: 1/30, late afternoon
WHERE: Enoch’s apartment
WHAT: Waldingers make a game plan after being interviewed by the FBI.
WARNINGS: None????
Crysta had taken a rare day off for Enoch’s birthday, to make him suspicious, not because his party needed any more planning. For all her subterfuge (she’d been making Raine go to the store for party supplies she’d already returned), the actual party was small and simple. A genius move on her part, to make everyone aware of a rager only to fake out and lead only a select few to a quiet bar night. She was all set for her trap to fall, resulting in heavy exasperation but then inevitable acceptance from her brother. It’s his thirtieth birthday, after all.
But she’s not thinking of that as she’s pacing in Enoch’s kitchen, waiting for him to get home from his interview. Liberal use of her emergency spare key, but she thought he’d forgive her that. Despite hostility, she’d navigated her interview just fine, but despite herself, Crysta’s nervous for Enoch. He’s charming, knowledgeable, professional, all that, but he’s still in an FBI interview on a difficult day in the first place, a week after a mysterious plane crash and six hours of lost memories. She isn’t sure she trusts the government with his brain, and is casually calculating how long she could sanely wait before interfering. Ire at all the wrong things bubbles within her chest. This is, after all, supposed to be her day to torture Enoch.
Which she can start again soon. The key’s in the lock, but she lets him come through the door before demanding, “How did it go?”
“This is against the rules,” Enoch says without hesitation. “You are not supposed to be here.” Truthfully, he’s relieved to see her, but it would also be against their rules if he didn’t give her grief about entering his apartment without permission. He touches the tie at this throat, considering pulling it off now that the workday is over, then shifts to plant his hands on his hips, radiating older brother annoyance.
She was worried about him. He knows that’s true with an instinctive certainty that has nothing to do with his powers, but ignores it. “Are you here to enact whatever machinations you’re weaving today?”
“I’ve never enacted a machination in my life.” Crysta lies so blatantly that she’s sure it will at least profoundly shock the part of her brother’s brain that senses them, so he’ll be too jarred to ask follow ups. “And I deemed this an emergency the second we were pulled into a federal investigation without our attorneys. What if they’d wanted to search your place? You’re welcome.”
Grinning and wholly undeterred, Crysta hops to sit on his austere kitchen counter.
“How did it go?” She insists, “You were in there as long as I was.”
Enoch winces at the discordant sound of Crysta’s lie, and looks around his place, with the Ernest Waters conspiracy board still tacked up on the wall. He considers finding something else to argue with his sister about, but it’s not worth it. “Agent Leonello hates me,” he says. “Deservedly. They asked about the illusion masks, as expected. This is somehow related to the plane crash, but they aren’t actually concerned about what happened out there.”
He tilts his head, thinking about what little he’d gleaned from his conversation, and pulls out his phone. “The two of them—were they Liminals?”
Which honestly, she counts as a win as she’d scared him away from birthday suspicions one more. She grins, but just for a moment, as she also doesn’t have as much information for her brother as she’d like. Her own interview had been annoying, and ultimately lacking fruit. She’d just been sure to make sure that’s how they felt, too.
“She’s a liminal. Definitely has telekinesis. She kept like, summoning her notebooks to herself, it was stupid. He isn’t one at all.” Crysta says, confident, because she hadn’t seen even a little purple in Agent Lundy’s capillaries. She perches forward, annoying Enoch forgotten for now in favor of just blurting out all the information that she had. Crysta feels more confidence in him to use it than herself, which could be examined later, or never.
“And also, Leonello hated me too. SO rude. Which. I kinda gave her the party girl thing, so that makes sense. Lundy was about to spill like everything, but she kept shutting him up. Did they lie about anything?”
“Jessica Leonello,” Enoch says, typing her name into an IRIS registration records request form. “She lies like you do.” A grudging compliment. He’d acted difficult to see if she’d lose control and let something slip, but for all her temper, Agent Leonello hadn’t revealed anything she wasn’t already prepared to reveal. “I didn’t get much out of them. Except… they know for sure that the missing hours weren’t due to deliberate sabotage.”
He pauses, just staring at his phone screen. He has no reason to believe them, really, except that the thought has been pinging through his brain over and over this past week: that their minds were erased and all data was scrambled without any hint of who could’ve done it, and the only entity with the resources and access to pull off such a feat was IRIS itself. He hadn’t realized how paranoid he was getting until the agents had shrugged off his worst suspicion. Not sabotage. Not a coverup. Not a reason to start distrusting Enodia.
Leonello lying like Crysta is not good news, they both know. It means that she’s playing cards as close to the chest as they are, and neither Enoch’s inevitably misanthropic tantrum or her best play at vapid harmlessness could draw them down. She doesn’t like that. Nor the vacuum she knows this one elimination leaves behind.
Picking up the natural conclusion, Crysta frowns. “If she lies like me, are you sure she just didn’t like, use the right words? A deliberate sabotage is technically different than a deliberate fix, if that’s like, the person’s true intentions and beliefs, right? Or did they really mean it was just. You know. Not on purpose. Because that’s…”
Her face scrunches the rest of the way up, unhappy. The few hours she doesn’t remember were probably not important, but an anomaly means one that can happen again.
“What she said was they didn’t have any reason to suspect that sabotage was at play, which was a lie on her part. In reality, they know for certain that it wasn’t.” Enoch frowns, subconsciously matching his sister’s expression. “It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes when I hear a lie, I can hear which part of their words is a lie. A bit of deduction, and you know what the truth is.”
He finishes typing, and sets his phone down on the kitchen counter. “What should we do about this?” He looks at Crysta, his gaze direct, hiding nothing. For all their petty mind games, Enoch hasn’t questioned including her in his schemes for months now, and he trusts her insight more than almost anyone else here.
Crysta tears her eyes away from the kaleidoscope of granite cells that made up Enoch’s counter that she’d zoomed in on inadvertently. Her eyes rise to meet her brother’s, ignoring the familiar headache that almost always comes with looking or focusing for too long. She’s no longer as suspicious as she once was about him asking for her input, or feel every time that it’s her last chance to do so or risk being disregarded.
“I think… we need to make ourselves stay involved or relevant to this investigation.” She decides, nodding. “They all but told me that our technology is not what they’re looking for. But if what they are looking for is at all relevant to the crash or the wipe, I’d like to know what it is. It’d have to be powerful. And I think we need to be keeping really accurate notes, on paper, of everything we learn. It sounds like they know what was used, and I don’t know if I trust them or whoever else to not use it deliberately.”
Paranoid. Judging from Enoch’s smile, he approves. “Learn what we can about Leonello and Lundy. Keep everything on paper. Review research tech to see if we can find what they missed. I think that’ll keep us far too busy for any parties, don’t you?”
Ah. So he absolutely knows about the party. But probably not about the actual party. Crysta considers if it’s a good time to make him feel like he’s won, and “call” the party “off.” But that would be probably more suspicious than not. So plan B, deny it altogether. It’s an easy enough question to do that with. That’s suspicious too, but there’s more information in her corner right now. She pops off the counter, crossing to a notebook she’d used months ago for a depression journal and left in his home, to begin taking notes as threatened, starting with their interrogations.
“Please.” She sighs at him. “Like you’ve never learned to multitask? I have.”
“Good for you. Now that I’m thirty, birthday parties are infantile and passé, so I will not be there tonight.” Lie. Enoch’s lips press together—a tell—and he isn’t quite sure when he decided to participate in this nonsense. The only new variable, aside from a thrilling FBI interrogation, was a conversation this morning with an exasperating individual with an alliterative name.
...on the other hand it would go straight to my head if you went to a surprise party just because I said please.
Embarrassing. Before Crysta can call him out on it, Enoch points to the door. “Out,” he orders. “Bring your notebook if you like. We can’t get started on our counter-investigation here.”
Crysta turns up a soft pout at her sudden eviction, exaggerated, because of course she’d caught that tell. A small ring of victory pings through her head, but she plays it safe. She knows, if he’s coming, it’s not for her. “Be where, Knock?” She questions with a loud sigh, pulling the notebook she’d found to her.
But it’s probably a good thing to go soon, anyway, before his more annoying instincts kick in and he starts to grill her for details. So she feigns acquiescence, rising back to her feet and ambling toward the door. Still. Enoch’s not safe yet, because as she passes, Crysta on whim and impulse, to create one more annoyance and maybe with an ounce of real appreciation that he’d made it to thirty, leans in and pecks his cheek. Of course with an exaggerated popping sound, lest he mistake it for real affection. “Oh yeah. Happy birthday. I forgot that it was today, actually.” (An absolutely giant lie.)
But she’s not thinking of that as she’s pacing in Enoch’s kitchen, waiting for him to get home from his interview. Liberal use of her emergency spare key, but she thought he’d forgive her that. Despite hostility, she’d navigated her interview just fine, but despite herself, Crysta’s nervous for Enoch. He’s charming, knowledgeable, professional, all that, but he’s still in an FBI interview on a difficult day in the first place, a week after a mysterious plane crash and six hours of lost memories. She isn’t sure she trusts the government with his brain, and is casually calculating how long she could sanely wait before interfering. Ire at all the wrong things bubbles within her chest. This is, after all, supposed to be her day to torture Enoch.
Which she can start again soon. The key’s in the lock, but she lets him come through the door before demanding, “How did it go?”
“This is against the rules,” Enoch says without hesitation. “You are not supposed to be here.” Truthfully, he’s relieved to see her, but it would also be against their rules if he didn’t give her grief about entering his apartment without permission. He touches the tie at this throat, considering pulling it off now that the workday is over, then shifts to plant his hands on his hips, radiating older brother annoyance.
She was worried about him. He knows that’s true with an instinctive certainty that has nothing to do with his powers, but ignores it. “Are you here to enact whatever machinations you’re weaving today?”
“I’ve never enacted a machination in my life.” Crysta lies so blatantly that she’s sure it will at least profoundly shock the part of her brother’s brain that senses them, so he’ll be too jarred to ask follow ups. “And I deemed this an emergency the second we were pulled into a federal investigation without our attorneys. What if they’d wanted to search your place? You’re welcome.”
Grinning and wholly undeterred, Crysta hops to sit on his austere kitchen counter.
“How did it go?” She insists, “You were in there as long as I was.”
Enoch winces at the discordant sound of Crysta’s lie, and looks around his place, with the Ernest Waters conspiracy board still tacked up on the wall. He considers finding something else to argue with his sister about, but it’s not worth it. “Agent Leonello hates me,” he says. “Deservedly. They asked about the illusion masks, as expected. This is somehow related to the plane crash, but they aren’t actually concerned about what happened out there.”
He tilts his head, thinking about what little he’d gleaned from his conversation, and pulls out his phone. “The two of them—were they Liminals?”
Which honestly, she counts as a win as she’d scared him away from birthday suspicions one more. She grins, but just for a moment, as she also doesn’t have as much information for her brother as she’d like. Her own interview had been annoying, and ultimately lacking fruit. She’d just been sure to make sure that’s how they felt, too.
“She’s a liminal. Definitely has telekinesis. She kept like, summoning her notebooks to herself, it was stupid. He isn’t one at all.” Crysta says, confident, because she hadn’t seen even a little purple in Agent Lundy’s capillaries. She perches forward, annoying Enoch forgotten for now in favor of just blurting out all the information that she had. Crysta feels more confidence in him to use it than herself, which could be examined later, or never.
“And also, Leonello hated me too. SO rude. Which. I kinda gave her the party girl thing, so that makes sense. Lundy was about to spill like everything, but she kept shutting him up. Did they lie about anything?”
“Jessica Leonello,” Enoch says, typing her name into an IRIS registration records request form. “She lies like you do.” A grudging compliment. He’d acted difficult to see if she’d lose control and let something slip, but for all her temper, Agent Leonello hadn’t revealed anything she wasn’t already prepared to reveal. “I didn’t get much out of them. Except… they know for sure that the missing hours weren’t due to deliberate sabotage.”
He pauses, just staring at his phone screen. He has no reason to believe them, really, except that the thought has been pinging through his brain over and over this past week: that their minds were erased and all data was scrambled without any hint of who could’ve done it, and the only entity with the resources and access to pull off such a feat was IRIS itself. He hadn’t realized how paranoid he was getting until the agents had shrugged off his worst suspicion. Not sabotage. Not a coverup. Not a reason to start distrusting Enodia.
Leonello lying like Crysta is not good news, they both know. It means that she’s playing cards as close to the chest as they are, and neither Enoch’s inevitably misanthropic tantrum or her best play at vapid harmlessness could draw them down. She doesn’t like that. Nor the vacuum she knows this one elimination leaves behind.
Picking up the natural conclusion, Crysta frowns. “If she lies like me, are you sure she just didn’t like, use the right words? A deliberate sabotage is technically different than a deliberate fix, if that’s like, the person’s true intentions and beliefs, right? Or did they really mean it was just. You know. Not on purpose. Because that’s…”
Her face scrunches the rest of the way up, unhappy. The few hours she doesn’t remember were probably not important, but an anomaly means one that can happen again.
“What she said was they didn’t have any reason to suspect that sabotage was at play, which was a lie on her part. In reality, they know for certain that it wasn’t.” Enoch frowns, subconsciously matching his sister’s expression. “It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes when I hear a lie, I can hear which part of their words is a lie. A bit of deduction, and you know what the truth is.”
He finishes typing, and sets his phone down on the kitchen counter. “What should we do about this?” He looks at Crysta, his gaze direct, hiding nothing. For all their petty mind games, Enoch hasn’t questioned including her in his schemes for months now, and he trusts her insight more than almost anyone else here.
Crysta tears her eyes away from the kaleidoscope of granite cells that made up Enoch’s counter that she’d zoomed in on inadvertently. Her eyes rise to meet her brother’s, ignoring the familiar headache that almost always comes with looking or focusing for too long. She’s no longer as suspicious as she once was about him asking for her input, or feel every time that it’s her last chance to do so or risk being disregarded.
“I think… we need to make ourselves stay involved or relevant to this investigation.” She decides, nodding. “They all but told me that our technology is not what they’re looking for. But if what they are looking for is at all relevant to the crash or the wipe, I’d like to know what it is. It’d have to be powerful. And I think we need to be keeping really accurate notes, on paper, of everything we learn. It sounds like they know what was used, and I don’t know if I trust them or whoever else to not use it deliberately.”
Paranoid. Judging from Enoch’s smile, he approves. “Learn what we can about Leonello and Lundy. Keep everything on paper. Review research tech to see if we can find what they missed. I think that’ll keep us far too busy for any parties, don’t you?”
Ah. So he absolutely knows about the party. But probably not about the actual party. Crysta considers if it’s a good time to make him feel like he’s won, and “call” the party “off.” But that would be probably more suspicious than not. So plan B, deny it altogether. It’s an easy enough question to do that with. That’s suspicious too, but there’s more information in her corner right now. She pops off the counter, crossing to a notebook she’d used months ago for a depression journal and left in his home, to begin taking notes as threatened, starting with their interrogations.
“Please.” She sighs at him. “Like you’ve never learned to multitask? I have.”
“Good for you. Now that I’m thirty, birthday parties are infantile and passé, so I will not be there tonight.” Lie. Enoch’s lips press together—a tell—and he isn’t quite sure when he decided to participate in this nonsense. The only new variable, aside from a thrilling FBI interrogation, was a conversation this morning with an exasperating individual with an alliterative name.
...on the other hand it would go straight to my head if you went to a surprise party just because I said please.
Embarrassing. Before Crysta can call him out on it, Enoch points to the door. “Out,” he orders. “Bring your notebook if you like. We can’t get started on our counter-investigation here.”
Crysta turns up a soft pout at her sudden eviction, exaggerated, because of course she’d caught that tell. A small ring of victory pings through her head, but she plays it safe. She knows, if he’s coming, it’s not for her. “Be where, Knock?” She questions with a loud sigh, pulling the notebook she’d found to her.
But it’s probably a good thing to go soon, anyway, before his more annoying instincts kick in and he starts to grill her for details. So she feigns acquiescence, rising back to her feet and ambling toward the door. Still. Enoch’s not safe yet, because as she passes, Crysta on whim and impulse, to create one more annoyance and maybe with an ounce of real appreciation that he’d made it to thirty, leans in and pecks his cheek. Of course with an exaggerated popping sound, lest he mistake it for real affection. “Oh yeah. Happy birthday. I forgot that it was today, actually.” (An absolutely giant lie.)